One of the biggest things confusing people about how public finance works is that everyone is focused on the Fed rather than the Treasury.
A good aspect of MMT is that it explains how the Treasury spending more than it takes in in taxes means more money is created into the economy than is deleted out of the economy. This is the more important thing to focus on.
Some of the MMT professors also do a good job explaining how QE (quantitative easing) doesn't create new net financial assets into the system, it just shifts around assets in accounts at the Fed.
All this focus on the Fed seems counterproductive.
> A good aspect of MMT is that it explains how the Treasury spending more than it takes in in taxes means more money is created into the economy than is deleted out of the economy. This is the more important thing to focus on.
This is one of the most absurd claims of the supposedly "descriptive" MMT. Taxation does not delete money from the economy. When the federal government collects taxes, it doesn't take that money and burn it in a giant pit. It turns around and immediately spends that money.
Yes, the federal government does not need your tax dollars. Yes, they technically have the ability to print an infinite amount of dollars. But that doesn't support the claim that taxation removes money from the economy.
> Some of the MMT professors also do a good job explaining how QE (quantitative easing) doesn't create new net financial assets into the system, it just shifts around assets in accounts at the Fed.
This is completely false. The Fed creates new reserves (base money) in order to buy assets.
>>"This is one of the most absurd claims of the supposedly "descriptive" MMT. Taxation does not delete money from the economy. When the federal government collects taxes, it doesn't take that money and burn it in a giant pit. It turns around and immediately spends that money."
I didn't know that idea was so polemic.
So, what you are saying is that government deficits are inflationary because they add money to the economy, but, on the other hand, government surplus don't retire money from the economy?
>>"This is completely false. The Fed creates new reserves (base money) in order to buy assets."
Yes, but the assets the Fed buy (when practicing QE) are in the accounts of the commercial banks in the Fed. After buying them, those assets are not there anymore, and, instead there is money (1). And money is basically a government bond that pay 0% interest.
> So, what you are saying is that government deficits are inflationary because they add money to the economy, but, on the other hand, government surplus don't retire money from the economy?
Honestly I don't know what point you're trying to make, or what deficits or surpluses have to do with anything. A deficit or surplus is merely the delta between total revenues and an arbitrarily defined budget.
Inflation is caused by additional dollars chasing the same number of goods. Printing money does not create goods and services - it merely decreases the value of each dollar relative to everything else. If I had a machine that could create an unlimited amount of gold at zero cost, the price of gold would approach zero if I made and sold enough of it. I don't know why you would think dollars would be any different.
> Yes, but the assets the Fed buy (when practicing QE) are in the accounts of the commercial banks in the Fed. After buying them, those assets are not there anymore, and, instead there is money (1). And money is basically a government bond that pay 0% interest.
Yes, the bank exchanges an asset (like a treasury) in exchange for reserves (base money). The question you need to ask yourself is, where did those reserves come from? Another question you need to ask is, when Fed engages in QE, why does the monetary base increase?
I'm a little late, but I want to answer for the sake of completeness.
>>"Honestly I don't know what point you're trying to make, or what deficits or surpluses have to do with anything."
You say "Inflation is caused by additional dollars chasing the same number of goods". We agree with that (it could be a supply problem too, but that's another subject).
Now, it seems to me that we agree also that a government deficit can be inflationary. So, by definition, a government deficit is adding money to the economy.
My question is: if a government deficit is adding money to the economy, what a government surplus is doing? That's the meaning of "taxes destroy money".
>>" The question you need to ask yourself is, where did those reserves come from? Another question you need to ask is, when Fed engages in QE, why does the monetary base increase? "
Monetary base increase because that is how it's defined.
I think that the problem here is that you subscribe to the fractional reserve banking theory that, I'm afraid, is false.
I suggest reading this report from the Bank of England (1) about how money creation works. A private bank lending is not limited for the quantity of reserves available in the system, because central banks have to keep the system of payments working and are targeting an interest rate. So, central banks have to answer any request for additional reserves.
The corollary to all this, is that it doesn't matter if the asset of the private bank is a treasury or reserves in the banking system, banks can lend anyway. The central banks sell treasury to the banks for controlling the interest rate, not the quantity of money.
You also seem to be arguing that centrals banks don't create new money, which is an odd assertion, especially for a proponent of MMT. From the article you posted:
> "QE involves a shift in the focus of monetary policy to the
quantity of money: the central bank purchases a quantity of
assets, financed by the creation of broad money and a
corresponding increase in the amount of central bank reserves.
The sellers of the assets will be left holding the newly created deposits in place of government bonds."
> "QE has a direct effect on the quantities of both base and broad money because of the way in which the Bank carries out its asset purchases. The policy aims to buy assets, government bonds, mainly from non-bank financial companies, such as pension funds or insurance companies. Consider, for example, the purchase of £1 billion of government bonds from a pension fund. One way in which the Bank could carry out the purchase would be to print £1 billion of banknotes and swap these directly with the pension fund. But transacting in such large quantities of banknotes is impractical. These sorts of transactions are therefore carried out using electronic forms of money."
>>"You also seem to be arguing that centrals banks don't create new money"
Not exactly. My undernstanding is that all money comes from the government. That is clear with banknotes for instance, it comes only from one place, but the same is true for bank reserves. Reserves originates in the Central Bank that is part of the government.
Now, if the government want to spend into something, let's say to pay a service to a private company, it tells the central bank to credit the appropriate account of the private company bank with the appropriate quantity. Money was effectively spent into existence, and, this will have inflationary effects.
On the other hand, if, for instance, in order to finance a crazy QE program, new reserves are created in the banking system, that money is available for banks to make loans, but that doesn't mean that a loan will be made. It's not until that loan is fulfilled that the new reserves will have an inflationary effect.
That's the reason why the QE programs were not inflationary. They affected the interest rate, but that was not enough because there were not appetite for loans in the economy. I think this has been calling "pushing a string". The MMT perspective would say "those QE programs are not going to be inflationary but they are not the proper tool. If you want to create demand (and some inflation) you need the government to spend, because the private sector obviously doesn't want to".
> My question is: if a government deficit is adding money to the economy, what a government surplus is doing? That's the meaning of "taxes destroy money".
It's rare for the federal government to run a surplus, but it did have one for four years straight in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001[1]. During that that time, the monetary base increased 32%[2] and the M2 money supply increase 23%[3].
No matter how you look at it, despite the government running a surplus, the money supply continued to increase. How do you square that with your claim that surpluses remove money from the economy?
You're forgetting that the government doesn't _control_ the whole money supply. The government only controls how much it itself creates or deletes on net.
Most money is created by commercial banks. As the demand for credit expands the money supply expands, and as credit is repaid, the money supply decreases. This is going on all the time.
My point is that with a government surplus there is less money being spent in the economy, the same way that with a government deficit there is more money spent in the economy. I don't think this is polemic.
Now, in order the government to run a surplus, it has to tax more that it spend. The money that is taxed in excess of the money that is spend, it's the money that it's retired from the economy. Ergo, taxes retire money or "destroy money".
Please, note, that when a government is running a deficit, it's effectively spending new money into existence but, that doesn't mean that all the money comes from the fiscal instance of the government. That's the reason we can see years when the government is in surplus and an increase in the monetary base at the same time.
Where is that money coming from if not from a fiscal deficit? It's coming from the central bank creating reserves. Why the central bank create new reserves if the government is not spending more than it tax? Normally, it would be for only one reason, manage the interest rate.
The credit department of commercial banks doesn't check if they have reserves before given a loan, they check if the loan make business sense (or they should) and then get the reserves in the interbank market. If there are not enough reserves in the system for the demand of credit in the economy, the interest rate will go up (offer and demand dynamics in the interbank market). The central bank has a interest rate target, so, in order to keep it in target, they have to add the reserves necessaries. The central bank don't have control of the monetary base, because if they control the quantity of money, they would loss control of the interest rate.
So, if in years of government surplus, the monetary base grow, that means that central bank had to add reserves to the system. Assuming it was not some crazy QE program, that means that the economy was demanding more credit. Also, we can deduce that in those years, while the public debt was going down, the private debt was going up.
This is related also to the (for me) very interesting concept of sectoral balances (1). If the government is running a surplus, and the GDP is the same or growing, and the external balance of payments is the same, that means that the private debt have to increase.
>>"It's rare for the federal government to run a surplus [..]"
Yes, very rare. It's interesting to think about why is that the case in the context of the sectoral balance model.
> Inflation is caused by additional dollars chasing the same number of goods.
But if there's a fall in aggregate demand at a given price level, there are _fewer_ dollars chasing the same number of goods for a period of time. So if government spending is greater than taxation for that given period, it doesn't necessarily cause inflation.
> the bank exchanges an asset (like a treasury) in exchange for reserves (base money)
The "monetary base" increases because of the way they define the monetary base. In the old days, the money in reserve accounts was convertible into gold, and the money in the Treasury bond accounts wasn't, so they count the money in the reserve accounts as part of the "monetary base" but not the money in the Treasury bond accounts.
> But if there's a fall in aggregate demand at a given price level, there are _fewer_ dollars chasing the same number of goods for a period of time. So if government spending is greater than taxation for that given period, it doesn't necessarily cause inflation.
I actually completely agree, but with a caveat. It may not cause inflation in terms of this years price level being higher than last years price level, but it will cause a decline in the purchasing power of the dollar. For example, let's say in the absence of intervention the price level would fall by 2%, but with intervention the price level would stay the same. That's still a 2% decline in purchasing power.
> The "monetary base" increases because of the way they define the monetary base.
The monetary base is defined as the sum of all currency (including coin) plus bank deposits. It increases or decreases completely at the Fed's discretion, because the Fed has the unique ability to create reserves. This isn't some semantic trickery.
Assuming that the fall in aggregate demand will last for several time periods, in the absence of intervention, the companies lay off part of their workforce, since now they don't need to produce as much per time period. So now unemployment is up and overall output is lower. By cutting output, the companies don't necessarily have to cut prices. In short: the lack of intervention doesn't necessarily lead to a fall in the price level.
The point of saying that the Treasury bond accounts aren't counted as part of the monetary base while the reserve accounts are is that it doesn't really matter which account your money is in at the Fed. My original comment was pointing out that QE just moves reserves from one account to the other and that this has little effect on overall economic activity because lending by private banks isn't reserve constrained (MMT people do a good job explaining this as well).
> Printing money does not create goods and services - it merely decreases the value of each dollar relative to everything else.
Consider that during a recession, factories have surplus capacity to produce more goods. But people don't have money to spend, so the factories don't use that existing capacity, or increase their capacity.
Printing money can stimulate demand and thus increase production of goods.
> If I had a machine that could create an unlimited amount of gold at zero cost, the price of gold would approach zero if I made and sold enough of it.
Well, they haven't created an infinite amount (yet). What if the demand for your watches grows as fast as your machine can produce them?
> why does the monetary base increase?
Has inflation kept up with the growth of the money supply?
It is rarely mentioned how deficit spending leads directly to private wealth creation. Increased military spending actually means increased outsourcing. It’s a transfer of wealth from the collective (future taxpayers) to the private (contractors and businesses).
Other than the amount of government money they receive, not particularly. Same thing would happen if we increased deficit spending for education purposes. Schools might bring in more external for mental health, contract out food preparation, provide tablets for all students, etc. Each of those would be a transfer of money from public (taxpayers) to private hands (contractors and companies).
One could argue that investing in a bomb that explodes in another country doesn't create as much economic value as using that same money to invest in the education of an American child.
Eisenhower had some thoughts when he left office [1]:
==This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.==
==Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. ==
These things are not known, actually. There are people much smarter than you or me that would disagree with your sentiment that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy."
> There are people much smarter than you or me that would disagree with your sentiment that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy."
How is anyone supposed to argue against that? You can use that to try and defeat any argument, but it doesn't really demonstrate anything. What people? How do you know they are smarter? Are smart people always correct?
The grandparent made a blanket statement that "we know MMT is a bad long term policy" which the other poster was rightly pointing out is wrong. This is a ridiculous blanket statement, and clearly and obviously false. Such arguments don't deserve detailed rebuttals.
Sorry, let me be clear: by "smart people" I mean economists who have spent their lives studying monetary and fiscal policy and analyzing how it can be used to make the world a better place.
Not sure why the onus is on me to be "reasonable" in my response when we all agree that the person I was replying to was making an entirely unreasonable assertion.
>I mean economists who have spent their lives studying monetary and fiscal policy and analyzing how it can be used to make the world a better place.
This means nothing when they haven't been held accountable for bad predictions. I work in finance, and it's super easy to build a model that looks like it can predict the future, but fails completely when applied in practice, due to some statistical/modelling error. Predicting the future is damn hard; it's way easier for us to convince ourselves that a model is correct than to actuallly produce a correct model, so if somebody isn't subject to a constant process of feedback (a scientific process) it's very unlikely they're producing correct models. Crystal healers have also spent their lives trying to determine how crystals can be used to make the world a better place; it doesn't mean squat because they don't apply the scientific method in their research.
From an economic perspective, if these people really had models that could predict the future, they'd be traders, not economists. Because why settle for a meagre economist's salary when they could be making millions?
I'm not sure what your point is? The comment I was replying to said "we know this is always true" I said, actually, economists aren't really sure about that issue. If your concern is that economists aren't good at making certain predictions, then guess what, we agree. Economists are also acutely aware of this fact and most of the ones involved in actual economic research are careful not to overstate the implications of their models.
Regardless, I simply have to laugh at your comment. The "finance bro says economists are all morons who would be traders if they actually knew anything" trope is pretty great!
I know online arguments can be super frustrating, but can you please not be a jerk in your posts here, regardless of how wrong other people or you feel they are? You posted something like half a dozen swipes in this thread that broke that site guidelines. This is the sort of thing that degrades discussion badly because the toxins compound.
It sounds like you know more about this field than others. That's great—but then the thing to do is share some of what you know, so we all can learn. If you mix it with cheap shots and swipes, that not only breaks HN's rules, it discredits the truth you're trying to advance, which is not in your interests or anyone else's.
A good aspect of MMT is that it explains how the Treasury spending more than it takes in in taxes means more money is created into the economy than is deleted out of the economy. This is the more important thing to focus on.
Some of the MMT professors also do a good job explaining how QE (quantitative easing) doesn't create new net financial assets into the system, it just shifts around assets in accounts at the Fed.
All this focus on the Fed seems counterproductive.