Saturday, June 1, 2019

Ms. Shelton is an MMTer


Ms Shelton has long been sympathetic to the gold standard, which the US fully abandoned in the early 1970s in favour of a flexible exchange rate for the dollar. “People call me a goldbug, and I think, well, what does that make them? A Fed bug,” she says. Her big dream is a new Bretton Woods-style conference — “if it takes place at Mar-a-Lago that would be great” — to reset the international monetary system, replacing the current regime, mostly based on floating currencies. Ms Shelton said countries should agree to tie their currencies to a “neutral reference point, a benchmark” — which she envisages to be a “convertible gold-backed bond”.  
Forget the gold standard, she can be talked into a market making bounds guaranteed by contract.  But she is absolutely right about MMT time, we are here, the moment is now. 

She is also historically correct on all accounts, we do regular MMT and we end up with delusional economists who claim we will not do it again.  Like that Reinhart lady, she keeps saying 'This time is a bit different and we know a lot more".  This time is not different, didn't someone write a book about that?

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