MSM wakes up long enough to notice that the MMT blogosphere has long ago and at present come up with a way to legally get us out of this moron-manufactured needless "debt ceiling" crisis.
Post at WaPo WonkBlog here delegated to Plumer as perhaps Klein thinks this "novelty" idea is beneath his direct attention and could potentially taint his tremendous Very Serious Person credentials. Excerpt:
Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Fed then moves this money into Treasury’s accounts. And just like that, Treasury suddenly has an extra $2 trillion to pay off its obligations for the next two years — without needing to issue new debt. The ceiling is no longer an issue.OK so far, BUT now here may be the line that gets the "MMT Irony of the Year Award":
“I like it,” says Joseph Gagnon of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “There’s nothing that’s obviously economically problematic about it.”Aaahhhhhhhhhggghhhh!!!!!! (Inner monologue: "Save the hammer for the man.... save the hammer for the man....")
Either they are all bigger morons than even I thought, or looks like Gagnon is going to be fired when he goes in to work at this Peterson place Monday morning.
Gagnon continues:
In theory, this is much like having the central bank print money. But, says Gagnon, the U.S. government would simply be using the money to keep spending at existing levels, so it wouldn’t create any extra inflation. And if it did cause problems, the Fed could always counteract the effects by winding down some of its other programs to inject money into the economy.I just can't believe the stupidity that these monetarist morons continue to exhibit.
Here Gagnon in his first sentence correctly relates price stability to the government spending rate, which is FISCAL policy.
[TIP: STOP RIGHT THERE JOSEPH GAGNON, you got it!]
BUT THEN he makes the assertion that in the face of this hypothetical fiscal process becoming too stimulative and leading to unstable prices, the solution would NOT be to modify this same FISCAL policy, but rather, have the Fed cease to make re-distributional arrangements effecting the duration of the financial assets on its central bank balance sheet.
How do their brains work?
