A video of top Biden economic advisor Jared Bernstein failing to demonstrate basic knowledge of how the economy works has recently gone viral on social media. But Finding the Money, the new documentary the video comes from, is an even more disturbing insight into the extremism that defines the left’s illogical and destructive approach to fiscal policy under what they call “Modern Monetary Theory,” or MMT.
In the clip in question, Bernstein, who chairs the White House Counsel of Economic Advisors, is asked why the government borrows money. “Again, some of this stuff gets – some of the language and concepts are just confusing,” Bernstein replies. “The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds. Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds, and lend them the money.”
As Bernstein’s answer made the rounds online, users were quick to point to it as evidence of the Biden administration’s incompetence. “This is absolutely priceless,” entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand posted. “And probably the most frightening clip you’ll ever watch on the people in charge of the U.S. economy.”
But while the Biden administration certainly deserves criticism for its handling of the economy and apparent failure to understand basic economic forces, Bernstein’s remarks might be some of the more coherent and sensible ones offered in the film.
For Stephanie Kelton, Finding the Money’s narrator and the public face of MMT, Bernstein is a useful dunce who is supposed to make viewers ask one question: why can’t the government just endlessly print more money instead of borrowing it?
Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University who previously worked for Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee and as an economic advisor to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, has become famous as a proponent of MMT. She is now seeking to spread greater awareness of the theory with this documentary.
MMT posits that a government that issues its own currency (as the United States does) can never run out of money in the same way a business or individual can, as it can always create more currency to finance spending. MMT argues that such a government should focus on achieving full employment and controlling inflation rather than balancing budgets, suggesting deficits are not inherently bad.
In other words, MMT proponents believe that governments can simply spend and rack up debt indefinitely with no negative long-term consequences. Accordingly, Finding the Money claims that textbooks and traditional economic theories fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between government, money, and markets.
The IMBD description of the documentary states that it follows a group of “underdog economists” who are “on a mission to instigate a paradigm shift by flipping our understanding of the national debt, and the nature of money, upside down.”
In reality, however, as the documentary unintentionally reveals, Kelton and the economists she interviews are hardly “underdogs.” Despite Bernstein’s unwillingness to embrace MMT on camera, MMT is essentially the de facto foundational belief of the Biden administration’s economic platform – as evidenced by the ballooning national debt and multi-trillion-dollar spending packages the White House has ushered through Congress.
Moreover, Kelton herself argued back in 2021 that Biden’s nearly $6 trillion in spending was evidence that the president (or at least his policy team) had already adopted MMT in practice since some of that spending was not financed through tax increases or other spending cuts.
Throughout the film, Kelton and the supporters of MMT she interviews, many of whom have backgrounds in Democrat Party politics, also frequently refer to the Green New Deal – the foundation of Biden’s environmental agenda – as an example of why MMT is necessary. At times, the documentary sounds more like a campaign ad for progressive social and climate policies than an analysis of a controversial economic theory. But, according to Kelton, the passage of the Green New Deal and mobilization of government dollars to see it realized would usher in a golden age of American opportunity.
But what about inflation, the obvious problem with limitless spending that has dogged Kelton and MMT advocates their entire activist careers? Kelton’s inaugural MMT book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy, was released in June 2020. At that time, inflation was not yet a major concern, and so Kelton largely ignored and dismissed the issue.
Now, however, in the wake of 40-year high inflation that remains well above the Fed’s target rate of two percent, MMT advocates can’t ignore it anymore.
So, in Finding the Money, Kelton changes course and makes the case that deficit spending does matter in terms of inflation. But she now maintains that if inflation does emerge, the solution is for the government to spend even more.
For instance, economist Rohan Grey, an MMT advocate, suggests in the film that the government could cut inflation by “tightening financial and credit regulations, shredding the fossil fuel, real estate, defense, and financial industries, and tightening environmental regulations.”
Agreeing with Grey, Kelton notes that increased demand for energy could also drive up gas prices, causing inflation. Her solution? Artificially constrict people’s access to gasoline via regulations, which in her mind will decrease demand and prices, which would bring down inflation.
In other words, Kelton makes the same bogus argument that Americans have heard from liberals for decades: The solution to every problem is more government spending and regulations.
As American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Stan Voyager incredulously asked in response to this theory, “How would intensifying environmental regulations conceivably place downward, as opposed to upward, pressure on inflation, when it would reduce economic output? How would shrinking industries increase supply? How would the myriad agencies involved in this process actually coordinate?”
Ultimately, Follow the Money makes the case for a government that is unrestrained and aggressive in its control of the economy – to the point where capitalism ends and socialism begins.
Americans need not worry about the documentary fostering a communist revolution – it hardly registered with the broader public, and just four reviewers even offered an analysis of the film on Rotten Tomatoes. But as a look into the mindset of the liberal economic “experts” advising Democrat politicians, Follow the Money is nonetheless a chilling exposé.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
