It should come as no surprise that an economist in the Biden administration knows nothing about economics – and Biden’s 31st Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Jared Bernstein, has reminded us that’s undoubtedly the case.
Bernstein appeared in a new documentary called “Finding the Money,” which was made by proponents of Modern Monetary Theory, a crank theory that argues the government can endlessly print money without consequences.
“The U.S. government can’t go bankrupt, because we can print our own money,” Bernstein says.
The interviewer then asks, “Like you said, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?”
Bernstein then seemed uncertain in his response. “Again, some of this stuff gets.. some of the language and concepts are just confusing. The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds, and lend them the money.”
He continued; “A lot of times, at least to my ear with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to um, uh … I guess I’m just, I can’t really, I don’t get it, I don’t know what they’re talking about. . . . It’s like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise you wouldn’t be having this debt and deficit conversation. So I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.”
The responses to his comment ranged from mockery…. to mockery.
Sadly, Bernstein probably is the most qualified person Biden could’ve found.
Bernstein graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied double bass . He also earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College as well as a DSW in social welfare from Columbia University’s school of social work
An assistant professor at UC Berkeley asked the class how U.S. money is created. I raised my hand, and said, “The Federal Reserve — composed of several private banks, tells the government how much is available for issue; the government then borrows the money from the Federal Reserve banks.” I was told the answer was wrong. Another student leaned over and said, “I am an Economics major; you are correct .” Political Economy (how public policies and economies interact)was one of my majors. I received my degrees in 2016 at the age of 69.
I’d rather be governed by the first 500 names in a phone book than these clowns.