“It Ain’t Necessarily So”
George and Ira Gershwin, Porgy and Bess (1935)
It is an article of faith among conservatives that government deficits automatically carry the threat of inflation. Milton Friedman once noted that inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon. The relationship between deficits and money creation is not absolute and the short-run relationship between money creation and inflation is also not absolute.
Inflation is a sustained increase in the price level, not an increase in any specific price or a singular increase in the price level that does not continue. These distinctions are important because inflation requires money creation to continue.
When the economy is operating at less than full employment levels, neither money creation nor deficits necessarily carry the threat of inflation.
Recent published research (The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 3rd Quarter 2010) examined the relationship between large deficits and inflation in industrial economies since 1970. Let me quote from their conclusion:
“We find that large deficits are not associated with higher inflation contemporaneously, nor are they associated with the emergence of higher inflation in subsequent years.”
Conservatives have been warning of the inflationary wolf since 2009. The pressing problem is unemployed resources not hypothetical inflation.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Federal Spending and Employment
Over the last few months much ink has been spilled over the effectiveness of federal government spending in stimulating job growth and employment. I propose to spill more ink.
No sentient resident of Washington State can deny the influence of federal spending on job creation. The development of hydropower on the Columbia River, naval bases (Bangor, Whidbey Island) and ports (Bremerton, Everett) and the role of defense contracts in the growth of Boeing all attest to the regional employment effects of federal government spending. Government spending creates jobs.
But regional job creation is not the same thing as national growth in employment. It is possible that more economic activity here leads to less activity elsewhere, so the net effect is zero, possible but not likely under our current economy. It is even possible that the government expenditures totally displace private expenditures in the affected region.
If the economy is operating at full employment, increased federal government spending financed by borrowing or taxes just transfers spending and resources from one use to another, and there is no overall increase in employment or output. This phenomenon is known as “crowding out”. Evidence of crowding out through government borrowing would be a rise in real interest rates. Ten year rates are now less than 2% (virtually zero in real, inflation adjusted terms). There is no indication that private borrowers are being discouraged by higher interest rates. However, if there is excess capacity and unemployed resources, increased government spending financed by borrowing (deficit spending) utilizes these resources and increases total output. Current data indicates the economy is operating at less than its potential.
Let’s return to the notion of “crowding out”. This is another way of illustrating the concept of opportunity costs or the foregone uses of resources when they are reallocated to a specific use. At the macro level this cost is only apparent when resources are alread fully employed and a new expenditure pattern develops.
At full employment, increased government expenditure would require a transfer of resources from one set off private uses to another set of uses. This could be accomplished by raising taxes, thereby reducing private consumption and investment and freeing resources from current uses. Increased government expenditures would just result in a transfer of real resources with no increase in real output.
Now let’s assume the expenditure is financed by borrowing from the public (domestic or foreign).Once again, the previous level of domestic investment was consistent with full employment and nothing real has changed other than the composition of output. Under full-employment conditions nothing real changes with changes in government expenditures and revenues. The GDP is unchanged. All effects are compositional, more scientists and fewer pole dancers.
If the economy is operating at less than full employment there are unused reserves of labor and other resources available. Increased government expenditures can lead to increased real output as government expenditures mop up unused or underutilized resources.
Under this condition it makes no sense to raise taxes to finance the increased activity because increased taxes will reduce expenditures and total expenditures are already insufficient to generate full employment. The efficient option is to borrow the funds from savers. The private loans to the government will come out of excess reserves of the banking system and not crowd out private lending. Therefore increased public spending will increase total spending and employment QED.
There is one potential fly in this expansionary ointment. Economists of The Rational Expectations School argue that the government can’t expand output regardless of the level of employment or the means of financing. They adhere to a version of something called Ricardo Equivalence (Let it be stated that Ricardo did not hold to a strict interpretation of this concept. Like most true believers, the modern supporters of the view have gone well beyond the master’s views.). According to the equivalence principle the current generation recognizes the future tax burdens associated with deficit spending and adjust their current level of saving upward so as to meet the future tax burden. Therefore the drop in current consumption expenditures offsets the increase in government expenditures and there is no stimulative effect to increased government expenditures.
Obviously raising taxes to pay for government expenditures is offset by decreased private expenditures. You can’t win! Fortunately for fiscal policy, the empirical evidence for this effect is wanting. During the 1981 to 1984 period when deficits increased dramatically there was not a compensating savings offset. So the deficits were expansionary and helped speed the recovery from a severe recession. Reagan’s results were Keynesian in principle.(Herbert Stein noted this at the time with the proper sense of irony). When the Federal Budget went from surplus to deficit under Bush there was no corresponding uptick in saving. In fact the savings rate fell.
As an aside, Alan Greenspan estimated, at the time, that about 20% of the Reagan tax cuts would be recouped through revenue gains. He was too pessimistic. Later estimates placed the figure closer to 30%. Thus a $100 billion tax cut would only increase the deficit by $70 billion. So much for the supply-side arguments, they should rest in peace.
“A regulatory climate that does not appreciate that the financial developments over an extended period of good times will tend to breed the financial environ- ment that leads to the likelihood of crisis and hard times, will not serve this economy well.
” Hyman Minsky (1975)
But regional job creation is not the same thing as national growth in employment. It is possible that more economic activity here leads to less activity elsewhere, so the net effect is zero, possible but not likely under our current economy. It is even possible that the government expenditures totally displace private expenditures in the affected region.
If the economy is operating at full employment, increased federal government spending financed by borrowing or taxes just transfers spending and resources from one use to another, and there is no overall increase in employment or output. This phenomenon is known as “crowding out”. Evidence of crowding out through government borrowing would be a rise in real interest rates. Ten year rates are now less than 2% (virtually zero in real, inflation adjusted terms). There is no indication that private borrowers are being discouraged by higher interest rates. However, if there is excess capacity and unemployed resources, increased government spending financed by borrowing (deficit spending) utilizes these resources and increases total output. Current data indicates the economy is operating at less than its potential.
Let’s return to the notion of “crowding out”. This is another way of illustrating the concept of opportunity costs or the foregone uses of resources when they are reallocated to a specific use. At the macro level this cost is only apparent when resources are alread fully employed and a new expenditure pattern develops.
At full employment, increased government expenditure would require a transfer of resources from one set off private uses to another set of uses. This could be accomplished by raising taxes, thereby reducing private consumption and investment and freeing resources from current uses. Increased government expenditures would just result in a transfer of real resources with no increase in real output.
Now let’s assume the expenditure is financed by borrowing from the public (domestic or foreign).Once again, the previous level of domestic investment was consistent with full employment and nothing real has changed other than the composition of output. Under full-employment conditions nothing real changes with changes in government expenditures and revenues. The GDP is unchanged. All effects are compositional, more scientists and fewer pole dancers.
If the economy is operating at less than full employment there are unused reserves of labor and other resources available. Increased government expenditures can lead to increased real output as government expenditures mop up unused or underutilized resources.
Under this condition it makes no sense to raise taxes to finance the increased activity because increased taxes will reduce expenditures and total expenditures are already insufficient to generate full employment. The efficient option is to borrow the funds from savers. The private loans to the government will come out of excess reserves of the banking system and not crowd out private lending. Therefore increased public spending will increase total spending and employment QED.
There is one potential fly in this expansionary ointment. Economists of The Rational Expectations School argue that the government can’t expand output regardless of the level of employment or the means of financing. They adhere to a version of something called Ricardo Equivalence (Let it be stated that Ricardo did not hold to a strict interpretation of this concept. Like most true believers, the modern supporters of the view have gone well beyond the master’s views.). According to the equivalence principle the current generation recognizes the future tax burdens associated with deficit spending and adjust their current level of saving upward so as to meet the future tax burden. Therefore the drop in current consumption expenditures offsets the increase in government expenditures and there is no stimulative effect to increased government expenditures.
Obviously raising taxes to pay for government expenditures is offset by decreased private expenditures. You can’t win! Fortunately for fiscal policy, the empirical evidence for this effect is wanting. During the 1981 to 1984 period when deficits increased dramatically there was not a compensating savings offset. So the deficits were expansionary and helped speed the recovery from a severe recession. Reagan’s results were Keynesian in principle.(Herbert Stein noted this at the time with the proper sense of irony). When the Federal Budget went from surplus to deficit under Bush there was no corresponding uptick in saving. In fact the savings rate fell.
As an aside, Alan Greenspan estimated, at the time, that about 20% of the Reagan tax cuts would be recouped through revenue gains. He was too pessimistic. Later estimates placed the figure closer to 30%. Thus a $100 billion tax cut would only increase the deficit by $70 billion. So much for the supply-side arguments, they should rest in peace.
“A regulatory climate that does not appreciate that the financial developments over an extended period of good times will tend to breed the financial environ- ment that leads to the likelihood of crisis and hard times, will not serve this economy well.
” Hyman Minsky (1975)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Federal Spending and Employment
Over the last few months much ink has been spilled over the effectiveness of federal government spending in stimulating job growth and employment. I propose to spill more ink.
No sentient resident of Washington State can deny the influence of federal spending on job creation.
The development of hydropower on the Columbia River, naval bases (Bangor, Whidbey Island) and ports (Bremerton, Everett) and the role of defense contracts in the growth of Boeing all attest to the regional employment effects of federal government spending. Government spending creates jobs.
But regional job creation is not the same thing as national growth in employment. It is possible that more economic activity here leads to less activity elsewhere, so the net effect is zero. Possible but not likely under our current economy.
If the economy is operating at full employment, increased federal government spending financed by borrowing or taxes just transfers spending and resources from one use to another and there is no overall increase in employment or output. However, if there is excess capacity and unemployed resources, increased government spending financed by borrowing (deficit spending) utilizes these resources and increases total output. Current data indicates the economy is operating at less than its potent
The development of hydropower on the Columbia River, naval bases (Bangor, Whidbey Island) and ports (Bremerton, Everett) and the role of defense contracts in the growth of Boeing all attest to the regional employment effects of federal government spending. Government spending creates jobs.
But regional job creation is not the same thing as national growth in employment. It is possible that more economic activity here leads to less activity elsewhere, so the net effect is zero. Possible but not likely under our current economy.
If the economy is operating at full employment, increased federal government spending financed by borrowing or taxes just transfers spending and resources from one use to another and there is no overall increase in employment or output. However, if there is excess capacity and unemployed resources, increased government spending financed by borrowing (deficit spending) utilizes these resources and increases total output. Current data indicates the economy is operating at less than its potent
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Taxing Evidence
President Nixon once noted that, although honesty isn’t always the best policy, it should be tried now and then. When it comes to taxes, politicians fall back on ideological/philosophical bromides and seldom refer to the data. Now and then it is worthwhile to look at the data. In particular, what actual evidence supports a relationship between capital gains tax rates and economic growth? I’ve selected the capital gains tax because it has it has the most quasi-religious ideology attached to it. Since the political ascendency of supply-side economics (mid 1970s), politicians have focused on marginal tax rates for ordinary and capital gains income. They have asserted that economic behavior is highly sensitive to minor changes to the tax rates. Much of this discussion has been economics by assertion (hysterical evidence) rather than to actual data (historical evidence).
Academic economists have remained largely immune to the more extreme supply side arguments, i.e. any assertion by Arthur Laffer. Why? The reason is simple: the data do not support the assertions. One would expect the data to reveal a strong negative relationship between the capital gains tax rate and economic growth. As rates go down, the “job creators” would engage in a feeding frenzy of new investments and economic growth would soar. Conversely, increases in the rate would dramatically reduce investment and economic growth would slow to a crawl. Statistical investigations of the macroeconomic data for the last 50 years do not reveal this asserted behavior.
There are, at least, two explanations for these results. First, other economic factors overwhelm the tax rate affect. The tax rate affect may exist but is not strong; the noise drowns out the signal. A second reason may be that capital gains taxes are poorly targeted and reward behavior that isn’t related to real investment and growth. Growth requires investment in plants, equipment and people; not the financial churning that characterizes much of the activity in stock and bond markets, let alone real estate. Many financial transactions have little to do with risk taking investment in productive assets, but are eligible for the capital gains tax rate. For example, I can go to my broker and purchase $1000 worth of stock from a seller and, if I hold it long enough and the value of the stock increases, I can sell it and be taxed at the capital gains rate rather than the income tax rate. I’ve been rewarded for taking financial risk but the risk is not directly related to the creation of real productive assets. Lucky me! Only if the stock is an initial public offering (IPO) or is newly minted by an existing firm to raise capital, is a stock transaction related to real investment.
Finally, even though the real economic benefits of the capital gains tax are ambiguous at best, it does have one clear effect: it widens the income and wealth gaps between the rich and poor. Over a 20 year period from 1991 until 2011, 80% of capital gains income went to 5% of the population. Actually the result is even more skewed. The top 0.1% of income earners garnered 50% of the total capital gains income. So the tax slices the pie without encouraging its growth.
I am not writing this piece as a partisan ideologue. I am not a member of either major party. I do believe, as did President Nixon, that honesty should be tried now and then. This means that assertions should be buttressed by actual facts. Ideology should not triumph evidence.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Entitlement Blues
The late economist Herbert Stein (Chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisors under Nixon, a founder
of the American Enterprise Institute and an avowed Rockefeller Republican) once
noted that something that is unsustainable cannot continue. It is asserted by
those in the know of both right and left political persuasions that the current
federal budget path is unsustainable and entitlements are the problem.
In particular the Medicare and Medicaid programs are on a
long-run path to swallowing the whole budget. (Social Security also has a
problem but it is modest by comparison.) The medical expenditures are driven by
the nation’s demography and the medical sector’s increasing treatment costs.
Both of these elements are outside of the formal budgeting process. Our
population will continue to age. No one has made a convincing argument yet as
to how to slow down the rate of medical inflation.
The Ryan/Republican approach is to shift the costs off
budget by increasing the share of the costs paid for by the beneficiaries. The
Obama Administration and the Democrats hope to shift some of the costs to the
supply side of the medical market place. Neither approach directly deals with
the demographic and cost inflation. The burdens are just redistributed. A real
solution remains politically elusive.
This Ryan Won’t Fly-Part
1
Back in the days when economists had a sense of humor and
irony Herbert Stein noted that something that is unsustainable will not
continue. This unalterable fact is true of federal finances as currently
constructed. The budget has a structural deficit of about 4%+ of GDP and this
structural component will grow if the spending/taxing relationship is not
changed. The Debt/GDP ratio will have to be reduced and stabilized. Empirical
research indicates a ratio of around 60% is necessary for long-run economic
stability. We are currently at 80% and moving towards a three digit level
within the next few years. The recession is only partially responsible (about
60% of the current deficit can be attributed to the slow economy).
Currently there are three fully formed budgetary proposals
designed to put federal finances on a sustainable path and reduce deficits and
federal debt. They are : The Bowles-Simpson plan put forward by the President’s
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, the Rivlin-Domenici deficit
reduction plan proposed by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the “Path to
Prosperity” fiscal plan proposed by Congressman Ryan. And recently the Obama
Late Entry Plan. I take it as a political truth that only bipartisan support will
generate a plan that has any chance of legislative enactment, and bipartisan
support indicates the public has the stomach for the plan’s distribution of
pains and benefits.
This eliminates two extremes: A plan that claims to attack the fiscal crisis by only cutting spending (The
Ryan Plan )or a plan that solves the problem by only raising revenues (I’m
speaking of both of these as a share of GDP). The current fiscal gap is roughly
10% of GDP.Under the current structure of taxes and expenditures. This gap
would close to around 5% if the economy were operating at a full employment
level of output. Any plan must reduce this structural gap to claim it will
achieve fiscal sustainability.
The trick is to move toward a sustainable fiscal balance
without jeopardizing the recovery. The adoption of a plan will not in itself
immediately stimulate the recovery. It will improve the nation’s balance sheet
overtime and provide a foundation for more economic stability. It accomplishes
this by stabilizing and gradually reducing the Debt/GDP ratio at the 60% range,
and reduces the potential “crowding out” effect of increasing federal debt held
by the public. This does not assure balancing of the budget, at least not,
annually. The ideal solution (I think) involves cyclical balancing of the
budget with a virtual balance at around 5% unemployment and surpluses at output
levels that generate unemployment a lower levels.
In the real world a politically acceptable solution will
involve increased taxes, and program cuts (this will involve actual reductions
in the growth rate of entitlement spending, actual reductions in Medicare and
Medicaid. Pain for all is the politically acceptable solution.
A balanced plan also implies some growth in the federal
share of the GDP. Demographic trends augur for an aging population and this
means increased medical care per capita. Demography is destiny.There is no
extant evidence that medical costs for the elderly will decline in absolute
terms, or for that matter in relative terms. This means that the current and
future generations will have to save more (either through increased personal
savings or increased taxes) to cover growing medical expenses. Geriatric care
is the elephant in the closet, and the elephant is growing. We can offset some
of this burden through economic growth but growth is unlikely to offset all of
it. We can try and offset the growth in medical federal medical liabilities
trend by reducing government expenditures on other programs. That will buy some
time but unless you can envision defense spending and non-defense discretionary
spending trending to zero, the budget will increase. The interest on the debt
is the other item that seems primed for inexorable growth absent serious fiscal
discipline.
The Ryan approach throws all the burden of hunting elephants
to the expenditure side of the budget. Over time discretionary spending
declines by 91% as a share of the budget and Medicare and Medicaid spending are
significantly reduced The burden of all these cuts falls on the majority of the
population.
Nothing real has changed. The elephant is still growing
demography and medical cost trends guarantee this result. The cost is shifted
to the consumers of medical services. (Additionally, The Affordable Care Act is
also repealed) Let me suggest that all of this is politically impossible, but
the fight will slow down the search for real alternatives.
The federal budget deficit is not the real focus of the Ryan
Plan. He wants to reduce the share of Federal spending to GDP to its post WW2
average of around 18% and just cuts spending growth to get there. The deficit
is not eliminated until 2030 under his favorable economic growth assumptions. A
discussion of these assumptions will follow in the next installment of the Ryan
flight plan.
These spending cuts and medical cost redistributions will be
combined with higher income earners sacrificing pre-Bush tax rates. This is the
most regressive fiscal revision in US history.
Cliff Notes
The length of a recession is officially measured by the
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as the time from the previous peak
in economic activity to the nadir (trough). This recession, known as The Great
Recession, lasted 18 months according to the NBER, from December 2007 until
June of 2009. Seems like forever. The recovery has been phlegmatic compared to typical
post war recessions. The cause(s) of
this recession were not typical and were characterized by a severe financial
crisis. Academic research indicates that the private deleveraging
process required to recover from a crisis of this type typically takes several
years (See Rienhart and Rogoff “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of
Financial Folly” 2009). We are doomed to a typical recovery. Our potential
recovery is complicated by perceptions of the risks associated with our
high level of public debt, particularly federal debt.
It is obviously naïve
to expect politicians to clarify issues surrounding the present state of the
economy They have not disappointed.. The role of political philosophy colors
the debate. Ideology prevents reasonable discussion and the weighing of
evidence. The mavens of the left overstate the benefits of intervention and
those of the right deny the possibility of benefits and see only negative
consequences. How about a discussion based on logic and/or evidence rather than
quasi-religious beliefs?
Simply put the “fiscal cliff” is a combination of tax
increases and expenditure cuts designed to reduce the deficit by about 50%
immediately. If this combination sounds like the European approach to their
fiscal crisis, that’s because it is. We can observe how well it’s doing there.
Why should we be different? There is no reason why. The Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) estimates the effect of making the leap as a one-half percentage
point reduction in the growth rate( or about $80 billion a year in GDP loss)
with a high probability of a recession in 2013. So the price is lost output and
increased unemployment. The economy returns normal growth (from a lower base)
by 2015 according to projections. The gain is a lower cumulative deficit in the
ensuing years. But the accumulated output loss adds insult to injury and
insures that this accumulation will take years to overcome. The price is too
damn high.
Larry Summers and Christina Romer have argued convincingly (April
2012) that more stimulus now with a real long-term plan for fiscal rectitude
will achieve greater growth at less short-term cost. Makes sense to me.
Sometime you have to strengthen the patient before performing the surgery.
More fiscal stimulus at this time with continued
Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve has the possibility of giving the
economy the jolt it needs to continue its revival even though global growth is
slowing down. This prescription is the only game in town. Krugman and some
other lefties have argued for a more aggressive monetary policy by the Fed.
They would like the Fed to raise the target rate of inflation (currently 2% per
year to 3 or 4%). They argue that raising the explicit target would encourage
more consumer and business spending as there would be an expectation of more
inflation, hence a fear of depreciating currency. I sympathize with this
argument but it is not without risk. Once in place, inflationary expectations
are hard to reverse, and there is a danger of overshooting the target. Let me
just note at this time that the tighter monetary policy necessary to reduce
inflation is not without significant costs.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Robert’s Rules of Order
The Supreme Court has spoken and the political din is in
full campaign mode. Dickens was half right. This is the worst of times for the
democratic process. Partisanship has removed all rationality from the
discussion of America’s health care system and the Affordable Care Act in
particular.
Let’s be clear about the basic parameters of the system.
Everybody has access to medical care. About 15% of the population is uninsured
and have inadequate access to regular care but can receive care at emergency
rooms. This is very expensive and the cost is shifted to those covered by
insurance. The result is higher cost for those insured and greater morbidity
for the uninsured. A Dickensian result. Everybody is worse off.
One component of the ACA proposed to extend Medicaid
coverage (administered by the states and aimed at the poorest segments of the population)
and offered, as a sweetener, to cover all of the costs for the first three
years The level of support would decline
to 90% by 2020 and remain at that level. This provision was invalidated by the
Court due to the penalty provision, so the states have the option of not
extending coverage. Some governors have expressed an unwillingness to extend
coverage under the rubric of avoiding future costs.
The states may avoid the costs but society won’t. It is an
unforgiving law of economics that all bills get paid. It is just a matter of
who pays, when and how? Medicaid expenditures explicitly recognize and cover
these costs. Those states refusing the extended coverage aren’t reducing these
costs; they are just shifting these costs to those covered by insurance. It
means higher premiums for the insured. These costs are “hidden,” but no less
real.
All of this roiling is another sorry example of the
political system’s unwillingness to recognize that all balance sheets have two
sides and hiding costs do not eliminate them.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Bad Conventional
Wisdom, Then and Now
“By 1960, progressive
income taxation on the one hand
and income support
measures for the poor on the other
hand were accepted by
all but the most unreconstructed
conservatives.”
Herbert
Stein, Presidential Economics. Third Revised Edition 1993
(Chairman,
Council of Economic Advisors under Nixon)
Since 1980 a whole
lot of deconstruction has been going on, particularly in the Republican Party.
Mr. Stein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) in the
Nixon Administration and a founder of the American Enterprise Institute,
considered himself a Rockefeller Republican. This brand of fiscally moderate,
internationalist Republicanism is all but extinct. There may be a member or two
of the species still alive in Maine but it’s not clear a breeding pair has
survived.
Since 1980 a strident quasi-religious brand of conservatism
has fully captured the Republican Party. They’ve rediscovered all the bad
advice that Andrew Mellon gave Hoover and made it part of their dogma. The
empirically based conservatism of Milton Friedman is no longer part of the received
wisdom.
They claim that we are heading down the Grecian path to
fiscal ruin while extolling the austerity policies that guarantee decline.
There is not a shard of evidence demonstrating that austerity is an effective way
out of the current economic problems facing the Greeks or the rest of west. Iceland
has the one crisis economy that is
actually generating some heat and their policy is determinedly anti-austerity.
It’s been over four years (Dec ember 2007) since the
recession officially began and three years (June 2009) since the recovery
officially started. It is the first major financial crisis since the Great
Depression and involves all of the major western economies. Even the German
banking system is fragile.
The US is recovering very slowly and Europe is stagnant. At
the current pace of recovery it will be years before we regain a semblance of a
fully employed economy. How did we get here?
Our sustained prosperity of the 1990s was framed by monetary
and fiscal policies antithetical to the current conservative cant. Taxes were
raised early in the recovery process and monetary policy accommodated the real
expansion. The result was an unequaled experience with 108 months of
uninterrupted expansion, falling unemployment rates, stable prices and falling
federal deficits.
Clearly the monetary and fiscal policies of the period were
consistent with uninterrupted prosperity. At the very least policy didn’t get in
the way. At the same time structural changes were occurring. Manufacturing was
continuing its relative decline, internet industries were enjoying birth and
growth, and the financial sector was undergoing growth and deregulation.
Until the current serious financial crises, post WWII history
of business cycles indicated that monetary and fiscal policies in the western
economies has been consistent with shorter, less extreme business cycles than
pre-WWII experience. This is a modest claim, but indicates monetary and fiscal
policy as practiced in the US has been more beneficial than its conservative
critics claim.
These critics have now left the reservation and are
preaching a version of fiscal and monetary austerity that is theoretically and
empirically bankrupt given the current circumstances. This bizarre advice has
been followed by the Euro Zone countries and the results are apparent. The
southern tier of countries has gone from recession to depression. The Irish and
British economies are returning to recession and their debt loads are
increasing. The German economy is heading towards a stall speed. It’s all pain
and no gain. At some time common sense will triumph ideology. In the meantime
unemployment will increase and debt will increase. This state of affairs can
only be characterized as economic sadism.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Evidence
“However beautiful
the strategy, you should occasionally look at the result.”
Winston Churchill
Sooner or later arguments over policy must actually refer to
the real world. England,Portugal, Ireland ,Spain and Greece have adopted
policies favored by traditional conservatives in the US. Some of the countries
are in crisis because of government squandering financed by borrowing, others
by real estate and financial bubbles in the private sector (England, Ireland,
and Spain) It may be useful to examine the preliminary results of following
these policies. Is fiscal austerity a path to prosperity when starting from a
position of financial crisis and severe recession?
The short answer is no. All of the countries listed are in deep
recession (in fact one could argue that Greece is in a depression) and recovery
is not at hand. Recovery is a complicated process and requires two sets of
policies. The first one is aimed at recovery and the second one focuses on
sustainability. Once you dig out, you want to stay out.
The shovels are monetary and fiscal policies designed to
increase total spending and encourage sustained growth. This task is trickier
than it sounds because one must account for the affect of actions on the
spending response of the general population to policy actions. This induced
effect imposes limitations on the effectiveness of policy. It is possible but
not entirely plausible, that private sector, consumers in particular, could
take actions that offset fiscal stimulus or fiscal contraction. Evidence for
this would be private saving varying inversely with the budget surplus or
deficit. This would indicate that changes in consumer spending would act to
offset government fiscal policy. This argument is made by some conservative economists.
All that is lacking is evidence. The growth in deficits during the Reagan and
Bush2 Administrations were not accompanied by increased personal savings rate
but by more consumption.
It seems clear that if private sector actions do not fully
offset the effects of increased public expenditures or tax cuts the federal
actions will increase or decrease total spending, hence GDP. Historical
evidence suggests that monetary and fiscal policy do make a difference but not
immediately and not of the magnitude once thought. Tax cuts are not totally
spent, federal expenditures are generate less additional spending than once
thought and the creation of bank reserves do not immediately increase lending
by significant amounts. Evidence has tempered views on policy effectiveness.
But, less effective does not mean ineffective.
Those who argue that economic healing can only occur through
a natural process (Austrian Economists in particular) do not have evidence on
their side. If one reviews the evidence on the rate of economic recovery from
the Great Depression among the western economies the evidence is strong for
proactive intervention. Countries that left the gold standard recovered faster,
and those countries that were most expansive in their monetary and fiscal
actions recovered more rapidly. The United States and France were among the
slowest to recover and followed the most conservative monetary and fiscal
policies.
Ben Bernanke the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a
student of the Great Depression and was profoundly influenced by Milton
Friedman and Ana Schwartz’s history of monetary fluctuations (A Monetary
History of the United States 1867 to 1963). That study provides ample
documentation of the Federal Reserve’s policy errors during the Great Depression.
In their view, the Fed’s initial monetary restriction in the 1929-33 time
period converted a recession into the Great Depression. Their continued
conservatism hampered the ensuing recovery. The Chairman’s own academic
research has reinforced the Friedman/Schwartz study.
It must be admitted that many of the New Deals economic
proposals were economically incoherent ( a view shared by Keynes) and
represented experimentation without
theory. But many of the infrastructure and direct employment programs were
stimulative, they were just insufficient. For example, the deficits in Reagan’s
first term averaged about 4% of GDP. The New Deal peacetime deficit only
averaged about 2.6% of GDP. How far we’ve come.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Hunting the Elusive
Keynesian
“This long run is a
misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run
we are all dead.
Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task
if in tempestuous
seasons they can only tell us that when the storm
has passed the ocean
is flat again.”
John Maynard Keynes
(A Tract on Monetary Reform. 1923)
Much has been made of late by journalists and letter writers
of all political persuasions about fiscal and monetary policy. Discussions in
the popular press and among the talking heads on cable news networks have
failed to properly identify the real Keynesians. I hope to remedy that
shortcoming. After this discussion you will be able to identify the crafty
Keynesians among you. You can then take appropriate defensive measures.
Keynesian analysis focuses
on the short run. This is a period of time when productive capacity and
productive resources, including the labor force, can be treated as fixed. The
fundamental macroeconomic problem is keeping this capacity fully utilized.
The Keynesians propound a theory of total spending
(aggregate demand) and its relationship to total output, employment and the
price level. It is fluctuations in this spending that is responsible for the
underemployment of resources. It is asserted that aggregate demand is not
inherently stable, nor does it necessarily tend to levels that assure full
employment. Therefore, policy intervention is necessary if society is to
maintain high levels of output and employment.
They argue that monetary and fiscal policy can reduce the
amplitude and duration of business cycles and thereby reduce average levels of
unemployment and loss output. All of these issues have been examined
empirically, and although the results are mixed, I think the preponderance of
results favor the Keynesian view. Why should this be so?
When these aggregate demand fluctuations occur, real output
and employment are significantly affected but nominal wages and prices are
sticky and adjust slowly (The evidence supports this.).If aggregate demand is
falling and price and wage adjustments lag, then output and employment must vary.
Economic adjustments are adjustments in prices and quantities. Stickiness in
one set of variables shifts the adjustment to the other variables.(During the
Great Depression nominal wages fell less than prices, hence real wages
increased in spite of record levels of unemployment. (This phenomenon has been
studied exhaustively with no clear conclusions as to why).
During the current
Great Recession real estate prices have fallen, but these are fixed assets. The
prices of things we consume daily and produce currently have fallen very little
as measured by the consumer price index (cpi). Wages have also remained stable
in nominal terms.
At one time (the 1960s) professed Keynesians were so
confident of their paradigm that they spoke confidently of using monetary and
fiscal policy to fine tune the economy. The real world, particularly the
stagflation of the 1970’s, ended this level of policy hubris.
The putative effectiveness of fiscal policy (expenditures
and taxes) is dependent upon a particular theoretical assertion particular to
the Keynesian paradigm. This effectiveness is dependent upon something called
the “multiplier effect”. This effect is a posited relationship between changes
in the level of government expenditures or taxes and induced spending by the
private sector on the part of consumers and businesses (the effect also holds
for changes in private investment and exports) If the induced effects are
positive the change in government expenditures (or taxes) has a magnified
effect on total societal spending. This induced effect is the “multiplier”.
It is important to note that the multiplier effect is only
real when there are unemployed resources in the economy. If the economy’s
resources are fully employed the effect of increasing government s share of
total spending is to transfer resources among uses (and increase the price
level) and not increase total output. This “crowding out” indicates a zero
value for the fiscal policy multiplier in real term. Empirical studies do not
support large values (significantly >1) for the multiplier. But it is
greater than zero. Again, if wages and prices are sticky the employment and
output effects will be greater.
That actual fiscal policy is less effective than theoretical
fiscal policy is not an argument against any fiscal policy. Many medicines work
better in the lab than on patients, and better in clinical trials than in
practice. They are still prescribed. It may be that a larger dose is necessary
for a given goal.
Fiscal policy is not enacted in a vacuum. Its effectiveness
is enhanced by an accommodative monetary policy. Changes in federal
expenditures and/or taxes may affect the level of interest rates that counter
policy goals Thus, in the absence of monetary intervention fiscal policy may be
blunted.
Keynesians regard monetary policy as an asymmetrical policy
option: Good against inflation, ineffective against recession or depression. It
can constrain excess demand but not create demand. Once again the evidence is mixed.
Although, I think the Friedman/Schwartz investigations of monetary behavior
during the Great Depression argues otherwise. The banking panic of the early
thirties and subsequent system wide contraction of credit transmogrified a
severe recession into The Big One. A strong recovery did begin after banking
reform in 1933 and continued until 1937 when the application of misguided
economic orthodoxy engendered a severe contraction.
Milton Friedman famously said (31/Dec/1965/Time Magazine)
“We are all Keynesians now and nobody is any longer a Keynesian”. Everybody has
purchased some portion of the apparatus and some portion of the theory, but no
one believed it all. This is clearly true for the mainstream. On the fringes
there are some true believers and some atheists. The true believers, like most
true believers, believe in a version of Keynesianism beyond what Keynes
believed. Keynes believed in monetary and fiscal policies as stabilizing
devices not as a rationale for the relative expansion of the role of central
government.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Economic Malpractice
Someone once
defined insanity as repeating the same behavior and expecting different
results. We are now in the midst of an economic policy debate in which
conservatives are preaching a reasonable facsimile of an economic policy that
failed in 1937.
By the
spring of 1937 the moderate expansionist policies of the Roosevelt
Administration had aided the economic recovery. Profits, wages and industrial
production had reached 1929 levels. Even so, unemployment was still at 14.3% . Unemployment
had peaked at 25% in 1933. We had been in a very deep hole and were digging our
way out.
At that
moment, the Roosevelt Administration suffered an attack of economic orthodoxy
and fiscally retreated in an attempt to balance the budget. Roosevelt had not
fully digested the Keynesian prescription for fiscal policy during periods of
high unemployment
It was the wrong medicine at the
wrong time. The result of this return to fiscal orthodoxy was a 37% drop in
manufacturing output to 1934 levels. Unemployment surged to 19% by 1938.
Conservatives are, once again,
preaching a return to fiscal orthodoxy in the midst of recovery. Why should the
medicine work this time? The economic version of a colon cleansing may
make sense during a period of inflation but is not the proper prescription for
continuing recovery.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Fiscal Fitness
Much is written these days concerning the federal budget, deficits, debt and fiscal prudence. The relationship of the budget to the level of economic activity is not well understood by many of the writers. I hope to subtract from the current confusions.
Once we opted for an income tax (1913) as a source of revenue, the revenue side of the budget became more sensitive to the business cycle. As the progressivity of the income tax increased, this sensitivity increased. Economic expansions and contractions moved segments of the population among the various income tax brackets and increased the sensitivity of government revenues to the ebbs and flows of economic activity. The transfer payment components of the budget, such as unemployment compensation, also behave in a countercyclical manner, increasing during recessions and declining during booms. Social Security payments are also mildly countercyclical, expenditures don’t decline during recessions or increase during booms, whereas revenues into the fund increase during booms and decrease during recessions. The same is true of Medicare. In summary, the inherent logic of the federal financing system is counter-cyclical and therefore stabilizing to the macro economy. This seems to me to be desirable. We do not want a budget structure that enhances rather than constrains the cyclical variability of our market economy.
A balanced budget at this stage in the recovery would be counterproductive. One need only review the record on the Roosevelt Recession of 1937 to see what premature prudence (that’s about as racy as economics gets) can do to a strong recovery, let alone a slow recovery. In the post WW2 period up to 1960 the federal budget was roughly balanced, with years of deficits balanced by years of surplus. In a Keynesian world that was how it was supposed to work. He advocated cyclically balanced budgets with surpluses during booms and deficits during downturns. He underrated the ability of democratic governments to enshrine structural deficits. Since the 1960s deficits have been the rule and have become structurally embedded in the federal financial system. This has also been true in Western Europe. On the spending side we have the entitlement system with Medicare and Medicaid posing serious problems in the short-and medium term, and Social Security posing a long-term problem. Our unfunded obligations exceed $60 trillion
. On the revenue side the tax structure that emerged from the Bush Administration is inconsistent with balanced budgets or surpluses under any known economic projections and unfunded mandates were expanded. Both political parties share in this dilemma. A realistic financial solution that is politically feasible will involve revenue increase and expenditure constraint. The ugly politics involves how the pain is to be distributed.
Maybe it’s our fault. Economic growth has allowed us to postpone the date of unsustainability for a very long time, and we’ve made few demands of our legislators other than bringing home the bacon. But as Herbert Stein once observed, something that is unsustainable will not continue.
The cure will result in a budget that generates a surplus during booms and deficits during recessions and a balanced budget in a Goldilocks economy. This behavior says nothing about the share of federal revenues and expenditures to the GDP. That is a philosophical argument dealing with the role of government in society.
Expansive welfare states in Europe have government shares well in excess of 40% of their GDPs and they provide greater services to their constituents than we do. They are also quite prosperous and have shown the ability to grow at rates comparable to us. In the west economic performance and government size are not strongly correlated. Sorry.
Once we opted for an income tax (1913) as a source of revenue, the revenue side of the budget became more sensitive to the business cycle. As the progressivity of the income tax increased, this sensitivity increased. Economic expansions and contractions moved segments of the population among the various income tax brackets and increased the sensitivity of government revenues to the ebbs and flows of economic activity. The transfer payment components of the budget, such as unemployment compensation, also behave in a countercyclical manner, increasing during recessions and declining during booms. Social Security payments are also mildly countercyclical, expenditures don’t decline during recessions or increase during booms, whereas revenues into the fund increase during booms and decrease during recessions. The same is true of Medicare. In summary, the inherent logic of the federal financing system is counter-cyclical and therefore stabilizing to the macro economy. This seems to me to be desirable. We do not want a budget structure that enhances rather than constrains the cyclical variability of our market economy.
A balanced budget at this stage in the recovery would be counterproductive. One need only review the record on the Roosevelt Recession of 1937 to see what premature prudence (that’s about as racy as economics gets) can do to a strong recovery, let alone a slow recovery. In the post WW2 period up to 1960 the federal budget was roughly balanced, with years of deficits balanced by years of surplus. In a Keynesian world that was how it was supposed to work. He advocated cyclically balanced budgets with surpluses during booms and deficits during downturns. He underrated the ability of democratic governments to enshrine structural deficits. Since the 1960s deficits have been the rule and have become structurally embedded in the federal financial system. This has also been true in Western Europe. On the spending side we have the entitlement system with Medicare and Medicaid posing serious problems in the short-and medium term, and Social Security posing a long-term problem. Our unfunded obligations exceed $60 trillion
. On the revenue side the tax structure that emerged from the Bush Administration is inconsistent with balanced budgets or surpluses under any known economic projections and unfunded mandates were expanded. Both political parties share in this dilemma. A realistic financial solution that is politically feasible will involve revenue increase and expenditure constraint. The ugly politics involves how the pain is to be distributed.
Maybe it’s our fault. Economic growth has allowed us to postpone the date of unsustainability for a very long time, and we’ve made few demands of our legislators other than bringing home the bacon. But as Herbert Stein once observed, something that is unsustainable will not continue.
The cure will result in a budget that generates a surplus during booms and deficits during recessions and a balanced budget in a Goldilocks economy. This behavior says nothing about the share of federal revenues and expenditures to the GDP. That is a philosophical argument dealing with the role of government in society.
Expansive welfare states in Europe have government shares well in excess of 40% of their GDPs and they provide greater services to their constituents than we do. They are also quite prosperous and have shown the ability to grow at rates comparable to us. In the west economic performance and government size are not strongly correlated. Sorry.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
The Profile
I’m a septuagenarian (born in 1936) and a product of a
Seattle public school education from grade school through graduate school. I
was raised in a middle-class environment. I don’t remember lacking even during
WW2. Being active in sports and playing in the streets was a way of life. We
didn’t get a television set until 1949, too late to profoundly affect my
reading and physical activity habits.
At the age of 14 I discovered the Century Athletic Club and
it was a life changing experience. I’ve been a gym rat ever since and exercise
still plays an important part in my life.
After finishing school in 1965 I taught at the University of
Colorado, Denver Center, worked as a consultant in Kirkland, Washington and
Santa Barbara, California. My final employment was in Anchorage, Alaska as a
Petroleum Economist for the Department of Natural Resources. After official
retirement in 1991 my wife (Laurel) and I settled along the Kalama River Road
in Kalama, Washington. She continued working as an environmental consultant
while I did some adjunct teaching at Linfield College and Clark Community
College.
Since 2005 I’ve avoided meaningful employment and lived the
good life along the river with Laurel and written occasional op-ed pieces and
hectoring letters for the local paper (The Longview Daily News).I view this
blog as a logical extension of my op-ed proclivities.
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