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Kevin Mayes's avatar

I recently noted in a comment on a Youtube clip by GhostOnTheHalfShell That MMT followers are almost always zealous acolytes who have discovered MMT being presented by other zealous acolytes as a fully-formed, out-of the box, fit-and-forget panacea for all the world's economic woes. This is a very beguiling proposition indeed- in the same category as the Christian Evangelists' 'all you need to do to gain everlasting life is to accept Jesus died for your sins', thereby absolving the subject from the necessity of living a virtuous life. Another similarity to Christian Evangelism is that the acolyte will accept no criticism of the true prophet- the adoration of Mosler in this case is often little short of fawning sycophancy. This has not been helped by the fact that other popular MMT 'Public Personae' such as Stephanie Kelton have glibly failed to make a clear distinction between money for public purpose being raised by bond sales to private financiers, which is generally approved of by the finance sector, since it profits them at the expense of the public, and bonds being 'sold' to the Central Bank directly, which is only approved as an 'emergency measure' such as wartime, since that sidelines the financiers.

In my opinion these cultish adorations and omissions are a deliberate obfuscation to paper over the vast cracks of the political chasm that MMT / Post Keynesian ideas have to cross, notwithstanding their technical correctness, which is that the governments of the so-called 'free' world are simply the minions of the combined finance sectors of those countries, Particularly in the USA where penetration of government by Wall Street started (probably) with Henry Morgenthau in the 1930's and became total with Robert Rubin in the 1990's to the extent that the entire US government is now little more than the military branch of Wall Street's global dominion. The same is true of the City of London etc, but it's not a case of individual governments being dominated by their national finance sectors- it's all governments dominated by the entire sector at the same time.

It's all very well Mosler fanboys admonishing heretics, Kelton making cute movies, and even Steve and his system-dynamics buddies making long-form presentations on Youtube, but the elephant in the room is that the obstacle to change is 99% political and only 1% technical. To go back to the religious metaphor I used earlier, if the leaders of 'Christian Evangelism' were to tell their acolytes to give up their wealth and property, share everything they have with strangers and to emulate the life of the disciples, rather than some cutesy trope about 'faith alone conquering death', they would be talking to an empty room. The cult of MMT as a hobby interest but without political action is a similar cutesy trope.

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Arthur Berman's avatar

Steve, I think I understand your difference with standard MMT on imports & exports being one of relative cost vs benefit, and also oversimplification. Would you elaborate on what aggravated the Leeds leadership beyond this because I'm missing something.

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