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In the Hoisington First Quarter Review, Lacy Hunt blasts MMT as “self-perpetuating” inflation.

Please consider the Hoisington Investment Quarterly Outlook for the first quarter of 2019.

MMT Leads to Hyperinflation

Under existing statutes, Fed liabilities, which they can create without limits, are not permitted to be used to pay U.S. government expenditures. As such, the Fed’s liabilities are not legal tender. They can only purchase a limited class of assets, such as U.S. Treasury and federal agency securities, from the banks, who in turn hold the proceeds from this sale in a reserve account at one of the Federal Reserve banks. There is currently, however, a real live proposal to make the Fed’s liabilities legal tender so that the Fed can directly fund the expenditures of the federal government – this is MMT – and it would require a change in law, i.e. a rewrite of the Federal Reserve Act.
This is not a theoretical exercise. Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff, writing in ProjectSyndicate.org (March 4, 2019), states “A number of leading U.S. progressives, who may well be in power after the 2020 elections, advocate using the Fed’s balance sheet as a cash cow to fund expansive new social programs, especially in view of current low inflation and interest rates.” How would MMT be implemented and what would be the economic implications? The process would be something like this: The Treasury would issue zero maturity and zero interest rate liabilities to the Fed, who in turn, would increase the Treasury’s balances at the Federal Reserve Banks. The Treasury, in turn, could spend these deposits directly to pay for programs, personnel, etc. Thus, the Fed, which is part of the government, would be funding its parent with a worthless IOU.

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

David Rosenberg: Fed Will Embrace ‘Helicopter Money’ In The Next Few Years

April 8, 2019

David Rosenberg: Fed Will Embrace ‘Helicopter Money’ In The Next Few Years

Jerome Powell has denounced MMT has “just wrong”, but many Wall Street luminaries have surprisingly communicated an openness to the proposal. Most recently Ray Dalio proposed a marriage of monetary and fiscal policy that sounded suspiciously similar to MMT. Bill Gross, once a vocal critic of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus program, told Bloomberg shortly after he retired from managing outside money that higher taxes and the advent of MMT might be ‘necessary evils’ to combat the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor.

MMT has been perhaps the most widely discussed topic in the realm of economics since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed it as a possible mechanism for financing her ‘revolutionary’ Green New Deal. But this past week, President Trump’s exhortation that the Federal Reserve usher in QE4 by cutting interest rates stoked a frenzy of speculation that the world’s most powerful central bank might be closer to outright debt monetization – aka ‘helicopter money’ – than mainstream economists had realized. Of course, debt monetization is a central plank of the MMT program.

But just days before Trump made his now-infamous QE4 comment, Gluskin Sheff chief economist David Rosenberg offered a prediction during an interview with MacroVoice’s Erik Townsend that, in retrospect, seems surprisingly prescient.

David Rosenberg

During a discussion about how the Fed ‘pause’ impacted Sheff’s monetary policy outlook, Rosenberg, a frequent guest on CNBC, declared that, instead of giving QE another try, the central bank would opt for something even more radical by embracing MMT. And not without good reason. Just because the Fed is ostensibly insulated from political considerations, doesn’t mean it’s not obligated to protect its credibility.

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

MMT Is a Recipe for Revolution

April 2, 2019

MMT Is a Recipe for Revolution

Historian Stephen Mihm recently argued that based on his reading of the monetary system of colonial Massachusetts, modern monetary theory (MMT), which he cheekily referred to as PMT (Puritan monetary theory), “worked — up to a point.”

One can forgive him for misunderstanding America’s colonial monetary system, which was so much more complex than our current arrangements that scholars are still fighting over some basic details.

Clearly, though, America’s colonial monetary experience exposes the fallacy at the heart of MMT (which might be better called postmodern monetary theory): the best monetary policy for the government is not necessarily the best monetary policy for the economy. As Samuel Sewall noted in his diary, “I was at the making of the first Bills of Credit in the year 1690: they were not Made for want of Money, but for want of Money in the Treasury.”

While true that colonial governments controlled the money supply by directly issuing (or lendin) and then retiring pieces of paper, their macroeconomic track record was abysmal, except when they carefully obeyed the market signals created by sterling exchange rates and the price of gold and silver in terms of paper money.

MMT in the colonial period often led to periods of ruinous inflation and, less well-understood, revolution-inducing deflation.

South Carolina and New England were the poster colonies for inflation, in part because they bore the brunt of colonial wars against their rival Spanish and French empires. Relative peace and following market signals eventually stabilized prices in South Carolina.

In New England, however, Rhode Island for decades was able to act as a “money pump” that forced inflation on other New England colonies until they abandoned MMT entirely in the early 1750s.

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

The Problem With Modern Monetary Theory

March 27, 2019

THE PROBLEM WITH MODERN MONETARY THEORY

According to the Modern Money Theory (MMT), money is a thing that the State decides upon. Following the ideas of the German economist, Georg Knapp, the MMT simply regards money as a token. For instance, when an individual places a coat in the cloakroom of a theatre, he receives a tin disc or a paper receipt. This receipt or a disc is a proof that the individual is entitled to demand the return of his coat. The token was labelled by Knapp as chartal or a pay token.

On this way of thinking money is seen as a chartal means of payments. According to the MMT, the material used to manufacture the tokens is irrelevant – it can be gold, silver, or any other metal or it can even be paper. Hence, the definition of money according to the MMT is what the State decides it is going to be[1].

According to this theory, the value of money is established because the State forces people to pay taxes with the money that the State has decided upon. The State taxes have to be paid with the money tokens issued by the State. The State also has the ability to control the value of money through its declaration of how much it is willing to pay for a certain commodity produced by the private sector. What we have here is a situation wherein the State exchanges empty tokens for goods and services produced by individuals. It then requires them to pay taxes with part of the tokens.

If one dissects the whole process one would discover that it is about an exchange of worthless tokens for real goods and services i.e. nothing for something.

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

The Real Problem With Modern Monetary Theory

March 23, 2019

The Real Problem With Modern Monetary Theory

MMT supporters will point to 2008 and say, “Just look at QE. In 2008, the Federal Reserve Balance sheet was $800 billion. But as a result of QE1, QE2, and QE3, that number went to $4.5 trillion. And the world didn’t end. To the contrary, the stock market went on a huge bull run.We did not have an economic crash. And again, inflation was muted.”

Fed chairman Jay Powell has criticized MMT, for example. But its advocates say Powell and other Fed officials hoist themselves on their own petard. That’s because they are the ones who actually proved that MMT works. They point to the fact that the Fed printed close to $4 trillion and nothing bad happened. So it should go ahead and print another $4 trillion.

This is one of the great ironies of the debate. The Fed criticizes MMT, but it was its very own money creation after 2008 that MMT advocates point to as proof that it works.

Their only quibble is that the benefit of all that money creation went to rich investors, the major banks and corporations. The rich simply got richer. MMT advocates say it will simply redirect the money towards the poor, students, everyday Americans, people who need healthcare and childcare. It would basically be QE for the people, instead of the rich.

And it will go into the real economy, where it will boost productivity and finally give us significant growth.

When I first encountered these arguments, I knew they weren’t right. Both my gut feeling and my more rigorous approach to my own theory of money told me MMT was wrong. But I must admit, their arguments were more difficult to answer than I expected. I had a tough time uncovering the logical flaws.

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

A Major Bank Capitulates: “This May Be The Time For Helicopter Money Drops”

March 22, 2019

A Major Bank Capitulates: “This May Be The Time For Helicopter Money Drops”

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…

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…

Economic Theories & Debt Driven Realities

March 11, 2019

Economic Theories & Debt Driven Realities

One of the most highly debated topics over the past few months has been the rise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). The economic theory has been around for quite some time but was shoved into prominence recently by Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “New Green Deal” which is heavily dependent on massive levels of Government funding.

There is much debate on both sides of the argument but, as is the case with all economic theories, supporters tend to latch onto the ideas they like, ignore the parts they don’t, and aggressively attack those who disagree with them. However, what we should all want is a robust set of fiscal and monetary policies which drive long-term economic prosperity for all.

Here is the problem with all economic theories – they sound great in theory, but in practice, it has been a vastly different outcome. For example, when it comes to deficits, John Maynard Keynes contended that:

“A general glut would occur when aggregate demand for goods was insufficient, leading to an economic downturn resulting in losses of potential output due to unnecessarily high unemployment, which results from the defensive (or reactive) decisions of the producers.”

In other words, when there is a lack of demand from consumers due to high unemployment, then the contraction in demand would force producers to take defensive actions to reduce output. Such a confluence of actions would lead to a recession.

In such a situation, Keynesian economics states that government policies could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment and deflation. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth.The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.

…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

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But We Need the Eggs

February 21, 2019

But We Need the Eggs

ALVY SINGER: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd … but, I guess we keep going through it because most of us … need the eggs. Annie Hall (1977)

I realize that we must un-person Woody Allen today, but Annie Hall is a great movie regardless. That’s Duane Hall in the picture above, Annie’s brother, as he drives Alvy and Annie to the airport after confessing to Alvy that his secret fantasy is to slam the car into the oncoming headlights. No one does crazy better than Christopher Walken.

We’re all passengers in the backseat of the State-driven car, and we all suspect that our drivers might be high-functioning lunatics, and we’re all terrified about what they might do next.

But we need the eggs.

We need a stock market that only goes up.

We need to consume more healthcare. We need to consume more education. We need to consume more travel. We need to consume more Netflix on more devices. We need to consume more social media. We need to consume more “experiences”.

And we need the credit to do all of that NOW.

I was thinking about that Annie Hall scene a lot in the past week, what with the Green New Deal ™ and the Modern Monetary Theory ™ proposals in the news, replacing the Tax Cuts ™ and Supply-Side Economic Theory ™ of just last year.

If there’s one oldie-but-goodie ET note I’d want everyone to read, it’s Magical Thinking, published in September 2016.

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

New Monetary Theory is Like Sleepwalking

February 6, 2019

New Monetary Theory is Like Sleepwalking

QUESTION: Bernie Sanders was basing his whole economic proposal to just keep spending and make everything free. They seem to be teaching this in school now. This macroeconomic theory whereby a country’s spending is only constrained not by revenue in taxes but by inflation when it creates a sovereign currency. It seems too good to be true, but some economists were teaching this to my son. Would you care to comment on this theory?

ANSWER: The problem with what many call “new” or “modern” monetary theory is that it is like sleepwalking. You walk, creating GDP, while you are also dreaming. It reminds me of Shakespeare:

“To die, to sleep–To sleep–perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

This economic theory is the same old incantation — how to prosper with other people’s money. Rome had no national debt and no central bank. It created money to fund itself. In hard times, they used the law to confiscate the property of people as they are doing today with their civil asset forfeitures.

What is missing in this theory is the question of debt. They assume they can borrow without end and never have to account for what they have done. They fail to understand that concept and try to regulate pension funds, which requires them to obtain government debt that they never pay off.

Yes, you can just create money to fund the government and it is confined by inflation. That is a true statement if taken by itself. However, you cannot then borrow with no intention of paying down the debt because the accumulative interest payments will end up representing 100% of the debt. This theory fails for it ignores dealing with the debt.

…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…

Don’t Be So Sure Hyperinflation Can’t Hit the U.S.

January 18, 2019

Don’t Be So Sure Hyperinflation Can’t Hit the U.S.

Some progressives back piling on even more debt to pay for social programs. That could be risky.

Marking time. Photographer: Ramin Talaie/Getty Images North America

Discussions of big government spending programs often revolve around the question of how to pay for them. For example, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez touted her proposal for a 70 percent tax rate on income above $10 million by saying it would help pay for the Green New Deal, a broad package of environmental and economic initiatives.

Implicit in this concern is the idea is that government debt shouldn’t get too big. This is a common belief — polls regularly find that Americans are worried about the national debt. The national debt clock in Manhattan is a famous symbol of this anxiety. The idea is also formalized in mainstream economic models, which tend to assume that in the long run the government has to balance its books. Writing at Brookings Institution, David Wessel expresses this conventional wisdom when he declares that “federal debt cannot grow faster than the economy forever.”

But what if this is a fallacy? What if the government doesn’t have to pay back what it borrows, now or ever? This is the provocative thesis of an unorthodox economic theory that is rapidly gaining credence on the political left called modern monetary theory, or MMT. The concept isn’t new — economist Abba Lerner endorsed something similar in the 1940s, under the name of “functional finance.” But the theory has enjoyed a popular resurgence since it was embraced by some progressives, who want to enact a federal job guarantee and other ambitious economic plans paid for by government borrowing.

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

How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

October 4, 2018

How mainstream economics has led to clueless governments

It’s time to consider a better economic plan (Image edited by Dan Jensen)

Governments of all stripes base their policies on mainstream economics. Powerful challenges to the mainstream, especially from ecological economics and modern monetary theory, explain why we are in a hole and can’t seem to get out.

If this article is largely correct, we can conclude that the economics profession is a major cause – directly or indirectly – of most modern evils.

In saying that, I draw heavily on the work of Australian academic economists Professor Robert Costanza, Associate Professor Philip Lawn, Professor Bill Mitchell and Dr Steven Hail.

Taken together, their work – in conjunction with colleagues overseas – claims that mainstream economics is fundamentally wrong left, right and centre — although I don’t mean to imply that these four scholars agree on every point.

Mitchell – a co-originator of modern monetary theory (MMT) – shows that we could have full employment quickly with a job guarantee, that federal budget deficits are normal and desirable, that the federal government never needs to borrow money, and that federal taxes do not fund anything.

The Federal Government should focus on non-inflationary full employment and not budget outcomes, because we can run deficits forever without borrowing.

In short, the Federal Government does not have the budget constraints of a household, business, or state government, because it can create unlimited money — but should spend prudently to avoid inflation and ecological overshoot.

For ecological economists like Lawn, increasing the size of high-GDP economies is now producing uneconomic growth rather than economic growth, because these economies are past their optimum size, as measured by a marginal cost-benefit analysis.

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

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