My latest report - Abolish Money (From Economics)! - has been released in ebook format. (The paperback edition will be published within a few weeks.) The ebook is available at the same online booksellers as my previous books.A big problem with conventional economics lies in integrating economics, which is concerned with the real or actual, that is, production, distribution and consumption of real goods, with finance, which is concerned with the nominal — money, cost, price, accounting, and financial assets.
- Amazon.com link.
- Universal book link (books2read.com)
The problem arises in economics as result of aggregation based on nominal value (costs, prices, etc.) without adequate consideration of the relationship of the nominal and the actual. The assumption is that this can be disaggregated by going back to journal entries to determine the prices of specific units and the number of units of various goods involved.
This is to treat money simply as a veil over barter, as conventional economists do, and to miss the role that money itself plays in the integrated economic-financial system owing to the specific dynamics of finance and the creation and use of financial assets along with real assets.
This approach is simplistic, as Keynes observed, and it leads to modeling that is not realistic enough to be very useless. In fact, the modeling can mislead, especially at junctures that are financially and economically crucial to a society.
It should be obvious that Brian is not calling for abolishing money but rather rethinking how conventional economists use the term as a key concept in economic modeling, in particular with respect to monetarisms in which interest rates are assumed to be determinative and monetary policy by the central bank rules. This is a failed approach.
7 comments:
Excellent news. There's no better or clearer writer out there in the MMT-friendly universe.
Just looked up the contents page on Amazon. It begins with banks, money and monetary aggregates and ends with SFC models! That's extremely impressive. Among the very many subjects I hope Brian covers in detail in future, I do hope he writes a report solely on SFC modelling.
Thanks.
The working title of my next book is "Introduction to SFC models using Python" (the computer language, not the snake...). I hope to keep it short, and get it out relatively quickly. (I said that last June about Abolish Money - oops.)
It may be more of a technical introduction to my Python package, and less on the economic logic behind the models. Even a non-programmer should be able to play around with the models, even if the amount of changes they can make are limited. (It may be possible to create a graphical front end, but I would only bother with that once the package is set up to deal with the bulk of the model types.)
The followup reports would cover more advanced economic topics.
Time to actually start reading the Python programming book I bought! Everyone I know says it's a great language, especially for someone like me who has always had difficulties with programming. In any case, I look forward to it.
Strangely enough Neil Wilson doesn't think much of Python. I usually pay a lot of attention to his opinions, but the sheer number of my friends who work as programmers just cannot understand this point of view! They're of the opinion that unless you want to be some hotshot, Python and VBA are all you'll ever need.
Does Python still have Case SenSiTive VariaBles?
I learned a little bit about Python a few years back for an elective I took. I don't care much for programming or coding, but I'd be interested in taking another look at Python as a programming language.
Yes Bob, most languages nowadays have case sensitive variables.
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