According to this website, this chap Bernstein served as chief economic adviser to Vice President Biden from 2009 to 2011, under the Obama administration. Prior to joining that administration, he was a senior economist and the director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute.
This clip is from an interview for the documentary "Finding the Money":
"The U.S. government can't go bankrupt, because we can print our own money," he says in the video. He was then asked, "Like you said, they print the dollar, so why does the government even borrow?"
Bernstein's reply indicates uncertainty – at best – about monetary policy.
"Again, some of this stuff gets – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. 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," Bernstein replied.
"A lot of times, at least to my ear with MMT, the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to um, uh … I guess I'm just, I can't really, I don't get it, I don't know what they're talking about. . . . It's like, the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise you wouldn't be having this debt and deficit conversation. So I don't think there's any-thing confusing there." Yep, there's definitely nothing confusing there!
No wonder that as of 5 March 2024 the American taxpayers are on the hook for $34,563,348,818,204.50, which presumably includes a hefty salary for Bernstein. The difference between the American financial advisors and ours? Ours talk the same shit but with a different accent!
