FWIW, Jared Bernstein has a degree in Music and in Social Work but heads the Council of Economic Advisors - he is asked a question about why the govt borrows money if it can print money
[BoingBoing] Well, um... the... uh... so the... I mean... again, some of this stuff gets... some of the language that the MM... some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money. Which is why, uh... uh... the government definitely prints money and it lends that money by uh... by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They... they... um... they... yeah... they... they... um... they sell bonds. Yeah. They sell bonds, right? Since they sell bonds and people buy the bonds and lend them the money. Yeah. So, a lot of times, a lot of times, at least to my ear with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to um... uh... eh... uh... so... um... yeah... I... I... I guess I'm just... I don't... I can't really ta- I don't... I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking about, like... cuz... it's like, the government clearly prints money. It does it all the time, and it clearly borrows. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this in.. this conversation. I don't think there's anything confusing there." |
