A few days ago Peter Bofinger, one of Germany’s “wise men,” published an astonishing post titled “German wage moderation and the Eurozone crisis” that appeared on VoxEU.org (see here) and Social Europe (see here). The post was astonishing in more than one way. First of all, it seems astonishing that, in late 2015, and not 10 years earlier or so, a wise man from Germany should feel the need to draw attention to the role of German wage moderation in the eurozone crisis. Persistent German wage moderation under the euro is an undeniable fact. How can there be any controversy about it some 20 years after it started?

No less astonishing was the particular occasion that triggered Bofinger’s post. Bofinger responds to a recently published CEPR Policy Insight titled “Rebooting the Eurozone: Step I – agreeing a crisis narrative.” This is an essay by a group of CEPR-related economists attempting to establish what they see as a “crisis narrative” that may be more in accordance with the basic facts about the eurozone crisis (rather than being based on myth or political convenience). In particular, these economists reject the official narrative that is still popular today among some key eurozone authorities, especially Germany’s finance ministry: namely, the “sovereign debt crisis” myth. Their alternative crisis narrative highlights large intra-eurozone capital flows and imbalances and the “sudden stop” event that featured their eventual implosion. Bofinger generally agrees with the proposed alternative crisis narrative but makes the point that something rather important is missing in it: the alternative CEPR crisis narrative pays zero attention to the role of German wage moderation and is therefore “incomplete.” It is indeed astonishing that one of the supposedly leading European economic policy think tanks proposes a crisis narrative, and one supposedly based on the basic facts, but misses the most basic fact of all: that German wages stopped rising under the euro. continue reading…

From Edward Chancellor’s review in Reuters Breakingviews of L. Randall Wray’s Why Minsky Matters:

Minsky, who taught economics at the University of Washington in St Louis before ending up at the Levy Institute at Bard College, had little time for conventional economics with its emphasis on equilibrium, rational expectations and the view that money and finance were largely irrelevant: “Nobody ‘up there’ understands American capitalism,” he once contemptuously wrote. […]

When the credit crunch arrived, it provided posthumous support for Minsky’s economic vision. Subprime mortgages were revealed as a classic form of Ponzi finance. Losses of securitized debt cascaded through the financial system, prompting a liquidity crisis, exactly as described in Minsky’s work. The Great Moderation gave way to the Great Recession, and the Lehman bust became known as the ultimate example of a “Minsky moment.”

As a result, the crisis made Minsky something of a household name beyond strictly economic circles. Unfortunately, Minsky in the original isn’t an easy read. “He needs to be translated,” writes Wray, in the preface to “Why Minsky Matters.” As a former teaching assistant of Minsky’s and colleague at the Levy Institute, Wray is perfectly positioned to perform that task. Few people understand Minsky as well as Wray. Written in clear prose, with Minsky’s idiosyncratic ideas and language patiently explained, Wray provides the best general introduction to Minsky’s economics.

Read the whole thing here.

Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders gave an important speech in which he invoked President Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights” in defense of his platform. As Bernie rightly pointed out, all of Roosevelt’s New Deal social programs to which we have become accustomed were tagged as “socialism”—just as pundits are branding Bernie’s proposals as dangerous socialist ideas. You can see Bernie’s prepared remarks here.

Just before Bernie’s speech, I was asked to do an interview with Alex Jensen, on TBS eFM’s “This Morning” English radio program in Seoul, Korea. I was sent a list of questions and jotted down very brief responses. Unfortunately, in our radio interview we were only able to get through a few of these. You can listen to the interview here (“1119 Issue Today with Professor L.R. Wray”).

As you will see, in addition to the subject of MMT and its critics, we talked about the platform of Senator Sanders and why his proposals have caught the imagination of the US population.

Here are some of the questions and my brief (written) answers. continue reading…

by Josh Ryan-Collins

The theoretical and policy arguments for monetary reform are becoming more accepted by economists and establishment figures. The financial crisis blew apart the idea that deregulated private money creation by commercial banks leads to more efficient outcomes and allocation of capital, as has been noted by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times and Lord Adair Turner, amongst others. Yet there are few examples of how public money creation – and its variants – can support economic growth without causing negative side effects, not least inflation.

In a new working paper, I examine the case of the Bank of Canada (the Canadian central bank) in the 1935-1975 period, perhaps the most interesting example of public money creation in the 20th century in the English speaking world. Throughout this period the Bank of Canada engaged in significant direct or indirect monetary financing of government debt. In other words, the central bank created new money that was credited to the government’s account either via purchase of government bonds or direct lending. On average, about one-fifth of government debt was financed and held by the central bank, with all interest returning to the state (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Monetary financing and consumer price inflation in Canada, 1935-2012[1]

This monetary financing supported the Canadian state to recover from the Great Depression, fight World War II, enable post-war reconstruction and, in the 30 years following the war, enjoy the longest period of economic growth and high employment in its history. The Bank also created one of the worlds’ largest industrial development banks for the financing of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), eventually providing a quarter of all loans to SMEs, again funded via public money creation.

It is a remarkable story and one few economists or economic historians have examined. Even more remarkable is the fact that this vast monetisation program did not prove to be inflationary. continue reading…

A new volume on EU financial regulation edited by Rainer Kattel, Jan Kregel, and Mario Tonveronachi:

Have past and more recent regulatory changes contributed to increased financial stability in the European Union (EU), or have they improved the efficiency of individual banks and national financial systems within the EU? Edited by Rainer Kattel, Tallinn University of Technology, Director of Research Jan Kregel, and Mario Tonveronachi, University of Siena, this volume offers a comparative overview of how financial regulations have evolved in various European countries since the introduction of the single European market in 1986. The collection includes a number of country studies (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia) that analyze the domestic financial regulatory structure at the beginning of the period, how the EU directives have been introduced into domestic legislation, and their impact on the financial structure of the economy. Other contributions examine regulatory changes in the UK and Nordic countries, and in postcrisis America.

You can read an excerpt (which includes the Introduction and part of Chapter 2) at Routledge.

Table of contents below the fold: continue reading…

The 2016 Minsky conference will be held here at Blithewood mansion, home of the Levy Institute. Barney Frank will be among the keynote speakers:

Will the Global Economic Environment Constrain US Growth and Employment?

Organized by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College with support from the Ford Foundation

Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Blithewood
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York 12504

April 12–13, 2016

The 2016 Minsky Conference will address whether what appears to be a global economic slowdown will jeopardize the implementation and efficiency of Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms, the transition of monetary policy away from zero interest rates, and the “new” normal of fiscal policy, as well as the use of fiscal policies aimed at achieving sustainable growth and full employment.

Participants

continue reading…

“Hyman Minsky is the most important economist since Keynes, yet it’s virtually impossible to find any books about him.”

That’s from Michael Pettis’s blurb for Randy Wray’s new book Why Minsky Matters, which is now shipping:

Hyman Minsky’s name has appeared in the popular press a lot more since the financial crisis, but often without much more elaboration of his ideas than a paragraph noting (to the bewilderment of non-economists) that his economic research stands out because of the way in which it takes into account the significance of the financial sector and the possibility of financial crises.

And as Wray points out, reading Minsky can be a challenge (though one you won’t regret embracing: you can browse through the digital archive of his papers here). This book is a guided tour of Minsky’s work, covering everything from his views on the inherent instability of the financial dynamics of capitalism to his work on poverty and full employment policies.

The book’s introduction is available for download (pdf), and Arnold Kling (who declares himself “not completely converted”) just posted a nice review.

Dimitri Papadimitriou and new Levy Institute Research Associate Emilios Avgouleas write about one of the obstacles to recovery of the Greek economy: the absence of credit expansion in connection with still-troubled Greek banks.

Beyond deposit flight and the ongoing recession, Papadimitriou and Avgouleas argue that the botched recapitalization of Greek banks can also be blamed for the failure to alleviate this liquidity crunch. As the next round approaches, they warn that past recapitalization efforts did not follow internationally-tested best practices:

The decision by creditors to allow the old, now minority, shareholders and incumbent management to retain effective control of Greek banks is highly questionable. This rather unusual governance approach in a post-rescue period meant that the Greek banking system did not benefit from any cleanup efforts, especially in light of the interlocking and privileged relationships some bankers enjoy with Greek political, media, and economic interests.

In addition, they stress that effective recapitalization requires some attempt to restructure loan portfolios: an attempt to deal with the significant — and still growing — share of loans falling into the “nonperforming” category (NPLs). This chart showing the growth of NPLs (from a strategic analysis by Papadimitriou, Michalis Nikiforos, and Gennaro Zezza), gives you a sense of the debt-deflation trap in which Greece is stuck:

In order to clear the way for Greek banks to return to making loans, Avgouleas and Papadimitriou propose the creation of a “bad bank” that would take on the NPLs, with government guarantees currently extended to Greek banks withdrawn and applied instead to the bad bank fund.

Under this scheme, Greek borrowers would be offered an effective way to restructure their borderline loans while banks could avoid writing off all NPLs, with significant consequences for their balance sheets, and instead have the loans objectively valued and transferred to the bad bank. In addition, creditors would not have to face an unduly inflated Greek bank rescue bill, and the investment that Greek taxpayers have made and will make in the banking sector would not be entirely wiped out. Sound bank recapitalization with concurrent avoidance of any creditor bail-in—which under the current circumstances would prove catastrophic—and implementation of robust and sensible corporate governance changes could help the Greek banking sector return to financial health.

The complete analysis can be found in their newly released policy note (pdf).

Jan Kregel, the Levy Institute’s director of research, was recently interviewed by the Buenos Aires Herald regarding Argentina’s economic prospects and its ongoing situation with the “vulture funds.”

On Argentina’s policy challenges:

So there are no alternatives to devaluation?

Argentina has one net advantage. As a result of the vulture funds it’s relatively insulated from the global crisis. Now it has a decision to make on how it is going to respond. China and Brazil didn’t have a choice but Argentina does. There has to be an exchange rate adjustment and it will be difficult because everybody else is doing the same thing. You can do it on a gradual basis but you would be doing it in a non-gradual context, taking the real as an example.

The government claims that a devaluation isn’t necessary and can be replaced by a larger consumption thanks to counter cyclical measures. Do you agree?

If you continue to go counter-current, that means the exchange rate will remain low. The country has a big opportunity to do import substitution due to the global context. Now is the moment to support domestic industry. The question is if you do that by increasing consumption or by more direct policies to stimulate manufacturing industries. You should first do the second, that will then boost consumption.

Argentina saw huge economic growth in the first years of Kirchnerism but now the economy has slowed down. What are the reasons for that?

When I was working at the UN, I used to come to Argentina and present reports at the Economy Ministry. The first question I asked officials is how long they thought Argentina could grow at eight percent. Usually the response was, why I thought that was a problem. Everybody actually believed that eight percent was something that could go on forever—that’s the reason behind Argentina’s current situation. Still, Argentina survived the world economic crisis much better than any other developing country.

And on the vulture funds:

Can the legal conflict with the holdouts be solved?

The most reasonable thing is to do nothing and let it sit there. The current US administration doesn’t support the claims of US investors and if the issue would go to any other court it is unlikely that it would be resolved. If you want to change something you just have to wait for the people who did it to die. Griesa is not very young and eventually has to retire.

Read the entire interview here.

by Felipe Rezende

Introduction

The creation of new sources of financing and funding are at the center of discussions to promote real capital development in Brazil. It has been suggested that access to capital markets and long-term investors are a possible solution to the dilemma faced by Brazil’s increasing financing requirements (such as infrastructure investment and mortgage lending needs) and the limited access to long-term funding in the country. Policy initiatives were implemented aimed at the development of long-term financing to lengthen the maturity of fixed income instruments (Rezende 2015a). Though average maturity has lengthened over the past 10 years and credit has soared, banks’ credit portfolios still concentrate on short maturities (with the exception of the state-owned banks including Caixa Economica Federal [CEF] and the Brazilian Development Bank [BNDES]).

While there was widespread agreement that public banks, and BNDES in particular, played an important stabilizing role to deal with the consequences of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, there is, however, less agreement on BNDES’ current role (de Bolle). BNDES has been subject to a range of criticisms, such as crowding out private sector bank lending, and it is said to be hampering the development of the local capital market (Rezende 2015). It is commonly believed that “development banks and other institutions in Latin America tend to replace markets rather than address collective action failures that lead to market incompleteness.” (de Bolle 2015). In particular, critics of Brazil’s national development bank have argued that large companies can borrow from private international capital markets and the bank extends credit to companies that have access to domestic capital markets.

Much of the policy discussion has been misplaced. Though the conventional belief assumes that capital markets are efficient and produce an optimal allocation of capital, this view is not supported by evidence. Free and competitive international capital markets have repeatedly failed to produce an optimal allocation of capital and privatized free-market banking systems have failed to assess risks properly thus misallocating resources (Kregel 1998, Wray 2011). Moreover, access to international capital markets has been based on the false premise of lack of domestic savings. As I have argued elsewhere (Rezende 2015) rather than justifying the existence of public banks —and BNDES in particular, based on market failures (Garcia 2011) — an effective answer to this question requires a theory of financial instability. continue reading…