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Economics

金融货币政策就在眼前

Apr 20, 2020 Adair Turner

伦敦—为了应对大流行病新冠肺炎，美联储将购买无限量的国债，而英格兰银行也将购买2000亿英镑(2500亿美元)的金边债券，欧洲中央银行亦将购买7500亿欧元(8150亿美元)的欧元区债券。几乎可以肯定，各国央行最终将提供金融货币，为财政赤字提供资金。但唯一的问题是：它们是否应该明确对此表态。

在目前的情况下，货币政策本身显然是无能为力的。各国央行纷纷下调政策利率，购买债券也压低了长期收益率。然而，没有人认为低利率会释放出更多的消费支出或商业投资。相反，低迷的经济增长将(尽可能地)通过增加政府在医疗保健方面的支出、对下岗工人的直接收入支持和减少税收来抵消。这将不可避免地导致前所未有的财政赤字。

从理论上讲，通过出售政府债券，这些赤字融资可能会通过该渠道提高债券收益率，从而有可能抵消刺激效应。但随着央行购买债券并压低收益率，政府能够以极低的利

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 4 Comments on this article

Avraam Dectis Jun 21, 2020

.
Great commentary from Baron Turner, as usual.
May I suggest that instead of focusing on just the mechanism of monetary finance that we instead look at re-engineering a few more bits of the economy so that such finance is not needed as often and is better understood.
That approach is called a Turbo Economics and is described here: https://medium.com/@trillionstrillions/turbo-economics-b617d24fb84e
Thank you.
Jack
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Kevin Newman Apr 24, 2020

I go along with the vast bulk of Lord Adair's concept

I add simply that helicopter money ie money financed fiscal expenditure, entails the relevant central bank suspending its independence for the duration of the stimulus programme

That is certainly controversial !

Yet two reasons make it more plausible now than ever before

One, we are effectively at the lower bound already so monetary policy is exhausted and second any excess inflation caused would be desirable as it would re-equilibrate the economy, for the better, away from persistent under-shooting its inflation target

Get the rotors whirring...!
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Tim Young Apr 22, 2020

I am pleased to see that Adair Turner mentions interest on reserves in this latest explanation of his overt monetary financing proposal. Now what he has to do is to realise that this is why the proposal offers no advantage over conventional government bond finance. Even if money creation is never reversed, because reserves pay interest at a close-to-market very-short-term interest rate ("Bank rate" in the UK; about the middle of the Fed funds target range in the USA), that, assuming that the fixed income market is roughly efficient, gives irredeemable reserves the same present value as ordinary fixed-term fixed-interest rate debt. Monetary financing is rather like government bond funding with irredeemable flowing rate notes. So you might as well fund government spending with conventional bonds anyway.

It is true that you can get away with paying less than a market rate of interest on some part of the reserves that you compel the banks to hold as reserves requirement, but that is effectively just a tax on banks, ultimately paid for by the users of banks, which is just about everyone. There are, however, plenty of other taxes that can be used to service public sector debt. And naturally, if you try to pay significantly less than a market rate of interest on the whole stock of reserves, their velocity of circulation increases, and they become inflationary.
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Paul Daley Apr 20, 2020

Turner is arguing from isolated examples. The post-war United States had the only functioning economy in a world of reconstructing states who needed dollars as much or more than they did the US goods and services. The same was true for Japan in the 1990s when it was flanked by rapidly growing economies in East Asia. But can everybody do what the United States and Japan did under special circumstances? The US ran into trouble in the 1970s when the demand for dollars ebbed. The same could occur again to both the US and Japan if East Asian growth or trade slows, or if new currencies emerge to support trade and payments. After all it's one thing to buy or sell low-yielding bonds that are denominated in a stable or appreciating currency. It's an entirely different story when the underlying currency begins to slip.
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