Price rises should be short-lived – so let’s not resurrect inflation as a bogeyman | William Mitchell

Until full employment is reached, governments need not cut back on public spending

A decade ago the financial press, echoing predictions from mainstream macroeconomists, obsessed about whether governments would run out of money as deficits rose to combat the global financial crisis. Stark predictions of rising bond yields and inevitable debt defaults came to nought.

Now, with much larger deficits, the headlines are all about inflation. No one seems worried any longer about government insolvency as capitalism survives on fiscal life-support systems. The focus has shifted from meaningless financial ratios to substantive issues relating to real resource scarcity (that is, how close nations are to full employment). However, the inflation mania is as misconstrued as the earlier solvency fears.

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William Mitchell is a professor of economics at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and docent professor of global political economy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is one of the co-founders of modern monetary theory