The Green New Deal has been in the air lately. In a recent piece on this website, Rob Urie writes that the Green New Deal is “the last, best hope for environmental and social resolution outside of rapid dissolution toward dystopian hell.”
Quite a claim. Let’s take a closer look.
The Green New Deal, first articulated by the Green Party but now supported by many progressive Democrats, calls for “real financial reform” to address the twin problems of climate change and economic insecurity.
Included are some of the standard proposals we regularly hear, such as restoring the Glass-Steagell Act (separating commercial and investment banking), breaking up the big banks, ending bank bailouts, reducing debt burdens, regulating derivatives, and taxing bank bonuses.
These are serious proposals, and would likely provide some relief, but they are partial measures subject to rollback and evasion–just the kind of incremental strategy that has failed for decades.
But the “real financial reform” the Green New Deal calls for goes a lot further. It promises genuine radical change with two new proposals: One is to “democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation,” and the other is to “support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.”
First, some background. Most people don’t realize that the government does not issue money; the private banking system does, by issuing loans at interest. The last time the government issued money in any quantity was during the Civil War, when so-called greenbacks were printed by the Treasury department to pay for the war. Greenbacks were not debt, but direct currency printed to give government contractors money for the goods and services provided, which they then spent into the general economy, stimulating commerce.
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CAMBRIDGE – More than a decade ago, I undertook a study, together with Graciela Kaminsky of George Washington University and Carlos Végh, now the World Bank’s chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, examining more than 100 countries’ fiscal policies for much of the postwar era. We concluded that advanced economies’ fiscal policies tended to be either independent of the business cycle (acyclical) or to lean in the opposite direction (countercyclical). Built-in stabilizers, like unemployment insurance, are part of the story, but government outlays also worked to smooth the economic cycle.
The benefit of countercyclical policies is that government debt as a share of GDP falls during good times. That provides fiscal space when recessions materialize, without jeopardizing long-run debt sustainability.1
By contrast, in most emerging-market economies, fiscal policy was procyclical: government spending increased when the economy was approaching full employment. This tendency leaves countries poorly positioned to inject stimulus when bad times come again. In fact, it sets the stage for dreaded austerity measures that make bad times worse.
Following its admission to the eurozone, Greece convincingly demonstrated that an advanced economy can be just as procyclical as any emerging market. During a decade of prosperity, with output close to potential most of the time, government spending outpaced growth, and government debt ballooned. Perhaps policymakers presumed that saving for a rainy day is unnecessary if this time is different and perpetual sunshine is the new normal.
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