It's Wednesday and there are a few topics that caught my attention this week as…
My blog is on holiday today
My blog is on holiday today. There is a lot going on at present and I will report on analysis and upcoming events in the coming period soon. MMTed is coming together, slowly, thanks, in part, to the donations that have been coming in. We need more funds but we appreciate the support so far. But you can see that there will be lots of topics covered in the coming weeks (overleaf) and in the meantime, enjoy some of the best jazz (funk) ever recorded. Back in force tomorrow.
While we continue to practice social distancing, I have been busy.
Topics coming in the next immediate period include:
1. What the RBA is up to buying commonwealth and state/territory government debt. Even the states have found the currency-issuer can ease their need to increase deficits.
2. Was the Eurogroup’s so-called ‘solidarity’ decision last week any major shift in the austerity mindset in the EMU and why it punishes Italy and Spain, particularly.
3. What the Bank of England and H.M. Treasury decided last week – implications etc.
4. What is happening with US labour markets – the job loss bias is skewed severely towards low paid workers.
5. How the neoliberal bias of the IMF has made the Coronavirus crisis worse.
6. And more.
Coming up!
Interview with New Zealand news service
I recorded an interview with the Otago Daily Times last week (journalist Bruce Munro).
His article reporting the interchange and a short video we did together was published on Saturday (April 11, 2020) in their Life & Style Magazine supplement – Much ado about nothing?.
I even got a chance to talk about Rugby Union, even though I would usually avoid the topic.
Thanks to Bruce and his team.
The message is getting out … slowly.
Call for MMTed Support
I imagine the current crisis will put a halt on people donating to causes.
But we are making progress in developing the program that will become – MMTed.
I ran my first Masterclass in London recently and it was well attended. I received good (useful) feedback from several people which will help tune the way we run these face to face classes.
The planned further Masterclasses (May in Australia, June in Europe, September in the US) are on hold while we assess the state of the world. But I hope we will be able to offer them sometime this year.
And on-line curricula is being developed.
But we still need significant sponsors for this venture to ensure that we can run the educational program with negligible fees.
If you are able to help on an ongoing basis that would be great. But we will also be appreciate of once-off and small donations as your
You can contribute in one of three two ways:
1. Via PayPal – which is our preferred vehicle for receiving donations.
The PayPal donation button is available via the MMTed Home Page or via the – Donation button – on the right-hand menu of this page (below the calendar).
2. Direct to MMTed’s Bank Account.
Please write to me to request account details.
Please help if you can.
We cannot make the MMTed project viable on a sustainable basis without funding support.
We will always maintain strict anonymity with respect to donations received, except if the donor desires to be publicly associated with the venture and gives their permission in writing to appear on the Donors Page.
Up until now, all donors have wished to remain private.
Jazz to work by …
Regular readers may or not know that I love Hammond B3 organs. While I am not very oriented towards material things, two possessions: (a) and old Hammond B3 with Leslie cabinet; and (b) a 1920s Steinway Grand Piano, would be easily accommodated in my house if anyone wants to give them away.
Here is a classic example of the beauty of the Hammond and perfect for a day of number crunching and coding in R (which has dominated today for me).
The track is from Lou Donaldson’s 1968 album on Blue Note Records – Midnight Creeper – with the track ‘Bag of Jewels’, written by master organ player – Dr Lonnie Smith).
Lou Donaldson is the alto player who set out during the BeBop era, which means Charlie Parker is in his music.
He is thought of as the ‘father of funk’ given his albums of the late 1960s, which are among my favourites and on my often play list.
This album features some of the best jazz players:
1. Blue Mitchell on cornet
2. Lonnie Smith – Hammond
3. George Benson – guitar before he got the weird idea that he could and should sing.
4. Idris Muhammad – drums
9:44 of pure funk and soul the whole way.
This is one of the reasons I fell in love with the Hammond organ.
That is enough for today!
(c) Copyright 2020 William Mitchell. All Rights Reserved.
Bill,
I have been studying your and others’ work further, most recently looking at the Deficits 101 series of blogs. The diagrams there make perfect sense, but what about a country like Australia – with both money-sovereign federal as well as non-sovereign state levels of government and their corresponding accounting?
Various taxes and investment programs are currently managed and “paid for”/paid for at the state level (e.g. land tax, transport, schools). Not even looking at local government and council rates.
Have you written any blogs with diagrams that would decribe or propose how the federal-and-states model could be structured, and with the money flows described with the MMT lens?
I believe it’s often sensible and pragmatic to find the minimal, least-controversial change that helps bring something forward.
For example, a MMT-based deficit policy agenda ideally wouldn’t be initially asking to change countries’ constitutions or similar.
So since MMT describes the already existing world, wondering there a “story” that could be told to people and politicians that’s more than “just do what Japan does” and which materially lifts the veil while not sounding too radical.
— more illustrative thoughts below, but main question has already been asked above, so I hope I’m not distracting… —
So perhaps rather than having the new/radical notion of consolidated government at the top (federal), only to then have to have another “government” in the diagram that’s not a sovereign money issuer (state gov) below, I wonder if there’s a possible intermediate, compatible accounting design that reuses the existing federal institutional structures and operations (Treasury and RBA) but at the same time clearly (or at least better) communicates the “magic” difference of the MMT lens, without bastardising MMT too much?
Or is the state relegated to purely being a proxy for communicating the public interest to the federal government and the feds always having to say yes to the states’ funding requests?
The point of states is to make locally optimised policy decisions – which would need a contrarevolution to give up. But at the same time states probably shouldn’t be collecting taxes and “finance” things. How can these concerns be united?
By the way, and I know it’s too late after over 25 years, but knowing that a crucial prerequisites of the world and policy options that MMT describes are 1971 + currency floats (and by extension making any pre-1971 theory in the 20th century likely obsolete), it comes to mind that “Theory of Modern Money” might have been a less ambiguous and perhaps more descriptive and accessible description than what can be read as a “Modern … Theory” where the “modern” could even be perceived as ideological/postmodernist/a-bit-crazy by some. Haha it’s too late now and silly of me to bring it up now 🙂
MMT is (in one respect) an analysis of what currency issuing national governments can do because they have that power to issue the currency. Unfortunately it also shows that state and local governments that do not issue the currency are very much more limited than the national government that does. They do rely on tax receipts to pay for what they spend. And they do have to borrow if they tax less than they spend. Unless they receive funding from the national currency issuing government. Aside from that possibility, understanding MMT does not really change the facts about how state and local government budgets operate. Although there have been interesting cases where states have issued what are in effect future state tax credit currencies and those tax credits have value and have served as a type of money. My state did something along these lines and I actually did a few jobs that were funded by such issuance. MMT explains why those tax credits have value and can work as money also.