MMT Author Stephanie Kelton Won't Let Us Interview Her

Prominent Modern Monetary Theory economist, author, and economics professor Stephanie Kelton is apparently too scared to let us interview her.

A couple noteworthy things about the tweet embed we posted above.

1) We were disappointed that Kelton chose to start a new subthread directly below the one we refuted the guy commenting directly above her in the tweet embed, which we assume was a passive-aggressive way to not have to acknowledge our existence, and

2) Claiming that printing money will cause inflation only when there's a "shortage of resources" is like claiming that snow only ever piles up on the ground when there's a shortage of weather above 32°F. Neither of which anyone can control, much less the government, which despite having exercised in futility for generations to artificially increase real productive output in this country, the only thing that ever actually works to flatten a giant inflation curve is raising interest rates and engaging in open operations in the securities markets, similar to the only way you can get snow off the ground in freezing weather is to buy a big shovel or snowblower and throw it off the sidewalk.

Anyway, the point is, to claim that printing money only causes inflation when there's a "shortage of resources" is ridiculous, because obviously, using the same exact logic, we can also conclude that printing money will cause inflation when the amount of resources stays the same, as we point out to Mr. Jacinta Nelligan here, who, we guess, simps and mindlessly jerks off to Stephanie Kelton on the regular. We were disappointed to see Mr. Nelligan disengage in the conversation after we pointed out to him this very simple fact (a fact that Stephanie Kelton herself also didn't bother to refute).

Strangely, and this is another thing we almost certainly would've grilled Kelton in during our interview that she never agreed to doing, Kelton actually admits herself in her book The Deficit Myth that government overspending will cause inflation. We kid you not - and she not only admits it once, but several times during her book, and is actually the literal subheading of chapter 2 of her book, right at the top of page #41, which reads:

[Chapter] 2

Think of Inflation

MYTH #2: Deficits are evidence of overspending.

REALITY: For evidence of overspending, look to inflation.

Not only that, but on the page directly preceding this, she writes:

"So why not tell Congress to just keep spending until all our problems are solved? [Great question, Stephanie!] Ah, if only it were that easy. Inflation, the subject of our next chapter, is a real danger. To be clear, MMT is not about removing all limits. It's not a free lunch. It's about replacing our current approach [...] while at the same time recognizing and respecting our economy's real resource restraints."

Mrs. Kelton, and we ask this question with all due respect, did you forget that you wrote this entire passage of your book? Did you even write this yourself at all, or did you hire a ghostwriter to write this book for you?!?!

For you to claim, as you did in our Twitter thread, that we didn't read your book, is brazenly disrespectful, considering we've said nothing that you haven't said yourself in your own book. You clearly acknowledge that inflation is in fact a real thing, and that it's caused by government overspending, and of course, the government can only spend money that it's first created into existence, so... can you please be specific as to what you disagree with us on, exactly??!

Now, it would be disingenuous with us to just make the claim that Kelton actually does in fact believe the shit she wrote in her own book that was published four years ago, because she's actually spent the last two and a half years inherently back-pedaling what she wrote (assuming she did in fact write this stuff herself, and didn't hire a ghostwriter to write it for her, unknowing as to what he/she was writing in Kelton's own book on her behalf). She seems to have completely forgotten the laws of economics, and has moved on, like many on the left, to go off spouting ridiculous and already-disproven conspiracy theories about inflation and the big bad corporate meanies who are causing it with their unconstrained greed. We won't bother you, once again, with refuting every single one of the modern inflation conspiracy theories under the sun - we know you're probably bored of reading about it at this point. But, if you're new here, you can type 'inflation' into our search bar in the News section of our site, which will propagate probably dozens of articles we've written over the past couple years refuting this nonsense.

Before we conclude this article, we do have to refute one actual myth that has been circulating through the rapidly-disintegrating circles of MMT proponents - and that's this absurd idea that somehow paying off our sovereign debt somehow won't cause inflation. We know to most of you reading this with a fully-functional brain, this sounds absurd (because it absolutely is), but this based around a myth that's frequently spouted by MMT proponents about how maturing securities are paid back. The myth goes something like this: "The money that we use to pay debt-holders doesn't need to be printed, because the debt-holders used money that was already printed to buy them in the first place!"

This is of course ridiculous on many different levels, primarily because no one would buy a security unless they're going to make some return on their investment from it - no one, not even a far-left progressive moron, is that stupid. It will always have a higher numerical cost to pay back debt than it is to buy it, otherwise no one, not even the nicest, most good-samaritan pro-American-prosperity-patriot in the world, would put their money into a security knowing that the dollars he or she would be paid back with will indefinitely be worth less than it was worth when he or she bought it.  That would obviously be insane. But there's a second, and arguably even bigger problem. Money that was spent to purchase U.S. debt is not included in the M2 money supply. Money that is then used to paid back the debt holder when the security matures will be included in the M2 money supply (and the correlation between money supply and inflation that economists speak of is most-usually in regards to the M2). So, when a security matures, and the debt holder is paid back, rest assured, it will indeed measurably expand the money supply. So this notion that paying back our sovereign debt will somehow not cause inflation because we don't need to print the money to do it arises out of a complete lack of understanding of how the U.S. economy actually works, Stephanie.

Our invitation to Stephanie Kelton for an in-depth interview remains open. We are genuinely interested to get some more in-depth insight into her theories on the economy, inflation, and the budget deficit and national debt. Until then, we hope that this article somehow reaches the computer on Mrs. Kelton's desk. We'd love to hear her refutations of our writings in this article - if she's able to refute them - via her Twitter account, her Substack op-eds, or anywhere else that we'd be able to read them.