Bank of Japan is in charge not the bond markets

I read a report on the American news network CNBC the other day (November 15, 2016) – The bond vigilantes are back, and Trump better pay attention – which included some so-called experts in a video claiming to know something about bond markets. The report asserted that “bond vigilantes” might return to force the new US President to “tone down his spending” (as they allegedly did when Bill Clinton was in office). One expert said “we’ve got fiscal policy again and … the prospect of higher interest rates and inflation could even herald the return of the bond vigilantes”. Idiot is a polite term for him. The journalist and the commentators invoked should take time out and learn about what is happening in Japan, which remains the best Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) ‘laboratory’ there is. The Bank of Japan in now putting into operation the decision it took in September 2016 to buy unlimited amounts of Japanese government bonds at a fixed-yield. Which means? In short, it will control the yields across all bond maturities from 2-year out to 40-year and will set them at whatever level they choose. Oh, won’t the bond markets prevent that happening? How? For the bond markets it is a case of “like it or lump it”. Once again Japan demonstrates that mainstream macroeconomic theory is devoid of understanding.

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The Weekend Quiz – October 29-30, 2016 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of modern monetary theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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First appearance by Australia’s new central bank governor disappointing

On September 18, 2016, the Reserve Bank of Australia ushered in a new governor, in the form of Philip Lowe. It been the deputy governor for several years and has worked at the RBA all his professional life except for a short stint with the Bank of International Settlements. He speaks Central Bank-speak. On September 22, 2016, he appeared for the first time as governor before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics and delivered the RBA Annual Report 2015 to Parliament. His – Opening Statement – and the subsequent answers to questioning by the House Committee members were revealing because they indicated that the new governor clearly understood the vexed situation that the government had placed the central bank in over the last decade or so, but, at the same time, indicated he was also prepared to continue perpetuating neo-liberal myths that have created the vexed situation in the first place. Not a great start in my opinion. The full transcript of the hearing is available in the Parliamentary Transcript.

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Is there a case for a basic income guarantee – Part 3

This is Part 3 in the mini-series discussing the relative merits of the basic income guarantee proposal and the Job Guarantee proposal. While there is a lot of literature out there on the merits of introducing a basic income guarantee very rarely will you read a detailed account of the macroeconomic implications of such a scheme. It is inescapable that the basic income proposal lacks what I call an inflation anchor. That is, to provide an adequate stipend and generate full employment (ensure there are enough jobs for all who want to work), the basic income guarantee is inherently inflationary and sets in place destructive macroeconomic dynamics which make it unsustainable. To suppress the inherent inflationary bias of the proposal, the stipend has to be so low that the recipients are freed from work but not poverty. The Job Guarantee, by way of contrast, is designed to provide an explicit inflation anchor and allows the government to continuously maintain full employment and provide a decent wage to those who from time to time will be in the Job Guarantee pool. It does not rely on poverty wages or unemployment to maintain price stability. That alone is a fundamental advantage of the Job Guarantee over the basic income guarantee – it is sustainable.

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The Weekend Quiz – September 10-11, 2016 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this Weekend’s Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of modern monetary theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Monetary policy has to work hand-in-glove with fiscal policy to be effective

In a paper – Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy and Central Bank Independence – delivered to the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, last week (August 25-27, 2016), Princeton University academic Christopher Sims suggested that monetary policy effectiveness cannot be judged independent of the fiscal position taken by the government. He argued that the current reality has demonstrated that when central banks shift to very loose monetary policy settings these policy changes will be ineffective if the fiscal authorities are simultaneously pursuing austerity. Even conservatives like Christopher Sims are starting to understand that the dominant mantra that places all policy responsibility on central banks and, meanwhile, pursues fiscal austerity, represents a failed and deeply flawed overall strategy. That is, the core neo-liberal macroeconomics strategy is now being shown by conservatives to be ridiculous. Modern Monetary Theory has long argued that monetary policy has to work hand-in-glove with fiscal policy and if the central bank is cutting interest rates then the fiscal authority has to be increasing its fiscal deficit to make the policy changes stick. Some of the more enlightened conservative economists are now seeing this reality.

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Indexed bank reserve support schemes will not expand credit

On the Wikipedia page for economist Ricardo Reis we learn he was “Influenced by: Greg Mankiw”, which basically should tell you everything. Everything that is that would lead to the conclusion that his macroeconomics is plain wrong. Yet his connections in the profession are strong and has prestigious academic appointments, is ensconced in senior editorial positions on influential economics journals, advises central banks in the US and has regular Op Ed space in a leading Portuguese newspaper (his homenation). These facts tell you what is wrong with my profession. That someone can write articles that are just so off the mark yet have significant influence in the profession and be held out in the public debate as to be someone who is worth listening to and being reported on. I have received many E-mails in the last few days about the proposal offered by Reis at Jackson Hole last week. Many readers are still confused and actually thought the proposal had credibility. Let me be clear – bank lending is not influenced by the reserve positions of the banks. Without credit-worthy borrowers lining up to access loans, the banks could have all the reserves in the world and the central bank could invoke any number of nifty ‘indexing’ or other support payment schemes on those reserves, and the banks would still not lend. And with those credit-worthy borrowers lining up to access loans, the banks will always lend irrespective of their current reserve position or the nifty support schemes the central bank might dream up. Core Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) 101!

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Modern Monetary Theory – what is new about it? – Part 2 (long)

In yesterday’s Part 1 of this two-part blog – Modern Monetary Theory – what is new about it? – I introduced the idea that a major new contribution of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to economic theory was in its treatment of inflation and the Phillips curve. This is part of a keynote presentation I will be giving at the International Post Keynesian Conference – which will be held at the University of Missouri – Kansas City between September 15-18, 2016. The keynote presentation is scheduled for Friday, September 16 at 17:00. The topic of my keynote presentation will ‘What is new about MMT?’ and will challenge several critics from both the neo-liberal mainstream and from within the Post Keynesian family that, indeed, there is nothing new about MMT – they knew it all along! I contest that when they say this they are lying and doing so to cover up the inadequacies of their own failed analytical frameworks whether they be mainstream or Post Keynesian.

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Modern Monetary Theory – what is new about it?

In a few weeks I am off to the US to present a keynote talk at the – International Post Keynesian Conference – which will be held at the University of Missouri – Kansas City between September 15-18, 2016. I will also be giving some additional talks in Kansas City during that week if you are around and interested. The keynote presentation is scheduled for Friday, September 16 at 17:00. The topic of my keynote presentation will ‘What is new about MMT?’ and will challenge several critics from both the neo-liberal mainstream and from within the Post Keynesian family that, indeed, there is nothing new about MMT – they knew it all along! Well the truth of it is that these characters clearly didn’t previously know or understand a lot of key insights that MMT now offers. No matter how hard they try to reinvent what they knew, the facts are obvious. MMT makes some novel contributions to our knowledge base and shows why a lot of so-called mainstream macroeconomic theory that parades as ‘knowledge’ is, in fact, non-knowledge. This blog and the second-part will provide some notes on the paper I am writing (with my colleague Martin Watts) on this topic.

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Hype aside – the Juncker Plan – a failure from day one

When Jean-Claude Juncker took over the Presidency of the European Commission in November 2014 – yes, 18 months ago. His record before that should have warned everyone of where his ideological preferences lay. He was the President of the Eurogroup from January 1, 2005 to January 21, 2013, serving two terms and overseeing harsh austerity programs and continually hectoring Member States to obey the rules that would see millions of citizens deliberately rendered jobless. Not only was the Eurozone a deeply flawed construction but the fiscal rules that were enforced for the weaker states (not Germany in 2004) were the anathema of responsible economic policy given the scale of the recession. The Eurozone is still teetering on the brink of crisis some 8 years after the GFC began. It is no surprise that he was termed “the most dangerous man in Europe” by the British press on June 4, 2014 (Source). They noted that he was a “ruthless opportunist” who “admits lying and backs ‘secret’ debate on European finances”. He was previously forced out of his position as Prime Minister of Luxembourg in 2013 as a result of his ‘political responsibility’ for illegal spying by that nation’s secret police on individuals, including rival politicians among other sins. This is the man that is now in charge of the dysfunctional European Commission. When he was eleted to the European Commission Presidency, his main strategic initiative, which was promoted with much fanfare was the so-called €300 billion investment offensive. It was adopted in November 2014 and was accompanied with other plans to fix the banking system and improve productivity growth. The plan has been an abysmal failure like most of the initiatives that come from the neo-liberal Groupthink machine known as the European Commission.

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The British Labour Party path to Monetarism

The Bank of England’s failure in the early 1970s to control the money supply under the Competition and Credit Control (CCC) policy should have discouraged the Monetarist support base. However, while the monetary targets were abandoned, the Monetarist infestation was firmly alive among economists in the British Treasury and the Bank of England and the junior ministers in Edward Heath’s government. The City was also a hotbed of Monetarist support, with the likes of Gordon Pepper, an economist in the private sector who edited the Greenwell Monetary Bulletin prominent. Pepper, was very vocal and very influential within government circles. The ‘Greenwell Monetary Bulletin’ became a vehicle for the monetarist views to penetrate the highest levels of government. The British Labour Party was struggling with its factions. On the one hand, the Left was becoming more powerful within the Party and deeply rejected the attempts to diminish union operations. They formulated a new and far reaching industrial policy, which was light years away from the approach adopted by Harold Wilson’s government in the 1960s. But there was also a significant rump of Labour Monetarists, mostly concentrated in the Parliamentary party who were closer to the Tories on macroeconomic policy than their colleagues on the Left. Major tensions developed and would, ultimately lead to the famous 1976 surrender to Monetarism by James Callaghan at the National Conference. We trace this evolution in this blog so that we can understand the next instalment, which analyses the 1976 IMF loan arrangement that the British government entered into. This arrangement is a significant turning point in the way that social democratic governments have been captured by the neo-liberal myths.

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The Weekend Quiz – March 5-6, 2016 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for this week’s Weekend Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of modern monetary theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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We are being led by imbeciles

After yesterday’s marathon blog, today will be easier going (and shorter). I was reading John Maynard Keynes recently – circa 1928 – that is, 8 years before the publication of the General Theory with his Treatise on Money intervening. He was railing against the principles and practice of ‘sound finance’, which he noted had deliberately caused billions of pounds in lost income for the British economy. He urged the Treasury and the Bank of England to abandon their conservative (austerity) approach to the economy and, instead, embark on wide-scale fiscal stimulus to create jobs and prosperity. He concluded that with thousands of workers idling away in mass unemployment that it was “utterly imbecile to say that we cannot afford” to stimulate employment via large-scale public works – building infrastructure etc. He considered the policy makers who opposed such options were caught up in “the delirium of mental confusion”. The stark reality is that 88 years later, he could have written exactly the same article and would have been ‘right on the money’. We are being led (euphemism) by imbeciles.

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The European circus continues

Yesterday, I briefly examined how a pack of big-noting financial market traders were trapped in stupidity by patterned behaviour and self-reinforcing group dynamics (aka Groupthink). Today, we consider the neo-liberal Groupthink that continues to trap political leaders and policy makers in Europe into a web of denial and stupidity.

In both case, innocent people have suffered huge negative impacts while, by and large, the idiots have escaped fairly unscathed. The recent data from Eurostat shows that growth is fairly flat in the Eurozone and industrial production is in recession. It also shows that the banking system is in deep jeopardy and the so-called reforms that were introduced post-GFC are not considered robust by investors. With massive bank deposit flight going on and banking share prices plunging, it is clear that the ‘markets’ have lost faith in the financial viability of the Eurozone. Meanwhile. Mario Draghi winds the key up in his back and tells the world that everything is fine and the ECB is on top of the situation. With chaos descending on the monetary union again, the ECB cannot even achieve its single purpose – a stable 2 per cent inflation rate. It has failed to even achieve that over the last four years. One couldn’t write this sort of stuff if they were trying.

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The capacity of the state and the open economy – Part 1

Wolfgang Merkel wrote in his recent Op Ed (February 5, 2016) – Economy, Culture And Discourse: Social Democracy In A Cosmopolitanism Trap? – that “we are dealing with a partially deliberate, partially careless surrender of the state’s capacity to regulate and intervene in an economy that structurally creates socio-economic inequality and erodes the fundamental democratic principle of political equality”. I highlight, the “partially deliberate, partially careless surrender” description of what has occurred over the last several decades as neo-liberalism has gained traction. Today’s blog continues my series that will form the content for my next book (due out later this year) about the impacts of globalisation on the capacities of the nation state. Our contention (I am writing this with Italian journalist and author Thomas Fazi) is that there has been no diminuition in the power of the state to impact on the domestic economy. The neo-liberal era has seen many commentators deny that proposition, yet, knowingly advocate use of these powers to further advantage capital at the expense of labour. The state is still central to the picture – it just helps capital more and workers less than it did during the full employment period in the Post World War II decades.

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The folly of negative interest rates on bank reserves

On Friday (January 29, 2016), the Bank of Japan issued a seven-page document – Introduction of “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing with a Negative Interest Rate” – which left me confounded. Do they actually know what they are doing or not? For years, the liquidity management conducted by the operations desk at the Bank has been impeccable, in the sense that they have maintained near zero interest rates in the face of growing fiscal deficits. There was always some doubt when they were the early users of quantitative easing which many claimed was to provide the banks with more reserves so that they would increase their lending to the private domestic sector in order to stimulate growth, after many years of rather moderate real performance to say the least. Of course, banks are not reserve constrained in their lending so the the only way that this aspect of ‘non-conventional’ monetary policy would be stimulatory would be if investment and purchasers of consumer durable were motivated to borrow at the lower interest rates that the asset swap (bonds for reserves) generated. The evidence is that the stimulus impact has been low and that there are many other factors other than falling interest rates governing whether borrowers will approach their banks for loans. In their latest announcement, the logic appears to be that by reducing reserves they will induce banks to lend more. Go figure that one out!

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The Weekend Quiz – January 16, 2016 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for The Weekend Quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Central bank propaganda from Minneapolis

My blog in the next week or so will be possibly rather holiday-like given the time of the year and the fact that I have rather a lot of travel and related commitments to fulfil over that period. So I will be pacing myself to fit it all in. Today, a brief comment on an article that appeared in the December 2015 issue of The Region, a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis – Should We Worry About Excess Reserves (December 17, 2015). It is that one of those articles that suggests the author hasn’t really been able to see beyond his intermediate macroeconomics textbook and understand what is really been going on over the last several years.

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European Left face a Dystopia of their own making

Last week, I re-read an article from May 1, 2012 by Abraham Newman – Austerity and the End of the European Model – that was published in Foreign Affairs. The article carried the sub-title “How Neoliberals Captured the Continent”. The author is a US political scientist and observed that given the unprecedented austerity that the European politicians have inflicted on their nations with such damaging consequences, the “Tea Party loyalists in the United States should be green with envy”, The hard-line US Republicans don’t go close to their European brethren. The thrust of the article was that independent of the short-term effects of the austerity it “will transform Europe’s political economy in the long term, lending credence to neo-liberal ideas of limited government and loosely regulated markets. The irony of this transformation is that it reinvigorates the very ideas that helped cause the financial crisis in the first place …” This is a theme that I share. It is also a starting point for a very interesting essay I read last week by Slovenian lawyer Bojan Bugaric – Europe Against the Left? On Legal Limits to Progressive Politics – published May 2013. I have been seeking to understand these perspectives more deeply as part of my larger book project concerning the demise of the European left.

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The non-austerity British Labour party and reality – Part 2

In Part 1 of this two-part blog I laid out a general analytical framework for considering fiscal rules that might allow governments to borrow for infrastructure as long as all current expenditure is at least matched by taxation and other current receipts. This is more or less the rule that the British ‘Charter of Budget Responsibility’ imposes and the approach that the new (previously called radical left) British Labour Party leadership aspires to obey. I use previously called ‘radical left’ advisedly because as the days pass the utterances of the economic leadership make it difficult to differentiate between Labour and the Tories. The main difference appears to be the worn out “we will tax the rich and the crafty tax dodgers to balance the budget”. A nonsensical stance for a progressive political force and verges on Game Over syndrome. John McDonnell’s presentation to the National Labour Conference yesterday was a further walk into obscurity. By claiming they are not “deficit deniers” and will close the deficit as a priority they have walked right through the Tory framing door. Not lingered on the doorstep and then sought more salubrious premises. But they are right inside – trapped into the same mantra – yes, they will cut the deficit but it will be a fairer cutting. The rich will pay. And pigs might fly.

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