Robert Murphy
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article28035.htmlModern Monetary Theory (MMT) is a hip economic/financial paradigm apparently sweeping a world unsatisfied with mainstream economics. Over the past year, I have been hearing a growing number of people refer to MMT: either fans who think it blows up my Austrian views, or foes who think it deserves a full-scale critique.
MMT's underground popularity derives from its seeming mathematical rigor, its disagreement with the obviously flawed doctrines of standard neo-Keynesian orthodoxy, and its underlying message of hope that the perceived constraints on government deficit spending are an illusion. The MMT proponents tell us that fiat monetary systems have removed the shackles associated with the gold standard, and that our economic recovery is limited only by our failure to understand how modern money and banking work.
To illustrate my problems with MMT, let's focus on a specific issue: the debate over the government budget deficit. With Austrians and other libertarian types calling for immediate cuts in spending, while Keynesians call for future spending restraint and tax hikes to slow the increase in debt down the road, the MMTers come along and say both sides are ignorant.
According to many proponents of MMT, "deficits don't matter" when a sovereign government can issue its own fiat currency, and all the hand wringing over the government's solvency is absurd. In fact, the MMTers claim that given the reality of a US trade deficit, a sharp drop in the government's budget deficit would hamper the private sector's ability to save. Thus, the Austrians are unwittingly calling for a collapse in private saving when they foolishly demand government austerity.
The national accounts concept underpins the basic income-expenditure model that is at the heart of introductory macroeconomics. We can view this model in two ways: (a) from the perspective of the sources of spending; and (b) from the perspective of the uses of the income produced. Bringing these two perspectives (of the same thing) together generates the sectoral balances.
So from the sources perspective we write:
GDP = C + I + G + (X ? M)
which says that total national income (GDP) is the sum of total final consumption spending (C), total private investment (I), total government spending (G) and net exports (X ? M) [i.e., exports minus imports].
From the uses perspective, national income (GDP) can be used for:
GDP = C + S + T
which says that GDP (income) ultimately comes back to households who consume (C), save (S) or pay taxes (T) with it once all the distributions are made.
So if we equate these two perspectives of GDP, we get:
C + S + T = C + I + G + (X ? M)
This can be simplified by cancelling out the C from both sides and re-arranging (shifting things around but still satisfying the rules of algebra) into what we call the sectoral balances view of the national accounts.
(I ? S) + (G ? T) + (X ? M) = 0
That is the three balances have to sum to zero. The sectoral balances derived are:
The private domestic balance (I ? S) ?
The Budget Deficit (G ? T) ?
The Current Account balance (X ? M) ?
A simplification is to add (I ? S) + (X ? M) and call it the non-government sector. Then you get the basic result that the government balance equals exactly $-for-$ ? the non-government balance (the sum of the private domestic and external balances). This is also a basic rule derived from the national accounts and has to apply at all times.
For the purposes of our discussion, let's simplify things by taking out the international-trade aspect. (We can justify this by looking at the world as a whole, which obviously can't run a trade deficit or trade surplus,[1] and then analyzing the effects of changes in the total budget deficits of all the various governments.)
So if we take out exports and imports, and rearrange the remaining terms, we derive this equation:
G − T = S − I
That is, the amount of government spending minus total tax revenue, is necessarily equal to private saving minus private investment. The MMTers might succinctly express this relationship in words:
Government Budget Deficit = Net Private Saving.
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'Being a contrarian is tough, lonely and generally right'