Bill Mitchell — Our sequel to Reclaiming the State in now in progress

As part of my recent European speaking engagements, I went to Rome on February 5, 2020 to speak at the Italian Senate on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the dysfunctional state of the European Union. The next day I had long discussions with one of my co-authors, Thomas Fazi, who I wrote – Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World (Pluto Books, September 2017) with. We have been working on the sequel to that book for some time, and, in the process, have had to work through some difficult issues on which there has been some degree of difference in our viewpoints. While I was in Rome, Thomas and I also recorded a video of a conversation where we talk about our sequel. We provide that video here as well as a brief discussion outlining some of the major issues that the book will address....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Our sequel to Reclaiming the State in now in progress
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Brian Romanchuk — Initial Comments On The New MMT Macro Textbook

Very brief first impressions.

Bond Economics
Initial Comments On The New MMT Macro Textbook
Brian Romanchuk

David Jamieson — Bernie Sanders' adviser to join advisory group for new indy economics organisation

Professor Stephanie Kelton to join group of economics advisers to new MMT Scotland group

• New Scottish economics group to argue for Modern Monetary Theory policies for independent state.
• Some of the worlds most influencial MMT advocates to join advisory panel, including key Sanders 2016 campaign adviser Prof Stephanie Kelton.
• MMT part of a new wave of economic thought around the developed world.
• Heterodox economic school sets economic thinkers in opposition to Growth Commission Sterlingisation proposal.

ONE of the advisers to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign will join a panel of prestigious economic advisers for the new Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Scotland group being launched at meetings in Glasgow and Edinburgh in May.…

The advisery panel will also include Warren Mosler and Professor Bill Mitchell, two of the world's leading MMT thinkers, Professor Mathew Forstater of University of Missouri-Kansas City and Fadhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University, among others.

Commonspace
Bernie Sanders' adviser to join advisory group for new indy economics organisation

David Jamieson

Bill Mitchell — When two original MMT developers get together to discuss their work

Last week, Warren Mosler and I had one of our regular catchups and we discussed at length the state of play in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). We are quite protective of it. We mused about how we started out on this Project and where it has gone. As old stagers do when they get together. We also reflected and compared notes on what the state of MMT is now, given the increasing visibility of the ideas in the mainstream media all around the world and the proliferation of social media activists who have chosen to identify and promote our ideas. There were aspects of that development that we identified as being of concern for us and other aspects which we considered to be a cause for optimism (celebration is too strong a word). We thought it would be a good idea to take a breath and document what we considered to be the essence of MMT – as a sort of checklist for people who want a fairly precise account of the body of work. I agreed to write this document after input from Warren. So, this is what we mean by MMT. What follows is my account of our conversation expanded to add meaning where required.…

Probably as close to an MMT manifesto as we'll get.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
When two original MMT developers get together to discuss their work
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Anthony Coughlan — ‘Reclaiming the State – a Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World’

Review of Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi's Reclaiming the State.

Village
‘Reclaiming the State – a Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World’Anthony Coughlan | Associate Professor Emeritus in Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin

UK Labour’s Fiscal Credibility Rule: Neoliberal Orthodoxy Dies Hard — Joe Emersberger interviews Bill Mitchell

MMT!

The problem is that when you just define these fiscal aggregates within their own financial terms you’re really losing the purpose and meaning of fiscal policy. The purpose of fiscal policy isn’t to achieve any particular fiscal outcome whether it be a balanced fiscal position, or a deficit of whatever percent or even a surplus of whatever percent. The purpose of fiscal policy as a tool is to advance wellbeing in the economy, to engage in government spending programs which are consistent with its electoral remit, and taxation to manage total expenditure in the non-government sector so that there is space – and what I mean by “space” is real resource space – for the government to basically buy those resources and conduct its programs. Taxation creates that space by depriving the non-government sector of the use of resources...

This is the purpose of fiscal policy. In a cyclical sense – in other words in the variation of economic activity – fiscal policy should play a very important role in being able to offset any fluctuations in non-government spending that would either cause unemployment if it were not offset, or would drive inflation if it were not offset. Fiscal policy has to be flexible enough to allow the government to meet that purpose. If you start imposing rules that are independent of purpose then you are likely to end up not meeting that purpose but also failing to meet your rules....

Excellent!

Counterpunch
UK Labour’s Fiscal Credibility Rule: Neoliberal Orthodoxy Dies Hard

Joe Emersberger interviews economics professor Bill Mitchell about the British Labour party’s fiscal credibility rule

See also

More MMT.

Arcade
The Unheard-of Center: Critique after Modern Monetary Theory

Scott Ferguson | Associate Professor and co-director of the Film & New Media Studies Track in the Department of Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of South Florida. a Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity), co-founder of the Modern Money Network: Humanities Division), and co-host of the Money on the Left podcast

Bruno Bonizzi and Jo Michell — A BELATED REPLY TO FAZI AND MITCHELL ON BREXIT

In a Jacobin article earlier this year, Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell argued in favour of a hard Brexit. We published a reply, also in Jacobin. Fazi and Mitchell (FM) responded with accusations of strawman arguments, false claims, bias and muddled thinking. We intended to write a reply at the time, but other commitments got in the way. However we believe that FM’s reply was sufficiently inaccurate – and in places, dishonest – that a reply is required, even if belatedly....

Critical Macro Finance
A BELATED REPLY TO FAZI AND MITCHELL ON BREXIT
Bruno Bonizzi and Jo Michell

Stephen Williams — How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

More framing.

This is a really good article. Concise, precise, and clearly formulated so that anyone can understand it. Disseminate widely.

Here is the lede:

Governments of all stripes base their policies on mainstream economics. Powerful challenges to the mainstream, especially from ecological economics and modern monetary theory, explain why we are in a hole and can’t seem to get out.

If this article is largely correct, we can conclude that the economics profession is a major cause – directly or indirectly – of most modern evils.

In saying that, I draw heavily on the work of Australian academic economists Professor Robert Costanza, Associate Professor Philip Lawn, Professor Bill Mitchell and Dr Steven Hail.

Taken together, their work – in conjunction with colleagues overseas – claims that mainstream economics is fundamentally wrong left, right and centre — although I don’t mean to imply that these four scholars agree on every point.

Mitchell – a co-originator of modern monetary theory (MMT) – shows that we could have full employment quickly with a job guarantee, that federal budget deficits are normal and desirable, that the federal government never needs to borrow money, and that federal taxes do not fund anything.

The Federal Government should focus on non-inflationary full employment and not budget outcomes, because we can run deficits forever without borrowing.
In short, the Federal Government does not have the budget constraints of a household, business, or state government, because it can create unlimited money — but should spend prudently to avoid inflation and ecological overshoot....

Independent Australia
How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

Stephen Williams

See also

For many, Brexit is a right-wing project because the principal authors are an extreme element of the British Tory Party. However an Australian academic will be putting forward a very different view at a public meeting in Galway.

Bill Mitchell is professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, a widely published author, and a notable proponent of Modern Monetary Theory. He is also the co-author, with Italian political theorist Thomas Fazi, of Reclaiming the State – A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty in a Post-Neoliberal World.
That book will form the basis of his talk in Galway, entitled Reclaiming the State, which takes place on Wednesday October 3 at 8pm in the Harbour Hotel. Prof Mitchell argues that progressives and the political Left should not regard Brexit - and the current problems of the EU and monetary union generally - as a cause for despair, but as an opportunity to embrace a progressive, liberating, vision of national independence, to reject the EU’s austerity straitjacket and to implement a democratic socialist platform, “which is impossible within the EU, let alone the euro-zone”.

In Reclaiming the State, Mitchell and Fazi dispute that national independence has become irrelevant in a globalised world. They contend that it is only by reclaiming the state from supranational institutions, such as the EU, that people can break away from the neo-liberal economic dogma of the privatisation of resources and public services, deregulation of finance, the reduction of workers’ rights in collective bargaining, cuts to social programmes, and the lowering of taxes on wealth and capital at the expense of the middle and working classes.

The event is organised by The Desmond Greaves School, and will be chaired by Terry McDonough, Professor Emeritus of Economics at NUI Galway.

Galway Advertiser
Public meeting to ask ‘Is Brexit is an opportunity for Ireland?’

Steve Keen — Some Preliminary Questions for MMT

I had an impromptu debate with Warren Mosler, the founder and still one of the leading figures of "Modern Monetary Theory" recently. We disagreed on the role of trade deficits, and this has led another MMT luminary, Bill Mitchell, to write two commentaries critiquing my position (see "Trade and external finance mysteries – Part 1" and "Trade and finance mysteries – Part 2".

This is my partial reply to Mitchell—there are more issues that I want to take up when I have time to do so....

Patreon
Some Preliminary Questions for MMT
Steve Keen | Professor and Head Of School Of Economics, History & Politics, Kingston University, London

Matias Vernengo — On the Blogs -- The Video Edition

One video is by Bill Mitchell, another is by Steve Keen, and another by Immanuel Wallerstein.

Naked Keynesianism
On the Blogs -- The Video Edition
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell — Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit

Remainers claim that Brexit will be an economic apocalypse. But it provides the opportunity for a radical break with neoliberalism.

Jacobin
Why the Left Should Embrace Brexit

Thomas Fazi and Bill Mitchell

Marshall Auerback — The Fed Is on the Verge of Making a Major Policy Error

Policymakers have helped to perpetuate an economic model that is ultimately unsustainable.

The article is based on Bill Mitchell's analysis of US unemployment.

AlterNet
The Fed Is on the Verge of Making a Major Policy Error
Marshall Auerback / AlterNet

Youssef El-Gingihy — Actually the magic money tree does exist, according to modern monetary theory

Short review of Bill Mitchell and Thomas Fazi's Reclaiming the State: A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World.

Independent
Actually the magic money tree does exist, according to modern monetary theory

Youssef El-Gingihy

Bill Mitchell — Three recent interviews – transcripts and video

Today, I have translated two interviews I did while I was in Europe recently. The original interviews were in Spanish. The first interview was with Andrés Villena Oliver for CTXT and was published in the Spanish newspaper Público. It was conducted at Ecooo in Madrid on September 28, 2017. The the second interview was with journalist Marta Luengo Garcés from the progressive newspaper El Salto Diaro. It was conducted at the Principe Pio Hotel in Madrid on September 29, 2017. You can get a feel for the concerns of the progressive journalists in Spain by the type of questions they asked me. I have also included the video of an interview I did yesterday (October 16, 2017) with Steve Grumbine of the Real Progressives. That should keep readers more than busy until tomorrow.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Three recent interviews – transcripts and video
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Peter Cooper — Mitchell, Wray and Watts on Teaching Modern Monetary Theory

The video below is of a three-part presentation by Bill Mitchell, L. Randall Wray and Martin Watts concerning their forthcoming MMT textbook. Throughout the presentation and in the Q&A session that follows there are interesting observations on the current state of university economics and prospects for MMT and the economics discipline in general. The presentation was given at the First International Conference on Modern Monetary Theory….

heteconomist
Mitchell, Wray and Watts on Teaching Modern Monetary Theory
Peter Cooper

Bill Mitchell — Paradigm shift – not from the CORE Econ Project – as mainstream as you will get

Next Friday (September 22, 2017), I will be presenting at a panel on developments associated with the proposed MMT University and our new MMT Macroeconomics textbook, which will be published by Macmillan in April 2018. The panel will present during the First International MMT Conference, to be held in Kansas City. In part, my contribution will be to discuss the general pedagogical concerns that we (Randy Wray, Martin Watts and myself) had as we wrote the textbook over what turned out to be several years. 

We were confronted with the situation that we want our textbook to be used as widely as possible in the first and second years of a typical undergraduate program, but also didn’t want to fall into the trap of compromising what we considered to be a unified body of theory based upon Modern Monetary Theory (MMMT) for what other colleagues (particularly, mainstream academics) would claim to be necessary material to prepare a student for the labour market. 

We now have what we believe is a very strong two-year sequence in macroeconomics, firmly founded on MMT principles, with a good balance between discursive narrative, historical context, empirical challenge, and formal (mathematical) reasoning. When one compares it to other post-GFC developments in the pedagogy of macroeconomics, some of which have received the headlines in the past week, I think the curriculum embodied in our text is progressive, consistent, and doesn’t fall into the typical neoliberal default regarding governments and the monetary system....

[Paragraphing added for online readibility]

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

Paradigm shift – not from the CORE Econ Project – as mainstream as you will get

Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Patricia Pino — The fringe event that promises to empower Labour’s Progressives against neoliberalism

Professor Bill Mitchell – a major proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) – will attend a Labour Conference fringe event this September, it’s a rare opportunity progressives must seize.…

Through the mass misinformation that is the neoliberal doctrine, the elites created a set of economic rules which presents them and only them as the indispensable saviours of society, and thus the only entity that must directly benefit from economic policy. They then dressed this fantasy as common sense, aided by their media sycophants whose very positions depend on the continued support from the wealthy classes. Dissent against this destructive order is presented as madness. Obedience is absolute: the poor think they must protect their masters, even at the expense of their own wellbeing.

In fact, every ill of society, every injustice, every incident of exploitation and systematic cruelty, finds its justification in some false economic dogma that goes unquestioned. And that is why the fight for social change goes hand in hand with economic reform....

If this movement belongs primarily to the young, then it is time for them to take the lead. Until millennials arm themselves with strong economic arguments, they will be defenceless when the establishment blames their money troubles on indulgence, their growing personal debt on irresponsibility and their joblessness on laziness. Until millennials can explain why these societal issues are a direct result of economic policy, the establishment will continue to promote them as individuals’ problems. The difficulties presented by a population that has endured 40 years of neoliberal indoctrination cannot be underestimated....

Help the organisers: visit the Crowdfunding page for this event. 

The Pileus

The fringe event that promises to empower Labour’s Progressives against neoliberalism

Patricia Pino

also by Patricia Pino:

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss MMT at length with Professor Bill Mitchell himself. My objective was to find a way to explain its fundamentals in a way which could be easily understood by anyone, without the requirement of an academic background. He was kind enough to help me in this task.

To understand MMT, it is best to start by comparing it to Neoliberalism.…

It should now be evident why the neoliberal model presents a destructive path. Immediate environmental and human concerns (namely climate change and destitution) are relegated to issues of secondary importance. But to replace this model with that proposed by MMT a number of challenges remain.…

The following are a few basic principles of MMT which must be understood in order to challenge the neoliberal myths:

Labour’s economic alternative to neoliberalism

Bill Mitchell — Reflections on a visit to New Zealand

Last Friday, I gave a public lecture organised by the strategy group Strategy2040 and the full presentation is available on YouTube – (I made it available in yesterday’s blog). After that presentation I was invited to a ‘Roundtable’ meeting (although the layout was rectangular) which comprised about 30 or so people (mostly economists as I gather) being given the opportunity for 90 minutes to question me about the presentation etc – to tear me apart really. There was a call from an former senior central banker in the audience to have Chatham House rules governing the meeting. I declined acceptance of that constraint. Opinions should be owned. But what the meeting taught me was that, despite the GFC and the failure of the mainstream macroeconomics to predict it, deal with it when it arrived and then change its approach in the aftermath, very little has changed within the mainstream narrative. The same myths are being propagated and academic and senior policy economists seem blithe to reality.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Reflections on a visit to New Zealand
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Former RBNZ economist Michael Reddell reviews Modern Monetary Theory where fiscal policy is the key lever rather than monetary policy; He argues monetary policy is still best for cyclical stabilisation

Michael Reddell takes issue with Bill Mitchell over the efficacy of fiscal policy versus monetary policy. Disagreement and debate are welcome, and this is not a back of the hand response, as so many are. It's one of the debates we should be having.

interest.co.nz
Former RBNZ economist Michael Reddell reviews Modern Monetary Theory where fiscal policy is the key lever rather than monetary policy; He argues monetary policy is still best for cyclical stabilisation

Michael Reddell

Bill Mitchell — Mainstream macroeconomics – exudes denial while purporting to be progressive

Bill deconstructs the conventional explanation for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

Toward the end, Bill discusses ISLM.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Mainstream macroeconomics – exudes denial while purporting to be progressive
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia