tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4305888946584866654.post4542241085404463617..comments2024-03-18T18:33:59.080-07:00Comments on The Left Chapter: The NDP and budget deficits: Not the Tommy Douglas vision Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4305888946584866654.post-87417139894107769642015-10-20T09:49:56.154-07:002015-10-20T09:49:56.154-07:00Herb
Since the second half of my comment eventual...Herb<br /><br />Since the second half of my comment eventually got posted above I will attempt to post the 1st half again.<br /><br />Rubbish... I think not.<br /><br />First let me say I mean no personal offence and I in no way speak for Michael Laxer although I do hope he comments.<br /><br />Unfortunately there is an incredible amount of mis-information about monetary operations on the internet. A lot comes from right wing charlatans trying to dupe people, but there is also right wingers who are just mistaken and even more unfortunately people on the left or progressives who appear to have good intentions, like COMER and Ellen Brown and yourself perhaps, but have incorrect information on board. Correct understanding of how money works in the current rendition of capitalism is crucial to using it to better people's lives today and hopefully (for me) on the road to eventual systemic change. IMHO the best source of information on how the money system works is coming out of the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC) and their Modern Money Theory, or MMT, and their writings at www.http://neweconomicperspectives.org/ . Other sources include the Levy Economics Institute http://www.levyinstitute.org/ , economists James Galbraith (son of the well known Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith), Steve Keen, Bill Mitchell (billy blog), and Warren Mosler. They have evolved from Georg Friedrich Knapp's chartalism with other influences being Keynes, Marx, Veblen and more recently Minsky (Sources from my knowledge, sorry if I have missed anyone). I would be curious to know if you are familiar with any of these sources.<br /><br />I cannot hope to address the errors in your, and the others cited, understandings of monetary operations on a blog comment (limited to 4096 characters) and I am guessing you will initially vigorously object. I understand you have a lot of time invested. I am also not a trained economist so would encourage you to take up your objections with the sources I have cited anyway for completeness (not that I am not willing to try). I understand the difficulty in the suggestion leading back to all the information available. For instance If I was a US libertarian or Austrian economist I may be suggesting you read the entire mises.org site or Ayn Rand or Hyek etc. and telling you that is the correct view. I can only say that I went through many paths, including COMER and Ellen Brown and mises.org and Hyek and mainstream economics (neoclassical or the more pejorative theoclassical) before coming across MMT (so called heterodox economics). A long and often painful journey at times.<br /><br />The other evidence I will give for you to invest time in this is the predictive power that has been demonstrated by the people using these economic models.<br /><br />Euro Crisis predicted;<br />http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/07/mmt-the-euro-and-the-greatest-prediction-of-the-last-20-years.html<br /><br />Dot com bubble predicted:<br />http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/business/economy/economists-embracing-ideas-of-wynne-godley-late-colleague-who-predicted-recession.html?_r=0<br /><br />2008 financial crisis predicted:<br />http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/2646456/09002_Bezemer.pdf<br /><br />See second post (above) due to character count run over:Angela, Brent, Brody, Amandahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01291718576676469042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4305888946584866654.post-45781031930011389512015-10-05T16:59:35.614-07:002015-10-05T16:59:35.614-07:00To try and nutshell it in case you are not familia...To try and nutshell it in case you are not familiar:<br /><br />MMT essentially states that sovereign currency issuers are nothing like households. They issue the currency!!! They cannot run out. Solvency is not the issue. They, and their grandchildren, can pay any debt denominated in the currency THEY ISSUE!! The debt really is an accounting entry. It could easily be labelled “non-government savings”. The Canadian Federal Government is the only entity that can issue the Canadian currency! Who else can? The term for anyone else attempting to issue the currency is counterfeiting. Sorry for the punctuation but once you give it five minutes of serious thought it is just plain obvious. Provinces, cities, private companies and households (and Greece under the Euro) are currency users, not currency issuers. They can over borrow and go broke (unless they get bailed out by the currency issuer as happened for banks and GM in 2008, but not Detroit; hmmm). These statements about credit cards and debt for grandchildren are just plain wrong and idiotic but unfortunately they still seem to have political capital (see the current incarnation of the lurch to the right NDP). Perhaps it would be political suicide to attempt to educate the electorate about these matters so close to an election? Maybe a new left party or the NDP shifted back from the right abyss can bring this issue to the fore in the next election???<br /><br />I am not a fan of MMT's policies as a final destination, only reforms en-route to revolution, and I believe we will get "socialism (of some form) or barbarism (a lot of which we already have of course)", but I do think it properly describes the modern money system as it currently exists, and actually pretty much as it has always existed. It also addresses the issue of inflation if a currency issuer overspends which really only occurs if overspending during full employment, which we will never experience under capitalism unless MMT's other policy of the job guarantee is adopted. MMT also addresses the difference between financial and real assets and the importance of how we use and allocate real resources. There of course are other issues to consider under global capitalism and geopolitics and I have not even scratched the surface in attempting to explain MMT.Angela, Brent, Brody, Amandahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01291718576676469042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4305888946584866654.post-80860265231303894022015-08-31T22:02:35.302-07:002015-08-31T22:02:35.302-07:00Rubbish Michael. There is no guarantee Mulcair wou...Rubbish Michael. There is no guarantee Mulcair would go this way but there is a choice. ww.mykawartha.com/opinion-story/5822132-the-myth-of-the-balanced-budget-narrative/Herbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01474083414027573138noreply@blogger.com