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Yes, sure, we know this, always have done

In effect this means is that the Bank of England has accepted that modern monetary theory works exactly as people like me have been saying for some time. As this note suggests, the government can always spend whatever it wishes simply by deciding to do so. And as we have always said, it can do so because it has the power to instruct its central-bank to fund any sum that it wishes to spend. And tax need not ever be involved in this process.

That’s simply monetisation of fiscal policy. Been known about for a long, long time.

The reason we’ve not done it more recently is that past episodes of when we have did not work out well. John Law perhaps, more recently Zimbabwe and Venezuela. The reason being that telling politicians they can spend as much as they like does not work out well.

17 thoughts on “Yes, sure, we know this, always have done”

  1. MMT – number 147 in the list of concepts, products, processes, scientific theories etc that the fat fvcking liar claims to have been the first to invent, discover, or conclusively develop or propose but did not.

    About the only thing he may (I don’t know if anyone else helped) have a legitimate claim to have developed alone is that runaway success, the Fair Tax Mark. Oh and that new POS he’s hawking – sustainable cost accounting

  2. That, actually, is NOT true. The government needs the consent of Parliament for any increase in the Fiduciary Issue above the previously-agreed limit.

  3. That’ll be good for her saintly martyrdomness.

    In other, other news, hypochondriacs and attention-seekers are being a bloody pain in the neck.

  4. When pressed his work on sustainable cost accounting seems to consist of little more than coming up with the name, he says it’s for others to flesh out the details of how it might work

  5. Seriously Tim Is that what they taught you at the LSE . The LSE , Sidney and Beatrice and their magical thinking about the USSR. But the Fabians morphed into the Labour Party of Harold Wilson and Shirley Williams . We didn’t call them ‘ Social Democrats ‘ at the time, but that was what they were. And then along came Thatcher who swooned over the ‘ B Film ‘ actor Reagan and was bedded ( metaphorically ) by the spivs – Rowland, Slater et al which became the template for ‘ free market capitalism ‘ which your silly little, pretend intellectual, Adam Smith Institute has prostituted for all these year. And here we are its 2020 and something so small that it cannot be seen with the naked eye has , without a care in the world, done ; brought the whole rotten edifice crashing down . We’re not quite there yet , but with a dolt in the hot seat who’ll give it a helping hand we don’t need to worry that to won’t be effective.

  6. Gov shuts UK and goes on insane borrowing spree: many believe it’s OTT reaction, but Ritchie jubilant economy being destroyed – someone shoot him please

    Close to tears, libertarian Tory MP Steve Baker has expressed his support for the measures taken by UK Prime Minister and the emergency bill to stop the current health crisis

    “I am not a good enough historian to put into context the scale of the infringement of our liberties that has been implemented today through the Prime Minister’s announcement and this enormously complicated Bill, which we are enacting with only two hours to think about amendments.
    .
    Let me be the first to say that tonight, through this Bill, we are implementing at least a dystopian society. Some will call it totalitarian, which is not quite fair, but it is at least dystopian. The Bill implements a command society under the imperative of saving hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of jobs, and it is worth doing.
    .
    By God, I hope the Prime Minister has a clear conscience tonight and sleeps with a good heart, because he deserves to do so. Libertarian though I may be, this is the right thing to do but, my goodness, we ought not to allow this situation to endure one moment longer than is absolutely necessary to save lives and preserve jobs.
    .
    For goodness’ sake, let us not allow this dystopia to endure one moment longer than is strictly necessary.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_51gGZKTyc

    Mr Barclay, you and Boris have caved to Left and media panic mongering and the fallacy of “if it saves one life” mantra

    UK has ~1,680 deaths every day, 613,200 pa. If 50,000 premature deaths in UK “with” not “due to” CV19 it’s a blip

    We beat adversity by strength, not by capitulation – where’s herd immunity priority gone?

  7. Peter Hitchens attacks coronavirus lockdown
    “Peter Hitchens tells Dan Wootton that he doesn’t know how crashing the economy and restricting civil liberties is going to prevent the spread of coronavirus, following the Prime Minister’s announcement of lockdown measures”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e66-8_JXq6o

    Agree with Peter Hitchens…
    …and Hector:
    https://hectordrummond.com/2020/03/22/apocalypse-later/

    From the government website:
    – “Status of COVID-19
    As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

    The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

    The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID”

    – “According to the Office for National Statistics, there are fewer deaths. This fact (as distinct from all the estimates and guesses about coronavirus) is completely incompatible with the notion that coronavirus is a serious public health problem, which requires the decimation of the economy, end jury trials, cancel elections, abrogate the right to assembly, violate the right to family life (Gove may have back tracked on that), and have the tech giants ramp up censorship. The responses to the coronavirus are going to do more harm than the virus will”

    Give in to Left and they want more:
    Media and Left now want all construction workers to be sent home, huge fines and jail:
    Piers “Hysteria” Morgan vs Gove
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcDHG7-ePxw

    Gove panders to Morgan: ban soon I guess

    I would say construction workers will have stronger immune systems than most

  8. Result of shut-down:
    Universal Credit system overwhelmed, queues of +30,000 people, Barclay promises improvement
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkPq6noW-Jc

    Tim Martin today says no “Gov’t 80%” until ‘end of April’
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8145979/Wetherspoon-boss-Tim-Martin-tells-40-000-staff-work-Tesco-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html

    EU shafting UK again – wonder why BBC, C4 etc quiet on this?
    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/21/macrons-france-seizes-lorries-carrying-130000-masks-to-british-hospitals/

    If we did same they’d be siding with EU with “More French Grannies to die because of UK Gov actions” headlines.

    For Newmoania, John Hope etc:

    Storytime with Dana Perino: The Giving Tree
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZSlHUB4jI

  9. And here we are its 2020 and something so small that it cannot be seen with the naked eye has , without a care in the world, done ; brought the whole rotten edifice crashing down .

    You think that the non-free-market economies are going to survive this better than the free-market ones?

    I think not, because they have no slack in their system. Even quite wealthy Socialist countries (e.g. Warsaw Pact) have bread lines in normal times, so they’re in major trouble if a large number of workers are taken out.

    I’m picking the death toll in North Korea is going to be horrific (less than it might be, though, since people don’t tend to live so long there). Cuba is going to be pretty bad too.

  10. @Chester Draws

    One for Tim W:

    Does UK being a Service, Tech, Pharma… economy make UK economy more resilient?

  11. Trump on coronavirus bill: I thought we had a deal last night, Dems changed it
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpla8kqM2aY

    Democrats stuff coronavirus bill with identity politics – all 1,400 pages of it
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un-DdiDJFns

    Democrats pack coronavirus bill with far-left agenda items
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_wfFfBBLos

    * Starve the virus, not the economy – excellent and revealing on msm/uni/sm censorship
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YbhZEflwtU

    Trump: I want to save American lives and livelihoods.

    Democrats: We want to solve corona virus but first we need to solve global warming, wage disparity, apologize to the Indians, make sure Bill Cosby is dead, ban meat, raise taxes, ban the terms he and she…

    Reckless endangerment – Dems guilty

    Biden gives incoherent rambling speech
    youtu.be/Y_wfFfBBLos?t=499

  12. Australia Left relishing CV-19 to go on massive power grab to diminish/eradicate public freedom

    Govt needs to ‘ignore the angry mob’ and keep schools open
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqGEkxdCuuU

    Closure of the NSW Qld border will be ‘a bureaucratic nightmare’
    “Decision to close the border between NSW and Queensland “will do great economic harm”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Fs4dlcIpM

    Victorian Labor government ‘moving perilously close to an Orwellian nightmare’
    “Police to enter homes to ensure no non-family there”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-l7wsddjM

    Victorians to be fined up to $25,000 if they break self-isolation rules
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScBQxlC52kg

    Cops investigate hoarders profiting from selling goods online
    youtube.com/watch?v=tu5xx-M1GCg

  13. The question of why we can’t simply print lots of money and make everyone rich is cute and endearing coming from a 7 year-old, but somewhat less so from a 70 year-old.

  14. Pcar – why don’t you start your own blog instead of repeatedly spamming this one with dozens of links? Only a suggestion.

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