We Need to Think Harder About Inflation
Stephanie Kelton as posted on her blog The Lens the article We Need to Think Harder About Inflation.
Here is one excerpt that summarize on of the points the post is making.
It’s not that MMTers don’t “believe in monetary policy” (whatever that means). It’s that we believe it’s unrealistic to think that the central bank can steer our colossal macro ship by periodically nudging the overnight interest rate around in search of alignment with some mythical r*. It’s that we agree with former Fed governor Daniel Tarullo, who candidly professed that “the Fed has no reliable theory of inflation.” It’s that we share Jeremy Rudd’s skepticism about the role of “inflation expectations” as driver of actual inflation, and we question the very idea that rate hikes necessarily mitigate inflationary pressures.
As for the article as a whole, this is something I have been trying to tell proponents of MMT to do for years. Dismissing inflation as no worry when there was no inflation was not a good idea. There needed to be a discussion of why there was no inflation, and talk about what could change that would allow inflation to occur. I think this post talks about and tries to correct what I thought was missing from the discussion.