Krugman

Wake Up Progressives: the Trillion Dollar Coin Can Be Game-Changing!

Joseph M. Firestone — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:33:30 -0500

Well, not really. But if you view the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) meme, as I do, as a short-hand for the more general idea of using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), then yes, it can change the whole political game for progressives if President Obama dares to use it.

Literal TDC proposals would solve the debt-ceiling, but they won't solve the larger problem of defeating the austerity politics that is so close to getting the cuts to social safety net and important discretionary government programs that austerians have long sought. PCS game-changer proposals are the ones calling for, or analyzing the impact of, PCS options aimed at paying off the national debt and covering anticipated federal deficit spending for some years.

PCS options of that kind change the game of fiscal politics by removing the issue of austerity from fiscal policy considerations. With this kind of PCS the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio go away as matters of concern. The focus of fiscal policy then becomes the impact of specific policies rather than some overall deficit or debt reducing target. The issue in fiscal policy then becomes public purpose. It becomes what specific impacts, including inflation, and full employment, are anticipated from passing specific legislation, and whether or not those impacts are in line with public purpose. But, when the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ration go away as matters of concern; then the issue of the deficit viewed as something that is draining a limited supply of financial resources goes away, also, because people will understand that using PCS to cover deficits ensures that the US Treasury can never run short of its own fiat currency.

I'm sorry to say that there are few posts of this kind, relatively speaking. I'll list and link to some of those posts later. But first I want to point to what some in the MSM blogosphere are saying right now.

A popular position in the MSM blogosphere

In response to a tweet from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) yesterday, Jason Linkins at HuffPo repeats Joe Wiesenthal's earlier contention that the platinum coin has nothing to do with additional spending, but only with solving the debt ceiling problem. And Linkins says:

The only role the platinum coin plays, in the scenario described by those who promote the idea, is an emergency measure that protects the United States taxpayer and the global economy from the catastrophic effects of a debt ceiling breach.

Linkins is just wrong about this, some, like myself have been advocating game-changing platinum coin seigniorage since July 2011 to get rid of austerity politics and enable the United States to handle its various problems without progressives having to constantly struggle against memes like “we can't afford it,” “we're running out of money,” “we're going to leave huge financial debts to our grandchildren,” and other nonsense memes along these lines from austerians. Linkins accuses the NRCC of lying about this and says that the idea that some people are advocating using the coin to provide the means for spending is “a myth.”

Well, I don't know whether the NRCC knows the PCS literature well enough to know about game-changing proposals, so they may have been lying about it out of ignorance. But, nevertheless, even though they may have misrepresented the position taken by many in the MSM “liberal” blogosphere, they haven't told an untruth about people like myself who aren't part of the MSM echo chamber, and who think more broadly about the possibility and potential of PCS applications. The real issue here isn't whether the NRCC is lying. It's why people like Wiesenthal, Linkins, Krugman, and Matthew O'Brien of the Atlantic aren't focusing on game-changing PCS. In an earlier post, I pointed out that Wiesenthal was concerned about inflation; and surprise, surprise, it turns out that O'Brien is too. He says;

So why not just mint 16 of these $1 trillion coins and retire the entire national debt, smart guy? Or, even better, create a single $16 trillion coin -- scratch that, make it $100 trillion!

Now that's just crazy talk. Let me be clear: Nobody wants to use platinum coins to eliminate the debt. As http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/mmt-again/ Paul Krugman points out, there's a limit to how much seigniorage a government can extract before hyperinflation sets in, and that's certainly far less than $1 trillion, let alone $16 trillion. . . . .

Can we cut this short? I need to run out and buy some canned food and gold bars to prep for the coming hyperinflation. A trillion dollar coin is only two orders of magnitude away from us matching Zimbabwe for monetary ignominy.

OK. So, it's really about the fear of hyperinflation from a guy who tweets under the name @obsoletedogma, and the reference to Krugman indicates that O'Brien, like Krugman, still goes along with the Quantity Theory of Money (QTOM), which Keynes put to a well-deserved rest during the 1930s. Talk about obsolete dogma, IS-LM and loanable funds models aren't exactly examples of up-to-date economic models.

Here's a good blogosphere refutation for Matt to read to understand that the QTOM dog won't hunt! And that he and the others need a specific analysis of why a $100 T coin would cause inflation including specifying causal transmission mechanisms for causing inflation when the seigniorage profits, including the debt repayment money would be paid out over a period of years, and the immediate money to be paid out, would go only to pay intragovernmental and Fed-held debt.

Before O'Brien, Wiesenthal, Linkins, and others start chanting: Zimbabwe! Weimar! I think they ought to do such an analysis and put off going out for some canned food and gold bars. I've done a fairly detailed analysis of PCS impact showing why it wouldn't be inflationary, whatever the denomination of the coin(s) involved. So has Scott Fullwiler. With so much at stake in the debate over the TDC, I think they should at least read these Posts and tell us why they disagree, before they go off half-cocked about using PCS and getting hyperinflation or even inflation!

Wiesenthal, and Linkins, agree that the Platinum “. . . . coin debate coin could be the most important fiscal policy debate you'll ever see in your life." I agree but, if that's truly the case, then let's see them expand the debate to a serious consideration of game-changing PCS, and get off the shtick of talking only about the TDC as a solution to the debt ceiling problem.

Game-changing Platinum Coin Seigniorage Options and Posts

So, again, PCS game-changer proposals are those calling for, or analyzing, the impact of, PCS options aimed at paying off the national debt and covering anticipated federal deficit spending for some years. They probably start at no less than $30 Trillion, because you need $16. 4 T to set aside for paying off the national debt, and then another 14T, which may cover the next 10 years of needed deficit spending if we can get the economy recovered again and get a better balance of trade than we have now. A $60 T option would cover the debt and deficits for 15 – 25 years, and $100 T would probably work for 40 - 45 years.

The further you go out, the more nominal money value you have to have in the public purse to cover deficit spending. The reason for that is that an economy like the US, which imports more than it exports, needs Government deficit support of full employment of roughly the size of the trade deficit plus the size of the demand leakage to private sector savings per year. Assuming the private sector will want to save 6% of GDP per year and that our trade deficit is likely to continue at 4% per year, we can see that we'll need a Government deficit of about 10% of GDP per year to sustain full employment. This follows from the well-known sectoral financial balances model of macroeconomics. It's an accounting identity and always holds.

Once the savings and trade balances are determined, then the deficit will be the sum of those. The only question is whether the deficit spending will be done well, that is, in such a way that full employment is facilitated along with investments that guarantee a bright economic future, or whether the deficit spending will be ad hoc and strictly dictated by the automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance payments, food stamps and the like. So, since GDP will be growing throughout this period, the deficit spending we'll need per year also will be growing along with the size of the economy.

Some bloggers have advocated minting a $quadrillion coin, and that is another option for how to proceed with game-changing PCS. I'm not really opposed to that. But I've proposed the $60 T coin, because I think a game-changing PCS solution is a transitional stage preceding the reorganization of the Federal Reserve and its placement under the supervision of the Treasury Department. Since the $60 T coin will cover debt repayment and debt-free deficit spending for 15 - 25 years; it provides enough time to educate people politically about the desirability of such a change, while providing the Executive Branch with the power to fill the public purse while retaining Congressional control over the purse things themselves, as the Constitution requires.

Why do I call options like the ones above game-changing options in contrast to using the $1 T coin? The reason is that they, unlike the $1 T coin option, not only solve the debt ceiling; but also change the way the Treasury gets the credits into its spending account to deficit spend. The Treasury doesn't create those credits directly with the platinum coin; but it does mandate the Fed to use its power to create them in response to depositing the very high value coin. Once the credits are swapped for the very high value coin involved, the national debt subject to the limit can be paid down and eventually off, without severely contracting the economy, and also deficit spending can then proceed using the credits already in the Treasury's spending account. In short, the very high value PCS options fill the public purse with enough credits to take the debt off the table as an issue, and also to make the question of how we're going to pay for the deficit spending we may need to adjust to the sectoral balances irrelevant, because the money will already be there to support that needed deficit spending.

With the debt ceiling, and the “how you gonna pay for it” issues gone from political debate; the foundation for austerity politics is also gone. We can forget about the Washington think tank industry talking about 50 year budget projections, fixing the debt, debating the debt, agonizing over the debt, calling for cuts to the safety net, saying we cannot afford Medicare for All, or programs for facilitating full employment, etc. This would be a new day for progressive and American politics. It would mean goodby to Bowles-Simpson, Maya McGuineas, Pete Peterson, Alice Rivlin, and all their cohorts.And it would mean hello to a new generation of progressives who could aggressively push a movement for social and economic justice for the 99%.

Moving to PCS game-changing posts, there are very few people blogging game-changing PCS until now. I began blogging it on July 21, 2011, during the first wave of mainstream posts on PCS, with a $30 T PCS post, including a speech the President could make announcing it and politically justifying it, and also a pretty detailed discussion of the inflation issue.

I concluded that inflation due to PCS per se wouldn't be an issue, because the $6.4 T in intragovernmental and Fed-held debt wasn't going to get into the economy. The repayment of other debt, gradually, and when it fell due, would have a similar impact on the economy as quantitative easing, already shown not to be inflationary. In addition, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that the reserves swapped for debt instruments when these are retired are less inflationary then the debt instruments, in any event. Finally, the use of PCS for deficit spending, in place of debt instrument sales, also would not be inflationary, because 1) the difference between these two is like QE; and also 2) the net financial assets produced by the deficit spending would be reserves rather than debt instruments, already shown to be less inflationary.

I followed that one on July 25, 2011, with an open letter to the President and Congress using the $30 T PCS proposal, and followed those posts with two more mentioning high value PCS on the 26th and 29th. At that point, on July 30, a popular blogger at DailyKos, Seneca Doane, wrote a blockbuster post on high value PCS that received 569 comments there, a large amount for DailyKos. It was a one-off thing for Seneca, but nevertheless did a lot to establish blogging about PCS at DailyKos, and also, Seneca was the first to mention the $quadrillion platinum coin in one his comments.

After Seneca's post I kept blogging about high value PCS, routinely including it in my posts. Then on August 2nd, the day after the debt ceiling settlement Scott Fullwiler published his post on coinseigniorage and inflation. This was a comprehensive analysis of the types of payments that might be made using coin seigniorage funds. Scott, a top-level MMT economist showed that 5 different types of payments would not be inflationary, regardless of the face value of the coins that were minted.

After August 1, 2011, mainstream bloggers dropped PCS like a hot potato since the debt ceiling was no longer in the news. But I kept blogging about it because I knew the debt ceiling would be coming back, and also because I had become far more interested in game-changing PCS than in the Trillion Dollar Coin itself.

On August 3, 2011, I blogged “Proof Platinum Coin Seigiorage: A Political Game-Changer for Progressives,” along with the $30 T post, I consider this post to be one of my most important ones. For one thing it introduced the $60 T alternative for the first time. For another, it made very clear the idea that minting such a coin would change the political context and also the terms of political debate. I still think that post is the most compelling one I've done for high value PCS. On August 5th I followed with “Mint the Platinum Coin: End the Austerity War Against the People” which urged the President to implement high value PCS ($60 T) immediately. It outlined a scenario, in which the President minted a $60 T coin and then had to cope with the results of his action.

I continued blogging on the $60 T option bringing it up in the context of various issues throughout the rest of August and most of September 2011. Then on September 26, I posted “Filling the Public Purse and Getting the Public Spending We Need.” Another one, I consider very important. That post emphasized the distinction between filling the public purse and opening the purse strings. It made the point that while PCS gives power to the President to get the public purse filled; it doesn't open the purse strings for deficit spending. It's still up to Congress to do that, showing that PCS DOES NOT interfere with the constitutional power and duty of Congress to appropriate Government spending. Throughout the rest of 2011 and the first half of 2012, I blogged on PCS in the context of other issues. During the second half of 2012, I blogged about it in defending entitlements, on debt/deficit issues, and the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff issues. I also updated my $30 T post to a $60 T post and started a petition on $60 T PCS which has gotten very little support so far.

That pattern of blogging relating high value PCS to other issues like unemployment, the fiscal cliff, health care etc. continued until December of 2012, when the Second Wave of MSM posts about PCS broke on December 3. At that point I began a series of posts you can find at, among other places, New Economic Perspectives (NEP) and Correntewire. The posts at NEP will be found on my page there. The posts at Correntewire are related to one another through a handy link structure which forms “a book” over there. The book begins with a history post and then considers various aspects of PCS including reviews of posts in the current debate. One post in the series extends Scott Fullwiler's analysis of PCS and inflation further. This post is part of the developing book on high value PCS.

Most recently, apart from from my own posts, other bloggers at DailyKos are starting to support High value PCS. These include: a post by priceman, one by bunnygirl60, and, a third by NBBooks.

Conclusion

So, that's it! What the mainstream blogs are missing in their discussions of PCS is game-changing PCS, because their posts are overwhelmingly focused on the TDC. They dismiss game-changing PCS, when they recognize it at all by saying, of course PCS isn't about that; it's only about getting around the debt ceiling, and anything beyond the TDC intended to do much more would be inflationary, and a great and unwelcome disturbance in the normal way of doing things of developed nations. However, when the likelihood of inflation and hyperinflation is analyzed as in posts written by myself, and Scott Fullwiler, it becomes clear that claims about hyperinflation and inflation are very stereotypical and are based on either no analysis or very primitive notions about the QTOM.

The importance of the high value PCS the MSM bloggers won't talk about, meanwhile, is that if tried it promises to end austerity and usher in a new era of progressive, even Green New Deal Politics, because the ideological basis of austerity politics which is the growing national debt would be gone. There are very few people blogging about this so far. But I've completed many blogs on $30 T and $60 T PCS which have discussed the major issues involved in high value PCS, and which have certainly provided a better basis for more extended discussion of it than the mainstream has so attempted. Whether they will ever go beyond the TDC, I don't know; but hopefully this and other posts I've completed in past weeks will challenge the more curious among mainstream bloggers to begin to write about game-changing PCS and leave the small-ball TDC behind.

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Wake Up Progressives: Bad Guys Are Trying To Steal the $Trillion Coin

Joseph M. Firestone — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:44:23 -0500

Wake Up Progressives: The Bad Guys Are Trying To Steal the Trillion Dollar Coin to Save the Financial Status Quo!

Among the many posts on the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) and Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) we're seeing this week, is a category of posts favoring using PCS in a limited way to avoid the debt ceiling crisis, rather than using it in a much more robust way, that would change the procedures underlying Federal spending, so that fiscal policies advocating austerity no longer have a political foundation in a visible and rising national debt that austerity advocates can constantly talk about fixing through “shared sacrifice.”

The Trillion Dollar Coin, as in #TDC and #mintthecoin is a meme representing more than a Trillion Dollar Coin. It represents, instead, the general capability of the Treasury Department under 31USC5112(k) to mint platinum coins of whatever face value the Secretary cares to specify.

The coins involved could have $1,000, or $1 million, or $1 Billion, or $1 Trillion, or $60 Trillion, or $100 Trillion, or even $1 Quadrillion face values. So, an issue immediately raised is what platinum coin denomination(s) should be minted by the Treasury Department if it decides it wants to use PCS to help fill the Treasury General Account (TGA) with enough electronic credits to fulfill its objectives?

Of course, the answer to this question is inherent in the way I posed it. It depends on the objectives involved, and these objectives will not and should not be merely narrowly financial or technical. They will and should be political.

And the two main political objectives associated with PCS and the TDC up to this time have been a) remove the risk of a politically induced default on the debts of the US Government caused by a refusal of the Radical Republicans to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate deficit spending appropriations Congress has already made; and b) to end the political context of austerity which has constrained and limited government activity in the service of public purpose, since the “fiscally responsible” (really stupidly fiscally irresponsible) Democrats gained control of the Executive Branch of government in 2009.

In the latest outburst of posts, tweets, articles, and videos about the TDC, we're beginning to see, a feeding frenzy in which the participants self-organize around the TDC meme AND the objective of avoiding the debt ceiling, but without providing any consideration at all to higher value PCS options that could both make the debt ceiling a dead letter and also remove the driving force for austerity politics. This focus on the bare TDC and its application to the debt ceiling is “small ball” policy analysis that ignores larger issues related to PCS. It needs to stop before it totally drives PCS into a defend the status quo solution, that may defuse the debt ceiling, but still leave us in the sorry state of austerity-driven politics

The focus on “small ball” policy analysis of PCS is emblematic of the superficiality of media outlets and what passes for “journalism” in the early 21st century. Too many content professionals are no more than marketers and propagandists, and don't make even minimal attempts to get at the heart of the larger PCS news story.

If the small ballers get to control the PCS debate it will result in the waste of a remarkable opportunity to change the whole direction of American politics. Progressives need to wake up and try to grasp this opportunity, before the fiscal conservatives save their version of the financial system with its increasing tendency to impose austerity on the rest of us while the 1% get more and more wealthy.

Let's review the pattern of those recent “small ball” PCS posts (each one summarized in the Appendix), and the significance of the position they take on PCS, then in my next post, I'll deal with an exception to the “small-ball” pattern. And in the Post after that I'll compare the small ball position with the one taken in the relatively few PCS “game-changer” posts.

The “Small Ball” Pattern

The primary characteristics of the small ball posting pattern are:

-- They generally don't consider any other options but the “TDC” option. They take the TDC meme literally and address their description, analysis, and advocacy to the TDC option, and its ability to end the debt ceiling crisis, and not to any of the other Platinum Coin Seigniorage variations, and what they may be able to do.

-- They view the TDC option as somehow screwy, outrageous, ridiculous, looney, bizarre, or highly inappropriate, even though they acknowledge that it is legal, and probably would not be inflationary.

-- They also believe that debt issuance prior to deficit spending, the way things are now done, is preferable to issuing platinum coins and then spending without debt issuance. So, some are concerned about the impact the TDC will have on the Federal Reserve's control of monetary policy and its independence and most are advocating Josh Barro's idea of swapping PCS capability for repeal of the debt ceiling legislation.

-- They favor the TDC, however, despite its negative characteristics, for one very good reason: using it is preferable to defaulting, in violation of the Constitution, when the debt ceiling is reached, and, again, according to Josh Barro's proposal, the capability to make TDCs can be traded for debt ceiling repeal, once it's shown that it can be used to avoid the debt ceiling and prevent default.

Let's evaluate this pattern. First, the idea that we have only one problem to deal with and that's the debt ceiling problem is short-sighted and narrow, and reflects the bias of small-ball writers towards the economic and political status quo. What they all want is for the debt ceiling crises to be over, for it to go away, and for the political system to return to normal.

Well, that may be what these writers want; but “normal” in the current political system is austerity politics, a politics in which “the fiscally responsible” people in both parties are about to agree on severe cuts to discretionary spending and the social safety net, and also, perhaps to increasing tax revenue, which will extract further money from the economy. The cuts in deficit spending being planned, with or without any debt ceiling crisis, will severely reduce aggregate demand, and will do that for years to come; condemning American to a depressed and stagnant economy for several more years and perhaps beyond. That situation's not much good for most of us, but it would be the result of the failure to end austerity resulting from viewing PCS as just an expedient for solving the debt ceiling crisis.

Second, I know it's fashionable for the Very Serious People (VSP) who comprise the New York/Washington policy/financial axis to view PCS as silly, ludicrous, and all the other various epithets they've seen fit to bestow on it. But. In doing so, they reveal their ignorance of the history of fiat money issuance and coin seigiorage unaccompanied by debt issuance in the United States and elsewhere.

Lincoln's Greenbacks funded the Civil War without ruinous inflation, and many nations funded their spending in World War I without debt issuance, and Nazi Germany, even if we hate the example, used it without issuing debt and without inflation in the pre-World War II period. Platinum Coin Seigniorage is not a priori silly. It is just not the way things have been done before, and if used in high denominations, it would require adjustments by the Federal Reserve. That does not make it silly, or looney, or ludicrous, or any such thing. It just makes it new and untried. That may be a problem for conservatives, and members of the MSM village, who, above all, want to be viewed as among the VSP; but it should not be one for progressives.

Third, the belief that deficit spending preceded by debt issuance is preferable to using PCS to close the gap between tax revenues and government spending is a belief I don't share. The basis of it, apart from some of its advocates benefiting from current arrangements in some way, is the belief, that Treasury issued reserves in the process of spending without debt issuance are more inflationary; than reserves added only after debt issuance. This, in turn, requires assuming that debt instruments added to the economy as net financial assets are less inflationary than reserves added when unaccompanied by debt instrument sales. This assumption is false.

Debt financing is accompanied by interest payments into the economy of some $245 Billion at present. In addition, debt instruments can be sold anytime reserves are needed, and also, debt instruments can be leveraged multiple times when used as collateral in credit transactions. Reserves do receive Interest-On-Reserves (IOR) from the Fed these days. But the rate paid is lower than on Treasuries and also the payments are made by the Fed and are not a cost to the Treasury. Finally, since reserves injected into the economy through deficit spending cannot be leveraged as effectively as debt instruments, they are not as potentially inflationary in a financial system where private banks and the Fed, based on credit, routinely create money out of thin air, whether the Treasury deficit spends or not.

Believing that it's preferable to have debt issuance precede deficit spending, rather than to use PCS prior to it, also is accompanied by concern about the impact of use of massive PCS would have on Federal Reserve control of monetary policy. PCS, in fact, is likely to result in the Federal Reserve's having to adjust whatever it wants to do in response to deficit spending. Is this a problem, or a bad thing? Does that compromise the Fed's independence? Doesn't the Fed now formulate its monetary policy based on the assumption that the Treasury will issue debt?

Of course, it does. So, what the Fed does now is already impacted by what the Treasury does. It is already reacting to what the Treasury and Congress do, and we also know very well that it reacts to what Wall Street does. And the change that would be introduced by using PCS as the basis of all deficit spending would do no more than cause the Federal Reserve to make some different assumptions before it reacted to these various forces.

The idea that this is destroying the Fed's vaunted independence, and that this makes it impossible to consider very high value PCS, is no more than a bias that prefers the status quo, and the way things are done now, where the predominant influence at the Fed is from the big banks and Wall Street. It is just conservatism talking again. Just a willingness to avoid changing how we do things to take austerity off the table, and make a better life for everyone out of fear of the new, the strange, and the unknown.

Fourth, even though the “small ball” writers are for using the TDC as a last resort, most of them endorsed Josh Barro's idea of making a deal to swap the PCS capability in return for repeal of the debt ceiling law. This idea is a terrible one, and if progressives support it or even accept such a trade, then that would a perfect example of “loser liberalism.”

It's essential to understand that if the Treasury uses PCS and continues to have the PCS capability, then the debt ceiling legislation is already a dead letter. It doesn't matter if it exists, since the outstanding debt can be paid using PCS, and all future deficit spending can be covered by credits generated by the Fed in the course of using PCS.

Since that's the case, a trade of the PCS capability for repeal of the debt ceiling legislation is a trade of something potentially very, very valuable as an enabler of progressive politics in return for nothing at all. It would be a bizarre trade. A silly trade. It would be a moronic trade. A trade made for no purpose at all.

Conclusion

Only a person who wants to keep the system of government deficit spending exactly as it is today can possibly advocate such a trade. But why would people want to keep it the same as it is now, since the political impact of such a system is so disastrous for progressive politics and for government efforts to achieve the public purpose? Why would people want to preserve a system that constantly sets the political table for austerity by constantly increasing something called “the national debt?”

What do austerity advocates now use to justify the policies they prefer? The answer is that they use the existence of the debt. And then they talk about fiscal responsibility, and the grandchildren, and the markets driving interest rates up, and the possibility of running out of money, and about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, discretionary programs that people need, and then they go on to talk about this thing we need that we can't pay for, and that thing we need that we can't pay for, and all the financial limitations we have in doing things that we desperately need to do to make our country viable again.

We need to put an end to all that. And we can do that if the PCS capability is maintained; and if we can find a President who will use its power to its full extent. That's why progressives need to wake up, and not only defend PCS against a Republican attack that has already begun; but also come forward with their own PCS proposals that will go beyond the TDC and offer PCS options that will put an end to the political basis of austerity!

Appendix: ”Small Ball” Views on the Trillion Dollar Coin

This survey summarizes what each of the pieces on the Trillion Dollar Coin appearing in the last few days I had the opportunity to review had to say. They served as the foundation for the above analysis. The dominant pattern is established by the Wiesenthal and Barro posts, and then is replicated by pretty much what looks like an MSM-based echo chamber. Not every post appearing in this time frame is replicated here. And some posts on the TDC were opposed to the idea and so, are not part of the 'small-ball” category. Nevertheless, I think the posts and the video segment reviewed here are representative and that they served as a good basis for the pattern I identify in the Post.

Joe Wiesenthal: Minting the Trillion Dollar Coin won't cause massive hyperinflation because: the money from a TDC wouldn't go into the economy since it wouldn't be used to pay back the debt; and even if some of it did go into the economy, the Fed could “sterilize” that by selling enough of the Treasuries it's holding to get money out of the system.

The TDC won't destroy the dollar because: the money won't be just poured into the economy like “a helicopter drop” of money to people would be. It's just a stop-gap to get by the debt ceiling and keep services going.

People who say we should mint a $16 Trillion coin or a $100 Trillion coin are missing the point. The point isn't to pay off our debt. It's to get by the debt ceiling. If we did try to pay off the debt with a minted coin we'd get inflation or hyperinflation because of the massive expansion of money.

Joe Wiesenthal2: Wiesenthal points out that Paul Krugman, Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and Josh Barro of Bloomberg News have endorsed it. Barro proposes an agreement in which the Republicans give up the debt ceiling and Obama gives up the PCS capability. Wiesenthal then says that it's silly to think of funding the Treasury with a coin, but even sillier to think that defaulting is a good idea. So, let's do the lesser silly (my paraphrase).

He also thinks that minting a TDC would not result in massive inflation because that results only from a massive injection of new money into the system, and a TDC could result only in spending conforming to Congressional appropriations. Also, we should not mint a $100 Trillion coin because: the current economic constraint is not about money, it's about law and getting around the debt ceiling, and a $1 T coin gets around that just as well as a $100 T coin.

Josh Barro: The Treasury has the authority to mint large denomination platinum coins and deposit them at the Fed to finance payments of the Government's bills in lieu of issuing debt. If the Republicans offer a list of demands to be met before they vote to increase the debt ceiling then the President should should simply say that he will mint platinum coins to pay the Government's bills until the debt ceiling is raised. And he should also promise that as soon as the debt ceiling is raised he will have Treasury issue bonds to drain the economy of currency equal to the value of the platinum coins in order to dampen down inflationary expectations. Josh Barro then says:

And then he should offer to sign a bill revoking his authority to issue platinum coins -- so long as that bill also abolishes the debt ceiling. The executive branch will give up its unwarranted power to print if the legislative branch will give up its unwarranted restriction on borrowing to cover already appropriated obligations.

He goes on to say that debt ceiling coercion is no way to run a country and neither is “. . . . monetizing deficits through direct presidential of the currency, in lieu of borrowing.” So, the ideal “concession” for Obama to offer is to trade this power for repeal of the debt ceiling legislation.

Matthew Yglesias: Platinum Coin finance would create new spending capacity, but no new spending authority. But because “it's mighty silly” he supports Josh Barro's call for legislation that would trade platinum coin financing authority for repealing the debt ceiling.

Joshua Holland, a progressive writer, likes the idea of using the TDC. He cites Josh Barro's post and also Jerry Nadler's support of the TDC idea, and then brings in Kevin Drum's legal qualms about the platinum coin legislation which I've reviewed earlier. But then he concludes that he'd just use the coin and let the chips fall where they may. He grants that there may be law suits, but says he still thinks it's a good idea because there's “. . . nothing more ridiculous than a Congressional minority threatening the economy by trying to extract unpopular concessions in exchange for paying the bills that Congress itself already ran up. Let's not pretend this is normal behavior we're dealing with.”

And then he points out we should not pretend that the behavior of hostage taking using the debt ceiling is constitutional behavior and then cites the 14th Amendment Section 4, and the oath of office to strengthen his case.

William Wei at Business Insider produced a youtube explaining the mechanics of the TDC, inaccurately, in the interests of brevity I suppose, lets people know about the #mintthecoin movement, and then asks people to choose which is more silly, minting the TDC and paying your bills; or not minting it and going to default.

The #mintthecoinpetition asks the White House to direct the Mint to make a single platinum trillion dollar coin! It asks for this simple solution to avoid playing political football with the US and global economies.

Charles Riley of CNN also writes about the TDC. He says it's not going to happen because it could lead to even people worrying about inflation and to critics of Federal reserve QE being apoplectic if the Treasury Department did a further “helicopter drop” of $1 Trillion. But later after outlining the solution, he refers to it as “elegant,” and points out that Jerry Nadler supports it as do many on twitter.

Alex Hern put together piece which combines the Wiesenthal and Barro posts and follows Barro down the road of advocating the swap I outlined earlier. He also repeats Wiesenthal's statement that the TDC idea was first suggested by Cullen Roche on July 7, 2011. So clearly Hern did no research of his own on the coin and its origin.

Connor Simpson at the Atlantic Wire is another participant in the echo chamber generated by Joe Wiesenthal. Connor mentions the platinum coin, links to all the names I've mentioned above, repeats Wiesenthal's viral error about the origins of the TDC movement, mentions the #mintthecoin petition, and then follows Barro down the line about what ought to be done, but also emphasizes using the coin as a negotiating tool to get the debt ceiling leverage off the back of the President in the negotiations over the budget. Then he asks why Obama didn't think of this before? And answers: “Because no one's first resort to a debt ceiling fight is to create what is essentially a loonie on horse steroids, duh.” He then concludes by presenting various humorous tweets on the subject by way of agreeing with the position that the move would not damage the economy much.

Bonnie Kavoussi of The Huffington Post provides a piece on the #mintthecoin petition. She calls attention to the debt ceiling and the possible dangerous consequences of default and then refers to the concerns of some that using the TDC may “could be a slippery slope to hyperinflation.” The piece also contains a video explaining the TDC, and reproduces a number tweets about the #mintthecoin petition drive. Everything is focused around the TDC and the debt ceiling problem.

Rachelle Younglai of Reuters This article just reports on the coin proposal, the #mintthecoin petition drive, and the context in the debt ceiling crisis. It doesn't question the legality of platinum coin seigniorage, and doesn't suggest that the proposal is “wacky” or “silly” or “ludicrous.” It mentions the likelihood of Congressional opposition from members trying to reduce deficits, and also mentions that using the coin would compromise the independence of the Fed.

Cullen Roche joined the small-ball party with a brief post at Pragmatic Capitalism. The debt ceiling is silly. The platinum coin solution is silly. The US government has no solvency constraint, and “Willingly defaulting on US debt by using the debt ceiling as a threat is pure madness. I can’t think of many things that would be more reckless than this.” The platinum coin is a legal workaround for the debt ceiling problem first discussed in a web comment by Carlos Mucha (beowulf). Mint the TDC. Deposit it at the Fed. Use the proceeds to pay down debt and it functions like raising the debt ceiling by $1T. It's not inflationary because it's not new spending. It's an accounting gimmick and shouldn't be used. But if the choice is between the coin and default, then “. . . then the decision is a no-brainer. It would be unpatriotic to default. Even more unpatriotic for leaders to allow default when they could mint the coin.” And then he endorses the Josh Barro solution of swapping the PCS capability for repeal of the debt ceiling.

Steve Randy Waldman also weighs in on the controversy. SRW thinks “The benefit of the plan (depending on your politics) is that it circumvents an institutional quirk, the debt ceiling. The cost of the plan is that it would inflame US politics, and there is a slim chance that it would make Paul Krugman’s “confidence fairies” suddenly become real. But note that both of these costs are matters of perception.” He thinks Treasury will reluctantly issue coins in the Million Dollar, rather than the Trillion Dollar range, to continue spending, and that the Fed will “sterilize” this spending selling assets to absorb an equal amount of money in the private sector. He thinks that's all that would happen and that it would be a “big nothingburger.”

Chris Hayes segment with Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and others on video.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This segment reflects the dominant pattern discussed in the text perfectly. The segment poses the issue as a trade-off between using the TDC and default due to the debt ceiling. Notice how Veronique De Rugy defends Republican debt ceiling tactics. Notice, also, that Chris Hayes appears not to have thought beyond the TDC idea as a solution to the debt ceiling.

Today, Paul Krugman weighed in with a very specific statement advising the Administration to be ready to mint the TDC immediately to take the debt ceiling issue off the table. He says: “Given the realities of our political situation, and in particular the mixture of ruthlessness and craziness that now characterizes House Republicans, it’s just ridiculous — far more ridiculous than the notion of the coin.”

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Paul Goes Platinum!

Joseph M. Firestone — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:53:10 -0500

Another platinum coin surge in the Second Wave rippled through the mainstream media yesterday and this time hit the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Domenico Mantanaro of MSNBC kicked things off on one of the morning shows by mentioning the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) as a possible solution to the debt ceiling problem. Then, in the afternoon, on MSNBC's the cycle, Krystal Ball, and Steve Kornacke, in discussing the coming debt ceiling conflict talked rather matter-of-factly, I thought, about minting some TDCs to get around the debt ceiling.

Then Paul Krugman blogged about platinum coins. In the context of answering a question about whether we can “print money,” to get around the debt ceiling, he answers no, and then says:

The peculiar exception is that clause allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination it chooses. Of course this was intended as a way to issue commemorative coins and stuff, not as a fiscal measure; but at least as I understand it, the letter of the law would allow Treasury to stamp out a platinum coin, say it’s worth a trillion dollars, and deposit it at the Fed — thereby avoiding the need to issue debt.

An admirably brief statement of the basic idea, but followed then by this puzzler:

In reality, to pursue the thought further, the coin really would be as much a Federal debt as the T-bills the Fed owns, since eventually Treasury would want to buy it back. So this is all a gimmick — but since the debt ceiling itself is crazy, allowing Congress to tell the president to spend money then tell him that he can’t raise the money he’s supposed to spend, there’s a pretty good case for using whatever gimmicks come to hand.

So, it's gimmicks for gimmicks to get around the debt ceiling, and no notion on Paul Krugman's part that Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) might have a much broader use than simply countering a gimmick the Republicans are using to try to trash the social safety net and drown the Government in a bathtub.

Apart from that, however, this “. . . the coin really would be as much a Federal debt as the T-bills the Fed owns, since eventually Treasury would want to buy it back” is a bit strange. A very high value platinum coin deposited by the Mint in its account at the Fed would have its value credited to the Mint's account in the form of electronic credits. The Fed would then keep the coin in a vault forever, as an asset on its balance sheet, and the seigniorage profits from the deposit of the coin would be swept into the Treasury General Account (TGA) where it would be used for repaying debt or other spending appropriated by Congress. So why would the Treasury ever want or need to buy that coin back from the Fed? And why would the coin be a Federal debt that the Treasury must repay?

It's true that base money issued by the Federal Government is a Federal debt in the sense that the Government has an obligation to accept it in payment of taxes. But in this case, the Fed holds the coin and it has no taxes to pay. Also, the coin never goes into circulation, but sits in a Fed vault, so where does a debt that the Treasury must repay come into this picture and why?

Paul Krugman goes on to make a number of comments about the Fed printing money and the need for the Fed to pull that money back by selling its Treasury debt at some future time when the economy is growing rapidly to prevent inflation. But these comments aren't directly relevant to using PCS, since using it is no more, and perhaps less, inflationary than using debt financing.

The appearance of PCS in Paul Krugman's blog apparently had an immediate impact. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), in an interview reported in Capital New York said:

"There is specific statutory authority that says that the Federal Reserve can mint any non-gold or -silver coin in any denomination, so all you do is you tell the Federal Reserve to make a platinum coin for one trillion dollars, and then you deposit it in the Treasury account, and you pay your bills,"

Well, that's a little garbled, since it's the Treasury that orders the Mint to create the coin which is then deposited in the Mint's account, which is then credited by the Fed with electronic credits because the coin is legal tender, and is then swept by the Treasury for the seigniorage profits which end up in the Treasury Account, and then you pay your bills. But, regardless, Congressman Nadler has the right idea. It is legal for Treasury to make platinum coins with arbitrary face values and to use the seigniorage to pay bills.

In the same interview, the Congressman also refers to invoking the 14th amendment as a way in which the President could justify not complying with the debt ceiling. But, I think, this is not as good a solution as using PCS. The reason why, is that the debt ceiling isn't unconstitutional as long as Congress has provided alternative ways for Treasury to meet its obligations. PCS is such an alternative, so, as long as it is legal, I think the President is obligated to use it and not the 14th amendment to defeat the debt ceiling constraint.

Mike Sankowski at Monetary Realism, also reviews Krugman's views and Nadler's interview and points out that:

I don’t think the coin will be used, but the idea of the coin has now hit critical mass. He’s a congressperson, so he only knows what his aides are telling him. If his aides are talking about it, you can be sure all of the democratic aides are talking about it over drinks. It’s just part of the everyday conversation in the support staff of congress.
Nadler is right – it’s not normally proper to consider such an extreme tactic. It is terrible it had to come to this, but here we are. It would be good if we just didn’t have a debt ceiling at all. Then, it would be so much nicer if the government had a well established, and commonsensical method to allow for the Treasury to print money directly – along with rules on how much and when this could be done.

I think Mike is right about the coin reaching critical mass and now being a topic of conversation among Congressional Staff. Even more, since the coin reference comes from Jerry Nadler, we can suppose that PCS is making the rounds within the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) specifically, and may become a key element in stiffening their spines during the debt ceiling fight. The CPC is much less likely to accept a lousy deal from the Republicans and the President if they know very well that the President can rise above the whole debt ceiling crisis by minting a very high value platinum coin.

Mike Sankowski voices misgivings about the coin. Above he calls it an “extreme tactic” and later on in his post he talks about the problem of giving politicians the power to print money. On the last point, I think the Constitution has already given the politicians the power to “print money.” And it's a wonder that instead of grasping that power more firmly, they've constructed all kinds of constraints preventing them just issuing it.

Until 1971, they constrained themselves with the gold standard. And from then until the present, they've constrained themselves by insisting that deficit spending be preceded by debt issuance even though there's no reason to believe, except the discredited Quantity Theory of Money (QTM), that issuing fiat money in the act of spending is any less or more inflationary if it's preceded by issuing debt than if it's not.

Commenter Robert Rice answered Mike's misgivings about the power to print money, by pointing out that every power of Government is subject to abuse and that this is no reason not to have government and to use its powers for public purpose. And I agree, Mike Sankowki's misgivings about the “printing money” power are no more than the usual conservative disposition to always mistrust government.

It's wise to do that, since one must never cease to look gift horses in the mouth. But it's not wise to let one's mistrust cripple one's government and, as a result, arrive at the kinds of conditions we are finding ourselves in right now. After all, what is the debt ceiling legislation itself, but an expression of the same conservative impulse that Mike is voicing? Listening to it is what has caused the mess we're in. To get out of it, we have go onto a new track. That track is using Platinum Coin Seigniorage as our primary tool when deficit spending.

As for PCS being an “extreme tactic.” I'm afraid, I think that's just labeling. Wigwam, a blogger at FDL and DailyKos, had this answer for people who label PCS as “weird,” a very similar label to “extreme.” He said:

Such coins are “legal tender” and can therefore be deposited into the Treasury’s General Account at the Fed, from which the Nation’s bills are ultimately paid. Therefore, there is no need for the Treasury to borrow money to meet the obligations of the United States. But, and this is critical, none of that money can be withdrawn except for congressionally appropriated expenditures; e.g., the Treasury cannot monetize the national debt except insofar as such expenditures are appropriated by Congress.

For the past 220 years, the Treasury has been paying a portion of each year’s expenditures via the markup (seigniorage) on the minting of coins — last year coin seigniorage covered about 1% of the tax deficit — Abraham Lincoln went even further and paid for the Civil War with printed fiat money (“Greenbacks”), as did the European powers to finance WW I, and as did Germany to finance its part in WW II.

All of the above is background to keep in mind the next time you read a financial/economic pundit declare that it would be “weird” for the Secretary of the Treasury to exercise his powers under 31USC5112(k) and recommend that he instead foment a constitutional crises by directly violating 31USC3101(b), which I think would be “weird” at best.

And further, how much “weirder” or “more extreme” is it for a government with a sovereign fiat currency system to deficit spend only after it borrows back its own currency, than it would be for that same government just to forget about borrowing and paying interest to rich investors and foreign nations on what it can create in unlimited quantities itself. In short, what we're doing now is a lot more “weird” and “extreme” than just using existing legal authority fill the public purse to spend what Congress has already appropriated.

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

China Currency Manipulation Equals China Inflation

Dave Johnson — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 14:08:50 -0500

Schemes and scams unravel, usually badly. China has been manipulating its currency, causing economic imbalances on a scale the world has rarely if ever before seen. The consequences are causing inflation problems inside China. One way or another this is going to adjust and China has to find a way to keep it from exploding.

Chinese people are feeling the inflation. This segment yesterday on Marketplace, for example,

Wang's 39. He assembles furniture at a warehouse for $500 a month. Half of that goes to rent for a bed in a crowded room; the other half to his family. But lately, he's set more aside to cover the rising cost of food. Rapid inflation makes him wonder what how he can go on.

Yesterday on the PBS Newshour, a segment Amid Hu's U.S. Visit, How Do China's Youth View Rest of World?, talking with Chinese students,

(Note, if the video isn't working you can watch it here.)

"When others see China, they see, oh, 8 percent per year, but when the Chinese see itself, they see unemployment, they see inflation, they see the rising costs of households."

Paul Krugman today, in China Goes to Nixon, lays it out,

In fact, Chinese currency policy is a lose-lose proposition, simultaneously depressing employment here and producing an overheated, inflation-prone economy in China itself.

One way to think about what’s happening is that inflation is the market’s way of undoing currency manipulation. China has been using a weak currency to keep its wages and prices low in dollar terms; market forces have responded by pushing those wages and prices up, eroding that artificial competitive advantage. Some estimates I’ve heard suggest that at current rates of inflation, Chinese undervaluation could be gone in two or three years — not soon enough, but sooner than many expected.

China’s leaders are, however, trying to prevent this outcome, not just to protect exporters’ interest, but because inflation is even more unpopular in China than it is elsewhere. One big reason is that China already in effect exploits its citizens through financial repression (other kinds, too, but that’s not relevant here). Interest rates on bank deposits are limited to just 2.75 percent, which is below the official inflation rate — and it’s widely believed that China’s true inflation rate is substantially higher than its government admits.

Rapidly rising prices, even if matched by wage increases, will make this exploitation much worse. It’s no wonder that the Chinese public is angry about inflation, and that China’s leaders want to stop it.

China's currency scheme is unraveling and China's government is trying to manage the internal pressures. But for who? Interests in China that have become wealthy use their increased wealth and power to influence policy to keep the good stuff flowing their way by keeping restrictions on imports. American multinationals use their wealth and power to push for lower wages.

Our government is supposed to be a countervailing power that speaks for We, the People and American workers. So our government should be pushing for China to stop restricting imports, stop manipulating currency and open up freedoms for Chinese workers to bargain for higher wages. The way to do this is to ask Chine nicely (done this, decades...), send them sternly worded letters (done this, no effect), demand changes (done this, no effect) and finally impose sanctions that restrict the imports into our markets until we have a level playing field.

The Fed Lied About Wall Street

Zach Carter — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:09:24 -0500

The data from the Federal Reserve audit is full of frightening revelations about U.S. economic policy and those who implement it. When Wall Street went off the rails in the fall of 2008, policymakers told the public we had a certain kind of problem, knowing all along that the actual nature of the problem was very different—and far more severe. This was a terribly destructive lie. Had policymakers fully explained the scope of Wall Street’s 2008 troubles, today’s problems with foreclosure fraud would simply not exist.

Here’s the basic issue. As Lehman Brothers, AIG and other major financial firms teetered on the verge of collapse, the Fed and the Treasury Department insisted that the trouble on Wall Street was one of “liquidity.” That’s a finance term meaning, “the banks are fine, but everybody is confused.” Banks have lots of money in long-term assets, but can’t convert those long-term assets into short-term cash.

In retrospect, that view was clearly an error. The bank held hundreds of billions of dollars worth of subprime mortgage assets, which were not merely worthless in the panic-stricken view of the financial mob, but worthless, full stop. At the time many people argued that the financial system faced not a liquidity crisis, but a liquidity crisis and a solvency crisis. That is to say, even if the government had helped the banks deal with day-to-day problems, the banks were still fundamentally unable to pay their debts. They were not merely illiquid, but insolvent.

I stole this perspective on the financial crisis from Mike Konczal, and the same basic framework was portrayed very forcefully by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in 2008 and 2009. Krugman’s major concern was that the U.S. would end up with a handful of dominant “zombie banks”—firms which were kept alive by government aid, but which were fundamentally insolvent, and unable to support the economy with productive lending.

The truth has been far worse than Krugman predicted. Not only are today’s major banks unable to support the economy, they are actively sabotaging the middle class with fraudulent foreclosures. This is a direct result of policymakers’ failure to address the fundamental solvency problem in 2008 and 2009. And what’s worse, it appears that the Federal Reserve was aware of the solvency problem, even as its top officials publicly insisted that the bailed out banks were fine.

To fix a liquidity crisis, the Fed has had a longstanding policy of offering short-term, low interest loans. In exchange for these loans, the Fed demands high-quality collateral. That’s as it should be: if a bank is truly experiencing a liquidity crisis, there is a public interest in keeping it afloat so it can meet its financial obligations.

And so in 2007 and 2008, the Fed created several facilities to ease liquidity based on this principle. The trouble is, starting on Sept. 15, 2008—right when Lehman Brothers was going under—the Fed started accepting total garbage as collateral for its loans. Not just a little bit of garbage, either. According to data released by the Fed yesterday, the central bank accepted $1.32 trillion in collateral rated “junk bond” status or lower, starting Sept. 15, through it Primary Dealer Credit Facility alone. That compares to $8.95 trillion in total loans extended through the Primary Dealer outlet from March 2008 through May 2009. From Sept. 15 onward, the Fed lend out $7.60 trillion through this window alone, meaning that a full 17 percent of its lending from this point was backed by junk bonds, or worse.

These total figures are somewhat exaggerated—the facility in question offered overnight loans, and many banks chose to roll-over their loans from one day to the next. Nevertheless, the collateral comparison is apt. However you measure it, nearly one-fifth of the Fed’s lending through this facility was backed by junk bonds.

What does all this mean? The Fed knew it was facing a solvency crisis, even as it publicly insisted that Wall Street was merely dealing with a liquidity issue. If the Fed had truly believed Wall Street only faced liquidity troubles, it would not have allowed major banks to pledge junk bonds as collateral for loans. And indeed, for months, the Fed did not allow banks to put up junk bonds as loans. But things changed when Lehman Brothers went under.

The Fed and the Treasury had to do something in the fall of 2008. But to fix liquidity without fixing solvency was a grave error. By denying the solvency crisis, major bank executives who had run their companies into the ground were allowed to keep their jobs, and shareholders who had placed bad bets on their firms were allowed to collect government largesse, as bloated bonuses began paying out soon after.

But the banks themselves still faced a capital shortage, and were only kept above those critical capital thresholds because federal regulators were willing to look the other way, letting banks account for obvious losses as if they were profitable assets.

So based on the Fed audit data, it’s hard to conclude that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was telling the truth when he told Congress on March 3, 2009, that there were no zombie banks in the United States.

“I don’t think that any major U.S. bank is currently a zombie institution,” Bernanke said.

As Bernanke spoke those words banks had been pledging junk bonds as collateral under Fed facilities for several months. From March 4, 2009 through May 12, 2009, when the Fed data stops, only two institutions borrowed money from the Fed’s Primary Dealer window: Bank of American and Citigroup. They borrowed almost every day, pledging junk bonds as collateral. Bernanke either knew this, or should have known it as a major public official.

This is the heart of today’s foreclosure fraud crisis. Banks are foreclosing on untold numbers of families who have never missed a payment, because rushing to foreclosure generates lucrative fees for the banks, whatever the costs to families and investors. This is, in fact, far worse than what Paul Krugman predicted. Not only are zombie banks failing to support the economy, they are actively sabotaging it with fraud in order to make up for their capital shortages. Meanwhile, regulators are aggressively looking the other way.

The Fed had to fix liquidity in 2008. That was its job. But as major banks went insolvent, the Fed and Treasury had a responsibility to fix that solvency issue—even though that meant requiring shareholders and executives to live up to losses. Instead, as the Fed audit tells us, policymakers knowingly ignored the real problem, pushing losses onto the American middle class in the process.

Wall Street Whiners Threaten to Wreck the Economy-- Again

Zach Carter — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 18:10:38 -0400

I agree with everything Paul Krugman has to say about Max Abelson's excellent run-down of the Wall Street whinery, but his critique stops a little too short. Abelson's piece emphasizes that Wall Street isn't really upset about any policies the Obama administration has adopted, since, as I and many others have noted, the Obama administration has been very friendly on that front. What they're upset about-- at least what they say they're upset about-- is the jargon. Obama called bailed-out bankers "fat cats" after they paid themselves obscene bonuses with taxpayer money. To the bankers Abelson quotes, this amounts to some kind of unfair discrimination. That's absurd-- the bailout barons Obama criticized had wrecked the economy and then paid themselves like princes for profits secured by taxpayer largesse. Those who did not benefit from such largesse have no reason to feel slighted by the critique, and those who did benefit have no reason to be complaining from their second homes in the Hamptons.

But what I find most interesting is that the cry-babies in Ableson's story actually threaten to wreck the economy over this rhetoric. The key passage is at the end of Ableson's piece:

Wall Street's emotions have consequences. "If, as a result of this anger, credit becomes unavailable, particularly for small and mid-size businesses," Mr. Schwarzman wrote in The Washington Post this year, before his Poland blunder, "then at best the economy will slow and, at worst, we will find ourselves in a dire situation." He said bankers felt under siege and were responding by "becoming conservative," a lovely little pun about lending and politics.

Credit does not just magically become "unavailable" because of "anger." Some class of angry people has to decide not to make credit available.

There are plenty of reasons why bankers might decide not to extend loans, but feeling "under siege" because the president called you a fat cat of isn't one of them. No sane businessperson would let those feelings overwhelm her decision-making process when the bottom line is at stake. If there were evidence that regulations were going to change dramatically and banks would have to keep more capital on hand to cushion against losses, there's a case to be made that banks might not be eager to extend loans as a result (not a very good case, though, since banks could just raise capital in the markets to support profitable lending opportunities). But freaking out because the President calls you a fat cat and preemptively shutting down your business makes, well, no sense.

Another of Abelson's anonymous Wall Street sources repeats the insanity:

"He's pissing on us and Wall Street and bankers and capitalism; then we have gotten afraid," the executive who turned CNBC on mute said. "We then are not investing in maybe what we should invest in."

What, exactly, are this guy and his friends afraid of? That Obama might call him another name that he likes even less than "fat cat?" Obama has proposed a couple of tax changes for some types of Wall Street revenue and some types of hedge fund pay-- but the fear of higher taxes wouldn't be grounds to invest less, or invest improperly. Bumping up the capital gains rate from 15 percent to 20 percent doesn't alter the incentive structure at all-- it isn't going to push any bankers or traders out of the investment business.

So these brats are saying one of two things with their tantrums. Either Wall Street is dominated by completely irrational fools who will wreck their businesses after hearing a dirty words, or this is a threat: Treat us like superhuman royalty, or we'll wreck the economy. If the first case is true, then these guys are paying themselves enormous sums of money to be total idiots-- something the "well operators" that one of Abelson's anonymous Wall Street sources spits on never do. If the second is true, then we have another excellent reason to keep these sharks out of economic policy debates.

UPDATE: Also note the use of anonymous sources in Abelson's story. Usually that anonymity protects somebody from something-- in financial journalism, anonymity usually protects a source who divulges a trading strategy or a lobbying tactic that ought to be a company secret. But these guys are just whining, and asking for Abelson not to tell anybody who they are. At least some members of the Wall Street whinery are ashamed of themselves.

Conservatives Are Clueless On Jobs

Zach Carter — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:00:45 -0400

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is the Republican Party's latest effort at putting forward a credible economic ideologist. His recent interview with Ezra Klein reveals this effort to be a complete failure. Ryan's views about the financial sector completely contradict his statements about the federal budget deficit, making his policy prescriptions as an incoherent mess of meaningless talking points.

Paul Krugman and Matthew Yglesias do a nice job explaining how Ryan really doesn't know what he's talking about. But the conservative politician makes things much worse for himself when he attempts to defend himself against these criticisms. Here's Ryan, emphasis mine:

I'm not convinced – but intrigued – with the debate over the carry trade that is going on right now. What I mean by that is banks can borrow at essentially no cost from the Fed, plow the money back into no-risk Treasury securities, and earn that modest spread. This dynamic, while obviously helping banks recapitalize, could be curbing capital deployment in the private sector.

There's no question that banks are doing this. At the moment, banks can borrow from the Fed for 0 percent, and invest that money in U.S. government bonds. A 10-year bond pays the bank interest of 2.91 percent right now, with the 30-year bond closer to 4 percent. Since there is no funding cost, every basis point of that return is pure profit for the bank. It is a "modest spread," to be sure, but as Ryan says, it's all risk-free profit.

Banks are doing it because they know the U.S. government isn't going to default on its debt. Although 2.91% isn't an amazing return, it's a sure thing, and it's much less risky than lending to businesses during a deep recession. Banks can borrow as much as they want from the Fed, and they can invest that free money in as many Treasury bonds as they want, allowing them to make a killing in millions of small installments. It's called a carry-trade, and it's a huge part of what financial analysts are talking about when they say banks are "earning their way back to health." One arm of the government—the Fed—is enabling banks to make tons of money from another arm of government—the Treasury.

Unfortunately for Ryan, this behavior is totally inconsistent with everything else he says during his interview with Ezra. Ryan makes an aggressive push to claim that the U.S. budget deficit is a terrible, terrible problem that puts the economy in grave danger. The only way to deal with this, he says, is through drastic cuts in government spending. But it's impossible for the budget deficit to be a dire problem when Treasury securities to carry "no-risk." If the budget deficit was a big deal, Treasury securities would be extremely risky. Investors would be worried that the big, bad budget deficit was about to spark a default, and investors worried about default either don't invest or demand a very high interest rate to compensate them for the risk they're taking on.

There are really only two ways for budget deficits to create economic problems. First, if big enough, budget deficits can spark severe inflation, as governments print loads of money to pay off their debt. Inflation isn't happening-- it's below the Fed's target rate, and even inflation hawks at the Fed are now worried about the prospect of deflation. Second, they can spur high interest rates, as investors demand a greater return on their investment out of fears of default. Those high interest rates can impede economic growth. Ryan repeatedly tries to make the second case. Earlier in his interview with Ezra he says this:

"Locking in budget reforms and spending control will help us in the short run by taking pressure off interest rates."

and this:

"At this point, given the borrowing costs, stimulus is counterproductive."

But if there were any real pressure on interest rates, we'd be seeing high interest rates on Treasury bonds. Of course, we are not seeing high interest rates on Treasury bonds. We are, instead, seeing record lows, something Ryan acknowledges when he says that banks can only earn a "modest spread" by investing in Treasurys!

What's more, those low interest rates that Ryan acknowledges mean that the government has record low borrowing costs. Ryan tries to argue that spending money to create jobs will cost so much that the measure won't work. But there has never been a better, cheaper time for the government to borrow money than right now. The bank behavior Ryan cites means that the government should be borrowing as much as it can and spending that money to create jobs, since we are still in the middle of the worst jobs crisis in 75 years.

And make no mistake, Ryan's quest to slash government spending is a job-killing agenda. He has to resort to crazy incoherent arguments about interest rates because everybody can see that spending money to create jobs will, you know, create jobs. Ryan is simply ideologically opposed to the idea of government spending (at least now that Democrats are in power). He is looking for any excuse he can find to cut that spending, regardless of the consequences for the economy. Sane policymakers should be worried about creating jobs, not looking for ways to push a bizarre anti-government agenda.

Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Big Banks

Zach Carter — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:23:00 -0400

I rarely accuse Paul Krugman of failing to think clearly, but I think he's missed the mark with his his argument against breaking up the U.S. too-big-to-fail financial oligarchy.

Here's Krugman's core objection:

Breaking up big banks wouldn't really solve our problems, because it's perfectly possible to have a financial crisis that mainly takes the form of a run on smaller institutions. In fact, that's precisely what happened in the 1930s, when most of the banks that collapsed were relatively small — small enough that the Federal Reserve believed that it was O.K. to let them fail. As it turned out, the Fed was dead wrong: the wave of small-bank failures was a catastrophe for the wider economy.

The same would be true today. Breaking up big financial institutions wouldn't prevent future crises, nor would it eliminate the need for bailouts when those crises happen.

Krugman is leaving out the most important part of the 1930s story here. The mass failure of small banks in the Depression was an economic disaster because it wiped out the deposits of citizens all over the country. It wasn't just that the banks were being wiped out, it was that people's savings were being wiped out with them. The government solved this problem when it invented deposit insurance. And as a result, when small banks go down, it doesn't wreak havoc on the economy. Literally thousands of small banks failed during the savings and loan crisis, but depositors didn't lose a dime. The S&L crisis wasn't good, but it was never a problem that threatened to bring down the entire economy. This is not the case when large banks fail today, as evidenced by the quagmire following the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Krugman is undoubtedly correct to state that breaking up the big banks would not prevent future crises, but that's not the point. No reform can eliminate the business cycle. What we can do is create meaningful regulations and restructure our markets to ensure that future crises are not total catastrophes. Part of this will mean, as Krugman suggests in his column, regulating what banks do. But part of it will also mean making sure that when regulators screw up, the result isn't economic Armageddon. The only way to do that is to break up the big banks.

Two other points are worth mentioning. First, as Simon Johnson and others have noted, the principal problem with Wall Street is not economic, but political. There's a reason why banks were able to secure their bailouts within a matter of weeks, but we've had to wait nearly two years for regulatory reform. The banks have been lobbying hard against any reform whatsoever, and for the most part, they've been successful. Even today, it's not obvious that any financial reform package, however weak, will get through Congress.

If Congress does find the will to enact stronger regulations, but doesn't break up the banks, it's very likely that the major banking conglomerates will be able to push regulators around and dodge the enforcement of those new rules. The only way to mitigate this political influence is to cut banks down to size.

Second, even if Congress establishes a new FDIC-style "resolution authority" for the shadow banking system—and I agree with Krugman that it should—the credit markets simply won't take it seriously. The biggest banks—Citigroup, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, etc.—will still be able to raise money at low interest rates based on the presumption of a government bailout. That injects a costly inefficiency into the financial system—Dean Baker estimates that it results in $34.1 billion a year in misallocated funds, all of which could be supporting small businesses or creating jobs.

But the lure of low-cost funding also encourages banks to get bigger. Right now, every significant incentive in the banking system is pushing banks to grow, grow, grow. If we do not break them up, the threat they pose to the economy is only going to be exacerbated over time. The largest U.S. banks currently hold about $2 trillion in assets. Does anybody, including Paul Krugman, really want us to confront the next crisis with a handful of $10 trillion or even $30 trillion banks?