Archive for August 21st, 2014

How money is made?

August 21, 2014

Not money as in earnings but money as in money supply.

 and Richard A. Werner say it is mainly created by banks. We usually think it is central banks who create money but that is a fraction of the overall money supply.

Last month, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) announced the establishment of their own development bank, which would reduce their dependence on the Western-dominated, dollar-focused World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These economies will benefit from increased monetary-policy agency and flexibility. But they should not discount the valuable lessons offered by advanced-country central banks’ recent monetary-policy innovation.

In June, the European Central Bank, following the example set by the Bank of England in 2012, identified “bank credit for the real economy” as a new policy goal. A couple of weeks later, the Bank of England announced the introduction of a form of credit guidance to limit the amount of credit being used for property-asset transactions.

Before the financial crisis hit in 2008, all of these policies would have been disparaged as unwarranted interventions in financial markets. Indeed, in 2005, when one of us (Werner) recommended such policies to prevent “recurring banking crises,” he faced vehement criticism.

This March, however, the Bank of England acknowledged the observation that he and others had made – that, by extending credit, banks actually create 97% of the money supply. Given that a dollar in new bank loans increases the money supply by a dollar, banks are not financial intermediaries; they are money creators.

They should have looked at India’s monetary policy. We always had credit playing an important role in mon pol.

Further, govt should stop issuing bonds and instead borrow from banks:

In general, economic growth depends on an increasing number of transactions and an increasing amount of money to finance them. Banks provide that finance by extending more credit, the impact of which depends on who receives it. Bank credit for GDP transactions affects nominal GDP, while bank credit for investment in the production of goods and services delivers non-inflationary growth.

The problem lies in bank credit-for-asset transactions, which often generate boom-bust cycles. By extending too much of this type of credit, banks pump up asset prices to unsustainable levels. When credit inevitably slows, prices collapse. As the late-coming speculators go bankrupt, the share of non-performing loans on banks’ balance sheets rises, forcing banks to reduce credit further. It takes only a 10% decline in banks’ asset values to bankrupt the banking system.

With an understanding of this process, policymakers can take steps to avert future banking crises and resolve post-crisis recessions more effectively. For starters, they should restrict bank credit for transactions that do not contribute to GDP.

Moreover, in the event of a crisis, central banks should purchase non-performing assets from banks at face value, completely restoring banks’ balance sheets, in exchange for an obligation to submit to credit monitoring. Given that no new money would be injected into the rest of the economy, this process – which the US Federal Reserve undertook in 2008 – would not generate inflation.

In order to stimulate productive bank credit – and boost the effectiveness of fiscal policy – governments should stop issuing bonds, and instead borrow from banks through loan contracts, often available at lower rates than bond yields. This would bolster bank credit and stimulate demand, employment, GDP, and tax revenues.

Some lessons from history:

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Michael Unterguggenberger, the mayor of the Tyrolean town of Wörgl, performed an experiment. In order to reduce unemployment and complete much-needed public-works projects, he hired workers and paid them with “work receipts” that could be used to pay local taxes. With the local authority effectively issuing money for work performed, the local economy boomed.

The central bank, however, was not pleased, and decided to assert its monopoly over currency issuance, forcing Unterguggenberger to scrap the local public money and causing Wörgl to fall back into depression. Some 80 years later, the English city of Hull has begun to implement a similar scheme, using a digital crypto-currency that is, so far, not prohibited by law.

The unfettered creation of money by large private banks has generated overwhelming instability, undermining the fundamental principle that money creation should serve the public good. This does not have to be the case. By implementing safeguards that ensure that credit serves productive and public purposes, policymakers can achieve debt-free, stable, and sustainable economic growth.

Broadly the idea is the same. Throw the money at the economy. Just that agency throwing it can differ. It can be govt., central banks or in this case as authors suggest banks can do the job better..

No new organisation to replace Plan Com, please..

August 21, 2014

Prof R. Vaidyanathan of IIMB makes a case for not having a replacement for Plan Com.

His idea is simple:

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RIP Planning Commission….. Was Plan Com not central to the policymaking since the mid-1960s?

August 21, 2014

Nitin Desai has this piece in BS where he bids adieu to Plan Com. The website is still functional and will be interesting if it is archived in similar manner as PMO’s twitter account. If it is indeed archived,  it is something the outgoing political party will just not like  but the ruling party will surely like. Also whether Yojana Bhawan will remain/converted into a museum?

So what does Mr. Desai say? He says PC played a crucial role in 1950s and 1960s:

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Using game of Scrabble to explain how countries grow..

August 21, 2014

Prof Ricardo Hausmann remains in top thinking and writing form. In this recent piece, he looks at convergence in incomes across countries and how certain countries have bridged the gap. Then he uses Scrabble as an analogy to explain convergence.

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