MMT in six hundred words.

Scott Fulwiller produced a paper which I gather Stephanie Kelton recommended to Larry Summers as an introduction to MMT. The title of the paper is "The Debt Ratio and Sustainable Macroeconomic Policy." Only trouble is that the paper is about 30,000 words.

Here’s my (perhaps cheeky) 600 word introduction.

1. Base money (i.e. state / central bank issued money) is a net asset as viewed by the non –bank private sector, and indeed as viewed by the private sector as a whole. It is also a very liquid asset: that is, it is most certainly a form of money. That’s as distinct from commercial bank issued money which is very definitely not a net asset for the non-bank private sector private sector: reason is that for every dollar of such money, there is a dollar of debt owed by non-bank entities to banks.

2. The typical household’s weekly spending varies with its stock of money: to illustrate, it’s pretty obvious that where a household comes by a thousand dollar windfall, e.g. a lottery win, the household’s weekly spending is likely to rise.

3. Ergo, to escape a recession, all the state needs to do is to create and spend more base money into the private sector, as indeed recommended by Keynes in the early 1930s. That works for two reasons, first the mere fact of spending that money will raise employment, e.g. spending more on schools causes more teachers to be employed. Second, there is the delayed effect of that spending raising households’ stock of money.

4. Note that while the conventional wisdom has it that only commercial banks can get their hands on base money (ignoring central bank issued paper money, e.g. $100 bills), that bit of conventional wisdom is not entirely correct. That is, when the state creates and spends more on the above mentioned schools for example, money flows into the bank accounts of teachers (and others), who deposit the money at their commercial banks,  and relevant commercial banks deposit that money at the central bank. Thus IN EFFECT teachers (and indeed butchers, bakers and candle stick makers) all possess or have control over sums of money lodged at the central bank (with relevant commercial banks acting as go-betweens between households and the central bank.

5. The arguments for government borrowing are far from clear. Milton Friedman and Warren Mosler (founder of MMT) advocated a “zero government borrowing” regime. While having the central bank (or Treasury) raise interest rates in an emergency, i.e. so as to cool down given a bout of irrational exuberance is clearly a useful tool to have in reserve, there is basically no point in the state (i.e. central bank and government) spending so much base money into the private sector, that the state then has to borrow some of that money back so as to cool things down.

Therein lies the logic of the MMT “permanent zero interest rate” idea: that is, the aim should be for the state to spend just enough base money into the private sector to bring about full employment without excess inflation, but no so much that the state has to borrow some of that money back at interest so as to cool things down. Apart from anything else, the latter borrowing involves collecting tax off the population as a whole, including the less well off, so as to fund interest paid to those who hoard money.

George Selgin’s book: “The Menace of Fiscal QE”.

 
Summary.   This book (or “essay” as Selgin calls it, since it’s shorter than the average book) basically argues against fiscal – monetary coordination (FMC), i.e. having the central bank create money with government spending it (and/or cutting taxes). Selgin’s reason is the inflationary danger.

Unfortunately, as is widely recognised nowadays with interest rates being at record lows, central banks may be right out of ammunition come another recession, in which case some sort of unconventional measure like FMC will just have to be used. But Selgin says very little on how that might work. So to that extent his work is not a useful contribution to the debate.

He does however refer briefly to a “coordinating method” advocated here, which is not set out in much detail but which seems to be roughly similar to the method Positive Money has advocated for about ten years, and which Ben Bernanke advocated a couple of years ago. But Selgin dismisses that method: he claims it still poses inflationary dangers.

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There have been increased calls in recent years, as Selgin explains in detail, for direct central bank funding of various government programmes: i.e. calls for central banks to simply create money and to have government spend it.  For example there’s “People’s QE”, “Green QE” and advocates of Modern Monetary Theory tend to argue for that type of “print and spend” system, though in the case of MMT, the forms of spending envisaged are normally not limited to matters “green” or limited to anything else.

Selgin’s recently published book / essay, argues against this development because of the apparent inflationary risks: that is, he argues basically that once everyone, especially politicians, get the idea that the central bank can simply create / print money to fund popular vote winning types of public spending, there’s a danger that the printing presses will then go into over-drive with disastrous inflationary consequences.

The first problem with that argument is that in some countries, politicians have had effective control over central banks (what might be called “non independent” central banks) without disastrous inflationary consequences. The Bank of England was an example up to 1997 when it was given nominal independence. I.e. since WWII and up to 1997 UK politicians controlled the printing press. But for most of that time, inflation in the UK was not excessive. (Although having said that, I do favour independent rather than non-independent central banks.)

Second, given that central banks may be right out of ammunition come another recession, it’s pretty obvious that some sort of unconventional measure will be needed, e.g. FMC. But Selgin has little to say on how that might work. 

Indeed, the concluding chapter is so short (just over a hundred words) that I’ve reproduced it in full below just to demonstrate Selgin’s lack of concern as to how FMC might work.

But first some points on his terminology. His phrase “fiscal quantitative easing” is synonymous with FMC. Second, what he calls the “corridor system” is that system that existed before the very large increase in bank reserves that came about as a result of the 2007/8 crisis: that is, central banks influenced interest rates by keeping commercial banks short of reserves, and varying the extent to which they were short. That’s in contrast to what he calls the “floor system” which is the system in existence at the time of writing, i.e. a system that involves banks have a very large stock of reserves.

The concluding chapter runs thus.

The Fed’s post-crisis operating framework exposes it to pressure to resort to “fiscal” quantitative easing, aimed not at combating recession but at financing government programs. Should the Fed be unable to resist such pressure, or should Congress pass legislation compelling it to undertake fiscal QE, the consequences are likely to prove harmful to both the general public and the Fed itself. And although Congress might take steps to guard against such future abuse of the Fed’s quantitative easing powers, that solution is both less likely and less appealing than the alternative: which is for the Fed itself to rule out the possibility of fiscal QE by switching from its present “floor” operating framework to a symmetric corridor system.

And that’s it!


A possible coordination system.

Having said that Selgin has little to say on how coordination might work, he does refer to a system set out in a very brief and vague fashion in this article (which I dealt with yesterday on this blog).

The passage in that article which according to Selgin sets out a coordination system (which is called a “standing emergency fiscal facility” (SEFF)) runs as follows.

 “Our proposal is for an unusual coordination of fiscal and monetary policy that is limited to an unusual situation—a liquidity trap—with a predefined exit point and an explicit inflation objective. Quasi-fiscal credit easing, such as central bank purchases of private assets, could be operated by the SEFF rather than the central bank alone to separate monetary and fiscal decisions.”

But in the next paragraph, Selgin says “…what is to keep it (i.e. government) from abusing the SEFF? What guarantee is there, in other words, that the SEFF will itself remain entirely under the Fed’s control?”

Well perhaps I can answer that question with another question: what is to stop any government putting pressure, even extreme pressure on a central bank? The answer is “basically nothing”!

After all, government controls the Army, Navy, Airforce and the Police, and when push comes to shove you can’t argue with that lot. And in fact in various counties ever since central banks were first set up, politicians have tried to put pressure on central banks. Donald Trump is certainly not innocent on that count.

All we can do is agree on a set of rules on exactly how the monetary system, interest rates, the deficit and so on are to be organised and try to keep to those rules. Politicians may well trample on those rules, but in a country where there is respect for the rule of law, separation of powers and so on, any politician doing that runs the risk of unpopularity and losing the next election.


Positive Money.

Anyway, having criticised Selgin for his silence on how FMC might work, it is perhaps incumbent on me to be more positive and say how I think it should work. Well the answer is simple: I can’t improve on the system advocated by Ben Dyson (founder of Positive Money) and Andrew Jackson in their book “Modernising Money”, a system which Ben Bernanke recently said he approved of (though Bernanke didn’t specifically mention Dyson & Jackson or Positive Money).

Under the D&J system, the central bank controls not just interest rates, but also the size of the budget deficit. To be accurate, D&J say that it does not absolutely have to be the central bank which wields that control: they say it could by any independent committee of economists, but to keep things simple, let’s assume the central bank does that job.

So under that system, where interest rates had declined to near zero, and more stimulus was needed, the central bank would automatically start to think about expanding the deficit (funded by new money if the central bank thought that appropriate).

Note that the D&J system is entirely consistent with Simon Wren-Lewis’s claim, namely that when interest rates are significantly above zero, interest rate cuts should be used to impart stimulus, whereas when rates are at or near zero, fiscal stimulus should kick in.

D&J’s ideas are also consistent with the claim made by many MMTers (e.g. me) that we should have a permanent zero interest rate, i.e. that there should be no government borrowing.

A couple of obvious, but actually flawed objections can be raised to the D&J system, as follows.

1. It could be argued that D&J were arguing for full reserve banking and that their system is therefore not suitable for a conventional banking set up (fractional reserve). Well the answer to that is that the full versus fractional reserve argument is actually entirely separate from the “FMC versus no FMC” argument. I.e. the DJ system (minus full reserve) would be perfectly feasible.

2. It might be said in criticism of D&J that politicians have a right to have a say in how much stimulus we have in any given year and that the D&J system is therefore undemocratic. Well the simple answer to that is that politicians lost their say in how much stimulus there is long ago where central banks became independent!

That is, politicians can implement as much fiscal stimulus as they like, but if an independent central bank doesn’t like that, it will negate that fiscal stimulus with an interest rate hike!

European Money and Finance Forum article tries to solve a problem solved long ago by Positive Money.

Summary. The EMFF article advocates a way of organising monetary / fiscal coordination which is actually pretty close to the method advocated by Ben Dyson, founder of Positive Money, about ten years ago.

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The article is entitled “Dealing with the Next Downturn”.
 
My only reason for looking at this article is that George Selgin, while he recently wrote a book arguing against monetary / fiscal coordination (i.e. having the central bank create money with government spending it) nevertheless concedes that such coordination might have merits, and he recommended this article as a way forward with “coordination”.  Unfortunately, if you’re looking for something worthwhile on such coordination, this “Dealing with the Next Downturn” article is not recommended, for reasons set out below.

First, it’s important to note that this article is by four Black Rock people, thus this is probably a case of a financial institution (i.e. Black Rock) trying to buy academic credibility. But never mind, let’s run thru the article to see what it says.

According to the first paragraph of the summary, the purpose of the article (as suggested above) is to examine monetary fiscal coordination in view of the fact that central banks are near out of ammunition and thus may well have to resort to unconventional measures like monetary fiscal coordination come another recession.

The article starts (under the heading “An Unusual Staring Point”) with the bizarre but widely accepted idea that 2% inflation is some sort of end in itself. The reality is that 2% inflation is not any sort of fundamental objective: the fundamental objective is to minimise unemployment as far as is consistent with acceptable inflation, with 2% having been chosen (for no particularly brilliant reasons) as being the maximum acceptable amount of inflation. (To be clear, I’ve no big quarrel with the 2% figure, but it is nevertheless a bit arbitrary: 3% or 1.5% would do equally well I’d guess.)

The next section entitled “Eroding policy space” says nothing of interest, though there’s a large and impossible to miss reference to Black Rock (plus a similar reference in the next section) thus drawing attention to Black Rock is clearly one of the main objectives of the article.

As to the latter “next section” (entitled “Conventional Fiscal Policy”), this section trotts out another popular myth, namely that fiscal stimulus is  all very well, but the additional borrowing involved is likely to raise interest rates.

Well the first answer to that was given by Keynes nearly a hundred years ago, namely that there is no need to borrow to fund fiscal stimulus: that is, come a recession, governments and their central banks can impart stimulus by simply creating new money and spending it (and/or cutting taxes). So congratulations to the Black Rock authors for being about a hundred years behind the times on that one.

Indeed, it’s a bit odd in an article devoted to considering the possibility of having the central bank create money with government spending it, to ignore the possibility that the central bank can create money with government spending it!


Ricardian equivalence.

Then in the para starting “Record debt levels…”, the authors trott out another popular myth: that is they claim that if government and central bank print or borrow loads of money, households will think that money will need to be paid back and will thus cut their weekly spending so as to be able to afford the extra taxes raised to enable that “pay back”.

Well the idea that the average household keeps an eye on government debt and the implications for future adjustments for tax is straight out of la-la land. As Joseph Stiglitz put it, “Ricardian equivalence is taught in every graduate school in the country. It is also sheer nonsense.”

But never mind: the evidence is piling up that the purpose of this article is to churn out words with a view to the authors being paid loads of bucks by Black Rock and for Black Rock, as mentioned above, to buy academic respectability.


Inflation.

Then in the para starting “That highlights..”, the authors worry about the inflationary effects of creating money and spending it into the economy. Well if creating money and spending it (and/or cutting taxes) raises employment and inflation, then doing the reverse (i.e. raising taxes and WITHDRAWING money from the economy) ought to do the reverse! Can’t see the problem!

Then the authors do in a very vague way set out some sort of coordination system. They say "Our proposal is for an unusual coordination of fiscal and monetary policy that is limited to an unusual situation – a liquidity trap – with a pre-defined exit point and an explicit inflation objective. Quasi-fiscal credit easing, such as central bank purchases of private assets...".

Well now Positive Money (or perhaps I should say Ben Dyson, founder of Positive Money) set a very simple and clear “policy framework”. It’s to have the central bank determine both interest rate adjustments and the size of the deficit, while politicians continue to take strictly political decisions, like what percentage of GDP is allocated to public spending.

For a quick summary of the Positive Money system, see under the heading “Bank of England would choose…” (p.10-12) here.
 
Note that while that work authored by Positive Money and others advocates full reserve banking, the full versus fractional reserve argument is actually quite separate from the coordination debate. That is, it would be perfectly feasible to switch to a system where the central bank determines both interest rates and the size of the deficit in the US, UK or anywhere else within the next month or two, and without switching to full reserve.


Conclusion.

The EMFF authors seem to be fumbling their way in a vague sort of way towards a system set out in much more detail around ten years ago by Ben Dyson and Andrew Jackson in their book Modernising Money.

Government borrowing is pointless.

I actually addressed this issue on this blog in November last year, but on re-reading that article, it struck me as leaving room for improvement. So I’ve scrubbed it and re-written it in the paragraphs below. Here goes.

Both Milton Friedman and Warren Mosler (founder of Modern Monetary Theory) claimed that government borrowing is pointless, though they did not give any very detailed reasons. To be more accurate, Friedman claimed government borrowing served no useful purpose except in an emergency like war time, while Mosler simply said he opposed government borrowing.

For Friedman see under his heading “Operation of the proposal” in this paper of his entitled “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability” published by the American Economic Review.

For Mosler, see the second last para of his Huffington article, “Proposals for the Banking System”.

In view of Friedman and Mosler’s lack of detailed reasons, I’m having a go at setting out some detailed reasons.

First, it’s important to distinguish between government borrowing as traditionally understood and another possible form of borrowing, which is to have government (or central bank) borrow with a view to damping down demand given an outbreak of irrational exuberance: i.e. excess demand. That form of borrowing would involve borrowing money and then doing nothing with that money.  I’m not advocating the latter form of borrowing as a particularly good way of dealing with excess demand, but clearly it’s a useful tool to have in reserve.

Second it’s important to distinguish between borrowing to fund current spending, and in contrast, borrowing to fund spending of a capital nature, i.e. investment spending. It is widely accepted by borrowing to fund current spending (both in the case of a household and in the case of government) does not make much sense. So that leaves capital spending.

For the naïve, that’s people who think government budgets can be treated the same way as household budgets, the purpose of government borrowing seems obvious: government borrows $Xbn instead of grabbing $Xbn off taxpayers. That borrowing appears to provide government with money to spend without any immediate costs for taxpayers or citizens generally.

There is however a problem, which is that the laws of macro-economics are very different to micro-economics: in particular, for every billion a year of extra spending by government (macro), private sector spending must be cut by a billion a year, assuming to keep things simple, that aggregate demand is to remain constant.  In contrast, when a household (micro) goes on a spending spree (e.g. buys a new house) as a result of having borrowed a large sum, there is no immediate need for it to cut down all that much on spending in other areas, e.g. on clothes, holidays, though of course over the very long term (decades rather than years) it will have to cut spending so as to repay the loan, or at the very least pay interest in the case of an interest only mortgage.

But does having government borrow a billion actually cut private spending by a billion? Certainly not! In fact it might not cut it at all. After all, those who lend to government, i.e. the well off, don’t invest in government bonds (or anything else) unless they think it makes them better off in the long run. So the net effect could easily be to increase spending by the private sector!

Of course raising taxes so as to fund interest on the sum borrowed will cut household spending, but that cut won’t be nearly enough: the cut required is the full amount of the capital sum borrowed, not just the amount of the interest thereon for a year or two.

Bill Mitchell draws attention to this nonsense, or at least implicitly draws attention to it in this video clip, where he says government bonds do not cut inflation.

And to add insult to injury, the above farce is even worse in the case of government bonds bought by foreigners. To illustrate, if someone in Switzerland buys UK government bonds, that might depress private sector spending in Switzerland (though for reasons given above, even that is doubtful). But it certainly won’t depress private sector spending in the UK!

Next, there is the problem of funding interest on the sums government borrows. If government simply raises taxes on the rich and poor in the same ratio as already obtains (which of course will involve, at least hopefully, taxing the rich more than the poor) then that still means the after tax income of the typical rich person has risen relative to the after tax income of the typical poor person. And that’s presumably not what government or the electorate would want, thus government will need to load some extra tax on the rich while reducing taxes on the poor so as to get back to, or near to the after tax income distribution that government and the electorate wants. In fact to get back to the “after tax income of the rich relative to the after tax income of the poor ratio” that existed prior to the above bout of capital spending, government will need to rob the rich of ALL OF the interest the rich get from lending to government, far as I can see.

Even if that latter point of mine is not quite right, it still looks like it would be much simpler to fund the capital spending by raising taxes on the rich and poor in a way that leaves after tax income distribution as between rich and poor at about the level that government and the electorate desires, and forget all about borrowing. That would be a lot simpler wouldn’t it?


Profligate politicians.

Another problem with borrowing is the temptation for politicians to borrow too much. Simon Wren-Lewis (former Oxford economics prof) refers to this problem as the “deficit bias”.

And David Hume writing three hundred years ago made exactly the same point when he said, “It is very tempting to a minister to employ such an expedient, as enables him to make a great figure during his administration, without overburdening the people with taxes, or exciting any immediate clamors against himself. The practice, therefore, of contracting debt, will almost infallibly be abused in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker’s shop in London, than to empower a statesman to draw bills, in this manner, upon posterity.”

Conclusion. Given the tendency of politicians to borrow too much and given that government borrowing achieves nothing or almost nothing, it looks like the best course of action is to simply abolish government debt!


The future generations myth.

And finally, there is the popular myth that since sums borrowed by government this year must be paid back in several decades time, that will enable to cost of capital projects to be loaded onto the future generations which benefit from such capital projects (bridges etc).

The flaw in that idea is that future generations inherit not just a liability, that is, the obligation to repay the latter government debt, but also an asset, namely relevant government bonds!

In fact the latter point stems more from the laws of physics rather than the laws of economics. That is, it just isn't physically possible to build a bridge in 2020 using steel and concrete produced in 2030 or 2040 etc. I.e. the blood sweat and tears required to build a bridge in 2020 absolutely must be expended in 2020 (or a year or two earlier).

Incidentally I'm well aware of "overlapping generations" idea proposed by Nick Rowe which claims to make the latter "load costs onto future generations" idea work. I'm not impressed by that idea, but the reasons are too involved to deal with here.

Grace Blakeley.

What – so those who “came of age” ten, twenty or thirty years earlier are too dumb or now too senile to work out that “mainstream economics has massive flaws”?

Also I’d guess that people who “came of age” in the 1930s high unemployment era also worked out that the economic system has “massive flaws”.

Come to that, I’d guess those who experienced bank crises and booms and busts in the 1800s tumbled to the above point as well….:-)

Simon Wren-Lewis tries to argue for unskilled immigration to the UK.

SW-L is a former Oxford economics prof and his article is entitled “Low paid jobs for British born workers”.

He starts (first four paras) with a hypothetical scenario where half UK employees are skilled and half are unskilled, and then claims (quite rightly) that if we have only skilled immigration, that will mean the proportion of native Brits in unskilled jobs will rise to above 50%. As he puts it “That has to mean that among British born workers, less than 50% are now skilled and over 50% are unskilled.” And that apparently is to be deplored.

But what exactly is wrong with a higher proportion of unskilled natives having jobs? Darned if I know! Far from being a disaster, more jobs for the unskilled strikes me as a win win. 

Just to emphasise my point, in SW-L’s hypothetical scenario, there is NO SHIFT for native workers FROM skilled work to UNSKILLED work: all that happens is that unemployment among the unskilled section of the workforce falls.

Then later in the article, SW-L advocates a very old and far from original way of raising the pay of the unskilled: raise the minimum wage. Well no one can possibly object to that if there are few job losses for the unskilled as a result. Unfortunately the evidence on that is mixed: i.e. the exact level of minimum wage pay at which the effects on jobs for the unskilled become serious is not entirely clear. A German study found that the recent rise in the minimum wage had in fact resulted in a significant number of job losses for the low paid.

And finally SW-L appears to be totally unaware of the point that if the UK imports both skilled and unskilled people, the only net effect is an expanded population. Now given that the UK is one of the most densely populated countries in the World, and given huge rise in real house prices over the last twenty years, and the difficulty those on lowish incomes have buying a home, a rise in the population doesn’t strike me as a brilliant idea.

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Afterthought (same day, 27th Feb 2020).

It occurred to me a few hours after publishing the above that the above “win win” point needs explaining more thoroughly, so here goes.

The constraint on raising demand is basically a shortage of skilled labour or at least specific types of labour. So assuming the economy is at capacity prior to importing a set of skilled workers who have jobs lined up, i.e. who have spotted unfilled skilled vacancies in the UK, then demand can be raised when those immigrants arrive, and not just by enough to employ those immigrants, but by an additional amount: that is enough to employ however many unskilled people are needed to work alongside the latter skilled people.

Ergo, the net effect is that unemployment among unskilled native Brits declines, and with no adverse inflationary consequences. At least that is the INITIAL effect. But there’s a problem (and this is actually an additional or entirely new point, not alluded to above.)

The nature or type of skills in surplus and short supply is constantly changing. Thus there is no reason to suppose that roughly six months or a year after importing that above set of skilled immigrants, the inflationary pressures deriving from labour market inefficiencies won’t return the maximum feasible level of employment consistent with acceptable inflation back to its original level. In which case the original importation of the above original set of skilled immigrants will achieve very little apart from increasing the size of the population.

Incidentally, readers versed in economics may be wondering why I use the cumbersome phrase “maximum feasible level of employment consistent with acceptable inflation” when there is a vastly shorter acronym I could use: NAIRU. Well the reason is that over the last five years a large number of idiots have appeared out of the woodwork claiming NAIRU is nonsense, but for some bizarre reason, they’re perfectly happy if you refer the IDEA behind the acronym using different words and letters (which supports my contention that they are idiots).

It's a bit like a bunch of hypothetical people who are triggered by the word "car", but are perfectly happy with "steel box on four wheels powered by an internal combusion engine".

At any rate, mollifying idiots is always important, which is why I’m a firm believer in mollifying idiots. Incidentally and ironically SW-L himself had a go at the people who are triggered by the acronym “NAIRU”. I’m not sure how successful he was....:-)

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Household name economist doesn’t know what the job of being an economist entails.

John B Taylor (inventor of the “Taylor rule”) claims the US deficit should be reduced by cutting public spending. That’s in his Project Syndicate article “Restoring Fiscal Order in the United States”.

Well the first bit of nonsense there is that it is not the job of economists to pass judgement on strictly political matters, like what proportion of GDP should be allocated to public spending, unless there are major economic consequences or implications deriving from a change to the latter proportion.  And it would seem that significant rise in the proportion of GDP allocated to public spending (as opposed to the cut in public spending advocated by Taylor) does not have major economic consequences. To illustrate, several European countries devote a much higher proportion of GDP to public spending than the US, and the “disastrous” consequences of that are what exactly? Scandinavian citizens are perfectly happy with their relatively generous social security system and enjoy standards of living much the same as Americans.

The above failure by economists to understand that it is not their job to pass judgement on political matters is actually quite common in the economics profession: John B. Taylor is far from the only one who does not seem to understand that point.

Second, what does Taylor think he is doing passing judgement on what the optimum size of the deficit and debt will be in ten or twenty years’ time? Barmy. It may be that the private sector will want to accumulate state supplied financial assets (base money and government debt) in ten years time, or it may not. If it does, and government does not supply those assets, then the private sector (and foreign government sector) will try to acquire those assets by saving rather than spending, and that will just give rise to what Keynes called “paradox of thrift unemployment”.

Again Taylor is far from the only economist who makes that mistake.
 
You really have to wonder whether some senior members of the economics profession have the faintest idea whether they are coming or going.

And finally I am always amused by the non stop attempts by Project Syndicate to get people to actually pay to read the nonsense they publish. What’s got into their head?