A Great Leap Forward

Part D

Money and the public purpose

Abstract

In this final part we return to our discussion of financialization. We provide a detailed analysis of Modern Money Theory, a new approach to both the private supply of money (created by banks) and the government's money (created as the government spends). We argue that while private finance is playing too large a role in our economy, the government's role is too small. We link finance to the public purpose and argue that while private finance can help in pursuit of the public interest, much of the responsibility for the finance that will be necessary to confront our biggest challenges ahead will fall to the national government. We discuss how to reform private banks and how to expand the government's ...