I ran into the periphery of an argument about the question “Are government bonds money?” on Twitter. I have seen variants of this question in “internet MMT” discussions for some time. I think this question confirms my view that we need to abolish “money” from economic theory
That's probably where the confusion comes from. 'Currency' is HPM + Treasuries in the MMT analysis, and it is definitely something else in other analyses.
"In the US, the dollar is our state money of account and high powered money
(HPM or coins, green paper money, and bank reserves) is our state
monopolized currency. I prefer to expand the conventional definition of
currency because US Treasuries (bills and bonds) are just HPM that pays
interest (indeed, US Treasuries are effectively reserve deposits at the Fed
that pay higher interest than regular reserves), so we will include HPM plus
Treasuries as the government currency monopoly."
https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/Wray_Understanding_Modern.pdf
That's probably where the confusion comes from. 'Currency' is HPM + Treasuries in the MMT analysis, and it is definitely something else in other analyses.