cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/12591808

  • Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s Chief Economist, faced difficulties explaining money’s workings in a documentary or Finding The Money,’ despite his role.
  • He stumbled through concepts, highlighting the confusion around government money printing and borrowing
  • Bernstein, who is head of the US Council of Economic Advisers, is not formally trained in economics and appeared bewildered in the clip
        • AbbysMuscles [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          16·
          6 months ago

          …the State Bank of the USSR took over the role of commercial lending and printed as much money as needed for rapid industrialization. You can read reports from Western journalists of how they were surprised how fast the USSR could develop in such a short period of time.

          I’m fascinated and uneducated. Can you break down for me how this didn’t lead to massive inflation?

            • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
              5·
              6 months ago

              Fun fact: During and after civil war in Russia the topic of import was mentioned in Lenin’s works very often, and Lenin was positively extatic over every deal where foreign sellers accepted rubles instead of gold or other currencies, and heaped praise on anyone who could negotiate deal in rubles.

        • SuperZutsuki [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          6 months ago

          Modern monetary theory is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires.

          In the wikipedia description they’re saying the government is the currency monopolist (as in they are the sole suppliers of currency). Thinking about it more, billionaires are more like money kulaks that hoard it and instead of the government redacting them and redistributing the currency, they encourage it and are heavily controlled by the billionaire class to keep everything concentrating upwards.