Modern Money and the War Treasury

Sam Levey
Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity, 2019
Niveau: avancé
Perspectives: Autre, Économie post-keynésienne
Sujet: Crises, Histoire économique, Macroéconomie, Monnaie & dette, Réflexion sur l'économie
Format: Working Paper
Lien: http://www.global-isp.org/wp-content/uploads/WP-123.pdf

In this working paper, Sam Levey discusses the US government's approach to finance during the second world war. Quoting liberally from internal Treasury memos, he shows that, under conditions of perceived existential threat, there was no question of "whether" the government could find money for the war. The question, rather, was how to handle the effects that the diversion of real resources away from the consumer economy would have on prices. This way of framing things is surprisingly consistent, Levey points out, with the perspective of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), according to which countries which issue their own fiat currency don't face budgetary constraints at all, only inflationary constraints.


Comment from our editors:

This paper makes several ideas important to the MMT perspective accessible by making them historically concrete. The first is that inflation isn't a purely "monetary" phenomenon, but in fact has everything to do with the availability of real resources and goods in an economy. The second is that the point of selling bonds isn't, as is commonly assumed, to raise money that the government then spends, but to take money out of circulation or "drain liquidity."

Go to: Modern Money and the War Treasury

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Ce projet est le fruit du travail des membres du réseau international pour le pluralisme en économie, dans la sphère germanophone (Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik e.V.) et dans la sphère francophone (Rethinking Economics Switzerland / Rethinking Economics Belgium / PEPS-Économie France). Nous sommes fortement attachés à notre indépendance et à notre diversité et vos dons permettent de le rester ! 

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