MMT's Economic Fix as Explained by Pavlina Tcherneva to Ben Merens

This is Pavalina R Tcherneva, Assistant Professor of Economics, Franklin and Marshall College, and research scholar, Levy Economics Institute and the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. She is being interviewed on the show "At Issue with Ben Merens".

Pavlina explains why the so-called debt crises is a false issue and that Aggregate Demand is the real issue we should be worried about.

This is from an October 17, 2011 Broadcast.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Modern Monetary Theory
• Pavlina Tcherneva
• Ben Merens

[laskji]

Ok why the is there such a thing as a debt ceiling?? And why the hell does the government use the concept of 'a budget'? The money creator has no budget... is it not a meaningless concept signifying nothing? Is all the budget talk merely a sham??

[DustinM83]

@laskji The debt ceiling is a leftover vestige of the gold standard. Having a 'budget' is still important. It is still possible to overspend. However, that limit is not equal to revenue as most people believe. The limit changes year by year which is why MMT concentrates on creating an acceptable buffer stock.

[ellenjhunt]

I have talked directly to farmers. Most of them would love to hire Americans. But when they try it, the Americans run off within a few hours. The Mexican workers do the job, they do it well.

[phillipgaley]

@laskji These things which you mention, and many other such, and taxes, give ppl something to talk about, . . .

[raspberrybaggio]

"We need 38 million people to retire."  If only all governments would give real estate investors a Tax-free tax allowance of say $400 a week. Modest investors could jack their jobs in, and live off their investments. This would free up millions of jobs for the unemployed to take up. I say $400, as I'm estimating that would cover the basic essentials of life.

[Bosniake]

This woman is from the past, from USSR

[momentinpassing]

So long as the currently rampant frauds are not widely recognized and punished as such we will see increasing instability, increasing concentration of wealth, impoverishment of a larger segment of the population, shrinking GDP, shrinking tax bases, and dropping aggregate demand. We're past peak fraud at the mortgage level, and with so much leverage against that widespread fraud via fractional reserve lending against those inflated house prices and derivatives, we won't see AD increase b4 a reset