Elsewhere: Popular Writing On Modern Monetary Theory

Some articles:

• Josh Barro, in New York Magazine.
• Noah Smith, in Bloomberg.
• Linette Lopez, in Business Insider.
• Michael Strain, also in Bloomberg.

I do not assert that all points in these articles are well-taken.

I think of MMT as descriptive. It combines endogenous money, functional finance, and chartalism. Much of its empirical evidence consists of qualitative descriptions of how financial institutions and central banks operate. One can imagine a policy regime where unemployment and inflation are addressed by changes in the level of taxes and government spending, with monetary policy is a more passive attempt to keep interest rates permanently low. This would contrast with one where central banks are more responsible, through interest rate policy, with addressing unemployment and inflation. An analysis of the implications of such treatments need not be normative.

(Some asides: As a contrast, Josh Barro could have brought up his father, Robert's, treatment of Ricardian equivalence, which Ricardo rejected. Doesn't Marx, in chapter 1, volume 1 of Capital have an incorrect theory in which barter precedes money?)