非常嫌疑

Feb 29, 2012 J. Bradford DeLong

伯克利—在整个欧洲-大西洋地区，2008—2009年衰退后的复苏一直步履蹒跚，将本可治愈的周期性失业拖成了结构性失业。而资本积累过程中的小趔趄也演变成了旷日持久的投资短缺，也就是说，不光是在复苏不力的当下存在资本存量和真实GDP下降的问题，未来数十年可能都将如此。

西欧20世纪80年代的经验留给我们一条拇指规则：在任何一年，只要劳动力工作时间和资本存量因投资的下降而下降，从而导致产出比正常水平低了1 000亿美元，那么在未来年份中，充分就业的生产潜能就会比正常情况的预计值低100亿美元。

这条拇指规则的财政效应相当令人吃惊。试想一下，美国或西欧核心经济体明年增加1 000亿美元政府购买。再进一步试想一下，它们的中央银行尽管不愿意继续采取非常规货币政策进一步扩大规模，但也不愿意妨碍当选政府的经济刺激措施，让它们难堪。果真如此的话，简单的恒定货币条件乘数表明，我们将能看到GDP增加大约1 500亿美元。如此规模的提振反过来会带来500亿美元的税收增量，而国民财富水平将仅增加500亿美元。

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J. Bradford DeLong

Writing for PS since 2002
231 Commentaries

J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was Deputy Assistant US Treasury Secretary during the Clinton Administration, where he was heavily involved in budget and trade negotiations. His role in designing the bailout of Mexico during the 1994 peso crisis placed him at the forefront of Latin America’s transformation into a region of open economies, and cemented his stature as a leading voice in economic-policy debates.

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Gregor Schubert Mar 4, 2012

The thrust of the argument proposed here can be summarised as saying the following: Fiscal policy is very effective at bringing GDP back to trend in a situation where central banks are "unwilling to extend themselves further in unconventional monetary policy". While the rest of the article further details the exact implications of this situation, this is the crux of the argument, as otherwise, the central bank would "act to keep the economy on track to meet the monetary authority’s inflation target".

Unfortunately, this is also where the argument is most lacking: It presents hardly any evidence that the special situation it relies on is currently in existence: Central banks seem as concerned as ever about their inflation target. In Europe, the ECB is notorious for raising its interest rates last spring even in the face of a severe financial crisis unfolding in the sputhern countries, because it was concerned about inflation. At the same time, statements by FOMC members and the public discourse in the US attribute great importance to recent upticks in headline inflation, often blaming the Fed for what is (incorrectly) viewed as a negative development. Why blame the Fed if inflation was out of its control?

To summarize: there seems little evidence that central banks have stopped caring about, or are unable to influence, inflation. Thus, their response to fiscal policy attempts to raise output and inflation still matters, making fiscal attempts to raise inflation and output futile unless they are accommodated by complementary loosening of monetary policy. Consequently, in the face of a reluctant central bank the "more usual multiplier is the monetary-policy offset multiplier of 0.5 or zero". Thus the relevance of DeLong's argument in the current environment is questionable.
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Procyon Mukherjee Mar 1, 2012

The article strikes a chord on tweaking with multipliers while the world of investors would be watching with baited breath on the denouement as one would bet against the other; the jury is still out on the very definition of a safe asset. Every investor is also a consumer-spender, while every consumer is also an investor. The behavior as an investor cannot be completely out of sync with the behavior that we demonstrate as a consumer. This belies the rhetoric that the theory of ‘drawing from the future’ with multipliers of our choice envisions; how so ever efficient the markets are, or inefficient, whether as a herd or as an outlier, we the consumers-investors of the future must make a choice that is based on sustainable principles and we cannot draw from the future without an insurance that future generations can rely on. This insurance perhaps lies in our ability to make shared sacrifice and in investing in those assets that create sustainable long term value for the entire humanity; safe or unsafe is a myopic view.

Procyon Mukherjee
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Zsolt Hermann Feb 29, 2012

I hope we arrive to the point as soon as possible, when respected experts, political and financial leaders stop repeating their own mantras, and pull their heads out of their subjective, introverted boxes and start looking around.

We are talking about highly qualified, educated, experienced people but since they are buried under their own subjective opinion they are simply incapable of seeing the true reality around us.

Of course we are in unusual conditions as the article suggest, since we have run into such a dead end we have never been before. We are not in a crisis, but our whole human, political, economical system is collapsing as it has become unsustainable.

The whole foundation of the expansive constant growth system is false. It is based on producing excessive amount of unnecessary goods, products that masses of people are brainwashed, tricked to consume through the marketing machinery, forcing people to take on credit way above their means making them slaves to the system on multiple count. On the other hand manufacturing is based on "near slave" labour, exploiting less developed countries as long as possible, also exploiting our natural resources and environment beyond tipping points.

This is all objectively, well documented today.

Beyond the false foundations we have also evolved into a closed, interdependent system, where all the above mentioned practices are now blowing up in our face as in such an integral system any negative effect I introduce into the system comes back at me with multiple force.

So why are there still experts suggesting even more spending, stimulus or bailout, pretending further growth is still possible exhausting even our last assessts we could use for a recovery?

Instead of stubbornly pushing on with the dead horse, we should stop, examine, analize our situation, the system we live in and then adapt to the new conditions and start building a new system that is suitable for the global world of the 21st century.

We are badly in need of visionary people, who are capable of sharing the available factual, scientific information with the public, helping them to understand the need for change so people could enter a new system willingly, without any coercion, where these visionary leaders could create such a mutually responsible, equal, and considerate governing system that couldelevate all 7 billion people to a sustainable level.
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