Macro N Cheese

The Covid19 pandemic is much more than a public health catastrophe; it has highlighted and exacerbated economic, social, and environmental crises on an unprecedented scale. While Congress sits on their hands, a learning-by-doing experiment is already underway at the Federal Reserve. With more than 40 million Americans out of work, the Fed appears ready to fulfill its congressional mandate to both maximize employment and promote stable prices. Indeed, the strongest signal that this time things can be different is the opening of the Fed’s new Municipal Liquidity Facility (MLF), which promises to buy both existing and future state and municipal debt. -- from “Overcoming Covid19 Requires Rethinking University Finance” (see article link below) Our guests, Ben Wilson and Scott Ferguson, are working with others in the MMT community to develop the plan for a new university-issued currency, the Uni, with backing by the Federal Reserve. Universities are not unlike small states or municipalities. They provide jobs an