Chart of the Day: Monetary Transmission Mechanisms

If and when the demand for credit increases, so too will the money supply

MMT for Austrians

We (also) do not want black helicopters flying around dropping bags of cash; and we (also) oppose government “pump-priming” demand stimulus—the libertarians and Austrians and even Milton Friedman are correct in their argument that this would generate inflation. Come to think of it, MMTers have more in common with Austerians than with “military Keynesianism” that supposes that high enough spending on the defence sector will cause full employment to “trickle down”. Most MMTers believe we’d get intolerable inflation before the jobs trickle down to Harlem. But can we “afford” full employment

The Political Economy of Artificial Constraints on Government Money

Consider the statements by the UK leadership that the UK has “run out of money.” Does anyone think that the UK financial leaders believe that statement? If Germany declared war on the UK tomorrow would the UK surrender because it had “run out of money” and could not “afford” to increase expenditures to defend the nation? The point is that nations, when faced with the need to make enormous, emergency expenditures, rediscover through necessity the knowledge of how monetary operations actually work even if they previously were captured by economic dogmas that asserted the opposit

Use of lower-rated debt in repos has returned to pre-crisis levels

Looks like there’s a storm brewing in the U.S. repo markets.

It figures: profit-center banks have every motivation to stay one step ahead of the regs and the pols. Since the gamekeepers have now gotten around to looking at proprietary trading and bringing derivatives onto exchanges, you can almost bet your first-born that the next crisis will be in neither one of these areas but someplace else entirely different

[Premium] The Ultimate QE is the Fed’s Coming Purchase of Real Assets

I would bet on near-systemic collapse before the Fed starts either asset purchases or Congress resorts to fiscal activism. But eventually, the Fed is going to purchase more than just treasuries. They will purchase a lot of financial assets and probably some real assets as well

Milton Friedman, Functional Finance and the Government Budget Constraint

Last week we examined Milton Friedman’s version of Functional Finance, which we found to be remarkably similar to Abba Lerner’s. The only problem with Friedman’s analysis is that he did not account for the external sector: he wanted a balanced budget at full employment, but if a country tends to run a trade deficit at full employment, then it must have a government budget deficit to allow the private sector to run a balanced budget—which is the minimum we should normally expect. Somehow all this understanding was lost over the course of the postwar period, replaced by “sound finance” which is anything but sound. It was based on an inappropriate extension of the household “budget constraint” to government

Milton Friedman’s 1948 Functional Finance Proposal

Milton Friedman’s 1948 article, “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability” put forward a proposal according to which the government would run a balanced budget only at full employment, with deficits in recession and surpluses in economic booms. There is little doubt that most economists in the early postwar period shared Friedman’s views on that. But Friedman went further, almost all the way to Lerner’s functional finance approach: all government spending would be paid for by issuing government money (currency and bank reserves); when taxes were paid, this money would be “destroyed” (just as you tear up your own IOU when it is returned to you). Thus, budget deficits lead to net money creation. Surpluses would lead to net reduction of money

What has the Fed done to avoid the US becoming the next Japan?

Imagine being on the FOMC and in the mainstream paradigm. In 2008 you moved quickly to make sure the US would not become the next Japan. What do you have to show for it, 3 years later

[Premium] Edward Harrison’s Ten Surprises for 2012

Welcome to Credit Writedowns Pro. This is the first post in a series here. Let me start this Byron Wien-style and make a predictions list. Wien defines his surprises as events to which investors assign 1-in-3 odds of happening but which he believes have a more than 50 percent likelihood of occurring in 2012. That’s how I am playing it too

What is Modern Money Theory?

OK, you might be wondering: Isn’t this a strange point at which to raise the question, “what is modern money theory?” Yes, in some important ways, it is. However in the past week there have been some really pretty extraordinary pieces in the popular media trumpeting

Liquidity is the Word

Tomorrow the central banks will auction dollars for the first time under the lower rates. There was some talk that the lower take down at this week’s regular refi operation (about 13 bln less euros than were maturing from last week’s operation) was due to the fact that participants are anticipating taking up dollars tomorrow.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the larger the participation tomorrow the more risk-on (in whatever limited way ahead of Thursday ECB meeting and Friday’s summit) insofar as banks would secure their dollar funding in a less disruptive way. The smaller the take down, the more dysfunctional the system may appear

Why the IMF thing works for the euro

Editor’s note: the IMF musings would be difficult politically, especially in the US. And any deal for Italy would also have to involve Spain too. However, Perhaps most important, operationally, the ECB lending to the IMF, which then lends to euro member nations, doesn’t count as ‘printing money’ in the Teutonic monetary bible