Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Bill Mitchell — The US government can buy as much of its own debt as it chooses


Bill Mitchell provides analysis of the "public debt problem" in the US to show that there isn't any. So much for "Fixing The Debt," and "who will buy the bonds?"
As a proponent of MMT, I do not consider there to be a public debt problem in the US so the analysis presented here is out of interest rather than establishing anything substantive.
However, what it shows is that even within the voluntarily-constrained system that regulates the relationship between the US treasury and the central bank, the latter can still effectively buy as much US government debt as it likes.
Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The US government can buy as much of its own debt as it chooses
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the Charles Darwin University, Northern Territory, Australia

4 comments:

mike norman said...

Blah, blah, blah I'm getting a little tired of hearing this already. All of us in the MMT community know this and so do a lot of other people, but it's going nowhere in policy circles. This is the problem.

Tom Hickey said...

Mike, Bill has a large and growing international audience these days and most of them aren't MMT. Needs to be said over and over.

In fact, we need a simple introductory book, MMT for Dummies. Maybe someone should approach the Dummies publisher about it.

Anonymous said...

He is finishing one right now with Wray, is he not?

Anyway Mike, this will all become 'self evident' at some point. In the meantime, use it to help you make money.

Tom Hickey said...

Bill and Randy are writing an intro macro text for school use. Not suitable as a popular intro.

A popular intro really has to be for dummies. Bare minimum of math and then clearly explained in words and diagrams from several different angles with examples. Most people don't think like this at all.