1888? Whitechapel Murders, Nintendo
March 14, 2014 § Leave a comment
The Bank of England’s Quarterly Review contains a detailed description of how money creation works in the UK’s fiat money economy…
And it is controversial. It rejects conventional theories of bank lending and money creation (my emphasis):
“The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:
• Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits.
• In normal times, the central bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank money ‘multiplied up’ into more loans and deposits.”
To be sure, numerous papers from many eminent researchers and august institutions (including the Fed, the IMF, the ECB and the Bank for International Settlements) have cast doubt upon conventional theory as an adequate explanation of money creation in a modern fiat money system. But to my knowledge this is the first time that a central bank has presented an explanation of money creation that so comprehensively departs from conventional orthodoxy…
It is of course difficult for mainstream economists to accept that the theory they have believed and taught for so many years – and upon which many models of the economy depend – is simply inadequate. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Katie West
Nearly all of human life has always passed far from hot baths
January 7, 2014 § Leave a comment
We are now in a position to demonstrate our proposition: the natural rate of interest is zero. First, to reiterate the argument thus far: Under a state money system with flexible exchange rates, the monetary system is tax driven. The federal government, as issuer of the currency, is not revenue constrained. Taxes do not finance spending, but taxation serves to create a notional demand for state money. Spending logically precedes tax collection, and total spending will normally exceed tax revenues. The government budget, from inception, will therefore normally be in deficit, which also allows the nongovernment sector to “net save” state money (this in fact has been observed in all state currencies).
The Natural Rate of Interest Is Zero
If spending is not revenue constrained, why does the government (conceived here as a consolidated Treasury and Central Bank) borrow (sell securities)? As spending logically precedes tax collection, the government must likewise spend sufficiently before it can borrow. Thus, government spending must also, as a point of logic, precede security sales. To cite a “real world” example, market participants recognize that when Treasury securities are paid for, increasing Treasury balances at the Fed, the Fed does “repos” on the same day; the Fed must “add” so the Treasury can get paid.
Since the currency issuer does not need to borrow its own money to spend, security sales, like taxes, must have some other purpose. That purpose in a typical state money system is to manage aggregate bank reserves and control short-term interest rates (over night interbank lending rate, or Fed funds rate in the United States).
In the contemporary economy, government “money” includes currency and central bank accounts known as member bank reserves. Government spending and lending adds reserves to the banking system. Government taxing and security sales drain (subtract) reserves from the banking system. When the government realizes a budget deficit, there is a net reserve add to the banking system. That is, government deficit spending results in net credits to member bank reserve accounts. If these net credits lead to excess reserve positions, overnight interest rates will be bid down by the member banks with excess reserves to the interest rate paid on reserves by the central bank (zero percent in the case of the USA and Japan, for example). If the central bank has a positive target for the overnight lending rate, either the central bank must pay interest on reserves or otherwise provide an interest-bearing alternative to non-interest-bearing reserve accounts. This is typically done by offering securities for sale in the open market to drain the excess reserves. Central Bank officials and traders recognize this as “offsetting operating factors,” since the sales are intended to offset the impact of the likes of fiscal policy, float, and so forth on reserves that would cause the Fed funds rate to move away from the Fed’s target rate.
Our main point is, in nations that include the USA, Japan, and others where interest is not paid on central bank reserves, the “penalty” for deficit spending and not issuing securities is not (apart from various self-imposed constraints) “bounced” government checks but a zero percent interbank rate, as in Japan today.
The overnight lending rate is the most important benchmark interest rate for many other important rates, including banks’ prime rates, mortgage rates, and consumer loan rates, and therefore the Fed funds rate serves as the “base rate” of interest in the economy. In a state money system with flexible exchange rates running a budget deficit—in other words, under the “normal” conditions or operations of the specified institutional context—without government intervention either to pay interest on reserves or to offer securities to drain excess reserves to actively support a nonzero, positive interest rate, thenatural or normal rate of interest of such a system is zero.
This analysis is supported by both recent research and experience. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Pixy Yijun Liao
If all else fails (has failed) I can at least describe a place
July 26, 2013 § Leave a comment
“Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 — that is what it amounts to, with interest. People who will not turn a shovelful of dirt nor contribute a pound of material will collect more money from the United States than will the people who supply the material and do the work. That is the terrible thing about interest. In all our great bond issues the interest is always greater than the principal. All of the great public works cost more than twice the actual cost, on that account. Under the present system of doing business we simply add 120 to 150 per cent, to the stated cost.
“But here is the point: If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20 per cent, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who directly contribute to Muscle Shoals in some useful way…
“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer, and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either…”
“Are you going to have anything to do with outlining this proposed policy?” Mr. Edison was asked.
“I am just expressing my opinion as a citizen,” he replied. “Ford’s idea is flawless. They won’t like it…” read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Thomas Demand
Victim recalls assailant’s breasts, little else
April 19, 2013 § Leave a comment
1. Gold is a Currency: This is rule number 1. It is not a decorative or industrial metal, it is a permanent store of value, as dictated by Greeks in Lydia around 700 B.C. And, it shall be ever thus.
2. The price of gold cannot fall, it can only be manipulated lower: When gold’s price falls, it is an unnatural act. It can only occur as the result of an international cabal of Central Bankers and politicians. It’s a conspiracy, and we know who the guilty parties are.
3. If the price of gold is rising, it is doing so despite enormous and desperate efforts by manipulators to prevent the rise: This is the corollary to the prior Rule of Gold manipulation. Gold runs up despite the overwhelming opposition to it…
6. Gold works whether the economy is good or bad: When we have a red hot economy, Gold is your hedge against inflation. When we have a bad economy, Gold is a safe harbor against collapse. It is a one way trade that never fails!…
11. Gold is always rallying in one currency or another: Sure, it may be down 30% in Dollars, the reserve currency it is priced in, but you can always find a currency falling faster than it does and claim you own it in that denomination. Last week, it was up in Japanese Yen. This week, it is up in Zimbabwe dollars. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Adrian Apo
Now hold on. I can hear you counting. One two three four. I know you’re coming around me. What I propose is that we move out together. Count it out together. That was always the plan
February 20, 2013 § Leave a comment
So what would happen if a sovereign, currency-issuing government (with a flexible exchange rate) ran a budget deficit without issuing debt?
Like all government spending, the Treasury would credit the reserve accounts held by the commercial bank at the central bank. The commercial bank in question would be where the target of the spending had an account. So the commercial bank’s assets rise and its liabilities also increase because a deposit would be made.
The transactions are clear: The commercial bank’s assets rise and its liabilities also increase because a new deposit has been made. Further, the target of the fiscal initiative enjoys increased assets (bank deposit) and net worth (a liability/equity entry on their balance sheet).
Taxation does the opposite and so a deficit (spending greater than taxation) means that reserves increase and private net worth increases.
This means that there are likely to be excess reserves in the “cash system” which then raises issues for the central bank about its liquidity management. The aim of the central bank is to “hit” a target interest rate and so it has to ensure that competitive forces in the interbank market do not compromise that target.
When there are excess reserves there is downward pressure on the overnight interest rate (as banks scurry to seek interest-earning opportunities), the central bank then has to sell government bonds to the banks to soak the excess up and maintain liquidity at a level consistent with the target. Some central banks offer a return on overnight reserves which reduces the need to sell debt as a liquidity management operation.
There is no sense that these debt sales have anything to do with “financing” government net spending. The sales are a monetary operation aimed at interest-rate maintenance. So M1 (deposits in the non-government sector) rise as a result of the deficit without a corresponding increase in liabilities. It is this result that leads to the conclusion that that deficits increase net financial assets in the non-government sector.
What happens when there are bond sales? All that happens is that the bank reserves are reduced by the bond sales but this does not reduce the deposits created by the net spending. So net worth is not altered. What is changed is the composition of the asset portfolio held in the non-government sector.
The only difference between the Treasury “borrowing from the central bank” and issuing debt to the private sector is that the central bank has to use different operations to pursue its policy interest rate target. If it debt is not issued to match the deficit then it has to either pay interest on excess reserves (which most central banks are doing now anyway) or let the target rate fall to zero (the Japan solution).
There is no difference to the impact of the deficits on net worth in the non-government sector.
Mainstream economists would say that by draining the reserves, the central bank has reduced the ability of banks to lend which then, via the money multiplier, expands the money supply.
However, the reality is that:
• Building bank reserves does not increase the ability of the banks to lend.
• The money multiplier process so loved by the mainstream does not describe the way in which banks make loans.
• Inflation is caused by aggregate demand growing faster than real output capacity. The reserve position of the banks is not functionally related with that process.
So the banks are able to create as much credit as they can find credit-worthy customers to hold irrespective of the operations that accompany government net spending.
This doesn’t lead to the conclusion that deficits do not carry an inflation risk. All components of aggregate demand carry an inflation risk if they become excessive, which can only be defined in terms of the relation between spending and productive capacity.
But it is totally fallacious to think that private placement of debt reduces the inflation risk. It does not. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Inès
CLOV: Do you believe in the life to come? HAMM: Mine was always that
February 4, 2013 § Leave a comment
All the water you drank today was sewage in the recent past and very possibly excreted by the person sat next to you right now.
Their output made your coffee possible. That and the stewed cowpats in which the coffee grew.
Still thirsty?
Water operates in a cycle, and therefore starting at any point on that cycle is as valid as any other point. But the emotional impact is vastly different.
The standard water cycle always starts with evaporation. Even the pre-treatment of water to make it drinkable is barely mentioned, and we certainly don’t go into the mechanics of what happens after you flush.
But wind that cycle back a stage and you can immediately generate a severe disgust reaction. So much so that even in areas with a severe shortage of water any attempt to use our advanced technological knowhow to short-circuit the evaporation/precipitation part of the cycle gets a label: “toilet to tap”.
And that tends to stop any rational debate on the subject stone dead.
Precisely the same trick is used with government spending. Government spending is just like the pre-treatment of water. It is an artificial intervention into the natural system that stops people and businesses dying unnecessarily. It is why we have an advanced economy rather than all of us having to stew our own cowpat juice.
And, like water, any spending in a credit economy creates a form of effluent that has to be dealt with by an active intervention. These are the excess saving desires of the non-government sector. They have to be sorted out or everything starts to go very smelly very quickly. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Jessica Tremp
my nerves are bad to-night 