The effectiveness and primacy of fiscal policy – Part 1


Economic Outlook has the article The effectiveness and primacy of fiscal policy – Part 1.

A firm will not invest, no matter how low the funding costs go, if they do not think they can sell the extra output that the increased productive capacity would produce.

When people ask me why pumping more liquidity into the economy via low interest rates does not stimulate investment, I have a quaint way to explain this. I ask “What part of no freakin’ customers do you not understand?”

Here is a partial list of posts where I have expressed my quaint aphorism

  1. The Effectiveness of Large-Scale Asset Purchases
  2. MODERN MONEY THEORY: How I came to MMT and what I include in MMT
  3. Robert Reich destroys Right Wing economist attempt to sell GOP tax cuts (VIDEO)
  4. Fed keeps U.S. rates steady, to start portfolio drawdown in October
  5. The Global Corporate Saving Glut
  6. Cutting Company Taxes is a Race to the Bottom
  7. The ECB’s Original Sin and Franco Modigliani’s Long View
  8. The Washington Consensus and Long-Term Austerity in Latin America
  9. Hillary Clinton Roundtable in New Hampshire
  10. Banking Hearing on Income Inequality
  11. 20 U.S. companies that paid 0% in taxes
  12. Central bankers issue strong warning on asset bubbles
  13. Turn That (Deficit) Frown Upside Down
  14. Corporations Are Generating So Much Cash It Is Sloshing Around

I have been yearning for an article like this one from an MMT expert. This is the first time I have heard one of these experts give a definitive and detailed explanation of why fiscal policy is a stronger tool than monetary policy to stimulate an economy. In fact, I thought I once heard L. Randall Wray say the opposite.


April 2, 2019

I have links to all three parts of the series in a subsequent post The effectiveness and primacy of fiscal policy.

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