Category: Recovery

-Richard Koo–If you don’t believe me, believe him

An alternative to popular faith
Listen to Richard Koo’s tape at http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/11/richard-koo-great-recessions-lessons-learned-from-japan/comment-page-1/#comment-233008. He says some of what I have been saying for the past 15 years. Federal deficit spending is absolutely, positively necessary for economic growth.

I hope our government leaders listen to him, though I doubt they will. They sure haven’t listened to me. The reason: The debt hawks have the nation worried, because they equate federal debt with personal debt. So you hear that your grandchildren will have to pay the debt, and large deficits cause inflation, and surpluses are more prudent than deficits — none of which are true.

So, we struggle with trying to provide universal health care, which the government can and should provide, while debt fear negatively impacts the physical and financial health of millions.

Deficit spending grows the economy and can provide health care, too — and it never needs to be paid back. Never. But Congress, the President and most of the economists simply don’t get it. They don’t even look at our economic history, which repeatedly shows long-term deficit spending is necessary for long-term economic growth.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com

–Deficits: The Possible vs. the Certain

An alternative to popular faith

Human beings have difficulty distinguishing threat levels. Despite the absolute fact that airline travel is safer per mile than auto travel, some people drive, even long distances, because they fear the safer air travel more than the dangerous auto travel.

Then think of the people who won’t vaccinate their children against the H1N1 flue, because they fear any unknown, possible adverse effects of vaccination more than they fear the known, deadly effects of the flue.

I was reminded of this human failing when I read an article in which the author claimed the economic recovery was not “real,” because it relied on government funding rather than on private funding. The author seemed to feel government funding was, in some way, artificial – as though we were using saccharine, rather than sugar, to sweeten our coffee.

Of course, money is money, and federal money is indistinguishable in effect from private money. But I suspect the author had something more than artificiality in the back of his mind. He probably understands that the federal government has the unique and unlimited ability to create money from thin air, and repeatedly has proved it never can run out of money. So, what is his concern? He must fear two things: Federal deficit spending might cause inflation and our grandchildren might have to pay for deficits.

As for inflation: Despite current, massive deficit spending we do not now experience an unacceptable level of inflation, and are unlikely to soon. Moreover, in the thirty-five years since we went off the gold standard, large deficits never have caused inflation. Clearly, something is askew with the deficits-cause-inflation hypothesis.

Even if deficits did cause inflation, private spending is identical with public spending; both add money to the economy. So the author should fear the supposed inflationary effects of private and public spending, equally.

As for grandchildren, I am a grandchild of the adults who saw the gigantic deficits of WWII and of President Reagan. Yet, because tax rates have gone down, I never have paid one penny toward those monster deficits. Similarly, if tax rates continue to stay level or decline, as they should, my grandchildren will not pay a penny toward today’s deficits.

What has this to do with the human difficulty distinguishing threat levels? The debt hawks know with certainty, that many millions of people now suffer the devastating effects of unemployment and loss of homes and lifestyle. People are dying, financially, emotionally and yes, even physically.

These same debt hawks believe that at some unknown time in the future, their children, grandchildren or great grandchildren may have to pay some unknown amount toward today’s debt. Yet they fear unknown future damage more than the certainty of today’s. That is why you see people rail against deficits. In essence, they are so afraid they one day may run short of water, they will let a home burn to the ground rather than allowing the fire fighters to save it.

The shame is that many professional economists, who should know better, foster these misguided fears, leading to misguided actions.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell.com/

-Debt hawks — Economics’ Chicken Littles

An alternative to popular faith

Are you too young (or too old) to remember the fable about Chicken Little, who believed the sky was falling down when an acorn fell on her head? She ran around in a panic, screaming “The sky is falling,” a now common idiom denoting an hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent.

Thus, have the debt hawks, aka Chicken Littles, been telling us for 30 years that the sky is falling, and that federal deficits will create disaster. Neither has occurred, or is likely soon, but failure of prediction neither embarrasses nor educates debt hawks.

We have arrived at a deficit of $1.4 trillion. In the past 30 years, the gross federal debt has grown an astounding 1,400%. The economy has grown, inflation has not been a problem, federal borrowing has not replaced private borrowing, countries have not refused to lend to us and because federal tax rates actually have gone down, no one’s grandchildren have paid for the $12 trillion gross debt.

The problem with debt hawks is they don’t understand money. They think of money as a scarce physical substance. It may be scarce to you and to me, but it no longer is scarce to the federal government, which since 1971, has created money at will, simply by creating T-securities from thin air, then exchanging them for the dollars it created earlier — also from thin air.

Visualize this. You go to a football game and the scoreboard reads 14 – 7. You might say one team “has” 14 points and the other team “has” 7 points. But in reality, the scoreboard merely has credited one team with 14 points and the other team with 7 points. The points are not physical things. No one “has” them.

Why is this important? Because in the economy, you and I are the teams and the government is the scoreboard. Points are not a real substance. Teams are merely credited with points. Money no longer (after we went off the gold standard) is a real substance. You and I, or more specifically, our bank accounts, merely are credited with money.

The scoreboard (government) never runs out of points. The government never runs out of the ability to credit you with dollars. The scoreboard does not need to ask either team to return some points so it can credit more points. Crediting a team with points does not reduce the scoreboard’s ability to credit more points. Crediting people or companies with money does not reduce the government’s ability to credit more money.

The scoreboard does not need to borrow points. The government does not need to borrow dollars. It as easily, safely and prudently can create dollars directly, rather than by creating and selling T-securities.

Imagine you decide to start a country from scratch. What is the first thing you will do? The people in your country need money, so you, as the government, will credit them with money. How? Perhaps by buying things from them. The people will give you material things and services; you will credit their bank accounts.

Debt hawks will call this exchange “deficit spending,” and they will demand that the people credit you, the government, back with some of the money. That’s called “taxation.” It is identical with giving the scoreboard back some points.

The scoreboard neither has nor needs points. The federal government neither has nor needs money. It never needs to be credited with money. It never needs to borrow money. It is the scoreboard. It can credit, endlessly.

The debt hawks continue to use obsolete, gold-standard thinking, from when money was a substance and was scarce to the government. Today, if the government wanted to give you $1 trillion, it simply would credit your bank account for $1 trillion, and debit its own balance sheets. Nothing physical would happen except the movement of a few electrons. The government can do this endlessly. In fact, last fiscal year, it did.

The government does not have a stash of money from which it spends. The government has no money at all. It merely credits bank accounts — yours, mine, foreign governments’.

Some may fear this can cause inflation, but the government now has absolute control over the value of its money through its control over both the supply and the demand (interest rates) for money.

The world changed in 1971, and the debt hawks have not yet understood that. Perhaps “hawk” is the wrong bird. More appropriate might be “Chicken Little.”

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
http://www.rodgermitchell/

-The debt ceiling illusion

An alternative to popular faith

      Sometime in October, the federal debt will touch the legal ceiling of $12.1 trillion, and Congress will decide whether or not to raise it. Surely, the debt ceiling law is among the nation’s silliest.
      Visualize this: All year, you recklessly spend more than you earn, and at the end of the year you announce that you will not pay your bills because you are frugal.        That’s Congress.
      Congress authorizes federal spending and federal taxing. So Congress already has control over the federal debt. It is Congress that has created the $12 trillion debt. Now, Congress will decide whether to pay for what Congress has authorized.
If Congress doesn’t increase the debt, several bad things could happen. The U.S. could default on its debts, thereby removing forever the trust other nations and our own citizens have in our money. Borrowing would become much more difficult and the world would begin to dump its T-securities – a financial calamity. Would Congress be that stupid? Well, it’s Congress.
      Or, the recovery from this recession could end, and we could plunge into a depression of unprecedented magnitude. Would Congress be that stupid? Well, it’s Congress.
      Or, the Treasury could implement some accounting tricks like redeeming government employee retirement funds, now invested in T-securities. Or the Treasury could stop paying interest on government trust funds. Both actions are internal devices without substance, merely delaying the inevitable, as does the vote on the debt ceiling.
      No responsible person, who cares about America, would vote against raising the debt ceiling, but we’re talking about Congress, a group that often embraces style over substance. The debt ceiling has two results. First, it is a shameful admission by members of Congress they know or care little about the bills they vote for, and focus on the individual, pork-barrel amendments they can sneak in. Generally, Congress is a “You-vote-for-mine-and-I’ll-vote-for-yours” club.
      Second, the debt ceiling gives members of Congress political cover — the ability to vote for spending for their constituencies, while voting against spending as a whole, thus to demonstrate how frugal and disciplined they are.
      There should not be a debt ceiling. If Congress wishes to be frugal, it should do so when authorizing, not when paying, its debts. Any Congressperson who speaks against raising the debt ceiling is a phony. Or is that statement a tautology?

Oh, and by the way. Limiting the creation of debt limits economic growth, but that is a subject discussed in many posts on this blog.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
For more information, see http://www.rodgermitchell.com