Sunday, November 12, 2017

The Basics of Modern Money

I liked this. Very simple and very nicely put together.


A nation’s currency is a wonderful, powerful thing. Learn how countries like the U.S.—which issue their own sovereign currency—can afford to use that currency to serve their citizens. Get inspired about our untapped potential, and learn to be less worried about the so-called "national debt"!

Learn more about modern money theory (MMT): www.modernmoneybasics.com

12 comments:

AXEC / E.K-H said...

MMT: The one deadly error/fraud of Warren Mosler
Comment on Warren Mosler on ‘Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy’*

Warren Mosler asserts: “Deadly Innocent Fraud No.1: The federal government must raise funds through taxation or borrowing in order to spend. In other words, government spending is limited by its ability to tax or borrow. Fact: Federal government spending is in no case operationally constrained by revenues, meaning that there is no ‘solvency risk.’“

Operationally true, of course. With regard to the economy holds, the Legitimate Sovereign can do anything. The question, what is legitimate and who is the sovereign has to be discussed and decided in the political realm. What Legitimate Sovereignty means in concrete detail is NOT an issue for economics ― understood as science. It should be clear, though, that from the fact that the government is not operationally constrained to kill the whole population does not logically follow that this is legitimate. Legitimacy entails operational self-constraint. From the fact that government spending is not operationally constrained does not logically follow that it is legitimate. From the fact that the government is not constrained in creating any amount of money does not logically follow that this is ‘good’ economic policy. The discussion about operational feasibility distracts from the core of the matter.

The core of economics is the question of how the monetary economy works and how deficit spending affects employment, income, profit, the creation/destruction of money, absolute and relative prices, growth, nominal and real distribution over the whole cycle from the origination of private and public debt to its full redemption.

Warren Mosler is right on all operational details but he does not get the big picture. He is, like the economists he criticizes, an incompetent scientist and inexcusably bad at macroeconomics.#1 The common defect of all schools of economics is macroeconomic profit theory.#2 Warren Mosler’s MMT movement is no exception.

“Deadly Innocent Fraud No.2: With government deficits, we are leaving our debt burden to our children. Fact: Collectively, in real terms, there is no such burden possible. Debt or no debt, our children get to consume whatever they can produce.”

True, except for the fact that MMTer confuse (or play a shell game with) the words we, us, and our.#3 Debt or no debt makes a huge difference for the DISTRIBUTION of real output (and accumulated real wealth) between the ninety-nine percenters and the one-percenters ― “we” and “our” in ‘We owe the debt to ourselves’ refer to DIFFERENT people.#4

“Deadly Innocent Fraud No.3: Federal Government budget deficits take away savings. Fact: Federal Government budget deficits ADD to savings.” Or “Any $U.S. government deficit exactly EQUALS the total net increase in the holdings ($U.S. financial assets) of the rest of us ― businesses and households, residents and non residents ― what is called the ‘non government’ sector. In other words, government deficits equal increased ‘monetary savings’ for the rest of us, to the penny. Simply put, government deficits ADD to our savings (to the penny). This is an accounting fact, not theory or philosophy. There is no dispute. It is basic national income accounting.”

Unfortunately, MMTers got National Accounting wrong.#5 Fact is that government deficits add NOT to OUR savings but to profit. It holds Public Deficit = Private profit. Not to realize this (or to shell game it away) is the one deadly error (fraud) of MMT.#6

See part 2

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Part 2

“Deadly Innocent Fraud No.6: We need savings to provide the funds for investment. Fact: Investment adds to savings.” Or “I like to say it this way: ‘Savings is the accounting record of investment.’”

This is rubbish since Keynes. The axiomatically correct relationships are Qm=−Sm in the case of the pure production-consumption economy, Qm=I−Sm in the case of the investment economy, Qm=(I−Sm)+Yd+(G−T)+(X−M) in the general case. Legend: Qm monetary profit, Sm monetary saving, I investment expenditures, Yd distributed profit, G government expenditures, T taxes, X export, M import.

Saving is NEVER equal to investment. Therefore, all I=S and IS-LM models are provably false and this includes Post Keynesianism and MMT.#7

With MMT policy, Warren Mosler has found a way to endorse full employment, healthcare, and other social agendas and to increase at the same time the business sector’s profit with the help of the sovereign money issuing state.#8

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

* PDF http://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/powerpoints/7DIF.pdf

#1 For the point-by-point refutation see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html

#2 The profit theory is false since Adam Smith
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/the-profit-theory-is-false-since-adam.html

#3 On the saying “We owe the debt to ourselves”
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/on-saying-we-owe-debt-to-ourselves.html

#4 MMT and the promotion of Wall Street socialism
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/mmt-and-promotion-of-wall-street.html

#5 Rectification of MMT macro accounting
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/09/rectification-of-mmt-macro-accounting.html

#6 MMT and the magical profit disappearance
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/08/mmt-and-magical-profit-disappearance.html

#7 For details of the big picture see cross-references Refutation of I=S
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/01/is-cross-references.html

#8 MMT: Redistribution as wellness program
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/10/mmt-redistribution-as-wellness-program.html

Kaivey said...

If you listen to the Steve Keen interview he says that the Chinese economy and society is zooming away from the West because the government is using publicly created money to pay for the infrastructure. The New Silk Road project is creating jobs and the workers are spending this money into the wider economy boosting the private sector. Steve Keen is saying that the Chinese government is using what we would call MMT.

As China levees the West behind it is proving that our economic theories which state that governments are incompetent and the less they are involved in the economy the better are completely wrong and may even be nothing but right wing propaganda.

I saw a YouTube video the other day which showed how all our modern technology was first developed by governments. Everything about our mobile phones including the touch screens and Wi Fi were developed by governments. The private sector likes short term gains and will not invest in long term projects like this. What the video did not say was that most of that government funded research was for military projects and that the military is not allowed to hold patents and so all that research can be freely used by the private sector, in other words a free lunch provided by the tax payer.

Our government is run by the oligarchy and we need a more democratic government accountable to the people. I don't knew what the answer is but as multibillionaires become trillionaires they will have too much power. Look at George Soros who is able to wreck the economy of continents and influence politics is the EU which which is anti democratic. I can only feel that 90% taxes - or more as the rich are becoming multibillionaires - is the only answer.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Kaivey

You say: “Our government is run by the oligarchy and we need a more democratic government accountable to the people.”

This, obviously, is a political analysis/conclusion. And, clearly, it has to be dealt with in the political realm. Economists, though, seem never to have fully realized that there is, for very good reasons, a strict separation of politics and science.

Since the founding fathers, economists violate the principle of the separation of science and politics which has been clearly stated by J. S. Mill: “A scientific observer or reasoner, merely as such, is not an adviser for practice. His part is only to show that certain consequences follow from certain causes, and that to obtain certain ends, certain means are the most effectual. Whether the ends themselves are such as ought to be pursued, and if so, in what cases and to how great a length, it is no part of his business as a cultivator of science to decide, and science alone will never qualify him for the decision.”

The compelling reason for the separation of politics and science is that the two realms are guided by different and incompatible principles. The one question in science is about the truth of a theory, i.e. its material and formal consistency: “In order to tell the politicians and practitioners something about causes and best means, the economist needs the true theory or else he has not much more to offer than educated common sense or his personal opinion.” (Stigum)

The designation MMT = Modern Monetary Theory indicates the allegiance to science. The problem is that MMT is nothing but crappy proto-science. This status MMT shares with the rest of economics. Economics is what Feynman famously called a cargo cult science and neither right-wing nor left-wing economic policy guidance ever had sound scientific foundations since the soapbox economists Adam Smith and Karl Marx.

At present, neither Krugman nor Wren-Lewis nor Keen#1 nor Varoufakis nor Mosler nor the rest of political loudspeakers, fake scientists, amateur journalists, bloggers, and blatherers can back up their political agenda pushing with a scientifically acceptable economic theory.#2 In order to become a science, economics has to get rid of ALL these folks.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Debunking Squared
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=%202357902

Where advanced Heterodoxy — represented by Steve Keen — took the wrong turn
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2016/04/where-advanced-heterodoxy-represented.html

Keenonomics, aggregate demand/change of debt, and some misleading critique
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/06/keenonomics-aggregate-demandchange-of.html

#2 For details of the big picture see cross-references Political Economics
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2015/11/political-economics-cross-references.html

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Calgacus said...

EKH: “Deadly Innocent Fraud No.2: With government deficits, we are leaving our debt burden to our children. Fact: Collectively, in real terms, there is no such burden possible. Debt or no debt, our children get to consume whatever they can produce.”

True, except for the fact that MMTer confuse (or play a shell game with) the words we, us, and our.#3 Debt or no debt makes a huge difference for the DISTRIBUTION of real output (and accumulated real wealth) between the ninety-nine percenters and the one-percenters ? “we” and “our” in ‘We owe the debt to ourselves’ refer to DIFFERENT people.


Yes, excepting the word "huge". Short website explanations meant to counter widespread myths can hardly avoid exaggerating the other way, and the sentence should be clearly be read to mean we=our=us="everyone alive at some point in time". But intentional MMT, Functional Finance, Keynesian, New Deal style deficit spending can be and almost always is the option that causes the smallest future additional distributive burden of the 99% towards the 1% - one which is mostly negligible.

An important way station in realizing this is understanding the flaw in the idea that surpluses are needed to pay for deficits in some way. In particular the idea that this follows from money being a creditary relationship. I did respond at the Kelton "pony" thread but only a few weeks ago which was a few weeks after the thread became dead.
As you said, this is a point of logic. But this belief, however formulated, is simply not true, it does not follow from the assumption & if one realizes this, it is easy enough to make it as formal as you want or construct or observe strong, explicit counterexamples. MMT sites & books & Abba Lerner's articles on functional finance, available on the web, cover this sort of thing well enough.

But the clearest, best exposition of national debt & functional finance issues is in Abba Lerner's Economics of Employment, the chapter on The National Debt, which is superior to his earlier articles as it covers the sort of points you have brought up and other objections. I can send anyone a pdf of the book.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Calgacus

You say: “New Deal style deficit spending can be and almost always is the option that causes the smallest future additional distributive burden of the 99% towards the 1% - one which is mostly negligible.” and “An important way station in realizing this is understanding the flaw in the idea that surpluses are needed to pay for deficits in some way. In particular the idea that this follows from money being a creditary relationship.”

(i) Public deficit spending increases public debt. The concept of debt includes repayment in period t, otherwise, it is a gift. Now, the repayment can be postponed indefinitely. So, as a LIMITING case t goes to infinity. MMT simply pushes repayment beyond the time horizon where it is conveniently forgotten.

(ii) The limiting case, though, does NOT make the debt disappear. Debt gives rise to interest. And a debt with infinite duration gives rise to an infinite interest burden for the household sector which takes the form of a tax burden.

(iii) Interest payments redistribute income from we = all taxpayers = creditors + non-creditors to creditors.

(iv) In the LIMITING case, the interest rate is zero if the debt is held in the form of overdrafts/deposits at the central bank. In this limiting case, no redistribution of income takes place.

(v) The two limiting cases taken together make public debt resemble a gift: no repayment, no interest burden.

(vi) What is missing in this picture is that Public Deficit = Private Profit. Profit, though, is not indefinitely held as zero interest deposit at the central bank. Let us assume here that profit is distributed as dividend and that this dividend income is fully spent. The additional consumption expenditures lead to a price hike and a redistribution of real output between wage income receivers (aka ninety-nine-percenters) and the receivers of dividends (aka one-percenters). Needless to emphasize that non-distributed profits can also be used to buy all kinds of assets, e.g. other firms.

In sum: Public deficit spending has real distributional effects. Whether these are ‘huge’ or ‘small’ depends on the duration of the debt, the rate of interest, and on profit distribution or how non-distributed profit is used. Compared to taxation, public deficit spending is, in any case, a BAD deal for the ninety-nine-percenters.#1 Apart from the distributional issue, it holds in any case that public deficit spending increases the economic power of the business sector.

MMTers and Post Keynesians and Functional Financers in their utter scientific incompetence simply have no idea how the monetary economy works.#2 The profit and employment theory is provably false since Keynes.#3

The only positive feature of Keynesianism/MMT is that microfounded Orthodoxy is an even greater heap of proto-scientific garbage.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 On the saying “We owe the debt to ourselves”
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/on-saying-we-owe-debt-to-ourselves.html

#2 Why Post Keynesianism Is Not Yet a Science
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1966438

#3 Keynes’ Employment Function and the Gratuitous Phillips Curve Disaster
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2130421

Calgacus said...

EKH: No, the concept of credit-debt relationship, as you yourself appeared to use it in the earlier conversation, does not and fundamentally can not necessarily include interest etc. The way MMT uses the words is the common, ordinary, primary English dictionary way, which does NOT include "interest" or "money". Involving "interest" etc at this level would create a logical circle if one tried to define money in terms of credit-debt as MMT does. Eric Lonergan makes the same mistake in his critique of MMT, less pardonably, as he refers to a sequence of posts of Wray, where Wray quotes yours truly clarifying this point. One has to read the classics of MMT - Mitchell-Innes, Lerner, Wray etc to understand it.

Much of what you say is reflected, but more precisely and correctly in MMT & its predecessors. But you are trying to go too fast, and making mistakes in logic. In particular that statement about surpluses paying for deficits, that this follows from the creditary nature of money, which is simply incorrect; understanding that is a good place to start. Forget at first about interest, profit, central banks etc. The last in particular is a recent innovation. Nobody is saying debt will disappear etc. But what you are doing is like trying to refute or prove a statement of classical Euclidean plane geometry with calculus or differential geometry. It might help occasionally in some contexts, but it can also be a fertile source of errors, and is not necessary.

Compared to taxation, public deficit spending is, in any case, a BAD deal for the ninety-nine-percenters.
As I have argued, if this is stated in specific enough terms, terms that applicable to the real world, it is quite false. A real world counterexample in the USA is Hoover vs FDR. Hoover did tax & spend - he raised tax rates more than FDR in either the New Deal or the War - and his policies failed, especially for the 99%. But FDR's deficit spending succeeded - particularly for the 99%. MMT carefully explains why & explains why its critics counterarguments are logically incorrect - as well as empirically clearly inadequate as suggested above.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Calgacus

The balance equations MMT is based upon are provably false.#1 By consequence, the whole analytical superstructure of MMT is false. As a matter of principle, there is NO NEED to refute more specific claims of MMT about the nature of money or about operational details of money creation/destruction.

The core of the argument is: the macroeconomic foundations of MMT are false since Keynes. Because of this, all MMT policy recommendations lack sound scientific foundations. And this, in turn, means that MMT is not economics but brainless agenda pushing. On closer inspection, it turns out that MMT claims to push the agenda of the ninety-nine-percenters but in fact — intentionally or unintentionally does not matter — it pushes the agenda of the one-percenters.

So, MMT is refuted as an approach.#2 The lack of consistent axiomatic foundations is, of course, compatible with the fact that SOME claims of MMT are accidentally or commonsensically or trivially true. This does not help much. The flat earth theory contained also statements that were trivially true but this has not saved it from being flushed down the drain.

You say “But what you are doing is like trying to refute or prove a statement of classical Euclidean plane geometry with calculus or differential geometry.” It is pretty obvious that this pseudo-methodological blather is beside the point and an insufficient answer to the PROOF of MMT’s material/formal inconsistency.

So, let us, first of all, put the balances equations right. At first, we have only the business- and the household sector.#3 The two sectoral balances are given as follows:

Qm≡C−Yw profit Qm is household sector’s spending C minus wages Yw,
Sm≡Yw−C saving Sm is wage income Yw minus consumption expenditures C,
--------
Qm+Sm=0 or Qm=−Sm.

The business sector’s monetary profit Qm is equal to the household sector’s dissaving. This is the most elementary form of the macroeconomic Profit Law. For a start, the household sector’s budget is balanced, i.e. C=Yw, hence macroeconomic profit is zero.

Transaction money is needed by the business sector to pay the workers who receive the wage income Yw per period. Transaction money is produced (i) either in the form of an IOU by the business sector, or (ii), by the central bank in the form of overdrafts/deposits with deposits = money. The average stock of transaction money is given as M=kYw, with k determined by the payment pattern. In other words, the average stock of money M is determined by the AUTONOMOUS transactions of the household and business sector and created out of nothing by either the business sector as an IOU or by the central bank in the form of deposits and overdrafts which are always equal. The idealized transaction pattern is shown on Wikimedia.#4

The household sector’s deposits/overdrafts are zero at the beginning and end of the period. The business sector’s transaction pattern is the exact mirror image. Money, that is, deposits at the central bank is continually created and destroyed during the period under consideration.

The transaction equation M=kYw=kPX=kPRL tells one that under the condition of budget balancing C=Yw and market clearing X=O the average stock of transaction money doubles if employment L doubles. The economy NEVER runs out of money. Transaction money is a generalized short-term IOU that bears no interest.

See part 2

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Part 2

Now, the government sector GS is added. The three sectoral balances are given as follows:

Qm≡C+G−Yw profit Qm is HS and GS spending C+G minus wages Yw,
Sm≡Yw−T−C saving Sm is wage income Yw minus taxes T and expenditures C,
Bm≡T−G, budget surplus Bm is taxes T minus government expenditures G,
---------
Qm+Sm+Bm=0 or Qm=−Sm−Bm.

The business sector’s monetary profit Qm is equal to the household sector’s dissaving plus the government sector’s budget deficit. For a start, taxes T are set to zero. Deficit spending −G is equal to cumulative money creation by the central bank. The household sector’s budget is balanced, i.e. C=Yw, i.e Sm=0. In this case, the business sector’s profit is equal to the government’s deficit, i.e. Qm =−G. It holds Public Deficit = Private Profit.

The combined transaction pattern of the household- and the government sector is shown on Wikimedia.#5 The transaction pattern of the business sector is the exact mirror image. So, while the government sector ends up with overdrafts, the business sector ends up with deposits of equal magnitude.

Two things happen, (i) there is a price hike because aggregate nominal demand is now C+G, and (ii), output O is redistributed between the household and the government sector. There is REAL taxation without nominal taxation because T=0. Nominal taxation is simply shifted into the indefinite future.

The government’s deficit spending causes an increase in the financial assets of the business sector. At first, the financial asset consists of deposits at the central bank which bear zero interest.

In the second step, the public debt is consolidated by the issuance of long-term government bonds or other types of securities. Government securities are offered with a certain maturity and interest rate. In the present case, the business sector is in possession of deposits and decides which amount to buy. It is here assumed for simplicity that the whole government debt is consolidated. After the switch from non-interest-bearing deposits to interest-bearing bonds, the newly created money vanishes again from the central bank’s balance sheet.

So, over the whole cycle, the household sector is taxed in real terms, suffers a reduction of net income for the duration of consolidated government debt via interest payments = taxes, while the business sector makes a profit which is equal to the budget deficit and enjoys interest income for the duration of the consolidated debt.

Compared to immediate taxation T=G, the household sector is worse off with government deficit spending and the business sector is better off. These are the distributional effects of MMT policy. Other effects have been dealt with elsewhere (for employment policy see #6).

Bottom line: MMT is proto-scientific garbage, politically biased in favor of the one-percenters, and sold as beneficial for the ninety-nine percenters.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Rectification of MMT macro accounting
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/09/rectification-of-mmt-macro-accounting.html

#2 For the point-by-point refutation see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html

#3 The production-consumption economy is defined by the macro axiom set: (A0) The objectively given and most elementary configuration of the economy consists of the household and the business sector which in turn consists initially of one giant fully integrated firm. (A1) Yw=WL wage income Yw is equal to wage rate W times working hours. L, (A2) O=RL output O is equal to productivity R times working hours L, (A3) C=PX consumption expenditure C is equal to price P times quantity bought/sold X. For a start X=O.

#4 Wikimedia, Transaction pattern C=Yw
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC98.png

#5 Wikimedia, Transaction pattern C+G greater than Yw
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AXEC99.png

#6 Full employment through the price mechanism
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/full-employment-through-price-mechanism.html

Calgacus said...

The balance equations MMT is based upon are provably false.#1 By consequence, the whole analytical superstructure of MMT is false. As a matter of principle, there is NO NEED to refute more specific claims of MMT about the nature of money or about operational details of money creation/destruction.

That is getting things completely backwards. MMTers do not say that "MMT is based upon" some balance equations. It says that it is based on the greatly more general claims called here "more specific claims" (!): (1) The creditary nature of money & (2) Operational details - precise Central Bank / Government accounting, according to universally accepted understandings of accounting & consideration of the State Theory of Money (as in Knapp) as a kind of creditary theory (Mitchell-Innes, McLeod, etc).

(1) especially is much better understood as "kindergarten blah-blah". That's what science is - "kindergarten blah-blah" all the way down. But true blah-blah, that is obvious to kindergarteners - after a few centuries or millennia.

In particular, you seem to me to be making in fact preposterous claims about the necessity (in what sense?) of surpluses after deficits. The fact that many make such obscure claims does not detract from their preposterousness. For where does money come from? According to ordinary = MMT accounting, from tautologies, it is from deficit spending. Well, there is money out there, and there has been for centuries. When is this surplus that will destroy it all coming? How can one have a monetary economy without the creation of money = deficit spending, by someone? What reason would there be for the creation of base money, state money, government deficit spending to be forbidden? This sort of thing implies that money should not exist, since creating it is always bad (for the 99%) or impossible.

I mean, brilliant people make mistakes. Laplace (think it was him - some great French mathematician of that era) was a great mathematician. But he published 30 "proofs" that Euclid's parallel postulate followed from the others, when people at roughly the same time (Saccheri, Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Gauss) were showing it didn't - sometimes by exhibiting models of say hyperbolic geometry inside Euclidean geometry, these becoming the paradigm of relative consistency proofs.

I'm not commenting on what you say positively, as I don't understand it and have little time to try. But saying false things like surpluses being necessary (a well-known mistake) & that it follows from money being credit, when counterexamples are easy to come by, doesn't help your cause.

If one idiosyncratically takes something which nobody else calls a foundational claim - and after translating it into one's own language & system, "refutes" it, one should not expect that anyone else thinks much of this.

I tried to nail it down with a moment's googling, but couldn't - Hegel somewhere says something like: "anyone can do such a thing, defeat an opponent far from his home - but an enemy is only conquered when you conquer him in his citadel." Kansas City, Bard, the Virgin Islands, Australia etc remain untouched.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Calgacus

I said “The balance equations MMT is based upon are provably false. By consequence, the whole analytical superstructure of MMT is false. As a matter of principle, there is NO NEED to refute more specific claims of MMT about the nature of money or about operational details of money creation/destruction.”

You answered: “That is getting things completely backwards. MMTers do not say that ‘MMT is based upon’ some balance equations.”

Fact is that the balances equations constitute the very core of MMT’s self- presentation. #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 Fact is also that the MMT balances equations are mathematically/provably false.#7

Because of this, ALL MMT policy recommendations lack sound scientific foundations. The economics of Kansas City, Bard, the Virgin Islands, Australia etc is qualitatively below the level of Trump University.

MMT is refuted on all counts and whether Calgacus, Mitchell, Tcherneva, Mosler, Wray, Kelton, Fullwiler, Forstater, Kaboub, and the rest of scientifically incompetent MMTers understand/accept this is a matter of indifference.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Presentation, Pavlina Tcherneva, Sectoral Balances Spain
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ld4gougp7sxb5hz/MMT%20Sectoral%20Balances%20Tscherneva.jpg?dl=0

#2 Wikipedia, Modern Monetary Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory

#3 Wikipedia, Sectoral Balances
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_balances

#4 Billy blog, Flow-of-funds and sectoral balances
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=32396

#5 For the point-by-point refutation of Peter Cooper’s posts see cross-references MMT
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/07/mmt-cross-references.html

#6 Warren Mosler “Simply put, government deficits ADD to our savings (to the penny). This is an accounting fact, not theory or philosophy. There is no dispute. It is basic national income accounting.”

#7 MMT and the magical profit disappearance
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/08/mmt-and-magical-profit-disappearance.html