Rogoff and Reinhart error – but does it really matter?

Lately there has been a lot of media coverage about an Excel error by academics Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart – co-authors of ‘This Time is Different’ – 2009. A student from University of Massachusetts tried to replicate one their models regarding growth rates when a country has a public debt of greater than 90% of GDP. Rogoff and Carmen stated that with this level of public debt growth in a country falls to a mean of -0.1%. However using the same data the student found that a figure of 2.2% was applicable in this context.

However Rogoff and Reinhart have been cautious about saying that high debt causes slower growth rates but it does highlight the validity of analysis connecting debt and austerity to growth rates. Adam Posen in the FT stated that the claim of a clear tipping point for the ratio of Government Debt to GDP past which an economy starts to collapse doesn’t hold. Following the second world war the US, UK, Belgium, Italy and Japan had public debt greater than 90% of GDP but there was not much of an effect on their economies. In Italy and of late in Japan stagnation in economies led to slowly rising debt levels. In the UK and US in the 1950’s growth returned and debt levels declined. What this is suggesting is

Slow growth is at least as much the cause of high debt as high debt causes growth to slow.

But a certain amount public debt is necessary for future development of any economy especially when you think about the construction of infrastructure and government spending on education. Both of which contribute to future growth and in theoretical terms move the production possibility curve outwards. This in turn creates growth and subsequently income for a government.

USA – Mad Spending v EU – Nervous Austerity

With one side of the Atlantic – USA – involved in quantitive easing (printing money) and the other – EU – with severe austerity, maybe somewhere in between would be a logical way to go about things. But is moderation a choice for policy makers when they have already gone so far down the track of their respective plans?

Final thought
What can be concluded is that too much debt has costs for growth but the degree of those costs is dependent on the reasons for debt accumulated and what path the economy is actually taking.

Conventional v Behavioural Economics

Teaching a behavioural economics course this year and I came across an explanation of conventional and behavioural economics by Morris Altman – University of Victoria, Wellington, NZ. Will post other material from the course.

Dow Jones Election Indicator

I like this Election Indicator from the NYT which suggests that a healthy performing Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) usually means victory for the incumbent party in the US election. Their chart ranks 28 presidential terms since 1900 – part of the chart is below – complete chart can be found at “US Presidential Stock Markets”.

When the DJIA has risen more than 5% a year the incumbent party has won the election on 11 occasions to losing on 3. When the market fell below a 5% growth rate the incumbent party has lost 8 out of 13 elections.

Obama has been doing well with a compound annual gain of 8.8%.

Anatomy of an Irish bubble

Michael O’Sullivan wrote an interesting chapter in “Understanding Ireland’s Economic Crisis” about Ireland’s bubble. He talked about the anatomy of a bubble and went through various examples from history. There are 3 stages of the bubble which he describes:

Stage 1 – Favourable shock

The Favourable Shock – in many cases this a change in economic policy or a technological shift. Examples:

The Mississippi bubble – the creation of paper money
Railways booms in the US and UK during the 19th Century
Dot.com bubble – 1990’s
Foreign Direct Investment – Ireland 1990’s

The above events enhance expectations of future economic growth and earning potential. What helps turn the boom into a bubble is the ease of credit – expansionary monetary policy (low interest rates), relaxed lending conditions etc. This then leads to rising asset values which allows corporate and the household sector the ability to take on more debt (leverage). In Ireland real interest rates (Interest rate – CPI) was 0% in 1998-2001 and was approximately -4% in 2000.

Stage 2 – Speculative growth

The Speculative Stage is one where the ecstatic enthusiasm for risk chases high returns and investment becomes speculation. A quote from J.M.Keynes describes the change in mood:

As the bubble gains momentum some people come to believe there is a greater fool who would buy their inflated assets. With this aura of confidence and supporting arguments from the periphery – e.g. “the world has changed” or “this time it’s different” – a mood of speculative optimism becomes rampant. An example of this positive rhetoric was from former Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern. He stated that those warning of the property bubble should “commit suicide”.

Stage 3 – Irrational Exuberance

Irrational Exuberance starts to dominate the “herd” and often this stage sees the sharpest and most bewildering rise in asset prices. However, there comes a time when this sort of frenzied activity cannot be maintained and eventually the bubble bursts. Most bubbles end with a tightening of monetary policy – higher interest rates – credit controls – limited borrowing potential. For Ireland, as was the case with other economies, the global financial crisis was the “lighting of the fuse”

The Irish Credit Bubble
Morgan Kelly wrote a paper on this and below is a chart from the book “Understanding Ireland’s Economic Crisis” which shows how bank lending assisted the bubble. In 1997 Irish bank lending to the non-financial private sector was only 60% of GNP compared with 80% in most eurozone economies and the UK. By 2008 bank lending grew to 200% of national income. Irish banks were lending 40% more in real terms to property developers alone in 2008 than they had been lending to everyone in Ireland in 2000, and 75% more as mortgages.

A2 Economics – Phillips Curve – an Irish Perspective

Coming from Ireland I took a keen interest in the book entitled “Understanding Ireland’s Economic Crisis” edited by Stephen Kinsella and Anthony Leddin. It is a series of papers written by Irish academics which focuses on the causes of the largest destruction of wealth of any developed economy during the 2007-2010 global financial crisis. One paper on “The Phillips Curve and the Wage-Inflation Process in Ireland” lent itself to the Unit 6 of the A2 CIE syllabus. Remember the Phillips curve:

Bill Phillips, a New Zealander who taught at the London School of Economics, discovered a stable relationship between the rate of inflation (of wages, to be precise, rather than consumer prices) and unemployment in Britain over a long period, from the 1860s to the 1950s. Higher inflation, it seemed, went with lower unemployment. To the economists and policymakers of the 1960s, keen to secure full employment, this offered a seductive trade-off: lower unemployment could be bought at the price of a bit more inflation.

The graphs below show the unemployment and inflation in Ireland between 1987 and 2012.

Notice the following:
1987: – 17% unemployment with over 3% inflation
1988-99: – unemployment falls to 5% and inflation 1.5%
1999-2000: – inflation increases from 1.5% to just over 7%. This increase was largely due to expansionary fiscal policy (demand-pull inflation) and capacity constraints that led to higher costs of production (cost-push). This led to a classic Phillips Curve situation as unemployment was at 4% and the unexpected increase in inflation had caused workers to ask for higher wages. With the low rate of unemployment their bargaining position was very strong.
2001-2004: – during this period we see the typical Phillips Curve wage-price spiral. When there is an unexpected rise in inflation this is accompanied by inflationary expectations and Ireland saw a dramatic upsurge in nominal pay awards. As demand-pull inflation fed into cost-push Irish inflation remained relatively high over the next 3 years.
2005-2008: – with unemployment still around 4% wages continued to rise significantly as inflation remained around the 5% level.
2008-2011: the global financial crisis hits the world economy and unemployment in Ireland hits 15% in the space of 2 years. Meantime the trade-off with inflation starts with the CPI reaching over -6% at the end of 2009. More recently we see inflation getting up to 3% with the rate of unemployment increasing at a diminishing rate.

Although economic indicators are improving in Ireland there is still a long way to go before they can be more confident about its outlook.

Is China going down the Keynes or Hayek route?

You will no doubt have seen the Keynes v Hayek Rap which was produced by econ stories. Now the debate turns to the Chinese economy – which of these economist’s policies is more prevalent? The Economist Free exchange column addressed this issue recently.

In order to maintain the level of economic activity in an economy Keynes believed in investment spending to maintain aggregate demand and employment. However, Hayek believed that investment spending might be directed in the wrong areas and would leave the economy poorly coordinated and workers stranded in the wrong jobs. Economist Andrew Batson has argued that Hayek seems to be gaining the upper hand in the battle of ideas as China is now keen to avoid the Hayek malinvestment even if there is less aggregate demand and growth which Keynes favoured. As mentioned in previous posts there has been huge investment in China in areas that normally stimulate growth in downturns – eg. creation of new cities or infrastructure projects.

There are others that say the Chinese economy has areas of its infrastructure that need to be developed. Cities like Beijing and Shenzen are congested and need investment spending on them. Although Hayek believed that malinvestment would result in a worse downturn what is different in China is that their high investment is backed by even higher savings. This means that investment projects don’t need to generate high returns in order pay back external creditors. According to The Economist the real cost of malinvestment is with the empty shopping malls, vacant apartments etc when there are poor medical facilities and overcrowding in housing. Might a more market approach be a better driver of the economy rather than that of central planning?

Open University – 60 second adventures in economics

Here is a series of 6 cartoons from the Open University about economic concepts – I got this link from Mo Tanweer of Oundle School in the UK. They are very well done and make for good revision with the forthcoming exams. Below is one on The Invisible Hand. To view all 6 click on the link -
Open University 60 second adventures in economics.

Keynes the Investor

John Authers of the FT wrote an interesting piece on John Maynard Keynes the investor. An era of non-Keynesian policy has culminated in a classic liquidity trap in which lower interest rates to stuimulate growth in the economy has little or no effect. Nowadays Keynes is back in fashion but how did Keynes the investor perform? In his early years he was a familiar figure in the City of London, where he made a fortune in the stock market, lost it all, and made it back again. Recently an academic publication analysed Keynes’ record an an investor and from 1924 to 1946 he managed the endowment fund of King’s College, Cambridge. The chart shows that any 100 that Keynes invested at the outset would have been worth 1,675 by his death in 1946. But what is significant about his performance as an investor was that the economic environment at this time included the Crash of 1929, the Depression and World War II. As John Authers alludes to, it is difficult to compare Keynes with investors today but if you take long-term illiquid investments like forestry, real estate, private equity and hedge funds you can get a more valid comparison. The table below shows that the return on investment by Keynes was higher than that of the market under similar conditions i.e. equity growth.

If you compare him to Warren Buffet and his main investment Berkshire Hathaway, Keynes’ King’s endowment did better – see graph.

How did he do it? Was it Animal Spirits?

* he invested in equities – no one wanted to invest in this area therefore inefficiencies were prevalent and profits could be made
* he steered clear of diversification
* put fairly large sums of money into enterprises that he knew something about

Keynes could see when he made a mistake, deal with it, and modify his behaviour.

McKinsey’s Economic Centre of Gravity – Round Trip

You may remember the post I did on the economic centre of gravity (ECG) by LSE’s Danny Quah. By economic centre of gravity he refers to the average location of the planet’s economic activity measured by GDP generated across nearly 700 identifiable locations on the Earth’s surface. Recently the McKinsey Global Institute showed how the economic centre of gravity – the geographic center of the world’s annual economic growth – has moved since AD 1 to a forecast year of 2025 – at a speed of 140kms per year.

Timeline:

1. Until 1700 China and India were about 60% of world GDP
2. British and American Revolutions which led to mass urbanisation and productivity gains ECG moved West
3. 1980’s-90’s it gravitates back to the East with the expansion of Japan and other asian economies. This is even with the Asian Crisis in 2000.
4. 2000 – 2010 sees a massive shift to the east with the impact of the Financial Crisis plus the continued growth of developing nations in the east.

McKinsey put the growth down the speed at which cities are growing especially in India and China. This has ultimately given rise to productivity and a growing consumer class. Much of this future growth (approximately 47%) will be driven by 440 developing world cities.

The Greek Economy – implosion was always on the cards!

The Greek economy is now into its sixth year of recession and it is no surprise that its economy is in tatters. Brian Gaynor from the NZ Herald wrote a very good summary of how Greece got into the mess that it is currently in. Below are some statistics over the last 6 years and this year sees a fifth year of recession – negative GDP for two consecutive quarters.

So what were the reasons for such a collapse on the Greek economy.

1. Tax avoidance has been endemic within the country especially amongst the higher income groups. Therefore there is a huge shortfall in government revenue relative to their expenditure. This means a government debt-driven recession.

2. The Greek economy boomed, like many others, with the availability of cheap credit in the early 2000’s and with the Olympics in Greece in 2004 economic activity was moving very nicely indeed.

3. Hosting the Olympics proved to be very costly in the long-run and there was little planning regarding the use of facilities post games. Many stadiums lie idle.

4. The Greek government was borrowing heavily overseas to fund its deficit.

5. Low interest rates and cheap money from overseas fueled a residential property boom – prices went up 100% from 2000-2008

6. Investment in assets with borrowed money that generated no overseas income.

Today the building industry has collapsed and residential property prices are down 20% from their peak in 2008 – isn’t this a familiar story worldwide especially with the sub-prime escapade. Also, as in Spain, there is a huge level of youth unemployment in Greece – 52.8% of under 25s are unemployed. As Brian Gaynor said at the end of the article

“The basic problem is that most Western countries, including New Zealand, have lived well beyond their means over the past 20 years, and Greece is just the worst example of this. The borrowing party is over and we are now experiencing the hangovers, particularly in Europe. These hangovers are not easily cured.”

Global Minotaur or Merkeltaur – Germans Kick Greece out of Euro

Ben Cahill of Senior College put a cartoon on the Tutor2u blog about the role Angela Merkel has in determining the destiny of Greece. The cartoon below has Merkel showing the Greeks to their only option ie. the labyrinth to be consumed by the minotaur. What she basically saying to the Greeks is that you have no choice but to stick to the reform measures and strict austerity measures. Furthermore one could say that after the soccer quarter-final on Friday “One gone, one to go”.

This cartoon also reminded me of book that I recently read called the Global Minotaur by Yanis Varoufakis. The Minotaur is a tragic mythological figure. Its story is packed with greed, divine retribution, revenge and much suffering. It is also a symbol of a particular form of political and economic equilibrium straddling vastly different, faraway lands: a precarious geopolitical balance that collapsed with the beast’s slaughter, thus giving rise to a new era.
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According to the myth’s main variant, King Minos of Crete, the most powerful ruler of his time, asked Poseidon for a fine bull as a sign of divine endorsement, pledging to sacrifice it in god’s honour. After Poseidon obliged him , Minos recklessly decided to spare the animal, captivated as he was by its beauty and poise. The gods, never allowing a good excuse for horrible retribution to go begging, chose an interesting punishment for Minos: using Aphrodite’s special skills, they had Minos’s wife, Queen Pasiphae, fall in lust with the bull. Using various props constructed by Daedalus, the lengendary engineer, she managed to impregnate herself, the result of that brief encounter being the Minotaur: a creature half-human, half-bull (Minotaur translates as ‘Minos’s Bull’, from the greek taurus, ‘bull’).

When the Minotaur grew larger and increasingly unruly, King Minos instructed Daedalus to build a labyrinth, an immense underground maze where the Minotaur was kept. Unable to nourish itself with normal food, the beast had to feast on human flesh. This proved an excellent opportunity for Minos to take revenge on the Athenians whose King Aegus, a lousy loser, had had Minos’s son killed after the young man won all races and contests in the Pan-Athenian Games. After a brief war with Athens, Aegus was forced to send seven young boys and seven unwed girls to be devoured by the minotaur every year (or every nine years according to another version). Thus, so the myth has it, a Pax Cretana was established across the know lands and seas on the basis of regular foreign tribute that kept the Minotaur alive.

Beyond myth, historians suggest that Minoan Crete was the economic and political hegemon of the Aegan region. Weaker-city states, like Athens, had to pay tribute to Crete regularly as a sign of subjugation. This may well have included the shipment of teenagers to be sacrificed by priests wearing bull masks.
Returning to the realm of the myth, the eventual slaughter of the Minotaur by Thesus, son of King of Aegeus of Athens, marked the emancipation of Athens from Cretan Hegemony and the dawn of a new era.

Aegeus only grudgingly allowed his son to set off to Crete on that dangerous mission. He asked Theseus to make sure that, before sailing back to Piraeus, he replaced the original mournful black sails with white ones, as a signal to his waiting father that the mission had been successful and that Theseus was returning from Crete victorious. Alas, consumed by the joy at having slaughtered the Minotaur, Theseus forgot to raise the white sails. On spotting the ship’s black sails from afar, and thinking that his son had died in the clutches of the Minotaur, Aegus plunged to his death in the sea below, thus giving his name to the Aegean sea.
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This suggests a tale of a hegemonic power projecting its authority across the seas, and acting as custodian of far-reaching peace and international trade, in return for regular tributes that keep nourishing the beast from within. The role of the beast was America’s twin deficits, and the tribute took the form of incoming goods and capital. Its end came from the collapse of the banking system. The book is well worth the read and not too long either.

Man vs Machine: will there be any jobs in the future?

Here is Paul Solman of PBS disucussing the issue of humans becoming obsolete in the years to come. There is an interview with Will.i.am, lead singer of the Black Eyed Peas,
who is also director of creative innovation at Intel and someone who worries about the so-called digital divide between those who know how to capitalise on technology and those who don’t have a clue.

He uses the concept of “Star Trek,” as people don’t seem to care about those that “Star Trek” left behind in the ghettos.

It was like, what was the life like for the people that “Star Trek” left? They never even put a perspective on homeboy’s family with the little visor. So technology can go either way, right? It can be the prize for humanity, the thing that we created, like, whoa, check this out, or it could be the doom.

Solman goes on to talk about Emperor Vespasian who built the Coliseum without labour-saving technology as it would displace manual labour. Also in 19th Century the Luddites who sabotaged the textile machinery that was displacing them. However technology just continued to be developed and today we have trainers being printed in 3-D with no human input. One of the problems in the global economy today is that we think that education ends when we graduate from University. Education actually starts when you enter the workforce. Well worth a look.

Professor Bernanke v Chairman Bernanke

In a recent edition of The New York Times magazine Paul Krugman wrote an article discussing the role of Ben Bernanke as an academic versus that of being the Fed Chairman.

When the financial crisis happened in 2008 it seemed that there could be no better person to be Fed Chairman. Having studied the Great Depression and written various academic papers on this and the crisis in Japan in 1990’s economists felt that Bernanke was the man for the job. Although the Fed has done a lot to rescue the financial system there is still major concerns about the labour market and the rising long-term rate of unemployment. Remember that the Fed has a dual mandate of Price Stability and Maximum Employment. In order to stimulate growth in the economy, especially when inflation is low, central banks lower interest rates but when the Fed Funds Rate reached 0 – 0.25% on the 16th December 2008 they basically ran out of ammunition as rates couldn’t go any lower. Here you tend to get stuck in what we call a “liquidity trap” in that monetary policy is no longer effective. When Japan was going through very slow growth in the 1990‘s, in which it experienced deflation, Professor Bernanke stated that Japanese policy makers should be a lot more active in trying to stimulate growth and inflation. With interest rates already at 0% he suggested that monetary authorities were not proactive enough to experiment with other policies even though they might have been radical. This all harks back to the days of FDR (Franklin D Roosevelt) in which he created work schemes, infrastructure projects etc, in order to boost employment. I have summarised Paul Krugman’s article below in a table format which shows Bernanke policies for the US economy as a Professor v Chairman.

So why hasn’t he taken on the role of the Academic Bernanke? Krugman suggests that:

this is the effect of bullies and the Fed Borg*, a combination of political intimidation and the desire to make life easy for the Fed as an institution. Whatever the mix of these motives the result is clear: faced with an economy still in desperate need of help, the Fed is unwilling to provide that help. And that, unfortunately, make the Fed part of the broader problem.

*Krugman is a keen “Star Trek” fan and compares the Federal Reserve to a Borg — a race of beings that act based on the wishes of a hive mind, and present major threats to the Starfleet and the Federation.

Social Inequality and the Great Contraction

Till van Treeck in the Guardian talks about higher inequality and easy access to credit being a reason for consumers to borrow beyond their means. There is mention of Rgahuram Rajan’s book “Fault Lines” which argues that lower and middle-class consumers in the US have saved less and borrowed more in order to increase their real incomes. This obviously kept aggregate demand and employment high but meant there was a huge amount of debt which contributed to the financial crisis of 2009-10. Rajan criticises the textbook theory of consumption as he believes that there is a link between income inequality and overall private consumption. Most would tend to agree with this statement as consumers tend not to be rational about their long-term income.

In 1996, Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, noted in response to growing concerns about rising inequality that “wellbeing is determined by things people consume [and] disparities in consumption … do not appear to have widened nearly as much as income disparities”. In a similar vein, Fabrizio Perri and Dirk Krueger suggested in an influential scholarly article published in 2006 that “consumers could, and in fact did, make stronger use of credit markets exactly when they needed to (starting in the mid-1970s), in order to insulate consumption from bigger income fluctuations”.

Recent research has shown that the rise in inequality over the last few decades has been due to many households living beyond their means and being attracted into suspect credit they couldn’t pay back.

Bring back Keynes!

Keynesian economists believe that consumers care about their consumption relative to others as an indication of their social status. Therefore the further you get behind in your ability to purchase goods and services – in relation to others – the more pressure there is for you to borrow money.

Similarly, the basic Keynesian insight that middle-class incomes need to grow in line with productivity in order to sustain robust aggregate demand appears today more relevant than ever.

In the US the increase in inequality has meant that household have worked longer hours, saved less, and borrowed more in order to maintain a social status. Till van Treeck alludes to the fact that the dominant textbook economic theories of consumption look almost as toxic as some of the credit products that ultimately caused the crisis.

Rethinking Economics – A New Paradigm.

Here is a great video clip from the The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) featuring many notable economists and economic thinkers. They basically look at the issue of financial stability, or the lack thereof, and discuss what is at the core of the problem. It includes Joseph Stiglitz, Gillian Tett, David Tuckett, Stephen Kinsella, John Kay, David Weinstein, Steve Keen and Dirk Bezemer.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)’s mission is to nurture a global community of next-generation economic leaders, to provoke new economic thinking, and to inspire the economics profession to engage the challenges of the 21st century.

Ludicrous regulations of the US Airline Industry

I use this clip from Commanding Heights to show how regulated the US airline industry was during the 1970’s. Regulations meant that major carriers like Pan Am never had to compete with newcomers. However an Englishman named Freddie Laker was determined to break this tradition and set-up Laker airways to compete on trans-atlantic flights. He offered flights at less than half the price of what Pan Am charged. Alfred Kahn was given the task by the then President Jimmy Carter to breakup the Civil Aeronautics Board (the regulatory body) and he wanted a leaner regulatory environment in which the market was free to dictate price. There is a piece in the clip that shows how ludicrous some of the regulations were:

When I got to the Civil Aeronauts Board, the biggest division under me was the division of enforcement – in effect, FBI agents who would go around and seek out secret discounts and then impose fines. We would discipline them. It was illegal to compete in price. That means it was illegal to compete in the discounts you offer travel agents. So we regulated travel agents’ discounts. Internationally, since they couldn’t cut rates, they competed by having more and more sumptuous meals. We actually regulated the size of sandwiches. Alfred Kahn

When the CAB was closed down competition was the rule and the industry had vastly underestimated the demand for air travel at lower prices – a very elastic demand curve – see graph below.

Keynes 1926 pamphlet could have been written today.

Diane Coyle runs a blog called “The Enlightened Economist” which is very good for reviews of recently published economics books. One of her recent posts talked of the republished 1926 pamphlet by John Maynard Keynes – ‘The End of Laissez Faire’. Though Keynes states that an economy should be free of government intervention he suggests that government can play a constructive role in protecting individuals from the worst harms of capitalism’s cycles, especially concerns about levels of unemployment. Diane Coyle produces a quote (see below) from the book which is ironically similar to what is the anti-capitalist sentiment today. She also suggests that we need to go beyond the state versus market debate and recongize that the two type of systems need to work together to alleviate problems such unemployment, externalities, uncertainty, well-being etc.

“Many of the greatest economic evils of our time are the fruits of risk, uncertainty, and ignorance. It is because particular individuals, fortunate in situation or in abilities, are able to take advantage of uncertainty and ignorance, and also because for the same reason big business is often a lottery, that great inequalities of wealth come about; and these same factors are also the cause of the unemployment of labour, or the disappointment of reasonable business expectations, and of the impairment of efficiency and production. Yet the cure lies outside the operations of individuals; it may even be to the interest of individuals to aggravate the disease.”

He then goes on to say

“I believe that the cure for these things is partly to be sought in the deliberate control of the currency and of credit by a central institution, and partly in the collection and dissemination on a great scale of data relating to the business situation, including the full publicity, by law if necessary, of all business facts which it is useful to know. These measures would involve society in exercising directive intelligence through some appropriate organ of action over many of the inner intricacies of private business, yet it would leave private initiative and enterprise unhindered. Even if these measures prove insufficient, nevertheless, they will furnish us with better knowledge than we have now for taking the next step.”

Should the Reserve Bank of New Zealand print money?

Bernard Hickey wrote a very valid piece in the New Zealand Herald yesterday. The gist of his writing focuses on the RBNZ and the fact that it should be following other central banks in printing money – quantitative easing. In the 1930’s the RBNZ did inject money into the economy and this helped pull NZ out of the Great Depression.

Most people see the dangers of quantitive easing in the hyperinflation that may follow such an expansion of the money supply. However, if you look at Japan in the 1990’s (the lost decade) interest rates remained at near 0% and the printing of more money didn’t create inflation. Furthermore if you look at more recent examples you see the following:

US Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, Bank of England, Peoples’ Bank of China, and the European Central Bank have printed a combined US10 trillion in the last 4 years and spent it on bonds, cash injections into banking systems. This normally happens when central banks run out of ammunition to stimulate growth – i.e. low interest rates and they enter a liquidity trap scenario. The graph below shows a liquidity trap. Increases or decreases in the supply of money at an interest rate of X do not affect interest rates, as all wealth-holders believe interest rates have reached the floor. All increases in money supply are simply taken up in idle balances. Since interest rates do not alter, the level of expenditure in the economy is not affected. Hence, monetary policy in this situation is ineffective.

Bernard Hickey suggests that it would be much better if the government borrowed from the RBNZ rather than foreign banks and pension funds. Also to print money to fund the deficit which in turn will reduce the value of the NZ$ and therefore make exports more competitive. Click here to view the full article.

Global Interest Rates – 2004 – 2012

Here is a useful interactive from the WSJ. As the global economy slowly starts to recover from a major slowdown, the WSJ has put together a great interactive that shows which countries have been implementing an exansionary or contractionary monetary policies. Red = rates up Green = rates down. Start at 2004 and see rates change up to 2012. Click here to go to the WSJ interactice.

Debt according to Krugman

Paul Krugman wrote an interesting piece on his blog (New York Times) about how those in Washington DC have no idea what they are talking about when in comes to debt. Although the US economy was technically going through a recovery last year, the levels of unemployment have been worringly high – 9%. However there is concern in Congress about the rising budget deficit and the need to reign in government spending.

Krugman explains that Washington isn’t just confused about the short run; it’s also confused about the long run. Those concerned about deficits portray a future where we have to pay back what we have borrowed – it is not like taking out a mortgage and struggling to paying it back. Krugman looks at government debt in two ways:

1. Although households have to pay back debt governments don’t – all they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax base. As the US economy grew (and the tax revenue for the government) the debt from WW II became immaterial and was never repaid – see graph below.

2. What is unique with regard to US debt is that it is not like an individual who owes debt to a bank. Essentially the US debt is money that is owed to the US themselves. Foreigners do hold a significant amount of government debt in teasury bonds but every dollar’s worth of foreign claims on the US is matched by 89 cents’ worth of US claims on foreigners. Furthermore because foreigners tend to put their assets into safe US investments, the US actually earns more from its assets abroad than it pays to foreign investors.

Nations with responsible governments willing to impose modestly higher tax rates when the situation warrants it have historically been able to live with much higher levels of debt than today’s conventional wisdom would lead you to believe. The UK has had debt exceeding 100% of GDP for 81 of the last 170 years. Keynes suggested of the need to spend your way out of recession when the UK was deeper in debt than any other adanced nation today, with the exception of Japan. Krugman states that the US doesn’t have a government that is responsible ie. willing to impose higher taxes. Debt matters BUT more government spending is needed to reduce unemployment.