So, why is this bad news? Because Kelton's concrete policy proposals would be an absolute disaster. She promises the reader that MMT opens up grand new possibilities for the federal government to help the unemployed, the uninsured, and even the planet itself… if we would only open our minds to a paradigm shift. And because she uses apt analogies and relevant anecdotes, Kelton is able to keep the book moving despite its dry subject matter. Kelton makes absurd claims that the reader will think surely can't be true… but then, she seems to justify them by appealing to accounting tautologies.

She takes the reader down trains of thought that turn conventional wisdom about federal budget deficits on its head. Such is the spirit of Kelton's book, The Deficit Myth. Eventually, everyone would decide against waving the wand' (Kelton 2020, p. Would you wave it?' This question - even though it was equivalent to asking to wipe out the national debt - 'drew puzzled looks, furrowed brows, and pensive expressions. Then, Kelton would ask, 'Suppose that wand had the power to rid the world of US Treasuries. She would first ask if they would wave a magic wand that had the power to eliminate the national debt. Soon after joining the Budget Committee, Kelton, the deficit owl played a game with the staffers. Unlike a deficit hawk or a deficit dove, Kelton's deficit owl was 'a good mascot for MMT because people associate owls with wisdom and also because owls' ability to rotate their heads nearly 360 degrees would allow them to look at deficits from a different perspective' (Kelton 2020, p. When she was first selected, journalists reported that Senator Sanders had hired a 'deficit owl' - a new term Kelton had coined. To illustrate the flavor of the book, we can review Kelton's reminiscences of serving as chief economist for the Democratic staff on the US Senate Budget Committee.

The bad news is that Stephanie Kelton has written a book on MMT that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever. The good news is that Stephanie Kelton - economics professor at Stony Brook and advisor to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign - has written a book on modern monetary theory (MMT) that is very readable and will strike many readers as persuasive and clever.

The deficit myth book