Global Money Notes #26 Countdown to QE4? — Zoltan Pozsar

Repo.

Credit Suisse
Global Money Notes #26 Countdown to QE4?

Zoltan Pozsar

Bill Mitchell — Japan still to slip in the sea under its central bank debt burden

President Trump banned a CNN reporter only to find his position overturned by the judicial system. Well CNN is guilty of at least one thing – publishing misleading and alarmist economic reports about Japan. In a CNN Business article last week (November 13, 2018) – Japan’s economy has a $5 trillion problem – readers were told that the Bank of Japan has no “dwindling options to juice growth if a new crisis hits” because “it’s now sitting on assets worth more than the country’s entire economy”. The real story should have been that the Bank of Japan continues to demonstrate the categorical failure of mainstream macroeconomics and, conversely, ratify the core principles of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). That is what the Japanese experience since the early 1990s tells us. And all the stories about special cases; cultural peculiarities, closed markets, etc that the mainstream economists wheel out when another one of their predictions about how Japan is about to sink into the sea as a result of its public debt levels, or that interest rates are about to go through the roof because of the on-going and substantial fiscal deficits; or that inflation is about to accelerate because of the massive monetary injections; and more, are just smokescreens to divert our attention from the poverty of their analytical framework. The Japanese 10-year bond trade is called the ‘widow maker’ because hedge funds who try to short it lose big. The Japanese monetary system is my real-time, non-linear economic laboratory which allows all the key macroeconomic propositions to play out live. And MMT is never very far off the mark. Try juxtaposing New Keynesian theory against Japan – total dissonance....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Japan still to slip in the sea under its central bank debt burden
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Bill Mitchell – Bank of Japan’s QE strategy is failing

On April 20, 1018, the IMF presented its – Asia and Pacfic Department Press Briefing – in conjunction with the release of the April 2018 World Economic Outlook and the upcoming (May 9, 2018) release of its Asia and Pacific Regional Economy Outlook. The Deputy Director of the Asia and Pacific Department, one Odd Per Brekk, told the audience that Japan should continue its Quantitative Easing (QE) program and maintain transparency in its purchase volumes so as to ensure the strategy to accelerate the inflation rate up to the 2 per cent target is achieved. Part of this strategy involves shifting inflationary expectations from their recent low levels. Critics of the program shriek that the asset base of the Bank of Japan is now approaching the nominal GDP level and given that a high proportion of those assets are comprised of Japanese Government Bonds, that reversing the strategy eventually will be difficult and risks involving the Bank is huge losses, which might render it insolvent. Insolvency has no application in the case of a central bank which can never go broke. Further, the Bank never needs to reverse the QE purchases. There is no relevance in the rising assets to GDP ratio. The problem is that QE will not achieve the desired end. The Bank has expanded its QE program significantly yet the inflation rate and inflationary expectations remain well below the 2 per cent target. They will eventually work out that the mainstream theory that predicted otherwise is erroneous.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Bank of Japan’s QE strategy is failingBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer — Quantitative Easing vs. Fiscal Policy

… when people pay taxes their bank accounts are debited and correspondingly the government account at the central bank is replenished. During an accounting period, government expenditure will have been funded by tax revenues received, sale of bonds to the private sector, plus the increase in central bank money....

I am not sure from reading this whether the authors hold that taxes fund spending and debt issuance finances deficits in the accounting sense of "fund" and "finance," or that such funding/financing is operationally necessary before spending can take place. The former is consistent with the MMT view, but not the latter.

From the MMT point of view, the central bank creates government liabilities by crediting accounts with bank reserves, which increases the monetary base. Funds in the Treasury's general account (TGA) do not count toward either the monetary base or the money supply. 

In the US, when the Treasury spends in accordance with appropriations, it directs the Fed to credit bank's account in the payments system with settlement balances aka "bank reserves." This increases base money. When taxes are paid, base money is reduced by that amount and taxpayers deposit accounts at banks are reduced. The spending and taxation are reflected in the government fiscal balance.

Similarly, when government securities are issues, the auction is paid for with settlement balances, the monetary base is reduced by that amount, and purchasers's deposit accounts at banks are reduced.

This simply involves crediting and debiting various accounts on the government's books (Treasury and central bank), banks' books, and bank customers books. There is no operational need for funding for the government to spend prior to spending than for banks to secure funding before extending credit by making loans and crediting deposit accounts. 

In the process, the LHS and RHS balance, which is what "funding" means in an accounting sense. For banks, the corresponding entry in a deposit account "funds" the loan. For government, the entries in accounts recording tax payments and debt issuance "fund" spending. 

With respect to government, the ratio between money creation that adds to the monetary base and money withdrawal through taxation and securities issuance that reduces the money base determines the fiscal balance. 

The difference between taxation and securities issuance is that taxation "destroys" money in the sense  that the monetary based and M1 are reduced, decreasing non-government net financial wealth in aggregate, while securities issuance shifts funds from the monetary base and deposit accounts to government securities without changing non-government net financial wealth in aggregate. Only the term changes and not the amount. 

MMT calls the issuance of government securities "draining the monetary base." It is a monetary operation that is not necessary operationally, but rather it is an optional tool operationally that is convenient for conducting monetary policy when the central bank chooses to set the interest rate above zero and is not paying interest on excess reserves. Draining the monetary base with securities issuance reduces the needs to open market operations (OMO) using repurchase agreements (repo).

However, instead of the Treasury issuing securities, the central bank could simply book loans to the Treasury directly. This is permitted in some jurisdiction, but it is prohibited politically in the US. This is a voluntary political choice that doesn't involve the US government needing to obtain funding from nongovernment in order to spend. In actuality, spending funds both tax payments in aggregate and securities purchases in aggregate, since the funds that government spends are offset on the governments' books by taxes and sale of government securities, both of which reduce the monetary base. The monetary base consists of government liabilities that only the central bank can create and that must already be available for tax payment and securities purchases. 

In this sense, government spends first which creates the funding for it similar to the way that the extension of a loan as an account receivable that is bank asset creates the corresponding funding in the form of a credit to a customer deposit account, which is a bank liability. Similarly, when government spends, the money base as a liability of the central bank increases and the TGA is debited. Debiting the TGA doesn't affect any of the measures of money.  When taxes are paid, monetary based decreases, which is the same as saying that the central banks' liabilities decrease. The TGA is credited but this credit doesn't count toward any measure of money. Thus tax payments "destroy money." The Treasury does not have money to spend. It simply has a credit that is used in determining the fiscal balance.

Based on spending appropriations and tax policy determined by the fiscal authority, generally the legislative branch, the Treasury and central bank coordinate operations to accommodate both the fiscal operations of the Treasury conducted by the central bank as the government's fiscal agent with the monetary operations of the central bank. This is coordinated so that all accounts stay in balance, which means that spending is always funded using government liabilities as the spending occurs.

The key to understanding this is that "the government neither has not does not have money." The government as monetary and fiscal authority issues the currency, determines monetary and fiscal policy, using its agents, the Treasury and central banks to carry it out in accordance with law and regulation.

Central banks are usually delegated as the fiscal agent of government having the authority and responsibility for issuing the currency. This means that the central bank is not limited in the amount it can credit to its liabilities. That is, as the currency issuer the central bank does not have to get money elsewhere. 

The Treasury does not have money either since credits to its account at the central bank do not count toward any measure of money. Moreover, the doesn't have to get money from the central bank to spend. The Treasury directs the central bank to credit non-government accounts in accordance with the government appropriations. Like the liabilities of the central bank that constitute bank reserves, the numbers in the TGA are simply accounting entries used to compute the fiscal balance from the income statement and balance sheet and show sources and uses of funding. 

The Treasury and central bank coordinate operations to ensure that accounts balance as operations are conducted. From the logical point of view, spending must precede taxation and securities purchases, since government only accepts its own liabilities in the payments system operated by the central bank. Currency users have to get these liabilities, whereas government is the currency issuer. From the temporal point of view, accounts are debited and credited simultaneously so that they are always in balance. There is some intra-day leeway but all accounts must balance at the close. 

Another key point is that government liabilities held by non-government are non-government financial assets. Since the liability is on the side of government, these financial assets held by non-government constitute non-government net financial assets in aggregate, that is to say, non-government financial wealth the funding of which is government liabilities.

Triple Crisis
Quantitative Easing vs. Fiscal Policy
Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer

Bill Mitchell — Helicopter money is a fiscal operation and is not inherently inflationary

There was a Project Syndicate article (September 2, 2016) – The Unavoidable Costs of Helicopter Money – claiming that “In fact, there are major downsides to helicopter money”. Hmm. Should I read this article was my thought at the the time. Waste a few minutes of my life. I wondered if I could pen the article in advance and then check to see how close I was. The theme would be inflation. In that I was correct. But the author really innovated a bit and, in doing so, undermined his own argument. What we learn is fairly straightforward. If a government continues to increase nominal spending growth ahead of the growth in productive capacity then there will be inflation. The argument presented is, in fact, nothing to do with the monetary operations that accompany government spending – helicopter or otherwise. The inflation risk is in the spending. If private investment expenditure outstripped the capacity of the supply-side to produce the capital equipment demanded then the same outcome. Should we caution against such expenditure? Should be make it taboo? Obviously not.…

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
Helicopter money is a fiscal operation and is not inherently inflationary
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Neil Wilson — Accounting for the Folly of QE

Steve Keen has an interesting piece up over at Forbes that describes the folly of QE and how it doesn't actually do what people thing it does.

The central points are correct. The amount of reserves in aggregate existing in the banking system is determined largely by the Central Bank, they don't get lent out and overall they can't really go anywhere other than back and forth.

However there are few things in there that perhaps could be misinterpreted.…

3spoken
Accounting for the Folly of QE
Neil Wilson

Bill Mitchell — The reality of Germany and the buffoons in Brussels intervenes …

This week, I seem to have been focused on central banking this week, which is not my favourite topic, but is all the rage over the last several days given the decision of the Bank of Japan to use negative interest rates on any new bank reserves and then continue to pump reserves into the system via its so-called QQE policy (swapping public and corporate bonds for bank reserves), and then imposing a tax on the reserves so created. Crazy is just one euphemism which comes to mind. So still on that theme and remembering that the Bank of Japan explicitly stated that the combination of QQE and the tax on reserves (they call it a negative interest rate – same thing) was introduced to increase the inflation rate back up towards its target of 2 per cent per annum, I thought the following paper was interesting. The paper from the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis (published July 2015) – Current Federal Reserve Policy Under the Lens of Economic History: A Review Essay – considers the unconventional monetary monetary policy interventions taken by the US Federal Reserve Bank between 2007 and 2009 and comes to the conclusion that “there is no work, to my knowledge, that establishes a link from QE to the ultimate goals of the Fed inflation and real economic activity”. Maybe the Bank of Japan and the ECB bosses should sent this researcher an E-mail and request his evidence. They don’t seem to have been able to escape from the straitjacket of their neo-liberal Groupthink.…

This is much more about central banking, QE, and economists' erroneous understanding of this than specifically about Japan or the EZ.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
The reality of Germany and the buffoons in Brussels intervenes …
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Andrea Terzi — More Target2 divergence: This time is different

In conclusion, the QE liquidity largely goes to banks in the “core” and sits there. This also means that “core” banks are the ones most penalized by negative rates.

Money And The Real Economy
More Target2 divergence: This time is different
Andrea Terzi, Professor of Economics, Franklin College, Switzerland

Martin Armstrong — Is Quantitative Easing the Same as Printing Money?

Gets this right. He is out of paradigm in other ways that don't come up in this post.

Armstrong Economics
Is Quantitative Easing the Same as Printing Money?
Martin Armstrong

Zero Hedge — Deutsche Bank's chief credit strateigst Jim Reid on the endgame

Deutsche Bank's chief credit strateigst Jim Reid.

I'd call it the second leg down.

Zero Hedge
This Is The Endgame, According To Deutsche Bank

Bill Mitchell — lightweight garbage from The Economist

Bill initially smacks down The Economist as a propaganda rag, but the rest of the article is an excellent primer on PQE and the difference between QE and the misnamed  PQE. QE is a monetary operation and PQE is a fiscal operation.

The differences are (see PQE is sound economics but is not in the QE family:

1. QE does not change the net financial asset position of the non-government sector at all – that is, the net wealth remains unchanged. It is an asset swap. The non-government sector just rearranges is wealth portfolio – more cash, less bonds. No net change.
That is the essence of a – monetary policy operation – which alters the liquidity in the economy. It does it by portfolio swaps and in doing so influences the interest rates and the term structure.

2. PQE (or OMF) means the central bank, as one part of the consolidated government sector, the other being the Treasury, would use the currency-issuing capacity of the government to facilitate the purchase of real goods and services to build productive infrastructure.

The NIB [National Investment Bank] is just a fancy title for a government agency and would be engaged in public spending – that is, in a fiscal operation. It would be spending out of some account the Bank of England created on its behalf and filled with numbers, presumably with many zeros after the first few digits.

PQE is not QE because it is a fiscal operation, which means it would increase the net financial assets in the non-government sector because it would increase national income (via spending on infrastructure).

PQE as envisaged is a fiscal operation, not a monetary operation, whereas QE as practiced by the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Bank of America, the Bank of Japan etc are not fiscal operations.

Bill Mitchell – billy blog
lightweight garbage from The EconomistBill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

Mark Thoma — 'Central Banks Have Made the Rich Richer'

Paul Marshall, chairman of London-based hedge fund Marshall Wace, in the FT:

"Central banks have made the rich richer: Labour’s new shadow chancellor has got at least one thing right. ... Quantitative easing ... has bailed out bonus-happy banks and made the rich richer. ...

"It is no surprise that the left is angry about this, nor that they are looking for other versions of QE that do not so directly benefit bankers and the rich.…"

Economist’s View
'Central Banks Have Made the Rich Richer'
Mark Thoma | Professor of Economics, University of Oregon

Was I right or was I right? Stupid eventually sinks to the bottom.

Back in 2012 I wrote an article about hedge fund little boy, David Einhorn.

(Click on the image above to read the entire post.)

In that post I talked about how Einhron was at some conference and made some really stupid idiotic comments like these:

"Norway is the only country in the world which can finance itself."

"China is misunderstood and is not an investment opportunity because it doesn't have enough money to feed the economy."

Norway can "finance" itself? Yeah, um, is that a revelation? (He's right, but for the wrong reasons.)

And China doesn't have enough yuan? Is he serious?

I think at that conference or shortly thereafter Einhorn announced that he had a huge position in gold because he said that he had dinner with Bernanke and was scared shitless at the answers to the questions he  posed to the former Fed Chairman. His thoughts went something like, "Wow, all this QE and 'money printing' is going to create hyperinflation."

Right...he didn't even BEGIN to understand monetary operations. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Totally fucking clueless.

And NOW we see this:

Hahahaaha!!!!!!! The gods have delivered!!

Einhorn has deservedely been slaughtered in gold. He's Schiff with a bigger purse and maybe not for long!

These guys are the worst...the absolute, worst. As far as I am concerned they cannot lose money quick enough. If governemnt won't "euthanize" them, which they won't, then maybe they'll just die off from their own stupidity. But that's probably wishful thinking because I'm sure they'll  just get their bought politicians friends to enact laws and policies that force their victims to pay them back for all their losses.

Yes, Einhorn's a billionaire and for the life of me I will never be able to figure out how that happened. If Einstein were alive today he'd have trouble with that, too, and by the way, Albert Einstein was arguably one of the smartest humans to ever walk the planet, but he made like $60k per year in today's money. Just sayin'.

What irony...Einsten and Einhorn. The names sound very similar, but BOY, what a difference.

Neil Wilson — Banks are fully funded

The Bank of England has published a blog post asking if Quantitative Easing boosted bank lending.

The language in that piece isn't helpful. But it is written in the expected format of its intended audience (those who believe in the BLC theories) without being wrong. I thought it might confuse a few people.

All banks are fully funded, as I've indicated before….

3spoken
Banks are fully funded
Neil Wilson

Mark Blyth, Eric Lonergan and Simon Wren-Lewis — Now the Bank of England needs to deliver QE for the people

We propose that the government legislates to empower the Bank with the ability to make payments directly to the household sector

The Guardian
Now the Bank of England needs to deliver QE for the people
Mark Blyth, Eric Lonergan and Simon Wren-Lewis

Rob Parenteau — Draghi’s Doom Loop(s) – More Than Just the Euthanasia of the Rentiers

The recently adopted quantitative easing (QE) approach by the ECB, in concert with the negative deposit policy rate (NDPR) introduced last summer, has set off a number of nested disequilibrium dynamics that may unwittingly introduce a material increase in systemic risk for the eurozone, and perhaps beyond.

Lord Keynes anticipated what he termed a “euthanasia of the rentiers”, as he expected active monetary policy would be successful in reducing long-term interest rates, and the share of the population living off of bond coupons would eventually just wither away. By way of contrast, if the following assessment is correct, Draghi may have signed a mutually assisted suicide pact with finanzkapital in the eurozone.

The logistics of implementing QE (including questions about whether there are enough bonds for the ECB to purchase, as well as the related market “liquidity” concerns), or whether or not QE represents what Lord Turner refers to as “open monetary financing”, are not the real problem, or at least not the most compelling ones. Rather, the implementation of QE with a large and increasing share of the bond market displaying negative yields to maturity (NYTM) presents a number of serious challenges to financial stability in the eurozone.

To cut to the chase, the ECB’s QE and NDRP measures may be setting investors up for a discontinuous price event, much like what was experienced in the equity market meltdown back in October 1987. Even if a disruptive yield spike is avoided, or even contained and reversed by ECB heroics, pursuing QE under NYTM market conditions may lead to a significant dampening down of bank and insurance company profitability. In the extreme, the solvency of key eurozone financial institutions could once again come under question. This could further complicate the ECB’s chances of achieving their 2% inflation goal, as it may dampen the bank lending channel as a key transmission mechanism for unconventional monetary policy.

The entire set up, in other words, begins to take on many of the characteristics of Andrew Haldane’s Doom Loops. In this case, however, the ECB may unintentionally be setting off nested Doom Loops that will feed on each other, and thereby magnify systemic risks quicker than investors and policy makers might otherwise imagine possible. Below is a concise sketch of the main elements of the Doom Loop dynamics the ECB may have set in motion.....

Naked Capitalism
Rob Parenteau: Draghi’s Doom Loop(s) – More Than Just the Euthanasia of the Rentiers
Rob Parenteau

Martin Weale, Tomasz Wieladek — What are the macroeconomic effects of asset purchases?

We examine the impact of large scale asset purchase announcements of government bonds on real GDP and the CPI in the United Kingdom and the United States with a Bayesian VAR, estimated on monthly data from 2009M3 to 2014M5. We identify an asset purchase announcement shock with four different identification schemes, always leaving the reactions of real GDP and CPI unrestricted, to test whether these variables react to asset purchases. We then explore the transmission channels of this policy. The results suggest that an asset purchase announcement of 1% of GDP leads to a statistically significant rise of .58% (.25%) and .62% (.32%) rise in real GDP and CPI for the US (UK). In the US, this policy is transmitted through the portfolio balance channel and a reduction in household uncertainty. In the UK, the policy seems to be mainly transmitted through the impact on investors’ risk appetite and household uncertainty.

Download the paper: CEPR Discussion Paper 10495

VOX.eu — CEPR's Policy Portal
What are the macroeconomic effects of asset purchases?
Martin Weale, Tomasz Wieladek

Dirk Ehnts — How much financial assets can the Fed buy per year?

The Fed can create central bank money (reserves) by keystroke and in this manner acquire financial assets, thus reducing their supply and likely increasing the price of the remaining financial assets. Whether it was a good idea to do this will be the subject of some discussion in the future, I think. (Note that the Fed is not allowed to spend those reserves into the real economy directly by buying goods and services. That would be Treasury’s job, with its democratic oversight.)

I understand that the Bank of Japan is now buying equities as part of its QE program, too. It's been rumored that the Fed had a "plunge protection team" as part of the "Greenspan put."

econoblog 101
How much financial assets can the Fed buy per year?
Dirk Ehnts | Berlin School for Economics and Law

Gerald Epstein — Will Quantitative Easing Solve the European Economic Crisis?

More on Greece and Germany than QE.

TripleCrisis
Will Quantitative Easing Solve the European Economic Crisis?
Gerald Epstein | Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts at 

Amherst and Co-director, Political Economy Research Institute

Andrea Terzi — Is QE forever?

The point of Draghi’s QE is not the amount. It is the principle.

This is the really big news in the Eurozone where, until last week, the ECB’s monetary operations did not include the possibility of trading in the government securities market in the same way the Fed, the Bank of England, or the Bank of Japan do. 

With QE, the ECB has become an actor in the government securities market and, as happens in the U.S,, the U.K., or Japan, this provides continuous liquidity to the bonds being traded, removing default risk.

The ECB is now acting like a central bank.

QE will not last forever. But the new attribute of the ECB as a dealer in government bonds is here to stay. 

Money and the Real Economy
Is QE forever?

Andrea Terzi, Professor of Economics, Franklin College, Switzerland