Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Old Heterodox Banking Debates — Brian Romanchuk

Banking and money is an area of ancient debates between post-Keynesians (and their fore-runners) and mainstream economists. Many of these showed up in my earlier book Abolish Money (From Economics)!, with the theme more focussed on money. Although I believe I need to touch on this topic, I want to keep it short. Partly because it appeared in another book, and partly because I am less and less convinced that these debates are that useful for discussing banking.

Note: Once again, this is a draft of a manuscript section from my banking book. It will be in a chapter on modelling banking.

Excellent summary of "exogenous" and "endogenous" as applied to "money." This is important for understanding the relationship of finance and economics, and it underlies a good part of MMT, The descriptive aspect of which involves modeling this relationship conceptually. That is to say, MMT as a theory provides an explanation of the relationship of finance and economics in terms of institutional arrangements. One could say that the mathematical aspect of the modeling  involved is provided by the accounting.

With these old debates somewhat covered, I will then discuss some of the “banking controversies” associated with Modern Monetary Theory.

Stay tuned.

Bond Economics

7 comments:

Matt Franko said...

“ And the only reason it is controversial is because Monetarists refuse to accept the reality that they were totally wrong about the fad of “monetary base targeting” in the 1970s/1980s, so they continue to make stuff up.”

Completely legitimate response under the Art degree methodology…

Hegel: “ if the facts disagree with the theory then so much worse for the facts”

“um so schlimmer für die Fakten”

Textbook Art degree 101.,,

We see it every day…

Peter Pan said...

What is the name of the methodology wherein you start with a conclusion, and then work backwards to confirm it?

Matt Franko said...

Yo it’s called the Art degree methodology…

Here:

https://undergrad.wharton.upenn.edu/academics/bs-in-economics/

“ In a liberal arts setting, students often learn by starting with a theory or abstract idea. After fully understanding the theory, they then look for problems to understand how the theory applies.”

This is how it’s SUPPOSED to work …

I don’t see how any art degree person could complain… 🤔

Matt Franko said...

So they start with the theory of monetarism thrn just wait until there is a general price increase at the same time as the central bank liabilities increase and say “see! We were right!”

Pretty easy to explain …it’s their training…

Matt Franko said...

I don’t hear Larry summers complaining…

He feels vindicated finally…

Tom Hickey said...

What is the name of the methodology wherein you start with a conclusion, and then work backwards to confirm it?

Begging the question

Matt Franko said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_man