[hgomersall]

Oh crumbs, you're going to get wildly different understandings depending on what camp the books come from. Personally, I'm of the view that the most coherent understanding comes from the MMT crowd, but much of that is quite subtle and open to deep misinterpretation (and regularly is). Warren Moslers' writings are excellent, but make you think https://moslereconomics.com/mandatory-readings/. Neil Wilson writes in a very accessible way and has bite size articles that cover many things you're talking about: https://new-wayland.com/blog/ (IMO, that blog is full of gold).