Many mainstream economists predicted tons of inflation, because MB went way up. It didn't happen. The MMT crowd knew it wouldn't going in. Your source (below), instead of admitting his mistake, is making excuses, saying that crazy inflation is going to happen sometime in the future. (It's not.)
MMTers point to a slice of time when it didn't happen and claim QE doesn't affect inflation. But, if you go back many decades, it shows that it does. If money isn't circulated, even if it is printed, it wont' cause inflation, so, there may have been some reason that during that period MMTers like to point to as "proof" that QE doesn't cause inflation, but if you look at a much larger period of time, there is a correlation. I never mentioned "crazy inflation".
I tried to explain this earlier. Deficits in and of themselves do not matter; despite the negative connotation that the word carries, it is just a description of the net flows of whatever is being measured. Federal deficit = private sector surplus. Trade deficit = imported goods surplus. The government, if it knows what it is doing, can adjust its spending to counteract deficits, and it can adjust taxation to counteract surpluses.
They don't matter if you believe QE doesn't cause inflation. It does over timei, therefore, QE to pay for the deficit (money spent not offset by taxes collected and bonds sold), does matter.
That's how I understand it.
They can be. It depends on what the government spends in response. Trade deficits, like saving, are a loss of income, which is a loss of (potential) domestic demand. When income is lost to saving, or trade deficits, it is not available to spend on consuming domestic production, and that gap needs to be filled.
I'm sure you can handle it, if you give it a fair chance.
I dont see how trade deficits are a loss of anything.
If I have 100 widgets (worth $1 each), and $100 cash, and you have 100 wodgets (worth $1 each), and $100 cash,the starting balance sheet totals $200 on both sides, inventory and cash.
Okay, You purchase 10 widgets from me. I have $10 more, you now have $10 less. I now have $110 cash and $90 worth of inventory = $200
You now have $90 cash and $110 in inventory = $200.
I purchase 50 wodgets from you. I know have $50 less ($60 cash remaining) plus $140 worth of inventory = $200
Even though there was a trade deficit of $30, the balance sheet is the same.
The point is, we should look at it from a balance sheet perspective, not a cash perspective.
If you need more money, you just earn it. The wealth of money is not the paper, digital or otherwise, it's labor, it's production. Wealth comes from labor and production, it doesn't come from the printing press or the stroke of a keyboard.
Another point is you and I purchase what we need, you can't force two parties to a transaction to purchase equal amounts of goods and services, it's not the natural order of things, and, in fact, it seems to me to be an insane objective.