MMT – In Conversation with Bill Mitchell
Professor Bill Mitchell, one of the key founders of MMT
In 1994, Professor Bill Mitchell received a phone call from a United States hedge fund owner. This person said his investment strategy would have failed if it had been based on standard macroeconomic reasoning in relation to money, a theory Mitchell opposed.
Could they get together and speak?
The phone call, alongside earlier internet discussions, played an important part in the creation of a body of work that today is referred to as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
“I received a phone call from an American, who said he was in Sydney and would like to speak with me. This was Warren Mosler,” Mitchell says over lunch near his current workplace, the University of Newcastle, where he is Chair of Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, cheekily abbreviated as CofFEE.
“So we got together and started speaking about these ideas. I was an academic and I worked out part of the story from first principles, but Warren had worked this out from an operational point of view.”
Mosler founded Illinois Income Investors in 1982 and made several trades through his firm that seemed to align with the principles of MMT.
One example is a trade he made during the early 1990s, where he took a contrarian view to the commonly held prediction that the Italian government would default on its bonds. He predicted correctly that this was not possible as Italy still issued its own currency: the lira.
This trade relates to the core of MMT, which argues a government that issues its own currency can’t default on its debt and, in fact, can also issue far more debt than is generally thought possible. Moreover, the debt does not fund the deficit spending – it is the other way around.
“Warren said to me: ‘If I had traded in the markets using mainstream neoclassical economics, I would have never made any money.’ That is sort of how our conversation started,” Mitchell remembers.
Why Governments Can’t Save
At its core, MMT makes the argument that a government that issues its own currency manages its balance sheet very differently than a household or a corporation.
From this point of view, it makes no sense to say a government that issues its own currency is saving when it runs surpluses. There is no savings account where governments can stash their unspent budgets and keep the money for a rainy day.
Instead, MMT argues that government deficits and surpluses directly affect the level of wealth in the private sector. Any budget surplus drains wealth from the private sector, while deficits mean money flows into the pockets of the private sector.
But wait a moment, isn’t government spending paid for by taxes?
Well, no, MMT says. Taxes don’t pay for anything. Taxes are used to reallocate resources from the private sector to the public sector, a subtle yet important difference, Mitchell says.
“What do taxes do? Taxes create, what I call, the ‘real resource space’, in which governments can spend and not cause inflation,” he says.
“The government doesn’t have any resources; we have the resources in a modern economy. We own labour and capital. How does the government get that to run its programs and mandate? Well, it’s got to deprive us of using those resources in one way or another.
“Think about how they do that: taxation. You don’t need taxation to spend; you need taxation to create the resource space in which they can spend, without causing inflation. Now, that is a fundamental difference from how people think.”
MMT says government spending is restrained by the available resources in the economy, not by the amount of taxes raised, and this means a government can often spend more than is commonly thought prudent. Inflation is not so much caused by government spending, but rather by supply and demand shocks.
“Sure, inflation is a problem, but it is an inflated fear,” Mitchell says.
“Governments have to make sure they manage their expenditure to not generate it, but that doesn’t mean you have to run austerity.
“A classic example is the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. People say: ‘Well, that was because [former President Robert] Mugabe went on a spending spree.’
“What most people don’t understand is that the hyperinflation there had nothing to do with fiscal deficits. If you understand the history of that time, you would know that Mugabe led the freedom fighters against the British, against Rhodesia, and liberated what is now modern Zimbabwe.
“You will know that during the colonial period land tenure was extremely unequal, with incredible land disparities. And quite reasonably, Mugabe decided to reward his freedom fighters, but quite unreasonably he decided to reward them in the wrong way by expropriating the white farmlands and giving them to his former soldiers.
“Zimbabwe was at the time the food bowl of Africa; its farming was incredibly efficient and productive. What happened within a very short time was that farm output collapsed by 60 per cent. In an agricultural society that is devastating.
“To avoid starvation the central bank of Zimbabwe imposed foreign exchange controls and rationed their foreign exchange holdings to buy food because their food supply had fallen. That deprived manufacturers from essential capital.
“So there were lots of events that caused a supply-side shock. It wouldn’t have mattered if the government would have run a surplus, you would still have had hyperinflation.”
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
MMT wasn’t created from scratch, but builds on the work of various economists, tracing back mainly to the work of British economist Abba Lerner and his concept of ‘functional finance’ and ultimately to John Maynard Keynes.
“There is very little [in MMT] that is original in the sense of pure originality. It is about adding ideas to what is already there,” Mitchell says.
“One of the main building blocks is from Abba Lerner, who in the 1940s created functional finance. It was part of the new way of thinking of the role of government after the great depression.
“What functional finance was addressing was what was called in those days ‘sound finance’. Sound finance is what we today would think of as neoliberalism: that governments had to balance budgets or run surpluses and if they didn’t, then bad things would happen, and that public debt was a burden for their grandchildren.
“What Abba Lerner said is the way we should really conceive of government is in functional terms: what it does. We shouldn’t assess their fiscal position, whether it is a two per cent deficit or a two per cent surplus, but we should assess it in terms of what we want the government to do on our behalf and assess the state of the fiscal position in relation to the functions of government.
“It didn’t make much sense to run a two per cent surplus if you have 10 per cent unemployment. Sound finance would say that is good, but functional finance would say it is a disaster because what we really want government to do is to make sure there is not 10 per cent unemployment. The fiscal position has to be whatever it is to achieve your functional goals.
“Functional finance recognised that governments really don’t need to fund their spending in the way that we think they do, in the way that sound finance says they’ve got to tax or borrow.”
Recognition
Mitchell, together with Mosler and several other economists, has been adding to the MMT framework since the early 1990s and he is somewhat amused it is now starting to receive attention from Wall Street and mainstream economists.
“It is finally starting to get attention because we are starting to break into politics now,” he says.
“It is only since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [the US Representative for New York’s 14th congressional district, also known by her initials AOC] has embraced MMT. That has given it a boost, but it has been building for some years.
“We’ve now got a textbook and we’ve got a program that I’m teaching at the University of Helsinki.”
But he is grateful for the attention it has received from US politicians and supports the Green New Deal, a series of infrastructure projects proposed by Ocasio-Cortez and others to help the economy transition to a low-carbon economy.
“The Green New Deal sounds fancy, but if you go back to the 1950s after WWII, Australia was quite a poor country and the public sector was huge,” he says.
“We were building a nation on the back of the government: the roads, telecommunication systems, the transport systems, schools and hospitals. There were massive public investments going on as part of that phase of nation-building.
“I see the Green New Deal as another example of nation-building. We’ve reached a point in our evolution that requires the next big public injection of infrastructure investment. Now, it is not an MMT project, I think everybody should own it, but what an MMT understanding tells you about it is that the government has the financial capacity to do the infrastructure spending.
“Then you hear critics say: ‘MMT says you can have it all for free.’ Well, no you can’t. The Green New Deal would be a massive transformation of real resource usage in our economies and we are going to have to deprive existing users of resources, such as [users of] coal, internal combustion car manufacturers, farmers using land clearing that is unsustainable and phosphates.
“There is going to have to be a massive redirection of resources. That is not an easy thing to do. The government is going to be able to fund that; that is not the problem. But it is a societal shift; that is the challenge of the Green New Deal. It has to be a very well managed and very politically delicate process.”
He points out Newcastle, where our conversation is taking place, is a prime example of some of the difficulties the Green New Deal is facing.
“You are within half a kilometre of the world’s largest exporter of coal: Newcastle Port. Well, this whole region will have to stop producing coal. How do you do that? That is the Green New Deal,” he says.
“It is not that the government can’t stump up the cash. It is about what instruments are you going to use to stop coal production. Are you going to regulate it? Are you going to bring in a carbon tax? These are all questions that need to be asked.
“I’ve been calling for this region, the Hunter, for years to become a hub for renewable energy production and technology. This is a trade region, it’s skills-based, but a lot of these workers aren’t doing anything now that BHP Billiton has closed [its steelmaking plant].
“The Green New Deal is a 50-year project, or at least a very long project. It will need elaborate transition frameworks to make sure that workers in this region have opportunities. But this is not going to happen overnight.”
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Zimbabwe! Weimar Republic! How Modern Money Theory Replies to Hyperinflation Hyperventilators (Part 1)
In last week’s post, I responded to Paul Krugman’s critique of Modern Money Theory (MMT), which argues that a sovereign government that issues its own floating exchange rate currency cannot face an affordability constraint—which means it cannot be forced into involuntary default on its own currency debt. His criticisms really boiled down to a misunderstanding over operational details—how banks work, how the Federal Government really spends, and the role played by the Fed in making all these operations work smoothly. I won’t rehash any of that here.
But what we were left with is the argument that if a government operates along MMT lines, then we are on the path to ruinous hyperinflation. Of course Austrians have long argued that all fiat money regimes are subject to these dangers—even ones that don’t follow MMT’s recommendations. MMTers are commonly accused of promoting policy that would recreate the experiences of Zimbabwe or Weimar Republic hyperinflations. These were supposedly caused by governments that resorted to “money printing” to finance burgeoning deficits—increasing the money supply at such a rapid pace that inflation accelerated to truly monumental rates.
It is very easy to titillate audiences with graphs such as the following, which displays rapid depreciation of the Weimar Republic’s paper money in terms of gold:
Or with a picture of a Zimbabwe note—which shares the all-time record for number of zeroes:
No one wants to defend high inflation, much less hyperinflation. In his classic 1956 paper Phillip Cagan defined hyperinflation as an inflation rate of 50% or more per month. Clearly the zeroes would add up quickly, and economic life would be significantly disrupted.
The most popular explanation of hyperinflation is the Monetarist quantity theory of money: government prints up too much, causing prices to rise. However, as prices rise, the velocity of circulation increases—no one wants to hold on to money very long as its value falls rapidly. Wages are demanded daily, so as to spend income each day because tomorrow it will purchase less. What that means is that even though the money supply grows as rapidly as government can print notes, it never keeps up with rising prices. And the faster prices rise, the higher velocity climbs—eventually you demand hourly payment and run to the stores at lunchtime because by dinner prices will be higher.
Essentially, this was Cagan’s explanation for the fact that a simple version of the quantity theory did not fit the data: if prices rise so much faster than the money supply, how can we conclude that the hyperinflation is caused by “too much money chasing too few goods”? To fit the facts of experience, the quantity theory was revised to say that in a high inflation environment, the old quantity theory presumption that velocity is stable (which is necessary to maintain a link between money and prices) no longer holds.
So armed with the revised quantity theory, we can still claim that high and even hyperinflationary inflation result from too much money even though velocity is not stable (it rises as money growth lags behind inflation). And as Monetarists claim that government controls the money supply, hyperinflation must be due to government policy. Add to that the observation that in hyperinflation periods, the supply of government currency (paper notes) rises rapidly (with extra zeroes added). Further, government runs deficits as it finds its tax revenue cannot keep up with its spending, so is said to frantically print money to make up the difference—and that adds to the “too much money chasing too few goods”.
So most of the blame for hyperinflation falls to government money printing to finance deficits. (You can see the parallels to the US, UK, and Japanese situation today—large budget deficits that stuff banks full of reserves that they can supposedly use to pump up the money supply and prices.)
Solution? Tie the hands of government. In the old days, gold could serve as the anchor (and of course Austerian gold bugs want to return to those good old days). Today what we need is discipline, in the form of balanced budget amendments, debt limits, or for deficit doves like Paul Krugman a commitment to “eventually” slash deficit spending once recovery gets underway.
Sorry, that was a long introduction to today’s blog. As usual, I beg to differ with conventional wisdom. I do not accept any part of these arguments. Let’s take a Great Leap Forward to an alternative wisdom based on MMT.
I want to make three points.
1. When MMT says that government spends by “keystrokes”, this is a description, not a prescription. If critics were correct that government spending by “printing money” necessarily leads to hyperinflation, then most developed nations would have hyperinflation all the time. Because we all spend by keystrokes. And all governments that issue their own currency have to spend it before they can collect it in taxes (or bond sales)—no one else can create it. There is no alternative way for these governments to spend—yet they don’t experience hyperinflation (a point to be demonstrated). That we have to look to cases like Weimar or Zimbabwe (or way back in time to American Continentals) tells us a lot about the connection between “printing money” and hyperinflation. The causation cannot be found there.
2. Hyperinflations are caused by quite specific circumstances, although there are some shared characteristics of countries and monetary regimes that experience hyperinflation. I will not claim to fully understand the causes of hyperinflation—but the Monetarist explanation sheds almost no light on the experience. There is a sensible alternative. We’ll look at three well-known cases from the alternative point of view.
3. There is nothing in the current or prospective future condition of the US (or the UK or Japan) that would lead one to expect high inflation, let alone hyperinflation.
I will address the first point in today’s blog. Next week I will address the second and third points.
Most critics of MMT and of so-called fiat money in general imagine a past in which money was closely tied to a commodity like gold, which constrained the ability of both government and banks to create money “out of thin air”. The best example was the precious metal coin that supposedly gave a “real” value to government money, and forced government to actually get gold in order to spend. A strict gold standard with 100% gold backing against paper notes (issued by government or banks) accomplished the same task.
The reality was always quite different, however.
Obviously I cannot present a history of money here; please see Blog #12 (and look for Blog #13 next week) at the Modern Money Primer (http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/p/modern-money-primer.html) for a critique of the commodity coin story. Put it this way, gold and silver coins were the Sovereign’s IOUs that happened to be recorded on metal (rather than on paper or electronic balance sheets). In truth, coins usually circulated far above metallic value, at a nominal value proclaimed by the Sovereign (this is termed “nominalism”—the Sovereign set the nominal value through proclamation, just like today’s pennies that are worth a cent).
And their value was not necessarily stable: governments devalued them by “crying down the coin” (announcing they’d be accepted at half the former value in payments to government). They also “debased” them by reducing metallic content—which did not necessarily change their nominal value at all. To be sure, there are cases of relatively stable coinage and prices for long periods of time, but these are associated with strong and stable governments that adopted strong “nominalism” rather than “metalism” (the principle that a coin would be accepted at a value determined by its metallic content).
Indeed, the most unstable periods for coins coincided with weak Kings that resorted to weighing coins to catch clippers (those who would clip coins to obtain bullion), whilst rejecting light coins. This created “Gresham’s Law” dynamics, forcing everyone to weigh coins, accepting heavy coins in payment but trying to make payments in light coins. A real monetary mess. (See my Blogs 12 and 13 cited above.) This was finally resolved by going all the way to nominalism, coining only base metal and destroying the coin clipper’s business model.
Further, the gold standard did not operate in the manner imagined by today’s gold bugs. First, countries went on and off gold. When a crisis hit, they’d abandon gold. With recovery they’d go back on, until the gold constraints imposed forced them to go off when the economy crashed again. Rather than contributing to monetary stability, the gold standard destabilized the economy.
Second, no one really played by the rules. The temptation was always too great to leverage gold—to issue more IOUs than one could ever convert. (Even Milton Friedman admitted this, which is why he argued that while a gold standard might be ideal in theory, it doesn’t work in practice.)
Third, the periods of relative stability—Bretton Woods post WWII, or Pax Britannica pre WWI—were really dollar and sterling standards, respectively. In each case, the dominant nation agreed to peg the price of gold, and other nations pegged to the dominant currency. It really amounted to a buffer stock program for gold (price ceilings and floors for gold), with international trade actually taking place in pounds and then later in dollars (and the Bretton Wood’s gold safely impounded at Fort Knox).
Conditions for stability were difficult to maintain—which is why neither system lasted long. After WWI the sterling system could not be restored, and indeed set up the conditions for both Weimar (discussed next week) and finally Hitler. The Bretton Woods system collapsed in the early 1970s—lasting barely one generation. In both cases, collapse of these fixed exchange rate systems led to international turmoil.
And that is generally the eventual conclusion of most attempts to tie a domestic currency to some sort of fixed exchange rate standard (whether gold or foreign currency): it works until it collapses.
The gold bug and currency board aficionados are correct that a country that is experiencing high inflation can fairly quickly bring it down by adopting a strict external standard. Argentina did that with its currency board. But that then creates two problems: most countries cannot earn sufficient foreign currency to provide the fiscal policy space needed to keep the economy growing.
Second, there is no easy way off the currency board once it is recognized that fiscal policy space has evaporated making it possible to deal with a burgeoning problem of no domestic growth and rising unemployment. Argentina experienced a speculative attack on its dollar reserves (even though fiscal policy was quite tight, unemployment was high, and growth had evaporated—causing markets to doubt its ability to convert on demand) and it took a crisis to get off the dollar. Once it did so, it fairly quickly restored economic growth with the fiscal space provided by return to its own currency.
And that brings us to “how governments really spend”. Any government that issues its own currency spends by “keystrokes”—crediting the account of the recipient and simultaneously crediting reserves to the recipient’s bank. (It could print currency and make payments that way—but the effect will be the same because recipients would make deposits in banks, which would receive credits to their reserves.) I repeat, this is not a proposal. It is reality. There’s no other way. You cannot print up Dollars in your basement. Government has to keystroke them into existence before you can pay your taxes or buy Treasuries.
There can be somewhat complex operational procedures that involve special private banks as well as intermediate steps involving the central bank and treasury bank accounts, but the end result is always the same: bank accounts get credited and banks get reserves. Usually the treasury then sells bonds to let banks earn higher interest than they receive on reserves. (See the discussion last week.)
On a floating exchange rate that is the end of the story. Banks can use their reserves to buy treasuries; depositors can demand cash (in which case the central bank ships it to the banks while debiting the banks’ reserves). But no one can return government IOUs to demand gold or foreign currency at a fixed exchange rate. There is no affordability constraint; there is no foreign currency or gold constraint. Government can meet all demands to convert to cash; and can pay all interest as it comes due through additional keystrokes.
However on a fixed exchange rate, or currency board, central bank and treasury IOUs have to be converted to foreign currency (or gold). And for that reason, a prudent government must limit its keystrokes. It can run out of foreign currency or gold. It can be forced to default on its promise to convert. That of course counts as a default on debt. Its “affordability” is called into question by markets when they doubt ability to do the conversions at the promised exchange rate. Imprudence is deadly. History is of course filled with imprudent governments—those that issue too many IOUs relative to the reserves promised for conversion on demand.
The floating rate provides policy space that can be used by prudent governments to pursue domestic policy goals with a greater degree of freedom. History is of course filled with imprudent governments there, too. There is no substitute for good governance. Still, it is curious that except for the losers of WWI (plus Poland and Russia, which were on the winning side but lost the war—so to speak–anyway), there are no cases of nominally democratic Western capitalist countries that have experienced hyperinflation in the past century. And if we limit our data set to those with floating currencies, there aren’t any with exchange rate crises, either.
Quite curious, no? Only countries with fixed exchange rates or other promises to deliver foreign currency or gold (such as debts in foreign currencies) seem to have hyperinflations and currency crises. And that always seems to come down to imprudent expansion of these IOUs relative to ability to actually deliver the foreign currency or gold.
While it appears that the fixed exchange rate guarantees prudence that is a foolish notion. The fixed exchange rate introduces exchange rate crises plus involuntary default as possibilities, in the pious hope that government will be prudent. Unfortunately, governments on fixed exchange standards more often adopt the prayer of St. Augustine: “Lord please make me prudent, but not just yet.”
Far from ensuring prudence and protection from high inflation, when sovereign government promises to deliver foreign currency it actually exposes the nation to Weimar Republic hyperinflationary risks—as we will see next week.
To conclude. It is not true that fixed exchange rates eliminate risks of exchange rate crises and hyperinflations. Because sovereign governments are not necessarily prudent.
And even if they are, their banks are not necessarily prudent. (Think Ireland! While the government was the paragon of financial prudence, its banks lent in foreign currency until the cows came home. When borrowers defaulted, the Irish government took on all the foreign currency debt—quite imprudent!)
Further, it is not true that floating rate standards invariably lead to hyperinflations. If that were true, we’d have hyperinflation all the time.
Finally, it is not true that ability to “print money” through keystrokes necessarily leads to hyperinflations. All sovereign governments that issue their own currency spend by keystrokes. Even if they promise to convert at a fixed exchange rate, they still spend by keystrokes. If keystrokes invariably cause hyperinflation, we’d have hyperinflation all the time.
We don’t. Hyperinflations are unusual outcomes. Next week we’ll take a look at some. And we’ll take a look at the case made by hyperventilators for prospective hyperinflation in the US.
Next Week: NOT WORTH A CONTINENTAL! HOW MODERN MONEY THEORY REPLIES TO HYPERINFLATION HYPERVENTILATORS (Part 2)
http://archive.economonitor.com/lrwray/2011/08/24/zimbabwe-weimer-republic-how-modern-money-theory-replies-to-hyperinflation-hyperventilators-part-1/
ジンバブエ！ワイマール共和国！現代貨幣理論が超インフレ過換気詞にどのように応答するか（その1）
著者：L. Randall Wray・2011年8月24日・コメント（920）この印刷を共有する53 81
大躍進
先週の記事で、Paul KrugmanのModern Money Theory（MMT）に対する批判に答えました。これは、独自の変動為替レート通貨を発行する主権政府が手ごろな価格制約に直面することはできないということです。自分自身の通貨借金。彼の批判は、銀行がどのように機能するのか、連邦政府が実際にどのように費やすのか、そしてこれらすべての業務を円滑に機能させるためにFRBが果たした役割に関する業務上の詳細に関する誤解に大きく煮詰まりました。私はここでそのことを書き直すことはしません。
しかし、残されたのは、政府がMMTの方針に沿って活動しているのであれば、破滅的なハイパーインフレへの道を進んでいるという議論です。もちろんオーストリアの人々は、MMTの勧告に従わなかったものであっても、すべてのフィアットマネー体制はこれらの危険にさらされていると長い間主張してきました。 MMTersは、ジンバブエやワイマール共和国のハイパーインフレの経験を再現する政策を推進していると非難されています。これは、急増する赤字に資金を供給するために「マネープリンティング」に頼った政府が、インフレが本当に記念すべき速度に加速するほど急速なペースでマネーサプライを増加させたことに起因していると考えられます。
次のようなグラフを使用して視聴者を評価するのは非常に簡単です。これは、金の点から見たワイマール共和国の紙幣の急速な減価償却を表しています。
あるいはジンバブエのメモの写真もあります。これはゼロの数に関する過去最高の記録を共有しています。
誰も高いインフレを防ごうとはしませんが、ハイパーインフレははるかに少なくします。彼の古典的な1956年の論文では、フィリップ・ケイガンは、月あたり50％以上のインフレ率としてハイパーインフレを定義しました。明らかにゼロはすぐに足し合わされ、経済生活は著しく混乱するでしょう。
ハイパーインフレの最も一般的な説明は貨幣のモネタリスト量論です。政府は印刷しすぎ、価格を上昇させます。しかし、物価が上がるにつれて流通の速度は上がります。値が急激に下がる限り、誰もお金を手に入れたくありません。明日それがより少なく購入するので、毎日収入を使うように賃金は毎日要求されます。それが意味することは、たとえマネーサプライが政府がメモを印刷することができるのと同じくらい急速に増えるとしても、それが価格の上昇に追いつくことは決してないということです。そして、値段が上がるほど速度が上がります。最終的には毎時の支払いを要求し、夕食時には店頭に駆け寄ります。夕食時の価格が高くなるためです。
基本的に、これはCaganの説明であり、数量理論の単純版はデータに合わなかった。物価が貨幣供給よりもはるかに早く上昇した場合、ハイパーインフレは「多すぎるお金の追跡」によって引き起こされると結論付けることができる。少数の商品」？経験の事実に合うように、量論は、高インフレ環境では、速度が安定しているという（貨幣と物価の間の関連を維持するために必要である）という古い量論はもはや成り立たないと言うように修正された。
したがって、改訂された数量理論を武装して、速度が安定していないにもかかわらず、高インフレインフレが多すぎるマネーから生じると主張することができます（マネーの成長がインフレより遅れるにつれて上昇します）。そしてマネタリストが政府がマネーサプライを支配すると主張しているように、ハイパーインフレは政府の政策によるものでなければならない。それに加えて、ハイパーインフレ期に、政府通貨（紙幣）の供給が急速に（余分なゼロが追加されて）上がるという観察。さらに、税収が支出に追いついていないため、政府は赤字を計上しているため、必然的にお金を印刷して差額を埋め合わせることになり、それが「多すぎるお金で商品を追いかける」ことになります。
そのため、ハイパーインフレのせいになっているのは、財政赤字を補うための政府のマネープリンティングにかかっています。 （今日の米国、英国、日本の状況との類似点を見ることができます。多額の財政赤字が銀行にお金の供給と価格を押し上げるために使うことができると思われる準備金でいっぱいにしています。）
溶液？政府の手を結ぶ。昔は金が錨となっていました（そしてもちろんAusterianの金のバグは昔の昔に戻りたいと思います）。今日必要なのは、均衡のとれた予算修正、借金限度額、あるいはPaul Krugmanのような赤字の鳩のための規律です。
すみません、今日のブログの長い紹介でした。いつものように、私は従来の知恵とは違うように頼みます。私はこれらの議論のいかなる部分も受け入れない。 MMTをベースにした別の知恵に飛躍しましょう。
私は三点を挙げたい。
1.政府が「キーストローク」で支出しているとMMTが言っている場合、これは記述子です。
イオンではなく、処方薬です。批評家が「お金を印刷する」ことによる政府の支出が必然的にハイパーインフレにつながるということが正しければ、ほとんどの先進国は常にハイパーインフレを抱えているでしょう。私たち全員がキーストロークで費やすからです。そして彼ら自身の通貨を発行するすべての政府はそれが税金（または債券販売）でそれを集めることができる前にそれを使う必要があります - 誰もそれを作成することができません。これらの政府に代わる代わる方法はありません - それでも、彼らはハイパーインフレを経験していません（実証されるべきポイント）。 WeimarやZimbabweのようなケース（あるいはアメリカ大陸に遡る方法）に目を向けなければならないということは、「お金の印刷」とハイパーインフレの関係について多くのことを教えてくれます。因果関係はそこには見つかりません。
ハイパーインフレを経験している国および通貨制度のいくつかの共通の特徴があるが、ハイパーインフレは非常に特定の状況によって引き起こされる。私はハイパーインフレの原因を完全に理解しているとは主張しません - しかし、Monetaristの説明は経験にほとんど光を当てません。賢明な選択肢があります。もう1つの観点から、よく知られた3つのケースを見ていきます。
3.米国（または英国または日本）の現在または将来の将来の状況には、ハイパーインフレはもちろんのこと、高いインフレを期待させるものは何もありません。
今日のブログの最初のポイントを取り上げます。来週は2点目と3点目を取り上げます。
MMTといわゆるフィアットマネーに対する批評家のほとんどは、金が金のような商品に密接に結びついていたことを想像していました。それは、政府と銀行の両方が「薄い空気から」お金を生み出す能力を制限しました。最も良い例は、おそらく政府の資金に「本当の」価値を与え、政府が実際にお金を使うために金を手に入れることを強いられた貴金属コインでした。紙幣（政府または銀行発行）に対する100％の金の裏付けを持つ厳格な金本位制も同じタスクを達成しました。
しかし、現実はいつもまったく違っていました。
明らかに私はここにお金の歴史を提示することはできません。コモディティコインストーリーの批評については、Modern Money Primer（http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/p/modern-money-primer.html）でブログ＃12（および来週のブログ＃13を参照）を参照してください。このように、金貨と銀貨は、（紙や電子バランスシートではなく）金属に記録されることがあったソブリンのIOUでした。実際、硬貨は通常、ソブリンによって宣言された名目価格で、金属価値をはるかに超えて循環していました（これは「名目主義」と呼ばれます。ソブリンは、今日のペニーの価値と同じように宣言によって名目値を設定します）。
そして彼らの価値は必ずしも安定しているわけではありませんでした：政府は彼らを「コインを叫ぶ」ことによって彼らを切り下げました（彼らが政府への支払いにおいて前の価値の半分で受け入れられると発表しました）。彼らはまた、金属含有量を減らすことによって彼らを「惑わしました」 - それは必ずしも彼らの名目値を全く変えませんでした。確かに、比較的安定した硬貨と価格が長期間にわたって存在する場合がありますが、これらは「メタリズム」ではなく「名目主義」を採用した強力で安定した政府に関連しています。その金属含有量によって決定される値）。
確かに、硬貨のための最も不安定な期間は、軽い硬貨を拒絶しながら、バリカンを捕まえるために硬貨を秤量することに頼っていた弱い王と一致しました。これは「グレシャムの法則」のダイナミクスを生み出し、誰もがコインを秤量し、重いコインを支払いに受け入れるが、軽いコインで支払いをしようとすることを強いました。本当の金銭的な混乱。これはようやく公称主義に行き、卑金属だけを硬くし、コインクリッパーのビジネスモデルを破壊することで解決されました。
さらに、ゴールドスタンダードは、今日のゴールドバグによって想像されるようには機能しませんでした。第一に、国々は金の出入りをしました。危機に見舞われたとき、彼らは金を捨てます。回復のために、経済が再び墜落したときに金の制約が彼らを強制的に撤退させるまで、彼らは続けます。金本位制は金融の安定に貢献するのではなく、経済を不安定にしました。
第二に、誰もそのルールに実際には参加していません。誘惑は常に強すぎて、金を活用することはできませんでした。 （ミルトンフリードマンでさえこれを認めたので、金本位制は理論的には理想的かもしれないが実際にはうまくいかないと彼が主張した理由である。）
第三に、第二次世界大戦後のブレトンウッズや第二次世界大戦前のパックスブリタニカの相対的安定期間は、それぞれ実際にはドルと英ポンドの標準でした。いずれの場合も、支配的な国は金の価格を固定することに同意し、他の国は支配的な通貨を固定することにしました。それは本当に金のためのバッファストックプログラム（価格の天井と金のための床）であり、国際貿易は実際にポンドで、そしてその後ドルで行われました（そしてBretton Woodの金はFort Knoxに安全に貯められました）。
安定のための条件
維持するのが難しい - それはどちらのシステムも長続きしなかった理由である。第二次世界大戦後、スターリングシステムは回復できず、そして確かにワイマール（来週議論される）と最後にヒトラーの両方のための条件を設定した。 Bretton Woodsシステムは1970年代初頭に崩壊しました。どちらの場合も、これらの固定為替相場制の崩壊は国際的混乱を招いた。
そしてそれは一般的に国内通貨をある種の固定為替相場基準（金であろうと外貨であろうと）に結び付けるためのほとんどの試みの最終的な結論です：それは崩壊するまで働きます。
金の虫と通貨ボードの熱狂的ファンは、高いインフレを経験している国が厳格な外部標準を採用することによってかなり急速にそれを下げることができるということは正しいです。アルゼンチンはそれをその通貨板でしました。しかしそれはそれから2つの問題を生み出します：ほとんどの国は経済を成長させ続けるのに必要な財政政策空間を提供するのに十分な外貨を稼ぐことができません。
第二に、財政政策の余地がなくなり、国内の成長がなくなって失業率が高まるという急増する問題に対処することが可能になったと認識されれば、通貨ボードから外れる簡単な方法はありません。アルゼンチンはドル準備に対する投機的な攻撃を受け（財政政策がかなり厳しく、失業率が高く、成長が蒸発したために市場が需要に応じて転換する能力に疑問を投げかけていたにもかかわらず）、ドルの下落に危機を迎えた。一度それが行われれば、それはそれ自身の通貨へのリターンによって提供された財政スペースでかなり急速に経済成長を回復させた。
そしてそれは私たちに「政府が実際にどのように費やすか」をもたらします。自国通貨を発行する政府はすべて、「キーストローク」で受領者の口座を貸方に記入し、同時に受領者の銀行に準備金を貸方記入します。 （通貨を印刷して支払いをその方法で行うことができますが、受取人が銀行に預金をすると、その準備金にクレジットが支払われるため、効果は同じになります。）繰り返しますが、これは提案ではありません。それは現実です。他に方法はありません。地下にドルを印刷することはできません。あなたがあなたの税金を支払うか、または宝物を買うことができる前に、政府はそれらを存在にキーストロークしなければなりません。
特別な民間銀行を含む多少複雑な操作手順や中央銀行と財務省の銀行口座を含む中間段階があるかもしれませんが、最終的な結果は常に同じです。銀行口座は貸方になり、銀行は準備金を得ます。通常、財務省はその後、銀行が準備金で受け取るよりも高い利子を稼ぐことができるように債券を売却します。 （先週の議論を見てください。）
物語の終わりである変動為替レートについて。銀行は自分の準備金を使って財宝を買うことができます。預金者は現金を要求することができます（その場合、中央銀行は銀行の準備金を引き落としながら銀行にそれを発送します）。しかし、固定の為替レートで金や外貨を要求するように政府のIOUを返すことはできません。手頃な価格の制約はありません。外貨や金の制限はありません。政府は現金に換金するというすべての要求を満たすことができます。それが追加のキーストロークを通して来るので、そしてすべての興味を払うことができます。
ただし、固定為替レート、または通貨ボードでは、中央銀行と財務省のIOUを外貨（または金）に変換する必要があります。そしてその理由で、慎重な政府はそのキーストロークを制限しなければなりません。それは外貨か金を使い果たすことができます。変換を約束してデフォルトにすることを強制できます。それはもちろん借金のデフォルトとしてカウントされます。約束された為替レートで変換を行う能力が疑われる場合、その「手頃な価格」が市場から疑問視されます。無礼は致命的です。歴史にはもちろん、未決定の政府、つまりオンデマンドでの変換が約束された準備金に対して多すぎるIOUを発行する政府があふれています。
変動金利は、慎重な政府が国内の政策目標をより大きな自由度で追求するために使用できる政策スペースを提供します。歴史はもちろん、そこにも未熟な政府でいっぱいです。良い統治に代わるものはありません。それでも、第一次世界大戦の敗者（勝者ではあったが戦争を失った - とにかく - とにかく）を除いて、名目上民主主義の西側資本主義国が過インフレーションを経験したことがないのは不思議である。過去の世紀に。また、データセットを変動通貨のデータセットに限定すると、為替レートの危機に陥ることもありません。
かなり好奇心が強い、いや？為替レートが固定されている、または外貨または金を調達することを約束している国（外貨建ての債務など）だけが、ハイパーインフレおよび通貨危機を抱えているようです。そしてそれは常に、実際に外貨や金を配達する能力と比較して、これらのIOUが急増していることに起因しているようです。
固定相場制が愚かな考えである慎重さを保証しているように見えますが。固定為替相場は、政府がその可能性として為替相場の危機に加えて非自発的債務不履行をもたらす。
慎重になります。残念ながら、固定交換基準の政府はより多くの場合、セントオーガスティンの祈りを採用しています。
主権政府が外貨の引き渡しを約束するとき、慎重さと高インフレからの保護を確実にすることからかけ離れて、来週見るように、それは実際に国家をワイマール共和国の超インフレリスクにさらす。
最後に固定為替相場が為替相場の危機やハイパーインフレのリスクを排除するのは事実ではありません。主権政府は必ずしも慎重ではないからです。
たとえ彼らがそうであっても、彼らの銀行は必ずしも慎重ではありません。 （アイルランドを考えなさい！政府は財政的慎重さのパラゴンだったが、牛が帰ってくるまでその銀行は外貨で貸した。借り手が不履行になると、アイルランド政府はすべての外貨建ての債務を引き受けた - これは非常に厄介だ！
さらに、変動金利基準が常にハイパーインフレにつながることは事実ではありません。もしそれが本当なら、私たちは常にハイパーインフレを抱えているでしょう。
最後に、キーストロークを介して「お金を印刷する」能力が必然的にハイパーインフレにつながるというわけではありません。独自の通貨を発行するすべての主権政府はキーストロークで支出します。たとえ彼らが固定の為替レートで変換すると約束したとしても、彼らはまだキーストロークで過ごします。キーストロークによって常にハイパーインフレが発生する場合は、常にハイパーインフレが発生しています。
そうではありません。ハイパーインフレは異常な結果です。来週はいくつか見てみましょう。それでは、米国で予想されるハイパーインフレについて過換気者が行った事例を見てみましょう。
来週：内容の価値がない！現代のマネー理論が過膨張症人工呼吸器にどのように応答するか（その2）
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