Warren Mosler
moslereconomics.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Warren Mosler writes about economics and Modern Monetary Theory, hosting papers such as The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy.
What HN saysCommenters recommend it as an introduction to MMT, pointing to the 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds PDF as a quick read that can change how you see money.
18HN people shared it
15linked it in comments
4stories submitted
172story points
1 year agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy [pdf]8 people · 1 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 2Natural rate is zero.PDF3 people · first shared 2016
- 3What is money? (1913)2 people · 168 points · first shared 2015 · 77 comments on HN
- 4The Natural Rate of Interest is Zero (2005) [pdf]1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 5Mandatory readings1 people · first shared 2023
- 6Full Employment AND Price Stability.pdf1 people · first shared 2022
- 7Marshalls latest1 people · first shared 2023
- 8Weimar Republic Hyperinflation through a Modern Monetary Theory Lens.pdf1 people · first shared 2023
- 9Soft currency economics1 people · first shared 2009
- 10Inequality nothing to worry about according to summers geithner1 people · first shared 2016
- 117 deadly innocent frauds1 people · first shared 2011
- 12Energy crisis solution1 people · first shared 2020
- 13The umkc buckaroo a curreny model for world prosperity1 people · first shared 2023
- 14Homepage1 people · first shared 2012
- 15Innocent frauds1 people · first shared 2023
What HN people wrote when they linked it
bubbleRefuge · 2012-12-13
Steve Keen is a heterodox economist(Circuit-ist I think) with close ties to MMT Modern Monetary Theory (born and raised on blogs). MMT intellectuals predicted the great recession, the European Crisis, and the Recession of 2001. I've become a believer. They are basically hyper-keynesians. The basic Tennats are
1) As a point of logic Government must spend dollars into existence(or loan out) before they can tax them back.
2) Therefore Fed Government funding is independent of taxation.
2) Taxation creates demand for currency and unemployment in the currency of record by definition.
3) Government is not funded by borrowing either.
4) Because of 1) 2) 3) Policy should be to proactively spend counter-cyclicly until economy reaches full capacity.
5) Banks create money ex-nihilio
6) Banks are effectively agents of government because of deposit insurance and membership in the Federal Reserve System.
Its pretty fascination stuff b/c MMT says that the mainstream has everything backwards.
http://moslereconomics.com
http://neweconomicperspectives.org
http://www.amazon.com/Currency-Economics-Modern-Monetary-ebook/dp/B009…
hgomersall · 2023-03-22
Oh crumbs, you're going to get wildly different understandings depending on what camp the books come from. Personally, I'm of the view that the most coherent understanding comes from the MMT crowd, but much of that is quite subtle and open to deep misinterpretation (and regularly is). Warren Moslers' writings are excellent, but make you think https://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/. Neil Wilson writes in a very accessible way and has bite size articles that cover many things you're talking about: https://new-wayland.com/blog/ (IMO, that blog is full of gold).
RobertoG · 2016-03-28
This is part of what Modern Monetary Theory has been explaining but it's always hidden in the public discourse.
The consequences of what money is in modern economies, are not well understood or accepted. I suspect that the possibilities that this open scare a lot of powerful people.
If somebody want to dig further in the rabbit hole, I recommend:
http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf (this one is a pdf)
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/modern-monetary-theory-primer.html
seoguru · 2015-05-13
If you are not familiar with "MMT", I highly recommend reading:
http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
It's a quick and easy read and may be quite mind expanding.
Also, this 2 hour long video with Mosler and Stephanie Kelton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba8XdDqZ-Jg
Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell and Pavlina Tcherneva are a
few other economists trying to get the word out.
For the "fiscal conservatives":
http://itsthepeoplesmoney.blogspot.com/2014/11/confessions-of-former-f…
bokonist · 2009-10-20
Your view is also antiquidated. Banking is moving target, the technicalities of the reserve system change frequently.
In modern banking the act of depositing is completely severed from the act of lending. Banks lend based on capital ratios, availability of borrowers, and the Fed's interest rates. Deposits and reserves no longer matter.
Effectively, when you deposit money, you deposit in a 100% reserve account with the Fed. The Fed as a completely separate action lends money to the banks.
Thus last year when people panicked and decided to hoard more, the result was deflation, (not lower interest rates on business loans and mortgages as your model would predict).
For further reading:
http://www.winterspeak.com/2009/09/loans-create-deposits-how-banks.htm…
http://www.moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/soft-currency-econom…
http://reservedplace.blogspot.com/2009/04/easing-understanding.html
And the comment thread between RebelEconomist and JKH here:
http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2007/05/11/rising-deficit-in-the-us-rising…
These folks actually work in banking, and make their living understanding how the system works. They are very much worth reading.
dools · 2023-11-07
As Mosler has maintained for many years "Government Checks Don't Bounce"
https://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/innocent-frauds/
amadeuspagel · 2023-05-27
Disappointing that the article doesn't have any links to the original comments and discussions, even if archived.
Wikipedia[1] has a link to the original article, but the comments are gone[1]. Archive has the comments[2]. There are lot of comments by beowulf, and there's one by someone else referencing the trillion dollar coin, but I haven't found the original comment by beowulf inventing the idea yet.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin#Emergence_of_the_co…
[2]: https://moslereconomics.com/2010/05/14/marshalls-latest/
[3]: https://web.archive.org/web/20100604051310/https://moslereconomics.com…
neilwilson · 2023-04-21
Here
https://moslereconomics.com/2011/09/19/the-umkc-buckaroo-a-curreny-mod…
This chapter mentions it in a more formal setting
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66376-0_7
User23 · 2021-02-11
In real reality, Danish banks are charging 0% interest for mortgages and making their money off of closing fees[1]. Also the natural rate of interest is zero[2].
Just because you've been raised from birth to believe usury is necessary for the payment system (not the economy!) to function doesn't make it so.
[1] https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/danish-bank-introduces-new-20-year-0…
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16414199 http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp-content/graphs/2009/07/natural-rate-… (link is broken in the HN post)
ceejayoz · 2020-05-19
The author of that also thinks the natural speed limit is 30 miles per hour, so take the assertion with a grain of salt.
http://moslereconomics.com/2008/05/22/energy-crisis-solution/
(The claim about interest rates is a bit more complicated than "set it at zero", too. The full claim from the linked article is "the natural, nominal, risk free rate of interest is zero". Most uses of interest in our economy aren't risk free.)
fineline · 2018-03-27
Warren Mosler mentions within this short book how he made a lot of money realising that Italian bonds could never default:
http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
Now they're on the Euro things may well be different. Never give away sovereignty over your currency.
quadrangle · 2017-03-30
There is NO SUCH THING as SS bankruptcy. It makes NO SENSE as a concept at all. It's a complete fiction. There is NO scenario in which the federal government can't just cash every SS check.
http://www.moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf fraud number 4. Short read, but easiest to understand if you read the first frauds.
noipv4 · 2014-05-20
http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
Check out #1, Pg 13.
EGreg · 2023-03-13
Nearly every hyperinflation example (there are very few, in fact) has something additional to that stuff.
In the case of Weimar Germany, there was the little matter of THE VERSAILLES TREATY that required them to endlessly pay war reparations and punitive payments in gold. Britain told France to cut it out, but France was mad enough at the Germans that they continued. This led to the rise of the Nazis and WW2.
https://www.history.com/news/treaty-of-versailles-world-war-ii-german-…
You should read more economic viewpoints, such as Walter Mosler on hyperinflations:
https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Weimar-Republic…
Oh, and meanwhile there was a "free money miracle" going on in nearby Austria, and clearly did not lead to hyperinflation, quite the opposite: everyone paid off their taxes due to the demurrage of the free money... keep in mind this was while all around them there was a growing depression... even Mises institute grudgingly agrees!
https://mises.org/library/free-money-miracle
maxime-levesque · 2019-06-11
Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy - Warren Mosler
Available here in PDF: https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has a convincing answer to the question: "What gives fiat currencies their purchasing power"
Mainstream economists simply say that purchasing power of money commes from "confidence", but they don't explain where the confidence comes from. It is a circular logic: one has confidence in a currency if one beleives that others have confidence in it, ... whoever whas the first the "have confidence" must have been duped, ... or more likely the theory is flawed...
MMTs explanation of purchasing power is simply that in an economy there are mandatory transactions: taxes, and taxes have to be paid in the currency mandated by the state.
Money is not a commodity, it does not arise out of barter, it is (and always has) been imposed by states that required taxes be payed with their currency.
This has many consequences:
1. Taxes serve to generate and maintain demand for the currency (reduce inflation, or produce deflation).
2. Currency has to be spent before it can be taxed (how else can currency enter the economy?)
3. The debt of a currency issuing state is equal to the net financial assets (sum of all monetary assets, minus sum of all monetary debt)
4. Markets are monetary in essence, they are a side effect on the enforcing of money on a population. In a market, participants all purchase money with goods…