Scott Fullwiler, Mr. MMT Drops By

     The number of economic celebrities who have dropped by here at Diary of a Republican Hater is rising. First it was Nick Rowe. Then Brad Delong put my post about Nick Rowe dropping by on his twitterstorm-Brad when are you going to do it again?! I am giving up all pretense and engaging in special pleading!-what impressed Mr. Delong was my ability to get the phrases "Nick Rowe" and "Snooki" into the same paragraph. For the record though my favorite is Angelina. A pox on your houses Jersey Shore for how you treated her! You can't handle such a strong-willed beautiful woman!

     For the original post that Nick Rowe responded too please check here

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/on-scott-sumners-intellectual.html

     Here is my post commenting on Nick Rowe responding to me

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/nick-rowe-answers-my-post.html

     That contains the Snooki-and Angelina my Italian queen-reference.

     Here is my post about Brad Delong putting my post about Nick Rowe answering my post on his twitterstorm. LOL

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/now-i-make-brad-delongs-twitterfeed.html

      Here was the time I refereed a disagreement between Scott Sumner and Mike Kimel over at the Angry Bear.

        http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-try-to-get-to-bottom-of-sumner-kimel.html

        Finally there was the recent new milestone last week here at Diary of a Republican Hater, when George Selgin himself-it through his ideas more than anyone that the current NGDP movement pioneered by Scott Sumner is derived from.

        http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/12/george-selgin-checks-in-with-us.html

         Finally in the most recent milestone, Scott Fullwiler, a major MMT theorist dropped by yesterday. I should say that me and the MMTers got off to something of a rocky start. They seemed very quick to take offense. This was a little frustrating as I was genuinely curious about their ideas. But any question seemed to get a snarky response. So, I wrote a post called, aptly enough, "Why are the MMTers so Snarky?"

     Scott answered my question with this:

      "This was a pretty good post overall, especially at the end."

       "Not to completely defend Stanley, but you did completely misrepresent MMT, and there are literally dozens of posts out there explaining why the "deficits don't matter" view of MMT is wrong. How do you feel when you explain something over and over and over and yet repeatedly others listen to only 1/2 of it and then misrepresent what you've been saying over and over? It's not an excuse for bad behavior or snarkiness, but the responsibility does run both ways, in my view"

      See, that's my one complaint with you guys, though they have loosened up now. Indeed a number of MMTers now have generously sent me links and info and I appreicate that we have a break through.

     But as I pointed out to Scott, this whole MMT thing I had just started reading about on Saturday. There are I'm sure "dozens of posts" explaining that MMT doesn't have the Cheney view that deficits don't matter,(In reality defcitis don't matter when a Republican is President, they matter again once a Democrat is; notice for example that Greenspan has only started discussing deficits again when Obama became President. Now we can't do anything because of the deficit, just like under Clinton. Under Bush they didn't matter and clearly they didn't matter under Reagan who "proved they don't matter."

   What I get is that MMT feels like their ideas are willfully misunderstood. That may be the case with some people. I feel like it should have been pretty clear that I'm not such a person. I get that some think Krugman does willfully misunderstand. I don't know if that's true or not-evidently he has gone to lunch with MMTers so it sounds like he's not wholly close minded but I can only speculate about that.

   I can say that I find MMT intersting as it gives me a new way of looking at the monetary world.

   I had actually read something by Scott before he commented so that only heightened my excitement-and appreciation for him dropping by. I hope it won't be the last time for him or other MMTers.

   Now that the frost has come many have been very helpful sending me interesting links. I particularly like Cullen Roche's Pragmatic Capitalism website because he really fosters an environment where you can learn something-he keeps things snark free which I prefer.

   You have to forgive me if I don't love snark-it takes me back to the days at Firedoglake when anyone who had anything other than contempt for Obama was declared a DNC planted troll.

    For more on that fun episode of my time at FDL along with my eventual-inevitable ban, see

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/banned-at-fdl-was-it-something-i-said.html

 
    For two for the price of one there was the time I got banned from Daily KOS who are supposedly more Obama friendly-at FDL they are supposedly the "Obamabots." Yet it took only one post by me to get banned. Part of the problem was my name I chose abortionondemand. They insisted on believing this meant I was on the Right.


    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/07/if-daily-kos-is-progressive-blog-where.html


    Finally, I even got banned from DemocraticUnderground.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-hit-trifecta-now-democratic.html

      Obviously there are certain environments I don't thrive in. Partly this is because as you might guess I am not someone who is going to shut up about my opinion just because most people in the room don't agree with me.

    Partly because I'm really not a fan of snark. It may be that many of those liberal blogs are more about popularity and consensus than honest discussion and learning.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/08/banned-from-big-liberal-blogsophere.html

     I know that many liberals have had my experience.

     Anyway to return to Scott, I read a very good piece by him on Saturday night before he commented it was about the Clinton surplus. This is something I'm really thinking about right now. As a Democrat during the 90s of course I wanted to believe it was a great think that we Democrats the party that the GOP mocked as tax and spenders had been the party of fiscal restraint. Now I'm beginning to reconsider this. Indeed many Democrats have been confused because the Republicans were urging a balanced budget on us for years then under Bush, Cheney declared, "Reagan showed deficits don't matter." Yet now that there's a Democrat in the White House again, they matter again. This is the postiion.

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2011/11/why-deficits-only-matter-when-democrat.html

   In the same vein I am currently reading Joseph Stigltiz's "The Roaring 90s" a must read for a liberal Democrat who really wants to know what to think about the Clinton 90s. Stiglitz was there, he was part of the Clinton Administration as the Chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and he does a great job of showing what the Administration does and does not deserve credit for in retrospect.