Money is just a unit of measure
Why? Money is a way to exchange goods. It is a unit of measure, a very convenient unit of measure, but nothing more than that. It is the standardized unit by which people compare and exchange whatever they produce. When google millionaires spend their money on a vacation in Hawai or going to a fancy restaurant; they really exchange their product, the search engine, with what a vacation rental company in Hawai offers them, or what the fancy restaurant company offers them. That is the real exchange going on between people; money is a convenient way to quantify these exchanges, and compare the relative values of these exchanges.
That you can somehow magically change people's production power, what products they make, by changing the units of measure, sounds bizarre to me. If they resort to low interest rates or giving money to everyone as gifts, they will only cause the prices of goods in money terms go up; but the real value of these goods or products, will not be affected. Nor will the productive powers of the people who make these products.
Just by changing a unit of measure and exchange you can't make people produce things which other people will find useful and will exchange their products for. i.e. you can't generate employment by playing around with interest rates, etc.
Instead of dollars and yuans, if we were to decide that sea shells were a unit of exchange, will you believe the sea shell makers and suppliers when they tell you that they can increase everyone's ability to produce the stuff they produce by changing the amount of sea shells which are used to circulate their products? You obviously wouldn't--then why would you believe a central bank can?
Do you think that a poor nation in Africa with unemployment of 40% can become suddenly rich or lower their unemployment by an intelligent banking system alone-that a central bank of that nation, playing with interest rates, money supply, etc. can reduce unemployment? If money and interest rates don't have a major role to play there, why would you think that in a developed economy like the US or Japan or EU, you could suddenly increase employment by playing with interest rates?
The bankers obviously believe that they are the most important part of the system. But a farmer and a computer-maker has an equal right to claim that. No one sector of the economy can single-handedly improve the productive powers of other sectors. Not the least a sector which like sitting on their asses and watching noise like inflation and GDP growth to decide interest rates, etc.
Don't expect the central banks or Governments to help the country's employment numbers. They are claiming to have powers which they don't really have.
Interest rates are set by the market, not by central banks
Interest rates are set by the market-a central bank doesn't set them. This was explained well by Smith. The central banks are a bunch of people with water guns, they like to believe that they are the ones in control, whereas in reality they have little to no effect on the Economy. Economic activity is far more that interest rates and money and the banking system. In reality, the capital involved in buying and selling money, which is what the whole financial sector is, is taken away from the useful capital of society. Money, as Smith said, is the highway to assist in the exchange of goods (and services). Any capital going into building the highway or making it run more smoothly is a loss of capital from the other parts which produce goods and services. The financial sector of the S&P500 is about 10% of the index; and that should be excluded from Economic activity. Same goes for GDP and other measurements; the earnings etc. of Financial companies should be excluded from those measurements. Money is just in instrument to make the trading of goods and services easier-it in itself has no value. Central banks, financial companies, etc. are nothing more than aiders to economic activity.
Central banks, banks and the financial system in reality follows the market in setting rates (from Adam Smith). They can't set the price at which people borrow-but it does make sense for them to follow the market rates. When rates are low, as they are currently (2016), it means that the demand for loans in the market is low-and that's why the Interbank rates, Fed funds rate. etc. are low. Not the other way around. When the market has high interest rates-the Fed fund rates, etc. will all go up together with it, as they should.
Economists are often times seen talking about interest rates and monetary policy. I don't know how that came about, or when; but they have missed the most essential lesson of Smith-that money is just a means to faciliate trade, nothing else. Fussing over 1% or 0.25% interest rate increase or decreases is a joke.
From GDP measurements, which is another farce published by a lot of so called economists who don't get the main part of economics, it seems that the Japanese GDP has been stuck at the same value since 1990 (to 2016, when I am writing this part of this post). According to GDP publishers and people who believe in that number, Japan, a developed nation of 150 million people, has not advanced at all on the last 26 years! Instead of accepting that maybe the GDP data is not capturing the progress of that wonderful country, they keep insisting that Japan really has gone nowhere in 26 years. I rest my case.
Interest rates, unemployment rate, GDP etc. are some very imperfect numbers, and they must not affect public policy too much. These are full of wrong information, as the Japan example shows. Another example is Venezuela; everything in South America knows that Venezuela is in a lot of trouble right now, people are forming lines to buy bread and milk, supermarkets, are empty etc. but the GDP per capita number of Venezuela is still published as a number above USD 10K. The country is in a lot of trouble, and anyone who follows news from Venezuela knows this, except the finance and economics types, who believe in some strange number and put Venezuela ahead of Peru and Colombia. A very large number of Venzuelans are immigrating every month to neighboring nations; and can testify that things are quite bad out there. Something like this is not reflected in the GDP per capital data at all.
***
More on how central banks cannot influence interest rates.
Interest rates are decided by the market-you pay more to borrow if you profits (of stock) are higher. Just because a central bank has low rates (as in Japan or US right now) does not men that people will borrow, or that the banks will like to make loans. Banks themselves have no interest in losing money, and even if interest rates of the dollars or yens they get from the respective central banks are low, if they find the the borrowers are a bunch of irresponsible people (workers, or people who want to borrow for very risky projects) they will not make loans to them-because they will lose their principal. That risk is somehow not considered by the Economics and Finance folks. A private bank getting a low rate of interest from the central bank is not obligated to loan money. It is in the bank's own interest not to loan money to speculators, lazy people etc. because they will not even pay back the principal advanced to them-forget about the interest charged to them. This is what happened in the 2008 crisis and probably many other crises-the banks loan to projectors who promise fast and amazing returns, the projects don't work out, and not only the projectors go under, but the banks who loan to these projectors also go under. Banks do not manufacture money out of thin air-they are always tied down by the deposits and the payments they are receiving from mortgages, etc. to decide if they can loan more money to other borrowers. If they find that the project is too risky, they will not loan. The ones who do will go under, or lose a part of their loan. The interest rate on the loan is decided by the market-if the people think that they can employ the money usefully, and if they have no problem returning the principal with interest, they will borrow. In general, in any economic transaction ( a transaction not done under duress), the buyers decide the price-the sellers only make offers. Prudent borrowers will not borrow even at low interest rates if they cannot employ capital successfully to make sure that they return the bank the principal and the interest.
I continue where Adam Smith left us in 1776-most money is borrowed by prudent borrowers, and most money is loaned by prudent banks, who, are careful about their own well being, the classic self-interest of Adam Smith. Therefore, speculators and risky borrowers are bad for the banks as much as they are bad for themselves (they will get ruined and will take the bank principal down with it). If the bank is giving loans to the wrong people, even at low interest rates, it will go under itself.
***
Central banks claims of controlling inflation rates are even more questionable. Unless the central bank donates money, or is forced to loan money to the Government (as has happened in Venezuela and Argentina) without regard to it's own well being, no reasonable central bank can reduce or increase the value of money. Adam Smith mentioned a case of this in the Bank of Scotland-who gave easy loans to everyone, and in the end bailed out all other banks at it's own expense. Generally responsible central banks like in most developed countries, and even a large part of the world, cannot do much to reduce the real value of money (inflation). They can cause deflation, but that is just a nominal thing-if prices of everything go down in money terms, it is not a bad thing overall, and real progress has been made in a country if there are more goods for consumers. We must always remember what Smith said in WN-the real quantity of goods and products do not change with small changes in the amount of paper money circulating in the country. Paper money is just a highway to carry things around, to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. It is in itself not consumable, nor of any use.
Normal inflation measurements are very noisy, and most of the massive data taking going on today on inflation with ever changing inflation baskets is nothing but noise. See more about this on this blog post.
***
Central banks were formed to prevent massive crises in the banking system. Note that the US Federal Reserve Act is of 1913, and even after that, there was the massive collapse of stocks and the so called Great Depression in 1929. Obviously they couldn't prevent that. More recently, the 2008 crash was not preventable by all the jargon of price stability, interest rate stability and increasing unemployment which the Central bank is supposed to provide. What they do provide, is the security when the panic is on and full blowing. They are like firefighters-they do nothing most of the time, but when there is a fire, they will help society. That's how central banks were formed (previously, there were only private banks, who would all go bankrupt together, and the savers would lose their deposit). The FDIC guarantee is an extension of that-to reduce the probability of bank runs and savers losing deposits.
Let's not credit the firefighters for creating the world's tallest buildings and the subway lines. They are there when things go bad; but in reality are an expense when things are going good (They are the put seller on the financial system and savers deposits in the banks).
Everyone likes the guarantee of a central bank that their deposits are insured at least upto $200K or $250K. But beyond that, they can't do much. I know personally someone who still can't get $ 5 million they had with Lehman Brothers in 2008. Let's not give too much credit to the central banks in normal times-they really do nothing in those times. Once again, they are very useful in bad times, providing the market support which is necessary; but after that, having monthly meetings to set interest rates, looking at all kinds of noisy data like inflation, GDP, Employments numbers etc. is a lot of hogwash. They pretend that they can do something about all these numbers; they can't.
Provide Price stability is also in the original Fed Reserve Act of 1913. They readily discard the volatile food and energy prices to come up with a smooth inflation number-they promote price stability by discarding volatile data! Poor people spend a lot of money on food; and discarding food and energy costs is clearly not right. Note also that despite all intentions of price stability, prices of commodities, stock market values and people's savings and investments, real estate etc. crash all the time. Clearly they are not able to do much. You can always argue that it would be even worse if there was no central bank-and that's a completely valid argument-but in my opinion, you are giving too much weight to what a central bank can do. The central bank is a bank of banks, and all banks can do is transfer money from real savers to real borrowers-they cannot generate loans out of thin air, otherwise their balance sheets reflect it, and they go belly up. This happened in 2008 to many banks. And it has happened to the central bank as a whole in Venezuela-which is clearly bankrupt. Note that cash held in deposits is a liability for the bank, and the assets and interest payments on them must match these deposits-otherwise a bank, including a central bank like of Venezuela right now, is bankrupt (Assets less than liabilities, and not able to pay interest payments). This is the cause of devaluation of their currencies. The shenanigans of a bankrupt central bank don't last very long, just as the shenanigans of a bankrupt company or individual-soon people get a whiff of it and stop doing business with it. Most products in Venezuela are quoted in USD for this reason. Same with Argentina until recently, when Macri got elected and things seem to have stabilized a bit.
***
Update 2016: Bank of Japan is now buying stocks in the Nikkei to "stimulate the economy and get growth back". See article here. They don't give up, do they? Their interest rate policy didnt get them anywhere for the part 20 years, so now they created another model-let's see if buying stocks creates growth and creates jobs. Banks can't do squat! Economic growth is decided by the hard working Japanese, the real capital owners of Japan, not a bank which is just in the business of transferring funds from lenders to borrowers. They will come up with newer and newer theories of tackling inflation, job growth, unemployment, etc...but will not accept that they have no effect over any of these things.
Dicking around with money, whose sole purpose is to help the transaction of goods and services, doesn't do anything to the real value of those goods and services.
Here's what Smith said about operations of banking, and how they help us:
"It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country. "
See also: What is money and what are its uses
No comments:
Post a Comment