Keynes and the Marxists — Nathan Tankus

For those interested in Keynes and "Keynesianism," and Marx and "Marxism." Nathan Tankus displays  his characteristically impressive grasp of the subject he is analyzing.

Jacobin
Keynes and the Marxists
Nathan Tankus, MMT economist

The story behind Fiat Socialism — Carlos García Hernández

Carlos García Hernández explains how he came up with the idea for his concept of fiat socialism that led to writing book based on MMT.

Fiat Socialism was recently published and it is also available for subscribers to read as an ebook at Scribd.

The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies
The story behind Fiat Socialism
Carlos García Hernández, author of Fiat Socialism: Achieving the goals of socialism through modern monetary theory. Carlos lives in Spain.

See also

The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies
Fiat Socialism

Carlos García Hernández

Also

Brave New Europe
Carlos Garcia Hernández – Spain’s New Coalition: Neo-liberalism with a Heart

Summers Says ‘Energizer Bunny’ Economy Signals Fed Hikes Failing

 

“Energizer Bunny economy!”  Another figure of speech…   This is what you get from these people… every time…

Michael Hudson — A BRICS+ Bank: How Would It Really Function?

The issue is an alternative payments system and not an alternative currency.

Naked Capitalism
Michael Hudson: A BRICS+ Bank: How Would It Really Function?
With introduction by Yves Smith

Debt-pushing as financial inclusion — Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Like most U.S. appointees to head the [World] Bank, Banga had no experience or earlier interest in development finance. Now, he is obliged to pursue U.S. interests and agendas. He has already announced he will rely on the private sector for funds and ideas....

Neo-feudalism. 

MR Online
Debt-pushing as financial inclusion
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Originally published: IPS News on October 4, 2023

Yu Yongding calls on Beijing to stimulate growth via fiscal expansion, believes 6% growth achievable — Yixiu Wei, Shangjun Yang, and Zichen Wang

The former adviser to China's central bank laments policy was influenced by supply-siders and the Maastricht criteria.

Pekingology
Yu Yongding calls on Beijing to stimulate growth via fiscal expansion, believes 6% growth achievable
Yixiu Wei, Shangjun Yang, and Zichen Wang

IMF paper on Africa exemplifies why the mainstream approach is problematic — Bill Mitchell

During the – 1997 Asian financial crisis – when the IMF intervened and imposed harsh structural adjustment packages on the impacted countries (cuts in spending and interest rate hikes), we learned that IMF officials would swan in from Washington to, for example, Seoul, for a weekend, hole up in expensive hotels and by the end of the weekend profess to know everything about the country and what was good for it. Austerity followed. This is the way the IMF work. They apply mainstream New Keynesian macro theory on a one-size fits all basis ignoring history, culture, institutional specificity and all the rest of the nuances and complications that should be taken into account when appraising a situation in some nation. So for them, spending a day or so in some expensive hotel was the perfect place for them to ‘know the country’ – good food, good wine, air conditioning – what more is required. The problem is that besides the specifics that always need to be considered, the overriding theory is not fit for purpose, which is why the application of the IMF-model with the SAPs has been a uniform disaster for nations. The IMF though continues to operate in this vein. I read a report yesterday about sub-Saharan Africa written by a series of IMF officials most of whom seem to be French citizens who have gone to the best universities, who advocate harsh fiscal policy shifts in the poorest nations. I am sure none of their jobs or wages are at stake.…

William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory

IMF paper on Africa exemplifies why the mainstream approach is problematic
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bard — Finding the Money: New Documentary on the Paradigm-Shifting Modern Monetary Theory Features Levy Scholar Stephanie Kelton and Bard Economists

Finding the Money, a new film by Maren Poitras, follows economist Stephanie Kelton, research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, on an exploration of Modern Monetary Theory—the heterodox economic policy model that reframes our understanding of government funding, spending, and national debt. “An alternative story of money will revolutionize our conception of what we as a society believe we can afford and can achieve,” says the filmmaker. Bard economists featured in the film include economics professors and Levy scholars Pavlina R. Tcherneva and L. Randall Wray, and Levy research associates Mathew Forstater and Fadhel Kaboub. This past weekend, Finding the Money had its world premiere at the 2023 Woodstock Film Festival with Kelton, Wray, Tcherneva, and Forstater all in attendance. 

Bard
Finding the Money: New Documentary on the Paradigm-Shifting Modern Monetary Theory Features Levy Scholar Stephanie Kelton and Bard Economists

How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition — Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider, Jason Hickel

Highlights

• Degrowth and Modern Monetary Theory form a strategic symbiosis for addressing social and ecological crises 
• Public spending on social and ecological objectives is not constrained by tax revenues or GDP 
• MMT needs to incorporate ecological limits to production and productive capacity
• Targeted fiscal and monetary policies can ensure macroeconomic and price stability during a degrowth transition 
• Policy priorities include a job guarantee, credit regulation, price controls, tax reforms, and universal public services
• An MMT-informed degrowth transition requires more democratic control over monetary policy and financial system governance

Abstract

Degrowth lacks a theory of how the state can finance ambitious social-ecological policies and public provisioning systems while maintaining macroeconomic stability during a reduction of economic activity. Addressing this question, we present a synthesis of degrowth scholarship and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) rooted in their shared understanding of money as a public good and their common opposition to artificial scarcity. We present two arguments. First, we draw on MMT to argue that states with sufficient monetary sovereignty face no obstacle to funding the policies necessary for a just and sustainable degrowth transition. Increased public spending neither requires nor implies GDP growth. Second, we draw on degrowth research to bring MMT in line with ecological reality. MMT posits that fiscal spending is limited only by inflation, and thus the productive capacity of the economy. We argue that efforts to deal with this constraint must also pay attention to social and ecological limits. Based on this synthesis we propose a set of monetary and fiscal policies suitable for a stable degrowth transition, including a stronger regulation of private finance, tax reforms, price controls, public provisioning systems and an emancipatory job guarantee. This approach can support broad democratic mobilization for a degrowth transition.

Science Direct

Ecological Economics
How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition
Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider, Jason Hickel

ht/ Naked Capitalism

 

Are the talk shows on Russian state television just yes-men to power? Are the Duma parties other than the governing party United Russia just poodles that never bark, much less bite? Gilbert Doctorow

This post segués into being mostly about the Russian economy and specifically, the neoliberal versus "other" factions. The Putin government is mostly neoliberal economically. Gilbert Doctorow sees that as on the way out, which would be a good thing from the MMT point of view. The central bank head, Elivira Nabiullina, is the chief neoliberal and a diehard monetarist.

Gilbert Doctorow — International relations, Russian affairs
Are the talk shows on Russian state television just yes-men to power? Are the Duma parties other than the governing party United Russia just poodles that never bark, much less bite?
Gilbert Doctorow

An Order of Men — Peter Radford

Peter Radofrd plumbs what is really going on in economics?

The Radford Free Press
An Order of Men
Peter Radford

See also

Open Democracy

Conspiracy theories aside, there is something fishy about the Great Reset

Ivan Wecke

Naked Capitalism

No Energy Transition Unless Tech Can Make It Cost Competitive: BlackRock

Julianne Geiger, Oilprice.com

Russia in Global Affairs

Global Encirclement and Prospects of Socialism in the 21st Century

Annamaria Artner, Institute of World Economics, Budapest, Hungary

Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Senior Research Fellow

Why The Government Has Infinite Money — Second Thought (video 18.35)

MMT-based. 

Why The Government Has Infinite Money
Second Thought

h/t Peter Pan in the comments

 

"Never Seen Anything Like It:" The Biggest Month in Antitrust in 50 Years — Matt Stoller

The Google trial, an Amazon complaint, an attack on a private equity roll-up, a giant meat price-fixing suit, going after pharma cheating, and populist GOP antitrust nominations. Astonishing.…

The irony of this remarkable month of antitrust activity is that it’s both astonishing, far more bigger than anything anyone expected, yet it’s also only a tiny fraction of what is necessary to reverse the damage monopolists have done to our society. But it is a real start. 

Good read. Matt Stoller has been working hard reporting on this front and is now quite familiar with the territory.

BIG
"Never Seen Anything Like It:" The Biggest Month in Antitrust in 50 Years
Matt Stoller

Kick Start Or Kick Over–Can The Us Defeat Russia In The Lithium Battery War? — John Helmer

Details of the world's lithium reserves and the lithium market. US/Russia competition is not the central focus.

Dances with Bears
Kick Start Or Kick Over — Can The Us Defeat Russia In The Lithium Battery War?
John Helmer

Moon of Alabama — China's 'Shared Future'

China's new policy paper on a multipolar world.

Moon of Alabama
China's 'Shared Future'

US wealth distribution – fiscal policy increases private net worth but the poor miss out — Bill Mitchell

I read an interesting report this morning, which resonated with some other work I had been looking into earlier in the week. The Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) released a report yesterday (September 27, 2023) – Inequality in Australia 2023: Overview – which shows that “The gap between those with the most and those with the least has blown out over the past two decades, with the average wealth of the highest 20% growing at four times the rate of the lowest”. It is one of the manifestations of the neoliberal era and is ultimately unsustainable. Earlier in the week, I spent some time analysing the latest data from the US Federal Reserve on the distribution of wealth among US households. The US data goes a long way to explaining why the recent interest rate hikes have been inflationary in themselves.

As an aside, one of the characteristics of neoliberalism that is not often recognised is the way in which it has created schizoid welfare institutions – where key organisations that deliver or advocate for improved safety nets or poverty relief adopt internally inconsistent positions without, seemingly, knowing it.…

William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory

US wealth distribution – fiscal policy increases private net worth but the poor miss out
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

Economics from the Top Down — new ideas in economics and the social sciences
How the Rich Get Richer

Blair Fix, a PhD-trained political economist based in Canada, author of the book Rethinking Economic Growth Theory from the Biophysical Perspective, and self-described "economic heretic"

War of Economic Corridors: the India-Mideast-Europe ploy — Pepe Escobar

 The India-Middle East-Europe transportation corridor may be the talk of the town, but it will likely go the way of the last three Asia-to-Europe connectivity projects touted by the west - to the dustbin. Here's why.…

The Cradle
War of Economic Corridors: the India-Mideast-Europe ploy

Pepe Escobar

Challenges to the strong golden rule: MMT and bond market paranoia — Simon Wren-Lewis

SWL is still caught in the monetarist fallacy. 

MMT has two arguments against the golden rule, which I will call reasonable and unreasonable. The unreasonable argument is that interest rate increases do not reduce aggregate demand and inflation, and therefore fiscal policy has to play the macro stabilisation role at all times. It is an unreasonable claim because it contradicts the large amount of evidence that higher interest rates do reduce aggregate demand and inflation, evidence that you will find in the academic economic literature.

Those who watch Mike Norman's YouTube channel, which is MMT-based financial analysis, will find evidence presented that contradicts this.

Mainly Macro
Challenges to the strong golden rule: MMT and bond market paranoia
Simon Wren-Lewis | Emeritus Professor of Economics, Oxford University

Trump is Fighting an American Class War – and Winning — Joel Kotkin

 The most important political event this week will not be the upcoming GOP debate but Donald Trump’s expected visit with striking UAW workers as the walkout expands to other states. In that one appearance, Trump demonstrates one of the most critical parts of political change, the emergence of the populist right.…

Once hostile to unions, Republicans like Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio, Ohio’s JD Vance and Missouri’s Josh Hawley have all pledged support to the strikers. Union-affiliated Democrats may find this “laughable,” but perhaps not so amusing on election day. Certainly, Biden is doing his best to expand his working-class base. 

The rest of the article is about how workers have been disadvantaged by Democratic economic policy. This began in the Clinton administration when Bill Clinton followed Dick Morris's advice to "triangulate," which meant essentially shifting the focus of the Democratic Party away from the New Deal, with its support for labor, following political losses as a result of the Gingrich revolution in the GOP.  Now the GOP is aiming at pick up the labor vote.

In other words, the demographics of the US are shifting politically in a way that challenges old stereotypes.

Newgeography.com
Trump is Fighting an American Class War – and Winning
Joel Kotkin

Remembering Jim Crotty — JW Mason

Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Jim’s pedagogy and scholarship, almost alone among economists we have known, was his ability to synthesise these two thinkers in ways that gave equal weight to both, that placed them in conversation rather than in tension. Crotty’s Marx anticipates Minsky, while his Keynes is a political radical – a socialist – in ways that few others have recognized.

Perhaps his most profound contribution to both traditions was the brilliant 1985 article “The Centrality of Money, Credit, and Financial Intermediation in Marx’s Crisis Theory” (Crotty 1985). There, he developed the idea that the Marxian vision of capitalist crises could only be understood in terms of the development of the credit and the financial system – that it was only via financial commitments that a fall in the profit rate could lead to an abrupt crisis rather than just a slower pace of accumulation. His reconstruction of a vision of the credit system that may either dampen or amplify disruptions to the underlying process of production suggests that Marx anticipated the ideas about financial fragility later developed in the Post Keynesian tradition. With a critical difference: While Minsky has finance calling the tune, in the Marx-Crotty version the ultimate source of instability is in the real world of labor and capital.

J. W. Mason's Blog

Remembering Jim Crotty
JW Mason | Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York and a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute

At Least It's Not As Bad As 1994 — Brian Romanchuk

The current Treasury bear market has been impressive, and unfortunately for the bond bulls, there is no valuation reason for it to stop. For example, the 5-year Treasury is still trading well below the overnight rate. If we look back to the 1994 bond bear market, the 5-year traded about 250 basis points above cash — versus about 100 basis points below now.

The explanation for this disparity can be pinned on the Fed reaction function....

Bond Economics

At Least It's Not As Bad As 1994

Brian Romanchuk

Trump up 10% over Brandon

 

If this thing holds Trumps going to immediately slash rates in half on day 1 in January 2025… lock it…

Meanwhile all the Art degree morons are all going around saying “ the Fed is independent! … the Fed is independent!…. the Fed is independent!”  

It will end badly if we rely on the speculators and gamblers for a climate change solution — Bill Mitchell

I am now in a very hot and humid Kyoto having left Australia yesterday in weather that was in some places 20 or more degrees Celsius above the norm for early Spring. The heat here and back home at this time of year is rather scary given what it portends. I also do not have much time today given I have been contending with various ‘moving in’ requirements. But I read an article on the plane last night which I think marks a divide between what ‘green’ progressives think and what I think is needed. I was talking to a friend the other day who remarked he was enduring what he termed ‘ecological anxiety’. In the week that followed, bushfires across Australia have started burning some months earlier than has been the typical pattern over a long period. There are massive ‘weather’ events now all around the globe and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the sceptics to dismiss these conjunctions as random or ‘we just haven’t had data long enough’ type ruses. Some ‘green progressives believe the solution lies in governments inducing the financial speculators to shift funds into ‘green’ investments so that profitability can be safeguarded. They also believe that governments will get more money to invest this way (through providing inflation-indexed sovereign bonds). Talk about a vision for increased corporate welfare. My starting point is that we should do everything possible to keep the speculators out of our policy moves to decarbonise. It will end badly if we rely on the gamblers for the solution.

William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory
It will end badly if we rely on the speculators and gamblers for a climate change solution
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

MMT Money Story - Print and Shred Edition — NeilW

Print and Shred is how the system works. All modern monetary systems work this way, no matter how much they try and hide the fact.

The MMT money story explains where the ‘why not print more money’ idea falls over. The government only prints more money to buy more stuff..…

New Wayland

MMT Money Story - Print and Shred Edition
NeilW

Trump bemoans high interest rates and indicates he might pressure Fed to lower

 

CNBC here…

Again politics.. You knew this was coming.. can’t wait to now watch all the political biased leftist MMT people flip and join with the monetarist morons and start to advocate for higher interest rates in response.. wait for it…

“Interest rates are very high. They’re too high. People can’t buy homes. They can’t do anything. I mean, they can’t borrow money,” Trump told MTP host Kristen Welker

Using the platform formerly known as Twitter, Trump often berated Fed officials, once calling them “boneheads,” and compared Powell to “a golfer who can’t putt.” Those remarks came while the Fed was raising interest rates in 2018 and 2019.

 

“We do know that I put a lot of pressure on him,” Trump told Welker. “It was outside pressure, because nobody knows whether or not you can really do that, but I did, because I thought his interest rates were too high. And he ultimately dropped his interest rates.”

Politics

 

Agree with Ehnts here but if you listen to 99% of the MMT commie Art degree or no degree left the current most regressive economic outcome I’ve ever experienced in my adult life is allegedly the result of improper technocracy by the monetarist morons in the academe…

LOL can’t be both!  Which one is it? 🤔

In Vladivostok, the Russian Far East rises — Pepe Escobar

Russia's pivot to the Far East, and away from the West.

The Cradle
In Vladivostok, the Russian Far East rises
Pepe Escobar

Oldest employed Americans have left the workforce never to return

Here for you left wing commie Art Degree MMT dumb fucks:

 S&P Global Market Intelligence 

Oldest employed Americans have left the workforce never to return

The oldest workers in the US labor force, edged out during the pandemic by retirements and health concerns, are unlikely to ever return, potentially ending a decades-long trend amongst working seniors in America and contributing to the ongoing imbalance in the jobs market.

Doesn’t have anything to do with whether your fellow Art degree morons think money is real and we can run out of it as usual… Senior cohort of productive workers being somehow disincentivized to work compared to previous..

MMT “brain trust” (I use that term loosely) somehow blaming their current figure of speech “inflation!” on government’s policy risk free interest rates…

Their as bad as their fellow Art degree monetarists…

Capitalist wants government to drive up unemployment by 40-50 per cent and inflict more ‘pain in the economy’ on workers — Bill Mitchell

Two items this Wednesday before the music segment. First, we saw the stark ideology of the elites on full display in Sydney yesterday with a property developer demanding the government increase unemployment by 40-50 per cent to show the workers that the employer is boss and redistribute more national income back to profits. For anyone who doubts the relevance of a framework based on underlying class conflict between labour and capital, then this outburst should eliminate those doubts. On the same day, a leading research group in the welfare sector released an update in their series tracing poverty in Australia. It demonstrated a rising incidence of poverty (nearly 20 per cent of the population) and 1 in 6 children living in impoverished conditions. And the profit takers want more of that to enrich (engorge) themselves even further. A shocking indictment of what has gone wrong with this nation....

While this may seem shocking to some, it is just the way the system works based on its foundational assumptions. Capitalism favors capital (ownership) over labor (people) and land (environment). The purpose of capitalism is the accumulation of capital, the argument being that growing capital increases growth and growth "trickles down" and "lifts all boats. The environment is assumed to be an infinite resource for growth. 

So nothing surprising about this attitude. It's the way the system is structured. According to economic liberalism, optimal growth results from agents pursuing their own interests maximally, which is assumed to be rational economic behavior. 

Economic liberalism favors markets free of government intrusion, whereas neoliberalism promotes growth by governments favoring capital as an economic factor

.

William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory
Capitalist wants government to drive up unemployment by 40-50 per cent and inflict more ‘pain in the economy’ on workers
Bill Mitchell |rofessor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

See also

The details and commentary from another Aussie.

“We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around. We need to see unemployment rise, unemployment has to jump 40–50 percent.”

CaitlinJohnstone.com

Wealthy Capitalist Accidentally Makes Great Argument For Revolution

Caitlin Johnstone 

Russia And China Channeling Hamilton — Mark Wauk

Read the remarks of Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and Editor at Russia in Global Affairs, about how Russia and China are now following the Hamiltonian plan of the American System or National System, later developed by economist Friedrick List. In other words, these countries are not doing what the nascent US did when breaking away from the British Empire, which was not only political and military but also economic and financial. And the ROW is watching.

Diessen also sees Central Bank of Russia head Elvira Nabiullina as a key player in implementing this plan rather than as the neoliberal she is usually viewed as.

Meaning in History
Russia And China Channeling Hamilton
Mark Wauk, retired FBI agent

See also

 Wallerstein’s first breakthrough came during his experiences in Africa during the process of “decolonization,” where he became aware that young militants in Africa possessed a conceptual framework that was entirely at odds with that of Europeans resident in Africa, a framework in which the African militants defined their reality as a “colonial situation.”  This awareness led Wallerstein to appreciate that a correct understanding must be based in a grasping of the colonial relation between Europe and Africa, which required moving beyond the assumption that society is the correct unit of analysis and moving toward the establishment of the world-system as the correct unit of analysis.…

Knowledge, ideology, and real socialism in our times

The World-Systems Perspective [of Immanuel Wallerstein]- An alternative, incomplete in its formulation and implementation

Charles McKelvey, Professor Emeritus at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, author of The Perspectives of The Colonized (Palgrave)

See also

De Gaulle said: “France’s objective is to build Europe [...] The whole point is that Europe should want to exist as its own self, independently from the U.S.[NATO is] quite simply putting Europe’s defense, nuclear and conventional, in the hands of the U.S. Europe is useless if it doesn’t control its own defense and therefore its own policy. NATO is a subterfuge. It’s a machine to disguise the stranglehold of America over Europe. Thanks to NATO, Europe is placed under the dependence of the U.S. without seeming to be.”

Twitter

A helpful reminder of what De Gaulle used to say about NATO and American hegemony over Europe.

Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand