Monthly Archives: May 2019

By J.D. ALT

I’ve spent the last month or so tinkering with and observing a diagram-machine representing the workings of the U.S. monetary system. In the process, I can see that I’ve bored a lot of people beyond their capacity with the tedium of the tinkering. I apologize for that, and I’ll hereby discontinue the torture. Nevertheless, I’d like to share a few insights the tinkering revealed—at least to me—that made the exercise worthwhile.

1. Money-creation is a response to what the American people decide they want to produce and consume.

This, it seems to me, is a crucial insight because it reverses the way we habitually think about and visualize “money.” The habitual frame is that money exists first, then we decide what we want to spend it on—and then we determine if there is enough of it available for us to get what we want. While this is certainly true for the individual family or business, the diagram-machine revealed very clearly that, for society as a whole, this is a false framing. Actually, it works the other way around: We, as individuals, decide we need new shoes, and the private banks—through a process of accepting Promissory Notes in exchange for bank-dollars—create the “money” that will enable the shoes to be both manufactured and purchased. The Federal Reserve (FED) then issues the Reserves, as necessary, to back up those bank-dollars during the “clearing” process that happens at the Central Bank at the end of each business day. In other words, the amount of money in the system expands, as necessary, to meet the consumption decisions made by American society. (Of course, individuals, families, and businesses each have to strategize how they’ll earn or otherwise acquire some share of the money that’s created by this process—but that’s a separate issue from the question of whether there’s enough money available, or how it’s created.)

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MMT for People in a Hurry

By J.D. ALT

POST #3  (Post #1, Post #2)

OPERATION #2—The federal government buys something big for the collective good.

NOTE: A much appreciated comment at Naked Capitalism re: Post#1 suggested that the term “Combustion Chamber” was misleading since the “fuel” (money) put into the chamber is not burned as in a motorcycle engine but is redistributed to other accounts. I was planning to point this out further into the narrative but the comment showed that would be too late. So, beginning now, I’ve changed the name “Combustion Chamber” to “Production/Consumption (P/C) Chamber,” of which we have two: a Public P/C Chamber and a Private P/C Chamber.

OPERATION #1 looked at a transaction in private commerce—an exchange of money occurring in the Private P/C Chamber of our diagram-machine. OPERATION #2 will observe a transaction in the Public P/C Chamber. Before we start, this is a good time to address a question you may already have asked: Why does our diagram-machine have two Production/Combustion Chambers? Why can’t all the Production and Consumption that American citizens need take place in just one?

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MMT for People in a Hurry

By J.D. ALT

POST #2  (See POST #1 here)

FIRST: Prime the fuel-pumps

As it stands, our diagram-machine has no fuel (“money”) in it, so it can’t operate. We could go through an exercise to imagine how it could prime itself in order to begin operations. But this would lead to other topics and considerations which would only distract us from our present goal—which is to simply understand HOW the diagram-machine operates—and how, and when, in the course of its operations, it creates money. To move things along, we’ll simply (and arbitrarily) populate the machine with some money to get it started.

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MMT for People in a Hurry

By J.D. ALT

I’m expanding an earlier essay into a short, book-length piece I hope will be useful in the unfolding public debate about MMT. The piece will utilize the “operation” of a “diagram-machine” to illustrate how our modern money system actually works. My hope is that it will be accessible and easily understood by people who have a genuine interest in MMT, but little time or patience to delve into its operations and implications. I’m posting the narrative here at NEP for comments and suggestions. Efforts to keep things simple and focused on basics might lead to some errors, or important omission—which I’d like to avoid. The diagram-machine, itself, I’m still working on—but I think the narrative, for now, can be followed (and evaluated) without it.

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