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The consolidated government treasury and central bank

2011-12-01 07:04:45

In yesterday s blog If only the citizens knew what was going on! I noted

that it makes very little sense from a flow of funds perspective to consider

the central bank not to be part of a consolidated government sector along with

the treasury. The notion of a consolidated government sector is a basic Modern

Monetary Theory starting point and allows us to demonstrate the essential

relationship between the government and non-government sectors whereby net

financial assets enter and exit the economy without complicating the analysis

unduly. This simplicity leads to many insights all of which remain valid as

operational options when we add more detail to the model. However, it still

seems that readers are confused by this and somehow think that the

consolidation is misleading. So for today s blog I aim to explain in more

detail what this consolidation is about. It should disabuse you of the notion

that the mainstream macroeconomics obsession with central bank independence is

nothing more than an ideological attack on the capacity of government to

produce full employment which also undermines our democratic rights.

Regular readers will have seen this diagram which appeared along with

discussion in the blog Deficits 101 Part 3 but was originally presented in

my book Full Employment Abandoned: Shifting sands and policy failures which was

published in 2008.

You should also read the blog Deficits 101 Part 1 to refresh your memory of

the vertical relationship between the government and non-government sectors

whereby net financial assets enter and exit the economy.

The diagram sought to elaborate on the vertical transactions between the

government and non-government sectors and to explain the importance of them for

understanding how the economy works? It was intended as a vehicle to help

people connect the pieces of the monetary system in an orderly fashion and to

re-educate those who have been poisoned by mainstream macroeconomics textbooks.

vertical_horizontal_relations

You will see that this diagram adds more detail to the diagram presented in

Deficits 101 Part 1 which showed the essential relationship between the

government and non-government sectors arranged in a vertical fashion.

Focusing on the vertical train first, you will see that the tax liability lies

at the bottom of the vertical, exogenous, component of the currency. The

consolidated government sector (the treasury and central bank) is at the top of

the vertical chain because it is the sole issuer of currency and the

transactions that the treasury and the central bank make with the

non-government are able to alter the net system balance (which I will explain

presently).

The middle section of the graph is occupied by the private (non-government)

sector. It exchanges goods and services for the currency units of the state,

pays taxes, and accumulates the residual (which is in an accounting sense the

federal deficit spending) in the form of cash in circulation, reserves (bank

balances held by the commercial banks at the central bank) or government

(Treasury) bonds or securities (deposits; offered by the central bank).

The currency units used for the payment of taxes are consumed (destroyed) in

the process of payment. Given the national government can issue paper currency

units or accounting information at the central bank at will, tax payments do

not provide the state with any additional capacity (reflux) to spend.

The reason we take a consolidated approach to government in the first instance

is because the two arms of government (treasury and central bank) have an

impact on the stock of accumulated financial assets in the non-government

sector and the composition of the assets.

The government deficit (treasury operation) determines the cumulative stock of

financial assets in the private sector. Central bank decisions then determine

the composition of this stock in terms of notes and coins (cash), bank reserves

(clearing balances) and government bonds with one exception (foreign exchange

transactions).

The diagram also shows how the cumulative stock is held in what we term the

non-government Tin Shed which stores fiat currency stocks, bank reserves and

government bonds.

I invented this Tin Shed analogy to disabuse the Australian public of the

notion that somewhere down in Canberra (our national capital) there was a

storage area where the national government was putting all those surpluses away

for later use. This is a constant misperception that pervades the policy

debate. Even the mainstream macroeconomics textbooks call budget surpluses

national saving .

The reality is that there is no storage because when a surplus is run, the

purchasing power embodied in the net outflow of financial assets from the

non-government sector to the government sector is destroyed forever. However,

the non-government sector certainly does have a Tin Shed within the banking

system and elsewhere.

Any payment flows from the government sector to the non-government sector that

do not finance the taxation liabilities remain in the non-government sector as

cash, reserves or bonds. So we can understand any storage of financial assets

in the Tin Shed as being the reflection of the cumulative budget deficits.

Taxes are at the bottom of the exogenous vertical chain and go to rubbish,

which emphasises that they do not finance anything. While taxes reduce balances

in private sector bank accounts, the government doesn t actually get anything

the reductions are accounted for but go nowhere.

Thus the concept of a fiat-issuing Government saving in its own currency has no

meaning. Governments may use its net spending to purchase stored assets

(spending the surpluses for instance on gold or in sovereign funds) but that is

not the same as saying when governments run surpluses (taxes in excess of

spending) the funds are stored and can be spent in the future. This concept is

erroneous. Please read my blog The Futures Fund scandal for more discussion

on this point.

Finally, payments for bond sales are also accounted for as a drain on liquidity

but then also scrapped.

What are the implications of all this?

You will have heard of the term the monetary base which appears in most

macroecoomics text-books as the precursor to outlining the erroneous concept of

the money multiplier. Please read my blogs Money multiplier and other myths

and Money multiplier missing feared dead for more discussion about why

there is no money multiplier.

The concept of the monetary base is a very narrow concept of what economists

misleadingly call money. We will use the term net financial assets because it

is less problematic.

The monetary base is comprised of:

The currency (notes and coins) held by the public and issued by the

government);

The deposits that the commercial banks have with the central bank the

so-called reserves;

The liabilities the central bank has to the non-bank financial intermediaries.

The term base is loaded (excuse pun) because it is seen by the mainstream as

the base on which banks lend from. Of-course bank lending is not reserve

constrained so the term lacks meaning in this context. Please read the

following blogs Building bank reserves will not expand credit and Building

bank reserves is not inflationary for further discussion on this point.

The following table captures the relationship between the monetary aggregates

but in no way supports a money multiplier interpretation of the linkages.

The Table helps to sort the vertical transactions (1 to 4) from the horizontal

(6 and 8).

National government budget impacts

In isolation, a national government budget deficit, which results from the

government spending more (via crediting bank accounts and/or posting cheques)

than it drains via taxation revenue from the non-government sector, results in

an overall injection of net financial assets to the monetary system. This

boosts the monetary base.

Conversely a national government budget surplus, which results from the

government spending less than it drains via taxation revenue from the

non-government sector, results in an overall withdrawal of net financial assets

from the monetary system. This reduces the monetary base.

However, if the government also issues debt $-for-$ to match its deficit then

the impact on the monetary base is neutralised. Mainstream textbooks think this

is a funding operation, whereas from a MMT perspective it is a bank reserve

operation which allows the central bank to effective conduct its liquidity

management tasks.

Please read my blog Understanding central bank operations for more

discussion on this point.

Foreign exchange transactions

The external position of a nation impacts on the monetary base if there is

official central bank foreign exchange transactions.

A nation s currency is demanded in foreign exchange markets to facilitate the

purchase of its exports by foreigners; to pay interest, profits and dividends

to residents who have foreign investments; and to faciliate foreign direct

investment in local companies.

Conversely, a nation s currency is supplied to foreign exchange markets to

facilitate the purchase of imports from other countries; to pay interest,

profits and dividends to foreign investors; and to faciliate lending to foreign

companies.

Ordinarily, where there is a balance of payments deficit the demand for a

nation s currency in foreign exchange markets will be less than the supply of

that currency and there will be downward pressure on the exchange parities.

When there is a balance of payments surplus the demand for a nation s currency

in foreign exchange markets will be greater than the supply of that currency

and there will be updward pressure on the exchange parities.

So exchange rate movements can arise from the real sector and the financial

sectors with the latter increasingly dominating in the era of financialisation.

That situation is one thing that needs to be changed if we are to restore

stable growth with full employment but that is the topic of another blog.

A floating exchange rate system allows these supply and demand imbalances in

currencies to resolve themselves via exchange rate movements with no impact on

the monetary base.

However, under a fixed exchange rate system, a country with an external deficit

(supply of currency greater than demand) would face downward pressure on its

parity and the central bank was committed to easing that quantity imbalance by

conducting official foreign exchange transactions. So in this case it would buy

its own currency in the foreign exchange markets by selling foreign currencies

until the demand and supply of the local currency was equal and consistent with

the fixed exchange rate being targetted.

These transactions would drain the local currency from the economy (the foreign

exchange market is considered part of the monetary system) and so the monetary

base would shrink.

If the nation had an external surplus (supply of currency less than demand) it

would face upward pressure on its parity and the central bank had to sell its

own currency in the foreign exchange markets by buying foreign currencies until

the demand and supply of the local currency was equal and consistent with the

fixed exchange rate being targetted.

These transactions would inject the local currency from the economy (the

foreign exchange market is considered part of the monetary system) and so the

monetary base would increase.

In a pure floating regime with no official central bank intervention, there is

no change in the volume of a nation s currency as a result of the foreign

exchange transactions. As an example, assume an exporting firm in Australia

earns $USDs and seeks to convert them into $AUDs. It will sell them to a

foreign exchange dealer who brokers a deal with a counterparty who desires to

hold $USDs and already has $AUDs (perhaps an importing firm).

The exporting firm s holdings of $AUDs rises as the counterparty s holds fall.

There is no change in the volume of AUDs on issue.

Clearly, things are different in a pure fixed exchange rate system as noted

above. A floating exchange rate system thus does no hamper monetary or fiscal

policy in the same way that monetary policy is forced to defend the parity in a

fixed exchange rate system.

In reality, the central bank still conducts official foreign exchange

transactions even if the currency mostly floats. So when the currency is weak

(and the central bank fears an inflationary spike coming via increased import

prices), it may intervene and buy foreign currency and vice versa when the

currency is strong (and there is a fear that the competitiveness of the trading

sector is compromised).

The following graphs show the scale of that intervention in Australia since

1973. The data is available from the Reserve Bank of Australia. The left-panel

shows the total official FX transactions in $A millions (which include gold and

foreign exchange less net overseas borrowing of the national government), the

middle panel shows the change in reserve assets due to valuation in $A

millions, while the right-panel shows the total change in reserve assets.

You can see the scale of the transactions has increased over time and there are

huge swings in short periods of time.

I plan to write some more about the capacity of foreign exchange markets to

wreak havoc on a nation, a point that some commentators seem to have become

stuck on recently. I would note that Australia is an extremely open economy

with litle industrial base. Our export sector is largely based on primary

commodities and agriculture.

We have huge swings in our exchange rate. For example in September 2001, the

$AUD was selling for 0.4923 $USD and all my US mates were laughing about how we

were now the half-price country. By March 2007, it was back over 80 cents. In

1987, we lost about 10 per cent of our nominal GDP in valuation effects due to

currency depreciation and terms of trade swings in two quarters! These are huge

swings. Our standard of living was barely impacted.

Government bond sales

The impact of national budget outcomes and central bank official intervention

on the monetary base can be offset by government bond sales/purchases. Why

would the government desire this offset?

The fundamental principles that arise in a fiat monetary system are as follows.

The central bank sets the short-term interest rate based on its policy

aspirations.

Government spending is independent of borrowing which the latter best thought

of as coming after spending.

Government spending provides the net financial assets (bank reserves) which

ultimately represent the funds used by the non-government agents to purchase

the debt.

Budget deficits (and official foreign intervention which adds to the monetary

base) put downward pressure on interest rates contrary to the myths that appear

in macroeconomic textbooks about crowding out .

The penalty for not borrowing is that the interest rate will fall to the

bottom of the corridor prevailing in the country which may be zero if the

central bank does not offer a return on reserves.

Government debt-issuance is thus a monetary policy operation rather than

being intrinsic to fiscal policy, although in a modern monetary paradigm the

distinctions between monetary and fiscal policy as traditionally defined are

moot.

To understand these points we need to understand the concept of a system

balance which relates to the daily liquidity in the banking system. The system

balance is another term for the monetary base. It is important to understand it

because it impacts on the ability of the central bank to maintain its desired

monetary policy stance which involves setting a particular overnight interest

rate.

Every day, official transactions are occurring (Items 1 to 3 in the Table

above) and they impact on the system balance or the money market cash position.

Governmments spend and tax continuously and the central bank regularly conducts

official foreign exchange transactions. Further public debt matures regularly

and the central bank may conduct repos and rediscount treasury notes before

their maturity date is reached.

When the flow of funds that accompany the vertical transactions is in favour of

the government sector, we say the system balance is in deficit (or the system

is undersquare ) and vice versa (surplus or oversquare).

You can thus appreciate the particular transactions and balances that will

deliver a system surplus or a system deficit.

A budget deficit, for example, will result in a system surplus or oversquare

position. There will be excess reserves in the accounts held by the banks with

the central bank.

If there is no support rate paid by the central bank on these excess reserves

then the commercial banks will try to lend then on the interbank market. The

possible borrowers will be other banks who lack reserves at the end of the day.

But these horizontal transactions are incapable of clearing the overall system

overall. All they do is shuffle which banks are carrying the excess.

In trying to chase a return on the excess reserves, the competition in the

interbank market drives the overnight rate down to whatever support rate is in

place (which might be zero). Effectively, if there was no central bank

reaction, the official policy rate being maintained by the central bank would

become irrelevant as the interbank rate fell.

The central bank can drain the excess reserves simply by selling government

debt. Accordingly, debt is issued as an interest-maintenance strategy by the

central bank. It has no correspondence with any need to fund government

spending.

The analysis should be easily understood in the case of the impacts of budget

surpluses and the impact of official foreign exchange transactions that add

reserves and those that drain reserves.

Further, the idea that governments would simply get the central bank to

monetise treasury debt (which is seen orthodox economists as the alternative

financing method for government spending) is highly misleading. Debt

monetisation is usually referred to as a process whereby the central bank buys

government bonds directly from the treasury.

In other words, the federal government borrows money from the central bank

rather than the public. Debt monetisation is the process usually implied when a

government is said to be printing money. Debt monetisation, all else equal, is

said to increase the money supply and can lead to severe inflation.

However, as long as the central bank has a mandate to maintain a target

short-term interest rate and does not pay a support rate on excess reserves,

the size of its purchases and sales of government debt are not discretionary.

Once the central bank sets a short-term interest rate target, its portfolio of

government securities changes only because of the transactions that are

required to support the target interest rate.

The central bank s lack of control over the quantity of reserves underscores

the impossibility of debt monetisation. The central bank is unable to monetise

the federal debt by purchasing government securities at will because to do so

would cause the short-term target rate to fall to zero or to the support rate.

If the central bank purchased securities directly from the treasury and the

treasury then spent the money, its expenditures would be excess reserves in the

banking system. The central bank would be forced to sell an equal amount of

securities to support the target interest rate.

The central bank would act only as an intermediary. The central bank would be

buying securities from the treasury and selling them to the public. No

monetisation would occur.

However, the central bank may agree to pay the short-term interest rate to

banks who hold excess overnight reserves. This would eliminate the need by the

commercial banks to access the interbank market to get rid of any excess

reserves and would allow the central bank to maintain its target interest rate

without issuing debt.

From a MMT perspective it is far preferable to eliminate the debt-issuance

machinery altogether and pay a support rate on reserves if the central bank

wants to target a non-zero short-term interest rate. But even more preferable

is to allow the short-term interest rate to drop to zero by not issuing public

debt or paying a support rate on excess reserves. Then the interbank market

will compete the rate down to zero each day and fiscal policy would become the

principle counter-stabilisation tool and the most effective means of

disciplining price pressures in specific asset classes.

Please read the following blogs Operational design arising from modern

monetary theory Asset bubbles and the conduct of banks and The natural rate

of interest is zero! for further discussion of the preferred MMT position.

Conclusion

The vertical transactions which add to or drain the monetary base that I have

outlined here are transactions between the government and the non-government

sector. I note some people think the distinction between government and

non-government is confusing but you should see it as an essential starting

point to understanding the nature of the vertical transactions.

These transactions are thus unique they change net financial assets in the

economy.

All the transactions between private sector entities have no effect on the net

financial assets in the economy at any point in time.

Anyway, we have now explicitly considered the impact of official foreign

exchange transactions (which might include gold sales and purchases as well as

straightforward currency deals).

Australian Federal Election

Tomorrow is our national election.

We are forced to vote here. Some democracy. The choices between the major

parties are either bad or very bad. The Greens who are the third main party

have no understanding of macroeconomics. Some democracy.

The Government may change tomorrow given the polls and Julia Gillard our first

female prime minister will then have the record of the shortest prime minister

in history. The Government should have kept the stimulus going and taken some

hard decisions on climate change and stopped locking refugees up in prisons

(including their children). They did not take any major progressive decisions

in their term of office and were beguiled by their neo-liberal pretensions.

They deserve to be tossed out. But that is not to say that the conservatives

deserve to be voted in. They are a disgrace and will seek to implement

pernicious policies on the disadvantaged just like they did when they were in

power last time (1996-2007). They deny climate change and want to make it even

harder for refugees. They never deserve to be in government of a progressive

forward-thinking nation.

The only policy that is separating them is on the construction of the national

broadband network. The Government is promising to continue building a

technology that will serve us well into the future whereas the conservatives

want to keep us back in the past. All discussions about costs in that regard

are irrelevant because the only costs that matter are the real resources being

used and the Government s plan is probably not much more costly than the

status quo.

Most importantly, both major parties want to run surpluses without knowing what

that means. They do not understand that at this stage of the business cycle

even larger deficits are required. They will both run a macroeconomic strategy

that will be detrimental to the unemployed and their families and then they

will both turn on these same people and introduce punishing welfare-to-work

changes that will just make the lives of the miserable even worse.

There is not much choice down here! I am not allowed under existing electoral

law to encourage voters that instead of voting they should write essays on

their ballot papers outlining why all major parties have lost the plot.

Saturday Quiz

The Saturday Quiz will be back sometime tomorrow. It national election day in

Australia so I might have some questions relevant to that event! Our democracy

is in a sad state.

That is enough for today!