What is Modern Monetary Theory? (with Stephanie Kelton)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is government debt real? Is anything real? Professor Stephanie Kelton gives Nick and Goldy a master class on the hottest idea in economics right now: Modern Monetary Theory. Stephanie Kelton is a professor of public policy and economics at Stony Brook University and a senior economic adviser to Bernie Sanders’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. She was the chief economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee in 2015 and in 2016, POLITICO named her one of the 50 people most influencing the public debate in America. Her forthcoming book, ‘The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of a New Economy’ will be published by Public Affairs in 2020. Twitter: @StephanieKelton Further reading: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/16/18251646/modern-monetary-theory-new-moment-explained https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/deficit-tax-cuts-trump.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/bernie-sanders-economic-advisor-stephanie-kelton-on-mmt-and-2020-race.html https://www.thenation.com/article/the-rock-star-appeal-of-modern-monetary-theory/

Transcript

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0:00.0	The stories we tell about the economy will change the economy itself.
0:08.4	We have the order of operations backwards.
0:10.6	Orthodox economic thinking has predicted the collapse of the economy. backwards. writes a check. It literally spends that money into existence.
0:25.8	As long as the government owes US dollars, it can always meet its obligation to pay U.S. dollars.
0:33.0	From the offices of Civic Ventures in downtown Seattle, this is Pitch Fork Economics, with Nick Hanauer, where we explore everything
0:46.0	you wished you'd learn in Econ 101. I'm Nick Henauer, founder of Civic Ventures.
0:57.0	I'm David Goldstein, Senior Fellow at Civic Ventures.
1:05.0	So Goldie in this episode of Pitch Fork Economics we're going to talk about an idea
1:12.0	that you grabbed onto way before me, MMT or modern monetary theory.
1:17.7	And I just, I'm reflecting on the fact that you've been needling me about this for three years now saying you should
1:24.3	look at this you should look at this and I was like I don't want to look at it sounds
1:28.3	nuts to me but it has emerged I think is a very interesting and important way to think about the economy.
1:37.0	And you should reflect a little bit about what grabbed you.
1:39.6	Yeah, well, first of all, the big lesson here is always listen to Goldie.
1:43.0	You know, I understood your reluctance to really get into it because it's a complicated thing
1:49.9	that we're not really expert about and to borrow one of your favorite words it's a
1:54.3	little orthogonal to the theoretical work that that we do but what grab me and
1:59.8	this does tie into our work in the office and this entire podcast series is we focus a lot on the
2:07.4	power of narrative that humans are a storytelling animal and stories are how we make sense of the world.
2:17.1	So we've talked about this before.
2:19.1	The stories we tell about the economy will change the economy itself. It will change the
2:26.2	options that we see available to us and will open or closed doors.
	...

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