John Smithin - Rethinking the Theory of Money, Credit, and Macroeconomics: A New Statement for the Twenty-First Century

Rethinking the Theory
of Money, Credit,
and Macroeconomics

Rethinking the Theory
of Money, Credit,
and Macroeconomics

A New Statement for the
Twenty-First Century

John Smithin

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Lexington Books

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Copyright 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smithin, John N., author.

Title: Rethinking the theory of money, credit, and macroeconomics : a new statement for the twenty-first century / John Smithin.

Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018033338 (print) | LCCN 2018035921 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498542821 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498542814 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Money. | Credit. | Macroeconomics.

Classification: LCC HG221 (ebook) | LCC HG221 .S6437 2018 (print) | DDC 339.5/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033338

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

IN MEMORIAM

Hana Smithin

(ne Hemanksa, bvala Ciprisova)

June 17, 1934, Brno-Tuany, Moravia

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December 16, 2017, Aurora, Ontario

ekni, mi ekni, kde je moje mil?

Contents

A few years ago I chanced to meet with Lord Robert Skidelsky the noted British historian, public intellectual, political commentator, and biographer of Keynes, at an academic conference. He told me that he was working on a book tentatively to be entitled Unsettled Questions in Macroeconomic Policy . I thought that this was a great title, as has been the case with many of Skidelskys books over the years. I wished, not for the first time, that I had had the ability to come up with something similar. The reference is obviously to John Stuart Mills Unsettled Questions in Political Economy of 1844 (Robbins 1967, viiixiii). Mill presumably thought that he had himself settled those questions only four years later in the Principles of Political Economy of 1848. If so, however, he was deceiving himself. In the form presented by Mill all of the outstanding questions have remained unsettled for the past 175 years. Moreover, any and all attempts to challenge economic orthodoxy, such as the valiant effort by Keynes in the mid-twentieth century, have been rebuffed by an uncomprehending economics profession. I was very interested to hear about Professor Sidelskys revival of the idea of unsettled questions. This is because as he has been working on his project I have been working on a book, this book, that I think finally does settle the issues in dispute after all this time.