It is commonplace to link neoclassical economics to 18th- or 19th-century physics and its notion of equilibrium, of a pendulum once disturbed eventually coming to rest. Likewise, an economy subjected to an exogenous shock seeks equilibrium through the stabilizing market forces unleashed by the...

Yet another rescue plan for the European Monetary Union (EMU) is making its way through central Europe, but no one is foolish enough to believe that it will be enough. Greece's finance minister reportedly said that his nation cannot continue to service its debt, and hinted that a 50 percent...

This paper provides an analysis of Keynes's original Bancor proposal as well as more recent proposals for fixed exchange rates. We argue that these schemes fail to pay due attention to the importance of capital movements in today's economy, and that they implicitly adopt an unsatisfactory notion...

In the debate on monetary policy strategies on both sides of the Atlantic, it is now almost a commonplace to contrast the Fed and the ECB by pointing out the former's flexibility and capacity to adjust rigidity, and the latter's extreme caution, and obsession with low inflation. In looking at...

This paper briefly summarizes the orthodox approach to banking, finance, and money, and then points the way toward an alternative based on socioeconomics. It argues that the alternative approach is better fitted to not only the historical record, but also sheds more light on the nature of money...

Minsky's classification of fragility according to hedge, speculative, and Ponzi positions is well-known. He wrote about fragile positions of individual firms and of the economy as a whole, with the economy transitioning naturally from a robust financial structure (dominated by hedge units) to a...

One of the main contributions of Modern Money Theory (MMT) has been to explain why monetarily sovereign governments have a very flexible policy space that is unencumbered by hard financial constraints. Through a detailed analysis of the institutions and practices surrounding the fiscal and...

This paper explores the rise of money and class society in ancient Greece, drawing historical and theoretical parallels to the case of ancient Egypt. In doing so, the paper examines the historical applicability of the chartalist and metallist theories of money. It will be shown that the origins...

This paper argues that the usual framing of discussions of money, monetary policy, and fiscal policy plays into the hands of conservatives.That framing is also largely consistent with the conventional view of the economy and of society more generally. To put it the way that economists usually...

This paper begins by defining, and distinguishing between, money and finance, and addresses alternative ways of financing spending. We next examine the role played by financial institutions (e.g., banks) in the provision of finance. The role of government as both regulator of private...