Those warning of “helicopter drops” of money by central bankers, as Ben Bernanke is often accused of doing in 2010, actually do not understand modern monetary operations. This post demonstrates that central bank operations generally are not helicopter drops, while fiscal operations in fact...

Develops a simple model of aggregate demand that explicitly incorporates the financial sector balances approach of Wynne Godley. Demonstrates how this can be used to understand the 1990s expansion and the recession beginning in late 2000s

Financial innovations have reduced banks' reserve holdings. Some argue the Fed's ability to set interest rates might be compromised. This concerns arises from a misunderstanding of Fed operations. Regardless of the quantity of reserve balances, the Fed can always set its federal funds rate...

Central to current policy debates regarding public pensions, the appropriate macroeconomic policy mix, and any number of other issues related to growth, development, poverty alleviation, and so forth, is the concept of fiscal sustainability. For neoclassical economists, fiscal sustainability is...

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...