Bill Mitchell – Military spending binge is working to keep economies growing

Its been around 9 months since the central banks of the world (bar Japan) started to push up interest rates. And still there are no firms signs that a recession is impending. There are some signs of a growth slowdown but that is not uniform across the globe. The US seems to be continuing to grow. While that suggests that monetary policy is less effective than the mainstream economists claim – which is no surprise to non-mainstream economists who have long understood that fiscal policy is the tool of choice for counter-stabilisation, there are other offsetting factors that are at play here. Governments around the world have seriously ramped up their fiscal outlays over 2022 on military procurements as the perceived threat from Russia and China has been magnified by military generals and their mates in the big US weapons corporations, who have taken the opportunity to get make massive extra profits. The power of the military-industrial complex (MIC) is long-standing and well understood. It explains why all the usual disaster scenarios that accompany increasing fiscal outlays by governments haven’t attracted much criticism. Too many elites benefit from the military binge. But the fiscal expenditure also helps to counteract any spending contraction by households who are negatively impacted by interest rate increases.…

PS: I am migrating away from Twitter to Mastodon. I will write a little primer soon on how you can all do the same. I want as many people who follow me on Twitter (currently 20.5 thousand odd) to make the transition too. I will provide instructions tomorrow on how to do that. 

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Military spending binge is working to keep economies growing
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia