Modern Monetary Theory And The Recovery: Introduction

The pre-order period for the electronic book version of Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery is now live (link to pre-order description, including table of contents). The ebook release date is March 11. (Paperback formatting is still underway.)

This article is the introductory section to the book, which describes its themes.

Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery: March 11 E-Book Release

 

My latest book Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery will be released on March 11, 2021 in e-book formats. It is available for pre-order at Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and others to be added. The paperback edition will be available in about a month. 

The book outlines the causes of slow growth that has plagued the developed economies since the early 1990s, and looks at policy recommendations from Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) designed to break out of this rut. It also outlines the contents of MMT from a somewhat more advanced perspective, aimed at readers with knowledge of economics but not MMT in particular. It concludes with a chapter of critiques of MMT.

Bond Bear Blues

The sell-off in government bond yields has attracted a fair amount of excited commentary. The subtext is that something interesting is going to happen. From my perspective, the safe bet in (non-euro!) developed govvie bond markets is that boring is the safe bet. Thus far, with the limited data that I have available, I do not see anything that is interesting from a systemic risk perspective.

Bond Market Panic

There has been a fairly impressive rout in the bond market, with all the appearances of some relative value strategies blowing up. My argument is that this is just markets being markets -- bond bear markets are not leisurely affairs, time spans are compressed. This behaviour seems to be the one that inflicts the most pain on users of technical analysis. 

I have seen calls for the Fed to intervene to prevent some sort of catastrophe. My argument is that just reflects an obsession with the Federal Reserve among market commentators. Absolute yields are low, and it is hard to believe that a slight increase in discount rates will meaningfully deflect the economy.

I expect that I will go through the data this weekend to see what things look like after the repricing,

Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery: "Soon"

Modern Monetary Theory and the Recovery is in its final formatting stages. It is an introduction to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), but directed at a particular subject: why has growth been sub-par in recent decades, and what could be done differently?

In addition to covering policy discussions, there is an overview of what MMT says, and what it does not. It also discusses many good faith critiques of MMT. There is a great deal of misinformation floating around with respect to MMT, and so the objective is to return to what the theory actually says.

The release date is not finalised, but March 8 seems to be likely for the e-book editions. The paperback edition might be ready for simultaneous release, but a delay seems probable.

Similar length to my other books. Excluding end matter, word count is just below 50,000 words. A focused handbook, not a full length textbook that aims to cover everything.

Electricity Options

The recent power failures in Texas led me to think about a topic I had not thought much about since my electrical engineering undergraduate days -- electricity transmission and generation. In this article, I discuss big picture options for electricity, both from a technology and electricity markets/regulation point of view.

Yet Another Strawman Attack On MMT

The number of bad takes on MMT have slowed down, but they are still arriving. I have a section on MMT critiques in my manuscript (the formatting of which I am supposed to be finishing off instead of ranting), but we have yet another data point to back my assertion that it is not worth responding to most MMT critiques, since they are terrible.