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Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers

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John T. Harvey

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“MMT recognizes that finance is not a limited resource. It is manufactured and created in the act of spending. In the modern world, the exclusive monopoly to issue the currency endows governments with unparalleled spending power. For MMT, that the issuer can spend without technical constraints is a rather trivial observation. What MMT stresses is that taxes and borrowing cannot pre-fund the issuer of the currency, as the currency must be provided before it can be used for tax collections or bond purchases. The substantive question for MMT then is how to deploy this spending power for achieving the two central macroeconomic goals: full employment and price stability.”

“The surest way to deny our purpose is to search for it outside ourselves — or worse, to let others define it for us. The moment we look outward for something that can only be felt inward, we turn away from the very source we seek. Trying to fit purpose into a sentence is like taking something alive — something ever-flowing, ever-changing — and freezing it into a monument of words. No matter how beautiful or precise, it becomes a still image of what was once moving. At best, it is a snapshot of a moment in time, a reflection that has already passed. But life’s purpose is not meant to be carved in stone. It is a living current, flowing and evolving in rhythm with our life. To define it is to risk stripping it of its aliveness — we would barter something wild and sacred for something safe and fixed. Purpose is to be lived, embodied, and surrendered to. It is something we meet anew in every moment we choose to show up in alignment with what stirs our soul.”

“Excerpt from page 113 [On Malaysia's Prime Minster's anti-capitalism and anti-globalization policies in September 1997] "Ah, excuse me, Mahathir, but what planet are you living on? You talk about participating in globalization as if it were a choice you had. Globalization isn't a choice. It's a reality. There is just one global market today, and the only way you can grown at the speed your people want to grow is by tapping into the global stock and bond markets, by seeking out multinationals to invest in your country and by selling into the global trading systems what your factories produce. And the most basic truth about globalization is: No one is in charge. You keep looking for someone to complain to, someone to take the heat off your markets, someone to blame. Well, guess what, Mahathir, there's no one on the other end of the phone!" "The Electronic Heard cuts no one any slack... The herd is not infallible. It makes mistakes too. It overreacts and it overshoots. But if your fundamentals are basically sound, the herd will eventually recognize this and come back. They herd is never stupid for too long. In the end, it always responds to good governance and good economic management.”

“Economics also has to become a fundamentally monetary discipline—from the consideration of how individuals make market decisions through to our understanding of macroeconomics. The myth of "the money illusion" (which can only be true in a world without debt) has to be immediately dispelled, while our macroeconomics have to reflect a monetary economy in which nominal magnitudes matter, precisely because they are the link between the value of current output and the financing of accumulated debt. The dangers of excessive debt and deflation simply cannot be comprehended from a neoclassical perspective. The discipline must also become fundamentally empirical, in contrast to the faux empiricism of econometrics. By this I mean basing itself on the economic and financial data first and foremost—the collection and interpretation of which has been the hallmark of contributions by econophysicists—and by respecting economic history, a topic which has been systematically expunged from economics departments around the world.”