The purpose of this blog/newsletter is to introduce/supplement Mehrling's Money and Banking course.
I once heard someone say that Mehrling's lectures were their favorite thing to binge-watch. I think the course is brilliant, and I want to help people get the most out of its content. Whether or not you've previously taken the course, my goal is to help you strengthen your understanding of Mehrling's money-view approach.
The posts on this Substack are meant to be read in order. I recommend that you keep reading my posts until you get impatient with the pace of my output. Then, just go straight to the lecture videos.
The lecture videos are also available through INET and through Mehrling's Boston Unversity faculty website.
As an enhancement to the material, I've color-coded balance-sheet operations according to Borja Clavero's four payment types and Daniel Neilson's quadruple-entry transaction classification. I've also added what I'll call "Entity Relationship Diagrams," adapted from Chris Rimmer, which represent balance-sheet positions and balance-sheet operations in a way that emphasizes the interconnectedness of economic entities.
You can read about these features in the following two posts.
Hi. I'm Alex Howlett.
I study monetary theory and the macroeconomics of Universal Basic Income (UBI) with the Greshm Institute. I became interested in Perry Mehrling's money view in 2015 when I found his Economics of Money and Banking MOOC on Coursera.
I help lead the online Money View Reading Group, which is organized through the INET Young Scholars Initiative. We have been reading and discussing texts through a money-view lens since 2021.
For five summers from 2020 to 2024, I led groups of independent learners through the Economics of Money and Banking course. Starting in 2025, I have this Substack.
Here’s a picture of me with my son Peter on the beach in Mexico.
