Abolish fiscal rules and the agencies that enforce them? Galbraith makes the case. (This is for you too, 🇬🇧)
"The budget process cultivates and perpetuates the idea that smaller deficits are better than large ones..." 1/
"..it sets a standard that tax cuts should be offset, at least in part, by spending reductions. That standard now leads to the grotesque bill just enacted." 2/
"According to the budget process, however, extending current tax law is scored as another tax cut – requiring yet another offset through spending cuts...The beast of deficit reduction is never sated." 3/
"A government-spending-led expansion would allow the private sector to expand without creating fragile balance sheets--indeed, government deficits would boost profits and add safe Treasury debt to private portfolios. 1/
However, a robust private sector-led expansion would tend to cause tax revenues to grow faster than private sector income (with a progressive tax system and with transfer spending falling in a boom) so that the government budget would 'improve' (move toward surplus) while the private sector balance would deteriorate (move toward deficit). 2/
For that reason, Minsky argued that private sector-led expansions tend to be more unsustainable than government-led expansions because private deficits and debt are more dangerous than government deficits and debt. 3/
Why does the government almost always spend in excess of taxes --i.e. run a budget deficit ? A 🧵 1/
The short answer is that the rest of us, on average, typically want to accumulate more US$ than what is required to pay taxes. That is, we want to net save US$. 2/
Government spending in excess of taxes--deficit spending--manufactures the $US that enable the rest of us to net save. 3/
"Each time the Federal Reserve acts as a lender of last resort, it prevents some financial institution or some financial market from collapsing. 1/
When it does this, it introduces additional Federal Reserve liabilities into the economy and extends a Federal Reserve guarantee over some set of financial practices. 2/
Thus in 1966 it protected banks that used certificates of deposits, in 1969-70 it protected the commercial paper market, and in 1974-75 it extended the Federal Reserve guarantee to those who owned the liabilities of offshore branches of American banks. 3/
🧵
20 yrs ago, Scott Fullwiler wrote this paper, comparing the (then extant) practice of hitting interest rate targets via day-to-day open-market operations and managing TT&L accounts with the yet-to-be-adopted practice of paying interest on reserves. 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Scott concluded that instead of replacing non-interest bearing reserves with interest-bearing Treasuries, it would be far "more direct and more efficient" to turn the non-interest bearing reserves into interest-bearing reserve balances (IBRBs). Treasury could then stop issuing securities altogether. 2/
But don't financial markets need Treasuries for a whole variety of reasons? Could we really just stop issuing them? Scott explains why the answer is yes. 3/
"If we could wave a magic wand and wipe out Treasury interest payments, we would have a lot of desperate people who had lost the income from savings bonds, Treasury bills, notes, and bonds and the pension funds that were holding them... 1/2
This in turn would mean less spending on goods and services, less production, and less employment for a lot of other people." 2/2
~Robert Eisner (1994)
"It is sometimes argued that this involves a regressive redistribution of income, on the assumption that the rich receive interest income...