Proposals for Monetary Reform – a Critical Assessment Focusing on Endogenous Money and Balance Mechanics
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Paper for the FMM Conference 2016: Towards Pluralism in Macroeconomics? 20 Years-Anniversary Conference of the FMM Research Network Proposals for Monetary Reform – A Critical Assessment Focusing on Endogenous Money and Balance Mechanics by Ruben Tarne International Economics (MA), Berlin School of Economics and Law Table of contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 2 Proposals for Monetary Reform .............................................................................. 3 2.1 Common Views of the Current Monetary System of Sovereign Money Reform Proponents and Post-Keynesians ............................................................................. 4 2.2 The Sovereign Money Approach ............................................................................. 5 2.2.1 Transaction and Investment Accounts .............................................................. 5 2.2.2 The Monetary Creation Committee .................................................................. 7 2.2.3 Monetary Policy by Monetary Targeting ......................................................... 8 3 Post-Keynesian Critique of Monetary Reform Proposals ..................................... 11 3.1 The Nature of Money ............................................................................................. 12 3.2 Emergence of Near-Monies ................................................................................... 13 3.3 Stability in a Reformed System ............................................................................. 13 4 A Balance Mechanics Perspective......................................................................... 14 4.1 Stocks ..................................................................................................................... 15 4.2 Flows ...................................................................................................................... 16 4.3 The General Quantity Equation ............................................................................. 17 4.3.1 Trade Lockstep ............................................................................................... 17 4.3.2 Straddle Effect ................................................................................................ 19 4.3.3 Direct Credit Relations between Non-Banks .................................................. 22 4.3.4 The General Quantity Equation ...................................................................... 25 5 Implications for Monetary Policy in a Sovereign Money System ........................ 26 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 28 7 Literature ............................................................................................................... 30 II 1 Introduction Ideas and debates about monetary reform have popped up throughout history. Over the last century major events such as the Great Depression in 1929 as well as the great financial crisis of 2008 have proved catalysts for these discussions. Some proponents of monetary reform identify the ability of private banks to create money as the main con- tributing factor to the outbreak of financial crises. Commercial banks are seen by some as problematic since they tend to inflate bubbles in boom times by providing too much credit; and they provide too little credit after the bubble bursts, prolonging the economic downturn. The idea of being able to control the money volume (and, therefore, the credit volume) in the economy in order to dampen both effects seems to be desirable for many economists. This has been the case after the Great Depression with the 100% reserves banking approach advocated by Irving Fisher (1936) later picked up by Milton Friedman (1948). Contemporary proposals based on these earlier ideas have been put forward by Joseph Huber (2016) and Positive Money, a UK-based NGO (Dyson & Jackson, 2012; Dyson, Greenham, Ryan-Collins, & Werner, 2011). Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof also lay out arguments that resemble earlier works of Fisher (2012; 2013). These renewed forays into monetary theory and policy are very similar in effect, though they differ in the details. The basic proposition is to take away the banks’ ability to create means of payment. By doing so, the reformers want to establish a system where banks that want to give out loans to households or firms need to have the means beforehand in the form of savings deposits. This way the banks would become a mere intermediator of loanable funds (as is already portrayed in many up-to-date textbooks). The loanable funds needed for an expansion of economic activities (ceteris paribus) would then originate from the central bank which would transfer the additional means of payment to the government which can then reintroduce them into the economy where they will end up as savings at one point which can then be invested. This assumes that a centralised institution can set a more optimal money supply for the aggregate economy. While the reformers admit that the optimal amount is not possible to determine ex ante, they state that commercial banks are not able to determine it either. “The question therefore becomes one of who is most likely to supply the economy with the ‘correct’ amount of money: commercial banks in the current system, or an independent committee in the reformed system?” (Dyson & Jackson, 2012, p. 171). Huber suggests that monetary targeting by central banks is superior to interest rate targeting, while stating that it has never been possible to see the former in practice as the ability of banks to create means of payment, e.g. bank deposits, undermine any monetary targeting in the first place (Huber, 2016, p. 150; Benes & Kumhof, 2012, p. 38). The reform proposals are essentially built on the assumption that a system with ‘true’ monetary targeting – when banks are prevented from creating money themselves – would be superior to current monetary systems. The indicator for that would be a dampening of credit booms and credit slumps. In order for the sovereign money system (SMS) to be viable, the fundamental assumption is that monetary policy works when the central bank can effectively set the desired amount of money in the system. Hence, the issue of whether such a system is more stable than the current arrangement depends a 1 lot on the answer to this question: can a central bank determine the amount needed in an economy better than private banks? The assumption that central banks possess a greater ability to set an appropriate amount of money for an economy will be the main focus of this paper. There will not be a general critique of the reform proposals from an endogenous money perspective as that has already been done to a large extent. Nevertheless, an overview of the relevant literature will be given in chapter 3 (Schulmeister, 2016; Goodhart, 1989; Fontana & Sawyer, 2016; Dow, Johnsen, & Montagnoli, 2015; Fiebiger, 2014). Instead, the focus of the paper will be on monetary policy in a reformed system with a special interest in the assumption of a central bank’s ability to set an appropriate amount of money for an economic system. This assumption rests mainly on the equation of exchange (푀 ∗ 푉 = 푃 ∗ 푇), in that with a stable velocity of circulation one can influ- ence 푃 and 푇 via setting the amount of means of payment 푀. Post-Keynesians have criticised this for two reasons: first, the velocity of circulation is regarded as unstable; and second, the economic activity determines the money needed and not the other way around (Godley & Lavoie, 2007, p. 127). While the argument of reverse causality has been developed very well in a stock-flow consistent way, this is not the case for the instability of velocity (ibid.). Interestingly, Wolfgang Stützel (1978) developed a stock- flow consistent equation of the relationship between money and economic activity already in the 1950s and therefore well before Godley and Lavoie (2007). Following from this, the research questions pursued in this paper will be: what can Stützel’s ‘general quantity equation’ tell us about the inherent assumptions of monetary policy trying to control the money supply? What can this equation contribute to the post-Keynesian critique of sovereign money reform (SMR)? To answer these questions, the reform proposals (and especially their underlying theory of “how to determine an optimal amount of money for the economy”) will be examined in Chapter 2. This way, their theory can be compared to the stock-flow con- sistent understanding provided by Stützel. In order to locate Stützel’s contribution in the current debate, we will make a short review of the newer critiques of sovereign money reform provided by post-Keynesian authors (Chapter 3). Then, Stützel’s general quantity equation will be explained by translating it into up to date stock-flow consistent balance sheets (Chapter 4). With the equation in hand, we can gain a better understanding of the assumptions of sovereign money proponents that are required for the velocity of circulation to be stable, and if these assumptions seem realistic or unrealistically restrictive (Chapter 5). Although Stützel did not use his ‘balance mechanics’ framework to model the econ- omy, he used it as an analytical tool in order to criticise the equation of exchange. His quantity equation’s benefit is that it shows clearly what exactly needs to hold in order for the