L. Randall Wray > Quotes

“Whenever I hear an economist use the word “efficiency” (or “productivity”), I can guess with near 100% accuracy that he (it usually is a he, as I’ll explain below) hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s talking about. With rare exceptions, he is inappropriately applying an engineering term to an economic process he does not understand.”
― L. Randall Wray

“The evidence is plain to see all around us: in an era of multiple pandemics that threaten the continued existence of human life on planet earth, we are stymied by imaginary constraints concocted by economists.”
― L. Randall Wray, Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers

“Professors reduce their office hours—or skip them entirely—and send students to the much cheaper teaching assistants as the efficiency fairies work to preserve more time for faculty to spend doing all the paperwork required by a burgeoning administrator staff that has nothing better to do than to create new paperwork requirements.”
― L. Randall Wray

“a sovereign government can increase its spending—even if that results in a budget deficit—without increasing risk of insolvency and default. In contrast, if private spending leads the way, it will tend to outpace income of households and firms, meaning that private indebtedness will grow. That is risky and ultimately unsustainable.”
― L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist

“Followers of the work of Minsky and Godley were thus amused by positive reactions to the Clinton-era budget surpluses and the predictions that all federal government debt would be eliminated over the coming decade and a half. It was”
― L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist

“A half century of neoliberalism has brought the world to the brink of collapse. Only concerted effort and cooperation by the world’s governments provides any chance of survival.
Understanding MMT does not make this easy. But it helps us to recognize what the true constraints are: resources, initiative, politics, imagination.”
― L. Randall Wray, Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers

“Minsky’s view, the central bank really cannot control the money supply. The problem is that attempts to constrain reserves only induce bank innovations that ultimately require lender of last resort interventions and even bailouts that validate riskier practices. Together”
― L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist

“Minsky’s extension was to add the financial theory of investment, stressing that modern investment is expensive and must be financed—and it is the financing that generates structural fragility. During an upswing, profit-seeking firms and banks become more optimistic, taking on riskier financial structures. Firms commit larger portions of expected revenues to debt service. Lenders accept smaller down payments and lower quality collateral.”
― L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist

“The doctor asks the patient some form of the following: “So, what is wrong?” (or, in my case, my doc always asks “So, what are your concerns?”). The doctor listens for an average of 9 seconds, then intervenes with a prognosis. The amount of time the doctor is willing to listen before intervening has gone down over time, presumably as health insurers have pressured doctors to increase throughput and as they have greatly increased the amount of paperwork required of doctors. In other words, it is in the name of efficiency. The efficiency fairies are at work in the doctor’s office to eliminate all that wasteful time spent in creating a doctor-patient relationship.”
― L. Randall Wray

“As the chartalist, or modern money approach, explains, modern governments actually spend by crediting bank accounts.23 It really just amounts to a keystroke, pushing a key on a computer that generates an entry on someone’s balance sheet. Government can never run out of these keystrokes.”
― L. Randall Wray, Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist