Give us an MM! (But not an MMT)

The good news is that the marketplace has provided support for the Lord's work--Scott Sumner's crusade to make Market Monetarism (targeting nominal GDP) mainstream central banking policy;

Through a very generous donation of Kenneth Duda (a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is supportive of market monetarism), the Mercatus Center has created a new program on monetary policy, and appointed me as director.

As Mr. Duda himself put it in the comments;

I am delighted to support Scott. Better monetary policy would meaningfully improve the lives of millions of people. How many chances do you get in life to support someone as awesome as Scott pursuing a goal with so much potential to make the world a better place?

Actually, we can think of quite a few opportunities to do such, but that doesn't diminish what Ken Duda has just done. Hip, hip, hooray!

Now to rain on the parade of better economics, Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vermont) has just made crackpottery mainstream by naming Stephanie Kelton, to be the Democrats chief economist on the Senate Budget Committee.

She being a devotee of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). A theory usually credited to Warren Mosler, and almost undefinable, due to its rather bizarre mixture of a few accounting identities with a lot of hand waving. The last we heard, it went something like, Forget worrying about how much money is printed...we can always fine tune those effects away with government spending and tax increases or cuts.

Or something. We eagerly await Paul Krugman's take on this.