[Steve_American]

He explains better than I can why the critics of MMT are wrong. Mostly they have not read enough of what MMTers have written about the fine points of [for example] how it relates to small & developing nations, etc. MMTers have written many peer reviewed papers and endless blogs and other articles.

Here I quote just the opening and the conclusion because you-all seem to just read what is here and don't see the meat of the argument or the graphs and maps.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/? ... ment-62280

The conga line of MMT critics – marching into oblivion
Posted on Thursday, March 7, 2019 by bill
The US-based Eastern Economic Association, which aims to promote “educational and scholarly exchange on economic affairs”, held its annual conference in New York over the weekend just gone. One of the panels focused on “New Views of Money” and I am reliably told turned into a bash MMT session as yet another disaffected economist, feeling a little attention deficit, sought to demolish our work. The technique is becoming rather standardised: construct MMT as something that it is not; refer to hardly any primary sources and only those that can be twisted with word ploys to fit into the argument; use this false construction to accuse MMT authors that are not cited of a range of sins; conclude that MMT is useless – either because the things it has right were known anyway and the novelties are wrong, proceed as normal. In denial. Afraid to admit you are part of a degenerative paradigm that has lost credibility. Bluster your way forward muttering something about optimising transversality conditions that need to be met. Feel happy to be part of the conga line. Well that conga line is heading for oblivion I hope. Where it belongs. On the scrap heap of anti-knowledge.

...snip...

Conclusion
. . . And in the interim, the New Keynesian heavies have been out in force embarrassing themselves – Krugman, ‘Mr Spreadsheet’ Rogoff, Summers and more – all rushing to [the] join the conga line of critics.
. . . All essentially following the same pattern – little citation, false constructions, idiotic inferences.
. . . We are (hopefully) witnessing what a degenerative paradigm (in the meaning that Imre Lakatos gave to that term) looks like as it declines into oblivion.
. . . What these characters don’t seem to realize is that they are probably helping disseminate our work to a wider audience.
. . . We should thank them for that.

A big point Bill makes is --- don't be fooled by the phrase "pay for" in criticisms. In English this term always refers to financial 'paying', but critics try to change the meaning to refer to real resources being used or diverted, claiming that MMT ignores this way of paying. The fact is MMT, far from ignoring it, goes out of its way the emphasize this as a constraint, maybe the only constraint on Gov. spending.

As of now there are 34 comments at the end.

[SueDeNîmes]

(not that I'm necessarily 100% on board with MMT, but..)

The recent big name crits - Summers, Krugman, Rogoff, Powell - simply seem to be ignorance of what the MMT literature actually says. Powell even admitted unfamiliarity with it, yet felt confident to dismiss it as "just wrong." Says more about them than MMT.

As it is, criticism from Larry repeal-Glass-Steagall Summers and Kenneth excel-spreadsheet Rogoff can only help

[Sivad]

And in the interim, the New Keynesian heavies have been out in force embarrassing themselves – Krugman, ‘Mr Spreadsheet’ Rogoff, Summers and more – all rushing to [the] join the conga line of critics.
. . . All essentially following the same pattern – little citation, false constructions, idiotic inferences.
. . . We are (hopefully) witnessing what a degenerative paradigm (in the meaning that Imre Lakatos gave to that term) looks like as it declines into oblivion.

The babbitts can perpetuate a degenerate paradigm indefinitely, they just gang up and takeover the institutions and their zombie theories continue to stagger on eating the brains of one generation after the next.