– if we live to realise it at all. Interesting short article in (remarkably) the ‘Telegraph’ from the Health Foundation think tank. People, since 2010 (I wonder what happened then?) have been – and, as far as I can see, this is unique in Europe – been living less long, and so too, are current… Read more
Category:
Money
Has the ‘Guardian’ got it?
This must be the first ‘Guardian’ editorial to quote Prof Stephanie Kelton – and the first one for a long time to suggest that deficit financing is a good idea. Before spending more money on the NHS, British politicians should take the advice of the US economist Stephanie Kelton: in a UK lecture this week,… Read more
Money for nothing is everything
There is an excellent summary in one easy blog on TRUK of Modern Monetary Theory* (MMT), which should more properly be called Modern Monetary Practice or the Modern Monetary System (MMS). As usual, below the article are the comments, many of which are highly critical, usually on the basis that if you are stupid enough… Read more
Even when government borrows money it still creates it
At least that is what I’ve always thought. So it was good that I’ve encountered some systematic reasoning on the subject, (but it’s drawn from diverse twitter replies so cannot be properly linked). When the government “borrows”, they give money to somebody, because they, the government, alone create it, and simply decide that, rather than… Read more
Burning tallies – and what bankers have forgotten
I mentioned the burning down of Parliament in my earlier post on a federal Britain. Famously it took place to general approval of the rubbernecking public. As Thomas Carlyle put it, “A man sorry I did not anywhere see.” I doubt it would be different now – although JMW Turner’s painting would doubtless be replaced… Read more
On trade deficits: MMT is not MMT enough
As a postscipt to my previous piece, there is futher comment using this title as a paragraph heading from Steve Keen who has pretty comprehensively rebutted the MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) view that exports are a cost and imports are a benefit – in so doing it shows again the dangers of viewing the overall… Read more
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)’s flaw for balance of payment deficit nations
Many, if not most, would agree that we have been poorly served by Conservative austerity policies, not just because it engenders economic contraction, but also, even more importantly, because it concentrates on judging the economy using the wrong measure. It is obvious that for sovereign currencies where the government creates its own money government deficits… Read more
Passing the Baton – a guest post by Geoff Plant
‘Power concedes nothing without demand; it never did and it never will.’ Frederick Douglass, 1857 There has been much written about the controlling “elite” in western society; both America and the UK alike have similar structures of privilege. Recent research by the Sutton Trust focused on where MPs were educated when compared to the general… Read more
Is Italy the white hope for European reform?
The radical reformist and largely Eurosceptic coalition parties in the Italian government are declaring radical views. They have asked for 250 billion of Euro debt to be written off. Although it has been subtly since denied, it is entirely in character with their previous pronouncements and they still maintain that a pre-Maastricht system would be… Read more
Central Banks – the Overmighty Citizens
There is an interesting book review in the FT (occasional paywall) on “Unelected Power -The Quest for Legitimacy in Central Banking and the Regulatory State”, by one, Paul Tucker, previous Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, no less. It comes in at 656 pages so I’m glad the FT has read it so that… Read more