The Lure of the Big Lie: Modern Monetary Theory and Wall Street’s Obsession with Unprofitable Companies.

In the “new economy”, spending has few if any limits and it pays to be unprofitable. Time to start planting tulips?

If you haven’t heard about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) you will. It’s the economic theory du jour, and it will be all over the news in the months to come — leading up to the 2020 election.

Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

MMT is a new way of looking at the economy. It’s very seductive (everyone gets a job), and very different from conventional economic theory.

Most economists believe that macroeconomic policy should stabilize the economy with the lightest possible touch — that it’s better to let markets allocate resources.

That’s been the prevailing economic theory for decades, as popularized by Ronald Reagan’s “trickledown” theory — the idea that less government, and lower taxes, will stimulate the economy.

Relying on the fact that governments control their own currency, MMT argues that governments can spend as much as they want — since they can always create more money to pay off debts in their own currency. They simply print…