The main reason we have a large budget deficit is because of all the tax advantaged savings plans- pension funds, IRA’s, insurance and corporate reserve.

All of these financial assets, which compound continuously, represent unspent income.

And unless they are offset by some other agent spending that much more than his income, the dollars won’t be there to be saved in these tax advantaged entities.

And also realize this is an accounting identity, beyond dispute.

Like 1+1=2.

Like how your checkbook must balance or you made an arithmetic mistake.

It works like this:

People work to produce and sell goods and services and someone get the dollars from all those sales. Those dollars that came from the sales are exactly the amount needed to buy those things in the first place. If anyone doesn’t spend the dollars he gets from the sales, there isn’t enough spending for the sales to happen in the first place. So when a large chunk of our dollars that we get paid from wages and profits go into pension funds, and don’t get spent, all the things for sale can’t get sold unless someone spends that much more than his income. And if we (both residents and non residents) don’t want to- or can’t- spend more dollars than our dollar incomes by borrowing dollars to spend, sales fall short, so income and jobs are lost in a downward spiral, that doesn’t end until someone finally fills that spending gap by spending more than his income to replace the spending power lost when earned dollars go into pension funds.

That’s where the government comes in. When those dollars piling up in pension funds cause spending to fall short, government can spend more than its income to make up for that lost spending power, fill the spending gap, and keep everyone working and producing and selling real goods and services. So right now the high unemployment and low sales tell us there is still a big spending gap to fill. In the past, this spending gap might have been filled by people borrowing to spend on houses and cars and all that. But this time around people aren’t willing or able to fill the spending gap.

The current level of government spending that exceeds taxes (deficit spending) is only partially filling the current spending gap. It’s a big economy and pension funds and corporate reserves are huge and growing, which means the spending gap is huge and growing which means the amount government spends that’s more than it taxes (government deficit spending) is still too small to fill the spending gap.

The answer is quite simple- cut taxes and/or increase government spending until output and employment is restored and the spending gap is filled. Unfortunately our fearless leaders have a large gap between their ears, and have it all backwards, and we’re all paying the price. And it will get a lot worse if they keep cutting the government deficit and make the spending gap wider instead of narrower.

While the annual deficit to gdp ratio is higher than the last two cycles, it’s been looking to me that the ‘neutral’ deficit to gdp ratio has been going up as well. This is likely because the unspent income (pension fund and other retirement accounts, corporate reserves including insurance reserves, cash in circulation, $US foreign central bank holdings and other non resident ‘savings’, etc.) is growing at ever higher rates, while private sector deficit spending has been subdued. Consequently, even with what may seem to be what historically has been a sufficiently high Federal deficit, GDP can retreat.

Where am I wrong, if at all?

July 25 (FT) – The future of fiscal policy was intensely debated in the FT last week. In this Exchange, I want to examine what is going on in the US and, in particular, what is going on inside the Republican party. This matters for the US and, because the US remains the world’s most important economy, it also matters greatly for the world. My reading of contemporary Republican thinking is that there is no chance of any attempt to arrest adverse long-term fiscal trends should they return to power. Moreover, since the Republicans have no interest in doing anything sensible, the Democrats will gain nothing from trying to do much either. That is the lesson Democrats have to draw from the Clinton era’s successful frugality, which merely gave George W. Bush the opportunity to make massive (irresponsible and unsustainable) tax cuts. In practice, then, nothing will be done. Indeed, nothing may be done even if a genuine fiscal crisis were to emerge. According to my friend, Bruce Bartlett, a highly informed, if jaundiced, observer, some “conservatives” (in truth, extreme radicals) think a federal default would be an effective way to bring public spending they detest under control. It should be noted, in passing, that a federal default would surely create the biggest financial crisis in world economic history. To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”. Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue. The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch? How did supply-side economics bring these benefits? First, it allowed conservatives to ignore deficits. They could argue that, whatever the impact of the tax cuts in the short run, they would bring the budget back into balance, in the longer run. Second, the theory gave an economic justification – the argument from incentives – for lowering taxes on politically important supporters. Finally, if deficits did not, in fact, disappear, conservatives could fall back on the “starve the beast” theory: deficits would create a fiscal crisis that would force the government to cut spending and even destroy the hated welfare state. In this way, the Republicans were transformed from a balanced-budget party to a tax-cutting party. This innovative stance proved highly politically effective, consistently putting the Democrats at a political disadvantage. It also made the Republicans de facto Keynesians in a de facto Keynesian nation. Whatever the rhetoric, I have long considered the US the advanced world’s most Keynesian nation – the one in which government (including the Federal Reserve) is most expected to generate healthy demand at all times, largely because jobs are, in the US, the only safety net for those of working age. True, the theory that cuts would pay for themselves has proved altogether wrong. That this might well be the case was evident: cutting tax rates from, say, 30 per cent to zero would unambiguously reduce revenue to zero. This is not to argue there were no incentive effects. But they were not large enough to offset the fiscal impact of the cuts (see, on this, Wikipedia and a nice chart from Paul Krugman). Indeed, Greg Mankiw, no less, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush, has responded to the view that broad-based tax cuts would pay for themselves, as follows: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.” Indeed, he has referred to those who believe this as “charlatans and cranks”. Those are his words, not mine, though I agree. They apply, in force, to contemporary Republicans, alas, Since the fiscal theory of supply-side economics did not work, the tax-cutting eras of Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush and again of George W. Bush saw very substantial rises in ratios of federal debt to gross domestic product. Under Reagan and the first Bush, the ratio of public debt to GDP went from 33 per cent to 64 per cent. It fell to 57 per cent under Bill Clinton. It then rose to 69 per cent under the second George Bush. Equally, tax cuts in the era of George W. Bush, wars and the economic crisis account for almost all the dire fiscal outlook for the next ten years (see the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). Today’s extremely high deficits are also an inheritance from Bush-era tax-and-spending policies and the financial crisis, also, of course, inherited by the present administration. Thus, according to the International Monetary Fund, the impact of discretionary stimulus on the US fiscal deficit amounts to a cumulative total of 4.7 per cent of GDP in 2009 and 2010, while the cumulative deficit over these years is forecast at 23.5 per cent of GDP. In any case, the stimulus was certainly too small, not too large. The evidence shows, then, that contemporary conservatives (unlike those of old) simply do not think deficits matter, as former vice-president Richard Cheney isreported to have told former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill. But this is not because the supply-side theory of self-financing tax cuts, on which Reagan era tax cuts were justified, has worked, but despite the fact it has not. The faith has outlived its economic (though not its political) rationale. So, when Republicans assail the deficits under President Obama, are they to be taken seriously? Yes and no. Yes, they are politically interested in blaming Mr Obama for deficits, since all is viewed fair in love and partisan politics. And yes, they are, indeed, rhetorically opposed to deficits created by extra spending (although that did not prevent them from enacting the unfunded prescription drug benefit, under President Bush). But no, it is not deficits themselves that worry Republicans, but rather how they are caused: deficits caused by tax cuts are fine; but spending increases brought in by Democrats are diabolical, unless on the military. Indeed, this is precisely what John Kyl (Arizona), a senior Republican senator,has just said: “[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to — if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans” What conclusions should outsiders draw about the likely future of US fiscal policy? First, if Republicans win the mid-terms in November, as seems likely, they are surely going to come up with huge tax cut proposals (probably well beyond extending the already unaffordable Bush-era tax cuts). Second, the White House will probably veto these cuts, making itself even more politically unpopular. Third, some additional fiscal stimulus is, in fact, what the US needs, in the short term, even though across-the-board tax cuts are an extremely inefficient way of providing it. Fourth, the Republican proposals would not, alas, be short term, but dangerously long term, in their impact. Finally, with one party indifferent to deficits, provided they are brought about by tax cuts, and the other party relatively fiscally responsible (well, everything is relative, after all), but opposed to spending cuts on core programmes, US fiscal policy is paralysed. I may think the policies of the UK government dangerously austere, but at least it can act. This is extraordinarily dangerous. The danger does not arise from the fiscal deficits of today, but the attitudes to fiscal policy, over the long run, of one of the two main parties. Those radical conservatives (a small minority, I hope) who want to destroy the credit of the US federal government may succeed. If so, that would be the end of the US era of global dominance. The destruction of fiscal credibility could be the outcome of the policies of the party that considers itself the most patriotic.

In sum, a great deal of trouble lies ahead, for the US and the world.

Where am I wrong, if at all?

I agree with the political analysis. I know Bruce Bartlett and he’ll be the first to tell you he does NOT understand monetary operations. Even simple statements like ‘China keeps its dollars in its reserve account at the Fed’ seem to cause him to glass over. He can only repeat headline rhetoric and has no interest in drilling down through it.

Krugman’s column a week ago, however, may have been a major breakthrough. He conceded the issue of long term deficits was inflation and not solvency. And while his maths and graphs disqualified him from participating in the inflation debate, it so far seems to have shifted the deficit dove position to much firmer ground.

A Congressman might vote to cut Social Security due to fear of Federal insolvency, with all ‘noted’ economists arguing only how far down the road it may be, along with dependence on foreign creditors. However, I doubt most Congressman would vote to cut Social Security based on some economists predicting possible inflation in 20 years.

A So even though Krugman’s reasoning was simply ‘they can always print the money’ followed by highly suspect graphs and statements about how someday that could cause hyper inflation, hopefully it did shift the discussion from solvency to inflation, where it belongs.

So now the hawk/dove question is, as it should be, whether long term deficits imply long term run away inflation. And while the correct answer is: depends on the offsetting demand leakages/unspent income like pension contributions and other nominal savings desires. Just the fact that the debate shifts away from solvency should be enough for a change of global political attitude. And, if so, this opens the door to a new era of prosperity as yet unimagined.

Greece is a deflationary event, as EU aggregate demand is further restricted, with no sign of any possibility of fiscal relaxation.

Oil fell as Saudis increased discounts, further reducing global capex and related asset prices. US oil production that gets sold counts as GDP, and for Q3 both production and prices look to be lower. Yes, the lower price also reduces the deflator, but the fall in the price of oil relative to other prices reduces GDP. The decline in oil prices has also directly lowered income earned from oil sales, royalties, etc. plus ‘multipliers’ as that lost income would have been ‘respent’ etc. This loss has been at least 1% of GDP and completely ignored by analysts who have been over forecasting growth by several % since oil prices declined. And the more than 50% decline in drilling due to the lower prices = declining production as oil (and gas) output from existing wells declines over time. This means both less GDP and higher imports, a negative bias for the dollar.

Trade flows remain euro friendly and are taking over the price action, and trade will continue to put upward pressure on the euro until the trade surplus is reversed. The stronger euro vs the dollar initially helps US stock psychology via earnings translations, etc. but hurts euro zone stocks, exports, GDP, etc. reversing this year’s growth forecasts. And a weaker euro zone economy is also a negative for the US.

Oil capex is down and not coming back until prices rise, and the US budget deficit is down further as well, and I see nothing else stepping up to replace the reduced private and public deficit spending that was offsetting the demand leakages (unspent income) inherent in the institutional structure that grows continuously. So unlike last year, when oil capex did the heaving lifting, I expect any bounce in Q2 gdp from Q1 to be modest and transitory.

The Fed may raise rates some not because of the state of the economy, but due to fears that current policy somehow risks some kind of financial instability. No discussion, of course, that Japan has had a 0 rate policy for over 20 years with perhaps the highest level of financial stability in the history of the world, perhaps indicating that a 0 rate policy promotes financial stability…

Employment seems to have begun to decelerate as well, with fewer new jobs each month and claims beginning to rise.

Unlike the last recovery that ended suddenly with a financial crisis that cut off credit, this one is ending with a fall off in aggregate demand from oil capex due to the Saudis cutting oil prices, so the sequence of events has not been the same. But, as always, it’s just a simple unspent income story.

As previously discussed the economy is continually subject to chronic ‘unspent income’, also known as ‘demand leakages’. Many are tax advantaged, such as pension fund and retirement contributions, insurance reserves, and other corporate reserves. Some are political, such as foreign central bank fx reserve accumulation.

And each period of expansion has been characterized by a ‘borrowing to spend’/’credit expansion’/’spending more than income’ that has more than offset the demand leakages.

The govt spending more than its income ordinarily gets things going, but then the non govt ‘spending more than its income’ has to take over as the ‘automatic fiscal stabilizers’ of falling unemployment and other benefits and increased tax collections ‘automatically’ reduce govt deficit spending.

In the 80’s the deficit went up with the tax cuts and spending increases, but the heavy lifting was done by the savings and loan expansion phase which added about $1 trillion of ‘suspect’ loans while it lasted. In the late 90’s it was the .com and y2k ‘borrowing to spend’ further supported by a surge in mortgage credit. In the early 2000’s it was the expansion phase of the sub prime fiasco that drove growth until that ended.

That’s why I’ve been looking for the credit expansion that’s been sustaining even the modest growth we’ve been getting in this latest cycle, particularly after the 180 billion tax hike that began Jan 1, 2013 and the 70+ billion in sequesters that followed a few months later. I couldn’t find the supporting credit expansion in the usual places- houses, C and I loans, student loans, and autos which did help some.

What I didn’t dig into was loans to the energy sector to develop what are now high priced oil. And now with that source of ‘borrowing to spend’ going into reverse, we’ll see how much support it’s been providing….

Aug 21 (NYT) — Rand Paul said something funny the other day. No, really — although of course it wasn’t intentional. On his Twitter account he decried the irresponsibility of American fiscal policy, declaring, “The last time the United States was debt free was 1835.”

Which consequently was followed by the worst depression in US history.

Wags quickly noted that the U.S. economy has, on the whole, done pretty well these past 180 years, suggesting that having the government owe the private sector money might not be all that bad a thing. The British government, by the way, has been in debt for more than three centuries, an era spanning the Industrial Revolution, victory over Napoleon, and more. But is the point simply that public debt isn’t as bad as legend has it? Or can government debt actually be a good thing? Believe it or not, many economists argue that the economy needs a sufficient amount of debt out there to function well.

Yes, to offset desires to not spend income (save) when private sector borrowing to spend isn’t sufficient, as evidenced by unemployment.

And how much is sufficient? Maybe more than we currently have. That is, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that part of what ails the world economy right now is that governments aren’t deep enough in debt..

Yes, it’s called unemployment, which is the evidence that deficit spending is insufficient to offset desires to not spend income. Something economists have known by identity for at least 300 years.

I know that may sound crazy. After all, we’ve spent much of the past five or six years in a state of fiscal panic, with all the Very Serious People declaring that we must slash deficits and reduce debt now now now or we’ll turn into Greece, Greece I tell you. But the power of the deficit scolds was always a triumph of ideology over evidence, and a growing number of genuinely serious people — most recently Narayana Kocherlakota, the departing president of the Minneapolis Fed — are making the case that we need more, not less, government debt. Why?

This is the right answer- because the US public debt, for example, is nothing more than the dollars spent by the govt that haven’t yet been used to pay taxes. Those dollars constitute the net financial dollar assets of the global economy (net nominal savings), as actual cash, or dollar balances in bank accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank called reserve accounts and securities accounts. Functionally, it is not wrong to call these dollars the ‘monetary base’. And a growing economy that generates increasing quantities of unspent income likewise needs an increasing quantity of spending that exceeds income- private or public- for a growing output to get sold.

One answer is that issuing debt is a way to pay for useful things, and we should do more of that when the price is right.

Wrong answer. It’s never about ‘when the price is right’. It is always a political question regarding resource allocation between the public sector and private sector.

The United States suffers from obvious deficiencies in roads, rails, water systems and more; meanwhile, the federal government can borrow at historically low interest rates.

Wrong answer. Yes, there is a serious infrastructure deficiency. The right question, however, is whether the US has the available resources and whether it wants to allocate them for that purpose.

So this is a very good time to be borrowing and investing in the future, and a very bad time for what has actually happened: an unprecedented decline in public construction spending adjusted for population growth and inflation.

I agree it’s a good time to fund infrastructure investment, due to said deficiencies.

However, whether or not it’s a good time to increase deficit spending is a function of how much slack is in the economy, as evidenced by the unemployment rates, participation rates, etc. And not by infrastructure needs.

And my read based on that criteria is that it’s a good time for proactive fiscal expansion.

Nor in any case is deciding whether or not to increase deficit spending rightly about whether or not to increase borrowing per se for a government that, under close examination, from inception necessarily spends or lends first, and then borrows. As Fed insiders say, ‘you can’t do a reserve drain without first doing a reserve add.’

Beyond that, those very low interest rates are telling us something about what markets want.

Wrong, they are telling us something about what level market participants think the fed will target the Fed funds rate over time.

I’ve already mentioned that having at least some government debt outstanding helps the economy function better. How so?

Right answer- deficit spending adds income and net financial assets to the economy to support sufficient spending to get the output sold.

The answer, according to M.I.T.’s Ricardo Caballero and others, is that the debt of stable, reliable governments provides “safe assets” that help investors manage risks, make transactions easier and avoid a destructive scramble for cash.

Wrong answer. Net govt spending provides in the first instance provides dollars (tax credits) in the form of dollar deposits in reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank. Treasury securities are nothing more than alternative deposits in securities accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank for those dollars. Both are equally ‘safe’.

Now, in principle the private sector can also create safe assets, such as deposits in banks that are universally perceived as sound. In the years before the 2008 financial crisis Wall Street claimed to have invented whole new classes of safe assets by slicing and dicing cash flows from subprime mortgages and other sources. But all of that supposedly brilliant financial engineering turned out to be a con job: When the housing bubble burst, all that AAA-rated paper turned into sludge. So investors scurried back into the haven provided by the debt of the United States and a few other major economies. In the process they drove interest rates on that debt way down.

Rates went down in anticipation of future rate setting by the fed.

What investors did was reprice financial assets. Investors can’t change total financial assets. The total only changes with new issues and redemptions/maturities.

And those low interest rates, Mr. Kocherlakota declares, are a problem. When interest rates on government debt are very low even when the economy is strong, there’s not much room to cut them when the economy is weak, making it much harder to fight recessions.

True, but cutting rates doesn’t fight recessions. In fact low rates reduce interest income paid by govt to the economy, thereby weakening it.

There may also be consequences for financial stability: Very low returns on safe assets may push investors into too much risk-taking — or for that matter encourage another round of destructive Wall Street hocus-pocus.

That would be evidenced by an increase in the issuance of higher risk securities, but there has been no evidence of that. In fact, it was $100 oil that at the margin drove the credit expansion that supported GDP growth, as evidenced by the collapse when prices fell.

What can be done? Simply raising interest rates, as some financial types keep demanding (with an eye on their own bottom lines), would undermine our still-fragile recovery.

It would more likely very modestly strengthen it from the increase in the govt deficit due to the increased interest income paid by govt to the economy. However, I’d prefer a tax cut and/or spending increase to support GDP, rather than an interest rate increase. But that’s just me…

What we need are policies that would permit higher rates in good times without causing a slump. And one such policy, Mr. Kocherlakota argues, would be targeting a higher level of debt.

Mr. K isn’t wrong, but again I’d rather just have a larger tax cut to get to the same point, but, again, that’s just me…

In other words, the great debt panic that warped the U.S. political scene from 2010 to 2012, and still dominates economic discussion in Britain and the eurozone, was even more wrongheaded than those of us in the anti-austerity camp realized.

True, and this author…

Not only were governments that listened to the fiscal scolds kicking the economy when it was down, prolonging the slump; not only were they slashing public investment at the very moment bond investors were practically pleading with them to spend more; they may have been setting us up for future crises.

True but for differing reasons. It’s never about investors pleading. It’s always about the public purpose behind the policies.

And the ironic thing is that these foolish policies, and all the human suffering they created, were sold with appeals to prudence and fiscal responsibility.

The larger problem with this editorial is that the wrong reasons it gives for what’s largely the right policy are out of paradigm reasons that the opposition routinely shoots down and shouts down, easily convincing the electorate that they are correct and the ‘headline left’ is wrong.

This line shows total GDP growth over the prior 10 years. It makes the point as to just how sudden the latest drop off was and how severe it continues to be. It’s just screaming ‘lack of aggregate demand’ begging a fiscal relaxation of maybe 5% of GDP annually for a while.

Bottom line: It’s always an unspent income story.

The 2008 financial crisis led to a sharp fall off in private sector deficit spending (credit expansion) that had been offsetting desires to not spend income, which I call ‘savings desires’. And it was in mid 2008, for example, that I proposed a full FICA suspension that would have allowed spending to continue, but from income rather than from debt.

However, what happened instead was an attempt to restore private sector credit growth with a zero rate policy that was soon supplemented with quantitative easing, and to date has failed to restore output growth and employment.

The Fed, however, believes the spark has been ignited and will likely move to ‘remove accommodation’ with a another small rate hike, even as all the indicators I can see continue to decelerate as previously posted and discussed.

It all started when the FICA tax cuts and a few of the Bush tax reductions were allowed to expire at the end of 2012, followed by the sequesters a few months later 2013. That resulted in 2013 GDP growth of a bit less than 2% or so that might have been closer to 4% without the tax hikes and spending cuts.

Going into 2014 GDP I suggested growth might be closer to 0 than to the 3.5% being forecast. It again printed about in the middle averaging a bit over 2% (with some ups and downs…), and then towards the end of 2014 the price of oil collapsed and it was discovered there had been $hundreds of billions of planned capital expenditures that would be cut, domestically and globally, after which I again suggested GDP growth for the year- this time 2015- would now be near 0, and in fact could well be negative. Additionally, it was revealed the extent to which it was the large and growing oil capex expenditures up to that time that had been supporting at least 1% GDP growth up to that point. And so far GDP growth for 2015 has been less than 2014, even after 2014’s recent downward revisions, and along with slowing GDP has come slowing corporate revenues and earnings growth. All subject to further revisions, of course, which lately have been downward revisions.

Meanwhile, in the first half of 2014 the euro began falling against the $ as well as other currencies. The fall coincided with the ECB threatening and then following through with negative rates and QE, much to the consternation of global portfolio managers, including Central Bankers, pension funds and hedge funds, who collectively proceeded to lighten up on their euro allocations. And along the way, issues surrounding Greece further frightened the portfolio managers into further selling of euro assets. This relentless selling pressure drove the euro down, particularly vs the US dollar. Specifically, a euro based portfolio manager might, for example, sell his euro securities, and then sell the euros to buy dollars, and then use the dollars to buy US stocks. Or a CB might manage its reserves such that the % of euro assets declined vs dollar assets. And a hedge fund might simply buy the $US index, which is about half dollar/euro and a way to sell euro and other currencies vs the dollar. All of this, along with several other ways to skin the same cat, constituted euro selling that drove the dollar up and the euro down, and at the same time produced buyers of US stocks.

Fundamentally, however, the opposite was happening. The euro area had a (small) trade surplus, which was removing euro from global markets, but not as fast as the sellers were selling, and the euro went ever lower. But as it did this it made the euro area that much more ‘competitive’ (euro area goods and services were that much less expensive in dollar terms) which resulted in an ever larger trade surplus, with the latest release showing a record trade surplus of about 24 billion euro per month. And at the same time, the increased euro exports helped support the economy and generated forecasts for improved future growth, all of which supported euro stocks.

It now appears the curves (finally) crossed, with the euro area trade surplus now exceeding the euro portfolio selling which seems to have run its course, which caused the euro to bottom and start to appreciate. This started generating adverse marks to market for those short euro and long US stocks, for example, who subsequently began reversing their positions by buying euro and selling US stocks. And the strong euro also threatens euro area exports and therefore output, employment, and GDP forecasts, causing euro stocks to sell off as well.

So far I’ve left out what turned out to be the catalyst for this reversal- China. When China moved to allow the yuan to trade lower against the dollar, it was deemed a credible threat to both euro and US exports, and world demand in general, which set off the latest wave of selling.

So what’s next?

More selling of US stocks and buying euro to reverse those positions. Hedge funds might move quickly, but, for example, pension funds often do their reallocating at quarterly and annual meetings, so it could all take quite a bit of time.

Additionally, buying of euro will drive the euro up, as there is no ‘excess supply’ being generated. Quite the reverse, in fact, as the trade surplus works to make euro that much harder to get. That means the euro will appreciate until the trade surplus reverses (whether there is any causation or not…), which should prove highly problematic for the euro economy and euro stocks. The other side of this coin is the weaker dollar that should lend some support to the US stock market, though a collapsing euro area economy with it’s associate debt issues and political conflicts might do more harm than the weak dollar does good, not to mention the weakening domestic demand in the post oil capex world with no relief in sight from other sectors.

Lastly, the stock market has been maybe the best leading indicator, and probably because of it’s direct effect on perceptions of wealth and its influence on spending and investing decisions. And the Fed doesn’t target stocks, but it doesn’t ignore them either, as it too recognizes the influence it can have on output and employment, especially on the downside.

Of course all of this can be reversed for the better with a simple fiscal expansion, as the underlying problem remains- the Federal deficit is too small in the absence of sufficient private sector deficit spending needed to offset desires to not spend income. (Yes, it’s always an unspent income story…).

But politics, at least for now, renders that sure fire remedy entirely out of the question.

I can’t say I’ve seen anyone in the deficit debates talking about the demand leakages? Not a mention in the mainstream press, financial news media, or any of the thousands of economic reports?

That’s like discussing the right horsepower for a truck or an airplane without any consideration of the weight of the vehicle.

Demand leakages are unspent income. And if any agent doesn’t spend his income, some other agent has to spend more than his income or that much output doesn’t get sold.

And if the non govt sectors collectively don’t spend all of their income, it’s up to the govt to make sure its income is less than its spending, or that much output does’t get sold, which translates into what’s commonly called the ‘output gap’. Which is largely a sanitized way of saying unemployment.

And with the private sector necessarily pro cyclical, the (whopping) private sector spending gap in this economy can only be filled with by govt via either a (whopping) tax cut and/or spending increase, depending on your politics.

So why the ‘demand leakages’? The lion’s share is due to tax advantages for not spending your income, including pension contributions, IRA’s, and all kinds of corporate reserves. Then there’s foreign hoards accumulated to support foreign exporters. And it all should be a very good thing- net unspent income like that means that for a given size govt our taxes can be that much lower. Personally, I’d rather have a tax cut than a policy to get other people to spend their unspent income. But that’s just me…

And then there’s the fear mongering about the likes of the $200 trillion present value of US govt unfunded liabilities. But 0 mention of the present value of all demand leakages- that future income that will be unspent as it’s squirreled away in the likes of retirement plans, corporate reserves, and foreign central banks.

If history is any guide, the demand leakages will probably continue to outstrip even the so called ‘runaway spending of our irresponsible government,’ like they’ve always done in the past, as evidenced by nearly continuous output gaps/excess unemployment.

Worse, every mainstream economist learned that it’s the demand leakages that create the ‘need’ for govt deficits. But somehow fail to even mention it, even casually.

If anything, they voice no objections to the popular misconception that we need more savings to have funds for investment, thereby tacitly supporting the call for higher levels of demand leaks and the need for even higher levels of govt deficit spending.

And all you hear are calls for deficit reduction, both public and private, all in the face of geometrically expanding demand leakages.

Am I missing something?

The Automatic Stabilizers: Quietly Doing their Thing By Darrel S. Cohen and Glenn R. Follette

Abstract: This paper presents theoretical and empirical analysis of automatic fiscal stabilizers, such as the income tax and unemployment insurance benefits. Using the modern theory of consumption behavior, we identify several channels–insurance effects, wealth effects and liquidity constraints- -through which the optimal reaction of household consumption plans to aggregate income shocks is tempered by the automatic fiscal stabilizers. In addition we identify a cash flow channel for investment. The empirical importance of automatic stabilizers is addressed in several ways. We estimate elasticities of the various federal taxes with respect to their tax bases and responses of certain components of federal spending to changes in the unemployment rate. Such estimates are useful for analysts who forecast federal revenues and spending; the estimates also allow high- employment or cyclically-adjusted federal tax receipts and expenditures to be estimated. Using frequency domain techniques, we confirm that the relationships found in the time domain are strong at the business cycle frequencies. Using the FRB/US macro-econometric model of the United States economy, the automatic fiscal stabilizers are found to play a modest role at damping the short-run effect of aggregate demand shocks on real GDP, reducing the “multiplier” by about 10 percent. Very little stabilization is provided in the case of an aggregate supply shock.

Bank earnings as a demand leakage.

All unspent income is called a ‘demand leakage’ as it means the output can’t get sold unless another agent spends more than his income. (by identity, not ‘theory’) And unsold output leads to cuts in output, cuts in employment, etc. etc. and down you go until some agent spends enough more than his income to offset the demand leakages. Invariably that agent is govt, as the automatic fiscal stabilizers increase the deficit. Of course they also work in reverse, providing an increasing headwind to the economy as it grows, via higher revenues and lower transfer payments. Like what’s happening now, which has brought the deficit down dramatically over the last few of years.

Anyway, when a bank has income and pays it out as shareholder income, that’s not a demand leakage. And if the shareholders don’t spend their income, that is a demand leakage. etc

But if a bank earns income and doesn’t pay it out or spend it, but instead lets its equity capital increase, that is a demand leakage.

So what’s happening in general is top line growth is pretty much flat, with earnings not being spent, but instead adding to net worth and therefore the earnings are demand leakages. This includes the housing agencies/banks who are now turning over their incomes to govt.

Remember this from the Fed?

It was previously noted that Treasury revenue was down, which now is confirmed. This is the beginning of the automatic fiscal stabilizers at work, where weakness translates into a larger federal deficit, and persists until deficit spending is sufficient to more than offset unspent income, as is necessary for growth. Private sector deficit spending would also restore growth. However I see only private sector credit growth deceleration, which is generally the case as the private sector historically has a strong tendency to instead be pro cyclical.

Consumer borrowing to spend is a component of private sector deficit spending that offsets unspent income to support GDP which is sales/income. Consumer borrowing is also ‘dissaving’ so a drop in borrowing is recorded as an increase in savings. The open question is to what degree the fiscal adjustment/increase in public sector deficit spending is offsetting the drop in private sector deficit spending.

Printing counterfeit banknotes is illegal, but creating private money is not. The interdependence between the state and the businesses that can do this is the source of much of the instability of our economies. It could – and should – be terminated.

It is perfectly legal to create private liabilities. He has not yet defined ‘money’ for purposes of this analysis.

I explained how this works two weeks ago. Banks create deposits as a byproduct of their lending.

Yes, the loan is the bank’s asset and the deposit the bank’s liability.

In the UK, such deposits make up about 97 per cent of the money supply.

Yes, with ‘money supply’ specifically defined largely as said bank deposits.

Some people object that deposits are not money but only transferable private debts.

Why does it matter how they are labeled? They remain bank deposits in any case.

Yet the public views the banks’ imitation money as electronic cash: a safe source of purchasing power.

OK, so?

Banking is therefore not a normal market activity, because it provides two linked public goods: money and the payments network.

This is highly confused. ‘Public goods’ in any case aren’t ‘normal market activity’. Nor is a ‘payments network’ per se ‘normal market activity’ unless it’s a matter of competing payments networks, etc. And all assets can and do ‘provide’ liabilities.

On one side of banks’ balance sheets lie risky assets; on the other lie liabilities the public thinks safe.

Largely because of federal deposit insurance in the case of the US, for example. Uninsured liabilities of all types carry ‘risk premiums’.

This is why central banks act as lenders of last resort and governments provide deposit insurance and equity injections.

All that matters for public safety of deposits is the deposit insurance. ‘Equity injections’ are for regulatory compliance, and ‘lender of last resort’ is an accounting matter.

It is also why banking is heavily regulated.

With deposit insurance the liability side of banking is not a source of ‘market discipline’ which compels regulation and supervision as a simple point of logic.

Yet credit cycles are still hugely destabilizing.

Hugely destabilizing to the real economy only when the govt fails to adjust fiscal policy to sustain aggregate demand.

What is to be done?

How about aggressive fiscal adjustments to sustain aggregate demand as needed?

A minimum response would leave this industry largely as it is but both tighten regulation and insist that a bigger proportion of the balance sheet be financed with equity or credibly loss-absorbing debt. I discussed this approach last week. Higher capital is the recommendation made by Anat Admati of Stanford and Martin Hellwig of the Max Planck Institute in The Bankers’ New Clothes.

Yes, a 100% capital requirement, for example, would effectively limit lending. But, given the rest of today’s institutional structure, that would also dramatically reduce aggregate demand -spending/sales/output/employment, etc.- which is already far too low to sustain anywhere near full employment levels of output.

A maximum response would be to give the state a monopoly on money creation.

Again, ‘money’ as defined by implication above, I’ll presume. The state is already the single supplier/monopolist of that which it demands for payment of taxes.

One of the most important such proposals was in the Chicago Plan, advanced in the 1930s by, among others, a great economist, Irving Fisher.

Yes, a fixed fx/gold standard proposal.

Its core was the requirement for 100 per cent reserves against deposits.

Reserves back then were ‘real’ gold certificates.

The floating fx equiv would be 100% capital requirement.

Fisher argued that this would greatly reduce business cycles.

And greatly reduce aggregate demand with the idea of driving net exports to increase gold/fx reserves, or, alternatively, run larger fiscal deficit which, on the gold standard, put the nation’s gold supply at risk.

end bank runs.

Yes, banks would only be lending their equity, so there is nothing to ‘run’

and drastically reduce public debt.

If you wanted a vicious deflationary spiral to lower ‘real wages’ and drive net exports.

A 2012 study by International Monetary Fund staff suggests this plan could work well.

No comment….

Similar ideas have come from Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University in Jimmy Stewart is Dead, and Andrew Jackson and Ben Dyson in Modernising Money.

None of which have any kind of grasp on actual monetary operations.

Here is the outline of the latter system. First, the state, not banks, would create all transactions money, just as it creates cash today.

Today, state spending is a matter of the CB crediting a member bank reserve account, generally for further credit to the person getting the corresponding bank deposit. The member bank has an asset, the funds credited by the CB in its reserve account, and a liability, the deposit of the person who ultimately got the funds.

If the bank depositor wants cash, his bank gets the cash from the CB, and the CB debits the bank’s reserve account. So the person who got paid holds the cash and his bank has no deposit at the CB and the person has no bank deposit.

So in this case the entire ‘money supply’ would consist of dollars spent by the govt. But not yet taxed. That’s called the deficit/national debt. That is, the govt’s deficit would = the (net) ‘money supply’ of the economy, which is exactly the way it is today.

Customers would own the money in transaction accounts.

They already do.

and would pay the banks a fee for managing them..

:(

Second, banks could offer investment accounts, which would provide loans. But they could only loan money actually invested by customers.

So anyone who got paid by govt (directly or indirectly) could invest in an account so those same funds could be lent to someone else. Again, by design, this is to limit lending. And with ‘loanable funds’ limited in this way, the interest rate would reflect supply and demand for borrowing those funds, much like and fixed exchange rate regime.

So imagine a car company with a dip in sales and a bit of extra unsold inventory, that has to borrow to finance that inventory. It has to compete with the rest of the economy to borrow a limited amount of available funds (limited by the ‘national debt’). In a general slowdown it means rates will skyrocket to the point where companies are indifferent between paying the going interest rate and/or immediately liquidating inventory. This is called a fixed fx deflationary collapse.

They would be stopped from creating such accounts out of thin air and so would become the intermediaries that many wrongly believe they now are. Holdings in such accounts could not be reassigned as a means of payment. Holders of investment accounts would be vulnerable to losses. Regulators might impose equity requirements and other prudential rules against such accounts.

As above.

Third, the central bank would create new money as needed to promote non-inflationary growth. Decisions on money creation would, as now, be taken by a committee independent of government.

As above.

Third, the central bank would create new money as needed to promote non-inflationary growth. Decisions on money creation would, as now, be taken by a committee independent of government.

What does ‘create new money’ mean in this context? If they spend it, that’s fiscal. If they lend it, how would that work? In a deflationary collapse there are no ‘credit worthy borrowers’ as they system is in technical default due to ‘unspent income’ issues. Would they somehow simply lend to support a target rate of interest? Which brings us back to what we have today, apart from deciding who to lend to at that rate, the way today’s banks decide who to lend to? And it becomes a matter of ‘public bank’ vs ‘private bank’, but otherwise the same?

Finally, the new money would be injected into the economy in four possible ways: to finance government spending.

That’s deficit spending, as above, and no distinction regards to current policy.

in place of taxes or borrowing.

Same as above. For all practical purposes, all govt spending is via crediting a member bank account.

Same thing- net fiscal expenditure.

to redeem outstanding debts, public or private.

Same.

or to make new loans through banks or other intermediaries.

As above, that’s just a shift from private banking to public banking, and nothing more.

All such mechanisms could (and should) be made as transparent as one might wish. The transition to a system in which money creation is separated from financial intermediation would be feasible, albeit complex.

No, it’s quite simple actually, as above.

But it would bring huge advantages. It would be possible to increase the money supply without encouraging people to borrow to the hilt.

Deficit spending does that.

It would end “too big to fail” in banking.

That’s just a matter of shareholders losing when things go bad which is already the case.

It would also transfer seignorage – the benefits from creating money – to the public.

That’s just a bunch of inapplicable empty rhetoric with today’s floating fx regimes.

In 2013, for example, sterling M1 (transactions money) was 80 per cent of gross domestic product. If the central bank decided this could grow at 5 per cent a year, the government could run a fiscal deficit of 4 per cent of GDP without borrowing or taxing.

In any case spending in excess of taxing adds to bank reserve accounts, and if govt doesn’t pay interest on those accounts or offer interest bearing alternatives, generally called securities accounts, the consequence is a 0% rate policy. So seems this is a proposal for a permanent zero rate policy, which I support!!! But that doesn’t require any of the above institutional change, just an announcement by the cb that zero rates are permanent.

The right might decide to cut taxes, the left to raise spending. The choice would be political, as it should be.

And exactly as it is today in any case.

Opponents will argue that the economy would die for lack of credit.

Not if the deficit spending is allowed to ‘shift’ from private to public.

I was once sympathetic to that argument. But only about 10 per cent of UK bank lending has financed business investment in sectors other than commercial property. We could find other ways of funding this.

Govt deficit spending or net exports are the only two alternatives.

Our financial system is so unstable because the state first allowed it to create almost all the money in the economy.

The process is already strictly limited by regulation and supervision.

and was then forced to insure it when performing that function.

The liability side of banking isn’t the place for market discipline, hence deposit insurance.

This is a giant hole at the heart of our market economies. It could be closed by separating the provision of money, rightly a function of the state, from the provision of finance, a function of the private sector.

The funds to pay taxes already come only from the state.

The problem is that leadership doesn’t understand monetary operations.

This will not happen now. But remember the possibility. When the next crisis comes – and it surely will – we need to be ready.

Agreed!!!!!