A Heretic Economist whose time may have come, at last

The old joke about economists: If you laid all the economists in the world end-to-end ... they would still point in all directions.

So a corollary of this is that being a heretic to standard schools of economics isn't as much of an impossibility as it was for Jacques Benveniste with his proof of homeopathy to the scientific establishment.

Current schools of economics have, shall we say, a problem with the models they use matching reality. Just look at one of the major economic events of recent years:

• The 2008 "great recession" and subsequent events. Almost no mainstream economist predicted it, and many predicted rampant inflation after the "quantitative easing" the Federal Reserve used to try and fix the effects of the recession ... which of course did not occur.

Our "heretic" says she has a model of economic reality called Modern Monetary Theory that better matches the economic facts on the ground, and after reading her book, I believe her.

Here she is:

Dr. Stephanie Kelton

Her views diverge wildly from the mainstream:

• A balanced U.S. Federal budget is undesirable, as it does not fuel the economy sufficiently
• Deficit spending in any country with "monetary sovereignty" (like the U.S., Japan, the U.K., Australia, even China) is, within very large limits, a benefit to that country's citizens
• We have plenty of resources in the U.S. to achieve guaranteed full employment and fully funded health care for everyone, without necessarily raising taxes a whole lot
• Austerity in any country with monetary sovereignty is a preposterously self-limiting strategy
• "pay as you go" plans to make sure any new spending is "deficit neutral" are unnecessary and actively harmful to the economy

If this makes you want to know more, the book she's just published is very readable:

And if you're more of a Youtube person than a reader, here's a small example for you to enjoy.