L. Randall Wray — MMT’s Mother Wears Army Boots

Randy asks critics to please check what MMT economists and financial professionals have actually said instead of attacking straw men.

Economonitor — Great Leap Forward
MMT’s Mother Wears Army Boots
L. Randall Wray | Professor of Economics, UMKC

Steve Keen — Briefing on the Fiscal Cliff at Congress

This week’s post returns to the topic I discussed just two weeks ago (Fiscal cliff lessons from the ’30s, November 26). I wrote that last post after I had given Congressman Dennis Kucinich a presentation on the fiscal cliff, and he asked me to return to Washington to give a public briefing in Congress. Today’s post is the document I spoke to at that briefing, and it’s substantially more detailed than the draft published two weeks ago.

Steve Keen's Debtwatch
Briefing on the Fiscal Cliff at Congress
Steve Keen

Steve Keen — Congress Briefing on the Fiscal Cliff: Lessons From the 1930s (video)

Outgoing Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich (seehttp://kucinich.house.gov/) arranged for me to give a briefing at Congress today on the Fiscal Cliff, and how the downturn of 1937 could be a foretaste of what will happen if the Cliff comes to pass. An attempt by the government to reduce its debt now may trigger a renewed bout of deleveraging by the private sector--and this is what appeared to happen in 1937, when confidence that the worst of the Depression was over led to the government reducing its deficit. Private sector deleveraging, which had stopped in 1934-35, began once more and unemployment rapidly rose from about 10 to almost 20 percent. The main danger with the Fiscal Cliff is therefore not what the reduction of government spending will do on its own, but that it might trigger a renewed bout of deleveraging from the $40 trillion overhang of private debt that I call the "Rock of Damocles".

Congress Briefing on the Fiscal Cliff: Lessons From the 1930s

Steve Keen

Kucinich loses primary

AMI loses the proponent of its monetary reform proposal in Congress.

Read it at The Huffington Post
Marcy Kaptur Beats Dennis Kucinich In Ohio 9th District Primary

by Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim

Dennis Kucinich states some OWS demands in 2008 — 2 min.

(h/t Ralph Musgrave)

A bit ouf of paradigm in places, but Rep. Kucinich asks fundamental questions of Congress that have not yet been answered, and Occupy Wall Street is now asking them in the streets.