I don't link to the New York Times because it is behind a paywall and not accessible to all, but I'm making an exception in this case.
In Business Day on Friday, I profile Warren Mosler, a charismatic gearhead and hedge fund executive who is among the best-known proponents of modern monetary theory. It is an unusual understanding of how money and economies work, and one of its main ideas is that governments never need to balance their budgets, ever.Nice pic of Warren, too.
The New York Times | Economix
Warren Mosler: A Reading List
Annie Lowrey
The New York Times | Economy
Warren Mosler, a Deficit Lover With a Following
Annie Lowrey
Warren responds:
Warren Mosler, a Deficit Lover With a Following and a Journalist LostPosted on July 5, 2013 by Russ Huntley
The New York Times published an article on Warren Mosler shown below. FYI, Mosler just sent this response to the author, Annie Lowrey
You got the Russian trade dead wrong. Please file a correction. I turned the firm over to my partners at the end of 1997, long before the Russian default, after a disagreement on how that fund was managed. With a fixed exchange rate there was a very real risk of default. As I told you my only contribution to the fund was the name which proved invaluable. Also you should have asked me for a response to Thoma and real rates if you were going to publish his comments, as a matter of journalism. The only reason real rates can be a problem is if they limit credit expansion, in which case a tax cut or spending increase is in order to sustain output and employment. Not that it matters, but history will not be kind to you regarding these points and the dismissive tone of your article in general.
Smack down.
Yes, the NYT piece is written with a dismissive, highly irritating tone. It tries to relegate MMT to the "nut" fringe as a kind of counterpart on the left to the gold bugs on the right.
ReplyDeleteThe insidious implication is that only the mainstream schools (that gave us, remember, the magnificents EMHs, CAPMs, MPTs, RATEXs, REs, you name it) are "reasonable". What a joke!
The Thoma quote is particularly ill advised. As a reputable economist he should know how MMT is closely related to the definitely non "nuts" "Old Keynesianism". He could have pointed out topics where he disagrees. He chose a low blow instead. Truly disappointing.
The NYT claim that MMT is “fringe” is nonsense. One of the main criticisms of MMT made by the really clued up is that it's quite the opposite: i.e. it’s just Keynes writ large. E.g. Dean Baker makes that criticism here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/modern-monetary-theory-whats-modern-about-it
And that’s a criticism that as an MMTer I accept. But what MMT has done is to bring Keynes alive. MMT sets out Keynes in plain English. Keynes used notoriously convoluted language. He needn’t have done.
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ReplyDeleteTom -- I have found that the NYT seems to allow links to be followed without throwing the paywall up. I have had no trouble accessing articles linked from Naked Capitalism's Links feed.
ReplyDeleteJohn, the reason I don't link to NYT, WSJ FT other than Alphaville which is free access, etc, is the paywall. It's a matter of principle wrt access.
ReplyDelete