Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p1
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p2
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p3
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p4
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p5
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p6
Why has the dollar depreciated so much since the 70's? p6
17 comments:
I detected no misunderstanding on the part of Hartmann at all.... None.
RSP,
Me thinks he might have done his homework before this interview. I imagine he's getting emails from MMT supporters. I sent him an email after the Hudson interview respectfully suggesting he bring on Kelton and read Wray's book.
MMT needs a tactical strategy. Decide who are the mainstream candidates most likely to be receptible, and then have supporters make a communication push.
Individual efforts like my email may or may not have an effect. But continual pressure would definitely have more of an effect.
Agreed, Matt. Both Hartmann and Wray were excellent.
Bob
If it takes 900 pages to explain "calculation" its obviously a bunch of hooey.
BTW
That was a great piece. Hartmann is getting it and Wray was fabulous in his descriptions. Not wonky and made very strong points.+
Without watching the videos (yet) I'll hazard that if banks create 97% of the money supply then the banks have created 97% of the price inflation.
If it takes 900 pages to explain "calculation" its obviously a bunch of hooey.
I'm not so sure. You and the rest of the MMTers are still too dumb to get it.
Wray ignores the justice aspect of unemployment. Jobs have been automated away with the stolen purchasing power of the workers via business loans from the government backed counterfeiting cartel, the banking system. And Wray's solution? Give the displaced workers make-work and/or train them so they can be further exploited by business!
But a nice informative interview, nonetheless. My thanks to Tom Hartman and Professor Wray.
This interview might be the best ever intro to MMT. I think I’m going to have to transcribe the entire thing. Every phony and twisted definition ever employed by statist “progressives” could be found in this short piece. Plus, there’s the typically relentless and perpetual obfuscation about and avoidance of the actual opposing libertarian and Austrian critiques. Not a word about the prohibition upon fraud and the initiation of force or about the nature of human exchange and/or economic calculation. As Mises noted in 1917, there are no human beings and no human exchange pursuant to “the state theory of money”.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msTApp.html
In litigation, if you ignore your opponent’s arguments, you are deemed to have PERMANENTLY waived them upon appeal.
Good show.
The dollar DID NOT go down in the years since the 1970s. While it has gone down against some of the major currencies, against a broad basket of currencies the dollar has been going up. Check it out, here.
The question that Hartmann posed to Wray had inherent mis-truths in it. Wray should have corrected the statement from the get-go.
Imho, I think a thorough understanding of sectoral balances is absolutely key, and should always be established in an MMT interview. Most ppl think the govt should run a surplus and all households should too (live within your means, and save for retirement). Which is just impossible with a trade deficit.
Hartmann seems a bit obsessed with the gold standard and the national debt. Why not make the point more often the the govt doesn't really borrow. When you issue the currency, the notion of borrowing loses all meaning. Why not say that treasuries and dollars are different forms of the same thing...
I say that sectoral balances are the most important thing because almost none of the public, commentators and policy makers understands that the govt's deficit is the non-govt's surplus. I'm a bit disappointed that Wray didn't cover that.
Everyone wants to reduce the govt's deficit, but they wouldn't want to reduce the non-govt's surplus. It literally reduces to 1-1=0, for you to gain a dollar someone else must spend a dollar. Why is that so hard to understand? Once you get that far, it becomes obvious that the "national debt" is just the accumulation of dollars by the non-govt (its savings, as Mike is fond of saying, it's what we own).
Joe: I say that sectoral balances are the most important thing because almost none of the public, commentators and policy makers understands that the govt's deficit is the non-govt's surplus.
My take, too. Thom Hartmann has asked several times what MMT is and hasn't really gotten a definitive answer, which I think must involve sectoral balances and functional finance. Everything follows from this. Otherwise MMT just sounds like "Keynesianism."
It's essential for understanding MMT to understand that the "non-government" sector cannot "net save" without the government creating and passing out new net financial assets (aka "funny money") to its cronies in the "non-government" sector.
And that such an activity does not create new government debt so that the term "deficit" is somewhat of a misnomer. The theft of purchasing power from the victims occurs immediately.
Why throw "funny money" at a problem when you could throw a 900 page doorstop at it?
"The dollar DID NOT go down in the years since the 1970s. While it has gone down against some of the major currencies, against a broad basket of currencies the dollar has been going up."
Mike - If all currencies are depreciating to one degree or another, then the net aggregate depreciation or appreciation of the US Dollar or any other currency is only going to be relative. The dollar has depreciated against gold by something 95% since 1971. I know.... I can hear you all groaning in concert but I would submit to you that gold is in fact a monetary commodity as evidenced by the fact the central banks hold it as a reserve asset.
Ed, I agree that gold is one benchmark, but many people treat it as an absolute criterion of price level, which it is not. There is no absolute criterion of price level. There are different ways to measure price level and changes in it, and they all need to be taken into consideration.
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