I saw "Finding the Money" this past Saturday night in New York City at a screening where Stephanie Kelton was part of a post-screening panel that included Stephanie Kelton, the film's director Maren Poitras and others. The movie is very good; I strongly recommend it. But I agree that Jared Bernstein comes off badly -- more than necessarily so. I had friends -- Twitter users -- who saw the movie at earlier screenings and they were eager to tell me about Bernstein. So going into the film I was predisposed to laugh at him but was also expecting to see Larry Summers and Jason Furman be exposed as well.
The film's director has said that most of the interviews were conducted in 2019. At that time Bernstein's long-time boss, Joe Biden, was out of office, so Bernstein was not yet a member or chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. I can't remember how the film captioned him, but he was probably employed at some Democratic think tank -- perhaps the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. According to his Wikipedia page, in 2018 he began a public dialog, "Questions for the MMTers," on the blog which he maintained before he went back to government. Bill Mitchell responded with three posts on his own blog. I haven't read either side of this dialog completely yet, but Mitchell does not appear to have been aiming to diss Bernstein nearly as much as he would have if the other side were Summers, Furman or Paul Krugman. I suspect that it was this public dialog in 2018 that led the filmmaker to request an interview with Bernstein a year later.
I recall seeing a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee in 2021 or so, when it was under Democratic control and the chair was one of the few people in Congress familiar with MMT. Both Bernstein and Randy Wray testified at that hearing. Their relations appeared to be cordial. Though in his first two years in office Biden made the ritual boasts about the deficit-reducing features of his budget, he's been quiet about the deficit since, and I can't recall any anti-MMT statements lately from anyone in the Biden administration. In contrast, Joe Stiglitz and Charles Goodhart launched apparently unsolicited salvoes against MMT when testifying before the British House of Lords back in February.
I note from Bernstein's Wikipedia article that he was a working jazz musician playing acoustic bass, then pivoted to get a Master's in Social Work from the Hunter College School of Social Work. I attempted to play electric bass (never successfully), then later got an MSW from ... the Hunter College School of Social Work!
Many of my MMT acquaintances are two generations younger than me and I've always thought that Twitter brings out the worst in them. That's why I stay away from it.
I don't think it fair to call Bernstein an "economist." His training was in music and social work. How he gets to be in his current position is a good question.
"poor preparation on his part" - are you kidding? He is an "economist". The question posed is one he aught to know the proper answer to, like if you are a physicist and someone asks you in an interview how pressure gauges work, or why in classical mechanics only energy differences have physical meaning.
It's a question that generally does not come up outside of MMT discussions. Although I directionally agreed with MMT fiscal policy views before I ran into MMT (courtesy of covering the JGB market), I never thought to look into questions like that. If I had thought about it, I probably would have just said "because they have to," which is technically correct description of existing institutions. Meanwhile, I was a government bond guy with heterodox leanings - so I would not expect Bernstein to have an answer to that question without doing preparations. (As another comment notes, my assumption was incorrect, he did have some contact with MMT before the documentary, but he obviously had not run into that question.)
Yeah, that's highly relevant background. It is a big problem in the general political and social discourse space that so many people now have a passing contact with MMT, and yet no deep grasp of MMT. Even though it is not hard to grasp! The "deadly innocent fraud" is rapidly becoming a clear and manifest deadly wilful fraud.
I saw "Finding the Money" this past Saturday night in New York City at a screening where Stephanie Kelton was part of a post-screening panel that included Stephanie Kelton, the film's director Maren Poitras and others. The movie is very good; I strongly recommend it. But I agree that Jared Bernstein comes off badly -- more than necessarily so. I had friends -- Twitter users -- who saw the movie at earlier screenings and they were eager to tell me about Bernstein. So going into the film I was predisposed to laugh at him but was also expecting to see Larry Summers and Jason Furman be exposed as well.
The film's director has said that most of the interviews were conducted in 2019. At that time Bernstein's long-time boss, Joe Biden, was out of office, so Bernstein was not yet a member or chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. I can't remember how the film captioned him, but he was probably employed at some Democratic think tank -- perhaps the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. According to his Wikipedia page, in 2018 he began a public dialog, "Questions for the MMTers," on the blog which he maintained before he went back to government. Bill Mitchell responded with three posts on his own blog. I haven't read either side of this dialog completely yet, but Mitchell does not appear to have been aiming to diss Bernstein nearly as much as he would have if the other side were Summers, Furman or Paul Krugman. I suspect that it was this public dialog in 2018 that led the filmmaker to request an interview with Bernstein a year later.
I recall seeing a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee in 2021 or so, when it was under Democratic control and the chair was one of the few people in Congress familiar with MMT. Both Bernstein and Randy Wray testified at that hearing. Their relations appeared to be cordial. Though in his first two years in office Biden made the ritual boasts about the deficit-reducing features of his budget, he's been quiet about the deficit since, and I can't recall any anti-MMT statements lately from anyone in the Biden administration. In contrast, Joe Stiglitz and Charles Goodhart launched apparently unsolicited salvoes against MMT when testifying before the British House of Lords back in February.
I note from Bernstein's Wikipedia article that he was a working jazz musician playing acoustic bass, then pivoted to get a Master's in Social Work from the Hunter College School of Social Work. I attempted to play electric bass (never successfully), then later got an MSW from ... the Hunter College School of Social Work!
Many of my MMT acquaintances are two generations younger than me and I've always thought that Twitter brings out the worst in them. That's why I stay away from it.
Thanks. I will update my comment.
I don't think it fair to call Bernstein an "economist." His training was in music and social work. How he gets to be in his current position is a good question.
He's been involved in policy discussions - which I largely ignore. So I do not have much of an opinion on his work output.
"poor preparation on his part" - are you kidding? He is an "economist". The question posed is one he aught to know the proper answer to, like if you are a physicist and someone asks you in an interview how pressure gauges work, or why in classical mechanics only energy differences have physical meaning.
It's a question that generally does not come up outside of MMT discussions. Although I directionally agreed with MMT fiscal policy views before I ran into MMT (courtesy of covering the JGB market), I never thought to look into questions like that. If I had thought about it, I probably would have just said "because they have to," which is technically correct description of existing institutions. Meanwhile, I was a government bond guy with heterodox leanings - so I would not expect Bernstein to have an answer to that question without doing preparations. (As another comment notes, my assumption was incorrect, he did have some contact with MMT before the documentary, but he obviously had not run into that question.)
Yeah, that's highly relevant background. It is a big problem in the general political and social discourse space that so many people now have a passing contact with MMT, and yet no deep grasp of MMT. Even though it is not hard to grasp! The "deadly innocent fraud" is rapidly becoming a clear and manifest deadly wilful fraud.