The Oz treasurer is in Washington with other financial leaders; at least he is prepared to stand up to the "free-market knows best" high priests including  officials in the Productivity Commission.

In an interview with  the ABC's Sarah Ferguson, he pointed out that many countries are now pursuing interventionist industrial policies like Labor's "Made in Australia", given the global push to zero emissions by 2050.

"The markets are good servants, but bad masters, and a worse religion."

O course the most egeregious market failure in Oz currently is the housing crisis. 

To recap, the three main axioms of MMT:

1. A sovereign currency-issuing government faces no purely financial constraints (unlike households who are USERS of the currency).

2. Such a government faces a resources and productive capacity restraint. 

3.  The public sector's deficit is the private sector's surplus.

[Note: if a nation cannot produce all its own vital  resources locally  (eg, food and energy, medicines), it will need to be able to earn sufficient foreign exchange (to pay for imports) by exporting sufficient of what other nations want, to maintain currency sovereignty].

https://billmitchell.org/blog/?p=61692

IMF now claiming that Japan has to inflict austerity when the government’s current policy settings are maintaining stability

It was only a matter of time I suppose but the IMF is now focusing its nonsensical ‘growth friendly austerity’ mantra on Japan. In a recent interview, the former Portuguese Finance Minister now in charge of the IMF’s so-called ‘Fiscal Affairs Department’, Vitor Gaspar claimed that Japan is now in a precarious position and must start to impose austerity. Recall last week that I concluded that

– The IMF has outlived its usefulness – by about 50 years

(April 15, 2024). The current interventions from senior officials such as Gaspar only serve to reinforce that assessment. The problem is that they are still able to command a platform and a significant number of people in policy making circles actually believe what they say. It would be a much better world if the IMF and its toxic ideology and praxis just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Then we could send all the highly educated officials to thought reassignment camps to allow their considerable intellectual capacity to search for cures to cancer or whatever.

Yes....evidence of mainstream 'group-think' on a massive scale.

On the Job Guarantee as price anchor (inflation control) in MMT.

1. Replaces neoclassical orthodoxy's inflation control aka the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment), with the Job Guarantee's price anchor aka the NAIBER (non-accelerating inflation buffer employment ratio ). 

2. The buffer employment pool is a variable employment pool which expands or contracts depending on the state of the economy.

3. In the NAIRU system, unemployment is deliberately engineered by the Reserve Bank to reduce demand and hence reduce inflation in the economy.

4. In the NAIBER system, employment is shifted from the inflating section of the economy to the buffer employment pool which is paid at the minimum wage in the economy, ie acting as the price anchor.
.........

MMT economists have differing views on economic management.

My own view (being a Marxist) is that the inflation fighting tools used by mainstream free-market central bankers, ie lifting interest rates to cool demand, should be replaced with price controls (and rationing if necessary in cases of supply-chain failure).

Some MMT economists regard taxation a tool to control inflation (of course all MMTers know currency-issuing governments don't need to tax - or borrow -  in order to fund governement spending, MMTers assign other functions to taxation). 

I prefer to eliminate taxation (except to discourage unhealthy consumption, eg grog and tobacco) in a zero interest rate, no tax scenario, using price controls and rationing as outlined above, to ensure "an economy which works for all"  (whereas  raising taxes and/or interest rates to control inflation hurts different people in different ways).

Note: free market economies CANNOT create an economy which works for all, there are always winners and losers.

Our goal is shared, sustainable prosperity, in a ZIRP, JG economy with minimal taxation  and directly limited inflation (via price controls and rationing as outlined above).

Note: economist Isabella  Weber caused a stir when she proposed price controls as an inflation control tool, but the idea has gained recognition in the mainstream

https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/inflation-price-c...

Could strategic price controls help fight inflation?

And if AGW climate scientists are correct, then the World Bank will have to create money out of thin air to fund the green transition in poor countries , since rich countries have failed to deliver on their promised $100 billion  annual transfer to poor countries....

And....

"The Natural Rate of Interest Is Zero"

Mathew Forstater and Warren Mosler.

https://moslereconomics.com/wp-content/graphs/2009/07/natural-rate-is-zero.PDF

Even these mainstream neoclassical economists recognize the IMF and World Bank are no longer able to deal with the economic problems facing the globe.

(Larry Summers is the goon who said  - 2 years ago - unemployment in the US would have to be increased to 10% for a year, to bring inflation down to 2-3%.)

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/imf-world-bank-spring-meetings-need...

Frank wrote on May 3^rd, 2024 at 10:52am:


Your error there: the US uni protests aren't communist, they are protests about the Israeli genocide on Palestinians.

Until the US stops blocking the establishment of Palestine (as per UN res 242), the protests will likely continue.

Nothing to do with food availability in US unies.

[See... your 'comedy' narrative didn't work - don't give up your day job.....   ]