Tag Archives: MMT

Mine’s Bigger than Yours: Notes on Optimal Size of Govt.

Posted on February 15, 2012 by | 4 comments
By L. Randall Wray

For most of my career—going on 30 years–I’ve been accused of advocating Big Government. That is mostly because I adopted Hyman Minsky’s views—which I won’t go through here. Of course, those claims came from the right. I’ve always been proud of it, to some extent, even if I’ve always been critical of what my government actually does with its spending. And if I don’t piss-off at least one person every day, I’ve failed.

For the past 20 years as we developed the MMT approach and the JG/ELR proposal, we’ve faced all manner of ridiculous accusations: we advocate slavery (offering a job to someone who wants to work is no different from chaining him and whipping him and forcing him to pick cotton in the hot sun from sunrise to sunset) or communism (proposing full employment as a policy goal is the same thing as forcing everyone to share their undergarments) or fascism (noting that taxes-drive-money is equated to herding Jews into gas chambers).

Of course, those claims came mostly from the left—indeed, all three were proclaimed in the same sentence by a prominent Post Keynesian, and repeated at every opportunity by him and all his followers.

And now there is a whole website devoted to an “alternative” modern money view (called MMR—which I’ve not been able to decipher; it either stands for Measles, Mumps, and Rubella, or Monetarily Mentally Retarded—neither is very PC as an identity, I must say) insisting that the MMT approach embraces Nazi authoritarianism, since as we all know, no democratic government would ever impose taxes, much less use them to drive money (nay, according to MMR everyone would sit around leaderless campfires and barter with seashells whilst singing Kumbaya).

Oh and then there is the guilt by association: some financial markets people as well as Austrians agree with some of MMT, thus, MMT has to be an evil plan developed by Goldman Sachs to take over the world. This is the view of both right and left critics.

And now we find ourselves accused of advocating Small Government. The ultimate insult!
In a bizarre twist, the critics have been able to combine the guilt-by-association (some MMTers actually are willing to discuss Austrians views! Oh my, what has the world come to?), ad hominem attacks (a hedge fund manager must be against government!), and faulty logic (explaining how a JG is an automatic stabilizer must mean you are against discretionary fiscal stimulus!) to come up with yet another attack—and, again by Progressives (obviously—since Austerians want smaller government, so presumably they welcome us to the Small Government fold!).

I don’t think either our Austerian friends or our Progressives have the foggiest notion how big the federal government now is, what it spends on, and how much greater spending would need to be to fund all the programs Progressives want (and that Austrians fear).

I don’t know if this is going to make me more of a Big Government type or enhance my newly found Small Government reputation. But let’s see what the Federal government actually spends, using 2010 data (latest more-or-less actual data from the 2012 Economic Report of the President). The total is $3.5 Trillion, which is 24% of GDP that reached $14.66 Trillion.

Note that this is unusually high compared to trends due to the “big spending Democrats in the White House”.
No, actually it is big because GDP was depressed by the deep recession while government spending rose mostly automatically to deal with unemployment, poverty, and medical problems brought on by the crash.
But let’s take 24% of GDP as a rough approximation of the size of our “Big Government”. Note I am not including state and local governments—these are users, not issuers of the currency. Their spending is “paid for” by taxes, fees, fines, and some funding from Washington. I can see arguments either way for including them in our measure of the size of “Big Government” but I think that from the MMT perspective it makes more sense to leave them to the side.

I have added in parentheses the percent of GDP for the biggest items: defense (5%), Education and so on (1%), Health (2.5%), Medicare (3%), Income Security (4%), and Social Security (5%). Nothing else really matters much individually. Note there are well-known problems with the defense number—the reported figure significantly understates actual spending because a lot of “defense” activities are secret; some of the spending is hidden in other categories. Some is probably not reported anywhere.

2010 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OUTLAYS BY FUNCTION ($Millions)
Total: On-budget and off-budget …………………………………. 3,456,213    (24%)
National defense …………………………………………………………….. 693,586     (5%)
International affairs ……………………………………………………….. …45,195
General science, space and technology ………………………… ….31,047
Energy ………………………………………………………………………. ……..11,613
Natural resources and environment ……………………………… ….43,662
Agriculture ………………………………………………………………… …….21,356
Commerce and housing credit ……………………………………  ….–82,298
Transportation ………………………………………………………………… 91,972
Community and regional development …………………………. …23,804
Education, training, employment, and social services ……..127,710      (1%)
Health ………………………………………………………………………. ……369,054      (2.5%)
Medicare ………………………………………………………………….. ……451,636      (3%)
Income security ……………………………………………………………….622,210      (4%)
Social security …………………………………………………………… …..706,737      (5%)
Veterans benefits and services …………………………………….. .108,384
Administration of justice …………………………………………….. ….53,436
General government …………………………………………………… ……23,031
Net interest ………………………………………………………………….. ..196,194
Undistributed offsetting receipts ……………………………………–82,116
OK for our conservative and Austrian Austerians, a government that is almost 25% of our economy is far too big. For our progressive friends it is far too small. Let’s focus on the big things.
At least a fifth of all government spending goes to “defense”—and the actual figure is probably double that (say, 10% of GDP). Judging from libertarian support for Ron Paul and from the traditional progressive opposition to US imperialism abroad, I suspect we can agree that “defense” spending is far too big. Personally, I have opposed all US invasions of other nations with the exception of our participation in WWII. I’d bring all troops home, close all foreign bases, and prohibit further military adventures abroad; as our Republican friends say, “starve the beast” by cutting all military spending down to what is necessary to maintain a purely defensive force within our borders. The only foreign intervention I would support would be to air drop food and medical supplies wherever they are needed.
I know I won’t get my way. I would not call this a Big Government or Small Government preference—it is anti-war. But let us presume we scale back “defense” spending to a scale that makes it hard to mount sustained invasions abroad—to, say, 2% of GDP. (That should be sufficient to put a tank into the hands of every gun-loving and motherland-protecting patriot to ward-off attack.) We’ve thereby reduced the reported size of government by 3% of GDP (and perhaps actual size by 8% of GDP—but we will ignore that in calculations below). So, a 3% reduction of Big Government.
MMTers want a universal Job Guarantee program at a living wage. Various calculations have put that at about 1% of GDP, with net cost close to zero (due to savings on anti-poverty programs, unemployment compensation, and so on). Let’s say that is off by an order of a three hundred percent—true cost turns out to be 3% of GDP. That just replaces the reduction of defense spending, getting us back to 24% of GDP.
Now it is unreasonable to presume there is absolutely no reduction of “welfare” spending—in the form of “income security” that is 4% of GDP. We’ll offer a job to all who want to work, creating somewhere between 10 million and 30 million new jobs at a living wage (note that not all of the new jobs will be in the JG program—that depends on “multiplier” job creation in the private sector, but those jobs will also pay living wages or otherwise workers cannot be recruited out of the JG). Unemployment compensation, food stamps, and even some “tax expenditures” on the earned income tax credit will all decline.
Stephanie Kelton and I have replicated earlier work done by Hyman Minsky showing that a JG program will eliminate most poverty (defined as those below the official poverty line) just by providing one minimum wage job per household. At a higher wage, and by offering more than one job to households that want more work, the JG would raise most families well above the poverty line. Let us say that income security spending falls by a couple of percentage points (2% reduction). That offsets two-thirds of the JG program spending.
Note also there will be a bit of saving in the “education, training, employment, and social services” category that currently prepares workers for jobs that do not exist. But let’s keep the 1% devoted to that spending but instead prepare workers for jobs that will exist. So I won’t count any reduction here.
So we are down to 22% of GDP. Now let’s replace our failing US healthcare system with a universal and free, federally paid-for program that offers the range of services that are provided in the average rich nation. That will run about 7-8% of GDP. We already devote an amount equal to 5.5% of GDP to “health” and “Medicare”. Then there’s another 10% of GDP spent by consumers either out-of-pocket, through their state and local governments (“taxpayers”) and through private insurers. So we can cut total spending if we ramped up federal spending by a couple of percentage points. We’ll presume that extraordinary health spending (vanity nose jobs, anatomical augmentation, hair transplants from hairy backs to shiny scalps, etc) is taken care of by the private sector, while all the important stuff is covered by the federal government.
Let’s leave the savings to the nongovernment sector spending to the side and focus on the government’s portion: we go from 5.5% of GDP to, say, 8% of GDP for an increase of federal spending equal to 2.5% of GDP.
The remaining big category is Social Security—about three-quarters of which goes to retirees. That is the main income support for the majority of our seniors. Progressives believe benefits are too small—especially for retirees who had low earnings, and also for many who receive disabilities as well as for dependents and spouses of workers who die. Let’s ramp that up by 2% of GDP.
Note that with the JG program discussed above, that offers a living wage to all who want to work, seniors and their dependents will already have the option of earning more income from work. We should let them “double dip”—no reduction in work opportunity due to retirement onto Social Security benefits, nor in Social Security benefits should they choose to work. Living standards should be significantly higher with the boost to benefits plus the enhanced jobs prospects.
Our net impact on federal government spending so far: net increase of 2.5% of GDP. We’ve gone from a Big Government of 24% to 26.5%.
But we aren’t done yet. Let’s look to our progressive wish list for more. Public infrastructure is deficient—a point made by President Obama, and by our society of engineers that finds a deficit in our public infrastructure amounting to trillions of dollars. Yes we need bullet trains, cleaner water, better airports, bridges and hiways, and more dependable sewage treatment. And we need to join the developed world in getting our darned electrical wires safely underground so that power isn’t knocked out in every ice storm.
How much? Let’s look to the estimates provided by the progressive PERI report. They found that the rate of growth of public infrastructure spending fell by about half over the past decades; they project a needed “baseline” annual increase of $87 billion to make up for the shortfall, of which $54 billion would come from all levels of government.
Their “wish list” high end estimate would be for the public sector to spend even more, an additional $93 billion annually. However our state and local governments are broke—so let’s put the full burden on the federal government, and ramp up its spending by 1% of GDP (make it a nice round $150 billion per year). That is well above the PERI dreams—which will go beyond traditional projects and make a dent in our sustainability problems with insulation retrofitting and so on. (There is a nice synergy here as our JG workers will be doing these sorts of projects.)
So we add another percentage point to government spending.
Our Big Government is now 27.5% of GDP. We’ve got true full employment at a living wage. We’ve got universal and free healthcare. We’ve got a more generous retirement system, and better care for survivors and those with disabilities. We’ve got bullet trains and bridges that don’t fall into rivers. And we’re reducing our foreign entanglements.
All for 3.5% of GDP additional spending.
And we’ve avoided “dynamic budgeting”—we have not counted potential savings in terms of reduced incarceration for the young jobless males who turn to a life of crime. We haven’t counted health benefits; we didn’t reduce spending very significantly on income support that will face fewer demands. We didn’t count multiplier effects on private sector spending—that would reduce government spending in some areas. And so on.
All of us, progressives and Austrians alike, know we can “afford it” because a sovereign government cannot run out of its own currency. Three point five percent.
I do not know if that will comfort our Austerians, who think 24% is already far too big. Nor do I know if it will comfort our Progressives, who are now sure that MMTers have become advocates for Small Government.
To be sure, I can add some more items to the list above: more federal funding for education, federal support for sustainable agriculture (but less support for corporate farming—so that probably balances), more foreign aid, and good wine flowing from every water fountain in America.
All that might add one or two or three more percent—and get us to a 30% government. Will that horrify our Austrians, and still dissatisfy our Progressives?
Probably. Both.
What should government do?
I think reasonable people can disagree when it comes to what government ought to do. I think it is worth discussing. Lay it out on the table. Forget the silly arguments about deficits and hyperinflations and taxation by dictatorships and JG slavery and bankrupting our grandkids and associating with Austerians and Hedge Fundarians.
And about arbitrary government-to-GDP ratios. We don’t need to argue about whose is bigger. What matters is what you do with government.
What should government do? It’s a mostly political question. A 24% government (US) can do most of what most people seem to want government to do. And more than what others want. And so can a 50% government (France). The jury is still out on a 15% government (Mexico)—it would be hard to point to Mexico as either a case of a successful government doing what people want it to do, or as an Austrian Austerian utopian Small Government.
What do you want government to do? 

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Alternative Fiscal Policies: Why the Job Guarantee is Superior (Wonkish)

Posted on February 11, 2012 by | 7 comments

By Pavlina R. Tcherneva

A few weeks ago I called for a technocratic debate on the merits of the JG, relative to other fiscal policies. A number of bloggers took the charge but the debate was not immune to ideological biases, which proved the starting point of my piece that one cannot separate fact from theory or ideology (and by ideology I do not mean the derogatory use of the word, but that which signifies ‘ontology’ or a ‘world view’). What I didn’t expect is for friends and sympathizers to resurrect one particularly invidious charge we have long heard from MMT deniers, namely that MMT is pushing authoritarian policies.

Oh, boy. How did we even get here? I thought this was going to be a technocratic debate.

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The World Needs 600 Million New Jobs

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | 1 comment
By Stephanie Kelton
The International Labor Office (ILO) has just released a sobering report on the growing crisis in world labor markets.  We began the year with 1.1billion people – one out of every three people in the global labor force – either unemployed or among the 900 million working poor who earn less than US$2 a day. On top of the existing glut of 200 million unemployed, global labor markets will see an average of 40 million new entrants each year.  That means that an additional 400 million jobs will need to be created over the next decade in order to prevent a further increase in unemployment. To employ everyone who wants to work, the world needs 600 million new jobs.
The concern, however, is that global growth is decelerating,which means it will be difficult for global labor markets to keep up with the growth of the labor force, much less make up any lost ground.  In 2011, global growth slowed from 5.1 percent to just 4 percent, and the IMF is warning of a further deceleration in 2012.  The ILO report warns that even a modest slowdown in 2012, say 0.2 percent points, would mean an additional 1.7 million unemployed by 2013.  The report also highlights the impact that overly tight fiscal policies have had on growth and employment, beginning with the job-killing austerity programs that have become especially common within the Eurozone. Elsewhere, in nations with ample policy space, governments have lost their appetite for fiscal stimulus, even as heightened insecurity and depressed consumer confidence keep private sector demand weak.
Analytically, the report begins on a high note, with an analysisthat employs the sectoral balance approach that is central to the MMT framework.  Here, the report draws out the (negative) implications of declining public budgets on private net savings.  Unfortunately, the authors of the report fail to grasp enough MMT to develop a cogent analysis throughout, particularly whenit comes to distinguishing between currency issuers and currency users. As aresult, the report concludes with a weak-kneed policy prescription to address “the urgent challenge of creating 600 million productive jobs over the next decade.”
Below are some excerpts (my emphasis) to give you a sense of the study’s main conclusions:
Even though only a few countries are facing serious and long-term economic and fiscal challenges, the global economy has weakened rapidly as uncertainty spread beyond advanced economies.  As a result, the world economy has moved even further away from the pre-crisis trend path and, at the current juncture, evena double dip remains a distinct possibility.
There is growing evidence of a negative feedback loop between the labour market and the macro-economy, particularly in developed economies: high unemployment and low wage growth are reducing demand for goods and services, which further damages business confidence and leaves firms hesitant to invest and hire.  Breaking this negative loop will be essential if a sustainable recovery is to take root.  In much of the developing world, such sustainable increases in productivity will require accelerated structural transformation – shifting to higher value added activities while moving away from subsistence agriculture as a main source of employment and reducing reliance on volatile commodity markets for export earnings.
Further gains in education and skills development, adequate social protection schemes that ensure a basic standard of living for the most vulnerable, and strengthened dialogue between workers, employers and governments are needed to ensure broad-based development built on a fair and just distribution of economic gains.
Housing and other asset price bubbles prior to the crisis created substantial sectoral misalignments that need to be fixed and which will requirelengthy and costly job shifts, both across the economy and across countries.
To address the protracted labour market recession and put the world economy on a more sustainable recovery path, several policy changes are necessary.
First, global policies need to be coordinated more firmly. Deficit-financed public spending and monetary easing simultaneously implemented by many advanced and emerging economies at the beginning of the crisis is no longer a feasible option for all of them.  Indeed, the large increase in public debt and ensuing concerns about the sustainability of public finances in some countries have forced those most exposed to rising sovereign debt risk premiums to implement strict belt-tightening.  However, cross-country spillover effects from fiscalspending and liquidity creation can be substantial and – if used in a coordinated way – could allow countries that still have room for maneuver to support both their own economies as well as the global economy. It is such coordinated public finance measures that are now necessary to support global aggregate demand and stimulate job creation going forward.
Second, more substantial repair and regulation of the financial system would restore credibility and confidence…
Third, what is most needed now is to target the real economy to support job growth.  The ILO’s particular concern is that despite large stimulus packages, these measures have not managed to roll back the 27 million increase in unemployed since the initial impact ofthe crisis.  Clearly, the policy measures have not been well targeted and need reassessment in terms of their effectiveness.  … policies that have proven very effective in stimulating job creation and supporting incomes include: the extension of unemployment  benefits  and work sharing programmes, there-evaluation of minimum wages and wage subsidies as well as enhancing public employment services, public works programmes and entrepreneurship incentives – show impacts on employment and incomes.
Fourth, additional public support measures alone will not be sufficient to foster a sustainable jobs recovery. Policy-makers must act decisively and in a coordinated fashion to reduce the fear and uncertainty that is hindering private investment so that the private sector can restart the main engine of global job creation.  Incentives to businesses to invest in plant and equipment and to expand their payrolls will be essential to stimulate a strong and sustainable recovery in employment.
Fifth, to be effective, additional stimulus packages must not put the sustainability of public finances at risk by further raising public debt.  In this respect, public spending fully matched by revenue increases can still provide a stimulus to the real economy, thanks to the balanced budget multiplier.  In times of faltering demand, expanding the role of government in aggregate demand helps stabilize the economy and sets forth a new stimulus, even if the spending increase is fully matched by simultaneous rises in tax revenues. As argued in this report, balanced-budget multipliers can be large, especially in the current environment of massively underutilized capacities and high unemployment rates. At the same time, balancing spending with higher revenues ensures that budgetary risk is kept low enough to satisfy capital markets.
The report concludes with the following sentence:
At the same time, balancing spending with higher revenues ensures that budgetary risk is kept low to satisfy capital markets. Interest rates will therefore remain unaffected by such a policy choice, allowing the stimulus to develop its full effect on the economy.
And this is my biggest problem with the report: there is no attempt to distinguish countries that must satisfy capital markets from those that need not.  As MMT makes clear, governments that issue “modern money” (i.e. non-convertible fiat currencies) can help restore growth by permitting their deficits to expand to the point where the private sector is satisfied with its net saving position.  Only governments that that operate with fixed exchange rates or other incarnations of a gold standard must cow-tow to capital markets.  A far bolder jobs program could be advanced if people understood the importance of monetary sovereignty.

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A Federally-Funded Jobs Program? Lessons from the WPA

Posted on January 12, 2012 by | Comments Off on A Federally-Funded Jobs Program? Lessons from the WPA

By John Henry

 
In the current debates surrounding various jobguarantee programs (in association with the Chartalistor Modern Money perspectives), it might prove helpful to review some aspects ofthe Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as Work ProjectsAdministration).  While the WPA was not a“job guarantee” program, it nevertheless points to a number of issues that areunder current discussion, including those of the nature of the projectsundertaken, impact on the larger economy, concerns surrounding bureaucraticimpediments, etc.  Let’s begin with an introductory statement pertainingto the political and economic orientation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and hisAdministration).
 
Roosevelt was nota progressive. He ran on a balanced budget platform, and initially attempted tofulfill his campaign promise of reducing the federal budget by slashingmilitary spending from $752 million in 1932 to $531 million in 1934, includinga 40% reduction in spending for veteran’s benefits which eliminated thepensions of half-a-million veterans and widows and reduced the benefits forthose remaining on the rolls. As well, federal spending on research andeducation was slashed and salaries of federal employees were reduced. Suchprograms were reversed after 1935. And one might recall that Rooseveltattempted to return to a balanced budget program in 1937, just as the economyappeared to be slowly recovering. The result was a renewed depression thatbegan in the fall of that year and ran through 1938.
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What’s MMT About Anyway and is the Job Guarantee Crucial to the Project?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by | 2 comments
By Pavlina R. Tcherneva
 
This post is primarily addressed to the MMTcommunity and whoever considers himself/herself a follower of Modern MonetaryTheory.  It deals with the question ofwhat is in the purview of MMT.
 
A number of MMT supporters from the blogosphere haveargued that MMT has a descriptive and prescriptive part and, more recently, thatthe Job Guarantee program (JG) falls in the category of prescriptions and that itis not as essential to the MMT project as the description of the operationalrealities of modern economies.
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A Scribbler’s Response to Marc Lavoie on MMT

Posted on December 14, 2011 by | Comments Off on A Scribbler’s Response to Marc Lavoie on MMT

By Philip Pilkington
(Cross-posted from Naked Capitalism)

Recently the eminent monetary economist Marc Lavoie published a paper engaging with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The paper was interesting for a number of reasons, not least the discussion of the European banking system; speculation about which in the media has generated much mythology in the past few months.

Lavoie is largely supportive of MMT and sees it as being essentially correct. However, he also finds that it has much ‘excess baggage’ that he thinks it needs to do away with. At the same time Lavoie notes that MMT has succeeded in appealing to a broad non-academic audience (Naked Capitalism being mentioned by name) which post-Keynesian economics has so far failed to do.

Unfortunately, Lavoie does not consider that what he calls the ‘excess baggage’ of MMT may well be the reason for its embrace by non-academics. In this Lavoie may well be sidestepping the underlying ideological issues that must be taken into account when considering the embrace of a given economic doctrine.


Excess baggage

While I will not go into too much detail about the arguments that Lavoie raises in what follows (the interested or critical reader can weigh my assertions against Lavoie’s paper themselves if they wish), I can sum up Lavoie’s gripes with MMT quite easily: he distinguishes between where the MMTers see what ‘is’ and where they see what ‘ought to be’.

This distinction revolves around the consolidation of the government sector in MMT – which basically means that the MMTers claim that it is theoretically valid to see the Treasury and the Central Bank as a single entity which they refer to as ‘the government’.

Lavoie raises criticisms against this which have been raised oftentimes in the past before – not least by the MMTers themselves. Basically what he is saying is that many governments that operate under their own currencies create institutional arrangements that separate the actions of the Treasury and the Central Bank.

This may seem like a nuanced point to the outside observer, but much of the MMTers rhetoric about taxes not funding spending and about governments spending by crediting bank accounts flows from here. If we accept a strict division between the Treasury and the Central Bank we can no longer make certain rhetorical claims about how the monetary system works.

MMTers consider the institutional arrangements facilitating such divisions to be ‘voluntary restraints’ imposed by ill-informed central bankers and policymakers and in this, so far as I can tell, Lavoie does not disagree. But this is where we see a distinction between what ‘is’ and what ‘ought to be’.

In academic fashion Lavoie insists that we must simply describe existing institutional arrangements and we should not prescribe what we think should, in fact, be the case. And it is on this point, I think, that he is fundamentally in disagreement with the MMTers.

MMT as a political program

My central point is that it is such rhetoric that gives MMT its strength. Ideally, MMT would like to see these constraints – which are weak and fairly inconsequential anyway –be done away with as they are viewed as leftovers from the gold standard-era. With these constraints out of the way all the MMTers rhetoric would be perfectly true.

Every heterodox economist should recognise what gives neoliberalism its strength. It is not its perfect logical consistency or fidelity to the real world (far from!), but its prescriptive capacity. It has, since the mid-1970s, given policymakers the world over – from both the right and the so-called left – a prism through which they could view the world. MMT turns this prism upside-down and that is what makes it so appealing to people who have seen the world economy led into such destruction through misguided neoliberal ideology.

Neoliberalism operates in a very similar manner to MMT in that it essentially gives policymakers a vision for what the world should be like and a toolkit to achieve this. In this regard MMT is far more humble and, rather than chasing the spectre of self-equilibrating markets or some other such imaginary entity, it merely asks that we reform the monetary system so that a functional finance approach can be taken to policymaking.

In this, MMT sees a far more stable and prosperous world in which policymakers understand that, among other things, taxation should be used as a means to stabilise aggregate demand rather than to raise funds for government spending. Without changing the very terms of debate – as the MMTers seek to do – such would be impossible, as it is clear to anyone today that politics is largely dominated by soundbites and ideology.

In my experience MMTers are aware of this and in this they are far more politically savvy than their academic post-Keynesian colleagues. If the frame of reference is not changed there is simply no hope that we can ever change the direction taken by government.

Policymakers and opinion-makers (and many economists) are not rational people. When they hear the term ‘government spending’, for example, it triggers a reflex in their mind that activates the term ‘inflation’. This is never going to be changed through rational argument – as I said a moment ago: these are not strictly rational people. Instead it has to be changed by shifting the very terms of debate.

In the past politically savvy economists recognised this. Certainly Keynes spent as much, if not more of his life trying to shift the terms of debate than he did writing academic treatises. And Abba Lerner, I think, was clearly aware of this need – and this was one of the reasons for formulating his functional finance approach (note that when examined carefully, this approach is mainly about a change in nomenclature rather than a new theoretical approach).

Where does post-Keynesianism fit in?

Post-Keynesian economists must be praised with being easily the most rational in their discipline. They should also be credited with doing some of the most impressive work undertaken in many fields – from theories of capital to monetary economics. However, they have failed to reach an audience beyond their own immediate group. Indeed, they have failed to even have their critiques and constructions taken seriously by their own colleagues and, from the point of view of an outside observer, seem to spend a great deal of time squabbling amongst themselves (which is probably more so an effect of isolation than a cause).

Every one of them can formulate a reason why this has been the case. And I suspect many will think that politics and ideology plays more than a minor role. If they are smart they will see in MMT something that they can hang their flag on – and, possibly, have their theories taken seriously by the mainstream.

Already MMT oriented blogs have begun to pay attention to post-Keynesian theory more generally (I wrote a popularised exposition of the Kalecki profit equation for this site, for example) and things will likely continue in this direction given MMT’s ever-growing popularity.

Put simply: the shift from a broadly defined post-war Keynesianism to neoliberalism was long and complex, but it was undoubtedly a key feature that its main proponents (especially Milton Friedman) had a clearly defined ideological program for governments. This program – based as it was on tenuous assumptions and philosophical trickery – now lies in ruins and there stands nothing ready to take its place.

Something will have to step in to fill this intellectual vacuum and I suspect that, should the academic cloisters be left to themselves, I can confidently predict what this ‘something’ will be: namely, a new Samuelsonian Keynesianism that will be as weak and as watery as its post-war cousin (most likely with someone like Paul Krugman as its leading media light). If this occurs all the fine work of the post-Keynesians will again be confined to the dustbin of history and the ISLM model – which Lavoie rightly presents in the paper as the guiding principle for the majority of the profession – will remain king.

When Friedman stepped into the breach he was largely ignored by his colleagues. “Keynes,” they all assured themselves confidently, “had proved him wrong years ago”. But through a careful refining of his message – together with a formulation of a broad new program for society – he found himself well-placed to fill the intellectual vacuum leftover from ISLM-Keynesianism in the inflationary 1970s (even though, in retrospect, his arguments were at best a sideshow as to what were truly the causes of the inflations of the 1970s).

It was the moral clarity that Freidman gave that found him an audience. And while the MMTers (thankfully) do not construct the sorts of metaphysical systems that Friedman peddled, they do allow us to once again raise fundamental questions about the role of government in advanced capitalist economies. They allow us to raise these questions in a fundamentally popular, interesting, but also eminently post-Keynesian way. To retreat from this because MMTers currently have no say in obscure institutional practices between certain Treasuries and their Central Banks, is a gross error; the equivalent of Freidman fleeing from his prescriptions for controlling the money supply because central bankers were then not adopting this approach.

For too long one gets the impression that, closed in upon themselves and shunned by the outside world, the point of being a post-Keynesian was to win the argument. Today, as this fine tradition gradually emerges from out of the shadows, the point is to win more generally. And one cannot win unless one has a clearly formulated game plan. MMT is the only positive game plan currently being put forward.

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The Road to Serfdom

Posted on November 9, 2011 by | 2 comments

(With apologies to Friedrich Hayek)

By Marshall Auerback
The markets are again infree-fall and, once again, a lazy Mediterranean profligate is to blame.  This time, it’s an Italian, rather than aGreek.  No, not Silvio Berlusconi, buthis fellow countryman, Mario Draghi, the new head of the increasingly spinelessEuropean Central Bank.
At least the Alice inWonderland quality of the markets has finally dissipated.  It was extraordinary to observe the euphoricreaction to the formation of the European Financial Stability Forum a few weeksago, along with the “voluntary” 50% haircut on Greek debt (which has turned outto be as ‘voluntary’ as a bank teller opening up a vault and surrendering moneyto someone sticking a gun in his/her face). To anybody with a modicum of understanding of modern money, it wasobvious that the CDO like scam created via the EFSF would never end well andthat the absence of a substantive role for the European Central Bank wouldprove to be its undoing. 

As far as the haircuts went,the façade of voluntarism had to be maintained in order to avoid triggering aseries of credit default swaps written on Greek debt, which again highlightsthe feckless quality of our global regulators being hoisted on their own petard,given their reluctance to eliminate these Frankenstein-like financialinnovations in the aftermath of the 2008 disaster. 
What is required is a “backto the future” approach to banking:  Inthe old days, a banker “hedged” his credit risk by doing (shock!) CREDITANALYSIS.  If the customer was deemed tobe a poor credit risk, no loan was made. 
It goes back to a point wehave made many times:  creditworthinessprecedes credit.  You need policiesdesigned to promote job growth, higher incomes and a corresponding ability toservice debt before you can expect a borrower take on a loan or a banker toextend one.  And, as Minsky used to pointout, in the old days, banking was a fundamentally optimistic activity, becausethe success of the lender was tied up with the success of the borrower; inother words, we didn’t have the spectacle of vampire-like squids bettingagainst the success of their clients via instruments such as credit defaultswaps.
Credit default swapsthemselves are to “hedging” credit exposure what nuclear weapons are to“hedging” national defence requirements. In theory, they both sound like reasonable deterrents to mitigatedisaster, but use them and everything blows up. At least one decent by-product of the eurocrats’ incompetent handling ofthis national solvency disaster has been the likely discrediting of CDSs as ahedging instrument in the future.  Notethat 5 year CDSs on Italian debt have not blown out to new highs today in spiteof bond yields rising over 7%, because the markets are slowly but surely comingto the recognition that they are ineffective hedging instruments – althoughthey have been very useful in terms of lining the pockets of the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. 
Say what you willabout Silvio Berlusconi (and there’s LOTS one can say about the man as anyreader of the NY Post can attest).  But hewas right to oppose to a crude political ploy being foisted on him by the ECB,the French and Germans to accept an irrational and economically counterproductiveprogram fiscal austerity program in exchange for “support” from the likes ofthe IMF.   All Berlusconi had to do wascast his eyes to the other side of the Adriatic to see the likely effect ofthat. The markets’ reaction to his resignation was surreal: akin to turkeysvoting for Thanksgiving.   The overriding imperative in Euroland(indeed, in the entire global economy) should be to stimulate economic growth to ensure that there are enoughjobs for all who want them.
Private spending is very flatand so they need to replace it with public spending or GDP will declinefurther. The eurocrats seem incapable of understanding that even if the budgetdeficit rises in the short-run, it will always come down again as GDP growsbecause more people pay taxes and less people warrant government welfaresupport.
As for Italy itself, this isa sordid case of the Europe’s mandarins subverting yet another democracy,through crude economic blackmail. Already one government has been destroyed this way: In the words ofFintan O’Toole of the Irish Times:

Firstly, it was madeexplicit that the most reckless, irresponsible and ultimately impermissiblething a government could do was to seek the consent of its own people todecisions that would shape their lives. And, indeed, even if it had gone ahead,the Greek referendum would have been largely meaningless. As one Greek MP putit, the question would have been: do you want to take your own life or to bekilled? Secondly, there was open and shameless intervention by European leaders(Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy) in the internal affairs of another state.Sarkozy hailed the “courageous and responsible” stance of the main Greekopposition party – in effect a call for the replacement of the elected Greekgovernment.
The third part of thismoment of clarity was what happened in Ireland: the payment of a billiondollars to unsecured Anglo Irish Bank bondholders. Apart from its obviousobscenity, the most striking aspect of this was that, for the first time, wehad a government performing an action it openly declared to be wrong. MichaelNoonan wasn’t handing over these vast sums of cash from a bankrupt nation tovulture capitalist gamblers because he thought it was a good idea. He was doingit because there was a gun to his head. The threat came from the EuropeanCentral Bank and it was as crude as it was brutal: give the spivs yourtaxpayers’ money or we’ll bring down your banking system.
Of course, this is nothing new for the EU, asany Irishman or Portuguese citizen can attest. Vote the “wrong” way in a national referendum and the result is ignoredby the eurocrats until the silly peasants realize the egregious errors of theirways and re-vote the right way.  If ittakes two, or even three, referenda, so be it. Politically, the interpretation of any aspect of the Treaties relatingto European governance have always been largely left in the hands of unelectedbureaucrats, operating out of institutions which are devoid of any kind ofdemocratic legitimacy.  This, in turn,has led to an increasing sense of political alienation and a corresponding movetoward extremist parties hostile to any kind of political and monetary union inother parts of Europe.  Under politicallycharged circumstances, these extremist parties might become the mainstream.
As for Italy itself, the country runs a primary fiscalsurplus. As George Soros has noted: “Italy is indebted, but it isn’tinsolvent.” Its fiscal deficit to GDP ratio is 60% of the OECD average.  It is less than the euro area average.  Its ratio of non-financial private debt toGDP is very low relative to other OECD economies.  
It is not at all like Greece.  It has avibrant tradeable goods sector.  It sells things the rest of the worldwants. You introduce austerity at this juncture, and you will cause even slowereconomic growth, higher public debt, thereby creating the very type of Greekstyle national insolvency crisis that Europe is ostensibly seeking toavoid.  And then it will move to France,and ultimately to Germany itself.  Nopassenger is safe when the Titanic hits the iceberg.
The entire eurozone is already in severe recession (depression, in fact, is not too strong aword), yet the ECB, the Germans, the French and virtually every single policymaker in the core continue to advocate the economic equivalent of mediaevalblood-letting via ongoing fiscal austerity. And, surprise, surprise, the public deficits continue to grow.
Here’s anotherinteresting thing:  in the 1990s, a number of countries, including Italy,engaged deliberately in transactions which had no economic justification,other than to mask their public debt levels in order to secure entry into theeuro (see an excellent paper on this by Professor Gustavo Piga, “Derivativesand Public Debt Management”, which documents this practice).  Italyactively exploited ambiguity in accounting rules for swap transactions in orderto mislead EU institutions, other EU national governments, and its own publicas to the true size of its budget deficit. 
And Eurostatsigned off on these transactions.  And who worked at the Italian Treasuryat that time?  That’s right:   “SuperMario” Draghi, who was director general of the Italian Treasury from 1991-2001 whenall this was going on, and then joined Goldman Sachs (2002-2005), when theprivatisations came up.  Interesting that he is now the guy who has todeal with the ultimate fall-out.  Karmic justice.
Virtuallyeverybody has lied about their figures (Spain is a notable offender today), solistening to Europe’s high priests of monetary chastity is akin to listening tosomeone coming out of a brothel proclaiming his continued virginity.
Is there a solution?  Ofcourse there is. But the eurozone’s chiefpolicy makers continue to avoid utilizing the one institution – the EuropeanCentral Bank – which has the capacity to create unlimited euros, and thereforeprovides the only credible backstop to markets which continue to query thesolvency of individual nation states within the euro zone.  They are, as Professor Paul de Grauwesuggests, like generals who refuse to go into combat fully armed (“European Summits in Ivory Towers”): 
“Thegenerals… announce that they actually hate the whole thing and that they willlimit the shooting as much as possible. Some of the generals are so upset bythe prospect of going to war that they resign from the army. The remaininggenerals then tell the enemy that the shooting will only be temporary, and thatthe army will go home as soon as possible. What is the likely outcome of thiswar? You guessed it. Utter defeat by the enemy.
TheECB has been behaving like the generals. When it announced its programme ofgovernment bond buying it made it known to the financial markets (the enemy)that it thoroughly dislikes it and that it will discontinue it as soon aspossible. Some members of the Governing Council of the ECB resigned in disgustat the prospect of having to buy bad bonds. Like the army, the ECB hasoverwhelming (in fact unlimited) firepower but it made it clear that it is notprepared to use the full strength of its money-creating capacity. What is thelikely outcome of such a programme? You guessed it. Defeat by the financialmarkets.”
The ECB should, as De Grauwesuggests, be using the ecoomic equivalent of the Powell Doctrine: when a nationis engaging in war, every resource and tool should be used to achieve decisiveforce against the enemy, minimizing casualties and ending the conflict quicklyby forcing the weaker force to capitulate.
The ECB is themonopoly supplier of currency.  They can set the price on the rates,(obviously not the supply) so if they set a level (say, Italy at 5%) why shouldthere be a default?  Capitulating to the markets, or entering the battlehalf-heartedly not only ensures more economic collateral damage, buteffectively emboldens the speculators by granting them a free put option onevery nation in the euro zone.  They’llline them up, one by one, starting with Greece and ending with Germany.
The ECB continuesto hide behind legalisms to justify its inaction, ironic, considering theextent to which national accounting fraud has long been tolerated in the eurozone since its inception.  The notionthat it cannot act as lender of last resort is disingenuous:  The ECB does have the legal mandate under its”financial stability” mandate which was provided under the Treaty ofMaastricht. 
True it is fairto say that the whole Treaty of Maastricht is full of ambiguity.  Theinstitutional policy framework within which the euro has been introduced andoperates (Article 11 of Protocol on the Statute of the European System ofCentral Banks (ESCB) and of the European Central Bank) has severalkey elements.
One notable feature of the operation of the ESCB is the apparent absence of the lender of last resort facility, which is an issue raised by the WSJ today, and which Draghi uses to justify his inaction.  But it’s not as clear-cut as suggested: The Protocols under which the ECB is established enables, but does not require, the ECB to act as a lender of last resort.
Proof that theECB exploits these ambiguities when it suits them is evident in its bond buyingprogram.  The ECB articles say it cannotbuy government bonds in the primary market. And this rule was once used as anexcuse not to backstop national government bonds at all.  But this changed in early 2010, when it beganto buy them in the secondary market. 
The ECB also hasa mandate to maintain financial stability.  It is buying government bondsin the secondary market under the financial stability mandate.  And itcould continue to do so, or so one might argue that it could.  True thereis now great disagreement about this within the ECB.  It has been turnedover to the legal department, which itself is in disagreement, which ultimatelysuggests that this is a political judgement, and politics is what is drivingItaly (and soon France) toward the brink.
In fact, giventhe 50% “voluntary” haircut imposed on holders of Greek debt, arguably the ECBis the only entity that can buy these national government bonds today.  As Warren Mosler has noted,it is hard to see how anyone with fiduciary responsibility can  buyItalian debt or any other member nation debt  after EU officials announcedthe plan for  50% haircuts on Greek bonds held by the private sector: 
Yes,all governments have the authority, one way or another, to confiscate aninvestors funds. But they don’t, and work to establish credibility that theywon’t.
Butnow that the EU has actually announced they are going to do it, as a fiduciaryyou’d have to be a darn fool to support investing any client funds in anymember nation debt.
Thelast buyer standing is and was always to be the ECB, which will now be buyingmost all new member nation debt as there is no alternative that includessurvival of the union.
Andwhen this happens there will be a massive relief response, as the solvencyissue will be behind them, with the euro firming as well.
Of course, wewill still have to deal with the reality of a major recession in Europe so longas the faith based cult of Austerians continues to dominate policy making.  Sadly, that’s unlikely to change until peopleare shot on the streets of Madrid or Rome. But at the very least, let’s get this silly national solvency problemaddressed once and for all in the only credible way possible.  Mario Draghi, you have the chance to redeemyourself and your country.  Don’t wastethe opportunity. 

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Predicting the Euro’s Demise: To Those Who Got it Right, We Salute You!

Posted on November 9, 2011 by | 2 comments

By Mitch Green

To many of the world’s most highly-regarded economists, the Eurozone’s meltdown has come as a major surprise.  Committed to the belief that One Market needs One Money, most economists expected the Euro to serve as an important complement to Europe’s integration.  But, as Cullen Roche at Pragmatic Capitalism has pointed out, those who recognized how the monetary systems actually work saw the writing on the wall, as the seeds of the Euro’s own destruction were unwittingly put in place right from the beginning. Wynne Godley was the first to point out that the unprecedented divorce between the Eurozone governments’ monetary and fiscal powers would place its members in a fragile position and render them powerless in the face of a crisis.  It was a warning that Cullen suggested might amount to “the greatest prediction of the last 20 years.”  Similar praise came just last week from John Cassidy of The New Yorker magazine, who dedicated an entire piece to Godley’s insights, calling him “The Man Who Saw Through the Euro.”

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US Senator Bernie Sanders’ Dream Team Includes Deficit Owls and Elite Fraud Fighters

Posted on October 21, 2011 by | Comments Off on US Senator Bernie Sanders’ Dream Team Includes Deficit Owls and Elite Fraud Fighters

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 – Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and other nationally-renowned economists agreed today to serve on a panel of experts to help Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) draft legislation to reform the Federal Reserve.

Sanders announced formation of his expert advisory panel in the wake of a damning report that faulted apparent conflicts of interest by bank-picked board members at the 12 regional Fed banks.
Top executives from Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, General Electric and other firms sat on the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks while their firms benefited from the central bank’s policies during the financial crisis, the Government Accountability Office investigation found. The dual roles created an appearance of a conflict of interest, according to the GAO.

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Why You and I Can’t Spend More Than We Bring In, but the Government Can – and Probably Should

Posted on October 13, 2011 by | Comments Off on Why You and I Can’t Spend More Than We Bring In, but the Government Can – and Probably Should

Watch Stephanie Kelton explain why TINA falls apart as justification to tolerate unemployment once we understand the relationship between the United States and her currency.  The lecture took place at Luther College in beautiful Decorah, Iowa on September 28, 2011.   Note: if you would like to see the handout featured in the video click here.

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