Category: Economics

Modern Monetary Theory—A Critique

So called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has become popular with Green New Dealers because it claims to remove or at least loosen traditional constraints on government spending.  MMT offers unconventional ideas about the origins of money, how money is created today, and the role of fiscal policy in the creation of money. It argues that government can spend more freely by borrowing or printing money than is claimed by conventional monetary theory. “The most provocative claim of the theory is that government deficits don’t matter in themselves for countries—such as the U.S.—that borrow in their own currencies….  The core tenets of MMT, and the closest it gets to a theory, are that the economy and inflation should be managed through fiscal policy, not monetary policy, and that government should put the unemployed to work.” James Mackintosh,  “What  Modern Monetary Theory Gets Right and Wrong’  WSJ April 2, 2019.

In fact, despite its efforts to change how we conceive and view monetary and fiscal policies, MMT abandons market based countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies for targeted central control over the allocation of resources. It would rely on specific interventions to address “road blocks” upon the foundation of a government guaranteed employment program.

MMT is an unsuccessful attempt to convince us that we can finance the Green New Deal and a federal job guarantee painlessly by printing money. But it remains true that shifting our limited resources from the private to the public sector should be judged by whether society is made better off by such shifts.  Printing money does not produce free lunches.

Where does money come from?

It has been almost 50 years since the U.S. dollar (or any other currency for that matter) has been redeemable for gold or any other commodity whose market value thus determined the value of money. It remains true, however, that money’s value depends on its supply given its demand. The supply of money these days reflects the decisions of the Federal Reserve and other central banks.

The traditional story for the fractional reserve banking world we live in is that a central bank issues base or high-powered money (its currency and reserve deposits of banks with the central bank) that is generally given the status of “legal tender.”  You must pay your taxes with this money.  We deposit some of that currency in a bank, which provides the bank with money it can lend. When the bank lends it, it deposits the loan in the borrower’s deposit account with her bank, thus creating more money for the bank to lend.  This famous money multiplier has resulted in a money supply much larger than the base money issued by the central bank. In July 2008, base money (M0) in the United States was $847 billion dollars while the currency component of that plus the public’s demand deposits in banks (M1) was almost twice that — $1,442 billion dollars. Including the public’s time and savings deposits and checkable money market mutual funds (M2) the amount was $7,730 billion.  [I am reporting data from just before the financial crisis in 2008 because after that the Federal Reserve began to pay interest on bank reserve deposits at the Fed in order to encourage them to keep the funds at the Fed rather than lending them and thus multiplying deposits. This greatly increased and distorted the ratio of base money to total money, i.e. reduced the multiplier. In October 2015 at the peak of base money M0 = $4,060 billion, of which only $1,322 billion was currency in circulation.]

The neo Chartalists, now known as MMTists, want us to look at this process differently.  In their view banks create deposits by lending rather than having to receive deposits before they can lend.  While a bank loan (an asset of the bank) is extended by crediting the borrower’s deposit account with the bank (a liability of the bank), the newly created deposit will almost immediately be withdrawn to pay for whatever it was borrowed for.  Thus, the willingness of banks to lend must depend on their expectations of being able to finance their loans from existing or new deposits, by borrowing in the interbank or money markets, or by the repayment of previous loans at an interest rate less than the rate on its loans.

The money multiplier version of this story assumes a reserve constraint, i.e., it assumes that the central bank fixes the supply of base money and bank lending and deposit creation adjust to that.  The MMT version reflects the fact that monetary policy these days targets interest rates leaving base money to be determined by the market.  Traditionally the Fed set a target for the over-night interbank lending rate—the so-called Fed Funds rate.  In order to maintain its target interest rate, the central bank lends or otherwise supplies to the market whatever amount of base money is needed to cover private bank funding needs at that rate.  The market determination of the money supply at a given central bank interest rate is, in fact, similar to the way in which the market determines the money supply under currency board rules under which the central bank passively supplies whatever amount of money the market wants at the fixed official price (exchange rate) of the currency.  With the Federal Reserve’s introduction of interest on bank reserve deposits at Federal Reserve Banks, including excess reserves (the so-called Interest On Excess Reserves – IOER), banks’ management of their funding needs for a given policy rate now involve drawing down or increasing their excess reserves.

According to MMT proponents, loans create deposits and repayment of loans destroys deposits.  This is a different description of the same process described by the money multiplier story, which focuses on the central bank’s control of reserves and base money rather than interest rates. It is wrong to insist that deposits are only created by bank lending and equally wrong to insist that banks can only lend after they receive deposits.

How is Base Money Produced?

MMT applies the same approach to the creation of base or high-powered money (HPM) by the government as it does to the creation of bank deposits by the private sector:

“It also has to be true that the State must spend or lend its HPM into existence before banks, firms, or households can get hold of coins, paper notes, or bank reserves…. The issuer of the currency must supply it first before the users of the currency (banks for clearing, households and firms for purchases and tax payments) have it. That makes it clear that government cannot sit and wait for tax receipts before it can spend—no more than the issuers of bank deposits (banks) can sit and wait for deposits before they lend.”[1]

This unnecessarily provocative way of presenting the fact that government spending injects its money into the economy and tax payments and t-bond sales withdraws it does not offer the free lunch for government spending that MMT wants us to believe is there. Central banks can finance government spending by purchasing government debt, but this does not give the Treasury carte blanche to spend without concern about taxes and deficit finance.  This is the core of MMT that we must examine carefully.

MMT claims that:

“(i) the government is not constrained in its spending by its ability to acquire HPM since the spending creates HPM….  Spending does not require previous tax revenues and indeed it is previous spending or loans to the private sector that provide the funds to pay taxes or purchase bonds….

“(iii) the government deficit did not crowd out the private sector’s financial resources but instead raised its net financial wealth.

“Regarding (iii), the private sector’s net financial wealth has been increased by the amount of the deficit. That is, the different sequencing of the Treasury’s debt operations does not change the fact that deficits add net financial assets rather than “crowding out” private sector financial resources.”[2]

MMT is correct that federal government spending does creates money. But what if the resulting increase in money exceeds the public’s demand (thus reducing interest rates), or the destruction of money resulting from tax payments or public purchases of government debt reduces money below the public’s demand (thus increasing interest rates)?  MMT claims to be aware of the risk of inflation and committed to stable prices (an inflation target) but ignore it most of the time.

If the central bank sets its policy interest rate below the market equilibrium rate, it will supply base money at a rate that stimulates aggregate demand. If it persists in holding short term interest rates below the equilibrium rate it will eventually fuel inflation, which will put upward pressure on nominal interest rates requiring ever increasing injections of base money until the value of money collapses (hyperinflation). If instead the central bank money’s price is fixed to a quantity of something (as it was under the gold standard, or better still a basket of commodities) and is issued according to currency board rules (the central bank will issue or redeem any amount demanded by the market at the fix price), arbitrage will adjust the supply so as to keep the market price and the official price approximately the same (for a detailed explanation see my: “Real SDR Currency Board”).  Unlike an interest rate target, a quantity price target is stable.

Does the Story Matter?

But does the MMT story of how money is created open the door for government to spend more freely and without taxation, either by borrowing in the market or directly from the central bank?  According to MMT, “One of the main contributions of Modern Money Theory (MMT) has been to explain why monetarily sovereign governments have a very flexible policy space that is unencumbered by hard financial constraints.  Not only can they issue their own currency to meet commitments denominated in their own unit of account, but also any self-imposed constraint on their budgetary operations can be by-passed by changing rules.”[3]

MMT maintains that: “Politicians need to reject the urge to ask ‘How are we going to pay for it?’…   We must give up our obsession with trying to ‘pay for’ everything with new revenue or spending cuts….  Once we understand that money is a legal and social tool, no longer beholden to the false scarcity of the gold standard, we can focus on what matters most: the best use of natural and human resources to meet current social needs and to sustainably increase our productive capacity to improve living standards for future generations.”[4]

MMT proclaims that a government that can borrow in its own currency “has an unlimited capacity to pay for the things it wishes to purchase and to fulfill promised future payments, and has an unlimited ability to provide funds to the other sectors. Thus, insolvency and bankruptcy of this government is not possible. It can always pay….  All these institutional and theoretical elements are summarized by saying that monetarily sovereign governments are always solvent, and can afford to buy anything for sale in their domestic unit of account even though they may face inflationary and political constraints.”[5] But inflating away the real value of obligations (government debt) is economically a default.  Moreover, debt cannot grow without limit without debt service costs absorbing the government’s entire budget and even the inflation tax has its hyperinflation limit (abandonment of a worthless currency).

MMT advocates do acknowledge that at some point idle resources will be used up and that this process would then become inflationary, but this caveat is generally ignored.  But if MMT is serious about an inflation constraint, we must wonder about their criticism of asking how government spending will be paid for.  In this regard MMT is a throwback to the old Keynesianism, which implicitly assumed a world of perpetual unemployment.

Is There a Free Lunch?

MMT states that when the government spends more than its income (and thus must borrow or print money) private sector wealth is increased “because spending to the private sector is greater than taxes drawn from the private sector, the private sector’s net financial wealth has increased.”  As explained below this deficit spending increases the private sector’s holdings of government securities, but not necessarily its net financial wealth.

Whether we take account of the future tax liabilities created by this debt in the public’s assessment of its net wealth (Ricardian equivalence) or not, we must ask where the public found the resources with which it bought the debt. Did it substitute T-bonds for corporate bonds, i.e. did the government’s debt (or monetary) financing of government spending crowd out private investment thus leaving private sector wealth unchanged, or did it come from reduced private consumption, i.e. increased private saving. Any impact on private consumption will depend on what government spent its money on.  MMT claims that “the government deficit did not crowd out the private sector’s financial resources but instead raised its net financial wealth,” is simply asserted and is unsupported.  Whether the shift in resources from the private sector to the public sector is beneficial depends on whether the value of the government’s resulting output is greater than is the reduced private sector output that financed it.

One way or another, government spending means that the government is commanding resources that were previously commanded by or could be commanded by the private sector.  If the government takes resources by spending newly created money that the central bank does not take back, prices will rise to lower its real value back to what the public wants to hold. This is the economic equivalent of the government defaulting on its debt, contrary to MMT’s claim that default is impossible.  This inflation tax is generally considered the worst of all taxes because it falls disproportionately on the poor.  In fact, MMT proponents rarely mention or acknowledge the distinction between real and nominal values that are, or should be, central to discussions of monetary policy. The exception to the inflationary impact of monetary finance is if the resources taken by the government were idle, i.e. unemployed, which, obviously, is the world MMT thinks it is in.

MMT claims to have exposed greater fiscal space than is suggested by conventional analysis. They claim that government can more freely spend to fight global warming or to fund guaranteed jobs or other such projects by printing (electronic) money. However, the market mechanism they offer for preventing such money from being inflationary (market response to an interest rate target that replaces unwanted money with government debt), implies that such spending must be paid for with tax revenue or borrowing from the public.  Both, in fact all three financing options (taxation, borrowing, and printing money), shift real resources from the private sector to the public sector and only make society better off if the value of the resulting output is greater than that of the reduced private sector output. There is nothing new here.

Fiscal Policy as Monetary Policy

Government spending increases M and the payment of taxes reduces it.  MMT wants to use taxation to manage the money supply rather than for government financing purposes.  MMT wants to shift the management of monetary policy from the central bank to the finance ministry (Treasury).  The relevant question is whether this way of thinking about and characterizing monetary and fiscal policy produces a more insightful and useful approach to formulating fiscal policy.  Does it justify shifting the responsibly for monetary policy from the central bank to the Finance Ministry?  Should taxes be levied so as to regulate the money supply rather than finance the government (though it would do that as well)?

In advocating this change, MMT ignores the traditional arguments that have favored the use of central bank monetary policy over fiscal policy (beyond automatic stabilizers) for stabilization purposes.  None of the challenges of the use of fiscal policy as a countercyclical tool (timing, what the money is spent for, etc.) established with traditional analysis have been neutralized by the MMT vision and claim of extra fiscal space.  In fact, as we will see below, despite their advocacy of fiscal over monetary policy for maintaining price stability, MMT supporters have little interest in and no clear approach to doing so as they prefer to centrally manage wages and prices in conjunction with a guaranteed employment program.

But the arguments against MMT are stronger than that. The existing arrangements around the globe (central banks that independently execute price stability mandates and governments that determine the nature and level of government spending and its financing) are designed to protect monetary stability from the inflation bias of politicians with shorter policy horizons (the time inconsistence problem). The universal separation of responsibilities for monetary policy and for fiscal policy to a central bank and a finance ministry are meant to align decision making with the authority responsible for the results of its decisions (price stability for monetary policy and welfare enhancing levels and distribution of government spending and its financing).  It is the sad historical experience of excessive reliance on monetary finance and the costly undermining of the value of currencies that resulted that have led to the world-wide movement to central bank independence.  MMT is silent on this history and its lessons.  As pointed out by Larry Summers in an oped highly critical of MMT, the world’s experience with monetary finance has not been good. Modern Monetary Theory-a-foolish-pursuit-for-democrats

The establishment of central bank operational independence in recent decades is rightly considered a major accomplishment.  MMT advocates bring great enthusiasm for more government spending—especially on their guaranteed employment and green projects, which will need to be justified on their own merits.  MMT’s way of viewing money and monetary policy adds nothing to the arguments for or against these policies.

The Bottom Line

To a large extent, most of the above arguments by MMT are a waste of our time as MMT advocates actually reject the macro fine tuning of traditional Keynesian analysis. “This approach of government intervention aims at avoiding direct intervention to achieve the goal (e.g. hiring to achieve full employment, or price controls to achieve low inflation), but rather using indirect “tools” while letting market participants push the economy toward desired goals by tweaking their incentives.  MMT does not agree with this approach. The government should be directly involved continuously over the cycle, by putting in place structural macroeconomic programs that directly manage the labor force, pricing mechanisms, and investment projects, and constantly monitoring financial developments….  But MMT goes beyond full employment policy as it also promotes capital controls for open economies, credit controls, and socialization of investment. Wage rates and interest rate management are also important.”[6]  No wonder Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is excited by MMT.

MMT attempts, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to repackage and resurrect the empirically and theoretically discredited Keynesian policies of the 1960s and 70s.  A 2019 survey of leading economists showed a unanimous rejection of modern monetary theory’s assertions that “Countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt” and “Countries that borrow in their own currency can finance as much real government spending as they want by creating money.” http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/modern-monetary-theory  Both the excitement and motivation for MMT seem to reflect the desire to promote a political agenda, without the hard analysis of its pros and cons—its costs and benefits.

****************************

[1] Fullwiler, Scott, Stephanie Kelton & L. Randall Wray (2012), ‘Modern Money Theory: A Response to Critics’, in Modern Monetary Theory: A Debate,  Modern Monetary Theory: A Debate, http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/working_papers/working_papers_251-300/WP279.pdf,  2012, page 19

[2] Ibid. page 22-23.

[3] Tymoigne and Wray, 2013 http://www.levyinstitute.org/publications/modern-money-theory-101

[4] Stephanie Kelton, Andres Bernal, and Greg Carlock, “We Can Pay For A Green New Deal” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-green-new-deal cost_n_5c0042b2e4b027f1097bda5b  11/30/2018

[5] Tymoigne and Wray, op cit. p. 2 and 5

[6] Ibid. pp. 44-45.

Central Banking award

The Central Banking Journal annually awards central bankers (best governor, best central bank, and providers of services to central banks) for their performance.  This year’s ceremony was held in London on March 13 and I was awarded Outstanding Contribution for Capacity Building. Here is a video of my acceptance speech.

 

Tariff Abuse

The U.S. constitution gives Congress the authority to enact and control tariffs (taxes on American consumers of imported goods and services).  Over the years Congress has increasingly delegated that authority to the executive branch (the President) under certain specified circumstances. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 gives the President the authority to restrict (impose tariffs on) imports that threaten national security without the need for congressional approval.

Last year President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum on the grounds, confirmed upon the President’s prompting by the Commerce Department, that relying on steel from Canada and the EU (fellow NATO members) was a threat to our national security.  If this were a skit on “Saturday Night Live” we would have a good laugh, but unfortunately it is for real.  It is the launching of a very ill-advised trade war by a President who had promised when campaigning for office to reign in executive overreach.  Sen. Ben Sasse, Republican from Nebraska, called Trump’s decision “dumb.”

Trump’s stated motive was to restore American jobs to an industry in which we are relatively inefficient. The few additional workers in steel and aluminum resulting from these tariffs were outweighed by the loss of jobs in industries dependent on these now more expensive metals as inputs. Bestowing financial favors on a selected group to the detriment of the rest of us can rightly be called corruption. https://wcoats.blog/2018/09/28/trade-protection-and-corruption/  Such policies do not reflect America First. They reflect My Friends First.

Trump has apparently asked the Commerce Department to “evaluate” whether importing cars is a national security threat that would allow him to impose tariffs on them without Congressional consent. So much for rolling back executive overreach and any consideration of the national interest.

Both Republicans and Democrats may have had enough of this.  “While the Trump Administration ponders whether to claim that imported Volkswagens threaten national security, some on Capitol Hill are trying again to rein in the President’s tariff powers.”  WSJ: “Two-bills-to-defend-free-trade”

Two bills have been introduced in the House that would shift the responsibility of determining if an import is a national security risk from the Commerce Department, which naturally leans toward protecting American commerce, to the Defense Department, which should better understand real security risks. “The stronger bill was introduced last week by Senator Pat Toomey, the Pennsylvania Republican….  Mr. Toomey’s bill would require Congress’s blessing. Once a tariff is proposed, lawmakers have 60 days to pass a privileged resolution—no Senate filibuster to block consideration—authorizing it. No approval, no tariff.” WSJ 2/9/2019  A somewhat weaker bill has been introduced by Senator Rob Portman, Republican from Ohio, on the grounds that it has a better chance of passing over a Presidential veto.

Please write your congressional representatives to support one of these bills (preferably the Toomey bill) before this President fights another war that we all lose.

The Wall: Form or Substance?

Most Americans support legal immigration into the United States (preferably more and better targeted than now) and oppose illegal entry. Controversy has arisen over how best to limit the illegal sort (to say the least).

The border between the U.S. and Mexico runs almost 2 thousand miles. By 2009 580 miles of fence or wall had been built for the purpose of reducing illegal entry of people and drugs. This grew to 654 miles by 2017.  Leaving aside the many controversies over the environmental impacts of fencing a border that runs through Indian reservations, and environmentally sensitive areas (“In April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to waive more than 30 environmental and cultural laws to speed construction of the barrier.” Wikipedia), we must ask whether a fence/wall on even half of the border will significantly reduce, much less stop, illegal entry into the U.S. and whether it is the most cost-effective way of doing so (electronic “fences” are also now being deployed). The Economist magazine estimated that it may have “reduced the number of Mexican citizens living in America by only 0.6%.” “The-big-beautiful-border-wall-America-built-ten-years-ago”  About half of all illegal emigrants arrived in the U.S. legally by boat or plane and overstayed their visas.

Where there is a will, there is a way. Illegal immigration is reduced when conditions (incomes and security) in a potential immigrant’s home country are improved, when legal channels of immigration widened, and when illegal entry and residence are made less attractive (riskier).

While the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into effect in 1994, benefited the United States, it improved living standards in Mexico and Canada as well, President Trump’s condemnations notwithstanding.  Over its first 20 years Mexican trade with the U.S. and Canada more than doubled. (Burfisher, Mary E; Robinson, Sherman; Thierfelder, Karen (2001-02-01). “The Impact of NAFTA on the United States”. Journal of Economic Perspectives. 15 (1):125 44.  CiteSeerX 10.1.1.516.6543. doi:10.1257/jep.15.1.125. ISSN 0895-3309.)  Per capita income (GPD) in Mexico increased 37% and in the U.S. 52% between 1993 and 2017.

An example of Trump’s misuse of data was provided by his statement during his recent State of the Union Address when he claimed that: “One in three women is sexually assaulted on the long journey north”, referring to the Mexican caravans to the U.S. border.  The data comes from the Doctors Without Borders, who reported that of the 57 women caravaners who sought their medical care one third “said they were “sexually abused” on the journey, not “sexually assaulted” as Trump says.” This is not even in the same ball park.  “Fact-checking-president-trumps-state-union-address”

On multiple occasions over the last 20 years sensible bipartisan immigration reform laws were proposed but never passed. We badly need to adopt some such reforms in order to meet the labor market needs of the U.S. economy and to settle the legal status of earlier illegal immigrants (including the Dreamers).  See my earlier comments on such reforms:  https://wcoats.blog/2017/02/12/illegal-aliens/  https://wcoats.blog/2018/01/11/our-dysfunctional-congress/

The most challenging component of the policies to reduce illegal immigration are policies to make illegal status as unattractive as possible. In short, a barrier to illegal status that immigrants can’t climb over, tunnel under, or walk around. Illegal status should be very unattractive. Illegal residence should not have access to any, other than emergency, welfare services. People generally immigrate to the U.S. in search of a better life. That generally means a better paying job than they could find at home.  Employers who hire undocumented workers should be heavily fined (especially if the employer happens to be the President of the United States).  Efforts to deny services and jobs to illegal immigrants should not intrude on the privacy and lives of legal residents however recently they might have arrived. Our conflicted approaches of overlooking illegal status, reflects our failure to have adopted sensible laws for legal immigration.

America is an attractive place to live and we have benefited greatly from the best and the brightest who have chosen to come here (legally).  For our own sake and for the sake of those who might come we need to improve the process and widen the door for legal immigration while making the illegal sort less attractive.

Central Banking Award

As a monetary policy expert working at the IMF when the Soviet Union dissolved I had the exciting and fulfilling opportunity of leading technical assistance missions to the central banks of Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Slovakia and building on those experiences to a number of post conflict country central banks (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Sudan). I am grateful to the IMF and the wonderful colleagues I worked with for these opportunities and now I am grateful to the Central Banking Journal for acknowledging this work with its “Outstanding Contribution for Capacity Building Award.”  I will received the award in London March 13.   Award announcement

 

Trade protection and corruption

Starting with the repeal of the Corn Laws in England (tariffs on grain imports) in 1846, cross border trade and incomes blossomed. “Global life expectancy in the past 175 years has risen from a little under 30 years to over 70. The share of people living below the threshold of extreme poverty has fallen from about 80% to 8% . . . . Literacy rates are up more than fivefold, to over 80%. Civil rights and the rule of law are incomparably more robust than . . . only a few decades ago.” From The Economist’s 175 anniversary issue September 13, 2018: “A-manifesto-for-renewing-liberalism”

Post World War II trade agreements reflected a process of progressive reductions in tariffs and other impediments to trade. Unfortunately and misguidedly, President Trump has reversed this trend by introducing new tariffs and raising old ones. Import tariffs are taxes on American consumers. Why is Trump doing this? He says that he wants to bring manufacturing jobs that have moved off shore back to the U.S. by making their output cheaper than taxed imports.

As the U.S. economy is fully employed (there are currently more job openings than people looking for work), increasing employment in one area can only occur by reducing it in one or more other areas. Starting with Trump’s 25% and 10% tariffs on steel and aluminum, the shift from imported steel and aluminum to domestically produced steel and aluminum as a result of tariff protection is only possible by shifting workers from other more productive activities lowering the value of over all output. Given that these products are inputs into some American exports, which are thereby made more expensive, it is estimated that more jobs will be lost than created. “Econ-101-trade-in-very-simple-terms”

The U.S. has already imposed steep tariffs on China’s steel and aluminum to offset Chinese government subsidies to its steel and aluminum industries and thus we import almost no steel and aluminum from China. Trump has justified his new steel and aluminum tariffs on national security grounds thus bypassing usual World Trade Organization (WTO) rules for justifying tariffs. It stretches credibility, to say the least, to claim that depending on Canada and Mexico for steel is a security risk, not to mention that existing domestic production by itself exceeds our military needs. “Trump-says-steel-imports-are-a-threat-to-national-security-the-defense-industry-disagrees”

Some claim that Trump’s tariffs and threatened tariffs are just part of his negotiating strategy to achieve fairer trade agreements by a free traders at heart. This is belied by the fact that steel and aluminum tariffs remain on Mexico even after tentative agreement on a NAFTA replacement/update with Mexico. The question is why would someone benefit one small sector of the economy while imposing much larger harm on the economy more generally? The short answer is corruption.

Corruption in this context refers to bestowing benefits on a few at the expense of others in exchange for something else. In government, corruption generally takes the form of vote buying, though sometimes it is for personal financial gain. My bottom line here is that in addition to reducing an economy’s output and thus its resident’s incomes by protecting inefficient or less competitive industries, tariffs and other forms of economic protection reflect, or at the least open the door for and encourage, corruption.

When the government has or takes the authority to tax or exempt from tax individual industries or firms, it invites, if not begs for, corruption. Read the story of the Dixon Ticonderoga pencil company and weep. “How-dixon-ticonderoga-has-blurred-lines-of-where-its-pencils-are-made”

Their Turkey and Ours

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes high interest rates are the cause of inflation, not the remedy for it”  The Economist May 19, 2018 “How-turkey-fell-from-investment-darling-to-junk-rated-emerging-market”

During the 1990s the inflation rate in Turkey averaged around 80% per annum varying between 60% and 105%.  Over that period interest rates on its 3-month treasury bills averaged about 30% above the inflation rate reaching almost 150% in 1996.  The economy grew rapidly in real terms with real GDP growth averaging 8% per annum between 1995-7.  But growth depended heavily on borrowing abroad in foreign currencies.  Banks were poorly regulated, and heavily exposed to foreign exchange risk and to government debt.  Obviously, Turkey’s nominal exchange rate depreciated at about the same rate as its inflation rate in order to preserve a stable real exchange rate.

In the wake of the Asian and Russian debt crises in 1997 and 1998 foreign investors became more risk averse and capital inflows into Turkey were reduced sharply slowing down economic growth from 7.5% in 1997 to 2.5% in 1998.  A serious earthquake in Turkey’s industrial heartland in August 1999 further deteriorated Turkey’s economic performance.  The combined impact of the two pushed the economy into a deep recession, shrinking GDP by 3.6% in 1999.

With support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1999-2003 the Turkish government reigned in its spending and monetary growth and reduced its inflation rate to 10% by 2004. I was a member of the IMF’s Turkey team at that time and remember the long sleepless nights very well. Turkey’s interest rates followed inflation down and, in fact, its real interest rates (nominal interest rate minus its inflation rate) fell from 30% to negative rates as the economy stabilized. During this transition, a number of state owned enterprises were privatized, 18 insolvent banks were intervened, and debt and the financial sector were restructured and strengthened.  Within a few (rough) years the economy was growing rapidly with low inflation and low interest rates.  In 2017 real GDP grew 7.0% though inflation had crept back up to 11.1%.

Following Turkey’s and the rest of the world’s recession in 2009 the country reverted back to its bad old ways.  “Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree easing access to foreign-exchange loans for Turkish companies.  The new rules lifted restrictions that barred companies without revenue in hard currencies from doing such borrowing—as long as the loans exceeded $5 million.”  How Erdogan’s push for endless growth brought Turkey to the Brink

Erdogan observed the low interest rates, low inflation, and high growth and apparently concluded that low interest rates caused low inflation rather than the other way around. Every economist knows that interest rates incorporate the market’s expectation of inflation over the period of a loan in order to establish a market clearing real rate of interest.  In 1996 when a borrower was willing to pay 130% interest and a lender was not willing to accept less it was because they expected 80% to 90% inflation per annum over the life of the loan.  The very high real rate (130% – 80% = 50%) reflects the risk premium of getting it wrong.

Central banks can, if inflation expectations adjust slowly, push real rates down temporarily by lowering nominal market rates below their equilibrium rate.  Doing so, however, increases the rate at which the money supply grows eventually increasing inflation and forcing nominal interest rates higher than they would otherwise have been.

Under political pressure from Erdogan, the central bank of Turkey has kept interest rates lower (and thus money supply growth greater) than are consistent with its inflation target of 5%.  In the last few years inflation has drifted up reaching 11.1% in 2017.  Markets have grown uneasy about the economic situation in Turkey and when the Central Bank failed to increase its policy interest rate last month from 17.75% investors began selling off Turkish bonds and withdrawing funds from the country.  Its exchange rate plummeted.  From January of this year the Turkish lira depreciated from 11.7 per dollar to 16 lira/USD at the beginning of July and to 21 lira/USD on the 22ndof August. Erdogan’s wrong-headed misunderstanding of the role of interest rates is pushing Turkey over the precipice of bankruptcy.

Meanwhile here in the United States, President Trump apparently attended the same school as Erdogan. After breaking a several decades old protocol against commenting on or interfering with the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy when he stated last month that he didn’t want to see the Fed increase its policy interest rate, he did it again a few days ago. “Trump-escalates-attacks-federal-reserve”  Trump’s advice is wrong. The Federal Reserve needs to continue raising its policy rate back toward normal levels (3% to 4%) before inflation momentum becomes any stronger. Real interest rates are still negative (less than the inflation rate).  The Fed should have started increasing rates several years earlier.

Have we been taken advantage of?

For as long as I can remember I have purchased food and household items from Safeway, Giant, and Whole Foods without any of them buying anything from me. Was I taken advantage of? Of course not. I voluntarily gave up part of my hard earned income in exchange for something I wanted more. I gained and was made better off by being able to make these trades just as they profited from providing them. In fact, I don’t know and I don’t care what those stores did with the money I paid them. Much of it, of course, was used to buy the goods they put on their shelves for me to buy.

These trades (my income for their goods) would only become a problem if I spent more at Safeway, Giant, and Whole Foods than I earned selling my labor. To do so I would need to borrow money from someone and go into debt. That might be OK temporarily, but obviously not on a permanent basis. In the long run, my purchases (imports) can’t exceed my income (export of my labor).

If you change my name to the United States and the names of Safeway, Giant, and Whole Foods to China, Japan and Germany (not necessarily in that order) nothing in this story changes fundamentally. Americans benefit from our purchases of Chinese goods and it doesn’t matter what they do with the money we paid to them (net of what they purchased from us—i.e., their trade surplus and our trade deficit). As I have explained in the following article, what they (all of them collectively) are largely doing with our money (our net global trade deficit) is finance our profligate government. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/who-pays-uncle-sams-deficits-26417

For some reason President Trump has trouble understanding these simple facts. He is upset by our trade deficit with China and Germany and others that his profligate, indebted government has caused. If the federal government balanced its budget (actually being at the top of the current business cycle it should be running a surplus in order to balance over the cycle), what would China and Germany do with their surplus of dollars? Rather than buying U.S. treasury securities, they might invest in the U.S. economy contributing to faster economic growth in the U.S. They might also choose to buy more goods and services from the U.S. thus reducing their dollar surpluses. In all likelihood they would do some of each. Given the resulting adjustments in their demand for dollars, the exchange rates of the dollar for Euros and RMB would adjust to produce the desired reduction in their surpluses.

Attacking China with tariffs and demanding a reduction in their trade surplus with the U.S. is counterproductive and wrong headed. But it does not follow that China is playing by the rules (WTO rules that we should be trying to strengthen rather than weaken). The EU, Japan, Canada, Mexico and others share this assessment and Trump would be much smarter to seek their cooperation in pressuring China to behave better rather than attacking them with tariffs and tariff threats as well. With the recent agreement with Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, to deescalate the trade war with the EU and resume the negotiations over further trade liberalization started a few years ago (TTIP), perhaps Trump is changing tactics in a more promising direction. This should include concluding the updating of NAFTA and rejoining the TPP now the CPATPP.  We should all hope so.

Richard Rahn makes similar arguments in his Washington Times article today: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/30/the-united-states-is-doing-better-than-it-did-duri/

Trump and interest rates

There seems to be no norm or conventional wisdom that President Trump is not willing to overturn. Following Fed Chairman Powell’s congressional testimony Tuesday in which he confirmed the Fed’s intention to continue its gradual increase in its policy interest rate, Trump said: “I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up.”  The statement is wrong on multiple accounts.

The economy is now fully employed and interest rates probably should have been returned to normal some time ago.  The alarming current and projected fiscal deficits of the federal government will force interest rates and trade deficits still higher.  This is Trump’s fault– not Powell’s.  “Who pays uncle Sam’s deficits?”  The major policies threatening to undermine the economic boost from tax and regulatory reforms are Trump’s trade policies (pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, stalling and threatening U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, Steel and Aluminum tariffs (taxes) on our friends in Canada, Mexico and the EU, and a deepening trade war with China).  Leaving the TPP  Resisting the interest rate increases needed to keep inflation at 2% would increase the most regressive tax around (inflation).

But Presidential interference in implementing monetary policy, as is now being undertaken by President Erdoğan in Turkey, violates a long established principle and practice of central bank independence.  Historically, inflation, which falls heaviest on the poor and undermines economic efficiency and growth, has resulted primarily from governments turning to their central banks for financing in misguided and ultimately futile efforts to keep interest rates (government borrowing costs) low.

President Trump can save the economic benefits of his tax and regulatory reforms by rejoining the TPP, rapidly concluding amendments to NAFTA that improve productive efficiency and fairness, dropping the steel and aluminum tariffs, ending the trade war with China, joining with the EU, Canada, Japan and others to bring China into compliance with the rules of a strengthened WTO, and establishing a fiscal budget surplus primarily through entitlement reform.

A proposal for the Fed’s balance sheet

By Warren Coats[1]

To save financial institutions from the collapse that threatened them after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the Federal Reserve purchased government securities and Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) sufficient to increase the size of its asset holdings from $0.9 trillion to $4.5 trillion by the end of 2014.  These large open market purchases were not meant to increase the money supply, the traditional purpose of such operations, which after a sharp drop followed by a sharp increase in the growth rate of broad money (M2) has grown at its historical average rate of around 6% per year. Rather they were to support the market prices of government debt and hard to price MBS in the face of market panic (at least initially).

The Fed accomplished this trick (large increase in the Fed’s asset holding with only modest increases in the money supply) by paying banks to keep the proceeds of their sales of securities to the Fed in deposits with the Fed, so called “reserves,” in excess of what is required, so called “excess reserves.”  Beginning in October 2008, the Fed began to pay interest on bank required and excess reserves deposited with Federal Reserve banks.  This kept broad money from growing in response to the huge increases in base money (the counterpart of the securities purchased by the Fed) and became the primary tool of monetary policy.

The Fed is now pondering what to do about its abnormally large balance sheet.  A year ago it announced its intention to gradually reduce the size of its asset portfolio in order to return to its traditional policy tools—regulating the growth in bank money and credit by targeting the overnight interbank lending rate (the Fed funds rate) via open market operations.  After having suspended the open market purchases that had inflated its balance sheet in recent years (QEs 1, 2, and 3), in October 2017 the Fed stopped replacing the maturing securities it held to the extend of about $20 billion per month.  As a result its asset holdings dropped about $150 billion in the nine months since then and by the end of June 2018 stood at $4,315 billion.  Its current intention is to reduce its asset holdings to $3 trillion by the end of 2022.

The reduction in the Fed’s holdings of these securities (Treasuries and MBSs) is an increase in the market’s holdings of them, other things equal.  But other things are not expected to be equal.  Our profligate government is expected to run a one trillion dollar deficit in 2019, adding that amount of government debt to the market on top of the Fed’s additions.  The Congressional Budget Office projects a worsening federal deficit every year over the next ten of its official forecast, worsening even as a percent of GDP. This will put pressure on the Fed to rain in or suspend its program to return its asset holdings to more traditional levels.

There is a better way to handle this difficult situation.  Bank reserves with the Fed are currently about $2 trillion (the rest of the Fed’s monetary liabilities is Currency in Circulation of $1.7 trillion) and banks’ checkable deposits are about the same amount (of which demand deposits are $1.5 trillion).  Requiring 100% reserve backing of checkable deposits was recommended in the 1930s by a group of University of Chicago economists as a way to protect our payment system from the loan default problems being experienced by many banks at the time.  This so called Chicago Plan would remove any risks to checkable deposits, a key part of our payment system, and thus eliminate the need for deposit insurance for such deposits.  Required reserves would continue to earn interest as they do now, but excess reserves would not.  But in addition to strengthening our payment system, adopting the Chicago Plan today would convert existing excess reserves into required reserves and end the debate over whether to further shrink the Fed’s balance sheet.

Adopting the Chicago Plan would prevent banks from on lending our checkable deposits.  At the moment they are not doing that anyway. This raises the question of where banks would get the funds (our savings) to on lend in their financial intermediary role?  In an extreme version of the Chicago Plan (100% required reserves against all deposits and deposit like bank liabilities) all bank lending would be finance by equity rather than debt.  Savers would hold claims on the value of a portfolio of loans as they now do with mutual fund investments and as in some Islamic banking instruments.  Equity rather than debt financed bank intermediation is a more stable structure as a result of shifting the risk of loses (loan defaults) from banks to the ultimate public investors.  The Federal Deposit Insurance Company would stop insuring 100% reserved deposits and its bank resolution functions would be moved to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

For purposes of requiring a 100% reserve and dropping deposit insurance, a more pragmatic boundary between all deposit liabilities and checkable deposits might include savings deposits (which can generally be shifted into checkable deposits almost automatically) and time deposits with a maturity of less than six months (or maybe three months).  This would add almost $10 trillion dollars to required reserves and would need to be phased in gradually.  The Fed would need to buy an equivalent amount of government securities in order to finance the increase in required reserves without contracting the money supply or bank credit.

It is very desirable to separate our payment system (checkable deposits of one definition or another) from the necessarily risky lending by banks and other financial institutions and make our money (currency and deposits) risk free.  Doing so would allow banks to take whatever risks with investor funds those investors are willing to finance.  This would enable a significant reduction in the government’s regulations of these activities.  “Changing Direction on Bank Regulation” Cayman Financial Review April 2015

[1]Dr. Coats retired from the International Monetary Fund in 2003 and is a fellow of Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.