Dr. Stephanie Kelton

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Posts by Dr. Stephanie Kelton

• Modern Monetary Theory

  Kelton joins Slate Money's Emily Peck, Felix Salmon, and Anna Szymanski for a long awaited episode on Modern Monetary Theory. She answers their many questions about MMT and discusses her book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy.

   

• Learn To Love Trillion-Dollar Deficits

  In this New York Times opinion, Kelton, a proponent of what’s called Modern Monetary Theory, explains our country’s myth about federal debt.

   

• As Congress Pushes a $2 Trillion Stimulus Package, the “How Will You Pay For It?” Question Is Tossed in the Trash

  In this opinion in The Intercept, Professor Kelton discusses the current economic crisis and argues “When all of this is behind us, to the extent that it ever can be, let’s not forget what we’ve learned: Congress knows how to spend money when it wants to.”

• Rumble with Michael Moore

  Kelton joins Michael Moore to discuss why 'we MUST use this moment to massively reshape our economic and healthcare systems and immediately get money in the hands of all Americans.'

  This episode originally aired on March 22, 2020

• Why is This Happening? with Chris Hayes

  Kelton joins Hayes to discuss 'the national deficit, the nature of money itself, federal spending, and why it’s time to stop comparing the deficit to a household budget'.

  This episode originally aired on January 8, 2020

• How MMT Can Help Us Understand the Economy

  Prof. Kelton discusses Modern Monetary Theory and its implications for both monetary and fiscal policy, on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast.

• The Economist Who Believes the Government Should Just Print More Money

  In an interview with Zach Helfand of The New Yorker, Stephanie Kelton argues that “How will we pay for it?” shouldn’t be a central question in American politics.

• Stephanie Kelton on Student Debt Forgiveness & The Fundamentals of Modern Monetary Theory

  On this episode of The Zero Hour, RJ Eskow interviews Professor Kelton on the macroeconomic consequences of student debt forgiveness following the introduction of Senator Sanders bill, the “deficit myth,” and the debates around Modern Monetary Theory. 

• Can the U.S. Afford Democrats’ Bold Promises? Why One Economist Says Yes

  Kate Davidson of the Wall Street Journal interviews Professor Kelton who argues the government doesn’t need to worry so much about how much it borrows to pay for spending programs. Unlike a household or business, it can never run out of money.

• The Climate Crisis and the Green New Deal

  At the Sanders Institute Gathering, we set out to have  conversations with some exceptional people that have made studying issues like the climate crisis their life’s work. We brought together some of the leading progressive minds to address this issue. Sanders Institute founding fellow, author and climate expert Bill McKibben, author and activist Naomi Klein, Executive Director of Presente Matt Nelson, Sanders Institute founding fellow and leading economist Stephanie Kelton, and physician and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, spoke in depth about the climate crisis and how it intersects with each and every issue that our progressive movement is fighting for.

• We Can Pay For A Green New Deal

  In this HuffPost opinion, Stephanie Kelton is joined by Andres Bernal, and Greg Carlock, in making the case for the financial feasibility of the Green New Deal and how we can rethink our budget in order to pay for it. Andres Bernal is a lecturer in urban studies at Queens College and Greg Carlock is a Washington-based researcher in climate action policy and data.

• Stephanie Kelton Wants You to Rethink the Deficit

  Ben Walsh of Barron’s talks with Professor Kelton about modern monetary theory and the flaws with conventional wisdom about deficits and the national debt.

• Everybody Gets a Job (How a Populist Government Works)

  CNN's Fareed Zakaria interviews Professor Kelton on the purpose of a federal job guarantee, how the policy could work, and how the government would pay for it.

• The Public Purse

  As part of the lecture series between UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and the British Library, Stephanie Kelton speaks on why a government budget should not be looked at in the same way as a household budget.

• Use Fiscal Policy, Not the Fed, to Fight the Next Slump

  This economic recovery is looking long in the tooth. It’s already the third longest U.S. expansion on record, and many observers are worried about what will happen when this phase of the cycle is over and the country falls into recession. That’s unavoidable, of course, so it makes sense to think ahead about what policy-makers should do to fight the next downturn. Don’t think a fiscal response is off the table.

• The Sanders Institute Talks: A National Jobs Guarantee

  Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders talks with Dr. Stephanie Kelton about the results of a new report on creating a national jobs guarantee program. The full report will be released through the Levy Institute in April, 2018. Dr. Kelton co-authored the report with L. Randall Wray, Flavia Dantas, Scott Fullwiler, Pavlina R. Tcherneva.

• The Sanders Institute Talks: Student Loan Debt

  Dr. Jane O'Meara Sanders sits down with Sanders Institute Founding Fellow and economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton to talk about Dr. Kelton's new report on the macroeconomic effects of student loan debt cancellation in the United States.

• How To Reinvent Infrastructure

  There was only one reference to the deficit in last night’s State of the Union speech, and it had nothing to do with the federal budget. I found that refreshing — we can carry a deficit if the money’s spent wisely — but that’s another story. What President Trump talked about was America’s staggering infrastructure deficit, a whopping $2 trillion fault line in the backbone of the American economy, according to the latest estimates from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

• You're The Real Job Creator

  As the GOP tax plan, officially known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, awaits reconciliation with the House, the threat of a mounting deficit is once again in the news. 

• Congress Can Give Every American a Pony (If It Breeds Enough Ponies)

  In 1860, Abraham Lincoln’s campaign slogan was “Vote Yourself a Farm.” In 1900, William McKinley promised “A Full Dinner Plate.” And in 1928, Herbert Hoover won a landslide victory pledging “A Chicken in Every Pot and a Car in Every Garage.” A free farm, a full belly and a shiny new car. Today’s Republicans would cringe at the thought of such rhetoric from their party’s nominees. As Ronald Reagan taught, the government is your problem, not the solution to your problems.

• Can “Trumponomics” Extend the Recovery?

  In this paper from the Real World Economics Review, Dr. Stephanie Kelton looks at the economic projections for the Trump administration. 

  Kelton approaches "Trumponomics" (economic policies of the Trump administration) through this question: "can “Trumponomics” extend the recovery?"

  She argues that it will not. First she examines the economy as a whole to establish whether there is room to grow, which she believes there is. Then she looks at the policies put forward by President Trump during the 2016 campaign and his stated economic goals since - she determines that President Trump's statements on economics do not conform with a "conventional ideological matrix." However, Kelton does mention a number of policies that are Reagan-esq that severely benefitted the top 1%:

  

  "the benefits of the Reagan expansions went overwhelmingly to those at the top of the income distribution. Tax cuts for the wealthy, attacks on unions, cuts to programs aimed at helping the poor and an obsession with deregulation and “free markets” shifted the balance of power toward owners of capital and ushered in an era of increasing insecurity and growing inequality for the working class."

  Kelton then looks at whether "Trumponomics" can extend the recovery. She draws from a number of economic predictions that show less growth under Trumponomics than under current policies. However, she acknowleges that a number of economists are more positive.

• Senator Bernie Sanders’ Economic Advisor Shreds Trumponomics

  In this article about a paper by Stephanie Kelton's on the current state of the economy after the 2008 recession and "recovery."

  The article and Kelton argue that "there may be no more room for economic recovery given the economy has reached its true employment potential, or as Kelton puts it, ” output is near its full employment ceiling not because the economy rose to its potential but because we lowered the definition of what we believe our nation’s productive capacity to be. It’s a bit like giving up on the idea that your child is capable of achieving straight As, relaxing the goal to a 2.0 GPA, and then celebrating when he presents you with across-the-board Cs.”"
  

  The article is critical of some of the possible outcomes of the new administration's economic policies.

• But How Will We Pay For It?

  “That's a good idea ... but how will you pay for it?” Dr. Stephanie Kelton joins Amar Reganti to discuss the economic priorities for the current administration.

• The Angry Birds Approach to Understanding Deficits in the Modern Economy

• Does More Government Help Or Hurt?

  In this video, Stephanie Kelton investigates the economic philosophy that states that smaller government will improve the economy. This philosophy in practice equates to: cutting taxes on the job creators to create more jobs.

  Kelton argues that this doesn't work. She presents Kansas as a case study where Kansas cut taxes on job creators. Rather than seeing an increase in job creation, Kansas' job creation is lagging behind the national average. The problem with this economic approach, Kelton argues, is that "It presupposes the most important part of capitalism: demand." Businesses hire when there is demand, not when they have fewer taxes. 

  Kelton then goes on to describe how government spending (and therefore larger government) can be a good thing and has been a good thing in the past. She suggests that these government programs would help boost the economy: federally funded jobs program, infrastructure investment, investment in education, and investment in research & technology.

• The Dual Mandate: Right Goals, Wrong Institution?

  In this article Dr. Stephanie Kelton looks at the "dual mandate." The Dual Mandate is a monetary policy imposed by Congress in 1913 which "charges the Federal Reserve with responsibility for achieving two broad macroeconomic goals: “maximum employment and stable prices.”"

  She discusses the different points of view that the different sides of the aisle take on the issue: "Much has been made (especially by those on the left) of the benefits of having a dual mandate." in contrast to the republicans "Not a single Republican expressed support for the dual mandate when the issue came up during a presidential debate on September 12, 2011. 

  Dr. Kelton then discusses some of the solutions put forward but offers her own take on the situation: "Nearly everyone seems to believe one or both of the following: (1) high levels of employment and low rates of inflation are worthwhile goals; and (2) the Fed is the right agency to deliver on these goals. I don’t dispute the former, but I often wonder about the latter."

   

• Government Has Always Had The Power To Pay Its Bills

  In this article, Dr. Stephanie Kelton describes a shift in how many view debt in the U.S.

  She describes that initially, "everyone knew the government spent a lot of money and that money had to come from "somewhere", but most people assumed there were limits to how much the government could afford to spend."

  However, the government does not function like an individual: "The United States is already the issuer of the currency. It isn't like a household or a private business. It can always pay."

  Kelton ends the article with the reminder that we should think of the government's spending differently and that our fears of falling further into deficit, while appropriate for an individual, do not necessarily apply to the U.S. government.

   

• What I Did Not Get to Say on NPR’s On Point This Morning

  The ordinary American will gleefully support deficit reduction (as polling shows), but I’m confident that you’d get a very different reaction if you asked them whether they support cutting their own surplus by trillions of dollars.  Almost no one recognizes that the former implies the latter.

• What Happens When The Government Tightens Its Belt? (Part II)

  In this article Stephanie Kelton describes the relationship between the government, the private sector, and foreign entities. 

  She describes that when you look at these three players in the economy, one entity's purchase is another entity's sale. Therefore, any surplus for one entity equates to a deficit for another. In more simplistic terms: wen we have a trade deficit and are importing in more goods than we are exporting, that means that when compared to us foreign entities are exporting more goods to the U.S. than they are importing from the U.S. 

  Kelton specifically points out that the government has a role to play to offset the trade deficit that this country has because, "Whenever the government’s deficit is too small to offset a deficit in the current account, the private sector will experience a net loss."

  She concludes that: "the Government needs to loosen its belt when we tighten ours. If it doesn’t, then millions of us will lose our [jobs]."

  

• What Happens When The Government Tightens Its Belt?

  In this article Stephanie Kelton describes the interaction between the government and the private sector in regards to spending and saving.

  Kelton describes that there is a direct relationship between what is happening in the private sector and what is happening in the public sector - " the total amount of money spent buying newly produced goods and services will yield an equivalent income to the sellers of these products." Meaning that someone's purchase is another person's sale and vice versa.

  The government both collects taxes, and spends money (from salaries for government workers to social programs). Kelton demonstrates that when the government runs a surplus, meaning that it is bringing in more money than it is spending, that money is removed from the private sector.  She finishes with the statement "As the government “tightens” its belt, it “lightens” its load on the teeter-totter, shifting the relative burden onto you."