u/Agile_Hour_9129

Been recently learning about MMT and find it very intruiging, but there are still many open questions left that I hope you can give me answers to.

1. I've heard the argument that countries don't need to sell bonds - they don't need it to pay for government spending, ok I get that - but without the bonds, what would private banks do with all the bank reserves they are sitting on? It would make them essentially useless IOUs. Why would private banks play this game if they get no use out of creating new deposits for the government? And if your answer is liquidity or that it pays interest - what use is liquidity of an IOU that you cant do anything with? Or interest payments of an IOU that you cannot use for anything (besides buying bonds which in that case wouldn't be issued anymore)?

2. What exactly is a currency and why couldn't everyone create them? By a USD, do you mean bank reserves or private bank money or both? What about treasuries, repo, fx swaps and other securities? Are they all "USD" or just denominated in that currency? And since many of the USD in the world are created by private offshore banks (like in the Cayman islands, Singapore, etc.) what stops a country like Germany or Japan from issuing USD? If its just a ledger entry, why wouldn't it work for these countries if private offshore banks can do it? Not getting them accepted seems inplausible when compared like that, after all these are some of the major economic powers of the world. If Japan had USD debt, couldn't they just make a ledger entry with a "USD" instead of "JPY" and call it a day?

3. Why do we need private banks at all? If I understand it correctly, they are just bookkeepers that could be replaced by a blockchain. In China, private banks don't even create the money, they simply distribute whatever the PBOC created (which causes some issues around trying to hit quotas). By that logic a CBDC saves a lot of useless, outdated friction and middlemen.

4. What role do the IMF/BIS/World bank play? If the money is just a ledger entry it could be done easily without them

5. What's MMTs view on Bancor? And international settlement for that matter - not just between countries but also between companies from difference countries? Right now its all running on this Eurodollar system and Bancor would only account for public cross-government payments without changing the private settlement aspect

6. If its all just ledger entries, why have different currencies at all? Ofcourse politically speaking that will not happen in a 1000 years (see the disastrous EU results) but technically its already the same ledger money around the world. What about a decentralized blockchain currency so no single country be the reserve currency - would that still work while keeping a states ability to create money?

7. People like Steve Keen have critized MMT for ignoring trade imbalances - what's your response? (I would have to look up his exact statements)

Thanks in advance! Learning about different heterodox systems is always fun.

Was thinking of pivoting jobs and the hg coaching program seems to be going pretty well - but I couldn't find any requirements or openings on the hg website. Does anyone know if/when spots are open and what the coaching curriculum looks like (and how much it costs)? Is the "coaching elements quest" the same thing?