A model of parallel currencies under free exchange rates

Money is one of the most studied and truly complex phenomena in Economics. How money is created? And how is it destroyed? ‘What constitutes money and what doesn’t? Is money only the means of payment sanctioned by law, by the State? In our current monetary systems, can we ‘create’ as much as money as we like? If so, wouldn’t it be inflationary? These are some of the questions Economics students frequently ask at the start their degrees. Today I am only going to focus, if only timidly, on one of them; the absence of competition in the national currencies markets in our days. Of course, the absence of competition in this market is not the result of the application of the conventional laws of Economics; quite the opposite, as masterly explained by Vera Smith in her ‘Rationale of Central Banking and the Free Banking Alternative’ in 1936, the granting of the legal tender clause to a single currency, that issued by the State, has been an explicit decision made by the government (the relation between the State and the central bank has always been problematic to say the least, you can find more details on it here). F. Hayek also explains marvellously the abolishment of the laws of Economics as regards money in his ‘Denationalisation of Money’ in 1976. More recently, my colleague from the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR), Tim Congdon, discussed this issue in his ‘Money in a Free Society’ in 2009 and makes the case for a privatised and truly independent central bank, detached from the political agenda or the economic needs of the government.

Following this debate, two colleagues of mine, Pedro Schwartz and Sebastian Damrich, and myself have reflected on these issues in a working paper just published by the Applied Economics Centre of the John Hopkins University (‘A model of parallel currencies under free floating exchange rates’. In Studies in Applied Economics, Num. 160, June 2020). In the paper we assess the feasibility of a parallel currency system under different macroeconomic scenarios. We first offer the rationale for the introduction of more competition in this market and then develop a model to see wether (and under which conditions) a parallel currency system ends up in the running of a single currency economy, or rather in two currencies competing for the market. We draw policy implications and use the the eurozone as a case-study, but the model could well be applied to any other set of countries sharing a currency or willing to access a different currency area. In a nutshell, what we show in the model is the conditions for the issuer of each currency to gain a higher market share and benefit from it. We make a distinction between (1) a macroeconomic stable scenario, defined in the paper ‘as one in which the sensitivity of the market share of the currencies to changes in prices in both currencies is not high (as we presume changes in inflation in both currencies will be rather small)’ (see page 25). In this scenario, it is ultimately the supply of each currency what determines their market share (the less inflationary currency will gain more market share over time); and (2) a highly unstable macroeconomic scenario, ‘where agents’ demand of each currency is very sensitive to changes in relative prices in both currencies. In this high price sensitive scenario, an increase in the switching costs to favour the use of one of the currencies (i.e. the government’s preferred currency) would only lead to inflation in that favoured currency and very quickly to its expulsion from the market’ (see page 25). The model can thus be applied to well-established economies, where both the national currency and the common currency circulate in the economy and to highly inflationary economies, where the government favours the use of its currency and uses the currency as a source of revenues (i.e. seigniorage).

This is the abstract of the paper, which you will be able to access in full here:

‘The production of good money seems to be out of reach for most countries. The aim of this paper is to examine how a country can attain monetary stability by granting legal tender to two freely tradable currencies circulating in parallel. Then we examine how such a system of parallel currencies could be used for any Member State of the Eurozone, with both the euro and a national currency accepted as legal tender, which we argue is a desirable monetary arrangement particularly but not only in times of crisis. The necessary condition for this parallel system to function properly is confidence in the good behaviour of the monetary authorities in charge of each currency. A fully floating exchange rate between the two would keep the issuers of the new local currency in check. This bottom-up solution based on currency choice could also be applied
in countries aspiring to enter the Eurozone, instead of the top-down once and for all imposition of the euro as a single currency that has turned out to be very stringent and has shown institutional flaws during the recent Eurozone crisis of 2009 – 2013. Our scheme would have alleviated the plight of Greece and Cyprus. It could also ease the entry of the eight Member States still missing from the Eurozone.’

All comments welcome. We still have to work more on the paper and suggestions for change and further references will be most appreciated.

 

Juan E. Castañeda

PS. A previous study on parallel currencies by P. Schwartz, F. Cabrillo and myself can be found here; where we put it forward as a solution to ease and expedite the adjustments needed to apply to the Greek economy in the midst of the so-called euro crisis.

 

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It’s not all about interest rates!

In a piece published by CityAM on 12/11/2019 (‘Interest rates aren’t central banks’ only ammunition to defend against recession‘), I criticised the view apparently shared by most policy commentators about the alleged lack of ammunition of central banks to tackle the next crisis; they claim that this is because policy rates have reached either zero or close to zero levels and therefore there is no more room for monetary expansion. As I put in the article, this is wrong:

“But interest rate change is not the only policy tool available to create money. Indeed, nor is it the most effective in times of crisis. In modern economies, where monetary systems are purely based on fiat currencies, money can be created “out of thin air”. As shocking as it may sound, this means that central banks can always increase the amount of money in the economy.”

Since 2008 central bank (main policy) rates had been cut down to zero or near zero territory, and for many years it was mainly by changes in the amount of money how central banks managed to stabilise spending (through unconventional policy measures or QE). The outcome in the US, the UK but also in the Eurozone (though achieved much later), has been the stabilisation of the rate of growth of broad money in these economies followed by a period of a relatively stable overall macroeconomic picture (i.e. broad money growth in the US around 4% – 5% for a long period of time).

 

 

The fundamentals to understand how monetary policy decisions are made in modern monetary systems, particularly in times of a financial crisis, where commercial banks struggle to expand deposits, can be summarised as follows:

• In the absence of a truly binding anchor (such a metallic standard under the gold or silver standards) central banks can always create money ‘out of thin air’, with no limit.
• In modern monetary systems both commercial banks and central banks create money; actually the bulk of the means of payments used are created by commercial banks in the form of deposits and the extension of overdrafts (see the seminal paper on this, Money creation in the modern economy , by McLead, Radia and Thomas, 2014).
• The announcement and later application of tighter bank regulation in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis (2009 – 2010) increased bank capital requirements by approx. 60%, thus limiting the ability of banks to give loans and create deposits (i.e. money) in an already recessive economy. In the absence of the creation of money by markets (i.e. banks), central banks had no choice but to step in and buy assets from the market (from non-financial institutions), the so-called QE operations. Otherwise, money supply would have contracted very severely, with the harm it would have inflicted on the economy (this time, central bankers were determined to avoid the mistakes they made in the Great Depression years as Ben Bernanke had famously put it back in 2002, when deposits contracted by more than 30% in four years in the USA, therefore aggravating and prolonging the recession).

I argue in the article that, for better or worse, the ‘monetary weaponry’ in modern monetary systems can never be exhausted (Venezuela today is a dramatic example of it, when the printing press is heavily exploited by the government). Under purely fiat monetary systems, we need to tie the hands of the central banks so they abide by a rule in order to maintain a moderate and stable rate of growth of money; a rule that does not result in excessive money growth during the expansion of the economy, nor in a strong decline or even a fall in money growth during recessions. My colleague from the University of Buckingham and the Institute of International Monetary Research, Professor Geoffrey Wood, explains masterly and in few minutes how to define and adopt such a monetary rule in the Eurozone in this video.

 

Juan Castañeda

PS. You can have access to the CityAM article in full at https://www.cityam.com/interest-rates-arent-central-banks-only-ammunition-to-defend-against-recession/

 

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On the performance of the Euro vs. the US dollar (video presentation)

Those who follow this blog will know that I have already published an entry on the index of performance of the euro (1999 – 2018); I commented on the outcomes of an overall index of macroeconomic dispersion among the Eurozone Members States, which can be split up into four (sub) indices: business cycle, competitiveness, public finance and monetary dispersion. I have also reported on the same metrics calculated for the US, so we could compare then with those of the Eurozone. The results are somehow expected, but nevertheless very revealing.

• Overall macroeconomic dispersion in the US is much smaller than in the Eurozone.
• Macroeconomic asymmetries within the US states did exacerbate in the crisis years and also in the pre-crisis years, but in the US have quickly returned to pre-crisis levels and remained fairly stable since 2010; whereas in the Eurozone we still have a long way to go.

Of course, some caveats apply in this instance: the US dollar has been a single monetary area for more than 150 years, and indeed a banking union and a fiscal union (with a meaningful federal-central budget) for a long time too. Even with these caveats in mind, what it is very revealing is not that the size of macroeconomic dispersion or internal asymmetries are much larger in the Eurozone, but how differently macroeconomic dispersion has evolved after the crisis: In the case of the Eurozone, particularly as regards monetary and competitiveness dispersion trends, they  show a very strong persistence, revealing (among other things) a more rigid functioning of the price system in goods and services and labour markets as compared to those in the US. The caveats mentioned above may well explain the difference in levels of dispersions, but the changes in trends reveal underlying/structural problems in the way in which markets adjust to crisis in the Eurozone.

We are now extending the results of the project to include the index of dispersion among regions and nations within the UK sterling area, and the (provisional) results confirm the same pattern: the poorer performance of the Eurozone (as measured by internal dispersion) as compared to both the US dollar monetary area and the UK sterling one. We may disagree on the solutions to this problem but we should not simple ignore the facts. ‘All and sundry’ claim that a fiscal union and a pan-EU central budget should be adopted, so counter-cyclical policies can diminish the negative effects of ‘lateral shocks’ (those affecting some MSs considerably more than others) in the future. I do advocate for a different solution, one that requires no further integration, but the devolution of fiscal discipline to the national level. Here it is a the report with my proposal for the re-balancing of the Eurozone.

Here you will find the video to the presentation of the index of the Euro performance (2019) at the European Parliament, in an event organised by the Institute of International Monetary Research in Brussels (29/10/2019). Feedback most welcome.

Juan Castañeda

 

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How has the euro performed as compared to the US$, 1999-2018?

An optimality index of the single currency: internal asymmetries within the Eurozone and the USA since 1999

We have measured the macroeconomic dispersion within the Eurozone (see further details here on the indicators we have used) and this is in a nutshell how the euro (12 and 19) has performed since its launched in 1999.

 

As shown in the chart above we have added Target2 balances in the calculation of the (overall) index of internal dispersion; which is in fact an index of divergence within the Eurozone. The empirical conclusions are quite revealing, and somehow the expected ones: (1) in the good years (1999-2007), overall dispersion increased quite notably (it doubled!); (2) after the 2008-09 crisis, divergence deteriorated much more sharply and, leaving Target2 balances aside, the trend has been reversed and the index shows signs of improvement (though at a very slow pace).

We have also calculated an index of macroeconomic dispersion for the (mainland US) dollar area, using the same methodology. The chart below shows the trends in dispersion/internal asymmetries in this two major monetary areas:

 

There are many questions to discuss on this issue: among others, I will just mention three: (1) should we or should we not add Target2 balances to the calculation of the index of dispersion? (effectively, do Target2 balances matter?); (2) since the US is indeed a banking union, should we factor in monetary dispersion across States?; and (3) do the charts above suggest that the policies implemented during the recent crisis are the right ones in order to achieve a greater degree of convergence in the Eurozone?

We will discuss these questions and the charts above, and what they mean for the interpretation of convergence trends in the Eurozone, in a two-day conference at the University of Buckingham this week (21-22 February): The Economics of Monetary Unions. Past Experiences and the Eurozone. If you cannot make it, you will be able to follow the presentations live online. More information on the full programme here and how to follow it at the Institute of International Monetary Research social media.

All welcome.

 

Juan Castañeda

 

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Rebalancing the eurozone

A proposal for Target2 reform and a capped mutualisation debt scheme in Europe

‘Under a monetary union, fiscal and monetary discipline have to go hand in hand if macroeconomic stability is to be maintained. The question is how to set up the right institutions to achieve this stability in a credible manner. This policy brief proposes a new institutional arrangement for the euro area to restore fiscal discipline. It places the responsibility for compliance entirely on the shoulders of the member states. It also provides for the mutualisation of 30% of the member states’ debt-to-GDP ratio.
This would help to maintain a stable currency and to limit the risk of contagion should another crisis occur in the future. However, this comes at a cost. Under the fiscal scheme proposed, member states, which would be fully fiscally sovereign, would need to run long-term sound fiscal policies to benefit from euro membership. In addition, this brief proposes a reform of Target2 under which overspending economies would have to pay the financial cost of accessing extra euros, which would deter the accumulation of internal imbalances within the euro area. All this is expected to change the current fragility of the architecture of the euro, provide member states with the right incentives to abide by sounder economic principles and make them fully responsible for the policies they adopt.’

The above is the abstract of a research report I have just written on the reforms needed to undertake to re-balance the eurozone economy, published by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies. As you will read in the report, I don’t favour more centralisation of fiscal competences to the ‘federal’ level (be it Brussels or Frankfurt), but instead to abide by the subsidiarity principle as much as possible; and thus to make Member States (MSs) fully responsible for their own macroeconomic policies and public finances. The euro is a sort of a ‘monetary club’ (some will claim, and quite rightly, that it is much more than that) with benefits and costs of membership. As to the benefits, these are particularly evident for those economies with a poor inflation record in the running of their own national currencies in the past; for which the euro has provided a strong monetary anchor and therefore greater  price stability and lower borrowing costs. As to the costs, these were more subtle before the Eurozone crisis (and indeed less publicised at the time of the launch of the euro), and have become much more evident since then: simply put, MSs do not have access to their own (national) monetary policy anymore in order to ‘alleviate’ the costs of adjustment to a crisis, and also have limited sovereignty over their fiscal policy.

The reforms introduced during and after the recent crisis have confirmed the direction of change in the eurozone towards ever more co-ordination of macro policies; and therefore more and more conditions and criteria are now in place to closely monitor and eventually fine MSs for the running of (severe) fiscal and also macroeconomic imbalances (see the the new ‘Fiscal Compact’ and the new ‘Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure’ for more details). If anything, the experience of how the excessive public deficits and public debt by different MSs were handled by the eurozone institutions before the crisis is not very promising; even less so now that the complexity and degree of macroeconomic integration and regulation are even greater. The approach I adopt in this report is quite different.

In a nutshell:

(1) I put forward a (capped) debt mutualisation scheme, so those MSs running sound fiscal policies and sustainable budgets can benefit from it; and those in excess of the annual debt threshold will have to issue their own bonds, backed only by their own national revenues and credibility. The scheme, once launched, is communicated to the MS and it is not negotiable; the scheme also decreases in the coverage of the MSs public debt for the current levels down to a 30% ratio of the GDP in ten years. With this scheme, the MSs will have the incentives to meet the pre-announced annual targets, as their debt will be covered under the debt mutualisation programme, and thus will benefit from much lower borrowing costs. And, crucially, there is no need to monitor nor regulate further the fiscal or macroeconomic performance of the MSs.

(2) I also propose a major reform of Target2, which has accumulated (particularly since 2008) enormous imbalances among MSs (see the latest balances across MSs at the ECB website here): On the one hand, Italy holds a debit position amounting to approx. 30% of its GDP while Spain’s is 25% of its GDP; on the other hand, Germany holds a credit position close for the value of nearly 30% of its GDP. The reform proposed in the report would consist of setting a price for access to credit (if only the ECB policy rate), so overspending economies find it more and more costly to keep on borrowing and thus accumulate further imbalances. A way to settle the existing balances cross MSs must be also addressed.

(3) There are other key elements in the report for the proposals above to be effective, such as the return to the ‘no bailout clause’ of MSs, and the possibility of an errant economy to leave the eurozone (or be temporarily suspended). More details in the report.

 

Juan Castañeda

Full text of the report at: https://www.martenscentre.eu/publications/rebalancing-euro-area-proposal-future-reform

Feedback most welcome.

 

 

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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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MONEY TALKS, by IIMR

‘Money talks’ is a series of mini-videos the Institute of International Monetary Research (IIMR) will start to release every week on the 18th of June, Monday.

The name of the series says it all: experts in money and central banking will be covering key concepts to understand better monetary economics in less than two minutes long videos. Tim Congdon (Chairman of the IIMR) and Geoffrey Wood (IIMR Academic Advisory Council) along with myself and many others to come will be addressing the fundamentals in money and banking to be able to understand how our monetary systems work and which are the roles and functions of modern central banks.

The topics address include the following:

Episode 1: What is Money?

Episode 2: What is the Central Bank?

Episode 3: What is the Monetary Base?

Episode 4: What is the Money Multiplier?

Episode 5: What does Monetary Policy consist of?

Episode 6: What is Central Bank Independence?

Episode 7: The Central Bank as the Lender of Last Resort

Episode 8: Bail outs and Bank Failures

Episode 9: Basel Rules

Episode 10: What os ‘Narrow Banking’?

Episode 11: Fiat Money

Episode 12: What is a monetary policy rule?

Episode 13: What is Monetarism?

Episode 14: Monetary Policy Tasks

But of course, these are just the ones we are starting with. The list will be expanded in the next few weeks and the aim is to produce a library of mini-videos that could be a good reference to search for short definitions on money, banking and central banking.

If you are interested in this project, please subscribe to the IIMR YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudZPVEs3S82iu2zb-QZfcK7pqnrHfPgO) to stay tuned.

As ever, comments and feedback most welcome!

 

Juan Castañeda

 

 

 

 

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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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Is the central bank a bank at all? The case for a privately-owned central bank

Last month I had the pleasure to contribute to the IIMR/IEA annual monetary conference (8 November 2017) in London, ‘Has Financial Regulation Gone Too Far? And do banks really need all the extra capital?‘. I gave a short talk in session 3, ‘The role of the central bank in financial regulation‘, chaired by Charles Goodhart (LSE), on the essential nature of central banks as banking institutions. It may sound silly to state the obvious but, as my good friend, mentor and excellent colleague – Pedro Schwartz – always reminds me, we should not take for granted the fundamentals in economics, even less in money and central banking. Let me then start by saying that modern central banks were established to cope with two major tasks: (1) to be the bankers of the State (the Bank of England and other continental European central banks are good examples of this, see here) but also (2) to become the bankers of the banks in monetary systems operated under a fractional reserve (again, the Bank of England is the first modern central bank in this regard); the latter is what we call the lender of last resort function of central banks.

In the early years of the establishment of central banks, with the running of the gold standard, strictly speaking, there was no monetary policy nor the pursue of a macroeconomic target as we understand it now; but a bank of issue with a privilege position in the monetary market, and mainly focused on maintaining the convertibility of its currency at the pre-announced rate. It was only quite recently (historically speaking), after the abandonment of the gold standard in the interwar years, that central banks have explicitly adopted or given other tasks, and indeed macroeconomic tasks, such as keeping price stability or achieving economic growth.

But we should not forget that central banks are at the core of the monetary system and the banking sector, providing financial services to a ‘club’ of commercial banks which create money in the currency issued by the central banks. Which money? ‘Bank money’, that is, bank deposits under a fractional reserve system. This money constitutes the bulk of the money supply in modern economies, and it is vital for the central bank to keep a steady growth of the amount of money in circulation to preserve stable and long term economic growth; thus avoiding too much money during the expansion of the economy or too little in a banking crisis. What I state in my talk is that privately-owned central banks are genuinely interested in maintaining financial stability, and thus will be willing to intervene in a liquidity crisis much more promptly and efficiently than a central bank under the shadow – if not the control – of the State. This is something I have supported in other articles (recently in this article), and my colleague at the IIMR, Tim Congdon, has written on (see chapter 7 in ‘Central Banking in a Free Society‘).

This is the video of the talk:

Comments are very welcome as ever!

 

Juan Castañeda

PS. To the best of my knowledge the characterisation of central banks as the bankers of a ‘club’ was first coined by Charles Goodhart in his seminal 1988 book, ‘The Evolution of Central Banks‘, a book anyone interested in the history and functions of central banks must read. However, unlike Goodhart’s position in his book, I do not see a conflict of interest for a self-interested central bank to become a lender of last resort in times of crisis. Actually, central banks did make a profit when lending in times of crisis, such as the Bank of England in several banking crises in the 19th century.

 

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Tighter bank regulation won’t stop boom and bust, but it will damage growth and prosperity

This is the title of an article written with my colleague, Tim Congdon (Institute of International Monetary Research and University of Buckingham), published in CityAM on 27/10/2017.

Our main point is that more regulation won’t make banks safer and is counterproductive. It is a sort of an instinctive reaction by politicians, policy-makers and regulators to respond to a crisis with more and tighter regulation, in an effort to tackle the ‘excesses’ in the market economy left of its own will. This is both very naive and irresponsible, as much as empirically and theoretically wrong. The recent announcement and approval of the Basell III tighter bank capital ratios is an example of it: this tougher set of regulations was announced and approved in the midst of a severe financial crisis (2008-2010), and resulted in banks shrinking their balance sheets even more; with the expected dramatic fall in money growth and nominal spending.

It is again a dire example of the running of the law of the unintended consequences of regulation; which would recommend the need to assess in advance the expected consequences of regulation, rather than quickly and desperately calling for more and tougher laws on banks and the rest of the financial system.

As we put it in the article:

‘Far too many people believe that “better” regulation is the answer to financial crises. But further regulation involves an expansion of the power of the state, and a loss of freedom for the financial system. Remember that Britain had no explicit official rules on bank capital until the 1980s, yet no British bank suffered a run on its deposits over the preceding century. Crucial to the success of British banking in the decades before the Northern Rock fiasco was the Bank of England’s willingness to lend to solvent banks if they were having difficulty funding their assets. Good central banking helped Britain’s commercial banks to run their businesses efficiently and profitably, and to the benefit of their customers.’

There was a time, not that far away, when regulation was not that prominent and financial markets flourished; and when a banking institution failed, that occasionally they did, there were solid policies and institutions willing to intervene in an decisively and orderly manner (the Bank of England had been an example of that, at least until the collapse of Norther rock in the recent crisis).‘

You will find the article in full here: http://www.cityam.com/274672/tighter-bank-regulation-wont-stop-boom-and-bust-but-damage.

Comments, even more if critical, most welcome!

Juan Castañeda

PS. We will be discussing these issues with the member of the Bank of England’ s Financial Policy Committee, Martin Taylor, in the IIMR Annual Public Lecture on the 7/10 in London: https://www.mv-pt.org/events/public-lecture-the-committee-of-public-safety-the-work-of-the-financial-policy-committee-by-m

 

 

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