DEBT-FREE MONEY AND BANANA REPUBLICS

By L. Randall Wray

Some time ago, I labeled the “debt-free money” campaign a non sequitur in search of a policy. (See here.) However, this non sequitur refuses to die. I went on to joke that if they want a debt-free money, they ought to propose that government issue bananas as currency.

I frequently am asked to do interviews and I almost always accept them. However, when I was asked last week to participate in a radio show devoted to debt-free money, I struggled mightily to get out of it. As you’ll see, the program’s producer took my idea of banana republics and ran with it. I thought readers might get a kick out of this exchange (the producer’s emails are in italics, my responses are in bold). After the exchange, I’ll summarize my objections to the notion of debt-free money.

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An Excerpt from Real Fiscal Responsibility, Vol I: the Progressive Give-up Formula

Below is an excerpt from my most recent e-book: Real Fiscal Responsibility, Vol. I: The Progressive Give-up Formula. The book is volume I of II critiquing austerity politics at the Federal level in the United States. It exposes its fallacies, its closed-mindedness and futility, and especially its reliance on wrong-headed conceptions of fiscal sustainability and fiscal responsibility. Continue reading

Randy Wray Discusses his book, Why Minsky Matters, on the Radio

NEP’s Randy Wray will be interviewed tonight on Bob Brinker’s nationally syndicated ABC talk radio show Money Talk, Sunday December 6th at 6:15pm ET for around 30 minutes. Wray will discuss his new book Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the work of a maverick economist, Princeton University Press.

The show airs live on 200 ABC affiliates including all major markets. Former guests include Alan Greenspan, Sheila Bair, Alan Blinder, Paul O’Neill, William Isaac, Peter Thiel, Joseph Stiglitz, David Wessel, Gretchen Morgenson, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Barton Biggs, Niall Ferguson, David Cay Johnston, Neil Irwin, John Bogle and John Zogby, just to name a few.

Here is the list of stations that carry the show.

COP21 and Beyond: Outlines of an Actually-Effective International Climate Policy Architecture

By Michael Hoexter

In this series, I attempt to outline key issues facing policymakers as they meet in Paris at the UN’s Conference of the Parties-21 starting on November 30th and possibly culminating in a global climate treaty by the end of the conference on December 11th, called a “deadline” by the organizers. COP21 is being viewed as a last chance for humanity to seriously address climate change in concert and therefore face humanity’s most serious and ominous existential crisis. Human survival as a species may very well be at stake.

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Review: Another “Minsky moment” may be on the way

Edward Chancellor over at Reuters has published a review of Randy Wray’s new book on Minsky, “Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist”. You can read the review here.

Road to COP21 and Beyond: The Missing Analysis of the Kyoto Protocol and its Failure

By Michael Hoexter

In this series, I will attempt to outline key issues facing policymakers as they meet in Paris at the UN’s Conference of the Parties-21 starting on November 30th and possibly culminating in a global climate treaty by the end of the conference on December 11th, called a “deadline” by the organizers.  COP21 is being viewed as a last chance for humanity to seriously address climate change in concert and therefore face humanity’s most serious and ominous existential crisis.  Human survival as a species may very well be at stake.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
                                                                        George Santayana, The Life of Reason

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MMT and Bernie Sanders

L. Randall Wray

Yesterday Senator Bernie Sanders gave an important speech in which he invoked President Roosevelt’s “second bill of rights” in defense of his platform. As Bernie rightly pointed out, all of Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs to which we have become accustomed, were tagged as “socialism”—just as pundits are branding Bernie’s proposals as dangerous socialist ideas. You can see Bernie’s prepared remarks here.

Just before Bernie’s speech, I was asked to do an interview with Alex Jensen, on TBS eFM’s “This Morning” English radio program in Seoul, Korea. I was sent a list of questions and jotted down very brief responses. Unfortunately, in our radio interview we were only able to get through a few of these. You can listen to the interview (uses iTunes) here. My interview is #8, Name: 1119 Issue Today with Professor L.R. Wray

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The Global Haves And Have-Nots In The 21st Century

NEP’s Marshall Auerback interviews Branko Milanovic, Visiting Presidential Professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. This is almost certainly the highest level of relative, and certainly absolute, global inequality at any point in human history. Is there anything we can do to reverse or mitigate this trend? See the interview here.

 

Some Platinum Coin Objections from the Mainstream: Part V

This is Part V, and the conclusion, of the series providing my reply to Philip Wallach’s reply to my evaluation of his views on the platinum coin proposal and other options for settling debt ceiling conflicts. In Part I I discussed some preliminary mis-characterizations of what I said and, more importantly, why the commonly recognized fiscal policy rule that, at least over a number of years, government revenues ought to match government spending is fiscally unsustainable and fiscally irresponsible in light of deductions from the Sectoral Financial Balances (SFB) model. Continue reading

Neil Delamere Talks Economics with Bill Black

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NEP’s Bill Black talks economics and the Irish economy with Neil Delamere on Neil’s Sunday Best program. You can listen here.