The importance of liquidity and insolvency for nation states and banks has been highlighted by current economic woes in the eurozone and elsewhere. The concepts are grounded in monetary theory, which determine the way they are interpreted. Connected to the discussion of autometallism and...

In his letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt Keynes (1933) wrote about "the technique of recovery itself". An increase in output is brought about by an increase in purchasing power, Keynes argues, which can come from three sectors: households, firms and government. Using the IS/MY...

The economic crisis in the euro zone proves that neither the creators of the euro nor today's policy-makers fully understand the functioning of a currency union. Explanations of the macroeconomic relations inside a currency union are therefore in demand. It is now clear that macroeconomic...

"The Alchemy of Finance", a book written by George Soros (1987) on the workings of financial markets, "has found a place in the reading lists of business schools as distinct from economics departments", according to the author (2003, 4). His theory of reflexivity, which is at the center of the...

In this paper, the focus lies on the way the German government spends, how it spends and what the connection between finance ministry and central bank is. The institutions involved in the process are identified and discussed. As a member of the Eurozone, Germany's national central bank is not...

This paper investigates how the concept of public purpose is used in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). As a common denominator among political scientists, the idea of public purpose is that economic actions should aim at benefiting the majority of the society. However, the concept is to be...

In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and within the context of significant macroeconomic imbalances in the world economy, economists have shown renewed interest in the way central banks and financial systems work. The rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has relied on the...

In 1905, Georg Friedrich Knapp published The State Theory of Money in his native German, claiming that money is a "creature of law" and not connected to metals via some intrinsic value. When the English translation appeared in 1924, apparently at the wishes of John Maynard Keynes, the German...