By Dan Kervick
In Part One of this essay I defended the MMT view that the national government is the monopoly issuer of the currency in the US, and I attempted to clarify the actual economic status of that government currency with respect to the Fed’s conventional balance sheet accounting. In this concluding part of the essay I will further develop the contrast between the government’s role as currency issuer and the role of private sector households and firms – including commercial banks – as currency users. I will then make a few points about how the government supplies currency to the non-governmental sectors of the economy before concluding with a discussion of several topics that tend to engender resistance to the very idea that such a currency monopoly exists.
