I notice that MMT discussion (esp. on [1]) focus very tightly on sovereign currencies for their examples and spend a lot of time describing the impossibility of default, etc., for governments that make loans in their own currency.
This is, of course, correct.
But I continue to wonder: in a world of MMT - a world wherein we fully adopt MMT as our model and pursue it explicitly - what is to happen to the Argentinas and the Ukraines and the Malaysias, etc. ? That is always glossed over ... is it just assumed that they will be as ill-served as always by the world order ?
AFAICT the answer that MMT has for Argentina (for instance) is: You'll be as fucked as you've always been.
https://denison.edu/people/fadhel-kaboub
In general the advice is to 1) maintain economic sovereignty as much as possible by avoiding debt denominated in foreign currency (IMF is pretty evil in this regard), 2) focus on maintaining economic activity that builds the basic needs of society, like food production, etc.
At its heart MMT is a really simple concept and pretty undeniable, just pointing out that the emperor has no clothes when it comes to rhetoric and political whining about debt. Inflation is still a big risk when spending capacity overreaches production capacity (or, as recently, production capacity seems to shrink...).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45731395-the-deficit-myt...
If you want a deeper dive in audio form, I really liked the MMT podcast sub-series embedded in Current Affairs' bird seed podcast. However they spend so much time on the basics and the "controversy" that they only focus on the central banking aspect of it; the critics they bring on are so bad at critiquing it that MMT really come out looking good. There are two aspects:
1) here's how money works with a central bank and what it means about, for example, US government "debt"
2) now that we have these concepts of money, and observe how monetary policy has been used to keep a pool of unemployed people, let's instead try to get full employment with a job guarantee to increase economic productivity.
I am compelled by (2) but it's not as essential as understanding (1) IMHO.
MMTers also tend to focus on government (sometimes called vertical) money creation, and pay much less attention to bank creation of money (sometimes called horitzontal), because MMTers are focusing on monetary policy by currency sovereigns. But horizontal money is super important to understanding economic cycles too. A really good book about this, that focuses on the intricacies of the UK banking system to prove its points, is Where Does Money Come From:
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Does-Money-Come-Ryan-Collins/dp...