Well, it can be found in Adam Smith (a few passages), and there are some other proto-chartalist meanderings, but the key text is Knapp's State Theory of Money. Keynes in the Treatise on Money explicitly accepts Knapp's main theses. Abba Lerner also embraced it in a short piece in the AER, 1947 I think, called "Money is a Creature of the State". More recently it can be found in Minsky (Stabilizing an Unstable Economy), and the "neo-chartalist revival" includes Randy Wray (Understanding Modern Money), Stephanie Bell (articles in the CJE, JEI), and others. Charles Goodhart is also a key recent reference--in his article in the European Journal of Political Economy, Goodhart contrasts the metalist-Mengerian-Monetarist tradition (the M-team) with the "Cartalist" tradition (the C-team). Menger's followers include the Austrians, etc., who claim that fiat money is still loosely but definitely tied to gold (and other metals) and look to the evolution of private moneys as the key,! with the State 'interfering' with these 'natural' developments. Goodhart had an interesting editorial called "One Government, One Money" asking "how can the 'one nation-one money' phenomena possibly be a coincidence?" and using the framework to highlight weaknesses in the EMU arrangements (where countries in Europe voluntarily reduce their own position to that of states in the U.S.--political entities that have no monetary authority on which to base their fiscal policies). Mat
-----Original Message----- From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 2:43 PM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: [PEN-L:21263] RE: RE: state power theory of money Mat writes: >This is straight chartalist monetary theory.< can you tell me (pen-l) about who developed this tradition? somehow I never picked it up and seem to have developed a version of it independently. -- Jim
