19 October 2013

Deconstructing Austerity I. Money

The narrative of austerity as proposed by Osborne and his cronies is that our huge national debt is the responsibility of feckless Labour politicians and their uncontrolled spending. An examination of the data from the Debt Management Office shows clearly that this is nonsense (this is shown in the graphic and discussed in more detail in my paper 'Who Owes Whom?'). The many billions that were spent as an emergency to prop up failing banks and prevent the financial system from crashing are the real explanation for the huge increase in the public debt. Osborne is a liar by omission because he will not discuss whether he would seriously have refused to invest this money and allow cashpoints to seize up.
 
The reality is that under Osborne far more money has been poured into preventing the cardiac arrest of the economy that results from a lack of circulating money. This is the money created through quantitative easing and the difference between it and what was spent by Darling during the crisis is that the QE money was direct credit creation whereas the money spent by Darling was generated through the sale of bonds and hence features in our national debt.

Since 2009 £375 billion has been created directly by the Bank of England and poured into financial institutions. They have greedily hoovered up this money and paid it to shareholders as well as improving their balance sheet position. They have barely loaned any of it to businesses or invested it in the economy, although the government could have used it for such direct investment, as I argued at the time. This explains why the wealthy and those with interests in finance are flourishing while the rest of us are suffering austerity. The £80 billion created for Funding for Lending has similarly not resulted in an increase in debt and has also been kidnapped by the banks rather than being fed into the real economy.

The Treasury bonds that were bought during the quantitative easing programme are still sitting inside the Bank of England presumably with a big label saying 'do not touch'. If they were to be cancelled, which they could be since they are IOUs issued on our behalf, nearly a third of our national debt would be wiped out in an instant. What a marvellous way of reducing the burden of austerity - or not depending on your political objectives.

These are political choices and hence the narrative of austerity politics that there is no alternative is simply a lie. Darling could have created money directly to save the banks; Osborne could create money directly now for investment in a renewable energy transition. Darling's unwillingness to resort to direct credit creation in the early days is hard to fathom and perhaps resulted from a failure of understanding. Osborne's refusal now to engage in any type of monetary policy that would assist the real economy is a consequence of his desire to use the financial crisis to achieve his long-term policy goal of destroying the public sector.

Almost without challenge Osborne portrays himself as the saviour of the economy while Cameron claims deceitfully to have reduced the debt. The national debt is of course still increasing (see the Spectator graphic) and while the deficit is slightly decreasing we're way off Osborne's original projections. However, this is all smoke and mirrors since the Conservatives have no intention and no desire of reducing the national debt: it's far too useful to them politically.
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2 comments:

  1. I agree with your premise that they no interest in reducing "debt" for political reasons.
    Have lots of probs though, why reduce the "debt" when it is not debt in any meaningful sense. It is net saving of the non govt sector. Certainly distribution issues with who owns it but that is a different subject.
    QE is not printing "money" unless you are using a very narrow definition. It is a swap between different duration gov liabilities as you are not changing the worth of your balance sheet just the type of net financial asset.
    Banks get reserves yes but they do not lend reserves (apart from to each other) stuffing them full of reserves does not mean any more lending...the money multiplier is a myth.
    i would argue thay QE itself is a placebo mostly and even slightly deflationary through the interest channel.

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  2. "Since 2009 £375 billion has been created directly by the Bank of England and poured into financial institutions. They have greedily hoovered up this money and paid it to shareholders as well as improving their balance sheet position. They have barely loaned any of it to businesses or invested it in the economy"

    I would wager that the lack of investment in the productive economy since this huge ramp in QE is due to the lack of yield in such lending and so there has been nothing left than to ramp up the speculative financial sphere which is positively bubbling. The question needs to be asked why we there are such low returns now in the productive economy and while the debt laden consumer has much to do with this, the real reason lies beyond I feel.

    The economic system itself is having to divert increasing levels of surplus capacity to the core drivers of the growth engine, namely energy production, especially oil. The amount of capital required to get the returns needed have naturally continued to increase given the limited nature of such resources. However, our more socially minded political policymakers do not, in the main, see things this way and lambast the bankers for hoarding this QE money. All we need to do is force more lending to SMEs and we will get things back on track they say. However, while some businesses may be saved and others even grow somewhat if we made such a move, it can only be short term. This is thinking within the growth paradigm and it affects all sides of the political spectrum.

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