Category Archives: William K. Black

By William K. Black
April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Part 7b of the MMT Series
Part 7a is available here.

Blair, Brexit, and Friedman Show the Need for MMT Insights

Part One: The MMT Critique of Orthodox Microfoundations

Orthodox ‘modern macro’ is based on ‘microfoundations’ that implicitly assume that firms profit-maximize, that there are no negative externalities, that there is no market power, and that there is no control fraud or predation. In sum, they assume out of existence reality and particularly the parts of reality that produce the “endemic” global financial crises that Friedman admits his favored model produce. (See Parts 2A and 2B of this MMT Series for a much more detailed discussion of microfoundations.)

Friedman, of course, loved both Blair and Brown. In the same April 22, 2005 column, Friedman described Brown as Blair’s “deft finance minister.” (Perhaps he meant to write ‘daft.’) In 2005, the UK was racing toward the GFC. It nosed Wall Street at the wire to ‘win’ the regulatory ‘race to the bottom’ that produced the epidemics of control fraud and predation in the U.S. and the UK that hyper-inflated bubbles and drove the GFC. The UK economy was sick in 2005. It was systematically misallocating capital. It was driven not by real industrial productivity gains, but by accounting scams in the City of London. The ethics of the City of London had fallen to sewer levels. Its biggest banks had been specializing in predating on their customers for two decades. Its most prestigious bankers were driving the two largest price-rigging cartels (Libor and Forex) in world history. Even the sleaziest U.S. bankers at the ‘vampire squid’ (Goldman Sachs) based their worst, most rapacious predators in the City of London. On any real economic basis, many of the UK’s largest banks were insolvent because of their terrible asset quality.

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By William K. Black
April 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Part 7a of the MMT Series

Tom Friedman’s April 2, 2019 column concluded “The United Kingdom Has Gone Mad.” To which, the only possible response is – ‘you just noticed?’ The UK went ‘mad’ 22 years ago when Parliament elected the odious Tony Blair Prime Minister. I think many Tory policies were mad long before that date, but the Labour Party opposed them. The entire UK did not go ‘mad’ until Blair created “New Labour” and adopted Tory policies and became PM in 1997. Blair explicitly modeled the name and the adoption of neoliberal economic and military policies on Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats.” The UK became ‘mad’ when both of its major parties adopted the neoliberal economic and military policies that Friedman celebrates and proselytizes. I am dividing this article into two subparts for reasons of length. This part deals with the general madness. The next part (7b) explains its relevance to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Friedman’s April 2, 2019 column was about Brexit, which understandably sticks in the craw of the populist spreader of the myth that the world is becoming ‘flat’ and a ‘hyper-meritocracy.’ The wealthy rig the world to make it tilt sharply. Plutocrats tilt it to ensure that a huge and increasing share of the world’s wealth flows to them. Friedman is the most infamous shill for those plutocrats. The plutocrats tilt and warp the economy unevenly to favor not simply the wealthy, but a favored subset that is typically the opposite of a meritocracy (kakistocracy). Worse, the world tilts toward catastrophe because the ultra-wealthy kakistocracy’s political pawns have produced environments so criminogenic that they produce our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. Friedman is shocked that one of the two epicenters of the global kakistocracy and plutocracy – the City of London – has forced the UK to follow policies so self-destructive and rapacious that vast swaths of the UK rose in opposition by voting for Brexit. The City of London, of course, hates Brexit.

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Number 2A in the MMT Series

By William K. Black
March 31, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Introduction

The second article in this series deals with Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) predictive and policy successes.  The article has three, separately published, parts.  Part 2A deals explains why predictive ability and policy success are so critical – and notes that MMT’s critics have been conspicuously unable to provide a record of predictive failure by MMT scholars.

Part 2B deals with MMT successes in microeconomics.  The MMT work on microeconomics constitutes a powerful refutation of the ‘microfoundations’ of ‘modern macroeconomics.’  The key characteristics that the MMT theorists have demonstrated dramatically superior predictive ability, particularly in the most important microfoundation issues of the last 70 years.  In the microfoundations context, MMT scholars have also demonstrated exceptional policy success.

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The latest developments about Trump’s relationship to Deutsche Bank could be the unraveling with Deutsche Bank and Trump facing a serious legal probe on bank fraud by the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters. NEP’s Bill Black appears on The Real News Network to discuss. You can view here with transcript.

By William K. Black
March 14, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Number 6 in a Series of Articles on MMT

Justin Wolfers is an economist who is disgracing the university I love, the University of Michigan.  I had the great fortune to be born in Detroit and receive the first seven years of my higher education as an instate student at the University of Michigan.  I was able to graduate with virtually no debt.  Wolfers is also a native of Australia, which means he is familiar with kangaroos.  That familiarity is ironic because Wolfers is devoting his time these days to serving as the chief apologist for a kangaroo court of orthodox economists that convened to declare Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) anathema.

Kangaroo courts are sham legal proceedings which are set-up in order to give the impression of a fair legal process. In fact, they offer no impartial justice as the verdict, invariably to the detriment of the accused, is decided in advance.

The orthodox economists’ kangaroo court met that definition.  Here is what happened – and there is no factual dispute about it.  MMT opponents ignorant of MMT scholarship drafted two strawman questions.  (They were actually the same question, with unimportant changes in phraseology.)  The willingness of people who never read MMT scholarship to be fervent opponents of MMT demonstrates the severity of the scandal.  The kangaroo ‘poll’ drafters falsely claimed that MMT scholars would answer “yes” to both questions.  Indeed, the deliberate implication was that a “yes” answer to both questions defined MMT’s core precepts.  MMT scholars have repeatedly and unequivocally made clear for decades that the answer to both questions is “no.”  MMT scholars have repeatedly and unequivocally over the last nine years explained to Paul Krugman, the falsity of his recurrent ascription of the same strawman used by the orthodox economists’ kangaroo court to MMT scholars.  As I have demonstrated in prior articles in this series, Brad DeLong has documented Krugman’s repeated falsehoods, the repeated statements of MMT scholars refuting Krugman’s strawman claims, and the clear statements by MMT scholars as to what they actually believe, write, and teach.

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William K. Black
March 14, 2019     Bloomington, MN

Fifth Article in a Series on MMT

Something extraordinary happened yesterday.  Orthodox economists, frustrated by their inability to intimidate progressive elected officials, have launched a coordinated assault on MMT in hopes of making it politically dangerous for elected officials to embrace MMT.  Yesterday brought three remarkable revelations about orthodox economists’ willingness to engage in naked intellectual dishonesty in their desperation to find something to discredit MMT.

The orthodox economic attack on MMT should be a ‘slam dunk’ – if orthodox economists were correct about MMT.  There are two obvious ways to deliver the ‘slam dunk.’  First, orthodox economists preach that a theory’s predictive ability is the test of its validity.  MMT scholars have been making predictions for decades, so orthodox economists should be able to produce a large number of falsified predictions by MMT scholars and declare victory.  There is only one problem with this option – MMT scholars have an exceptionally fine predictive record and orthodox macro scholars have such a terrible predictive record that prominent economists deride “modern macro” as the “dark ages” (Paul Krugman) and a religion unsuccessfully posing as a pseudo-science (Paul Romer).  .

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