The victory of “Modern Monetary Theory”?
Proponents of Modern Monetary Theory believe that if governments run the necessary fiscal deficits, whatever their size, and if these deficits are financed by money creation, all macroeconomic problems (under-employment, poverty, insufficient public investment or social welfare, etc.) can be solved. Has this theory won the day, and has it been adopted by OECD countries? The analysis proposed by Modern Monetary Theory is, however, very superficial. Admittedly: Monetisation of fiscal deficits prevents a rise in interest rates and crowding-out effects; In contemporary economies, there is no longer any link between growth in the quantity of money and inflation; moreover, in Modern Monetary Theory, to avoid inflation it is enough to stop monetising fiscal deficits once full employment is reached. But this analysis ignores all the destabilising effects of excessive money creation: asset price bubbles, and therefore undeserved wealth accumulation and taxation of young people; disappearance of the information contained in financial asset prices .