Welcome to MMT works

This weekly report will provide some insights into life for a westerner (me) who is working for an extended period at Kyoto University in Japan but who over the years of working here has increasingly began to understand the language and local cultural traditions. For the next several weeks I am working once again at…

On September 22, 2026, a member of the Monetary Policy Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) gave a speech – A Wage-price Spiral: What are the Chances? – at Melbourne University. The tenor of his presentation was that despite the constant recent claims about wages pressures emanating from a labour market that is…

The labour market contraction that I have been signalling for the last two months continued in August. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest labour force data today (September 24, 2026) – Labour Force, Australia – for August 2026 – which showed that the labour market deteriorated further in August, in that full-time…

On Sunday (September 20, 2026), the two state elections in Germany confirmed a trend that has been unfolding for some years in fact – the polarisation of politics in nations, and, in particular the legitimisation of far Right politicians espousing views that are not inconsistent with the views of the National Socialists in Germany in…

As at September 9, 2026, the Bank of England held £489,026 million in British government gilts (bonds). Since the beginning of February 2022, the Bank has been steadily selling of the stock of gilts it purchased as part of its Asset Purchase Facility (APF) over the period March 11, 2009 to December 15, 2021. These…