Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Michael Sankowski — We create money-like instruments all the time

 Creating money-like instruments isn’t just for countries demolished by a stupid currency union. It happens in the largest economy in the world because the economy demands bubbles when g > r, and as Scott Fullwiler has shown, g > r nearly all the time.
We are trillions of dollars of real world wealth poorer because we do not let the world have enough money to conduct the desired level of commerce.
Read it at Modern Monetary Realism
We create money-like instruments all the time
by Michael Sankowki

Steve Keen also observes that the ratio of vertical money creation and horizontal money creation is crucial to financial stability. The ratio has tipped strongly in favor of horizontal money creation and the creation of money-like instruments in many countries, thereby increasing financial instability. He recommends increasing the share of vertical money for greater stability, as well as more prudential regulation of the financial sector in order to reduce systemic risk. Steve is getting a lot of exposure on this recently.

5 comments:

STF said...

Sounds like Steve's an MMT'er. :)

Tom Hickey said...

I think Steve is getting close. Neil Wilson is the one to comment on this, since he follows Steve's development closely and seems excited about the development of Steve's dynamic model.

Leverage said...

Yep, can't wait for Keen to include vertical flows into his dynamic models.

Anyway I've seen him advocating government spending to soften the effects of private deleverage (in line of MMT and 'balance sheet recession' view). As well as some sort of jubilee or big write downs for private sector. I agree with both policies and both are necessary (I don't think MMT policies alone will be enough for a quick fix of household sector and the state of labour, even if it helps a lot and its better than nothing).

STF said...

Leverage,

What are "MMT policies alone"?

Here's some that we've proposed since the crisis started: job guarantee, payroll tax holiday, block grants to states, downsize financial sector, re-regulate banks, close down insolvent banks, Mosler plan for avoiding foreclosures, some household debt-forgiveness, infrastructure spending, etc.

Is there more to do? Are you sure we'd be against it?

Leverage said...

I didn't say you would be against them, but you guys are more loud on the 'bigger deficit' side of policy (also the JG stuff, which is controversial but I agree the pluses are bigger that the minuses). Which is fine, but in my opinion it's not enough (may be wrong though).

I don't see that fixing income disparity and polarization, household over leverage (which is partially a cause of the later), decreasing disposable income & purchasing power, working more for less (would have to see how much of that is structural though) etc.

I don't think neither more write downs, debt forgiveness & bigger deficits are neither going to fix these problem, but will ease the situation a lot and give some space for fiscal/investment policies to try fix these problems.