Tag Archives: Brown

UK’s Brown and King re: failed auction

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Brown ‘Terribly Fragile’ After Bond Auction Flops

by Robert Hutton and Mark Dean

Mar 26 (Bloomberg) — The first failed British bond auction in more than seven years leaves Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s reputation for economic competence even more tarnished as he battles recession and a rising tide of voter anger.

Brown, who had the backing of 30 percent of the electorate in a ComRes Ltd. poll last week, must now cope with what amounts to a vote of no confidence by investors in his ability to end the recession. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, his ally for much of the past decade, warned a day earlier that there’s no more money for further spending.

Wrong! Spending is not inherently constrained by revenues.

King must not understand how the monetary system works.

“The notion that Brown is leading us to the promised land is laughable,” said Ruth Lea, economic adviser to the Arbuthnot Banking Group Plc in Solihull, England. “He cannot get to grips with how other people see this country now, as the sick man of Europe.”

Yes, that’s how most see it, but they don’t understand how the monetary system works.

The Treasury yesterday tried to sell 1.75 billion pounds ($2.6 billion) of 40-year gilts and got 1.63 billion pounds of bids, a sign that investors are reluctant to finance his record borrowing.

No, a sign at that point in time that investors didn’t want to buy that many bonds of that maturity.

This does not constrain government spending.

“Brown’s strategy now looks terribly fragile,” said Mark Wickham-Jones, a professor of politics at Bristol University. “His situation is economically extremely uncertain, politically risky and this auction again highlights how we are now in un-chartered territory.”

He doesn’t seem to understand the monetary system either.

G-20 Tour

The auction failure couldn’t have come at a worse time for Brown, who set off on a five-day tour this week to win support for his economic-reform plans before a summit of leaders from the Group of 20 nations he’s hosting in London on April 2. He’s in Brasilia today and due to visit Chile after speaking in New York yesterday.

He does understand that he does not need their support for anything regarding the UK economy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted Brown’s push for a new fiscal stimulus, saying her country already has committed to a boost worth 4.7 percent of gross domestic product.

Germany does have funding constraints the UK doesn’t have as per the eurozone institutional arrangements.

Brown’s Agenda

The government says the G-20 will focus on stabilizing financial markets, reforming global financial institutions and helping people get through the recession. Brown wants them to agree on a fiscal stimulus to support growth, something King warned might not be affordable.

More evidence King doesn’t understand the monetary system. ‘Affordable’ is not an applicable concept regarding nominal spending with a non convertible currency.

“Given how big these deficits are, I think it would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits,” King said in Parliament on March 24.

Brown’s spokesman Tom Hoskin said yesterday the prime minister wasn’t troubled by the auction failure. “There have been other auctions that have been uncovered in other countries,” he told reporters in London. “The underlying strength of the market in gilts is there.”

More to the point, it’s not a necessary condition for deficit spending. The economics of deficit spending are the same whether or not guilts are sold. The difference is long term rates are higher if the Treasury issues long term securities. They should listen to Goodhart and not issue or sell them at all.


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Brown Says Monetary Policy Is Having Reduced Impact in U.K.

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In fact, lower rates are slowing things down by cutting government interest payments, and thereby requiring a higher fiscal adjustment.

Brown Says Monetary Policy Is Having Reduced Impact in UK

Jan 27 (Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the Bank of England’s ability to influence the economy with lower interest rates is being hurt by the impact of the financial crisis in the U.K. “Our financial system remains under such strain that this will reduce the impact of lower interest rates,” Brown said in a speech in London today. “We have to do more. We took the decision in the pre budget report to launch a major fiscal stimulus. Rather than cutting back on public investment, we have decided to stick to our spending plans.”


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FT: Letter to the editor

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Published letter to the editor in FT.

Expect public-sector deficits and oil prices to go on rising

by Prof Philip Arestis, Dr John McCombie and Mr Warren Mosler.

Sir, Public-sector deficits and crude oil prices will probably both continue rising. Chris Giles’ reports, “Treasury to reform Brown’s fiscal rules” and “Treasury sees storm clouds gathering” (July 18), recognise the inevitability of growing deficits due to economic weakness while also implying public-sector deficits are per se a “bad thing”.

What the articles fail to appreciate are three dimensions to the argument: the first is that public-sector deficits do not present a solvency issue, only an “inflation” issue. Second, public-sector deficits equal total non-government (domestic and foreign) savings of sterling financial assets and are the only source of non-government accumulation of sterling net financial assets. Third, public-sector deficits provide the net financial equity to the non-government sector that supports the private-sector credit structure.

It is the case that the public-sector deficit will increase in one of two ways. The “nice” way would be pro-actively with sufficient tax cuts or spending increases (depending on one’s politics) that support demand at desired levels. The “ugly” way is from a slowing of demand that reduces tax revenues and increases transfer payments. If, instead, the government tries to suppress the current deficit with any combination of tax increases or spending cuts, the resulting accelerated slowdown of the economy will then increase the deficit the “ugly” way.

In any case, the current “inflation” is the result of Saudi Arabia acting as swing producer as it sets the oil price at ever-higher levels and then supplies all the crude demanded at that price. Our institutional structure then passes these prices through the entire economy over time, and there is nothing interest rates or fiscal policy can do to change these dynamics.

The ability to set crude prices can only be broken by a sufficiently large supply response, such as in the early 1980s when net supplies increased by more than 15m barrels per day, helped considerably by the US deregulating natural gas production, which allowed substitution away from crude oil products.

In sum, the deficit will go up either the nice way or the ugly way, as it always does when markets work to grant the private sector the desired net financial assets, which can come only from government deficit spending. “Inflation” will continue higher as long as the Saudis remain price-setter and continue to post ever-higher prices to their refiners.

Philip Arestis,
University Director of Research,
Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy

John McCombie,
Director,
Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy

Warren Mosler,
Senior Associate Fellow,
Cambridge Centre for Economic and Public Policy,
University of Cambridge, UK


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