Warren Mosler

Warren Mosler (born September 18, 1949) is an American hedge fund manager and entrepreneur.

He is a co-founder of the Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at University of Missouri-Kansas City and the founder of Mosler Automotive.

Mosler is a proponent and research financier of post-Keynesian Modern Monetary Theory.

He initially went on to work at the Savings Bank of Manchester in Manchester, Connecticut in 1973.

Next he went on to work in Hartford for Bache and Co. before moving to New York City.

From there he would go on to work on Wall Street, specifically, Bankers Trust NYC, and then William Blair in Chicago.

In 1982 he founded a hedge fund, Illinois Income Investors, where he was responsible for several strategies utilizing government securities, mortgage backed securities, LIBOR Swaps and LIBOR caps, and financial futures markets.

By the late 1990s, most of the firm had been largely turned over to his partners, as he had disagreements on the direction of some of its investments.

Warren's hedge fund was informed by his developing theories.

After his departure at the end of 1997, Warren's former business lost money when several dealers refused to make payments on credit default Swaps on Russian debt.

Separately, Warren attributed the crisis to the fixed exchange rate Russia had at the time.

Excited to share his various economic theories, Warren met economist Arthur Laffer through a referral from Donald Rumsfeld.

At a meeting of Social Policy in NYC, William Vickrey suggested Warren to seek out postkeynesian economists L. Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell, and Stephanie Kelton to discuss his ideas.

These post-Keynesian economists had been familiar with chartalism, and recognized the validity of Mosler's analysis.

Laffer also his staff economist Mark McNary, who provided editorial and research assistance in Warren's self-published monograph, "Soft-Currency Economics".

Academically, he is known for his writings on Modern Monetary Theory, an economic theory that describes the way fiat money is created and used in modern economies.

His unorthodox views have gained a substantial following among participants in Internet discussion groups and academics.

In 2010 he published Seven Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy outlining errors that can be made in the development of policy and explains what he deems "true" as proper alternatives.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Franklin University Switzerland, and in 2014 was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Mosler has run as an independent for multiple offices including: United States president, a delegate to Congress three times, and lieutenant governor.

In recognition that his "leadership in the field of economics is notable" Mosler was awarded an honorary doctorate from Franklin University Switzerland in 2014, after the Mosler Economic Policy Center (a center founded by him and aimed at encouraging education and research in new concepts and methods of economic policy analysis) had promoted a lecture about functional finance at Franklin the year before.

In 2014 he became visiting professor at the University of Bergamo.

He is attributed with creating Mosler's law dealing with fiscal policy of a nation during a recession.

Specifically, Mosler's law states that "[...] no financial crisis [is] so deep that a sufficiently large fiscal adjustment cannot deal with it."

He stated that the recent recession could have been alleviated much quicker from a full payroll tax holiday that suspended FICA taxes (or massive government spending increases, depending on one's politics) until unemployment fell.

He opposes overly high taxes since they discourage consumption within an economy but does agree a certain tax level is needed to guarantee citizens use the dollar as a currency.

He is confident that inflation is a non-factor in his analysis given current procurement policy as long as there is sufficient excess capacity.

In his theory the government has the complete ability to constantly expand net spending and guarantee consumption and growth.

He supports unlimited FDIC deposit insurance for all bank deposits for US banks.

He stresses that federal spending is in no way constrained by tax revenues, therefore the government will always be able to make payments in its own currency, stating "Federal Government checks don't bounce".

He goes on to state that any and all debt passed on to future generations will never be burdensome, since they will undoubtedly consume whatever is produced.

He developed much of his belief from his time as a hedge fund manager when many investors predicted the Italian government defaulting on bonds, whereas he predicted, correctly, that Italian government would not default and thus made considerable returns.

Mosler supports government funding for full-time employment with full health care coverage for employees and dependents, thus triggering all firms providing health care to remain competitive.

He states health cannot be viewed as a production cost, therefore the government should fund for at least 90% of the cost paid by the firms.

Finally, he supports issuing medical debit cards to all citizens, for a fixed amount.

This covers any medical costs and any amount above this will be covered by "catastrophe insurance".

At the end of every year, citizens would receive a portion of their unused medical debit card.

In a brief proposal, Mosler stated the energy crisis could be solved by lowering the speed limit nationally to 30 mph.

In 2018, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands as an independent.

Mosler attended the University of Connecticut where he graduated with a degree in economics.