Soft Currency Economics II: The Origin of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT - Modern Monetary Theory) Paperback – March 11, 2013

This short work is extremely clearly and simply written. It is a brilliant synthesis of a number of strands of economic thought, making it the first work developing the Modern Monetary Theory (MT) approach to economics. It tells the truth about fiat currencies and how they work, and provides much clear insight into the workings of the banking system and the relationships between the Fed and the Treasury. If you're interested in macroeconomics and in the Modern Monetary Theory approach to it, then you must read this book. There are others that are also essential, including the author's The Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds, and also important works by Professors L. Randall Wray, and Bill Mitchell. But this updated version of the original Soft Currency Economics is a place to start opening your eyes to an approach to economics that can free the United States from the bonds of austerity in fiscal policy, and allow us to create a Green New Deal for America.

This is a good introduction to Modern Monetary Theory by the person most responsible for developing it. This is not written for the casual reader. It helps to have completed a college course in macroeconomics before taking this on. The more casual reader can still distill the essence of MMT from this book; however there are less technical books on MMT, that are presented in friendlier terms, for those who are interested.Whether one agrees or disagrees with MMT, this book provides a lot of food for thought for anyone worried today about multi-trillion dollar government spending, the deficit, and inflation. Fascinating book, highly recommended, for those who don’t mind the technical aspects of this.

I finally understand a bit more about how the goverment operates. This book shines a light into the fiat currency and how it works. It also shatters the illusions we have about how we think the goverment spending, deficits works vs how it reallt works today. Get this book now!

In the sad state of affairs that is our current discourse on the ways to help the American economy, there are two main camps - the deficit hawks and the deficit doves. Both agree that deficits are somehow "bad" - they only disagree about the ways and timeframes of reducing those deficits. The truth is, the deficits are not inherently good or bad, although for a normally functioning modern economy they are actually necessary (with the size being "right" - more on that in the book).To think that the deficits are inherently "bad" is like thinking that pressing on the gas more than on the brake while driving a car is inherently "bad" - yet we all know this is nonsense. Deficit by definition is the difference (in $) between what the government takes out of the non-government sector (mostly by taxing it) and what it injects into the non-govt sector (mostly by spending). In normal modern economies, the non-govt sector has a net desire to save dollars, and as a whole it can achieve that only if the government accommodates with a deficit - this is true simply by accounting identity. Just like a car most of the time can only more forward when you press on the gas more than on the brake, so is our economy most of the time moves forward only when the govt is running a deficit. Sometimes the deficit needs to be larger - like when going up a hill, and sometimes (though rarely) smaller or even a surplus - when going downhill or trying to stop.This is a short analogy to the view of economy popularized by the economic school of thought called MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) of which Warren Mosler is the godfather.Read his book to understand much better the world about you.

Not as detailed on concepts and solutions that modern monetary theory could bring our post industrial society as I thought it would be by other reviews and description. You may want to read other books on the subject and Ellen Brown's, Public Bank Solution to see where we can go from here

Stephanie Kelton referenced this work in her book, The Deficit Myth, so I thought I would read it. I would advise potential readers to brush up on fundamentals of money and banking. Otherwise the going gets heavy quickly.

In order to explain how the finance world in which he participated actually worked, Warren apparently took an insightful analysis of transactions which are involved. From his experiences and insights, he conceived the idea of soft currency economics. It is most interesting that among all of the money managers you have ever heard of, none other that Warren seems to have any significant insight into just how our money system works. This book is well written and a quick read even for the non-expert. Warren and Dr Bill Mitchell are generally credited with formulation of MMT and I think that each has ideas with which the other is generally in agreement. Both Mosler and Mitchell have web sites which provide useful information to anyone wishing to learn more about MMT.