Modern monetary theory (MMT) explained

Modern monetary theory is a heterodox economic theory which states governments should not worry about government borrowing but be willing to aim for full employment. Full employment should be achieved through expansionary fiscal policy and financed by creating money.

MMT argues the only limit of higher government borrowing is the effect on inflation. Thus if the economy is depressed with unused resources, the government should immediately create jobs through creating money to finance extra government spending.

As the economy gets close to full capacity and inflationary pressures start to rise, the government should increase taxes to take excess money out of the circular flow and thereby reduce the budget deficit.

MMT argues the traditional view of government borrowing is a mistake. It is not really ‘borrowing’ like a household but the government is ‘borrowing’ using its own debt instruments.

MMT is a controversial economic theory, criticised for ignoring effects of crowding out, inflationary pressures and unrealistic world view. It has become more significant since the financial crisis of 2008 and 2020 have necessited very high levels of government borrowing to deal with falls in economic output.

(When MMT talk about government – it includes government and Central Bank acting as one.)

 

MMT View on Monetary policy

MMT advocates argue that the conventional view of monetary policy is misplaced – especially in a liquidity trap. The conventional response to a recession is cutting interest rates. However, in a slump, the private sector may not want to borrow and cheaper loans have no effect in increasing investment. This is why fiscal policy is much more effective. If the government employ workers, the private sector economy will have more confidence to employ people.

If the government maintain zero interest rates, but no expansionary fiscal policy this can actually be quite contractionary.

MMT argues that raising interest rates can even be expansionary because the government pay higher dividends to private sector, causing injection into the economy. Cutting rates can be deflationary because interest dividends to the private sector (holding bonds) is reduced.

MMT View on government borrowing

A key aspect of MMT is that a government can never default on debt because it can always create money which is accepted by private sector. The only constraint to government borrowing is the effect on inflation.

A traditional view of government borrowing is that it is like a household – spending more than it receives in income. This becomes debt they owe to an external third party. However, MMT says this is mistaken. A household cannot print money which will be accepted in a shop. MMT argue that a government should borrow by creating money (not issuing debt) In effect the government is issuing its own liabilities to the private sector. It is ‘borrowing’ using its own debt instrument. MMT also observe that when the government issue bonds, this is a value to the private sector.

“Hence government issuance of debt results in net financial asset creation for the private sector. Private debt is debt, but government debt is financial wealth to the private sector.” Yeva Nersisyan L. Randall Wray, June 2010

MMT say the only limit to government borrowing is its effect on inflation. In a recession, a government can easily increase the money supply without inflationary pressure because there is spare capacity and falling velocity of circulation. If the government pursue expansionary fiscal policy when the economy is close to full capacity then this will cause inflation, and the government should respond by raising taxes to reduce demand.

Note: MMT make an exception to countries like Greece and Italy who are in the Euro – they may not be able to print money to finance debt because they rely on ECB. Countries like UK, US and Japan do control their currency fully.

Crowding out/Crowding in

A traditional critique of government borrowing is that if the government borrow, it deprives the private sector of funds for investment – therefore, government borrowing – crowds out the private sector. However, MMT say if the economy has spare capacity, then government borrowing is not reducing private sector spending, but the reverse can happen. Creating jobs and reducing unemployment gives the private sector more confidence to invest because they expect additional demand.

Policy implications of MMT

“Politicians need to reject the urge to ask “How are we going to pay for it?” … We must give up our obsession with trying to “pay for” everything with new revenue or spending cuts…”  [Kelton, Bernal, and Carlock 2018].

  • Don’t worry about deficits – only worry about inflation. As long as deficits are not inflationary, governments should borrow (through money creation) as much as needed to gain full employment.
  • ‘Free-lunches available‘. When resources are idle (recession), there is no trade off involved in increasing money supply and getting unemployed back to work. It is like a ‘free lunch’ you can increase output with no cost. Unemployment is an unnecessary burden and loss of resources.
  • Importance of fiscal policy. The government should use fiscal policy to target inflation and unemployment. Increasing spending when inflation is low, increasing taxes/cutting spending when inflation is increasing.
  • Jobs guarantee. Some MMT propose a jobs guarantee or NAIBER non-accelerating inflation buffer employment ratio – this means that if workers cannot find a job in the government sector, they should find a job via the government’s job guarantee (JG). The government’s job guarantee will be a fixed wage and so you can reduce unemployment without causing inflation.

Criticisms of MMT

  • The concept governments can just create money to fund spending is misleading – ultimately the ability to print money is not enough – the government relies on real output and income to gain the credibility and ability to finance spending.
  • View on inflation too simplistic.  MMT say if there is spare capacity, the government can create money, but inflation could already be a problem even at this stage. Inflation can be due to cost-push factors. Also measuring the amount of spare capacity is difficult.
  • Political issues of using tax. MMT argues tax rates should be changed to control inflation, but this can be politically difficult. Politicians may not want to raise tax just to reduce inflation.
  • Higher government borrowing can be inflationary. In the 1970s, the government’s did run budget deficits which were highly inflationary. In effect, the government did default on part of its debt. Investors who owned bonds in 1970, saw inflation erode the real value. Many developing countries have underestimated the potential for higher borrowing to cause runaway inflation.
  • The ‘evangelism of MMT’ Paul Krugman, amongst others, has criticised the evangelism and ‘revolutionary fervour of MMT arguing they are too quick to state MMT agenda is self-evident.

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7 thoughts on “Modern monetary theory (MMT) explained”

  1. A little too brief to 2xplain things fully. I’d recommend Stephanie Kelton’s book – The Deficit Myth.

    One important thing to note is if their were no ‘deficit’ there would be no money in the economy. The ‘deficit’ is money in circulation, wealth that we own (and therefore does not have to be repaid in the form of taxes back to the Govt).

    The other major irritant is the use of the term borrowing. The govt (currency issuers) does not have to borrow to create money. It just does it. In much the same way private banks do when they ‘loan’ money – they just create it in a bank account, it doesn’t have to already exist – though it does get destroyed on loan repayment.

    • Just taking a stab at this:

      Money circulating in the economy comes from production and consumption (of goods and services), in addition to gov. spending (deficit spending). The difference is production and consumption aren’t inflationary.

      Gov can’t issue currency. They issue bonds to the Fed, which is considered monetizing debt. The monetization of debt is what makes deficit spending possible.

      Just heard of this MMT, and know nothing about it, other than what I read up above, but sounds extremely dangerous.

  2. Some of the criticisms are a bit strange. To take one example, it is often stated as ‘fact’ that government deficits in the 1970’s were inflationary, thus debunking Keynes and ushering in Monetarist Neoliberal / Neoclassical economics.
    However the actual fact is that due to the OPEC Oil Embargo the price of Oil increased 1000%. Yes 10x. In an era even more dependent on oil. Increasing costs and wage-demands to compensate for price increases. Isn’t that the more obvious reason? What do you think would happen today if the oil price shot up from $70 to $700? Even without the union bargaining power now that they had in 1970’s.
    1970’s inflation had absolutely nothing to do with governments bidding up prices for services & resources it wished to purchase.
    In reality, as we have seen, it is hard for governments to generate inflation through spending, except by consistent and serious policy error.

    • You are correct. The actual inflation came from a monetary phenomena with the currency. Yes, the money supply was expanding do to the Vietnam War. From what I’ve read, quite a bit of us dollars was ending up in France. So Charles de Gaulle began redeeming dollar for gold at the NY Fed and they didn’t like this much. So they got Nixon to break with the international gold standard by blocking all redemption of US Dollars for gold. This triggered a massive sell off of dollars on FX exchanges driving down the exchange value of the dollar relative to other currencies and commodities. This is what triggered the price inflation. OPEC reacted to the loss of the dollar’s value by raising oil prices which compounded the issue by a knock on effect all through the supply chain causing not just an adjustment of oil against the dollar but an entire repricing of all domestic goods and services relating to the dollar. Wages were slow to keep up. Then the idiots at the Fed made it even worse by jacking up interest rates which in theory works to stall inflation but this only made it even more costly for suppliers to borrow funds to expand supplies into a consumer market that has stagnant wages. Now how would raising interest rates work at all? It was the most retarded move ever and Paul Volker was called a hero for doing it. He was a moron or a traitor. Then we voted Reagan in and he did all that could be done. He passed a trillion dollars of deficit spending, more than doubling the national debt at super high interest rates allowing bond traders to make hundreds of billions AFTER the Fed lowered interest rates for the consumer to start borrowing again after the government created enough demand to signal it was safe for the supply side to start borrowing again to expand supply. Right after this we had the bull run of the 80s and a complete roll up, buy out and sell off of most of America’s Industrial Base that was shipped over seas totally destroying the blue collar middle class. And guess how it all got funded? It was those massive gains the investment bank bond traders made who lent to the government at 15% interest and as the interest rate dropped, those bond prices skyrocketed. The entire process took about 15 years. From August 15, 1971 when Nixon broke with Bretton Wood’s gold standard to the massive buyouts of the late 80s. America’s standard of living was gutted along with its manufacturing all so bankers could make more money. The entire thing was a set up to de-regulate banking and open the spigot of unlimited banking credit, but before that the bankers wanted to subjugate us in poverty and despair before they used our national debt to fund their mergers and acquisitions of our entire industrial base. This is how you got globalism and Neo-liberalism and it all happened on Republican watch. Reagan was a buffoon. But no more than Bush, Clinton and all the rest before and after.

  3. “MMT argues the only limit of higher government borrowing is the effect on inflation. ”

    Actually, MMT argues that the government doesn’t need to borrow at all. That is one of the major points of MMT. The government creates the money it needs id doesn’t need to borrow it.

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