Where all this may be going is anyone's guess. Wherever, it looks like down the rabbit hole. The UK is "broke." The USD is being crushed under "a mountain of debt." De-dollarization is "in full swing."
The Alternative WorldOne of the undercurrents at the recent UK MMT Conference in Leeds was the apparent unwillingness of MMT economists to acknowledge their mistake in dealing with international trade. In our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure (published July 2024) – we devote a chapter to this issue. There are various strands to the criticisms we receive ranging from claims we are simply wrong at the most elemental level to others claiming trade has no part in the MMT framework. All miss the point and I am surprised people have tried to make a ‘career’ (or advance their egos) on this issue. As I have noted several times in the past, the issue is nuanced but the elementary facts are not. I am now working on a section for my new book (with Dr Louisa Connors) on ‘degrowth’ and system viability from an MMT perspective and so I am linking the trade aspects of MMT with this narrative to provide further clarification of how nuanced this area of discussion can be. Here is a little glimpse of that work....
Today (July 26, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 2 in the second season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …
In Stabilizing and Unstable Economy, Minsky noted that “[a]n economy has a number of different types of money: everyone can create money; the problem is to get it accepted” (p. 228). While governments and banks usually get the spotlight, tens of thousands of monetary instruments have been issued by localities, ecclesiastic domains, local seigneurs, taverns and other private agents in many periods of monetary history, worldwide, up to the present [see Burn (1853); von Glahn (1996); Fletcher (2003); Blanc (2017)]. All these instruments are part of a “hierarchy of money” (Bell, 2001), “debt pyramid” (Olivecrona, 1957), “pyramid of credit” (Murad, 1954), or “scale of credit” (Wilson, 1811); a concept used to categorize the variety of monetary instruments available in a given area common to all of them, and the extent of the operation of a payment system and its integration within other, usually broader, payment systems. While the given common area is often the domestic economy, the international scale can also be considered (see de Conti et al., 2013; Palludeto and Abouchedid, 2016).
Not MMT per se, but it explains something of the tenacious hold that neoliberalism has on economic and monetary policy owing to the Bank of International Settlements ((BIS).
Monetary Policy Institute Blog #146Today (July 12, 2024), MMTed releases Episode 1 in the Second Season of our Manga series – The Smith Family and their Adventures with Money. We have spent the last several months developing the storylines and graphics and Season 2 will run from today to December 6, 2024 with episodes appearing on a fortnightly basis.
Have a bit of fun with it while learning Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and circulate it to those who you think will benefit …
Here is a short video about our new book – Modern Monetary Theory: Bill and Warren’s Excellent Adventure – which will be published on July 15, 2024.William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory