Revealing article at Slate from Matt Yglesias related to public finance and the inflationary environment 1,700 years ago in Ancient Rome under Emperor Diocletian circa 300 AD.
In the first part of the century, the Roman Empire doesn't have a bond market it can raise funds on so instead it finances budget deficits by coining money. This leads to positive inflation, but of a fairly normal non-ruinous sort in the 3-4 percent range.So if I read him correctly here, Yglesias perhaps contends that the "natural" way that a nation's government can "finance" itself, is to issue bonds to a non-government sector, but given the state of information technology back then, the Roman government had to settle, if you will, for an approach of "finance budget deficits by coining money".
This would be absurd.
He cannot see that the non-govt sector back in that day would not be able to even settle a "bond sale" back then without the government itself having first spent the silver or bronze coins into circulation in transactions to provision the Roman government in the first place.
How could his fictitious Roman government "Financiers" even contemplate such an absurd financial transaction? "Hey Brutus, let's go borrow our own coins that we just spent!".... Whaaaaaat!?!? This does not even pass the test of simple logic.
If local Roman government authorities needed additional provision, the ONLY choices they would have had would be to either mint new coins to spend or increase the rate of the local Roman Poll Tax. These would be purely fiscal operations.
You can see here how brainwashed people can become due to their immersion in our contemporary systems where in an absurd way, our current crop of fiscal morons think that the government itself has to "get the money" from the non-government and foreign sectors.
Don't fall for it Matt Yglesias.
Yglesias is sometimes good but embarrassing with this stuff.
ReplyDeleteKinda like Megan McArdle.
This is one reason why I argued that it might be a good idea to separate government bond issuance from the Treasury and give it to the Fed - so that even smart people like Matt stop getting confused about the purpose of government bonds.
ReplyDeleteGovernment bonds provide a low-risk savings vehicle for people looking for such a thing and inject regular interest payments into the financial sector. The government doesn't need bonds to fund itself.
The Treasury can run deficits as needed if Congress adopts operational rules that permit the Treasury to spend more than it receives.
The US should just end the tsy issuance offset as operationally unnecessary. Then abolish the Fed and rate setting by setting the overnight rate to zero and providing unlimited liquidity to solvent banks, and having Treasury run the settlement system. It's all computerized anyway.
ReplyDeleteSavings bonds could continue to be issued as is already with E-bonds. Constant fixed rate of 3% on a long bond. That sets the price on the outer end of the yield curve and the overnight at zero.
great post Matt. Way to flush 'em out.
ReplyDeleteExactly Dan.
sounds great to me Tom. From your lips to our nation's ears!!!!