T Sabri Öncü

The Modern Monetary Theory is described as an integration of endogenous money, state money, credit money, and functional finance theories. Despite departing from a faithful narration of what actually happens in the real world, the MMT arrives at a new world in which the government can spend as it pleases. Not only this and several other difficult-to-swallow claims, but also academic concepts such as vertical and horizontal components of money supply introduced along the way are what make MMT difficult to communicate to the general public and also difficult to fully appreciate.

Riba could mean usury, interest, economic rent and even surplus value (in the Marxian sense). Riba is “un-Islamic.” Without riba, capital accumulation, and capitalism itself will not be possible. However, those who own capital in the Muslim world have taken charge of defining what is Islamic and what is not. The result? They find ways to multiply it in modes that benefit only themselves, just as their non-Islamic counterparts.

There have been two main proposals to tackle the stressed assets problem of Indian banks since the beginning of this year. Both proposals are based implicitly on the financial intermediation theory of banking. The alternative credit creation theory of banking opens up other possibilities. One such possibility is a partial Jubilee financed by zero coupon perpetual bonds.

The Lehman moment is the moment when Lehman Brothers—one of the largest investment banks in the United States (US) at the time—collapsed. The collapse happened on 15 September 2008. Almost nobody disagrees that the Lehman moment has been the most important moment in the ongoing global financial...

Even as some insist that the global economy is in “secular stagnation,” the facts suggest that we may be entering the “worst” depression in history. The global markets have been on a slippery slope since the summer of 2007, and things have only been getting worse in 2016. The picture looks dismal, no matter which theoretical lens one uses. (This article was written on 5 February before last week’s tumble in global and Indian markets.)