Why, then, do governments borrow?

 

Most people are unaware that a major historical event occurred in 1971 when President Nixon abandoned what had been called the gold standard (or US-dollar standard). Under that monetary system, which had endured for eighty-odd years (with breaks for war), currencies were convertible into gold, exchange rates were fixed and governments could expand their spending only by increasing taxes or borrowing from the private sector. After 1971 governments issued their own currencies, which were not convertible into anything of value and were floated and traded freely in foreign currency markets. Most nations have operated “fiat monetary systems” ever since, and as a result national governments no longer have to “fund” their spending. The level of liquidity in the system is not limited by gold stocks, or anything else.

 

Why, then, do governments borrow? Under the gold standard governments had to borrow to spend more than their tax revenue. But since 1971 that necessity has lapsed. Now governments issue debt to match their deficits only as a result of pressure placed on them by neoliberals to restrict their spending. Conservatives know that rising public debt can be politically manipulated and demonized, and they do this to put a brake on government spending. But there is no operational necessity to issue debt in a fiat monetary system. Interestingly, conservatives are schizoid on the question of public debt: public borrowing provides corporate welfare in the form of risk-free income flows to the rich because it allows them to safely park funds in bonds during uncertain times and provides a risk-free benchmark on which to price other, riskier financial products. The fact that bond yields have remained low throughout the latest economic crisis (reflecting strong demand for public debt) tells you that the parasitic bond markets do not buy the neoliberal rhetoric. They know that national governments (outside the Eurozone) have no solvency risk.

Read more: Beyond Austerity | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/article/159288/beyond-austerity#ixzz2agXfJnR9

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Living in the Land of Smoke and Mirrors – aka La-La-Land

 

We were continually told that the federal government was financially constrained and had to issue debt to “finance” itself. But with surpluses clearly according to this logic the debt-issuance should have stopped.

 

 

While the logic is nonsense at the most elemental level, the Treasury bowed to pressure from the large financial institutions and in December 2002, Review to consider “the issues raised by the significant reduction in Commonwealth general government net debt for the viability of the Commonwealth Government Securities (CGS) market”.

 

 

I made a Submission (written with my friend and sometime co-author Warren Mosler) to that Review.

 

 

 

The Treasury’s (2002) Review Of The Commonwealth Government Securities Market, Discussion Paper claimed that purported CGS benefits include:

 

 

… assisting the pricing and referencing of financial products; facilitating management of financial risk; providing a long-term investment vehicle; assisting the implementation of monetary policy; providing a safe haven in times of financial instability; attracting foreign capital inflow; and promoting Australia as a global financial centre.

 

 

That is the logic noted above that during the Great Financial Crisis, the liquid and risk-free government bond market allowed many speculators to find a safe haven. Which means that the public bonds play a welfare role to the rich speculators.

 

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But we argued in our submission that: (a) the benefits identified by Treasury which are used to justify the retention of the CGS market can be enjoyed without CGS issuance; and (b) more importantly, these benefits cannot be conceived as public goods, and rather, at best, appear to accrue to narrow special interests.

 

 

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We also argued that:

 

 

They appear to be special pleading by an industry sector for public assistance in the form of risk-free CGS for investors as well as opportunities for trading profits, commissions, management fees, and consulting service and research fees.

Furthermore, and ironically, their arguments are inconsistent with rhetoric forthcoming from the same financial sector interests in general about the urgency for less government intervention, more privatisation (for example, Telstra), more welfare cutbacks, and the deregulation of markets in general, including various utilities and labour markets.

 

 

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We asked the question:

 

 

Do the proponents of CGS really want the private sector to have access to government annuities rather than be directing real investment via privately-issued corporate debt, as an example? This point is also applicable to claims that CGS facilitate portfolio diversification. Why would Australians want to provide government annuities to private profit-seeking investors? … We would also require a comparison of this method of retirement subsidy against more direct methods involving more generous public health and welfare provision and pension support.

 

 

So the continued issuance of debt despite the Government running surpluses was really a form of “corporate welfare” – to provide safe investment vehicles to private investment banks.

 

 

We argued that all the logic used by the Government in the Treasury Discussion Paper applies only to a fixed exchange rate regime. With flexible exchange rate, where monetary policy is freed from supporting the exchange rate, there is no reason for public debt issuance.