mmt – Page 2 – Olduvai.ca

Long before the Fed was humiliated into reversing its hawkish rate hike policy in January and then again in March, we published – back in June 2015 – “The Blindingly Simple Reason Why The Fed Is About To Engage In Policy Error“, in which we predicted, correctly, that the neutral rate of interest is far too low to allow a lengthy tightening campaign by the Federal Reserve, as the real Fed Funds rate would promptly rise above the neutral rate, further depressing demand, resulting in a policy error.

More importantly, instead of some arcane calculation of the infamous, convoluted r-star (or neutral rate of interest) we said that one might argue for low “implied” equilibrium short rates via debt ratios. For example, if nominal growth is 3 percent and the debt GDP ratio is 300 percent, the implied equilibrium nominal rates is around 1 percent. This is because at 1% rates, 100% of GDP growth is necessary to service interest costs.

So to help the Fed and pundits calculate just where r star is in an economy where total debt/GDP is 350% and rising, and where GDP is 2% and falling, we presented – all the way back in 2015 – a sensitivity table which looks at just two simple variables: nominal growth, or GDP, and total debt/GDP. Assuming the current leverage of the US and assuming 2% in nominal growth, the short-run equilibrium real interest rate is just about 0.57%, something which the Fed now appears to have discovered on its own.

%.

As an aside, we also said that such a policy error could reinforce itself by causing structural damage that puts additional downward pressure on the equilibrium real rate adding that “in this case the yield curve would flatten meaningfully, at least until the Fed actually reversed course by cutting rates.” This is precisely what happened.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exposing the Myth of MMT

March 21, 2019

Exposing the Myth of MMT

Yesterday I discussed modern monetary theory (MMT) and how it’s become very popular in Democratic circles.

That’s because it allows for much greater government spending without having to raise everyone’s taxes. And everyday citizens could get behind it because it promises to fund lots of programs without seeing their taxes raised.

What’s not to like?

If MMT were just a fringe idea with a few fringe followers, I wouldn’t waste my time or your time on it. But it’s coming your way, so it is important to understand it.

If you missed yesterday’s reckoning, go here for a refresher.

The people who are thinking about MMT, who understand it at least in some superficial way, are the people who are driving the policy debate or running for president.

Many mainstream economists and money managers have attacked MMT, including Fed Chairman Jay Powell, Larry Summers, Paul Krugman, Kenneth Rogoff, Larry Fink, Jeff Gundlach, Jamie Dimon and Ray Dalio.

But much of their criticism is unjustified (see below for more). I’m an opponent of MMT — but for different reasons. As far as I know, I’m the only analyst who’s raised the objections I list below.

Today, I’m going to show you what I believe to be the real problem with MMT.

Again, it’s easy to see why so many politicians on the Democratic side would be such big supporters of MMT.

Some or all of them have come out in support of the following programs:

Free college tuition, student loan forgiveness, Medicare for all, free child care, universal basic income (UBI) and a Green New Deal. Some support them all.

Needless to say, that’s going to cost a lot of money. Just consider the Green New Deal alone.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Federal Borrowing Crosses the Rubicon

March 12, 2019

Federal Borrowing Crosses the Rubicon

A year ago, Republicans in control of Congress suspended the cap on federal borrowing. The limit was automatically re-imposed on March 1st. Politicians now have a few months to hammer out legislation to raise the cap as the Treasury employs “extraordinary measures” to fend off default.

The federal deficit is mushrooming once again. The 2017 tax cuts have taken a bite out of receipts at the IRS and economic growth has not met expectations.

This year’s borrowing to fill the gap between government tax revenue and expenditures may reach a trillion dollars for the first time since 2012.

If Washington politicians follow the usual script, we can expect Republicans to posture as fiscal conservatives and then relent either just before or just after a federal shutdown.

Democrats will chastise the GOP for playing politics with America’s sacred responsibility to pay its bills.

This drama has played out dozens of times over recent decades and is therefore likely to repeat once more this fall.

Perhaps it won’t, though. The Associated Press notes that there just aren’t many people in the Capitol who even pretend to care anymore when it comes to deficits.

The AP quoted former senator Judd Gregg from New Hampshire on Sunday: “The president doesn’t care. The leadership of the Democratic Party doesn’t care.” He should also have included Republican leadership, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who have reliably supported metastasizing federal debt.

Meanwhile, the socialist Left has touted so-called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT) as the mechanism to fund the economy-killing Green New Deal and any and all other government boondoggles. At its core, MMT advocates for perpetual money printing to fund government spending.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

February 26, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

December’s market instability and resulting Fed capitulation to the marketplace continue to reverberate. At this point, markets basically assume the Fed is well into the process of terminating policy normalization. Only a couple of months since completing its almost $3.0 TN stimulus program, markets now expect the ECB to move forward with some type of additional stimulus measures (likely akin to its long-term refinancing operations/LTRO). There’s even talk that the Bank of Japan could, once again, ramp up its interminable “money printing” operations (BOJ balance sheet $5.0 TN… and counting). Manic global markets have briskly moved way beyond a simple Fed “pause.”

There was the Thursday Reuters article (Howard Schneider and Jonathan Spicer): “A Fed Pivot, Born of Volatility, Missteps, and New Economic Reality: The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be ‘patient’ about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates.”

And then Friday from the Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “Slow-inflation Conundrum Prompts Rethink at the Federal Reserve: Ten years into the recovery and with unemployment near half-century lows, the Federal Reserve’s traditional models suggest inflation should be surging. Instead, officials are grappling with unexpectedly tepid price growth, prompting some to rethink their strategy for steering the US economy. John Williams, the New York Fed president, said on Friday that persistently soft inflation readings over recent years could damage the Fed’s ability to convince the general public it will hit its 2% goal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

February 24, 2019

Weekly Commentary: Dudley on Debt and MMT

December’s market instability and resulting Fed capitulation to the marketplace continue to reverberate. At this point, markets basically assume the Fed is well into the process of terminating policy normalization. Only a couple of months since completing its almost $3.0 TN stimulus program, markets now expect the ECB to move forward with some type of additional stimulus measures (likely akin to its long-term refinancing operations/LTRO). There’s even talk that the Bank of Japan could, once again, ramp up its interminable “money printing” operations (BOJ balance sheet $5.0 TN… and counting). Manic global markets have briskly moved way beyond a simple Fed “pause.”

There was the Thursday Reuters article (Howard Schneider and Jonathan Spicer): “A Fed Pivot, Born of Volatility, Missteps, and New Economic Reality: The Federal Reserve’s promise in January to be ‘patient’ about further interest rate hikes, putting a three-year-old process of policy tightening on hold, calmed markets after weeks of turmoil that wiped out trillions of dollars of household wealth. But interviews with more than half a dozen policymakers and others close to the process suggest it also marked a more fundamental shift that could define Chairman Jerome Powell’s tenure as the point where the Fed first fully embraced a world of stubbornly weak inflation, perennially slower growth and permanently lower interest rates.”

And then Friday from the Financial Times (Sam Fleming): “Slow-inflation Conundrum Prompts Rethink at the Federal Reserve: Ten years into the recovery and with unemployment near half-century lows, the Federal Reserve’s traditional models suggest inflation should be surging. Instead, officials are grappling with unexpectedly tepid price growth, prompting some to rethink their strategy for steering the US economy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bill Dudley Slams MMT: “It Failed In Germany, Venezuela And Zimbabwe”

February 19, 2019

Bill Dudley Slams MMT: “It Failed In Germany, Venezuela And Zimbabwe”

While there has been much disagreement among the financial elite about the ultimate consequences of central bank activism and market manipulation, with some – usually those who do not manage money for a living and are not paid by investors – predicting fire and brimstone, while a separate, far more optimistic group expects the world’s greatest experiment in monetary policy to somehow have a happy ending, when it comes to socialism disguised as monetary policy, besides a certain, politically-influenced fringe, the condemnation against “helicopter money” wrapped in a convenient political wrapper has mostly been uniform.

We are talking, of course, about MMT, which stands for Modern Money Theory, but would make far more sense if it stood stand for Magic Money Tree, as the theory effectively espouses unlimited money printing and skipping central banks as intermediaries in money creation which, however, the theory claims does not result in hyperinflation because, somehow, taxation manages to limit the amount of money in circulation and the result is monetary utopia.

It is therefore hardly a surprise that MMT has emerged as the pet financial theory for such socialist politicians as Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Jones (the biggest proponent of MMT is finance professor Stephanie Kelton who previously worked on Sanders’ presidential campaign and was a “chief economist for the Dems on the Senate Budget Committee”), who get to promise their potential voters pretty much everything while also vowing not to worry about the insane costs that delivering “everything” would entail (AOC’s Green New Deal is said to cost over $6 trillion and according to some, the bill would be north of $20 trillion).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Modern Monetary Theory’ Is a Joke That’s Not Funny

January 19, 2019

‘Modern Monetary Theory’ Is a Joke That’s Not Funny

Yes, a government that issues its own currency can pay its bills. But piling up debt for no urgent reason is lunacy.

There’s a theory behind it. Photographer: Eva Hambach/AFP/Getty Images

If you follow the debates over U.S. economic policy, you had probably heard of modern monetary theory well before freshman Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke favorably about it earlier this month.

If you thought from the start that the whole idea sounded like lunacy, you were right, even if it’s possible to admit some sliver of sympathy for it. So why is MMT, as it is known for short, generating such intense interest now?

First, let’s start with the confusion over what it is. The answer seems to depend on which advocate of MMT is being asked. It is sometimes a theory of money. MMT is also being discussed in the context of a political program to justify huge increases in social spending. Finally, there is its role as a prescription for macroeconomic policy.

Even as just an economic theory, it is not settled or fully developed. This makes engaging with it challenging — even, at times, frustrating.

The bedrock observation of MMT is correct: Any government that issues its own currency can always pay its bills. This observation allows policy makers to show less concern about the budget deficit than is typically the case.

In fact, MMT is growing in prominence precisely because of its relative lackof concern about the size of the deficit. In the years immediately after the Great Recession, which started in December 2007, this aspect of MMT stood in favorable contrast to the position of fiscal-policy centrists and many Republican politicians who called for significant reductions in the deficit at a time of very high unemployment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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