Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

In the first part of this series, I looked at how the Trump administration's blend of ignorance and unscrupulousness has led them to consider a cryptocurrency stockpile as a win-win for both scammers and the public being scammed alike. Or perhaps they're being a bit disingenuous there. Here I go on to look at how their profound misunderstanding of money threatens to turn the US into an impoverished kleptocracy. Which, on reflection, might also be a deliberate part of the plan.

In February, Donald Trump carried on appending his distinctive zigzag scrawl to a growing pile of executive orders, including A Plan For Establishing A United States Sovereign Wealth Fund. This declared:

[Note: this post suffers from my slow writing speed, and since doing the bulk of the writing of it, has been overtaken by events. I will catch up in subsequent posts.]

I've been trying to avoid reading too much on the Trump administration's governance by imperial fiat, in an effort to preserve some measure of mental health. In ordinary times I've an inexhaustible appetite for grim news, but these are not ordinary times, and even I have my limits.

However there have been a series of executive orders since January which, together with prior pronouncements from those in the administration's inner circle, imply a wholesale reconfiguration of the US financial system, with foreseeably disastrous consequences. It's clearly madness, but I think I can see the method in it. Let me run it past you.

About a month ago, my online chum kat posted this:

Trying to understand the latest executive order.

Cory Doctorow recently cited this article which talks about how insurance is a terrible instrument for mitigating climate risk. The standard neoliberal patter on this runs that insurance will send a price signal that steers investment away from environmentally damaging activity and towards adaptive responses.

One problem with this is that the people doing the damage are not necessarily (or even likely to be) the people who will experience the worst of its' effects, so this will do little to prevent investment in — for instance — fossil fuel extraction. In fact, you'll likely see investment flowing away from the uncertain business of keeping populations alive and secure, and directed towards digging up minerals and sludge.