Tuesday, September 15, 2020

There is no limit to government debt issuance – if you have your own currency — Bill Mitchell

Japan has a new leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who, given the majority of the LDP in the Diet will become prime minister in the coming days. He was interviewed over the weekend about the current crisis and the role that the Japanese government can play to attenuate the costs. He stated clearly that there was no limit to government debt issuance. The meaning of this statement is clear. The Japanese government should ignore claims that its public debt ratio is too high or is facing impending insolvency or bond-market revolts or any of the other manic predictions that economists who do not know better keep making. Instead, as Yoshihide Suga noted, the challenge is jobs and incomes. The only limits are real resource constraints and when there is a pandemic and rising unemployment, those constraints ease and the fiscal space for more net spending increases. At least one world leader understands that....
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
There is no limit to government debt issuance – if you have your own currency
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“ A government should never withdraw a fiscal stimulus until the economy is recovering and non-government spending is able to take up the slack.”

Sounds like Krugman... bills gone full deficit dove..

Peter Pan said...

Krugman is Democrat-in-White-House dovish.