Bill Mitchell — We do have a choice – we just need to identify it

Bill Mitchell has a good summary of how a modern monetary system works in general terms, hence the analogy of government as a big firm or household is false. It begins here:

The statement “recharging the fiscal batteries” which is sometimes expressed in terms of “building a war chest, or in negative terms as “running out of bullets” etc is commonplace in the public debate.

I hear expressions such as these used every day by politicians, commentators, academics, and citizens.

It is a demonstration of how ill-informed the public debate really is and why when it comes to exercising our obvious choices those choices do not seem to be so obvious to most of us.

It is a total fallacy to suggest that the government has some stockpile of “spending capacity” that it has to recharge and buildup just in case it needs to “turn the lights on” in the future.

 The fundamental principles that arise in a fiat monetary system are as follows:

Read it at Bill Mitchell — billy blog
We do have a choice – we just need to identify it
by Bill Mitchell

This is the basis of MMT as a general theory of modern money.

Brett Fiebiger — The International Dimensions Of Currency Autonomy

Modern economies operate on fiat monetary systems with an accent on plural. Anyone who takes a look at policymaking decisions around the global economy will soon observe that there seems to be substantial differences in the ability of policymakers to determine macro policies… why? In this post I will seek to provide some answers. The gist of it is that there are differing currency regimes in the global economy and macro policy autonomy exists on a spectrum of heterogeneous experiences.

Read it at Pragmatic Capitalism
The International Dimensions Of Currency Autonomy

By Brett Fiebiger, PhD
(Cross-posted at Modern Monetary Realism)