Well, that’s over. The President had a chance to go “over the cliff,” bargain hard with the Republicans, get more of what he said he wanted at the price of perhaps some more days of crisis with extreme pressure building on the Republican caucus, and he blinked. I don’t much care that he blinked on tax rates for the top 2% and on inheritance taxes, because tax rate increases for purposes of deficit reduction simply aren’t needed for getting deficit spending needed to create jobs, as the rest of this post will show. Here’s what I care about:

– First, he claimed to be after extending the partial payroll tax holiday; but he didn’t get that, a $125 Billion would-be stimulus failure that is likely to cost at least a million jobs;

– Second, he claimed to be trying to get the debt ceiling issue off the table for at least two years, and he didn’t even get anything to deal with it in the bill;

– Third, he claimed to want to resolve the sequestration issue, but only got that can kicked down the road for two months;

So, in sum, he’s already achieved some unneeded austerity with this “negotiation” and, in addition, he’s set things up beautifully for a truly extreme episode of extortion by the Republican House over the next couple of months, as Congress faces the upcoming sequester, debt ceiling, and Continuing Resolution (CR) conflicts. Why did he insist on making his year-end deal, rather than allowing things to kick over to the new Congress and negotiating a better one?

There are different theories about that. One, is that he wanted, at all costs, to avoid Wall Street panicking and then tanking, even if, only temporarily. A second is that he has good “progressive” motives, but he’s just a lousy negotiator, who just can’t avoid first establishing firm positions and then showing the other side that he will always cave in if they, in turn, stand firm. A third theory, and the one I favor, is that since 2009 he’s been conducting a careful campaign to get Americans to accept austerity through forced deficit reduction including heavy cuts to the social safety net programs that Americans love so well.

During this campaign, he’s ignored the evidence from Europe and elsewhere that austerity doesn’t work and hurts most of the people, most of the time. He’s also ignored all the polling data showing how Americans feel about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And he has moved slowly, deliberately, persistently, and in concert with allies outside the Administration like Peter G. Peterson, high-level Wall Street Executives, and MSM media personalities and journalists to create a consensus around the idea that “entitlement reform” is both inevitable and necessary for long-term fiscal sustainability. Finally, he has “negotiated” with Republicans during a series of “shock doctrine” crises to try to gradually implement austerity, while making sure that the Republicans, rather than his own party end up bearing the blame for the end result of austerity policies.

The results of the “cliff” negotiations have now set up a confluence of three events: the sequestration; the debt ceiling; and the CR; creating the occasion for the mother of all fiscal “shock doctrine” negotiations over the next three months. This confluence can be seen as an intentional emergence of the conflict between the Republicans and the “progressive” President Obama, or it can be seen as the result of a very long-term conservative campaign setting the stage for austerity, and a comprehensive attempt to weaken the social safety net.

I won’t try to make the case that the dangerous confluence we’re about to face is due to a deliberate staging by the President, even though I suspect that it is. Nor will I try to make the contrary case that the President has excellent motives, but stumbled into this mess due to incompetence at negotiating, and the Republican victories in the House in the past two elections, for which his supporters might say, he was blameless. What, I’ll do instead, is try to show that either way, the President has leverage to get what he wants.

If His Game Is Deliberate Austerity?

Then, of course, he’s maneuvered us into a situation where, he will claim, there either has to be a Government shutdown, frightening to most people, or concessions to Republican demands for cutting discretionary programs and entitlements. He will be in a very good position then, to regale all of us with horror stories about the consequences of shutting down the Government for weeks until the “crazy” Republicans capitulate; compared to the lesser evil of making “balanced” spending cuts among defense, discretionary, and entitlement programs, while he prepares to reluctantly give into the hostage takers to avoid disaster; while constantly letting us know that as the adult in the room he must arrive at a “compromise” settlement. So, if his game is deliberate austerity, then he will have plenty of leverage to get what he wants.

If His Game Is to Avoid Cuts That Will Hurt the Economy and the Safety Net?

Today, most people commenting on the fiscal cliff agreement are assuming that this is his game, and are saying that the President has given away his leverage for future deal-making. Their logic is that he’s already made deals on the tax rate cuts and on the inheritance tax rates, so that he has little left to offer the Republicans except painful cuts in programs most of the American like. This, however, isn’t true.

First, the President still has some leverage when it comes to defense cuts. Republicans don’t want those at all. So, if he’s willing to cut there; he can sincerely threaten cuts and then trade for their sparing popular programs from the ax.

But, second, the main thing being ignored by most of the strategists commenting on the morning after is the President’s ability to change the fiscal context of the coming negotiations from one of apparent scarcity “justifying” austerity to one where spending capacity is so plentiful, that Congress will be hard-pressed to impose austerity, because its justification in the form of apparent limitations on spending capacity will just seem silly. Now, that can translate into leverage in the negotiations!

How can it be done? Through the use of Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS).

PCS Variations

Here are some variations on PCS, an idea first proposed by beowulf. (Carlos Mucha).

First, mint a $1.6 Trillion coin and have Treasury use the profits from it to buy all the outstanding debt instruments held by the Fed. This would retire a substantial part of the national debt and immediately create $1.6 T in “headroom” relative to the debt ceiling. This alternative involves the least amount of change in current procedures. The coin, once deposited at the Fed, would remain in a Fed vault, and would not go into circulation.

The Government would then go right back to issuing debt in order to meet its debt obligations and spend previous Congressional appropriations. Of course, this proposal is a solution to the debt ceiling problem alone. It would prevent a default crisis caused by anti-government tea party Republicans. But, it wouldn’t do very much to defeat the austerity mind set in fiscal policy.

A second proposal is to mint a $6.7 T coin to pay back all debt held by the Fed, and all Intra-governmental debt, including that owed to Social Security, Medicare, and a host of other other agencies. That would create $6.7 T in headroom relative to the debt ceiling, that’s more than enough to carry us through the 2016 elections without breaching the ceiling. Again, this wouldn’t result in any “money” immediately going into circulation, but over time SS and Medicare payments to individuals and organizations would be adding to bank reserves without any reserves being withdrawn from the private sector due to debt issuance.

This alternative would render the debt ceiling problem a dead letter for some time to come, and it also might take some of the austerity pressure off. But it probably wouldn’t end the austerity drive, because the deficit hawks would still point to long-term problems in entitlements that would be projected as running up the public debt in future years.

A third proposal for applying PCS is to mint a coin with face value large enough to cover the $6.7 T intra-governmental and Fed debt repayment, plus all debt to the non-government sector coming to maturity during the next four years, and all Congressional Appropriations expected to require deficit spending through the 2016 elections. I’ll estimate, roughly, that a $20 T coin is enough for that, including about $6.2 T to more than close the expected gap between tax revenues and Government spending through the 2016 elections, and the rest for paying down the national debt. Issuing a coin that large, using the profits from seigniorage, and assuming that Congressional appropriations continue the pattern of the past 2 years or so, that would result in a remaining public debt outstanding of roughly a few trillion dollars in long term debt, which would please the bond markets except for the fact that the US wasn’t issuing any more debt instruments, which would probably make the bond vigilantes scream for those safe harbor debt instruments again.

A more important aspect of a coin this large is that it takes the deficit/debt issue very much off the table, since there would be no new debt issuance needed until after 2016, and because most of the seigniorage would be used to pay down debt the US would then have only about 15% of its current debt subject to the limit. In other words, it would take the austerity meme off the table completely over the next four years and even after that there would be a lot of room between the outstanding level of debt and the debt ceiling.

Much of the pressure now being applied to entitlement programs would also be gone. So, progressives could be much more expansive in supporting full employment programs, education, infrastructure, higher entitlement benefits, Medicare for All and other things the country needs.

If, also, Congress does the right kind of spending to bring full employment inside a year, then tax revenues will come back as they did during the Clinton Administration, and then there will be no need for all the profits from the platinum coin to be used completely for deficit spending between now and 2016. In fact, if the right jobs creating program is immediately enacted, as much as $3 T could be left, by the end of 2016. So, this is a much more progressive alternative than the first two. But in itself, it doesn’t provide a continuing ability for the Treasury to create reserves directly to support deficit spending. The nation could still slip back into the regressive money creation practices after 4 or 5 years, and the conservative, neoliberal bias of fiscal politics could be restored.

So far, I’ve discussed three alternative coin seigniorage proposals ranging in scale from a minimal proposal to handle the current crisis to one that would provide enough funds to both pay down debt, and support a gap between spending and taxes that might be sufficient to enable full employment. Now here’s a fourth, enough to handle even generous Congressional appropriations and deficit spending for at least 15 – 20 years, until 2032 and beyond.

Why not mint a $60 T coin?

I favor this fourth alternative above all, because it institutionalizes the idea that there is a distinction between appropriations, the Congressional mandate to spend particular amounts on particular goods and services, and the capability to spend the mandated accounts by having the funds (electronic credits) in the public purse (the TGA). In a fiat currency system, the capability always exists if the legislature provides for it under the Constitution, as it has under current platinum coin seigniorage legislation.

But the value of the $60 T coin, and the profits derived from it, is that it is a concrete reminder of the Government’s continuing ability to buy whatever it needs to meet public purposes, and its continuing ability to harness the authority of the Central Bank to create reserves to support the needs of fiscal policy. It demonstrates very clearly that the Government cannot run out of money, and that the claim that it can is not a valid reason for rejecting spending that is in accordance with public purpose.

So, please keep in mind the distinction between the capability to spend more than government collects in taxes, and the appropriations that mandate such spending. The capability is what’s in the public purse, and it is unlimited as long as the Government doesn’t constrain itself from creating credits in its own accounts. With PCS, its capability could be and should be publicly demonstrated by minting the $60 T coin, and getting the profits from depositing it at the Fed transferred to the Treasury General Account (TGA).

On the other hand, Congressional appropriations, not the size or contents of the purse, but whether the purse strings are open or not, determines what will be spent, and what will simply sit in the purse for use at a later time. So there is a very important distinction between the purse and the purse strings. The President can legally use coin seigniorage to fill the purse, but only Congress can open the purse strings through its appropriations.

This fourth alternative is the one that best solves both the debt ceiling problem and the problem of taking austerity, justified by “we’re running out of money,” off the table. The debt ceiling would no longer be an issue if the Treasury immediately paid off $6.7 T in Fed and intra-governmental debt, and was poised, with the money in its account, to pay off the rest of the debt subject to the limit as it falls due. Nor would there be any justification for austerity policies if the Treasury had a public purse with $44 T of unearmarked funds in it to cover future deficit spending. So, this is the progressive alternative, the one that changes the political context of fiscal policy debates for the foreseeable future. It also gives progressive enough time to fight a major political battle that ought to and must occur; the battle to free the Fed from control by Wall Street and banking interests and to make it accountable to the people by placing it under the authority of the Treasury Department, and our nationally elected executive, the President.

What about inflation? Well using PCS isn’t intrinsically inflationary. For the reasons why, see my previous post. I outline how to justify it politically in the next and final section.

The Speech

If the President wanted to emulate the great Democratic Presidents of the past, end austerity and decide to rise above the debt ceiling controversy, safeguard the social safety net, and do something really, really important from the perspective of history by using $60 T coin seigniorage to short circuit the upcoming fights over the debt ceiling and the budget, then there would be a spectacular uproar in the Congress and the Press over what he had done. All kinds of overblown and downright crazy claims would be made because the President’s action would shock people, everyone would have a tough time getting their minds around it, and the media would report on what was going on in a very sensationalist way using stereotypes created by the neo-liberal perspective that journalists at places like the WaPo, NYT, WSJ, and CNN are superficially well-schooled in. Places like CNBC and Fox would be absolutely foaming at the mouth in response to something like this, and Geithner might very well resign over it, as might Ben Bernanke, since he’d be forced to have the Fed credit the coin.

There would also be an immediate move in Congress to repeal the 1996 law that enabled the President’s action. This would fail however, because even if it got through the Congress, the President would simply veto it. The opposition couldn’t possibly get the 2/3 vote necessary to override the veto. Even if by some miracle, repeal got through, however, it would be too late. The coin would have done its work and the $60 T would be in the Treasury General Account, a fait accompli, and a vivid demonstration that the government can create as much money as it wants, and can only run out of money by choice.

However, the President would then have to defend himself with a political campaign aimed at persuading the public that his move was a bold and liberating move and the first step in finally getting out of this protracted economic depression. And yes, he should use the D-word, whatever the Republicans, and the so-called “fact-checkers” say about it. And he should also begin the campaign by explaining the issuance and deposit of the first $60 T coin in a high profile TV address to the public, the following way.

My Fellow Americans:

1) Until now the Treasury has been borrowing the money the Government created back from the private sector, in order to cover our deficit spending, so the national debt has been steadily growing.

2) That’s silly! According to the Constitution, this Government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the ultimate source of all US money. So why should we ever borrow US money back and pay interest on it, since we can create it any time by the authority of the Constitution and Congress?

3) Congress has also imposed a debt ceiling, so, if and when we reach it, we can’t borrow back our own money without Congressional approval, anyway, and lately Congress has been using the need to raise the debt ceiling as an excuse to extort cuts in safety net and discretionary programs that the majority of Americans support.

4) So, on my order, and in accordance with legislation passed by Congress in 1996, and with the US Code, the US Mint has issued $60 Trillion using a single 1 oz. platinum coin, and deposited it at the NY Fed. It’s legal tender, so the Fed credited the Mint’s Public Enterprise Fund (PEF) account with $60 Trillion in US Dollar credits using its unlimited authority from Congress to create them.

5) This is not inflationary because the Fed will put our coin into its vault, and keep it there permanently out of circulation, and the Treasury will use the $60 T in USD credits only to pay back the national debt and to spend what Congress has already approved, which is only a small fraction of these credits and far from the amount needed to cause inflation.

6) My action ends any possibility of a debt ceiling crisis in February or March, because we have no further need to borrow our own money back in the markets, and that’s why we don’t need the tea party or other Republicans, or even my fellow Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling any more.

7) Now the Treasury, has plenty of money, much more than we need, in fact, to pay for all appropriations Congress has already approved for 2013, and may approve in March, including all deficit spending and, again, we won’t have to borrow our own money back, either to repay debts or to implement future deficit spending.

8) So, we will pay all Government debts which will come due in 2013 and 2014. Treasury securities and all other debts included. We will also pay back all debts held by other agencies of Government and the Federal Reserve. When we do this we will lower the national debt by about $12 T, reducing the “debt burden” by about 75% by the end of 2014, and creating an actual Social Security trust fund with 2.7 T in cash reserves in it; and again, to do this we don’t have to borrow any of our own money back, and we will also reduce our interest costs on the outstanding national debt all through the remainder of 2013, 2014, and beyond until it is all paid off.

9) None of the $60 T in new credits created by our actions is “money” in the private sector economy until the Treasury spends it. For now it is just capability to spend awaiting the appropriations of Congress to mandate deficit spending, should it need to compensate for the reduction in demand, probably close to 10% of GDP right now, caused by your own desire to save (which we want to do our best to facilitate), and your desire to import goods from foreign nations.

10) We have created $60 Trillion in new credits even though we probably needed less than that to cover anticipated deficit spending and debt repayment until at least 2028. The reason for this, is that I wanted to have enough capability created in the Treasury account, so that the national debt could be completely paid off (except for a small amount in very long-term Treasury debt still not mature by 2028), and all projected Federal deficits covered over the next 15 years, even extraordinary deficit spending needed to be performed without further borrowing over this period.

11) Of course, we can always make new coins if our projections about future deficits turn out to be wrong; but I thought it would be best to ensure that all $16.4 T plus of the “debt burden” can be completely eliminated from our political concerns; and also to provide enough funds in our spending account at the Fed, so that it would be very clear to Congress and all newly elected Representatives and Senators, that even though they, as required by the Constitution, continue to control the purse strings, the national purse is very, very full, and that we would be able to cover from the Treasury General Account whatever deficit spending for the public purpose, including for full employment, Medicare for All, infrastructure, education, and other things, that Congress, in its wisdom, chooses to appropriate now, before the next election, and for some elections to come.

Good night, my fellow Americans! Rest well knowing that our beloved country won’t be defaulting on any of its debts when the debt ceiling is reached, and that I’ve prevented this without going over the legal debt ceiling, or borrowing any more, by providing money for spending mandated appropriations, in compliance with the laws authorizing Platinum Coin Seigniorage, while supporting the Constitution’s prohibition against our Government ever defaulting on its debts. I hope that, in the future, everyone in Congress will obey the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against questioning the validity of Federal Government debts, and think twice before they indulge themselves in loose talk about the possibility of the Federal Government defaulting on its obligations.

America will always pay its debts in US Dollars according to the terms of the contracts it has concluded, and in line with the pension payments and other obligations that it owes. Neither you, nor the rest of the world need ever doubt that again! Nor need you ever think that our Government is running out of money for the things we must do. We can never run short of money unless Congress refuses voluntarily, to use its unlimited constitutional authority to make more of it. But as long as it delegates to me the authority to create high value platinum coins to cover our needs, you can be sure that running out of US money will never happen!

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

The word “deficit,” when applied to the Government financial accounting of a monetarily sovereign nation, that is, one that issues a non-convertible fiat currency, with a floating exchange rate, and no debts in a currency it doesn’t issue, is a problem, because the label “deficit” when applied to such a Government doesn’t mean what most people think it means. As Michel Hoexter points out:

. . . The word “deficit” is a hold-over from conventional accounting and the era of the gold-standard when currencies were supposed to be fixed in their quantity by convertibility of the currency into a fixed quantity of precious metal. Deficit means primarily a “lack”, an “absence” and in conventional accounting it means being “in the red”, not having taken in enough income to cover expenditures. . . .

Maybe to fix the 'deficit' we must redefine our terms.

The term “deficit” in this sense can be properly applied to households, corporations, other private and inter-governmental organizations, and states and nations that aren’t monetarily sovereign such as the US States and the members of the Eurozone. In all these instances the governments involved can run out of money, and the more deficits they run, the more the risk that they will become insolvent increases. But when that term is applied to monetarily sovereign nations, then the “deficit” notion is profoundly misleading because neither the size of the “deficit,” nor its accumulation over time when it is accompanied by selling debt instruments, makes a bit of difference when it comes to solvency, because monetarily sovereign governments always have unlimited power to issue currency, if they decide to remove all self-imposed constraints on currency issuance and use that power.

There’s a corresponding problem with the term “surplus” as applied to monetarily sovereign Government accounting. Surpluses are supposed to represent the situation where tax revenues exceed spending and the gap between them is described as net “savings” increasing the financial assets of the Government running the surplus. A surplus over a particular time period is viewed as being “in the black” for that time period, as a good thing for the Government doing it, and as reducing the “debt” of that government giving it an increased financial capability to spend in the future.

The term “surplus” in this sense can be properly applied to households, corporations, other private and inter-governmental organizations, and states and nations that aren’t monetarily sovereign such as the US States and the members of the Eurozone. In all these instances the governments involved can accumulate surpluses as financial assets, and the more surpluses they run, the more the risk that they will become insolvent decreases. But when that term is applied to monetarily sovereign nations, then the “surplus” notion is also profoundly misleading because neither the size of the “surplus” during a time period, nor its accumulation over time, makes a bit of difference when it comes to solvency, or adding to the government’s capability to spend in its own currency either currently or in the future.

So, from the viewpoint of Modern Money Theory (MMT), both the terms “deficit” and “surplus,” and also the term “national debt” are misleading when applied to monetarily sovereign nations. Recognizing this, some of us have been kicking around the idea of using new terminology for talking about national financial accounting. In the recent post by Michael Hoexter I referred to earlier he proposes:

Read the rest of this entry →

Obama for America, the campaign apparatus with the very large e-mailing list and great segmentation techniques that exploited Romney’s weaknesses to help the President to eke out (yes, I know the electoral vote involved no “eking out,” but the popular vote was something else again) his re-election victory, is now trying to mobilize people who voted for the President to work against their own interests by supporting his deficit/debt cutting activities. So, I couldn’t resist the following commentary on their mobilization e-mail.

From the graphic:

Right now, President Obama is working with leaders of both parties in Washington to reduce the deficit in a balanced way so we can lay the foundation for long-term middle-class job growth and prevent your taxes from going up.

This is just one sentence. But it has more errors in it than a whole book written by some economists. First, it assumes that we should “reduce the deficit.” But:

– It’s fiscally irresponsible to frame and follow a long – term deficit reduction plan (limited austerity) when, as now, both a trade deficit and an output gap between the economy’s potential and its actual results exist. Such a plan is one that must remove more net financial assets, specifically reserves, from the private sector than would otherwise be the case, every year the plan is pursued. Banks can compensate for these reserves by creating new ones when they make loans. But, loans create both assets and liabilities in equal measure and no new net financial assets.

So eventually, if deficit reduction is pursued for long enough, a declining rate of addition to private net financial assets will exacerbate the output gap by lowering aggregate demand and causing both labor and capital to deteriorate. This will eventually dig the US’s economic grave by reducing the productive capacity of the economy, and the Government’s ability to sustain greater levels of deficit spending, producing outputs of real social value, without triggering inflation. Oh, well, President Obama, Timothy Geithner, Jack Lew, Erskine Bowles, Alan Simpson, Alice Rivlin, Pete Peterson, and the rest of us will be able to find consolation by reminding ourselves that our collective trip to the poorhouse was in the service of the neoliberal notion that fiscal responsibility is all about containing the rise of the debt-to-GDP ratio.

– REAL fiscal responsibility is a pattern of fiscal policy intended to achieve public purposes (such as full employment, price stability, a first class educational system, Medicare for All, etc.), while also maintaining or increasing fiscal sustainability, viewed as the extent to which patterns of Government spending do not undermine the capability of the Government to continue to spend to achieve our public purposes. Read the rest of this entry →

Robert Reich has been writing a series on “the Grand Bargain” and the “fiscal cliff.” In this post, I’ll do a commentary on his “The President’s Opening Bid on a Grand Bargain (II): Put a Trigger Mechanism in the Legislation”, because I think it’s a good example of self-defeating progressivism or “loser liberalism. Take your choice of epithet.

Reich begins:

When he meets with Congressional leaders this Friday to begin discussions about avoiding the upcoming “fiscal cliff,” the President should make crystal clear that America faces two big economic challenges ahead: getting the economy back on track, and getting the budget deficit under control. But the two require opposite strategies. We get the economy back on track by boosting demand through low taxes on the middle class and more government spending. We get the budget deficit under control by raising taxes and reducing government spending. (Taxes can be raised on the wealthy in the short term without harming the economy because the wealthy already spend as much as they want – that’s what it means to be rich.)

So, the good “progressive” defines the problem pretty much the same way as the rest of the Washington mainstream does. And he just assumes everyone agrees on that, especially on the idea that the budget deficit is out of control and that we need to reduce deficits by raising taxes and reducing government spending. So he gives away half the game by agreeing on essentials with the deficit hawks. But why does he agree that the deficit has to be brought “under control,” implying that the deficit is a problem? Why are WE just expected to accept that? Why isn’t there an explanation? When are we going to make these “progressives” explain exactly why the deficit, debt, debt-to-GDP ratio is such a problem for them?

After all, Robert Reich has been around long enough to know that the Government of the United States is a currency issuer and that no deficit it may incur is beyond its power just to make more money? So why do they think it’s a problem? Let’s go on and see if we get a hint of what the explanation for Reich’s concern with “the deficit problem” comes from.

But before we do that, let’s briefly note that Reich’s easy comment that taxing the rich more won’t harm the economy, isn’t quite true since since for every dollar taxed away GDP does decline by about $.30. Of course, that can easily be fixed by spending an equivalent amount to the amount taxed on something more productive than tax cuts for the rich. But since we can easily spend that amount of money on that more productive thing if we want to, anyway, there’s no reason to tax the rich more arising out of any imagined shortage of dollars. Of course, there are many more reasons to tax them, like justice, fairness, the desire to make them pay for ill-gotten gains, etc. But the need for money in order for the Government to spend on other things is just not one of them.

It all boils down to timing and sequencing: First, get the economy back on track. Then tackle the budget deficit.

Get the economy back on track, indeed. But, again, why is the deficit something that has to be “tackled”?

If we do too much deficit reduction too soon, we’re in trouble. That’s why the fiscal cliff is so dangerous. The Congressional Budget Office and most independent economists say it will suck so much demand out of the economy that it will push us back into recession. That’s the austerity trap of low growth, high unemployment, and falling government revenues Europe finds itself in. We don’t want to go there.

We certainly don’t want to go where Europe has been going lately. They’re a great example of how NOT to manage your way out of a Great Financial Crash. But what makes Reich and other progressives think they can avoid the fate of the Eurozone nations by planning for deficit reduction later ,or at all? The assumption here is that there must and will be a time when we can reduce the deficit without harming the economy. But what if there’s no such time? What if any substantial deficit reduction to under 4% of GDP, a figure envisioned in most of the deficit reduction plans being offered, means making the private sector poorer in the aggregate?

That’s not just a theoretical question. Right now, the US imports more than it exports in an amount greater than 4% of GDP. If we continue to do so, and the Government deficit is forced down to a number below 4% of GDP, then a private sector surplus in the aggregate will be literally impossible to attain, and, if we continue with such a policy, year after year, the private sector will lose more and more of its net financial assets as the Government eats the private economy in a fit of fiscal irresponsibility, that since it’s now way past 1984, the austerity advocates label fiscal responsibility.

Although the U.S. economy is picking up and unemployment trending downward, we’re still not out of the woods. So in the foreseeable future — the next six months to a year, at least — the government has to continue to spend, and the vast middle class has to keep spending as well, unimpeded by any tax increase.

Of course, that’s true, but the “vast middle class” can be impeded from consuming by cuts in discretionary Government spending and in social safety net spending equally effectively, and deficit reduction, without raising taxes on the middle class, is likely to involve a good bit of those kinds of cuts, if there’s any compromise at all with the deficit hawks on the budget.

But waiting too long to reduce the deficit will also harm the economy – spooking creditors and causing interest rates to rise.

Now we’re getting an inkling of what Reich’s problem is. He’s afraid of the “bond vigilantes” and their supposed power to raise interest rates and leave us with a great big interest bill that will further increase the deficit. So, all this concern over a “deficit problem” is due to fear of the markets and, perhaps, Reich would have no problem with running continuous deficits if he thought that the Fed, along with the Treasury, control interest rate targets, and that the bond markets are powerless to impose their will on Mr. Bernanke and the Treasury Secretary if they want to keep rates near zero, or at any other level of interest they would like the US to pay? Well, if that’s true, then let me assure Professor Reich that the bond markets and the ratings agencies are powerless to drive up interest rates against the combined determination of the Fed and the Treasury to keep them low.

We can see this if we imagine what would happen if the Fed continues to target overnight rates at close to zero, and the Treasury issued mostly 3 month debt. We know that short-term debt tends strongly to the overnight rate, and that there’s nothing the markets can do about that. So, if the Fed targets that rate at say 0.25%, and if the Treasury issues only short-term debt, the result will be that the markets cannot drive the rates much higher than that even if Moody’s is follish enough to downgrade US debt to below Japan’s rating.

This is why any “grand bargain” to avert the fiscal cliff should contain a starting trigger that begins spending cuts and any middle-class tax increases only when the economy is strong enough. I’d make that trigger two consecutive quarters of 6 percent unemployment and 3 percent economic growth.

Triggers are a really bad idea, and I’d hate to be among those 6% on the U-3 measure of unemployment, or the likely 12% on the U-6 measure, when the spending cuts and tax increases specified in the trigger mechanism occur, because those levels aren’t ones associated with a booming economy or one that is anywhere prosperous enough to stand against years of reduced Government spending at a deficit level below that necessary to compensate for the loss of aggregate demand due to our trade deficit. A trigger like this would take an already fragile economy, operating at way less than full employment, and would make unemployment higher, while it reduces private sector net financial assets during the years of deficit reduction triggered by such a plan. Depending on the details of the trigger, and assuming there’s no private sector credit bubble putting off the day of reckoning, a recession is a sure thing within an unpredictable, but relatively short space of time.

And keep in mind please, that this notion of Reich’s is a proposal for Obama’s opening bid, which presumably is open to compromise. So, perhaps Reich would be willing to set the deficit reduction at a compromise level of 7% U-3 unemployment? What a “loser liberal”!

But the real mistake here is in having any “trigger” at all. The whole idea is really dumb from an economic point of view. Fiscal policy needs to be guided by our expectations about its likely effects on real outcomes; not by some scheme that assumes that deficits are “bad” and must be minimized. We no longer live under the gold standard Professor Reich! A deficit is nothing more than the amount that Government spending exceeds tax revenue. It’s just a number!

To assess its appropriateness we have to place it in the context of what the private sector wants to save, and how much it wants to import, assuming the willingness of other nations to export to the US. The best fiscal policy is one that spends what the US needs to spend to solve its serious problems and achieve public purposes, and at the same time lets the deficit float as it will given such spending.

Of course, too much deficit spending can cause demand-pull inflation. But the proper remedy for that is to raise specific taxes and lower specific spending in such a way that price stability and full employment, as well as other good outcome result from fiscal policy. The size of the deficit or surplus is not a proxy for such real outcomes, and responsible fiscal policy should not be attempting to maximize, minimize or optimize either deficits or surpluses, rather than the real outcomes of government fiscal policy. In other words, run fiscal policy in accordance with expected real outcomes, and forget about deficits and surpluses per se. They should be treated as insignificant side effects, not as as centerpieces for fiscal responsibility, as they were under the gold standard.

To make sure this doesn’t become a means of avoiding deficit reduction altogether, that trigger should be built right into any “grand bargain” legislation – irrevocable unless two-thirds of the House and Senate agree, and the President signs on.

Please, no more foolish legislation that tries to constrain the freedom of action of future Congresses! The context of fiscal policy is always changing, and the Government must be adaptive to changing conditions. Future governments have to take into account things that have gone or are likely to go wrong. We should not, and really cannot bind them to “triggers” that can’t take into account the future conditions that may present themselves.

The fiscal cliff is itself an example of this principle. The “cliff”, after all, results from the sequestration trigger. And now, after agreeing to it, how’s that working for Congress and the rest of us? It’s made Congress look really, really stupid, and has only made it more obvious that the only crisis is what Congress has manufactured, and now refuses to fix in any way that won’t hurt the economy. And it has put the nation in a bind and subjected Congress to an immediate high pressure situation and the people to more “shock doctrine.” The agreement producing it was the last thing we needed. But we’ve got it, because people resorted to a “trigger.”

Now Reich wants to turn to another kind of trigger. But what we need instead is a return to real fiscal responsibility, and some education about what it means to have a non-convertible fiat currency, a floating exchange rate, and no debts in a currency not our own.

The trigger would reassure creditors we’re serious about getting our fiscal house in order. And it would allow us to achieve our two goals in the right sequence – getting the economy back on track, and then getting the budget deficit under control. It’s sensible and do-able. But will Congress and the President do it?

If the main reason for the trigger is to stop the creditors from reacting badly to attempts to create an economy that produces full employment at a living wage and prosperity for all Americans, as well as a modern economy that fulfills our health care, educational, infrastructure, education, energy, climate change, and environmental needs, then I say let’s stop issuing debt and get the bond markets out of the Treasuries business entirely. That will certainly stop our interest costs from getting out of control and also render the bond vigilantes irrelevant to the finances of the US. Then neither Professor Reich, nor anyone else will have to give a moment’s thought to what “our creditors” think about our deficits, our national debt, or anything else we do.

Last time I looked, comparatively few of the bond market investors were actual American voters. So, why should they have any influence over what we choose to do anyway?

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

so-called cliff

Like many others, I’m not worried about the so-called fiscal “cliff,” and the ravages to the economy that are likely to occur if Congress doesn’t do something about it before the end of the year. That’s because a lot of the impact can be cushioned in the short run by Executive Branch manipulations while negotiations continue to go on. But if measures aren’t taken to reverse the contractionary effect of the sequestration-induced changes, we’re looking at deficit cuts of $487 Billion over 9 months of the fiscal year.

By comparison, the American Recovery and Reinvestment (ARRA) of 2009 produced only $350 B in stimulus during its first year. And, if the full sequestration were allowed to proceed unmodified, then it would result in a “claw-back” of about 60% of the total ARRA stimulus.

Fortunately, if we do go over the “cliff” heavy pressure will then be on both parties to reintroduce the middle class tax cuts, and make them retroactive, and to restore some of the other cuts as well, so it may be possible to mitigate much, if not most, of the damage, if the Democrats are aggressive enough in pushing the negotiation advantages they appear to have now. So, the real danger of the manufactured “fiscal cliff” is more long-term.

That danger is the constant bleating from both deficit hawks and “progressives” that we have to do something long-term about the deficit/debt problem. So, they put up these long-term plans to delay deficit cutting for a year or two and then want to cut even more down the road to ‘stabilize’ the debt-to-GDP ratio. This is a non-existent problem, and any plan providing for deliberate polices to force deficit reduction by constraining Government spending to some arbitrary level is bound to damage the economy seriously when the prescribed spending cuts and increased taxes for lowering deficits take effect.

People have to come to accept reality, which is: if we want to import more than we export; and also want the private sector as a whole to save money (i.e. bank savings, pensions, other savings) then there is no alternative to having the Government deficit spend. Further, how much the deficit ought to be, without incurring the penalty of demand-pull inflation is dictated by how much we want the private sector to save, and how much of a trade deficit we want to continue to run. If we want to have a trade deficit at 4% of GDP, and we want to save 7% of GDP, then we must allow the Government to run a deficit of approximately 11% of GDP. And we must do that year after year after year, for as long as we want to save that much and import that much.

Do I need to point out that our deficits are not now anywhere near 11%? And that as a result we not only have high unemployment, an output gap of more than $3 Trillion annually in GDP, but also less in both savings (financial wealth being accumulated) and imports (real wealth being accumulated) then we otherwise would have? What will happen if even the “liberal” Center On Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) hits the economy with its proposed total of $3.7 Trillion (the $1.7 Trillion already agreed to last year and the additional $2 Trillion it is proposing) in deficit reduction? That is an average of $370 Billion per year in enforced deficit reduction which will come right out of savings and imports. That, in the absence of credit bubbles creating unsustainable demand, will condemn us to a stagnant economy as far as the eye can see.

We don’t have to run those 11% of GDP deficits, and also have them drive 11% of GDP further debt accumulation. Deficits and debt accumulation are not the same things, and can be decoupled. We can have the deficits and use Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) to underwrite the deficit spending; or we can change the rules preventing the Fed from monetizing deficit spending by just creating the necessary credits for spending Congressional deficit appropriations and placing them in the Treasury General Account (TGA) when needed. So having the increased debt along with the continuing deficits isn’t necessary. And if we don’t like the debt, then we can get rid of it.

But, again, if we want the imports and if we want the savings, then we must have the deficits, and we must never have deficit reduction unless we also have savings reduction and/or trade deficit reduction. So the bottom line here is: We need to have the “loser liberal” message we’re hearing from Bernie Sanders, Robert Reich, The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities, and various “progressive” pundits and organizations, just stop!

Keynes’s idea that a fiscally responsible nation incurs deficit/debt in bad times, and pays it back in good times with surpluses, is wrong in the context of fiat currency nations. The gold standard’s been gone since 1971. Nations have much more fiscal space. Some nations want to run trade surpluses all the time, and accumulate nominal financial wealth, and others want to accommodate them and accumulate the real wealth of their imports instead.

So, this makes it impossible for those others to have both aggregate private sector savings and full employment, without Government deficits compensating for the demand leakages. The accommodating nations need to run permanent deficits to serve their own populations. And, if other nations, object to that, then they need simply to stop having export-led economies.

We have no national debt, or debt-to-GDP ratio problem, because we are a nation with a non-convertible fiat currency, a floating exchange rate, and debts in currencies not our own. This means we can always generate new currency to pay our obligations using the methods I just mentioned. And it also means that 1) our levels of debt and debt-to-GDP ratio have no impact on the fiscal sustainability of our fiscal policy; and 2) fiscal responsibility can’t mean targeting fiscal policy at particular levels of the national debt, or the debt-to-GDP ratio.

Nor can the bond markets create rising interest rates on US public debt because “we,” that is the Fed and the Treasury together, control those rates and can keep them as low as they want to even if every ratings agencies downgrades US paper to its lowest rating. Put simply, our creditors have zero power over our interest rates. Reich’s talk about persuading our creditors that we’re serious about getting our fiscal house in order is just errant nonsense. What we really need to do about them is to use PPCS to fill the public purse, repay our debt instruments as they come due, and take their bond market in USD away from them entirely. It’s only a source of “welfare” payments to rich people and foreign nations anyway. What do we need it for, anyway?

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Photo by tbennett under Creative Commons license.

Many MMT posts and other writings on fiscal responsibility, including my own, focus on the myths of neoliberalism, pointing out why they are myths and developing an alternative MMT perspective in some detail. Off hand, and I may have forgotten something, I couldn’t think of a brief positive MMT narrative related to fiscal responsibility containing primarily the truths, rather than the myths.

So, here’s my version, revised, a second time, after calling for and receiving comments from readers at New Economic Perspectives, Correntewire, FireDogLake, DailyKos, and ourfuture.org, a second time. Thanks to Tadit Anderson, Mitch Shapiro, Devin Smith, Dan Kervick, Nihat, James M., MRW, Marvin Sussman, joebhed, Clonal Antibody, Calgacus, Ed Seedhouse, JonF, Lyle, Thornton Parker, Sean, Golfer1john, Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, econobuzz, Charles Yaker, Lambert Strether, maltheopia, Ian S., Tyler Healy, PG, for contributing significantly to the critical evaluation of the earlier versions.

More comments, criticisms, recasting in more effective form, are all welcome. But this will be my last round of crowd-sourced revision. I hope all readers will feel free to use this version as they think is best to spread the MMT message about fiscal responsibility. To boil that message down: fiscal responsibility is about the impact of fiscal policy on people; it’s not about the old time religion of its impact on a supposedly limited supply of gold standard-based money.

The Narrative

The first four points in the narrative offer some conclusions

– Austerity requiring budget surpluses cannot work in the United States economy, because surpluses, defined as tax revenue exceeding spending, destroy money in the private sector. Unless these financial assets are replaced through revenues acquired by running a trade surplus; the continuous loss of financial assets by the private sector is unsustainable, eventually leading to credit bubbles, recession or depression, and the return of deficit spending. It is mathematically IMPOSSIBLE for the USA to simultaneously run a government surplus, have a trade deficit and increase aggregate private sector wealth! (h/t Ian S.)

– It is fiscally irresponsible to frame and follow a long – term deficit reduction plan (limited austerity) when both a trade deficit and an output gap exists, because by definition, such a plan is one that must remove more money from the economy than would otherwise be the case every year the plan is pursued. Eventually, if pursued for long enough, a declining rate of addition to financial assets will exacerbate the output gap by lowering aggregate demand and causing both labor and capital to deteriorate, thus reducing the productive capacity of the economy, and the Government’s ability to sustain greater levels of deficit spending producing outputs of real social value without triggering inflation.

– REAL fiscal responsibility is a pattern of fiscal policy intended to achieve public purposes (such as full employment, price stability, a first class educational system, Medicare for All, etc.), while also maintaining or increasing fiscal sustainability, viewed as the extent to which patterns of Government spending do not undermine the capability of the Government to continue to spend to achieve its public purposes.

– REAL fiscally responsible policy, if it works generally as expected, creates greater real benefits than real costs for people! It has nothing to do with conforming to some standard simple measure like an acceptable debt-to-GDP ratio that has only a questionable theoretical connection to the actual well-being of people. It is political malpractice to give greater priority to that kind of abstraction than to full employment, price stability, a strong social safety net, and Government programs that will help us solve the many outstanding problems of our nation. Let’s put an end to the domination of Washington by that kind of malpractice. Let’s put an end to the current misguided fiscally irresponsible campaign to promote a “Grand Bargain” that is sure to do nothing but destroy more private sector money and jobs than would be the case if we either did nothing or increased the deficit and created a full employment budget.

– Social Security has no solvency or “running out of money” problems. The SS crisis is a phoney one. No solution to this “fiscal crisis,” bipartisan or partisan, is needed. What is needed is a solution to the political problem of getting SS’s funding guaranteed in perpetuity by Congress, just the way it guarantees funding for Medicare Parts B and D.

– The same applies to the so-called Medicare crisis. It too is phoney, and can be solved easily by Congress guaranteeing funding in perpetuity to Medicare Parts A and C.

– More generally, there is no entitlement funding crisis in the United States, except a political crisis where US politicians are determined to ignore their constituents and cut back on an already inadequate safety net either because they believe in, or want others to believe in false ideas about fiscal responsibility and nature of the Government as a giant household.

And the rest of it provides the reasoning underlying them.

– The US Government can’t involuntarily run out of its own fiat money (USD), since it has the constitutional authority to create it without limit. Congress constrains and regulates this ability. But its existence is still a stubborn fact!

– Greece and Ireland are users of the Euro, not issuers of it. So, their supply is always limited and that’s why they can run out of Euros. The US is the issuer of Dollars; so it’s supply of dollars is limited only by its desire to create them, and its ability to mark up private accounts, and that’s why it can’t become Greece, Ireland, or any other Eurozone nation.

– In addition to taxing and borrowing money, the Government (including the combined activities of the Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve) has an unlimited capacity to create it. When it taxes and borrows, the Government removes money from the private sector, and destroys it. When it creates money, it adds it to the private sector. A deficit is the net amount of money creation minus the amount of destruction due to taxation. A surplus is the net amount of money destruction minus the amount of creation due to Government spending. (h/t Golfer1john)

– Since this is the case, it’s clear that present proposals to reduce the deficit by an average of $400 Billion/year over the next 10 years are sure to remove money or Treasury securities (assuming deficit spending is accompanied by issuing debt) from the private sector that otherwise would have been created there in the absence of deficit reduction.

– The Government of the United States offers the functional equivalent of interest-bearing savings accounts to investors, usually wealthy individuals, large corporations, and foreign nations. The savings accounts are usually called US Treasury securities, and the sum of their face values is called the debt-subject-to-the-limit; or more colloquially, the national debt, even though comparable savings accounts in banks, are for some reason, not called bank debt. (h/t PG)

– The Treasury can keep accepting deposits (“borrowing money”) and issuing securities if we want it to. There’s no limit on this Government “credit card,” just as there is no limit to the deposits a bank can accept, except the one imposed arbitrarily by Congress in the form of the amount of debt-subject-to-the-limit, otherwise known as the debt ceiling. So, if the US does run out of money, due to a failure to raise the debt ceiling between now and March 31, 2013, it will clearly be the fault of the Congress for refusing to grant further authority to the Treasury to elicit and accept further deposits, also known as refusing to raise the debt ceiling!

– Even though it may seem that foreign nations can place a limit on “the credit card” by refusing to buy Treasury securities at auction, foreign nations holding dollars basically have a choice between continuing to hold them and earning no income, or earning interest on them by buying securities. So, as long as other nations are exporting to the US and accepting dollars as payment; those dollars are likely to be invested in the interest-bearing “savings accounts” known as Treasury securities.

– Bond markets don’t control US interest rates; the Federal Reserve Bank does by exercising its authority to meet its target interest rates. Bond vigilantes have no power against the Fed. If they fight against its interest rate targets by trying to bid them up; then they will “die” in the flood of reserves the Fed can unleash to drive the interest rates down to its chosen target. The Fed can’t control the money supply. But it does control the price of it with its interest rate targeting.

– The bond markets will buy US debt as long as we keep issuing it; but if one insists on considering the hypothetical case where the markets won’t, the US would still not be forced into insolvency; because the Government can always create the money needed to meet all US obligations.

– The US is obligated by the 14th Amendment to pay all its debts as they come due. Nevertheless, our national debt cannot be a burden on our grandchildren; unless they wish to make it so by stupidly taxing more than they spend. This is true because, assuming the debt ceiling is raised when needed, or repealed, we have an unlimited credit card to incur new debt at interest rates of our choosing. So, we can “roll over” our national debt indefinitely. Or, alternatively, we can create all the money we need to pay off the debt-subject-to-the-limit, without ever incurring any more debt. One way to do this is through Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS). A second way is through subordinating the Fed to Treasury and then using the Fed’s ability to create money out of thin air to pay back all debt instruments (“savings account balance”) when they fall due. The first way is legal now. The second is constitutional, but would require politically unlikely action by Congress to authorize it.

– A fiscal policy that measures its success or failure in reducing deficits, rather than by its impacts on public purpose, is fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable. The deficit is a meaningless measure because the US Government has no limits on its authority to create/spend money other than self-imposed ones, so neither the level of the national debt, nor the debt-to-GDP ratio can affect the Government’s capacity to spend Congressional Appropriations at all. Also, a deficit/debt oriented fiscal policy ignores real outcomes relating to employment, price stability, economic growth, environmental impact, crime rates, etc. which actually can affect fiscal sustainability by strengthening or weakening the underlying economy, and, with it the legitimacy of the Government and its fiat currency. In short, responsible fiscal policy is not about its impact on Government debt. It’s about its impact on people!

– The Federal Government is not like a household! Households can’t make their own currency and require that people use that currency to pay taxes! So, their supply of dollars is always limited; while the Government’s supply is a matter of its decisions alone.

– However large the Federal Debt becomes, it cannot be a “crushing burden” on our Government, because Federal spending is virtually costless to the Government, if it wants it to be.

Conclusion

Current claims that we have a fiscal crisis, must debate the debt, must fix the debt, and must immediately embark on a long-term deficit reduction program to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio under control, all misconceive the fiscal situation, and smack of a campaign to create hysteria among the public. They are based on the idea that fiscal responsibility is about developing a plan to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio “under control,” when it is really about using Government spending to achieve outputs that fulfill “public purpose.” There is no fiscal crisis that will require “a Grand Bargain” including cuts to popular discretionary spending and entitlement programs. It is a phoney crisis!.

The only real crises is one of a failing economy and growing economic inequality in which only the needs of the few are served, and also one of lack of political desire or will to solve these real problems. MMT policies can help to bring an end to the first economic crisis; but not if progressives, and others continue to believe in false ideas about fiscal sustainability and responsibility, and the similarity of their Government to a household. To begin to solve our problems, we need to reject the neoliberal narrative and embrace the MMT narrative about the meaning of fiscal responsibility. That will lead us to the political action we need to solve the political crisis and eventually toward fiscal policies that achieve public purpose and away from policies that prolong economic stagnation and the ravages of austerity.

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Many Modern Monetary Theory posts and other writings on fiscal responsibility, including my own, focus on the myths of neoliberalism, pointing out why they are myths and developing an alternative MMT perspective in some detail. Off hand, and I may have forgotten something, I couldn’t think of a brief positive MMT narrative related to fiscal responsibility containing primarily the truths, rather than the myths.

So, here’s my version, revised after calling for and receiving comments from readers at New Economic Perspectives, Correntewire, FireDogLake, DailyKos, and ourfuture.org. Thanks to Tadit Anderson, Mitch Shapiro, Nihat, James M., Marvin Sussman, joebhed, Clonal Antibody, Ed Seedhouse, JonF, Lyle, Thornton Parker, Sean, Golfer1john, Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, econobuzz, Lambert Strether, maltheopia, Ian S., for contributing significantly to the critical evaluation of the earlier version.

More comments, criticisms, recasting in more effective form, are all welcome.

The Narrative

– The US Government can’t involuntarily run out of fiat money, since it has the constitutional authority to create it without limit. Congress constrains and regulates this ability. But its existence is still a stubborn fact!

– In addition to taxing and borrowing money, the Government (including the combined activities of the Congress, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve) has an unlimited capacity to create it. When it taxes and borrows, the Government removes money from the private sector. When it creates money, over and above what it taxes or borrows, it adds it to the private sector. Since this is the case, it’s clear that present proposals to reduce the deficit by an average of $400 Billion over the next ten years are sure to remove net financial assets from the private sector.

–The Treasury can keep borrowing money if we want it to. There’s no limit on the Government credit card except the one imposed arbitrarily by Congress in the form of the amount of debt-subject-to-the-limit, otherwise known as the debt ceiling. So, if the US does run out of money due to a failure to raise the debt ceiling between now and March 31, 2013 it will clearly be the fault of the Congress for refusing to raise the debt ceiling!

– Even though it may seem that foreign nations can place a limit on “the credit card” by refusing to buy Treasury securities at auction, foreign nations holding dollars basically have a choice between continuing to hold them and earning no income, or earning interest on securities. So, as long as other nations are exporting to the US and accepting dollars as payment; those dollars are likely to be invested in Treasury securities.

– Bond markets don’t control US interest rates; the Federal Reserve Bank does by exercising its authority to meet its target interest rates. Bond vigilantes have no power against the Fed. If they fight against its interest rate targets by trying to bid them up; then they will “die” in the flood of reserves the Fed can unleash to drive the interest rates down to its chosen target. The Fed can’t control the money supply. But it does control the price of it with its interest rate targeting.

– The bond markets will buy US debt as long as we keep issuing it; but if one insists on considering the hypothetical case where the markets won’t, the US would still not be forced into insolvency; because the Government can always create the money needed to meet all US obligations.

– The US is obligated by the 14th Amendment to pay all its debts as they come due. Nevertheless, our national debt cannot be a burden on our grandchildren; unless they wish to make it so by stupidly taxing more than they spend. This is true because, assuming the debt ceiling is raised when needed, or repealed, we have an unlimited credit card to incur new debt at interest rates of our choosing. So, we can “roll over” our national debt indefinitely. Or, alternatively, we can create all the money we need to pay off the debt-subject-to-the-limit, without ever incurring any more debt;

– A fiscal policy that measures its success or failure in reducing deficits, rather than by its impacts on public purpose, is fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable. The deficit is a meaningless measure because the US Government has no limits on its authority to create/spend money other than self-imposed ones, so neither the level of the national debt, nor the debt-to-GDP ratio can affect the Government’s capacity to spend Congressional Appropriations at all. Also, a deficit/debt oriented fiscal policy ignores real outcomes relating to employment, price stability, economic growth, environmental impact, crime rates, etc. which actually can affect fiscal sustainability by strengthening or weakening the underlying economy, and, with it the legitimacy of the Government and its fiat currency.

– The Federal Government is not like a household! Households can’t make their own currency and require that people use that currency to pay taxes! So, their supply of dollars is always limited; while the Government’s supply is a matter of its decisions alone.

– Social Security has no solvency or “running out of money” problems. The SS crisis is a phoney one. No solution to this “fiscal crisis,” bipartisan or partisan, is needed. What is needed is a solution to the political problem of getting SS’s funding guaranteed in perpetuity by Congress, just the way it guarantees funding for Medicare Parts B and D. The same applies to the so-called Medicare crisis. It too is phoney, and can be solved easily by Congress guaranteeing funding in perpetuity to Medicare Parts A and C.

– However large the Federal Debt becomes, it cannot be a “crushing burden” on our Government, because Federal spending is virtually costless to the Government, if it wants it to be.

– Greece and Ireland are users of the Euro, not issuers of it. So, their supply is always limited and that’s why they can run out of Euros. The US is the issuer of Dollars; so it’s supply of dollars is limited only by its desire to create them, and its ability to mark up private accounts, and that’s why it can’t become Greece, Ireland, or any other Eurozone nation.

– Austerity requiring budget surpluses cannot work in the United States economy because surpluses, defined as tax revenue exceeding spending, destroy net financial assets in the private sector. Unless these financial assets are replaced through revenues acquired by running a trade surplus; the continuous loss in net financial assets by the private sector is unsustainable, eventually leading to credit bubbles, recession or depression, and the return of deficit spending. It is mathematically IMPOSSIBLE for the USA to simultaneously run a government surplus, have a trade deficit and increase aggregate private sector wealth! (h/t Ian S.)

– It is fiscally irresponsible to frame and follow a long – term deficit reduction plan (limited austerity) when both a trade deficit and an output gap exists, because by definition, such a plan is one that must remove more net financial assets from the economy than would otherwise be the case every year the plan is pursued. Eventually, if pursued for long enough, declining rate of addition to financial assets will exacerbate the output gap by lowering aggregate demand and causing both labor and capital to deteriorate, thus reducing the productive capacity of the economy, and the Government’s ability to sustain deficit spending producing outputs of real social value.

– REAL fiscal responsibility is a pattern of fiscal policy intended to achieve public purposes (such as full employment, price stability, a first class educational system, Medicare for All, etc.), while also maintaining or increasing fiscal sustainability, viewed as the extent to which patterns of Government spending do not undermine the capability of the Government to continue to spend to achieve its public purposes. REAL fiscal responsibility is Government fiscal policy creating greater real benefits than real costs for people! It has nothing to do with conforming to some standard simple measure like an acceptable debt-to-GDP ratio that has only a questionable theoretical connection to the actual well-being of people. It’s political malpractice to give greater priority to that kind of abstraction than to full employment, price stability, a strong social safety net, and Government programs that will help us solve the many outstanding problems of our nation. Let’s put an end to the domination of Washington by that kind of malpractice.

Conclusion

Current claims that we have a fiscal crisis, must debate the debt, must fix the debt, and must immediately embark on a long-term deficit reduction program to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio under control, all misconceive the fiscal situation. They are based on the idea that fiscal responsibility is about developing a plan to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio “under control,” when it is really about using Government spending to achieve outputs that fulfill “public purpose.” There is no fiscal crisis that will require “a Grand Bargain” including cuts to popular discretionary spending and entitlement programs. It is a phoney crisis!.

The only real crisis is a crisis of a failing economy and growing economic inequality in which only the needs of the few are served. MMT policies can help to bring an end to that crisis; but not if progressives, and others continue to believe in false ideas about fiscal sustainability and responsibility, and the similarity of their Government to a household. To begin to solve our problems, we need to reject the neoliberal narrative and embrace the MMT narrative about the meaning of fiscal responsibility. That will lead us to fiscal policies that achieve public purpose and away from policies that prolong economic stagnation and the ravages of austerity.

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Photo by Evan-Amos under Creative Commons license.

Many MMT posts and other writings on fiscal responsibility, including my own, focus on the myths of neoliberalism, pointing out why they are myths and developing an alternative MMT perspective in some detail. Off hand, and I may have forgotten something, I couldn’t think of a brief positive MMT narrative containing primarily the truths, rather than the myths. So, here’s my version. Comments, criticisms, recasting in more effective form, are all welcome.

– The US Government can’t involuntarily run out of fiat money because it has the constitutional authority to create it without limit. Congress constrains and regulates this ability; but its existence is still a stubborn fact!

– In addition to taxing and borrowing money and, most importantly, the Government has an unlimited capacity to create it. When it taxes and borrows, it removes it from the private sector. When it creates it, over and above what it taxes or borrows, it adds it to the private sector.

–The Treasury can keep borrowing money if we want it to. There’s no limit on the Government credit card except the one imposed arbitrarily by Congress.

– Bond markets don’t control US interest rates; the Federal Reserve Bank does by exercising its authority to meet its target interest rates. Bond vigilantes have no power against the Fed. If they fight against its interest rate targets; then they “die.”

– The bond markets will most probably buy US debt for the foreseeable future; but if they don’t, then the US won’t be forced into insolvency; because the Government can always create the money needed to meet US obligations.

– We’re obligated to pay all US debts as they come due. Nevertheless, our national debt cannot be a burden for our grandchildren; since we have an unlimited credit card to incur new debt at interest rates of our choosing, or, alternatively can create all the money we need to pay off debt subject to the limit, without incurring any more debt; unless they wish to make it so by stupidly taxing more than they spend.

– Since the US Government has no limits on its authority to create/spend money other than self-imposed ones, neither the level of the national debt, nor the debt-to-GDP ratio can affect the Government’s capacity to spend Congressional Appropriations at all. That’s why a fiscal policy that measures its success, not by its policy impacts, but by its success or failure in reducing deficits isn’t fiscally responsible, or likely to be sustainable.

– The Federal Government is not like a household! Households can’t make their own currency and require that people use that currency to pay taxes! So, their supply of dollars is always limited; while the Government’s supply is a matter of its decisions alone.

– Social Security has no solvency or “running out of money” problems. The SS crisis is a phoney one. So, no solution to this “fiscal crisis,” bipartisan or partisan is needed. What is needed is a solution to the political problem of getting SS’s funding guaranteed in perpetuity by Congress, just the way it guarantees funding for Medicare Parts B and D.

– However large the Federal Debt becomes it cannot be a “crushing burden” on our Government, because federal spending is virtually costless to the Government, if it wants it to be.

– Greece and Ireland are users of the Euro, not issuers of it. So, their supply is always limited and that’s why they can run out of Euros. The US is the issuer of Dollars; so it’s supply of dollars is limited only by its desire to create them, and that’s why it can’t become Greece, Ireland, or any other Eurozone nation.

– Austerity cannot work in the United States economy because budget surpluses, defined as tax revenue exceeding spending, destroy net financial assets in the private sector. Unless, these financial assets are replaced through revenues acquired by running a trade surplus; the continuous loss in net financial assets by the private sector is unsustainable, eventually leading to credit bubbles, recession or depression, and the return of deficit spending. For a Government and economy like the US, with both a trade deficit and a substantial output gap, evidenced by high unemployment and under-employment, a policy of deficit reduction aiming toward budget surpluses (austerity) is destructive and will only push the economy further into recession or depression.

– REAL Fiscal Responsibility is a pattern of fiscal policy intended to achieve public purposes, while also maintaining or increasing fiscal sustainability viewed as the extent to which patterns of Government spending do not undermine the capability of the Government to continue to spend to achieve its public purposes.

– It is fiscally irresponsible to frame and follow a deficit reduction plan when both a trade deficit and an output gap exists, because by definition, such a plan is one that must remove net financial assets from the private sector every year the plan is pursued. Eventually, if pursued for long enough, declining financial assets will exacerbate the output gap by lowering aggregate demand and causing both labor and capital to deteriorate, thus reducing the productive capacity of the economy and the Government’s ability to sustain productive deficit spending producing outputs of real social value.

So, current claims that we have a fiscal crisis, must debate the debt, must fix the debt, and must immediately embark on a long-term deficit reduction program to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio under control, all misconceive the fiscal situation because they are based on the idea that fiscal responsibility is about developing a plan to bring the debt-to-GDP ratio “under control,” when it is really about using Government spending to achieve outputs that fulfill “public purpose.” There is no fiscal crisis that will require “a Grand Bargain” and cuts to popular discretionary spending and entitlement programs. It is a phoney issue.

The only real crisis is a crisis of a failing economy and growing economic inequality in which only the needs of the few are served. MMT policies can help to bring an end to that crisis; but not if progressives, and others continue to believe in false ideas about fiscal sustainability and responsibility, and the similarity of their Government to a household. To begin to solve our problems, we need to reject the neoliberal narrative and embrace the MMT narrative about the meaning of fiscal responsibility. That will lead us to fiscal policies that achieve public purpose and away from policies that prolong economic stagnation and the ravages of austerity.

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Stephanie Kelton writes:

The US is broke. Government deficits are de facto evidence of a government gone wild. We’re careening toward Greece. Entitlements are the root cause of our fiscal woes, and the Chinese are coming for our grandchildren. How many Americans believe this garbage? My guess? Most of them.

Pete Peterson has won and the American people have lost. There is no effective counter narrative, not even from the left. Nearly all “progressives” have accepted the fundamental premise that the federal government is like a great big household. That it faces the same kinds of constraints that you and I face. That it should spend only what it takes in and that deficits are morally and/or fiscally irresponsible. President Obama told the nation, “We’re out of money.” . . .

Stephanie knows that there is a counter-narrative out there to Peter Peterson’s take on fiscal responsibility, because she’s one of the people who best expresses it. But she thinks it can’t be called “effective,” because we’ve been unsuccessful so far in getting the fiscal responsibility counter-narrative developed by Modern Money Theory (MMT) economists communicated broadly enough to create a break in the Washington/New York political consensus, which insists that now our most urgent need is for austerity to bring the deficits and the public debt under control. I agree with Stephanie, of course. We’ve not been successful in persuading enough people yet.

So, in this Post, I’ll make yet another effort to counter the neoliberal austerian fiscal responsibility ideology by juxtaposing the primary claims underlying the narrative, with my construction of the MMT answers to them. The austerian claims below all link to MMT-based posts that critique them. And they are all juxtaposed against an MMT-based claim that refute them. The paragraphs following each pair of claims, summarize my version of MMT answers, and together provide a counter-narrative.

The Government is running out of money

MMT answer: The Government cannot involuntarily run out of money

The US Government has the Constitutional Authority to create an unlimited amount of money provided Congress appropriates the spending, and places no constraints on spending, such as a need to issue debt instruments when the Government deficit spends, or debt ceiling limits. So, all constraints on spending appropriations are purely voluntary in the sense that they are due to Congressional mandates that Congress can repeal at any time, and not to financial limits inherent in the Government’s authority.

Having said that, the constraints mentioned are now in place, and, so, it’s important to emphasize that even with them, and without legislative changes, the Executive can always create enough money to pay for whatever spending Congress has appropriated and also repay debt, so that even with a Congress willfully maneuvering for default, or brandishing the threat of it, the Executive can still ensure that the Government doesn’t run out of money even without more taxing and borrowing, because the Executive can use the option of Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) as one method of getting around the debt ceiling. Originally suggested by Beowulf some time ago, there are any number of PPCS options the President can use to generate coin seigniorage profits to use for a variety of purposes. I’ve outlined some of them here. Some PPCS options stop with $1/2 Trillion coins, some go over $1 Trillion up to $5 Trillion, and still others envision very high face value coins ranging to $60 Trillion and up.

For getting around the debt ceiling, coins with face-values up to $5 Trillion will certainly remove the need to issue further debt subject to the limit and break the debt ceiling. However, minting a platinum coin with a face-value of say, $60 Trillion is also a political game-changer, because it results in filling the Treasury General Account with enough in credits to make it obvious to the most concrete thinker that the Government has the capacity to pay all the debt subject to the limit, issue no more such debt if it so chooses, and also spend whatever Congress chooses to appropriate in the way of new programs to solve current problems.

So, issuing a $60T coin, removes the issue (excuse) of whether the Government of the United States can afford to pay for employment programs, educational programs, infrastructure, new energy foundations, a Medicare for All program, new R & D programs, or expansion of the social safety net from the political table. Issuing that coin can and would create a new political climate moving American politics much further to the left within the space of a few months. In short, it would dramatically illustrate the MMT counter to the austerian deficit hawks, namely that the US Government is not running out of money and cannot do so as long as it has the intention to use its authority to create more of it.

The Government can only raise money by taxing or borrowing

MMT answer: The Government can create money; so it can never involuntarily run out

The austerian claim is false. First, the Federal Reserve, a Government agency can create unlimited money “out of thin air,” as the saying goes, though not for purposes of deficit spending, or directly liquidating Treasury debt. But second, I’ve just pointed out that PPCS can be used in the present legal framework to create money other than by taxing or borrowing. And third, if Congress doesn’t want to use PPCS, it can authorize the Treasury to spend appropriations without issuing debt instruments any time it wants to take an afternoon off to get that done. So, plainly the Government can “raise money” without taxing or borrowing it by just creating the necessary money while spending.

We can’t keep adding debt to the national credit card.

MMT answer: We can if we want to. There’s no limit on the credit card except the one imposed arbitrarily by Congress.

Congress has placed a debt ceiling on the Government, and it has also mandated debt issuance when the Government deficit spends, by prohibiting the Fed from lending the Treasury money. So, it’s only the self-imposed constraint of Congress that prevents the Government from continuing to add “debt to the national credit card.” There is nothing inherent in the international economic system, or our own Constitution that prevents us from adding debt as needed.

And even if current constraints on debt ceiling constraints remained in place, Treasury can still issue debt without breaching the debt ceiling. Beowulf, the blogger/commenter, who first proposed using high face-value PPCS to get by the debt ceiling, recently came up with a new option to avoid breaking the debt ceiling. That option follows:

Another way to sidestep the debt ceiling is to go the opposite extreme from one-day maturities, issue perpetual T-bonds with no maturity date (what the Brits call consols). Look at the debt ceiling law, the public debt adds up, for all outstanding debt, the face amount of the guaranteed principal. The future interest payments to be paid aren’t counted. (“The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are guaranteed by the United States Government“).

If there’s no maturity date, then there’s no promise to repay principal and thus there’s nothing to add to the public debt total. Tsy could issue an unlimited amount of consols without tripping over the debt ceiling.”

Beowulf has more on consols here. But the possibility of consols is enough to show that the Treasury has an unlimited credit card under current legal arrangements, and can use it without breaching the debt ceiling, though of course, it can’t spend more than Congress has appropriated, and is also required to repay debt and interest that is coming due.

If the Government borrows more money, the bond markets will raise our interest rates

MMT answer: The bond markets don’t control US interest rates.

The Treasury can flood overnight bank reserves and float short-term debt to meet its targeted interest rates, however low they may be. The Government, if Congress would let it, can even stop issuing debt subject to the limit when it deficit spends (using PPCS or consols, or by Congress moving the Fed into Treasury where it belongs) in which case the bond market interest rates would become entirely irrelevant to the United States.

If we continue to issue more debt, then our main creditors may refuse to buy it, an event that would lead us to insolvency and severe austerity

MMT answer: They’ll most probably buy it for the foreseeable future; but if they don’t we won’t be forced into solvency because we can always create the money we need to meet our obligations

Our creditors all want export-led economies. This means that they must accumulate dollars, because the US is where the consumption power is, and if they want to keep exporting they must keep the American consumers’ business. Their dollar surpluses can sit idle in their Federal Reserve accounts or be used in a way that makes them money. Buying our debt makes them some money, however little it may be at current interest rates. Buying our goods and services reduces their trade surpluses with us, and goes against their export-led policies. Selling our currency, weakens the value of the USD holdings they retain. In short, they have little choice other than to buy our debt, unless they want to gradually adjust trade balances with us over time.

Even more importantly, as I keep repeating, we don’t need to raise money by borrowing USD from them or anyone else. We can simply spend/create it ourselves if Congress repeals its constraints prohibiting the Fed from “monetizing” the debt, or if the President decides to use PPCS or consols. The result of no more debt issuance, along with use of these other methods, would be paying off the national debt over time, without austerity. So, if we care so much about the high debt levels, then why don’t we do that? Could it be that the austerians want austerity for political rather than economic reasons, and that the fiscal sustainability/responsibility justifications they give are just part of a complex fairy story they tell to avoid being candid about why they want austerity?

Our grandchildren must have the heavy burden of repaying our national debt

MMT answer: We’re obligated to pay all US debts as they come due. But since we have an unlimited credit card to incur new debt at interest rates of our choosing, or, alternatively can create all the money we need to pay off debt subject to the limit, without incurring any more debt, our national debt cannot be a burden for our grandchildren unless they wish to make it make it so by stupidly taxing more than they spend. So, let’s educate them well in MMT-based economics, so that they never make that mistake

No US generation except one has ever repaid the national debt by running budget surpluses. After the debt was paid off in 1835, that generation was rewarded with the depression of 1837. Moreover, each time the nation ran substantial surpluses for a period of time, the country fell into depression or recession, most recently the recession of 2001, following Clinton’s four years of running a surplus. It’s a bad idea to repay the national debt by running surpluses, because taxing more than a Government spends destroys net financial assets in the private sector, unless one also exports more than one imports.

So, provided we continue to run a trade deficit, our grandchildren won’t run surpluses. They may not issue debt subject to the limit while “deficit” spending. But that’s possible, only if the Congress repeals the mandate to issue debt when the Government deficit spends, or alternatively, the Government freely uses its PPCS power. In both cases the national debt can then be repaid without requiring that tax revenues match or exceed Government spending.

In any event, our grandchildren will not have the burden of repaying the national debt, if they are wise enough not to run surpluses. But if we are silly enough to attempt to pay it down, or pay it off, by running surpluses and practicing austerity, then they will have the burden of growing up in poor families, attending very poor schools, living in mal-integrated communities where they’ll be subject to crime and violence, and living in a class-ridden nation run by a kleptocratic elite that monopolizes both the artificially constricted supply of financial wealth, and the increasingly scarce real wealth produced by a stagnant, broken economy. That’s not what any of us want; but that’s what the austerian/deficit hawk policies are producing.

I can’t emphasize this last point enough. Austerity isn’t moral. It’s immoral! It kills, and it eventually impoverishes most people including our grandchildren, both those who are now living and growing up in difficult economic circumstances, and those yet unborn, who will be born and will grow up in a stagnant economy crippled by attempts to reduce the national debt, at the expense of full employment, and lost output for years on end.

There is a deficit/debt reduction problem for the Federal Government that is not self-imposed.

MMT answer: All together now, there is no such problem. Since the US Government has no limits other than self-imposed ones on spending or borrowing, the level of the national debt, or the debt-to-GDP ratio don’t affect the Government’s capacity to spend Congressional Appropriations at all.

These numbers aren’t related to fiscal sustainability or responsibility in nations like the US with a non-convertible fiat currency, a floating exchange rate, and no debts denominated in a currency it doesn’t issue. Such nations can’t become involuntarily insolvent because they always create more currency to pay debts denominated in that currency.

If the debt-to-GDP ratio were 300% and there were no other changes in current policy, the US would still have the same ability to deficit spend it has now. Conversely, if the debt-to-GDP ratio were 10%, the same would apply. To put this simply, the size of the public debt subject to the limit, and the size of the debt-to-GDP ratio have no impact at all on our capability to deficit spend, because we can always make the money we need, if need be, through PPCS. So there is no need for a long-term deficit reduction plan to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio. There is also no need to run surpluses to decrease the size of the debt, since we can always use profits from PPCS to do that without either borrowing more or raising taxes.

Even though neither the level of the national debt, nor the level of the debt-to-GDP ratio creates a sustainability problem for the US, depending on conditions, the deficit itself can be “too high.” But the question of when a deficit is too high isn’t an issue of fiscal sustainability in the sense that we can run out of money, but instead is an issue of the negative consequences of an excessively high deficit. The most important of these consequences is demand-pull inflation, and when that is observed, Federal spending should be reduced to control or eliminate it. However, there are two questions arising here. First, which spending, if cut, will produce the most overall benefit. And second, what’s the impact of cutting spending vs. the impact of doing nothing, vs. the impact of raising taxes.

The Federal Government is like a household and that since households sacrifice to live within their means, Government ought to do that too.

MMT answer: No, the Federal Government is not like a household! Households can’t make their own currency and require that people use that currency to pay taxes.

Households can’t make their own currency and require that people use that currency to pay taxes. Households can run out of money; but the US can’t ever run out of money as long as Congress decides to appropriate spending and gives the Executive the authority to implement that spending. So, the Federal Government doesn’t have to sacrifice to live within its means, since its “means” to create new currency is limited only by its own decisions and not by any factors external to it. Put simply, Federal spending including deficit spending doesn’t cost anything in the doing. The only relevant question is its real effects on the economy.

We should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations

MMT answer: Social Security has no fiscal problems. The SS crisis is a phoney one. So, no solution to this nonexistent fiscal crisis, bipartisan or partisan is needed. What is needed is a solution to the political problem of getting SS’s funding guaranteed in perpetuity

Again, this austerian claim assumes that Social Security funding is a fiscal problem and that the program needs to be strengthened by making the program “fiscally sustainable.” But that claim is at issue. Apart from the fact, that it isn’t obvious that a bi-partisan solution to a fiscal problem would produce a real solution, it’s also true that this is a fake fiscal problem.

Social Security should be strengthened alright. But the way to strengthen it is to guarantee its funding in perpetuity, and to greatly increase benefits for many seniors whose current benefits leave them scraping the poverty line. Try doubling SS benefits while providing full payroll tax cuts. That will strengthen SS and the economy as well.

We face a crushing burden of Federal debt. The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy, and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead

MMT answer: This is total nonsense, because federal spending is costless to the Government

If the debt subject to the limit bothers the neoliberal austerians so much, they ought to be supporting full payoff of the debt using PPCS profits. Doing that won’t harm the economy, and it won’t cause inflation either, since the bonds retired are more inflationary then the money paid to redeem them.

The United States is in danger of becoming the next Greece or Ireland

MMT answer: Greece and Ireland are users of the Euro, not issuers of it. So, their supply is always limited and that’s why they can run out of Euros. The US is the issuer of Dollars; so it’s supply of dollars is limited only by its desire to create them, and that’s why it can’t become Greece, Ireland, or any other Eurozone nation.

This one is a real laugher. Greece and Ireland can run out of Euros. California can run out of dollars. But the United States can’t run out of Dollars. Japan can’t run out of Yen. The UK can’t run out of Pounds, and Canada and Australia can’t run out of Canadian or Australian Dollars. So, governments like California, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. can become the next Greece or Ireland if the Federal Government allows that to happen by refusing to bailout States if they need it, but the US can’t become the next Greece or Ireland, because it can always bail itself out if it chooses to do so.

The real danger for the US is in becoming the next Japan and losing a decade of economic progress by following neoliberal deficit reduction doctrines. The US is now four years into the decade we are losing. Why are we losing it? Because, as Warren Mosler is fond of saying: “. . . we fear becoming the next Greece, we continue to turn ourselves into the next Japan.” That is, we’re making ourselves a stagnant economy by imposing fiscal austerity, rather than creating/spending the money we need to solve our increasingly serious national problems.

Fiscal Responsibility means stabilizing and then reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio and achieving a Federal Government surplus.

MMT answer: No! REAL Fiscal Responsibility is fiscal policy intended to achieve public purposes while also maintaining or increasing fiscal sustainability viewed as the extent to which patterns of Government spending do not undermine the capability of the Government to continue to spend to achieve its public purposes.

So, the REAL Government fiscal responsibility problem is not the problem of everyone “sucking it up” and responsibly accepting austerity. It is not targeting the debt-to-GDP ratio and managing Government spending to try to stabilize it. Instead, it is the problem of people facing up to the need to use fiscal policy to stop our out of control economy from ruining the lives of any more Americans.

This means that the REAL solution to the REAL fiscal responsibility problem is for our leaders in Congress and the Executive Branch, to remove fiscal constraints and use the fiscal powers of the Federal Government to fund solutions to the many national problems we face, starting with creating full employment, and a real universal health care system in which no one is shut out, or forced into foreclosure or bankruptcy by medical bills, and then all the other serious problems we face, but now will not handle because we claim a non-existent fiscal incapacity of the Federal Government. There is no incapacity! We have not run out of money! We have only run out of smarts, morals, will, and courage! We need to get those back, and do what must be done to reclaim the future for working Americans.

Federal Government austerity will create jobs

MMT answer: Right! Show us one case where austerity is working

Well, let’s see. We’ve got austerity now in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Baltics, and, of course, Greece, among nations in the Eurozone, and also in the UK. Is it creating jobs anywhere? Is there even one case, in which the “austerity will create jobs” theory isn’t being refuted by events? Some may think that Latvia is beginning to recover because it’s unemployment rate has now fallen to 15%; but that’s because 200,000 Latvians (10% of the population) have chosen to emigrate, a particularly effective way of both leaving the labor force, and lowering the rate of unemployment. Bet we could lower unemployment here too, if we first ran the economy down by 30%, drove U-3 up to the 20% level, and then had 31,000,000 people leave the United States for parts unknown. Oh austerity, will thy wonders never cease?

Conclusion: Saying No to Neoliberal Austerity

So, the importance of continuing to counter austerian propaganda coming out of the Peterson Foundation and the organizations it allies with, and funds, remains. We must continue to try to break through the screen of the Petersonian closed system, the Washington/New York consensus. One of the popular slogans for the austerians this year is “Debate the Debt.” There’s a petition web site urging politicians to debate the debt. There was even a proposal demanding that the presidential candidates devote a whole presidential debate to the debt and deficit issues.

But, what is it the austerians want us to debate? They want us to debate how we should reduce deficits over the medium and long-term by spending less and taxing more. But they most emphatically don’t want to debate whether the debt, deficit, and debt-to-GDP ratio, represent real problems relating to fiscal sustainability or fiscal responsibility. Put simply, they don’t want us to debate whether their deficit/debt “problem” is really a problem either for our capacity to spend in the future, or for government solvency, or for our grandchildren.

They say there’s a government solvency problem and that all of us must and should suffer to solve it. MMT says that there is no solvency problem and there’s no reason for people to suffer any more than they have already due to the crash of 2008. That’s the debate about the debt we badly need right now, When they say debate the debt, they mean debate how we should all suffer to get rid of it. When I say “debate the debt,” I mean debate whether the public debt subject to the limit is a real problem, or a just a massive distraction from coming to grips with our real problems. I think that my debate question is clearly prior to the austerians’ because it doesn’t assume what it should prove, namely that there is a problem and that focusing on it isn’t a distraction.

But, I think it is a massive distraction; and the President can prove it! Just mint that $60 T platinum coin and the debt problem will go away. Then the Peterson Foundation and other agents of the emerging plutocratic elite, will need to invent a new fairy tale to distract us with; or maybe they’ll do all of us a favor and just go out of business, so we can re-build our country without having to deal with their insolvency fantasy first!

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

I have a petition to President Obama up at: http://signon.org/sign/end-austerity-mint-the It’s about minting that $60 T coin and ending austerity. The wording of the petition is:

”A 1996 law gives the Executive Authority to mint coins w/arbitrarily large face values and deposit them at the Fed. The President should immediately mint a $60 Trillion coin, and use the proceeds to pay off the national debt completely, cover all likely deficit spending by Congress over the next 15 years, and take the issue of spending cuts in programs that benefit the 99% off the table! Google “$60 Trillion coin” for background!”

The purpose is:

“Ending the emphasis in Congress on deficit reduction rather than the merits of policy proposals to create full employment, Medicare for All, & rebuilding education, US infrastructure, & energy foundations.”

A $60 Trillion Proof Platinum Coin could close the spending/revenue gap entirely in any fiscal year, and technically end deficit spending, while still retaining the gap between tax revenues and spending that can produce full employment. In addition, profits from the coin could be used to pay off the “national debt,” and would also remove the need to issue any more public debt in coordination with deficit spending for at least 15 years.

However, a $60 T coin is not only a solution for ending public debt, it also has the potential to take off the legislative/fiscal table the whole austerity mind set that bedevils our current budgetary process and provides it with a constraining conservative cast focused on narrow monetary costs considerations, rather than a broader progressive framework that weighs the real costs and benefits of proposed fiscal activities of the Federal Government.

The $60 T coin can free the Government from narrow green eye shade concerns and force both Congress and the Executive to evaluate the substance of legislative proposals based on their likely direct impacts and side effects on the lives of Americans, rather than their impact on Federal deficits and surpluses.

For example, currently we see before us proposals to drastically reduce the USPS in size after years of reduction in service and personnel and also proposals to cut already austere, by modern industrial nation standards, Social Security and Medicare programs, as well as massive spending cuts in other entitlement and discretionary programs. Why are we seeing these proposals? Would we be seeing these proposals if we were rapidly paying off the debt and we also had $ 44 Trillion in the Treasury General Account to be used for future deficit spending?

We’re seeing them now because of the effectiveness of a 35 year propaganda effort by deficit and debt hawks who have persuaded many Americans that the government is like a household which has enormous debt that will be burdensome to pay back. This view is false. But we can’t educate people about this in the near term. We can’t counter the deficit hawk propaganda with our own messages about the complex facts of government finance.

On the other hand, if we mint that $60 T coin, pay off the debt, and still have $44 T left in the TGA, then all the effects of the 35 year propaganda campaign will immediately go away. The debt will just no longer be an issue. Then the issues will be about what people need, and what improvements we can make by working together through our Federal Government.

That gets to be the fulcrum of the new politics, not debt. I think that’s where we want it to be. If you agree, you’ll follow the link above and sign my petition!

If you need more background to make a decision see here and here. But please consider this. I have only 5 signatures so far and I need 50 to get to the next stage of the petition process. So, if you really want to end austerity, then let’s get this over the first hurdle and let’s see how far we can take it into the public’s consciousness.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.