Italian article this am

Misrepresents what I say a bit, but they do have my picture next to JFK!
;)

The IMF: sovereign currency, no longer the monopoly of the banks

Eliminate the public debt of the United States at once, and do the same with Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Greece. At the same time revive the ‘ economy, stabilize prices and oust the bankers. In a clean and painless, and faster than what you can imagine. With a magic wand? No. With a simple law, but able to replace the current system, in which to create money out of nothing are private banks. We only need a measure requiring the banks to hold a financial reserve real, 100%. To propose two economists at the International Monetary Fund, Jaromir Bene and Michael Kumhof. You, the bank, you want to make money on the loan of money? First you have to prove it really that much money. Too easy to have it by the central bank (which the factory from scratch) and then “extort” families, businesses and entire states, imposing exorbitant interest.

The study of two economists, “The Chicago Plan Revisited,” with “a revolutionary and” scandalous “‘Maria Grazia Bruzzone,” La Stampa “, emphasizes the global resonance of the dossier, that bursts like a bomb on the world capitalist system now jammed. The global debt came the exorbitant sum of 200 trillion, that is 200 trillion dollars, while the world GDP is less than 70 trillion. Translated: the world debt is 300% of gross domestic product of the entire planet. “And to hold this huge mountain of debt – which continues to grow – there are more advanced economies and developing countries,” says the Bruzzone, stressing that “the heart of the problem and the cross” is the highest “power” Japan, Europe and the United States. Hence the sortie “heretical” by Bene and Kumhof: simply write off the debt, it disappears.Sparked the debate was the last IMF report, which points the finger on austerity policies aimed at reducing thepublic debt . Policies that “could lead to recession in the economies ‘, since’ cuts and tax increases depress the ‘economy ‘.

Not only. The IMF would be really worried the crisis that is ravaging the ‘ Europe threatens to be worse than the 2008 financial. The surprise is that even the IMF now thinks that “austerity can be used to justify the privatization of public services,” with consequences “potentially disastrous”. But if the problem is the debt – public, but now “privatized” by finance – you can not delete? Solution already ventilated by the Bank of England, which holds 25% of the British sovereign debt: the Bank of England may reset it by clicking on the computer. Advantages: “You will pay much less interest, it would free up cash and you could make less harsh austerity.” The debate rages on many media, starting from the same “Financial Times”. thread which breaks now the revolutionary proposal of the two IMF economists targati: cancel the debt.

“The Chicago Plan Revisited,” writes Maria Grazia Bruzzone, raises and explores the “Chicago Plan” original, drawn up in the middle of the Great Depression of the ’30s by two other economists, Irving Fisher, Henry Simons of the University of Chicago, the cradle of liberalism . Cancel 100% of the debt? “The trick is to replace our system, where money is created by private banks – for 95-97% of the supply of money – money created by the state. It would mean return to the historical norm, before the English King Charles II put in private hands control of the money available, “back in 1666. It would mean a frontal assault on the “fractional reserve” banking, accused of seigniorage on the issue of currency speculation: if lenders are instead forced to hold 100% of its reserves to guarantee deposits and loans, “pardon the exorbitant privilege of create money out of nothing. ” As a result: “The nation regained control over the availability of money,” and also “reduces the pernicious cycles of expansion and contraction of credit.”

The authors of the first “Plan of Chicago” had thought that the cycles of expansion and contraction of credit lead to an unhealthy concentration of wealth: “They had seen in the early thirties creditors seize farmers effectively bankrupt, grab their lands or comprarsele for a piece of bread. ” Today, the authors of the new edition of this plan argue that the “trauma” of the credit cycle that expands and contracts – caused by private money creation – is a historical fact that is already outlined with Jubilees Debt ancient Mesopotamia, as well as in ancient Greece and even Rome. Sovereign control (the state or the Pope) on currency, recalls Bruzzone, Britain remained so throughout the Middle Ages, until 1666, when it began the era of the cycles of expansion and contraction. With the “bank privatization” of money, add the “Telegraph”, “opened the way for the agricultural revolution, and after the industrial revolution and the biggest leap Economic ever seen “- but it is not the case of” quibbling, “quips the newspaper.

According to the young economists of the IMF, is just a myth – disclosed “innocently” by Adam Smith – that the money has been developed as a medium of exchange based on gold, or related to it. Just as it is a myth, the study points out the IMF, what you learn from books: that is the Fed, the U.S. central bank, to control the creation of the dollar. “In fact, money is created by private banks to 95-97% through loans.” Private banks, in fact, do not lend as owners of cash deposits, the process is exactly the opposite. “Every time a bank makes a loan, the computer writes the loan (plus interest) and the corresponding liability in its balance sheet. But the money that pays the bank has a small part. If it does borrow from another bank, or by the central bank. And the central bank, in turn, creates out of nothing that lends the money to the bank. ”

In the current system, in fact, the bank is not required to have its own reserves – except for a tiny fraction of what it provides. Under a system of “fractional reserve”, each money created out of nothing is a debt equivalent: “Which produces an exponential increase in the debt, to the point that the system collapses on itself.” The economists of the IMF hours overturn the situation. The key is the clear distinction between the amount of money and the amount of credit between money creation and lending. If you impose banks to lend only numbers covered by actual reserves, loans would be fully funded from reserves or profits accrued. At that point, the banks can no longer create new money out of thin air. Generate profits through loans – without actually having a cash reserve – is “an extraordinary and exclusive privilege, denied to other business.”

“The banks – says Maria Grazia Bruzzone – would become what he mistakenly believed to be, pure intermediaries who have to get out their funds to be able to make loans.” In this way, the U.S. Federal Reserve “is approprierebbe for the first time the control over the availability of money, making it easier to manage inflation.” In fact, it is observed that the central bank would be nationalized, becoming a branch of the Treasury, and now the Fed is still owned by private banks. “Nationalizing” the Fed, the huge national debt would turn into a surplus, and the private banks’ should borrow reserves to offset possible liabilities. ” Already wanted to do John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who began to print – at no cost – “dollars of the Treasury,” against those “private” by the Fed, but the challenge of JFK died tragically, as we know, under the blows of the killer of Dallas , quickly stored from “amnesia” of powerful debunking.

Sovereign coin, issued directly by the government, the state would no longer be “liable”, but it would become a “creditor”, able to buy private debt, which would also be easily deleted. After decades, back on the field the ghost of Kennedy. In short: even the economists of the IMF hours espouse the theory of Warren Mosler, who are fighting for their monetary sovereignty as a trump card to go out – once and for all – from financial slavery subjecting entire populations, crushed by the crisis , the hegemonic power of a very small elite of “rentiers”, while the ‘ economic reality – with services cut and the credit granted in dribs and drabs – simply go to hell. And ‘the cardinal assumption of Modern Money Theory supported in Italy by Paul Barnard: if to emit “money created out of nothing” is the state, instead of banks, collapsing the blackmail of austerity that impoverishes all, immeasurably enriching only parasites of finance . With currency sovereign government can create jobs at low cost. That is, welfare, income and hope for millions of people, with a guaranteed recovery of consumption. Pure oxygen ‘s economy . Not surprisingly, adds Bruzzone, if already the original “Chicago Plan”, as approved by committees of the U.S. Congress, never became law, despite the fact that they were caldeggiarlo well 235 academic economists, including Milton Friedman and English liberal James Tobin, the father of the “Tobin tax”. In practice, “the plan died because of the strong resistance of the banking sector.” These are the same banks, the journalist adds the “Print”, which today recalcitrano ahead to reserve requirements a bit ‘higher (but still of the order of 4-6%) required by the Basel III rules, however, insufficient to do deterrent in the event of a newcrisis . Banks: “The same who spend billions on lobbying and campaign contributions to presidential candidates. And in front of the new “Chicago Plan” threaten havoc and that “it would mean changing the nature of western capitalism. ‘” That may be true, admits Bruzzone: “Maybe but it would be a better capitalism. And less risky. ”

statement by President Herbert Hoover, Nov 1928

In Nov. 1928, Hoover gave a speech (accepting the Republican nomination) saying, in part:

“We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but, given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”

1938 in 2010

1938 in 2010

By Paul Krugman

September 5 (Bloomberg) — Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.

The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the year is 1938. Within a few years, of course, the Great Depression was over. But it’s both instructive and discouraging to look at the state of America circa 1938 — instructive because the nature of the recovery that followed refutes the arguments dominating today’s public debate, discouraging because it’s hard to see anything like the miracle of the 1940s happening again.

Now, we weren’t supposed to find ourselves replaying the late 1930s. President Obama’s economists promised not to repeat the mistakes of 1937, when F.D.R. pulled back fiscal stimulus too soon. But by making his program too small and too short-lived, Mr. Obama did just that: the stimulus raised growth while it lasted, but it made only a small dent in unemployment — and now it’s fading out.

And just as some of us feared, the inadequacy of the administration’s initial economic plan has landed it — and the nation — in a political trap. More stimulus is desperately needed, but in the public’s eyes the failure of the initial program to deliver a convincing recovery has discredited government action to create jobs.

In short, welcome to 1938.

The story of 1937, of F.D.R.’s disastrous decision to heed those who said that it was time to slash the deficit, is well known. What’s less well known is the extent to which the public drew the wrong conclusions from the recession that followed: far from calling for a resumption of New Deal programs, voters lost faith in fiscal expansion.

Consider Gallup polling from March 1938. Asked whether government spending should be increased to fight the slump, 63 percent of those polled said no. Asked whether it would be better to increase spending or to cut business taxes, only 15 percent favored spending; 63 percent favored tax cuts. And the 1938 election was a disaster for the Democrats, who lost 70 seats in the House and seven in the Senate.

Most interesting!

Then came the war.

From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government borrowed an amount equal to roughly twice the value of G.D.P. in 1940 — the equivalent of roughly $30 trillion today.

Had anyone proposed spending even a fraction that much before the war, people would have said the same things they’re saying today. They would have warned about crushing debt and runaway inflation. They would also have said, rightly, that the Depression was in large part caused by excess debt — and then have declared that it was impossible to fix this problem by issuing even more debt.

Agreed! The deficit per se was of no consequence. The risks were and remain inflation from excess demand, which is not an easy channel to use to generate what we call inflation in today’s world. Our CPI problems have tended to come in through the cost channel and propagated by govt indexation of one form or another.

But guess what? Deficit spending created an economic boom — and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity.

Agreed. Though the way I say it, for a given size govt. and given set of credit conditions there is a level of taxes that coincides with full employment, and that level is generally well below the level of govt spending.

Overall debt in the economy — public plus private — actually fell as a percentage of G.D.P., thanks to economic growth and, yes, some inflation, which reduced the real value of outstanding debts. And after the war, thanks to the improved financial position of the private sector, the economy was able to thrive without continuing deficits.

What??? Here, sadly, Paul’s implication that the actual level of the govt debt per se matters, and that his bent that lower deficits are somehow ‘better’ shines through, keeping him in the camp of being part of the problem rather than part of the answer.

(Good article for MMT’s to earn some hearts!)

Re: Budget surpluses cause depressions


[Skip to the end]

(email exchange)

All a bunch of true but not relevant crapola.

All 6 US depressions were preceded by the first 6 periods of budget surpluses.

The 7th ended in 2001, as Bloomberg announced it was the longest surplus since 1927-1930.

The difference now we are not on the gold standard so the Treasury can deficit spend at will to restore and sustain aggregate demand.

Yes, it is that simple.

A payroll tax holiday and a few hundred billion of revenue sharing and within a few weeks everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.

And if nothing fiscally is done, it will be like the early 90’s where the deficit went up via falling tax revenues and rising transfer payments until it gets large enough to restore output and employment.

But that can take a few years.

And nothing is gained by not doing a proactive fiscal adjustment.

(And don’t forget the energy policy to keep gasoline and crude oil consumption down!)

Happy Holidays!

Warren

>   
>   On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 7:24 PM, Morris wrote:
>   

How Recessions become Great Depressions

By Martin Hutchinson

Remember the Great Depression of 1921? Or of 1947? Or of 1981? Each of those years began with many of the same problems evident today, or that were evident in 1929-30. Yet they did not produce more than garden-variety recessions, which were soon over. It is instructive to examine why.

The preconditions for depression in 1921, 1947 and 1981 were similar to those operating today, and rather more severe than those of 1929-30. In each case, a large percentage of U.S. assets, built up over the preceding few years, had become obsolete and needed to be scrapped. In 1921 and 1947 the excesses consisted of surplus capacity built to provide munitions for World Wars I and II, together with the boom-time optimism additions of 1919 and 1946. In 1981, the excess consisted of a combination of U.S. factories that had become hopelessly internationally uncompetitive (think Youngstown, Ohio) and capacity that was impossible to retrofit to meet new tighter environmental standards, imposed with such enthusiasm in the 1970s.

All three of these downturns involved an “overhang” of assets that were no longer worth their cost, and associated debt that would default, similar to the housing overhang of 2008. Only in 1929-30 was the overhang less obvious initially, but an overhang was produced during the downturn by the insane political imposition of the Smoot-Hawley tariff, decimating world trade.

The 1921, 1947 and 1981 recessions were short and fairly mild, and 1929-32 became the Great Depression because of government action responding to the initial downturn. In 1929-32, as is well known, government produced the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the huge tax increase of 1932; and the Federal Reserve failed to prevent money supply collapsing after the Bank of the United States crashed in 1930, sparking widespread runs on banks across the country. As a minor addendum, President Herbert Hoover and his acolytes also followed a policy of keeping wage rates high, which was continued by President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats after 1933 – thus condemning 20% of the workforce to a decade of unemployment while unionized labor fattened its working conditions.

The mistaken policies of 1929-33 were generally not followed in other downturns. In 1921, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, who believed in allowing the private sector to liquidate its way out of recession, was at the peak of his powers; he therefore organized no bailouts, but instead cut public spending to reduce government’s burden on the economy (he was still there in 1929, but was consistently overruled by Hoover.) In 1947, the Republican 80th Congress also cut public spending sharply and passed the Taft-Hartley Act restricting union power. The backlog of growth potential from technological advances made during the Great Depression and World War II might have lessened the destructive force of 1947’s downturn anyway, but Congress certainly helped rather than hurt. In 1981, incoming President Ronald Reagan restricted government’s spending growth, cut top marginal tax rates and allowed the Paul Volcker Fed to squeeze inflation out of the system – all actions that brought recovery closer.

In none of the 1921, 1947 or 1981 recessions did government engage in massive bailouts (the Chrysler bailout – only $1.5 billion, less than 0.1% of Gross Domestic Product – was passed in 1979, before the main leg of recession hit). Neither did the government indulge in stimulus packages in 1921, 1947 or 1981 (although President Reagan’s tax cuts had some stimulative effect in 1982-83); instead its stand on public spending on all three occasions was markedly restrictive. Finally, at no time in 1921, 1941 or 1981 did the Fed run a negative real interest rate policy; instead real interest rates were positive in all three years, sharply so in 1921 and 1981.

Internationally, the potential to become Great Depressions: 2001 was marginal as the asset overhang, from stock and telecom sectors, and was bailed out by the Fed (at the cost, we now know, of a worse recession 7 years later.); 1991 had only a modest overhang of bad housing finance assets – the rest of the economy was in great shape after the ebullient 1980s; 1974 had a substantial overhang, but the novelty of both high oil prices and environmental restrictions made the overhang less obvious than in 1981, and President Gerald Ford’s restrictive public spending policy, together with a 2001-like monetary bailout through high inflation and lower interest rates prevented it from metastasizing; 1970, 1958 and 1937 had no great new asset overhangs to deal with, although in 1937 the economy was still unbalanced from 1929-32. Thus only about a third of recessions have the potential to turn really nasty, and it appears that government actions, in one direction or the other, determine whether they do so.

Internationally, the Japanese recession after 1990 involved a huge asset overhang, from stock and real estate investments made during the 1980s bubble. The Japanese authorities got policy partly right. They did not sharply increase taxes as did Hoover in 1932, nor did they become significantly more protectionist – indeed they liberalized somewhat. On the other hand, they indulged in an orgy of unproductive infrastructure spending, driving their public debt ratio to over 180% of GDP and “crowding out” private sector borrowing, which was restricted anyway by banks’ lack of capital. After 1998, they drove real interest rates below zero, reducing the domestic savings rate and delaying true recovery.

That recovery only occurred when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi cut wasteful infrastructure spending and moved towards a balanced budget, thus freeing up finance for the private sector. However, new Prime Minister Taro Aso’s insistence on wasting yet more money on public spending and the Bank of Japan’s failure in 2006-08 to raise interest rates to a positive real level may well produce in Japan a recurrence of downturn like that of 1937 in the United States, an entirely unnecessary aftereffect of poor public policy.

In the United States in 2008, the current unpleasantness clearly has the potential to become much worse. The asset overhang from the housing bubble is comparable to those of 1921 and 1981 (relative to the U.S. economy) and probably larger than that of 1947, when the memory of Great Depression prevented much postwar “irrational exuberance.” Moreover, public policies of bailout, spending stimulus and negative real interest rates all tend towards producing a “Great Depression” although some of the worst mistakes (protectionism, savage tax rises) of 1929-32 have so far been avoided.

This time around, bailouts have been used on a scale greater than Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) gave a spendthrift lame-duck administration and a personally conflicted Treasury secretary complete license to throw money at any problem that appears politically threatening – thus the current attempt to use bank bailout money to assist auto manufacturers, even after Congress has failed to pass an aid package. An initial recapitalization of the banking system, costing about $200 billion, may have been necessary, but the TARP proposal to spend $700 billion on dodgy mortgage assets was an appalling waste of money and in the event unworkable.

In any case, the initial injection of capital to banks should have been definitive. When Citigroup came back for more, only weeks after having been given $25 billion of new capital, it should have been forced into bankruptcy, possibly through an orderly liquidation under government-appointed administrators to minimize market disturbance and unanticipated losses. The financial services industry needs to downsize, which involves removing the worst-run competitors, an accolade for which Citigroup certainly qualifies. Conversely the automobile industry should be able to survive, but only after Chapter 11 filings have removed old union contracts and pension obligations, and allowed the U.S.-owned auto companies to streamline their model ranges and reduce wage costs to their competitors’.

By prolonging the life of incompetent banks and overstuffed union contracts, the government is making matters worse and increasing the probability of serious trouble. It is essential that TARP be closed down and that the window for government bailouts, in banking and elsewhere, is slammed firmly shut. By preventing the market’s destruction process from operating, the government makes the recession almost certainly deeper and without doubt horribly artificially prolonged.

Stimulus plans also raise the chance of a Great Depression because of the deficits they cause. When the government sucks more than $400 billion out of the U.S. economy in two months, it should not be surprised when the credit crunch worsens for the private sector. Indeed, the earlier tax rebate stimulus of the summer may well have caused the surge in unemployment, of over 400,000 per month, which occurred from September onwards. The crunch point for finance availability in a crisis occurs not in the large companies (except those that are due to fail anyway) but in medium-sized and smaller companies, the principal creators of jobs, who find credit lines pulled and survival impossible. The money for stimulus packages has to come from somewhere; when the public sector deficit is already bloated, it comes straight from the job prospects of small company employees and the self-employed.

Loose monetary policy can work either way. When an asset overhang is limited, it can make finance cheaper, raising equilibrium asset prices and limiting the force of a downturn. It was successful in doing this in 1974 and 2001, at the cost of worsening inflation in the 1970s and a more virulent asset bubble in the 2000s. However, when the asset overhang is large enough and the collapse in banking confidence sufficiently severe, loose money can no longer bail the system out of a downturn. Instead it becomes a further depressing factor, eliminating the returns for saving, preventing capital formation and keeping stock and asset prices above the depressed level at which further investment is truly economically attractive. That’s what happened after the Smoot-Hawley tariff disrupted economic activity in 1930, and it is what appears to be happening after the banking crisis of September-October. Whether or not negative real interest rates produce inflation, they will certainly in such circumstances delay recovery.

Current policies could potentially turn today’s recession into tomorrow’s Great Depression. Let us hope that President-elect Barack Obama’s team of economic wizards can figure out a way of preventing this.


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