State money and the real world: or chartalism and its discontents

Recent emphasis on chartalism is an important extension of the monetary theory within Post Keynesian analysis. However, chartalism as the main interpretation for the existence of money has some limitations. Sovereignty, understood as the power to tax and to collect in the token of choice, is not the main explanation for the existence of money, even if modern money is ultimately chartal money. The view according to which institutions that provide bridges between the present and the future create the conditions for economic agents to be willing to hold money is far more instructive. The state is certainly one of those institutions, but so are banks, and other financial institutions, which, during certain historical periods, might have had more importance.