In my third article about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), I try to understand the policies of the Carney government through the lense of this new way of looking at public finance.
https://open.substack.com/pub/billhulet/p/modern-monetary-theory-part-three
When it was announced that Mr. Carney would run for office, the first thing I did to find out about him was to watch a video of one of his recent speeches to a big business audience. There is no way he would think of MMT as acceptable. He’s a huge fan of the way things are, so we will keep spending a significant percentage of the government budget directly on satisfying the greed of the rentiers.
What a surprise! Carney tells big business people what they want to hear.
I also listened to his BBC lectures about how economics is only of value if it is in service of the public good.
Carney couldn’t be as successful as he has been without learning how to be ‘all things to all people’. I’m not convinced that I know who he is. But I strongly suspect that other people who are absolutely convinced they do might not be right.
I voted for him because I was sure that he would be better than Poilievre. I still think he’s better than anyone else on offer. Maybe you’re right and he’s a closet neo-liberal. But I don’t want to dismiss him out of hand because I think you can also look at what he’s done and see something else altogether.
I remember hearing once that F.D.R. was called ‘a sphinx’ because no one could tell what he really thought. I think Carney is a sphinx too.
He wasn’t exactly sphynx-like in the speech I was thinking of. He spoke with eloquence, but directly and plainly. It did indeed seem clear that he sincerely believes that the existing banking system — which he had a hand in running for so long — operates in service of the public good.