Does MMT get money right?

"A government can't run out of its own money." On that, Modern Monetary Theory is right — and the mainstream, with its household-budget metaphors and its fear of the bond vigilantes, is wrong. A currency issuer spends by crediting accounts; taxes don't fund it; the only hard limit is real resources and inflation, not solvency. Keen has no quarrel with any of that.

Where he parts company is emphasis. MMT builds its story around the public sector — the state's spending power, the Job Guarantee. Keen builds his around private debt — because it's the change in private credit, not the government deficit, that drives booms and busts. MMT is right that public debt isn't the danger the mainstream claims; his point is that the danger was always private, and MMT leaves that dynamic under-modelled.

Allied, not aligned. The MMT Full Model with Credit runs a monetary economy MMT would recognise, then adds the private-credit dynamic that makes it unstable. Sovereign money is where the story starts — not where it ends.