Three Natural Experiments Documenting Krugman’s Bias Against MMT

William K. Black
March 13, 2019      Bloomington, MN

Third article in a series on MMT[1]

I urge readers to review Scott Fullwiler’s brief paper on the theoretical and predictive successes of MMT scholars on a topic of enormous theoretical and practical importance.  You do not need economics training to understand it.  Fullwiler reports the results of two “natural experiments.”  In this context, this means an unplanned experiment.  The twin experiments were:

  1. What would happen if orthodox scholars tested the predictive strength of MMT?
  2. How would Paul Krugman react to an orthodox scholar’s demonstration of the predictive accuracy of key MMT insights – if Krugman did not know that the orthodox scholar’s work was verifying key MMT predictions?

Fullwiler’s paper answers both questions.  The orthodox scholar, unknowingly, confirmed the predictive strength of many of MMT’s most important insights.  Krugman praised De Grauwe’s findings as “seminal.”  Krugman had no idea he was praising the predictive successes of MMT scholars because Krugman had never read MMT scholars’ work.  Fullwiler’s paper shows that a series of MMT scholars made De Grauwe’s point more than a decade before De Grauwe published his “seminal” contribution in an orthodox journal.  Stephanie Kelton was one of the MMT scholars who demonstrated precedence, making Krugman’s use of the word “seminal” as a descriptor even more unintentionally humorous.

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MMT Responds to Brad DeLong’s Challenge

By L. Randall Wray

In recent days MMT has captured the attention of anyone who can fog a mirror—even those long thought dead. The critics are out in full force—from the crazy right to the insular left. A short list includes Doug Henwood, Jerry Epstein, Josh Mason, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, Ken “Mr Spreadsheet” Rogoff, Bill Gates, Larry Fink, George Selgin, Noah Smith, and Fed Chairman Powell. After laboring for a quarter century in the wilderness, the developers of MMT are pilloried for unleashing a theory that is “crazy”, “disastrous”, “hyperinflationary”, “nonsense”, “garbage” and just plain “wrong”.[1] Summers here; Rogoff here; Powell here; Krugman here; and here for Kelton Response

What all the critics have in common is that they have not bothered to read the MMT literature. Oh, it is just too much effort for the lazy critics! So they imagine what it must say, conjuring up the most ridiculous thing they can imagine, and then tear apart ideas so stupid that no one could possibly hold them.

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MMT Takes Center Stage – and Orthodox Economists Freak

William K. Black
March 11, 2019     Bloomington, MN

First Article in a Series

The massive, coordinated assault on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) scholars by the most elite forces of orthodoxy represents a watershed moment in economics, but we must not lose sight that the real attack is actually on progressives, particularly the newly elected progressive members of Congress plus Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders.  Even that statement is incomplete, for it is the combination of the rise of these progressive elected officials, the 2020 presidential election (and nomination battle), and the exceptional embrace of progressive policies by the general public and Democratic Party candidates for the presidential nomination that prompted the coordinated and personalized assault of overwhelmingly neoliberal economists on MMT scholars.  This first column in a series provides an overview of why the progressives’ embrace of MMT spurred the terrified assault on MMT by orthodox economists.  That desperate assault reveals how much orthodox economists fear the voters’ increasing embrace of the progressive core policy issues on the environment, health care, and restoring the rule of law to the markets.  Later articles in this series will flesh out that overview.

The polls showing enormous public support for the key progressive initiatives terrify the neoliberals.  Sanders’ 2016 policy initiatives have transformed the Democratic Party candidates’ policy proposals for 2020.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Warren’s policy proposals are having a similar effect.  Polls show broad support for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a jobs guaranty program, a tax system that would reverse the current race to plutocracy, a campaign to reduce gun slaughter and massacres, the restoration of the rule of law (including antitrust laws) to business (particularly banking and Silicon Valley), and a meaningful minimum wage.

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Clinton-Era Official Says Left Should Lead Following Center-Right Failures

On The Real News Network, NEP’s Bill Black analyzes Assistant Secretary of Treasury Brad DeLong’s statement that neo-liberals should get out of the way and let the left lead since coalition with Republicans did not work. You can view here with transcript.

Can the US Treasury run out of money when the US government can’t?

By Eric Tymoigne

On one side, critics argued that MMTers say nothing new when MMTers emphasize US government’s monetary sovereignty; “everybody knows this” is a common refrain. On the other side, critics argue that MMT incorrectly merges the US Treasury and Fed into a US government, which ignores the fact that the US Treasury can run out of money because it needs to tax and issue bonds first before it can spend.

Something is amiss. This post shows that MMT can be understood from two viewpoints. One is the consolidation viewpoint and another is the coordination viewpoint. Both lead to the same conclusion; money is never an issue. US government can’t run out of money, US Treasury can’t run out of money. They are other implications in terms of public finances (the role of taxes, the role of Treasury issuances, debt sustainability, etc.) and monetary policy but the post does not address these issues. Continue reading

The Incoherence of a Serious Economist

By J.D. ALT

Lawrence Summers, according to Lawrence Summers, is a “serious economist.” He has just written an op-ed in the Washington Post in which he seriously explains why Modern Money Theory—as proposed by “fringe economists,” as he calls them—is a recipe for disaster. I am going to leave it to the “fringe economists” to rebut Mr. Summers; (I’m confident that professors Wray, Kelton, Tcherneva, Tymoigne, and Fullwiler can take care of that job quite easily). What I want to consider is something even more fundamental: How is it that someone who presents himself as a “serious economist” can get away with speaking incoherently while expecting us—the everyday citizens of America—to take what he is saying as true?

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Middle Class Loses, Plutocrats Win With Trump’s Tax Cuts

Trump’s “middle class tax cut” is a tax hike. NEP’s Bill Black says Trump could have been a popular President, if he hadn’t lied about middle class tax cuts and building infrastructure in Bill’s latest appearance on The Real News Network. You can view with transcript here.

Why Did Trump Choose to be Such an Unpopular President?

William K. Black
February 25, 2019     Ames, Iowa

Donald Trump promised to deliver a middle-class tax cut of epic proportions.

“The largest tax reductions are for the middle class, who have been forgotten,” Trump said in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 22, 2016.

If Trump had fulfilled that campaign promise, it would have made him spectacularly popular and vastly increased his support beyond his base.  He, not the ‘Republican Party,’ controlled the House and the Senate.  Many Democrats would have supported a serious cut in middle-class taxes.  Better yet, from Trump’s perspective, many Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and ‘Chuck’ Schumer would have bitterly opposed the Trump Tax Triumph on the economically illiterate basis that budget surpluses are next to godliness.

Trump could have followed up his tax cut success with a real infrastructure program distributed through grants to counties, cities, and states.  Again, this would have been spectacularly popular and even Pelosi and Schumer would have rushed to co-sponsor the legislation.  This would have been the second Trump triumph.  With those two triumphs, the Republicans would have won a whole series of close congressional elections in 2018, retained (and perhaps expanded) control of the House, and expanded control of the Senate.  That would have been the third Trump triumph and would have positioned him brilliantly for reelection.

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New Wordology

By J.D. ALT

Whenever I get frustrated—which is quite often these days—I vent some steam (and feel somewhat better) simply by imagining a response that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might give to some conservative pundit when they say, “Yes, but that’s going to increase deficit spending beyond anything imaginable!”

REPLY: “Excuse me, Anderson, I don’t use the term ‘deficit spending’ because it suggests or implies something which is demonstrably not true. It implies that when the federal government spends more dollars than it collects in taxes it is creating a debt that it will have to repay in the future. This is factually not the case. If the government spends three dollars and collects one dollar in taxes, it creates a ‘net spending’ of two dollars. It’s as simple as that.

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Response to Doug Henwood’s Trolling in Jacobin

Doug Henwood has posted up at Jacobin an MMT critique that amounts to little more than a character assassination. It is what I’d expect of him in his reincarnation as a Neoliberal critic of progressive thought. (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/modern-monetary-theory-isnt-helping). It adopts all the usual troll methodology: guilt by association, taking statements out of context, and paraphrasing (wrongly) without citation.

According to Henwood, MMT is tainted by Warren Mosler’s experience as a hedge fund manager. Beardsley Ruml (father of tax withholding and chairman of the NYFed, who argued correctly that “taxes for revenue are obsolete”) is dismissed because he was chair of Macy’s (and Director of the NYFed—Macy’s still has a director on the NYFed) and because he argued that the corporate tax is a bad tax (his main arguments were later advanced by Musgrave&Musgrave, the textbook on public finance, by Hyman Minsky, and by me in the second edition of my Primer).

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