Central banks are not just interest rate setters

Central banks are not just interest rate setters: an introduction to modern central bank roles

This is the online presentation I made at the 2020 Freedom Week (by the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs) on August 21st. It is an overview of the major roles undertaken by modern central banks in our economies, which involves much more than setting the policy rate. Actually, since the outbreak of the Global Financial Crisis what leading central banks have been doing is to act as ‘bank of banks’, ‘bank of the government’ and, as regards monetary policy, to engage in asset purchase operations (i.e. Quantitative Easing). Once policy rates were brought down to the effective lower (nominal) bound, central banks have used outright asset purchases to be able to affect macroeconomic outcomes. Contrary to a very popular misperception, in purely fiat monetary systems, central banks cannot run out of ammunition, even when nominal policy rates are zero or close to zero. In this presentation, I briefly discuss (1) what central banks do as providers of services to the banking sector and to the government, as well as (2) the importance of monetary analysis to understand the effects of changes in the amount of money on inflation and output over the medium to the long term. This is at the core of what we do at the Institute of International Monetary Research.

I hope you find it a good introduction to central bank roles in modern economies. As ever, comments welcome.

Juan Castaneda

PS. If only for enjoying James Gillray‘s caricatures as a means to explain money and central banking, it may well be worth watching.

 

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The problem of asymmetry in a monetary union the Eurozone must address

In a fixed exchange rate system such as the euro symmetry in the application of the standard is key for the well running of the currency and even its preservation over the long term: i.e. surplus countries should overspend and run deficits (either private or public or a combination of both) so they suffer from an excess of money in the economy and thus ultimately higher inflation. And just the opposite in case of deficit countries within the euro standard, as they need to cut down their spending in order to cut costs and prices and ultimately regain competitiveness. This was for long considered, if only implicitly, as the main ‘rule of the game’ in the running of the classical gold standard at the time.

Of course we have heard about the application of adjustment policies in deficit countries in the eurozone during the recent crisis, the so-called ‘austerity policies’; or in the technical jargon, policies aimed at achieving ‘internal devaluation’ as an external devaluation is not possible at all. However, it is important to remember that it is the running of both policies in surplus and deficit countries what would lead to a balanced macroeconomic equilibrium over time in the eurozone. Just looking into the 2018 balances of each country (to be precise, each national central bank) in the Target2 payments settlement system in the Eurozone, we can see how far we are from symmetry in the area. Actually, the balances have been deteriorating quite dramatically since the summer of 2007; and now we have countries like Germany holding a significant creditor position against the rest of the Eurozone countries (and particularly against Italy and Spain) of nearly 30% of the German GDP.

 

Source: Institute of International Monetary Research, Monthly Update (2018). From ECB data. 

 

The gold standard is often taken as a predecessor of the euro standard; true, both systems are based on the commitment to fixed exchange rates but the euro standard is much more stringent and demanding in that it is a ‘monetary union‘ (and not simply a ‘currency union‘ as the gold standard was, where national currencies ran at the announced fixed exchange rate and were ultimately governed by the national central banks). In an monetary union such as the euro standard the need to abide by symmetry, by both surplus and deficit member states, is even more difficult to articulate and achieve: the states do not longer have their national central banks to inject or withdraw money as needed be, and symmetry can mainly be achieved by expanding or tightening fiscal policy (and also by supply-side policies, that are indeed needed but take a longer time to be effective).

Along with two colleagues of mine, Alessandro Roselli (Cass Business School) and Simeng He (University of Buckingham) we have conducted a research on the measurement of asymmetry in the running of the gold standard from the 1870s to 1913. As shown in the table below, only the hegemonic economy, the UK, abided by symmetry, whilst the other 4 major European economies at the time did not (see table below).

See the following link for further details on our paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328562649_A_measurement_of_asymmetry_in_the_running_of_the_classical_gold_standard

This is an extract from the paper with a summary of our conclusions, with striking parallels on the situation of the euro standard and the asymmetries mentioned above:

‘The consequences resulting from the running of the gold standard with a deficient degree of symmetry should not be underestimated, as countries like Germany and France refused to let the increase in reserves to be reflected in a greater amount of money supply. This created tension in the system, as countries like Italy or Spain would find it more difficult to regain competitiveness, and thus a greater internal devaluation was needed to be able to compete with their trade (surplus) partners.

Were the asymmetries of the pre-WW1 period the origin of the gold standard’s final collapse? The straight answer is negative: all the five countries here surveyed had to suspend the standard at the outbreak of the war, if not before such as Spain in 1883; it was the War, with the huge expansion of the money supply, dramatic inflation and social unrest that made later in the 1930s the gold standard unable to survive. In the post-war period, Britain had lost her hegemonic status and symmetry together with it.  (…) the asymmetry of the hegemonic country (the US) under the Bretton Woods System might well explain its collapse.

Should we infer from these experiences that symmetry of the hegemonic country is the precondition for a fixed rate system (or for a currency union with a single currency) to survive? And, referring to the Eurozone, should we think that Germany – unquestionably the hegemonic country – is behaving asymmetrically and that the Eurozone should collapse as a consequence? Another paper would be needed to answer these questions.‘

Some claim the Eurozone must be completed with a full fiscal (budget) union, so a meaningful ‘federal EU budget’ can transfer resources within the area when needed; however, even if politically feasible, this option will take time to take place and the imbalances within the Eurozone keep on accumulating day by day. There are pressing issues resulting from the lack of symmetry in the running of the euro standard no one can now deny: How are the Target2 balances going to be settled, if they will be at all at some point? Can persistent trade imbalances among member states run within Eurozone countries? Can more flexible goods and services as well as labour markets reduce asymmetries within the Eurozone enough? Can the Eurozone force surplus countries to be more expansionary when needed be?

The eurozone member states clearly opted for a more centralised monetary union during the crisis, and the questions above are some of the key questions still pending to address for the euro standard to stop accumulating internal asymmetries. The other option would have been to abide by the no bail-out clause stated in the Maastricht Treaty and the application of the subsidiarity principle in the construction of the eurozone, and thus let errant countries fail if they could not fulfil the strict requisites to remain in the eurozone; but this was clearly not the option taken.

 

Juan E. Castaneda

PS. For information, we will address these issues in a conference on ‘The Economics of Monetary Unions. Past Experiences and the Eurozone’ at the University of Buckingham (21-22 February 2019). Please check the speakers and the programme online should you want to attend (by invitation only).

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How to cope with a crisis, Spain in the 1930s vs. 2000s

Confronting financial crises under different monetary regimes:  Spain in the Great Depression years

This is the title of the paper I have written with my friend and colleague Professor Pedro Schwartz, which is being published in May 2018 as a chapter in a book, Money, Currency and Crisis. In Search of Trust, 2000 BC to AD 2000, edited by R. J. van der Spek and Bas van Leewen (Routledge). As we put it in the first section of the chapter, “the thesis of the present essay is that the recession was much lighter in Spain than in the US, Italy, Germany or France (see Figure 1); that the causes of the contraction were domestic rather than epidemic; and that the relative shallowness of the contraction in Spain, and of the UK after abandoning gold, may have been due in some measure to similarly flexible monetary arrangements.”

 

The exchange rate system does matter in coping with a major crisis, and both the 1930s and the 2000s crises are good examples of this. Spain in the 1920s and 1930s, free of exchange rate commitments, and thus with full monetary sovereignty, led the Peseta float  in response to quite dramatic changes in both domestic and international market conditions. Being a very rigid economy at the time, the depreciation of the Peseta was an effective and timely tool to cut down costs and prices. This is not to say that depreciation is panacea; it is not! If not followed by orthodox both fiscal and monetary policies, it will just lead to greater and greater inflation over time, and we have plenty of examples of this. It is useful though to compare the adjustment of the Spanish economy to the Great Depression in the 1930s to that to the Global Financial Crisis in the 2000s via ‘internal devaluation’ (i.e. cutting domestic wages and prices); the charts below are quite revealing of the effects of these two alternatives (see Figures 15 and 16) and do provide a textbook case-study on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

 

As figures 15 and 16 above show, the depreciation of the Peseta carried most of the burden of the adjustment to the 1930s crisis, while it has been domestic costs (Unit Labour Costs) in the 2000s crisis.

Over the medium to the long term, both an internal devaluation and a standard (external) devaluation achieve the same (necessary) goal: to cut down costs, prices and spending in the economy in crisis. This is something unavoidable in either policy scenario; the economy cannot continue spending as it used to before the crisis. In addition, an internal devaluation also brings greater competitiveness over the long term, given that the economy will be able to produce with lower costs than its competitors. However, the economic and political costs of this latter policy option are not negligible in the short term. This is the trade-off every economy confronts in a major crisis, (1) either to opt for a quick devaluation to cut down domestic costs and prices almost instantaneously, or (2) to cut down public and private spending (internal devaluation).

• The external devaluation option, when the country retains its currency and its domestic monetary policy, is the most appealing option in the short term; especially by politicians, as it may be unnoticed by the public for a time. But, if not accompanied by fiscal and monetary restrictive policies, it will surely lead to inflation very soon.
• The internal devaluation option was the only available for the Eurozone countries in the 2000s crisis, and was the right policy to pursue, however painful as indeed it was. The experience of Spain, and the other Eurozone countries in crisis from 2009 to 2014, shows again how stringent the conditions to remain in a monetary union are in times of crisis: both labour and good and services markets must be as flexible as possible to let prices go up and down whenever needed; otherwise, the adjustment will be even more painful and will take longer, and more jobs and output will be lost.

The preference for one or the other policy will depend very much on how rigid markets are to adjust to new market conditions, and the commitment of policy-makers to run orthodox monetary and fiscal policies. In the absence of committed policy-makers to adjusting costs and prices, an external devaluation will just be a gateway to rampant inflation.

 

Juan Castañeda

 

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For those interested in the chapter, please find the abstract below (more in the book!):

Spain was effectively on silver from 1868 down to the II Republic in 1931. Being off the gold standard and on a depreciating silver standard from the 1890s on helped the economy adjust almost painlessly to the several economic crises it suffered during that period and resulted in a much milder recession than the rest of the world in the 1930s. This proves how relevant is the monetary regime to deal with shocks and economic crises, particularly when confronting financial crises. 

Devaluation corrects past policy mistakes at the cost of making the country poorer; but it will only hold in the longer term if it is accompanied by sound fiscal and monetary policies. During WWI a neutral Spain had accumulated a large gold reserve by selling to all belligerent countries. Pressure to move to gold was resisted but the slow depreciation of the silver anchor after WWI was accompanied by a surprisingly sound Bank of Spain monetary policy. Though the Treasury did use its power to borrow from the Bank from time to time the Board of the Bank correspondingly tightened interest rates to maintain monetary stability. This resulted in quite moderate rates of growth of the money supply that helped keep internal prices in check. In fact, the peseta behaved like a properly managed nominal currency. In the ‘twenties the rate of exchange of the peseta versus the pound sterling fell along with silver against gold, due to a persistent structural deficit in the balance of payments; and though from 1929 to 1935 the peseta fell less rapidly than silver, it did fall more than if it had been on gold.

Being on the silver standard dampened the effects of the Great Depression in Spain. Under a gold standard regime the balance of payments would have rebalanced quickly but with a large restructuring cost such as that suffered by Spain today under the ‘euro-standard’: Then as now, almost immovable structural inflexibility makes external depreciation a more politically and socially acceptable policy than harshly imposed internal devaluation.

Another positive effect of the peseta being anchored on a depreciating silver standard was to allow the Bank of Spain freely to act as lender of last resort in 1931 and thus prevent the deep banking crisis that struck other developed economies.

However one must not exaggerate the effect of a flexible monetary policy in a country like Spain in the 1930ies: Spain still was an agricultural country and she enjoyed two bumper crops in wheat in 1933 and 1935; and in any case the relative smallness of the foreign sector helped dampen the effects of what was happening in the rest of the world.

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A discussion on money and central banking with Tim Congdon and Geoffrey Wood

On the 13th of March (IEA, London) I had the pleasure to participate in the launch of the new MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking (University of Buckingham, with the collaboration of the Institute of International Monetary Research), starting in September 2017; and I did it with two of the professors who will be teaching in the MSc, indeed two excellent and very well-known experts in the field: Professors Geoffrey Wood and Tim Congdon. I have known them both for long and shared research projects and co-authored works in money and central banking; and it was a privilege for me to have the chance to  introduce the new MSc, as well as to engage in a fascinating dialogue with them on very topical and key questions in monetary economics in our days: amongst others, ‘How is money determined? And how does this affect the economy?’; ‘Is a fractional reserve banking system inherently fragile?’; ‘Does the size of central banks’ balance sheet matter?’; ‘If we opt for inflation targeting as a policy strategy, which should be the variable to measure and target inflation?’; ‘Why the obsession amongst economists and academics with interest rates, and the disregard of money?”; ‘Who is to blame for the Global Financial Crisis, banks or regulators?’; ‘Does tougher bank regulation result in saver banks?’; ‘Is the US Fed conducting Quantitative Tightening in the last few months?’.

You can find the video with the full event here; with the presentation of the MSc in Money, Banking and Central Banking up to minute 9:20 and the discussion on the topics mentioned above onwards.  Several lessons can be learned from our discussion, and however evident they may sound, academics and policy-makers should be reminded of them again and again:

• Inflation and deflation are monetary phenomena over the medium and long term.
• Central banks‘ main missions are to preserve the purchasing power of the currency and maintain financial stability; and thus they should have never disregarded the analysis of money growth and its impact on prices and nominal income in the years running up to the Global Financial Crisis.
• A central bank acting as the lender of last resort of the banking sector does not mean rescuing every bank in trouble. Broke banks need to fail to preserve the stability of the banking system over the long term.
• The analysis of both the composition and the changes in central banks’ balance sheets is key to assess monetary conditions in the economy and ultimately make policy prescriptions.
• The analysis of the central banks’ decisions and operations cannot be done properly without the study of the relevant historical precedents: to learn monetary and central banking history is vital to understand current policies monetary questions.
• Tighter bank regulation, such as Basel III new liquidity ratios and the much higher capital ratios announced in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis, resulted in a greater contraction in the amount of money, and so it had even greater deflationary effects and worsened the crisis.

These are indeed key lessons and principles to apply should we want to achieve both monetary and financial stability over the medium and long term.

I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did. As ever, comments and feedback will be most welcome.

Apply for the MSc here!

Juan Castaneda

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The privatisation of central banks

Did you know that central banks have not always been State-owned banks? The vast majority of them were in the hands of the public before the wave of nationalisations that took place right after the end of WWII. And the system did not work bad at all; the record of both price stability and financial stability before 1913 was certainly impressive. True, bank panics also occurred but the different response taken to such crises is the key to understand the pros of a monetary system fully in the hands of the public and market participants. And, a regards price stability, from approx. 1870 to 1913 most developed (and other less developed) economies ran the gold standard as the rule to determine the amount of money in the economy; a standard which very much tied the hands of central banks and governments as regards money creation. The outcome of the running of a system which preserved monetary stability for a 50 year-time period limited was (not surprisingly for any monetary economist!) was true price stability (by true, I mean that the price level in 1870 was roughly similar to that in 1913), and a growing and rather stable financial system on the whole.

Why was such a ‘miracle’ possible? There is no mystery nor secrecy about it at all! It was the establishment of the right institutions and policies to discipline both the Treasury and a highly independent (actually privately-owned!) central bank what explains such a favourable outcome. And, did you know something even more striking? Several central banks are traded in the market in our days in different ways: the Swiss National Bank, Belgium Central Bank, Reserve Bank of South Africa, Greece Central Bank and Bank of Japan. Historically speaking as I said above this is not an anomaly but the norm before the 1940s. Given the poor record of our monetary authorities since then and the miss-management of the recent financial crisis, why not extending private ownership even further and thus mitigate the threats of a politically-exposed (some will say ultimately ‘controlled’) central bank?

In an interview with Standard and Poor’s, ‘New way forward or outdated anomaly? The future of publicly traded central banks’ (S&P Global. Market Intelligence), I advocate for central banks to return to the public and the banking sector, in order to guarantee their independence from governments and thus be able to achieve a more sound and stable monetary system. You will find the arguments in favour of a more independent central banks, owned by market participants in many references. Here I will just mention two of them, one written by Tim Congdon (Chairman of the Institute of International Monetary Research), Central Banking in a Free Society (IEA), and the other by myself with Pedro Schwartz (Visiting Professor, University of Buckingham), Central banks; from politically dependent to market-independent institutions (Journal of Economic Affairs); both pieces written in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis (2008-09) and the observed mismanagement of the lender of last resort function of central banks.

Find below an extract from the interview with my arguments:

‘Those in favor of privately owned central banks say such institutions would be better equipped to preserve market stability and could help prevent future financial crises.

“If publicly traded or owned by the banking sector … the market incumbents will have a genuine interest in setting clear … rules for the central bank to maintain financial stability over the long term,” said Juan Castañeda, director of the Institute of International Monetary Research at the University of Buckingham in England.

In the event of another financial crisis, a central bank would be fully independent to intervene at a bank in need, and any injection of capital would come from the banking or private sector, Castañeda said. Situations like the nationalization of Northern Rock by the Bank of England at the outset of the global financial crisis could be averted were central banks not in public hands, he argued.

“Those are the things that you can avoid if your central bank is publicly traded,” he said, citing the late 19th century example of U.K.-based Barings Bank, which faced bankruptcy but was saved by a consortium of fellow lenders, helping to stave off a larger crisis.

Oversight of a central bank would belong to the bank’s shareholders, although national authorities would also have a say because of the bank’s management of monetary policy and financial stability.’

It is not surprising Tim Congdon and myself advocate for more independent central banks (privately-owned) as a way to protect them from political interference in the development of its functions. I do believe this would contribute to a more sound running of monetary policy and to less financial instability in the future. If publicly-traded or owned by the banking sector (following the US Fed model), market incumbents will have a genuine interest in setting clear mandates/rules for the central bank to maintain financial stability over the long term. Should another financial crisis occur in the future (that it will), the central bank will have free hands to intervene promptly and avoid the contagion of panic in the market (by the application of its lender of last resort function). And if any injections of capital were needed, it would be the banking sector (or the private sector as a whole) which would bail-in the bank in crisis and, most likely, taxpayers’ money will not be needed again.

Of course this alternative arrangement is fully compatible with the central bank be given statutory functions (such as an inflation target for example) and be subject to parliamentary oversee; so the Governor will have to answer not just to the Bank’s shareholders but to Parliament as well in relation to the running of monetary policy and financial stability (find further details on these arrangements in Congdon’s 2009 work mentioned above).

Juan Castañeda

PS. An excellent narrative of the flaws of the current system can be found in Milne and Wood (2008)’s  analysis of Northern Rock bank crisis in the UK.

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The communication of a banking crisis: it’s all about confidence!

During a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC (‘The Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture’) I visited the Presidents’ gallery and found Franklin Delano Roosevelt‘s portrait accompanied by an interactive panel with some of his very popular at the time ‘fireside (radio) chats’ with the nation. One of them caught my attention; it was his address to the nation on the 13th of March of 1933 on the occasion of a major financial panic which led to the suspension of all banking activities for a week (the proclamation of 5 days of bank holiday). Of course the explanation of it would take us to the Great Depression and the massive fall in banks’ deposits in the country (as calculated by M. Friedman and A. Schwartz in their seminal Monetary History of the US, more than a third of the money supply since 1929). But what this brief post is about today is on just the communication of the suspension of the banking activities by the President himself to the nation: as you will hear in this audio recording, it is a very good explanation, and very easy to follow, of how the financial system in a modern economy operates and how fragile it becomes when confidence is lost and people run suddenly on their banks for liquidity. Even at that time, when the US was still on the gold standard and thus paper notes were ultimately backed by gold, the system relied on the confidence of the depositors on the soundness of the banks. Being very well aware of it, all the President tries to do with in this ‘fireside chat’ on the banking crisis was to restore the confidence lost by reassuring the american  people the monetary authorities were willing (and had already) to lend to sound banks to meet the liquidity needs of their customers. It is a good example of how to educate the people on these complex issues and to communicate how the crisis was being tackled.

Do not miss the opportunity to listen to it; in just a two-minute recording you will easily recognise all the elements involved in a banking panic and in the solutions needed: run on liquidity, fractional reserve, fiat versus backed money, lender of last resort, confidence, … . It is an excellent teaching material for a lecture in macroeconomics or money and banking.

However, involved in a massive fiscal expansionary program, only three months later the President suspended the convertibility of the US$ notes in gold, which left more room for the government and the baking sector as a whole to expand the amount of (fiat) money in circulation.

Juan Castañeda

PS. This audio and others of FDR and other Presidents can be found at ‘The American Presidency Project‘ website (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/medialist.php?presid=32).

(Franklin Delano Roosevelt, picture taken at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC)

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New estimates of stock of gold

Estimates of the aboveground stock of gold (1492-2012)

Those of you who regularly follow this blog will find this topic familiar. This is because it is the second paper I have just published on this question; in the first one (2012), “The aboveground gold stock: its importance and size”, published by the GoldMoney Foundation, James Turk and myself mainly focused on the analysis of the available estimates of the stock of gold and concluded that most of them overestimated the stock of gold in 1492; which necessarily leads to a less amount of gold in the present time (the study also includes a very useful and comprehensive statistical annex).

In this one (“New estimates of the stock of gold (1492-2012)”, full text published in Moneta 156), I offer alternative estimates of the stock of gold in 1492 using different sources of (indirect) information, which include the analysis of the research made by economic historians, geologists and economists. As a result, an interval estimate of the stock of gold in 1492 is offered; one which is again much lower (see the table below) than the one implied according to the current estimates of the stock of gold and the data we have on gold production since the discovery of the Americas. Taking these new estimates as a starting point, I also include a full series on gold production since 1492 (a series collected from different sources) and a new series on the stock of gold since 1492 to 2012.

There might be several implications for the analysis of the current gold market as, according to this research, the aboveground stock of gold in our days may be around a 10% lower than the “official” figures (as published by the World Gold Council). Of course, due to the nature of this research and the lack of (much) reliable information on this issue for such a long time period, the results must be interpreted with due cautious; and I would welcome more research on this topic to refine the current estimates.

Anyhow, find below the table with the main results of the paper (in tonnes of gold):

1.World Gold Council aboveground gold stock in 2012	174,147
2.Gold production 1493-2012	157,162
3.Implied World Gold Council estimate of aboveground gold stock in 1492 (1-2)	16,985
4.Our high estimate of aboveground gold stock in 1492	1,275
5.Overstatement of the aboveground gold stock (3-4)	15,710
6.Our high estimate of aboveground gold stock in 2012 (2+4)	158,437
7.Overestimation of the current aboveground gold stock (2012) (1-6)	15,710

More details on the estimates can be found here; a video with the presentation of the paper in a recent seminar organised in Madrid last May organised by Prof. G. Depeyrot as part of the activities of the Damin project, which is a world-wide research network of scholars interested in the study of precious metals and monetary issues in the 19th century.

I hope it can be of some interest. Comments very welcome.

Juan Castañeda

PS. Link to the video with the presentation of the research paper and many others: http://www.anr-damin.net/spip.php?article60

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Mr. Carney, the Old Lady is not for tying

I found this caricature in The Times last Saturday (see below) and I could not resist the temptation to write a post on it. With a blog like this one, with its name, I had no other choice but to welcome and echo this caricature and its message. As I already explained in more detail here, I do believe that a  course on money and central banking could be taught by using these classical (and contemporary) caricatures as the main material of the course. They provide the political and historical context needed to properly analyse how different constraints/events have affected the policies conducted by the central banks along the modern history.

As J. Gillray masterly did it two centuries ago, here you will find again the (poor) Old Lady screaming and fighting with the authorities; represented this time not by the prime minister but by the next governor of the Bank of England, Mr. Carney. There are some other differences of course. In this new version of Gillray’s “Political-ravishment, or the old lady of Treadneedle-Street in danger!” (1797), the new governor is not taking some gold coins from her pocket but trying to keep the Lady well tied up and under his control. The Lady is obviously protesting and is struggling to free herself from the new ties imposed in the last years; ties which represent the new and extraordinary lending facilities the Bank has had to implement since the outbreak of the recent financial crisis to assist the banking system and the Government. True, many will say that the central banks, wisely acting as the lenders of last resort of the financial system, had no other alternative but to support the banking system and maintain the proper running of the payment system. Fine, I agree to some extent since, in the face of a major financial panic, the central bank must act firmly and timely to avoid the collapse of the financial system. But at some point these extraordinary policies will have to cease and the central banks will return gradually to normality in the coming years; which certainly will mean the adoption of a more orthodox monetary policy, one committed to maintaining the stability of the financial system but also the purchasing power of the currency. Let’s see if the new governor of the Bank of England succeeds and is able to extend the existing “ties” or even adopt new ones: an expansionary nominal income targeting strategy?, the adoption of a new, higher of course, inflation target?

Nothing new at all. Under the gold standard there were clear rules which prevented the central banks from printing too much money. In our days, under a fully fiat monetary system, one in which money is created out of thin air (or ex novo), those rules are even much more needed (though become blurred many times …); so, yes, somebody must tie the hands of the Government and those of its bank (i.e. the national central bank) not to overspend and overissue respectively, in order to maintain monetary stability and the purchasing power of the currency in the medium to the long term. Until relatively recently (in the interwar years), it was in the very nature of the central bank to limit the amount of money in circulation to preserve the value of its own currency in the markets. It was a profit maximising institution for quite a long time and that was the best policy to increase the demand of its money and thus its revenues (the seigniorage). However, as depicted in this caricature, this time it looks like the world is turning upside down, since it is the (next) governor of the Bank of England, the “manager” of the bank, the one who wants to impose his own (new) ties to the Old Lady to keep on running extraordinary policy measures in the UK.

Future will tell which vision prevails in the UK and elsewhere, the classical one which defines the central bank as a bank which provides essential financial services to the banking system (a sound money amongst them) or the modern view of the central bank as a major policy actor committed to a time changing basket of macroeconomic goals, either given by the government or not.

Paraphrasing Mrs. Thatcher’s very famous quote (1980), The Time‘s cartoonist has chosen a very clever title for this satirical caricature: “the Lady is not for tying“ (see below). Enjoy it.

Juan Castañeda

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Published in The Times, 4th May 2013. Business section p. 51. “The Lady’s not for tying”. By CD, after Gillray.

 

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Quantitative Easing or the reinvention of the wheel

Much has been said about the QE operations conducted in the US and elsewhere in the recent financial crisis. Some have claimed they constitute a true revolution in central banking; some have even gone further to suggest that it is the beginning of a new monetary policy. And, also quite many still claim that these extraordinary monetary policy measures should not be applied as they are supposed to be highly inflationary by their own nature.

Just a very quick look at the modern monetary history in Europe and in the US will reveal how wrong those views can be. On the one hand, as tested quite many times in our economic history, yes, too loose monetary policies (via QE operations or other else) will result in inflation, but only if (broad) money grows much faster than real income. So, how inflationary QE will be in the coming years cannot be assessed without making a proper monetarist analysis. Monetary expansion will have other effects, true (in part, already addressed here). On the other hand, even though under a different name, with the current QE operations we are just “inventing the wheel” or, following the Spanish saying, “discovering the Mediterranean sea”.

As quoted from Geoffrey Wood’s “The lender of last resort reconsidered” (A paper prepared for a conference in honour of Anna J Schwartz. Washington, 14-15 April 2000), in relation to the 1825 panic affecting the british banks:

“There had been a substantial external drain of gold, and there was a shortage of currency.  A panic developed, and there were runs on banks.  The type of bills the Bank would normally discount soon ran out and the panic continued.  If a wave of bank failures were to be prevented, the banks would have had to borrow on the security of other types of assets. Of that change of policy Jeremiah Harman, a Director of the Bank, spoke as follows when giving evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1832.  The Bank had lent money “… by every possible means and in modes we had never adopted before; we took in stock on security, we purchased Exchequer bills, we made advances in Exchequer bills, we not only discounted outright but we made advances on the deposit of bills of exchange to an immense amount, in short by every means consistent with the safety of the Bank, and we were not on some occasions over nice”. Published in the Journal of Financial Services Research, 2000, vol. 18, issue 2, pages 203-227. See:  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1026542821454.

So the Bank of England, already in the early 19th c., did conduct a truly active monetary policy to prevent the collapse of the banking system in Britain “by every possible means”; which included the purchase of stocks, public bonds, the discount of paper, … . And even most interesting,  Professor Wood (Cass Business School and University of Buckingham) provided in his work (written in 2000!) an excellent description of several successful application of the lender of last resort role of central banks that did prevent the collapse of the banking system without provoking (the supposed) hyperinflation. His work could have been taken as an excellent guide to make policy decisions from 2008 on.

The study of monetary history will do no harm to all of us at all, either academics or policy-makers. Quite the contrary!!!

Juan Castañeda

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Keynes and Hayek: A never ending controversy in funny videos (Econstories.tv)

Keynes and Hayek: A never ending controversy

A classic: what would have J. M. Keynes and F. A. Hayek said in the context of this major financial crisis were they alive? What would these “giants” of Economics suggest to tackle the problems arisen in the recent crisis?

Hayek

Well, we know quite well what Hayek would have probably suggested. Firstly, in relation to the diagnosis of the crisis, his theoretical works on the boom and bust crises fit very well with the current crisis. Moreover, his (Austrian) interpretation of the business cycles is very well-established in his works, mostly written in the 20s and 30s, and they have indeed received much more attention recently. So I do firmly think that he would claim some credit for the Austrian theory of the business cycle. As to his policy measures to overcome the crisis, I am afraid that he would probably suggest that the painful adjustment of the economy (including the liquidation of the so-called mal-investments, those associated with excessive money growth in the expansionary years) would have to take place, one way or another. And he would also possibly claim, as he did in his excellent works on money, central banks and the monetary system, that we should finally reform the nature of the monetary system with the introduction of more competence in the money market; which would imply the abolition of the legal tender clause of the national money(ies). This is exactly what he proposed in his Institute of Economic Affairs excellent “Denationalisation of money” in 1976.

Keynes

In relation to Keynes, we cannot be so positive about what he would have said. We know how pragmatic (and “case sensitive”) and even volatile Keynes could be, so we cannot really predict the policy solutions he would have proposed. This is exactly what Hayek claimed on the academic relation they maintained in the 30s. By the time Hayek was able to reply and contest a Keynes’ book or article, the latter had already launched another work with a different approach and even with a quite different perspective or theory. This was viewed by Hayek as a lack of consistency, something Hayek was not accustomed to and very much unusual for the very systematic Austrian theorist. Anyhow, if it were the Keynes of the General Theory, he would indeed ask the State to take firm steps in the running of the economy by the conduction of the aggregate (effective) demand. In essence, it would imply both (1) lowering nominal interest rates to the minimum and (2) then managing directly aggregate investment.

Another interpretation: some videos proposed

There is an excellent (and much funnier and entertaining) interpretation of their theories, and their application/adaptation to the current scenario, masterly made by John Papola and Russ Roberts in their very interesting and valuable “Econstories.tv” ‘s project. You will find below  several videos on the works and theories of these two economists, as well as interviews with excellent scholars on the works of this two excellent economists (see the interviews with Professor Lawrence White and Lord Robert Skidelsky).

– Video 1: “Fear the boom and bust”, at: http://econstories.tv/2010/06/22/fear-the-boom-and-bust/

– Video 2: “Fight of the century”, at: http://econstories.tv/2011/04/28/fight-of-the-century-music-video/

Enjoy them.

Juan Castañeda

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