"The US government can't go bankrupt because we can print our own money," Jared Bernstein asserts with unwavering confidence in an interview for economist Stephanie Kelton's upcoming documentary, Finding the Money.
The confidence is well earned. After all, Bernstein is President Biden's handpicked economic guru, currently serving as the Chair of the United States Council of Economic Advisers.
But get ready to cringe.
Kelton asks Bernstein a simple followup question: "Like you said, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?"
Bernstein's replies sounds like a high school student doing a presentation on a book he didn't read:
Well, um… the… uh… so the… I mean… again, some of this stuff gets… some of the language that the MM… some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money and it definitely lends that money. Which is why, uh… uh… the government definitely prints money and it lends that money by uh… by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They… they… um… they… yeah… they… they… um… they sell bonds. Yeah. They sell bonds, right? Since they sell bonds and people buy the bonds and lend them the money. Yeah. So, a lot of times, 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… eh… uh… so… um… yeah… I… I… I guess I'm just… I don't… I can't really ta- I don't… I don't get it. I don't know what they're talking about, like… cuz… it's like, the government clearly prints money. It does it all the time, and it clearly borrows. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this in.. this conversation. I don't think there's anything confusing there."
I'm glad he's not confused. That's why we pay him the big bucks.
Must Watch‼️: Why does the government borrow in the currency it prints out of thin air? Even the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors can't explain it.
byu/_CypherIO inBitcoin
