I am aware that Heather Stewart's article in the Guardian, in response to Zack Polanski's speech yesterday, has grossly misrepresented modern monetary theory.
She said:
But Polanski called for a much more radical approach – of scrapping the OBR altogether in favour of what he called “fiscal referees”, who would give a general ruling on whether the government's plans looked sustainable, rather than a pass or fail against narrowly drawn rules.
That would be a significant shift, and might cause market anxiety, but steers well short of modern monetary theory, which Polanski has previously been accused of flirting with, and which suggests governments can simply print money.
Apart from Heather Stewart clearly misinterpreting the speech by conflating these two issues, she is also grossly wrong in her representation of MMT. I have sent a letter to the Guardian this morning pointing this out.
There is, of course, no guarantee that the Guardian will publish my letter. Others may wish to join in. One of us might succeed.
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Once upon a time, a politician would campaign to erase a government department that seemed to have out lived its purpose. The politician would claim to be returning to a more simple form of government that had previously existed. There was nothing to fear. This was called conservatism and certainly not radical. I don’t know the purpose of the OBR. MMT makes the case that it is completely irrelevant. We have become so devoid of our own self confidence that we can’t live without the rubber stamp approval of a government body. No thank you.
I have always read and understood the function of the OBR to be ideological legitimation – at least with the rules constructed as they are. Legitimation of constrained budgets, which keep the government out of the economy as much as possible.
Of course, a body whose job is to confer and counsel the government is not necessarily a bad thing. It is all dependent on the metrics it chooses to use, and the mechanisms by which is calculate. The OBR is not a shining example of either.
Much to agree with
Thanks for the call to arms Richard 🙂
I’ll get writing as soon as I can.
At the risk of giving you more to moderate today, I have to relate the following to the blog.
This society of ours is caught in some sort of death wish and if not that, gratuitous self flagellation concerning money?
Last night on R4 was Michael Burke (or is it ‘berk’) on the ‘Moral Maze’ discussing (wait for it) our inability to ‘sacrifice’ things these days informed by the sin of people asking for help from the government with living costs. Apparently, it is our fault for not wanting to lose something that makes us rely on someone to do something for us. Some people happen to think that that is wrong, a sign of weakness. And that if we learnt to sacrifice more we would be able to cope…………with even less than what we have got now. Apparently we are all spoilt rotten these days. The intellectual rigor was ……….amazing (not)!
I sat there – incredulous – listening to this shit wondering if I was actually awake and unfortunately I was. All Berk (sic) had to add was a northern accent and it would have sounded like the 4 Yorkshireman sketch from Monty Python – but for real!!
The excuses that pleonexia and Neo-liberalism produces for greed never end do they – ‘out-sourcing’ the causes of the problem to anyone but those whose rapaciousness really causes it – themselves.
Sickening………………..
I have been a guest on the Moral Maze several times.
My summary is that it is set up to deliver right wing bullshit both by the choice of most of the panel lists and by the chair.
As that is, its goal, it succeeds.
I am not sure that I would bother again.
I listened to the Moral ‘Haze’ by mistake – the invective it brought forth ensured that it was quickly turned off.
🙂
Last night’s panel was set up as left (Matthew Taylor and Ash Sarkar) and right (James Orr (JD Vance’s buddy) and Ella Whelan (Academy of Ideas and GB News), so, on the face of it, the producers were aiming at balance, but it sounds like they failed miserably.
Matthew Taylor is not on the left
The first speaker – James Bartholomew – was infuriating. The household model was taken as read. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” got its usual mention, without any indication that Smith first wrote a book about moral sentiments. We are living beyond our means, and passing a burden of debt on to our children and grandchildren (no mention of the creditor’s position: to whom is that “debt” owed?).
Government spending must be cut, and atomised individuals must learn to live (or die) within their own means. Else we will never get “growth” (no mention of who benefits from that “growth”). It seems the rich have the right to get ever richer and everyone else must starve. And on it went.
No value ascribed to “the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play […] the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials […] our wit […] courage […] wisdom […] compassion”
Sounds like you had half an hour you won’t get back
Rupert Read did his best. What was extraordinary about the set-up of the programme was the lack of distinction between the moral case for sacrifice. It’s a completely different question for the rich and the less well-off.
I have played cricket with Michael Buerk, and yes all BBC panel discussions tend to be rigged to the right. Buerk introduce the IEA lobby tanker as being from a ‘think tank’.. Grace Blakeley did provide some balance but was more or less labelled extreme left before she spoke.
I noticed that Ms Stewart is a former Economics editor at the Grauniad and a holder of the dreaded PPE from Oxford. Could this be an adaptation of the famous Upton Sinclair quote?
Of course, our government does create money, most of it not printed. Lazy trope.
I have also sent the Guardian a letter – without much expectation.
Thanks
Letter sent.
More economic stupidity…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/mar/19/bank-of-england-interest-rates-decision-hold-inflation-oil-gas-iran-wage-growth-slows-latest-news-updates
Not a single word of explanation as to HOW rising BoE base rates will deal with the external inflation pressures. Not a single word.
That’s our medicine, says the unanimous vote of the MPC, and if we won’t swallow it then it will be administered to us forcibly by stomach tube.
Noted
[the guardian, domain removed to not add extra seo clout to nonsense]/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/19/why-mortgage-rates-going-up-bank-of-england-base-rate-same
I came to share this link on your post about YouTube as an example of the kinds of things I’d get value from in your content – I think it’s a valid question I’d like to understand better, but then I read this..
“In the UK this will typically be for two, three or five years, and funded by a mixture of money saved in banks and building societies and money that lenders have borrowed on the wholesale markets”
“To provide the money for mortgages, “lenders use their own funds and also borrow money at variable rates, which comes with risk””
I stopped reading about here. I’m genuinely interested in explainers of topical things like this, but if I can’t trust them on the basic details, how can I trust the conclusions!?
I have done many such explainers
This is dire, although fair for building societies
I’ve sent a letter. I’ve read the article and her statement about MMT demonstrates she either hasn’t done the reading and doesn’t understand MMT or she is being deliberately misleading to discredit Zach. I suspect the latter as she surely can’t be that ignorant.
The idea of “fiscal referees” does seem preferable to the OBR trying to ensure strict adherence to these arbitrary (imaginary even) fiscal “rules”. However, the referees would have to be people who know how the economy and, in particular, money creation works. Messrs Murphy and Keen ideal candidates if the budget would allow!
Thanks
I went down the Complaints route:
Email as sent:
QUOTE
Article:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/18/zack-polanski-greens-economic-policy-reeves-taxes-labour
Incorrect information:
“… steers well short of modern monetary theory, which Polanski has previously been accused of flirting with, and which suggests governments can simply print money.”
No informed writing on Modern Monetary Theory suggests such a thing.
The phrase “printing money” is the most dangerous lie told about the UK economy, and paralyses any genuine understanding by the public of the government’s power. As such, its use in a national newspaper affects any correspondence I have with my MP and the BBC, regarding the truth of the economy and its portrayal in Parliament and in the media.
All government spending in a sovereign, fiat-currency-issuing State such as the UK (and nearly all modern economies) is a function of the State’s monopoly power to create money – but that money is created in the UK by the act of spending against a line of credit from the Bank of England. Only if the real resources, priced in pounds, exist in the economy can new money be created, and only by the act of purchasing. There is no mechanism for “simply printing money”.
Citation:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2022/may/self-financing-state-institutional-analysis
Abstract: Selected quote:
“We find, first, that the UK Government creates new money and purchasing power when it undertakes expenditure […]”
END QUOTE
I’m not holding my breath.
Her article was not, I note with some amusement, open to comments. The Guardian is increasingly paranoid as to comments; their undying support of Starmer’s neoliberalism is getting a savage kicking when they do open.
From the article: “As Michael Jacobs, a professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and a former Labour adviser, puts it: “Most economists would say in circumstances in which prices are rising: you should subsidise energy saving, not bill-paying.” What I would strongly support would be a kind of bill-support which would tax the money back out of existence once the utility hucksters had it to tax from the consumer. Note the grotesque profits British Gas etc made from the fuel subsidies handed out in 2022/23 – anyone would think that’s why the Tories really gave away all that money!
“Comment is free”. Really?
I will write to the Guardian. More to the point, perhaps ALL (or as many as possible) of your readers should write to the Guardian. How many letters would that be? And while I’m about it, why don’t ALL of us write to the rest of the written & broadcast media, then the Treasury, week by week, & don’t forget local MPs. political parties, unions, etc..etc….Forget petitions & crank up the volume of letters – something has to be done in addition to your efforts Richard to break through the glass ceiling….
It would make a difference
Heather’s commentary record is patchy at the best of timed. In a way, gross caricatures misrepresentations such as she presents here offer the best opportunities to improve both the breadth and depth of public understanding of pivotal sets of arguments; more are bound to complain/protest and, best of all, those in charge will scratch their heads looking for answers.
Plus, beyond seizing opportunities to get better hearings for MMT, there are openings for demanding that HM Treasury and it’s public and private second-guessers, learn to better assess how and where public expenditure best increases productive capacities. Until that enters into public understanding, we’ll never get beyond merely countercyclical applications of Keynes’s kry insights.
We are forever getting a basically incorrect analysis from so-called economic correspondents, especially those who really should know better.
Are they afraid that cognitive dissonance through admitting failure might cause these people to ‘lose their shit’?
If they know they are wrong and continue to take the pieces of silver, then they really are abject human beings, deserving of pity.
I admire people writing to their editors and producers, yet suspect these people are forever guarding their own jobs while unconcerned with the concept of truthful journalism. Depressing.
No letter was published today
letter below sent
Dear Sir
The article entitled ‘Polanski positions Greens’ economic policy as radical alternative to Reeves’ by Heather Stewart on 18 March was well below the rigorous standards I would expect from the Guardian. Rather than analysis what we got was a defence of Labours position and a misrepresentation of the Green position. To take just two examples, Stewart says that Polanski has “being pilloried for advocating a wealth tax as though it could solve all the country’s ills”. This misses out the fact that those doing the pillorying are the vested in the interests of the wealthy, but more important, Polanski has never claimed the taxing the rich would “solve all the countries ills”. He has only said it would help tackle inequality. The article seriously misrepresents Polanski’s stated position
Second “printing money” is mentioned more than once but where it is mentioned specifically in relation to “modern monetary theory”, it again misrepresents. Polanski is accused of flirting with modern monetary theory “which suggests government can simply print money”. But MMT does not suggest that government can “simply print money” it describes the process of money creation and specially talks about the real constraints on money creation.
Such lazy and misleading journalism does not warrant the title “Analysis’
Thanks. As far as I can see, there is nothing in Today.