Thursday, June 23, 2016

David Dayen — Hillary Clinton Criticizes Donald Trump for One of the Few Things He Is Right About

DEFICIT HAWKS OFTEN raise the specter of hyperinflation to scare people who disagree with them. And that’s exactly what Hillary Clinton did on Tuesday.
Speaking in Columbus, Clinton criticized Donald Trump for saying last month that the U.S. can never default on its debt obligations “because you print the money.”
“We know what happened to countries that tried that in the past, like Germany in the ‘20s and Zimbabwe in the ‘90s,” Clinton said. “It drove inflation through the roof and crippled their economies.”
But printing money — otherwise known as increasing the money supply – is a routine occurrence for governments that control their own currency. The Federal Reserve has increased its balance sheet by over $3 trillion since the financial crisis, explicitly to support the economy. (The Fed does this by buying stocks and bonds with electronic cash that didn’t exist before.)
In fact, an increasingly influential school of economics, known as Modern Monetary Theory, argues that deficit spending, including through money printing, is critical to promote full employment.
Even Alan Greenspan, former chair of the Federal Reserve, echoed Trump’s comments almost verbatim back in 2011, when the U.S. came close to reaching the debt limit. “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that,” Greenspan told “Meet the Press.”…
Another reason not to vote for Hillary. She is a fiscal moron.

The Intercept

1 comment:

Matt Franko said...

Can't wait to see all the left MMT people come up with a new conspiracy theory when they don't regulate the borders with a JG and there are still all these unemployed people hanging around and the JG min wage doesn't hold....