The public sector, in carrying out its operations, often incurs foreign currency denominated liabilities and, as such, is exposed to exchange rate fluctuations that could affect the value of public debt to GDP ratios over time. This paper shows that converting foreign currency denominated flows...

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...

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 crystallized the underlying imbalances that are currently acting to tear apart the Euro area monetary and fiscal systems by focusing markets and public attention on the core cause of the overall Euro crisis, the insolvency of the Euro area member-states...

This post will explore at length (warning!) and in detail (another warning — wonk alert!) the MMT perspective on the debt ratio and fiscal sustainability. While the approach suggests a macroeconomic policy mix and strategies for both fiscal and monetary policies that most neoclassical...

The debt ceiling debate could be ended right now given that the US Constitution bestows upon the US Treasury the authority to mint coins. Further, this simple change would lift the veil on how current monetary operations work and thereby demonstrate clearly that a currency-issuing government...

A large body of literature has concluded that bond finance of the deficit is unstable because of rising interest payments on the debt. This paper criticizes this literature in detail, focusing on the Blinder-Solow and Sargent-Wallace papers. It argues that conclusions regarding a debt trap under...

This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA downgrade...

This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) downgrade announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA...

Governments around the world have gone on a massive fiscal expansion in response to the Covid crisis, increasing government debt to levels not seen in 75 years. How will this debt be repaid? What role do conventional and unconventional monetary policy play? We investigate debt sustainability in...