Looks like it’s on and I’ll be there.
All invited to attend. Will get details later today and tomorrow.
Will be getting a press release out as well.

Fighting Back Against the Drive to Slash Entitlements

By Ian Welsh

April 14 — Back when I was at FDL I had a chat with the Peterson Foundation folks. They struck me as sincere, but off-balance. To the extent that Social Security is in deficit at all any problems are decades out (which they admitted), and while Medicare has issues, the simplest and easiest way to cut medical costs overall is single payer, something they won’t push. More to the point, somehow “entitlements” always get mentioned first, and not things like Defense spending.

But the folks at the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Conference have a broader point: that fiscal sustainability, according to Modern Monetary Theory, isn’t based on debt-to-gdp, or how much the private sector will lend. The government can spend a lot more if it needs to, and doing so is a good idea if it leads to full employment and gets economic growth going again. They are having a free counter-Fiscal Summit on April 28th, the same day as the Peterson foundation has its summit.

There’s going to be some interesting speakers and topics at the summit, so if you can make it to DC, it’ll probably be worth going:

– What Is Fiscal Sustainability? (Team Leader: Professor Bill Mitchell, Research Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia, and blogger at billyblog.)

– Are There Spending Constraints on Governments Sovereign in their Currency? (Team Leader: Stephanie Kelton, Assistant Professor of Macroeconomics, Finance, and Money and Banking, University of Missouri, Kansas City, and blogger at New Economics Perspectives)

– The Deficit, the Debt, the Debt-To-GDP ratio, the Grandchildren and
Government Economic Policy; (Team Leader: Warren Mosler, International Consulting Economist, Independent Candidate for the US Senate in Connecticut, and blogger at moslereconomics.com)

– Inflation and Hyper-inflation (Team Leader: Marshall Auerback, International Consulting Economist, blogger at New Deal 2.0 and New Economic Perspectives); and

– Policy Proposals for Fiscal Sustainability (Team leaders: L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics, University of Missouri, Kansas City, and Pavlina Tcherneva, Assistant Professor of Economics at Franklin and Marshall College, and bloggers at New Economic Perspectives)