This week, I have been plagued by self-doubt and mostly reading:

• Overt Monetary Financing – again — Bill Mitchell: From the perspective of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a helicopter drop is equivalent to an increase in the fiscal deficit in the sense that new financial assets are created and the net worth of the non-government sector increases. It occurs when the government uses its currency-issuing capacity (linking treasury spending to central bank operations) without matching its deficit spending with debt-issues to the non-government sector. So the central bank adds some numbers to the treasury’s bank account to match its spending plans and in return may be given treasury bonds to an equivalent value. Instead of selling debt to the private sector, the treasury simply sells it to the central bank, which then creates new funds in return. This accounting smokescreen is, of course, unnecessary. The central bank doesn’t need the offsetting asset (government debt) given that it creates the currency ‘out of thin air’. So the swapping of public debt for account credits is just an accounting convention.
• We are not and never will be dependent on bond markets — Richard Murphy: […] no government need issue gilts at all. It has only been EU law that has required the UK to do so in recent years. It is that law which has prevented the government simply issuing new money instead at any time. […] far from investors doing the government a favour by investing in gilts the government does savers an enormous favour by letting them place funds on effective deposit at guaranteed fixed rates with the only deposit taker who will never default because they can always print more money to make sure that they will not do so. The government could, in effect, entirely avoid paying this interest but for the essential role that the government wants its bonds to play in certain key financial markets, such as the repo and pension sectors.