One of the most confused suggestions of my recent session with Positive Money (PoMo) was their stance in favour of PQE, which they are happy to admit is just printing money without first raising taxes. IE they are spending first. So if they are prepared to justify it on that basis what do they propose… Read more
Category:
Money
Positive Money thinking
Whilst most people were probably on holiday, I spent much of last weekend at a ‘get together’ in scenic London SE1 with Positive Money. Or PoMo as many of the staff seem to call it. I do think that PoMo is to be admired for – uniquely – promoting grass roots groups throughout the country… Read more
Neoliberalism is no philosophy but simply another pressure group
I quote from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) “deepen the inequalities and inefficiencies of neoliberalism.” This suggests neoliberalism is a philosophy. I profoundly disagree. It is rather a pressure group that was smart enough to endeavour to create an idea. I think the NEF should know better. We must beware – neoliberalism is NOT a… Read more
Neoliberalism exists to disable democracy
Whilst the Mont Pelerin Society was founded 1947, it is interesting to discover that the origins of Neoliberalism go back forty years or so before that. When, in 1907, Austria saw its first elections held under universal male suffrage – a full eleven years before Britain, and seven years before the First World War, the… Read more
Neoliberalism is driving us nuts
– 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
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