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L. Randall Wray Quotes

Larry Randall Wray is professor of Economics at the University of Missouri–Kansas City in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, whose faculty he joined in August 1999. Before UMKC, he served as a visiting professor at the University of Rome, Italy, the University of Paris, France, and the UNAM, in Mexico City. From 1994 to 1995 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bologna. From 2015 is a Visiting professor at the University of Bergamo.

He is also Research Director, of the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability, and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, NY.

Wray is a past president of the Association for Institutionalist Thought and served on the board of directors of the Association for Evolutionary Economics. He has served, along with fellow Post-Keynesian William Mitchell of the Charles Darwin University, Australia, as co-editor of the International Journal of Environment, Workplace, and Employment.

✵ 1953
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L. Randall Wray: 4   quotes 0   likes

Famous L. Randall Wray Quotes

“The true order of events shows that orthodoxy clearly has reversed the process through which investment is funded. Banks do not begin as intermediaries which accept deposits of 'savers' and then make loans to 'investors', for this would assume that the public has already developed the 'banking habit'. This habit is the end result of public experience with short term bank liabilities which have been created as banks extend short term credit to finance working capital expenses.”

L. Randall Wray

Source: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, 1990, p. 58; as cited in: Stein (1994).

“It has long been speculated that money predates writing because the earliest examples of writing appear to be records of monetary debts—meaning that the closely intertwined chronology of the development of writing and money will make it impossible to find a written history.”

L. Randall Wray

L. Randall Wray, The Credit Money, State Money, and Endogenous Money Approaches: A Survey and Attempted Integration. (2005)

“A sovereign government's budget is not like the budget of a household or firm. Governments issue the currency, whereas households and firms use the currency. As the chartalist, or modern money approach, explains, modern governments actually spend by crediting bank accounts. It really just amounts to a keystroke, pushing a key on a computer that generates an entry on someone’s balance sheet. Government can never run out of these keystrokes.”

L. Randall Wray

L. Randall Wray (2015), Why Minsky Matters: An Introduction to the Work of a Maverick Economist. p. 66

“Money as a medium of exchange becomes important when workers are paid in medium of exchange rather than in wage goods directly. Since wage goods constitute the majority of goods produced (particularly in the early stages of development), it is tempting (but misleading) to focus on exchanges and on money as a medium of exchange [like the neo-classicals]. Once capitalist production dominates the economy, money becomes universally important: money operates as a medium of exchange and money hoards provide a measure of security. However, production involves goods and services now in exchange for a promise to pay in the future. That is, money is involved in the production process because production is time-based and involves debt commitments. If one only focuses on the use of money in exchange or as a store of value, one ignores how money creation is inextricably related to time-based production in private property economies.”

L. Randall Wray

Source: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, 1990, p. 10; Cited in Howard Stein. "Theories of institutions and economic reform in Africa." World Development 22.12 (1994): 1833-1849.

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