Author Archives: Devin Smith

BACK TO THE FUTURE: MODERN MONEY CONFERENCE IN 1999

Posted on March 30, 2013 | 19 comments

I thought readers might enjoy taking a peek back in time to 1999, to a conference organized at the New School by Stephanie Bell (Kelton), Mat Forstater and Edward Nell. This was pre-UMKC, just before we made the big move. The Center for Full Employment and Price Stabililty was housed at the Levy Economics Institute and Ms. Bell was pursuing a PhD. I’m including the conference program, my outline, and my notes for presentation. Note that the conference was organized around Charles Goodhart’s presentation, based on his deservedly famous article, “The Two Concepts of Money”, published in the European Journal of Political Economy in 1998. Hence in my presentation, I adopt his taxonomy of approaches to money as the “M form” (metalist or monetarist) and the “C form” (cartalist or chartalist or state money). You will see that it’s all there–the basics of what became MMT: state money of account, taxes drive money, endogenous (private) money, and labor bufferstock to stabilize prices.

Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in L. Randall Wray

Tagged MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

A Plague on All Your Budgets

Posted on March 26, 2013 | 47 comments

By Joe Firestone

The Sector Financial Balances Model:

Domestic Private Balance + Domestic Government Balance + Foreign Balance = 0

is an accounting identity that provides a focus for macroeconomic analysis, explanation, and prediction by economists applying the Modern Money Theory (MMT) approach. It leads to a very critical line of thinking about the budget deficit projections produced for our consumption by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the House, and the Senate. The US has recently had a sharp decline in its balance of trade deficit. It now stands at about 3% of GDP; which means that the rest of the world has a surplus, a balance of +3% of US GDP in its annual trade with the United States. Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Joe Firestone

Tagged #PCS, 2013 budgets, CBO, CPC, Fiscal Policy, High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage, House budget, MMT, paul ryan, Senate budget, Trillion Dollar Coin

The NY Times Calls Third Way “Center-Left” and Turns a Study on its Head

Posted on March 21, 2013 | 18 comments

By William K. Black

Some lies will not die. As I have demonstrated repeatedly, Third Way is Wall Street on the Potomac. It is funded secretly by Wall Street (it refuses to reveal its donors), it is openly run by Wall Street, and it lobbies endlessly for Wall Street. Third Way, like every Pete Peterson front group, is dedicated to shredding the safety net as its highest priority and throwing the Nation back into a gratuitous recession through self-destructive austerity. Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, false flag, The Third Way

Why MMT is Right and the Dreamers are Wrong: Kaldor Versus the Kaldorians

Posted on March 20, 2013 | 298 comments

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil

Dreaming, I was only dreaming
I wake and I find you asleep

– Billie Holiday “Gloomy Sunday”

The criticisms of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) on the internet and in academia can be placed into three categories: the cranks; the nit-pickers; and the Kaldorians. The cranks make up by far the largest group. These are the people that simply have not bothered to understand the theory. These, which include some prominent academics, say things like: “The MMTers say that deficits don’t matter; they forgot about hyperinflation!” These people can usually be safely ignored as they are not arguing in good faith. Continue reading →

298 Comments

Posted in Guest Blogger

Tagged kaldor, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory

Yglesias Cheers a Double Betrayal of Cyprus

Posted on March 20, 2013 | 37 comments

By William K. Black

Slate’s Matthew Yglesias writes columns about economics and finance. Yglesias has been writing about Cyprus, and my critiques of the policies he has been proposing are the subject of this column. The short version of the background one needs to understand the issues is that Cyprus is in a crisis and the EU is willing to bail out its collapsing banks only if Cyprus raises revenues. The EU is unwilling to make the banks’ sophisticated creditors – the bondholders – take any losses. The EU wanted the banks’ least sophisticated creditors – the depositors – to take losses, even if their deposits were small enough to be within the deposit insurance limit. The reality, which the EU wishes to obscure by calling its proposal a tax, is that that the EU was insisting that depositors no longer be fully protected from loss by government deposit insurance. The EU demand was made shortly after the EU and Cyprus’ government pledged that depositors under the insurance limit would suffer no losses. Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged Cyprus, euro crisis, Yglesias

O’Donnell Thinks Krugman is “a lonely voice opposing austerity” because he listens to MSNBC

Posted on March 19, 2013 | 14 comments

By William K. Black

On March 18, 2013, Lawrence O’Donnell stated that John Boehner’s admission that the U.S. faces no current debt crisis vindicated Paul Krugman, who O’Donnell described as “a lonely voice opposing austerity.” It is true that Krugman has been a strong opponent of austerity and has been proven correct. It is also true that MSNBC has frequently portrayed Krugman as an isolated, virtually sole opponent of austerity. Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged austerity, MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, msnbc

Modern Money and Public Purpose 5 – Money, Democracy and the Constitution

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 43 comments

The latest installment of Modern Money and Public Purpose is now online. This seminar explores the relationship between money and the legal formation of the modern liberal capitalist state, with a particular emphasis on the pre-Revolutionary and early United States. In contrast to conventional economic narratives that cast money as lubrication for existing forms of exchange, this event highlights the legal and political origins of our modern monetary system, and traces the influence of those forces on the shape of the modern economy.

You can view the video below or view at the Modern Money and Public Purpose Continue reading →

43 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged constitution, democracy, Modern Money and Public Purpose, money

The SEC embraces irony – its enforcement “inflection” “point”

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 5 comments

By William K. Black

Many readers doubtless shared my doubt that the SEC was capable of exercising the critical self-examination and sense of humor about itself as a flawed institution that would make it capable of deliberate irony. When I accessed the Wall Street Journal’s home page I found the most delicious example of SEC (and WSJ) irony. The WSJ synopsis of its article on the SEC reads: “The SEC is filing significantly fewer civil fraud cases this year, as its efforts to punish misconduct related to the financial crisis start to ebb.”

“Start to ebb?” Is it only me, or have other readers missed the tidal bore of SEC enforcement cases “punishing” the “misconduct” of the most culpable, elite perpetrators of what, even conservative, finance scholars describe as “pervasive” accounting control fraud by our “most reputable banks”? Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in William K. Black

Tagged accounting control fraud, banksters, Control Fraud, enforcement, Great Financial Crisis, SEC

The EU Needs a Bill Seidman to Save It from Itself: Cyprus and the “Reverse Toaster Theory”

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 11 comments

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

Everyone involved in financial regulation in modern times with any broad knowledge of the field will know of Bill Seidman, Chairman of the FDIC and the RTC. In 1989, the newly elected President Bush (the First) had a very good idea that became the Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA). FIRREA was one of the very unusual cases of enhancing financial regulation. It was prompted by the lessons we had learned in containing the Savings and Loan (S&L) Debacle. The original administration bill, however, had a very bad idea associated with the President’s chief of staff, John H. Sununu. Sununu is a brilliant guy – who wants you to know how much smarter he is than everybody else. His wiki biography page informs the reader that: Continue reading →