Tag Archives: narrow banking

The Banking System We Need

Posted on by under Circuitism / MCT / Keen / Bank Reform / Credit Money, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

As the crisis of 2007 demonstrated, the banking system in its current form does not optimally serve the public interest. To make the system work in the best interest of the nation as a whole, I would make the following changes:

Banks

  • Banks that are allowed to grant loans that create deposits would operate under the Mosler/Mitchell/Wilson proposals including:
  • Be allowed direct access to government funds  (details below)
  • All bank levies, liquidity ratios, and reserve requirements would be eliminated.
  • Banks must operate on a single balance sheet, and with no subsidiaries of any kind.
  • Banks should not be allowed to engage in profit making ventures beyond basic lending; banks should profit through high quality credit analysis.
  • Banks would be allowed to lend only directly to borrowers, and only for capital development purposes (i.e. business credit lines and household loans)
  • Loans must be kept on their books until cleared.
  • Banks cannot accept collateral.
  • Banks cannot buy (or sell) credit default insurance.
  • There would be a narrow banking option.

Treasury & Federal Reserve

All Federal Reserve functions would be absorbed by the Treasury. No public purpose is served by the Federal Reserve that cannot not be more democratically, efficiently, and transparently carried out by the Treasury.

Converting U.S. Government securities into federal reserves via open market operations serves no public purpose. The Treasury would fund the monetary system and public expenditure by spending zero interest perpetual bonds directly into the economy (electronically in the same manner currently used for transferring demand deposits and federal reserve accounts).

The same effect as above could be achieved by having the Federal Reserve keep the discount rate and fed funds rate target at zero and allow zero rate overdrafts by the Treasury on its deposit account. However, maintaining and allowing a Federal Reserve/Primary Dealer(s) middleman to do this serves no public purpose.

Having the Treasury spend zero interest perpetual bonds directly into the economy allows for funding full resource utilization (including mobilization/training for all idle labor). The public purpose is hindered by obfuscation from complex and needless Open Market/Primary Dealer operations. The national government maintains productivity and stable price levels through fiscal spending and taxation respectively and this should be done both directly and openly.

The fundamental structure/goals of the current FOMC will be maintained within the Treasury, with a primary mandate to maintain full productivity and a stable price level. As now, appointments to the body will outlast/overlap political and administrative terms of office, allowing the price stability mandate to remain apolitical in the manner of the current FOMC.

The role of banks and credit

The role of banks is to provide for a payments system and to fund loans based on credit analysis.

The payments system will be an open clearing system created by the state available to all on an open license. The public purpose is best served by a single public payment system.

A primary area of concern with a non-endogenous monetary system based on treasuries is that if banks are only allowed to loan funds they actually possess (in the way building societies/credit unions traditionally functioned) lending will not be sufficiently responsive to the needs of the economy. Credit is thought to be overly restricted and bank balance sheet expansion/contraction not able to nimbly adapt to prevailing economic conditions.

Crucially, the above concern over restricted credit demonstrates a failure to follow through with the full implications of a direct treasury funded system. Zero interest perpetual bonds, unlike current bank credit, will not be extinguished by loans being repaid. This is not trivial. Under this system the incentives and availability of funds for building society/S& L/credit union type institutions is vastly greater than the current system due to the way in which repayment does not extinguish money in the way it does in the current system.

The current system relies on distracting Federal Reserve/ Primary Dealer operations that maintains the destructive public belief in the “household analogy.” This is also perpetuated by the demand deposit money system. Neither of these processes serve the public and are easily bypassed.

“Endogenous” bank balance sheet expansion
In addition to building society/credit union type institutions, special banks will be allowed to grant loans that create treasury deposits, with the loaned treasuries extinguished on repayment.

These public/private partnerships are licensed to create and extinguish (as loans are repaid) zero interest perpetual Treasury bonds. They serve as intermediaries between the Treasury and businesses/individuals who are willing to take on what is in effect a special tax burden for a special privilege (treasury funding).

This process is the same as the current private endogenous demand deposit creation process which is able to nimbly expand and contract to meet changing economic conditions. However, crucially, it beneficially keeps the process on one national balance sheet. The creation of private demand-deposit money serves no public purpose that cannot be duplicated with direct-issued treasury money.

These transactions are carried out in the same way as bank credit money is created now, with the asset restrictions outlined in the “banks” section above (the Mosler/Mitchell/Wilson rules).

These special funding/taxation agreements are one more policy choice for spending into the economy, along with fiscal, tax reduction, and citizen dividend options. Crucially, the amount of spending via this channel can, unlike the current system, be easily made highly countercyclical via changes to capital requirements, loan quality assessment, and interest rates and is a policy decision like any other.

Summary: Stability, Equity, Innovation 

A monetary system is made by creating and expanding a balance sheet and the public operating within the asset side of it.
Taxes (or the bank equivalent, loans) represent a debt. This debt obligation is traded around as currency. This is why taxes (or bank debt repayment) give value to a currency.

  • It can be national, with government spending creating deposits and taxes destroying deposits. That is, the public swaps the government’s deposits (treasuries) around as money.
  • It can be endogenous, with bank loans creating deposits and repayment destroying deposits. The public swaps banks’ demand deposits around as money.
  • In the latter case when businesses/individuals choose to take out a loan beyond what the building society/credit union/mutual funds banks might provide, they in effect choose to take on greater spending and in return take on an additional tax burden (thus helping to maintain the value of the currency; taxes give value to a currency). For the good of the public and for innovation, individuals voluntarily asume a possible gain and asume a liability.
  • Both systems can exist at same time with same denomination, as in modern economies.
  • Both their combined total size and the balance between them is important…

Optimal total size and optimal balance 

  • Optimal level of total money creation = enough to keep the economy at full productivity, through both fiscal policy and through individuals having money created for them (loans) for spending on productive purposes.
  • Optimum balance is enough national spending to create public goods that otherwise wouldn’t be done – i.e., infrastructure, education, full use of idle resources including idle labor, military, and health care.
  • Additional spending into the economy for innovative, productive economic activity is by the special banks (endogenous) sector. This private borrowing/repaying allows private venture-type investment by individuals who agree to what is in effect voluntary taxation. This is also equitable because, unlike normal taxation, individuals ask for the additional opportunity (and accept voluntary “taxation” in return).  If credit analysis is administered in the right way, this means goods created by individuals who are willing to take on rewards but also take on an additional tax.
  • Both systems net to zero. This is crucial to emphasize in both systems, albeit for different reasons. In the government balance sheet expansion monetary system, it is important to realize that as a whole the system is debt free (assets and liabilities net to zero) as this highlights the fact that the government can expand the balance sheet as much as they want in order to bring all idle resources into productive use. Being clear on the equity, debt free nature of the national balance sheet crucially highlights the fact that the nation is not a household and is key to getting the public to realize that the government balance-sheet monetary system does not remotely function like a household.
  • On the endogenous side, although the private endogenous system nets to zero the total size of its balance sheet relative to the monetary system matters. If the endogenous balance sheet expands greatly due to unproductive debt creation for the FIRE sector (as now), although it nets to zero it nevertheless unfairly allows real claims on real resources.
  • The system balanced so that there is easy availability of the “endogenous” system to those who want to borrow/repay, but it is far more stable than the current system.
  • One national balance sheet reflects the reality of our intertwined monetary-financial system and allows easier optimization of public spending and productive investment.

[I am traveling at the moment & this is a rough draft that needs editing – comments greatly appreciated]

~~~

March 28, 2019  UPDATE: The Intro to Economics textbook is finished! Live on Amazon here –

1000 Castaways: Fundamentals of Economics

TOWARDS A PURE STATE THEORY OF MONEY

Posted on by under Full Reserve Banking, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

Knapp State Theory of Money cover, 1905[Prologue to this post]

MODERN MONETARY THEORY (MMT) notes correctly that money is a creature of the state, and that important macroeconomic and policy conclusions follow from this understanding, e.g., sovereign states are not revenue constrained and spending is primarily limited by inflation. Taxes give value to state money and maintain its value (i.e., inflation can be controlled through taxes).

One (among many) key policy insight is that a job guarantee is possible. A job guarantee not only achieves what many think should for myriad social reasons be a primary goal of macroeconomics but also further creates a buffer stock (the most useful one of any imaginable given the social reasons just mentioned) that achieves an additional primary macroeconomic policy goal – stability.

However, there is no state that operates under a pure state system of money. Most of what serves as money in most banking systems in the world is privately created credit money.

We can compare the current most common banking system with a pure state system of money:

PURE STATE SYSTEM OF MONEY

 

CURRENT SYSTEM

Money is a creature of law.

Money is a creature of law.

Money is valued because it can be used to extinguish debt to its issuer.

Money is valued because it can be used to extinguish debt to its issuer.

The issuer is the state.

The issuers are the state and private banks.

Taxes move resources into the public sector

Taxes move resources into the public sector.      Loan repayments move resources into the private (often finance) sector

This raises important questions. If the state is not a monopoly issuer of money, do other neo-chartalist/functional finance/MMT insights hold?

A sovereign currency issuer is still not revenue constrained. And it can still spend towards full employment and other public purposes.

One major worry, however, is whether, because the state does not have a monopoly on money creation, it can set prices in the ways MMT argues. Especially, trying to do so while not having a monopoly on money creation may be inflationary even with otherwise appropriate taxation.

So what are the possibilities? Let’s imagine a system where the state truly has a monopoly on money creation. The state creates money and a payment system. There can still be loans and borrowing, but borrowing will be from someone else giving up use of their money, just as if you loaned a friend a tenner from your pocket. The risks and rewards of this can be pooled for large capital projects.

Let’s ignore the sometimes heard first criticism of this: “deflation!”. Imagine moving to this system in a portfolio neutral way, so that essentially all M’s (M2 and beyond) are, through bookkeeping entries, changed to M1 in a one-off system change. (There are also worries that this “creation” of M1 would be inflationary by others; they seem not to understand what “portfolio neutral” means.)

The obvious advantage is that bank runs will be a thing of the past – assuming a few other obvious regulatory moves (on securities and such) and all bad loans will be losses to individual investors, never systemic (this incidentally puts the incentives for loan quality and underwriting in the right places, raising the quality of loans in the first place). If Joe doesn’t pay you back his tenner, you are the only loser and there is no amplification of this loss. Cascading liquidity crises simply are not possible under this system.

THERE ARE THEN TWO RELATED objections – first, that without continued private credit money creation, this new system would still be deflationary. The related objection is that the “dynamic” private credit money system is behind much innovation and growth, and this would be lost.

On the first – this is interesting as it highlights a major question on the purpose and effectiveness of government. If money is a creature of the state, and a sovereign government cannot be insolvent, then it cannot be that a pure state money system will be deflationary because there is not enough money. The state can create as much money as it needs to re-inflate an economy.

The worry, then, must be that somehow the state will not be able to get the money it can endlessly create into the right hands, while somehow the private credit money system does. This highlights the fact that the worries about abolishing private bank credit money creation cannot truly be about the quantity of money or credit but about how and by whom the money and credit needed to keep the economy from deflation is created and spent into the economy.

This gets to much of what is the core concern of a pure state money system by both advocates and detractors alike, although often they are not nearly as clear as they could be about it.

What serves the public purpose more- having only the state create and spend money and credit into the economy, or allowing the private sector to control part of this public utility?

We already saw that one concern is that private credit money may force a tradeoff between public spending and inflation. What are some other potential costs? What is the real value and real cost of funding borrowers’ needs by allowing credit money to be created privately?

Costs

– We already mentioned policy space – the current system of substantially privatizing a public utility seems to move many resources into the private finance sphere, arguably reducing the policy space for public purpose (job guarantee, education, health care, etc.).

– A major tenet of MMT/Functional Finance is that it is how we utilize real resources now that matters, not deficits, and that we cannot borrow from the future. Money creation through credit likewise does not magically transport future resources to the present, it can only redistribute existing resources. Ceteris paribus (on taxes, policies, and who is utilizing the money) there is X amount of money that can be spent into an economy without inflation. Credit money creation can only redistribute this X amount of money and the real resources it affords (or cause inflation), and it is not clear that the private system does this in an equitable, nor necessarily the most efficient, manner.

– Where private money creation is combined with maturity transformation, as in the shadow banking system, money market and many bond funds, there is a distorted yield curve on interest rates. Some, especially Austrians, view this as leading to market inefficiencies in the long run, in addition to being severely unstable. This system allows narrow private benefits at the expense of widespread socialized costs and chronic instability (Maurice Allais’s non-Austrian work on this seldom receives the attention it merits, especially in the English speaking world.)

– Instability – allowing credit money has time and again led to intense and highly damaging episodes of instability. Diamond & Dybvig formalized the multiple equilibrium nature of banks runs; there is no stable equilibrium of credit-money creating banks without a lender of last resort. The true costs of instability are seldom weighed as a whole, nor presented in a way the general public can understand. What is the true and total cost to the public of the crises of 1907, 1929, 2008, the many smaller crises such as S & L, the Japanese asset price bubble, LCTM, banking crises in Finland, Sweden, Asia, Russia, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, and throughout Europe, the dot.com and housing bubbles, the bailouts of AIG, Northern Rock etc.? Is it truly, with proper accounting, worth the growth that some defend the current private system as promoting? On balance, a stable economy without socialized losses may be more dynamic and productive and allocate the real resources of the economy more efficiently than the current system, if judged with proper accounting standards.

– This leads to another point: Reality. The government already funds the banking system, both with occasional trillion dollar bailouts and on a daily basis. “Private” systems have shown time and again to be backstopped by governments (e.g., the U.S.and U.K.bailouts). The US government has proven to de facto guarantee the entire U.S. financial system (and the UK government the British system and so on), and lenders know it, much to their advantage (and distortion of the real economy). As someone else has written* “When A guarantees B’s liabilities, B needs to be on A’s balance sheet. This is accounting 101, folks.”

– MMT very correctly insists that an economic theory, to be worth considering at all, must at a minimum match real bookkeeping. To meet basic standards of accounting we would have to “[c]onsolidate the entire financial system onto USG’s balance sheet. While we’re at it, merge the Fed, Treasury, Social Security and Medicare into one financial entity. Clean up the whole mess of interlocking quasi-corporations. The US government is one operation. It should have one balance sheet.”* Again,  this is Accounting 101.

 IF IT IS INDEED THOUGHT that the benefits of credit money creation are worth the instability and other costs this system incurs on society, this raises another question:

Can a government duplicate credit money creation while distributing the gains and losses more equitably (i.e., socialized gains as well as socialized losses, instead of the current system that is mostly private gain and socialized loss)?

As we noted, in the current system, in addition to the money that people and businesses already have, they often want more money for productive and socially useful purposes. We further noted that there are two ways to get this money:

1. through other people loaning money that they already have or

2. through private credit money creation.

The first is not problematic, while the second is.

Would it be possible for the state to maintain something like the current system operationally, just making the parts of it that already are backstopped by the state actually state? This raises questions: Could this system be kept apolitical? (this potential political downside has to be weighed against the already existing downside: our private system has already experienced extensive regulatory capture). Could it be kept as competitive as it is now? Would it be as unstable as now with a truly “risk-neutral non-liquidity-constrained economic agent” (that is, the government) behind it?

This system could be thought of in this way:  Individuals and businesses that desire more money for productive purposes than they can get from other money holders are granted the privilege of additional state money created just for them; alongside this special privilege they voluntarily accept an additional tax burden to maintain the value of the money system. Let’s add that (in bold) into the comparison we made above between a pure state theory of money and the current state/private hybrid system:

PURE STATE SYSTEM OF MONEY

 

CURRENT SYSTEM

Money is a creature of law.

Money is a creature of law.

Money is valued because it can be used to extinguish debt to its issuer.

Money is valued because it can be used to extinguish debt to its issuer.

The issuer is the state.

The issuers are the state and private banks.

Taxes move resources into the public sector

Taxes move resources into the public sector.       Loan repayments move resources into the private finance sector

Some businesses or individuals want to borrow money. There are two ways to do so. One is for others to loan their existing money. This may be too restrictive and keep growth at suboptimal levels. The other is for new money to be created. 

 

Some businesses or individuals want to borrow money. There are two ways to do so. One is for others to loan their existing money. This may be too restrictive and keep growth at suboptimal levels. The other is for new money to be created.

The government creates this new money. The individual or business pays an additional tax for this privilege.

  Private banks create this new money. The individual or business pays the bank interest for this privilege.

The “lender of last resort” is the lender of first resort. There are both private and social gains and corresponding private and social losses.

 

Privately created money is inherently unstable without a lender of last resort. The government is the lender of last resort. There are private gains and socialized losses
 As a monopolist over its currency, the state has the power to set prices, including both the interest rate and how the currency exchanges for other goods and services. As a monopolist, the state can fund a job guarantee and other public goods without causing inflation.  In a system with “redundant currencies” (Innes 1914) the state may not be able to achieve macro policy goals and prevent inflation simultaneously
 The system is inherently stable. Stability leads to optimal investment, insurance, and allocation decisions and optimal long-term growth and welfare. Redistribution of private and social gains and losses is minimized.  The system is inherently unstable and uncertain. Chronic instability and uncertainty leads to suboptimal investment, insurance, and allocation decisions and suboptimal long-term growth. The system continuously transfers unearned wealth into the private (often finance) sector, furthering suboptimal economic performance and incentivizing rent-seeking and regulatory capture.

 

Currently, many of the most important neo-chartalist/MMT functional finance insights are not applied in the US, UK, and other countries, and they are clearly desperately needed. However, even if they were applied, the private credit money system would still interfere, possibly greatly, and would still lead to the same type of instability it always and everywhere has. The ongoing “crash” of 2008 seems to be fundamentally and deeply related to issues of private credit money creation, not the equally important issues of state money that MMT has so usefully brought to light. A true state theory of money must address the fundamental instability and inequitable nature of what Innes (1914) called a situation of “redundant currencies”, a system of both state and private money creation, and to be fully consistent, integrate it into its framework completely. It is not enough to “agree with the MCT folks” (or vice versa). The two must be a seamless whole.

~~~

* This wording is by an arch-Austrian good with pithy wording; I am not “Austrian” but on this issue, at least, he has interesting observations.

(Previous post: TOWARDS A PURE STATE THEORY OF MONEY, PROLOGUE: A NOTE ON KNAPP & INNES )

Modern Monetary Theory & Full Reserve Banking: Connected by Fiat

Posted on by under Full Reserve Banking, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

[The fourth of a series of posts on MMT, ‘The Chicago Plan Revisited’, and related issues; see also part 1, part 2, & part 3]

Summary: MMT understands the monetary system in depth, particularly a fiat monetary system. “Full Reservers”, because they have not always fully grasped the significance of the fact there is no money multiplier and that the loanable funds model is wrong, often have a misplaced emphasis on the reserve ratio and sight deposits. Nevertheless, they can be understood ultimately to be worried about endogenous money, and in effect are arguing for a pure fiat money system. Steve Keen shows the magnitude of the negative effects of endogenous money on the economy. If Keen is properly understood, and what are in effect the anti-endogenous money policies of Full Reserve plans implemented, the end point is a pure fiat money system. And the starting point of a true chartalist system, the natural home for neo-chartalism.

There are actually two concerns most advocates of Full Reserves have

1. Solvency – there are few solvency issues with full reserves; not surprisingly a major concern in the 1930s for Simons, Fisher, The Chicago Plan etc.

2. (Endogenous) money creation

The second is much the more important, but the two are often confusingly conflated.
Partly this is because the significance of the fact that the loanable funds model is wrong and there is no money multiplier is not always fully appreciated by Full Reservers.

Banks do not make loans based on reserves or loanable funds but based on demand, perceived profitability, and the capital they hold. The government covers reserve requirements later. Raising reserve requirements can raise costs but does not stop money creation. Even the focus on sight deposits (i.e., PositiveMoney) misses the point – not only do reserve requirements not stop money creation, neither does stopping lending based on sight deposits. Banks loans pull money from the central bank, with the limit being the ratio of capital to risk-weighted assets.

So, unless Full Reservers are only worried about bank solvency, which is doubtful, they are really addressing concerns that have their root in endogenous money.

Anti endogenous  money, pro- true chartalism proposals

The main benefits of plans such as AMI, PositiveMoney, Kotlikoff, the Chicago Plan, Werner etc are, or would be with any needed tweaking, that:

Issuing fiat would be rightfully reserved for the issuer of the fiat decree: the government. A monopoly on money (but not on banks; entities that invest people’s money and distribute the gains would exist much the same as now). As L. Randall Wray notes, “money is a social creation. The private credit system leverages state money, which in turn is supported by the state’s ability to impose social obligations mostly in the form of taxes.” (Wray, 35)*. As the system stands, a public good is leveraged for narrow private gain, in a process that entails public costs through intrinsic systemic instability.

Implementing restrictions on the type of lending that leads to endogenous money creation would be “no big deal” according to Warren Mosler. (The details of how this would work, and why credit, investment in capital, and instruments for earning interest would still exist are in the various plans; Mosler suggests they would only be allowed to invest their equity capital. Some details are here).

The effect of this, however, would be a very big deal indeed. It would be the creation of a true fiat system of money, instead of the mixed state-credit financial system (as Steve Keen calls it) we have now. All money would be outside, exogenous, vertical, HPM.

Endogenous money creation is a vestige left over from older systems, where either banks were powerful enough to challenge sovereigns, or rich enough to buy off lawmakers, or where commodities actually were leveraged with bank notes. And before digital accounts, weakening banking regulation and related developments completely untethered credit-money creation from reality.

Whatever the past utility of endogenous money, in the modern economy it serves no socially useful purpose that could not be retained under a true chartalist,  pure fiat money system. Worse, endogenous money is increasingly understood to be extremely socially costly (especially in the work of Steve Keen).

Pro Full Reserve advocates, if the goals of their proposals and root of their worries are reviewed carefully and in light of the fact that loanable fund and money multiplier models are incorrect, are most concerned with the same problems Keen has also so clearly shown, that endogenous money is destabilizing and harmful.

It is evident that (neo)chartalist policies would work better under (true) chartalism than under the mixed state-credit financial system we operate under now.

That is why I say that Modern Monetary Theory & Full Reserve Banking are Connected by Fiat.

_______________
*L. Randall Wray “The Credit Money, State Money, and Endogenous Money Approaches: A Survey and Attempted Integration” Link

Although the simplifying assumptions are not perfect, Endogenous Supply of Fiat Money highlights some incentive problems with bank credit-money creation.

P.S. This post was partly inspired by a perceived lack of interest on the part of MMTers in full reserves, and vice versa (and downright hostility to MMT from the AMI Full Reservers). Good discussion here.

I see MMT, the aims of Full Reservers, and followers of the enlightening work of Steve Keen as natural allies.

Bob Mitchell (MMT), and Ralph Musgrave (pro-Full Reserve), both explicitly disagree, stating that MMT and Full Reserve have little in common. I will consider Bill Mitchell’s objections  in another post. In a nutshell though, Mitchell’s proposals (besides his analysis needlessly wading into the bogs that are Austrian thought) for banking are all very good, needed under any system, and I very much agree with him. However, they are to a large extent trying to undo the damage caused by an inherently flawed pseudo-chartalist system that has all the incentives wrong, a system that creates bank-credit-money bubbles that are the fundamental enablers of much bad activity in the financial sector. You might say that endogenous money adds fuel to the “FIRE” that Mitchell wants to extinguish. Excising endogenous money creation from our fiat money is needed to truly effect the changes Mitchell wants.

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