Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part III

Part I, Part II Part III continues with Edmond’s first three examples: New Zealand throughout the 1980sFrance in the early 1980sIsrael mid 1980s hyperinflation France For starters, as in the cases in Part II, we see the twin oil supply inflationary events of the 70s/early 80s. In France, there is a steady and sharp decline … Continue reading Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part III →

Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part II

[Continued from Part I]In Part One I ask:Name examples where peacetime, politically stable countries (with no foreign-currency denominated debt) have ever spent themselves into inflation? I received a first potential case, the so-called "Barber Boom" in the UK in the early 1970s (which of course segued into the global inflationary spikes of the the two … Continue reading Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part II →

Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part I of III on the Government Spending→Inflation Myth

Prologue The worry about a "danger" from understanding how government actually functions/spends was already famously stated by Paul Samuelson decades ago: I think there is an element of truth in the view that the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times...Once it is debunked, [it] takes away one of the bulwarks that … Continue reading Democracy & Profligacy: Will MMT Destroy the World? Part I of III on the Government Spending→Inflation Myth →

The Myth of Hyperinflation

[Image: Charge of German infantry against the Russian fortress of Novogeorgievk, 1915. Germans sieging Russians in Poland in other words, soon all to have their currencies collapse.]

Airplane crashes aren’t “hyperlandings”: Notes on Zimbabwe

“IF THERE IS FIRST NO COLLAPSE IN PRODUCTION, NO ELITE MINORITY, AND/OR NO FOREIGN DENOMINATED DEBT, YOU GET NO HYPERINFLATION. JUST SOME OTHER TYPE OF TRANSITION OR STATE FAILURE.”