Hahnel ABCs of Political Economy Modern Primer

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over $200 billion. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, FSLIC, had less than $2 billion in assets at the time. While the Federal Reserve Bank was anxious to shut the insolvent Savings and Loan Associations down to prevent them from accepting new deposits and creating additional FSLIC liabilities, neither Congress, led by Speaker Jim Wright from Texas, nor the Reagan White House wanted to declare the thrifts bankrupt because that would have required massive additional appropriations for FSLIC. Many of the insolvent thrifts were in Texas and they convinced Wright to lobby for delay of bankruptcy procedures. Owners of those insolvent thrifts had everything to lose from bankruptcy, whereas they could continue to collect dividends as long as they were permitted to accept new deposits and make new loans – regardless of whether or not there was any likelihood they would be able to overcome insolvency by doing so. The Reagan administration was not anxious to accept responsibility for the consequences of its financial deregulatory frenzy in the early 1980s, and didn’t want to have to raise taxes or cut defense spending to come up with the appropriations necessary to fund FSLIC sufficiently to pay off $200 billion to depositors – which the Grahm-Ruddman bill limiting deficit spending would have required at the time. As a result the crisis was swept under the carpet for three more years, by which time the deposit liabilities of the insolvent thrifts had doubled. In other words, the politics of partially funded government insurance cost the American taxpayer additional hundreds of billions of dollars. Besides the hundreds of billions spent in the bail-out itself, the Resolution Trust Corporation established by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 to sell, merge, or liquidate insolvent thrifts, offered huge tax breaks as inducements to solvent financial institutions to buy and take over failed institutions, thereby reducing tax revenues for many years to come, and making it impossible to calculate what the eventual total loss of the S&L crisis to taxpayers will be.

Federal insurance also aggravates what economists call moral hazard in the banking sector. Bank owners and large depositors essentially collude in placing and accepting deposits in financial institutions that pay high interest on deposits which are used to make risky loans that pay high returns – as long as the borrowers don’t default. But when there are defaults on risky loans neither depositors nor shareholders are the major victims of insolvency and bankruptcy. Lightly capitalized shareholders lose little in a case of

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bankruptcy. And fully insured depositors lose nothing. Meanwhile both have been enjoying high returns while running little or no risk in the process. So government insurance compounds the problem that bank officers cannot be counted on to pursue the public interest in an efficient trade-off between profitability and risk of insolvency by no longer making it necessary for depositors to monitor the lending activities of the financial institutions where they place their deposits. Apparently depositor fear of insolvency was an insufficient restraint on bank lending policy before the advent of public deposit insurance since all governments already had charged their Central Bank with regulating minimum reserve requirements and monitoring the legitimacy of bank loans. Deposit insurance has the unfortunate effect of further weakening depositor incentives to monitor bank behavior.

Finally, notice that banks mean the functioning money supply is considerably larger than the amount of currency circulating in the economy. If we ask how much someone could buy, immediately, in a world without banks the answer would be the amount of currency that person had. But in a world with banks where sellers not only accept currency in exchange for goods and services, but accept checks as well, someone can buy an amount equal to the currency they have plus the balance they have in their checking account(s). This means the functioning money supply is equal to the amount of currency circulating in the economy plus the sum total balances in household and business checking accounts at banks. Since checking account balances were $616 billion and currency in circulation was only $463 billion in January 1999, currency was less than half the functioning money supply, commonly called M1, at the beginning of 1999.1

1.More precisely, M1, referred to as the “basic” or “functioning” money supply, includes currency in circulation, “transactions account” balances, and traveler’s checks. Beside checking accounts, transaction accounts include NOW accounts, ATS accounts, credit union share drafts, and demand deposits at mutual savings banks. The distinguishing feature of all transaction accounts is they permit direct payment to a third party by check or debit card. M2 and M3 are larger definitions of the money supply which include funds that are less accessible such as savings accounts and money market mutual funds (M2), and repurchase agreements and overnight Eurodollars (M3). By 1999 people held so much money in money market mutual funds and savings accounts that M2 had become more than three times larger than M1.

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Which leads to our last frightening realization. Most of the functioning money supply is literally created by private commercial banks when they accept deposits and make loans. But as we have seen, when banks engage in these activities, and thereby “create” most of the functioning money supply, they think only of their own profits and give nary a thought to the sacred public trust of preserving the integrity of “money” in our economy.

MONETARY POLICY: ANOTHER WAY TO SKIN THE CAT

In chapter 6 we studied three fiscal policies: changes in government spending, changes in taxes, and changing both spending and taxes by the same amount in the same direction. While they had different effects on the government budget deficit (or surplus) and on the composition of output, in theory, any one of them was sufficient to eliminate any unemployment or inflation gap. The alternative to fiscal policy is monetary policy which, in theory, can also be used to eliminate unemployment or inflation gaps. If the Federal Reserve Bank changes the money supply it can induce a rise or fall in market interest rates, which in turn can induce a fall or rise in private investment demand, which in turn will induce an even larger change in overall aggregate demand and equilibrium GDP through the “investment expenditure multiplier.” Just like fiscal policies, monetary policy can be either expansionary – raising equilibrium GDP to combat unemployment – or deflationary – lowering equilibrium GDP to combat inflation.

While fiscal policy attacks government spending directly, or household consumption demand indirectly by changing personal taxes, monetary policy aims indirectly at the third component of aggregate demand, private investment demand.2 As we saw in the previous chapter investment demand depends negatively on interest rates. The micro law of supply and demand tells us that changes in the money supply should affect interest rates, which are simply the

2.Our model and language oversimplify. While most federal taxes are personal taxes and therefore affect household disposable income, business taxes potentially affect investment decisions. Moreover, government transfer payments count just as much toward budget deficits as government purchases of military equipment, yet only the latter is part of the aggregate demand for final goods and services. And when the Fed cuts interest rates it makes it cheaper for households as well as businesses to borrow. Beside business investment, monetary policy affects consumer demand for “big ticket items” like appliances, cars, and houses that people buy on credit.

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“price” of money. Just as the price of apples drops when the supply of apples increases, interest rates drop when the supply of money increases. The Federal Reserve Bank – called the Central Bank in civilized countries – can change the money supply in any of three ways. It can change the legal minimum reserve requirement. It can conduct “open market operations” by buying or selling treasury bonds in the “open” bond market. Or it can change something called “the discount rate.” By changing the money supply the Fed can induce a change in market interest rates to stimulate or retard business investment demand.

When the Fed lowers the legal minimum reserve requirement some of the required reserves held by each bank are no longer required and become excess reserves the banks are “free” to loan. As we saw, when banks make loans this has the effect of increasing the functioning money supply. By increasing the required reserve ratio the Fed can cause a decrease in the functioning money supply. Interestingly, changing the reserve requirement changes the money supply without changing the amount of currency in the economy.

The Fed has its own budget and its own assets, including roughly 8% of the outstanding US treasury bonds in an assortment of sizes and maturity dates. So instead of changing the reserve requirement the Fed could take some of its treasury bonds to the “open” bond market in New York and sell them to the general public who, for simplicity, we assume pays for them with cash. The market for treasury bonds is “open” in the sense that anyone can buy them, and anyone who has some can sell them. While new treasury bonds are sold by the Treasury Department at what are called “Treasury auctions,” previously issued treasury bonds are “resold” by their original purchasers who no longer wish to hold them until they mature, to purchasers on the “open bond market.” When we talk about the Fed engaging in “open market operations” we are talking about the Fed buying or selling previously issued treasury bonds, that is, we’re talking about the bond “resell” market rather than Treasury Department auctions of new bonds. When the Fed sells bonds this isn’t a transfer of wealth from the private sector to the Fed or vice versa. It is merely a change in the form in which the Fed

Nonetheless, a simple model, which we don’t use to make actual predictions in any case, that assumes (1) all of G is demand for public goods, (2) taxes affect only household disposable income, and (3) monetary policy only affects business investment demand is useful for “thinking” purposes and not terribly misleading.

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and private sector hold their wealth, or assets. Whereas the Fed used to hold part of its wealth in the form of the bonds it sells, now it holds that wealth in the form of currency. Whereas the private sector used to hold part of its wealth in currency, now it holds that wealth in the form of Treasury bonds. But when the Fed engages in open market operations it does change the amount of currency in the economy – increasing currency in the economy by buying bonds and decreasing currency in the economy by selling bonds.

Finally, the Federal Reserve Bank loans money to private commercial banks that are members of the Federal Reserve Banking System. If these commercial banks borrow more from the Fed and then loan it out, the money supply will increase. If they borrow less from the Fed the money supply will decrease. Just like any other lender, the Fed charges interest on loans – in this case loans it makes to private banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System. And just like any other borrower, these banks will borrow more from the Fed if the interest rate they have to pay is lower, and less if the interest rate they pay is higher. The name for the interest rate the Fed charges banks who borrow at its “discount window” is the discount rate. So by lowering its discount rate the Fed can induce commercial banks to borrow more currency, thereby increasing the currency circulating in the economy, and by raising the discount rate it can discourage borrowing, thereby decreasing the amount of currency circulating in the economy.

In sum, the logic of monetary policy is as follows: The Fed can increase or decrease the functioning money supply, M1, by changing the minimum reserve requirement, through open market operations, or by changing its discount rate. By changing the money supply the Fed can induce changes in market interest rates, leading to changes in investment demand, leading to even greater changes in aggregate demand and equilibrium GDP. When monetary authorities fear economic recession they increase the money supply, as Chairman Greenspan and the Fed did from mid-1999 through early 2002 when they regularly lowered the discount rate by a quarter and sometimes half percent every month or two. IMF conditionality agreements, on the other hand, routinely insist that monetary authorities reduce their functioning money supply in exchange for emergency IMF bail out loans, for reasons we explore in the next chapter. Since neither increasing nor decreasing the money supply affects government spending or taxes directly, monetary policy has no direct effect on the government budget. Of course if expansionary monetary policy

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lowers unemployment and thereby decreases government spending on unemployment compensation and welfare, it will indirectly lower G. And if expansionary monetary policy increases GDP and therefore GDI and thereby increases tax revenues collected as a percentage of income, it will indirectly raise T. So monetary policy does have an indirect effect on the government budget. But unlike fiscal policy, changing the money supply has no direct impact on the government budget. As far as the composition of output is concerned, expansionary monetary policy increases the share of GDP going to private investment, I/Y, and decreases the shares going to public goods, G/Y, and private consumption, C/Y. Deflationary monetary policy has the opposite effect – it chokes off private investment relative to public spending and private consumption. In chapter 9 we explore the effects of equivalent monetary and fiscal policies in a simple, short run, closed economy macro model.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FINANCIAL AND “REAL” ECONOMIES

Increasingly the economic “news” reported in the mainstream media is news about stocks, bonds, and interest rates. During the stock market boom in the 1990s the media acted like cheer leaders for the Dow Jones Average and NASDAQ index. It is was not uncommon for the major US media to report with glee that stock prices rose dramatically after a Labor Department briefing announcing an increase in the number of jobless. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis the media reassured us that stock indices and currency values had largely recovered in Thailand, South Korea, and Indonesia – as if that were what mattered – neglecting to report that employment and production in those economies had not rebounded – as if that were unimportant. What should we care about in the economy, and what is the relationship between the financial and “real” sectors of the economy?

In chapter 2 we asked, “What should we demand from our economy?” The answer was an equitable distribution of the burdens and benefits of economic activity, efficient use of our scarce productive resources, economic democracy, solidarity, variety, and environmental sustainability. Nowhere on that wish list did rising stock, bond, or currency prices appear. This does not mean the financial sector has nothing to do with the production and distribution of goods and services. But it does mean the only reason to care

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about the financial sector is because of its effects on the real sector of the economy. If the financial sector improves economic efficiency and thereby allows us to produce more goods and services, so much the better. But if dynamics in the financial sector cause unemployment and lost production, or increase economic inequality, that is what matters, not the fact that a stock index or currency rose or fell in value. In an era when the hegemony of global finance is unprecedented, it is important not to invert what matters and what is only of derivative interest.

How can money, lending, banks, options, buying on margin, derivatives, or hedge funds increase economic efficiency? Simple: by providing funding for some productive activity in the real economy that otherwise would not have taken place. If monetized exchange allows people to discover a mutually beneficial deal they would have been unlikely to find through barter, money increases the efficiency of the real economy. If I can borrow from you to buy a tool that allows me to work more productively right away, whereas otherwise I would have had to save for a year to buy the tool, a credit market increases my efficiency this year – and the interest rate you and I agree on will distribute the increase in my productivity during the year between you, the lender, and me, the borrower. If banks permit more borrowers and lenders to find one another, thereby allowing more people to work more productively sooner than they otherwise would have, the banking system increases efficiency in the real economy. If options, buying on margin, and derivatives mobilize savings that otherwise would have been idle, and extend credit to borrowers who become more productive sooner than had they been forced to wait longer for loans from more traditional sources in the credit system, these financial innovations increase efficiency in the real economy. But while those who profit from the financial system are quick to point out these positive potentials, they are loath to point out ways the financial sector can negatively impact the real economy. Nor do they dwell on the fact that what the credit system allows them to do is profit from other people’s increases in productivity.

At its best what the credit system does, in all its different guises, is allow lenders to appropriate increases in the productivity of others. Why do those whose productivity rises agree to pay creditors part of their productivity increase? Because the creditors have the wealth needed to purchase whatever is necessary to increase their productivity while they do not. Moreover, if they wait until they can save sufficient wealth to do without creditors, borrowers lose whatever

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efficiency gain they could have enjoyed in the meantime. But even when the credit system works well, that is, even when it generates efficiency gains in the real economy, the credit system can increase the degree of inequality in the economy. If the interest rate distributes more than half of the increase in the borrower’s efficiency to the lender, and if lenders are generally more wealthy than borrowers in the first place, the credit system will increase wealth inequality.

But beside increasing inequity, the credit system can generate efficiency losses instead of gains in the real economy. In chapter 9 we look at a model that makes clear how rational depositors can cause bank runs. We then look at a model of a real corn economy with banks that shows how banks can generate efficiency gains when all goes well, but banks will make the real economy less efficient than it would have been with less formal credit markets if there is a bank run. When depositors have reason to fear they will lose their deposits if they fail to withdraw before others do, the model demonstrates how banks will produce efficiency losses, not gains, in the real economy. In a third model we show how international finance can generate efficiency losses as well as gains in a “real” global corn economy for similar reasons. The general lesson from these models in chapter 9 is when borrowers and lenders become accustomed to finding each other through bank mediation and banks fail, it is possible for fewer borrowers to find lenders than otherwise would have been the case, and therefore for the real economy to become less efficient than it would have been without banks. Similarly, when more highly leveraged international finance makes it more likely that international investors will panic, and capital liberalization makes it easier for them to withdraw tens of billions of dollars of investments from emerging market economies and sell off massive quantities of their currencies overnight when they do panic, tens of millions can lose their jobs and decades of economic progress can go down the drain as banks and businesses in “emerging market economies” go bankrupt. This is how liberalizing the international credit system can make real underdeveloped economies less efficient than they were when international finance was more restricted, as it was during the Bretton Woods era. These are among the potential downsides of lashing “real” economies more tightly to the back of a credit system when the credit system proves unstable.

Banks, futures, options, margins, derivatives and other “financial innovations” all either expand the list of things speculators can buy and sell, or permit them to increase their leverage – use less of their

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own wealth and more of someone else’s when they invest. In other words these, and whatever new “financial instruments” speculators dream up in the future, simply extend the credit system. If the extension provides funding for some productive activity that would otherwise have not been funded, it can be useful. But all extensions increase dangers in the credit system by (1) increasing the number of places something might go wrong, (2) increasing the probability that if something goes wrong investors will panic and the credit system will crash, or (3) compounding the damage done if the credit system does crash. New “financial products” add new markets where bubbles can form and burst. Increased leverage makes financial structures more fragile and compounds the damage from any bubble that does burst.3

There are two rules of behavior in any credit system, and both rules become more critical to follow the more leveraged the system. Rule #1 is the rule all participants want all other participants to follow: DON’T PANIC! If everyone follows rule #1 the likelihood of the credit system crashing is lessened. Rule #2 is the rule each participant must be careful to follow herself: PANIC FIRST! If something goes wrong, the first to collect her loan from a debtor in trouble, the first to withdraw her deposits from a troubled bank, the first to sell her option or derivative in a market when a bubble bursts, the first to dump a currency when it is “under pressure,” will lose the least. Those who are slow to panic, on the other hand, will take the biggest baths. Once stated, the contradictory nature of the two logical rules for behavior in credit systems make clear the inherent danger in this powerful economic arrangement, and the risk we take when we tie the real economy ever more tightly to a credit system which financial businesses and politicians have recently conspired to make more unstable and fragile.

3.For example, derivatives can disguise how many are speculating in a market. Frank Partnoy, a derivative trader turned professor of law and finance at the University of San Diego, described this problem as follows when explaining East Asian currency crises: “It’s as if you’re in a theater, and say there are 100 people and you have the rush-to-the-exit problem. With derivatives, it’s as if without your knowing it, there are another 500 people in the theater, and you can’t see them at first. But when the rush to the exit starts, suddenly they drop from the ceiling. This makes the panic all the greater.” Quoted by Nicholas Kristof in his article in the New York Times on February 17, 1999.