Bernie Sanders' adviser to join advisory group for new indy economics organisation

26th February 2019

Professor Stephanie Kelton to join group of economics advisers to new MMT Scotland group

New Scottish economics group to argue for Modern Monetary Theory policies for independent state.

Some of the worlds most influencial MMT advocates to join advisory panel, including key Sanders 2016 campaign adviser Prof Stephanie Kelton.

MMT part of a new wave of economic thought around the developed world.

Heterodox economic school sets economic thinkers in opposition to Growth Commission Sterlingisation proposal.

ONE of the advisers to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign will join a panel of prestigious economic advisers for the new Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Scotland group being launched at meetings in Glasgow and Edinburgh in May.

Professor Stephanie Kelton of Stony Brook University is one of the US' most high profile experts on MMT, which posits that governments which control their money supply can determine their own level of spending, and that fiscal constraints on public debt have played far too large a role in modern economic policy.

She is one of several high profile economists who will serve on an advisory group of a new economic network devoted to MMT in Scotland and its application in an independent Scottish state. The advisery panel will also include Warren Mosler and Professor Bill Mitchell, two of the world's leading MMT thinkers, Professor Mathew Forstater of University of Missouri-Kansas City and Fadhel Kaboub, Associate Professor of Economics at Denison University, among others.

The new group supports Scottish independence, but will seek to address the wider UK economic landscape with MMT solutions to ongoing problems in the economy, and reach those either side of the constitutional debate with its message.

Read more: 5 big ‘rock the boat' ideas the indy movement could take from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Speaking to CommonSpace, one of MMT Scotland's co-founders Cameron Archibald said that MMT's ideas were necessary in Scotland at a time when monetary policy was being debated.

He said: "Countries with their own currency, their own central bank, who can control how their money works, are much better suited to meet the needs of their population compared to a country that uses the currency of another country."

The SNP Growth Commission proposals, published in May last year, called for 'Sterlingisation' - the continued use by an independent Scotland of the UK's currency, without an independent central bank and the monetary policy levers available to most independent countries.

MMT has been developing as a body of economic thought for decades, but has become more popular among economists since the 2008 financial crisis, most prominently in its analysis of the subsequent Eurozone debt crisis, which was predicted by MMT economists years prior because of the use of the Euro across many, often divergent, European economies.

Read more at Common Space