Let's divert attention to more substantive issues. For example, the Fed has a legislated monopoly over the supply of small-denomination paper. Is this a good idea? What if we keep the Fed as is and allow free-entry into the business of money creation? If an unfettered private money system works well enough, it might drive Fed notes out of circulation. On the other hand, perhaps the demand for Fed paper will remain. Government paper (in the form of US Treasuries) drove out private money (AAA tranches of MBS) in the repo market in the past financial crisis. Now, isn't that interesting?BONUS
Anyway, back to my main point. Which is that condemnations of the Fed based on charges of creating money "out of thin air" are off the mark. The discussion should instead center on whether the Fed, as currently construed, is an institution that can be trusted to make good on its promises. This is the same question one would ask of any agency, public or private.posted by saulgoodman at 10:16 AM on April 14, 2011
pyramid termite: i propose we base our new economy on metafilter favoritesEh, but then we'd have to calling them je$$amyn and cort€x...
The idea of money as a source of social memory was also crucial for John Locke who figures prominently in our story as the philosopher who inaugurated the modern age of democratic revolutions. Locke was obsessed with money's role both in establishing a progressive social order and in subverting it as its criminal antithesis. Indeed he believed that money launched humanity from the state of nature onto the road to civil government. As long as men’s possessions were limited to perishable products, the scope for property was restricted. Money, by offering a durable store of value convertible against all useful things, unleashed the potential for property accumulation and for the intergenerational transmission of inequality. For Locke then, money was indispensable to that development of cultural memory on which civilisation depends.but if i may draw your attention to (SRW's take on) MMT for a moment:
A large stock of 'risk-free' financial assets allows people wishing to carry wealth forward to shirk their duty to steward resources carefully and bear the consequences of investment failure. Thus, the availability of government obligations simultaneously degrades the quality of real investment (by disincentivizing supervision) and magnifies the distributional injustice that attends failures of aggregate investment by shifting the burden of those shocks onto risk investors and workers. In theory, governments can mitigate this injustice by careful transfers and expenditures ex post, and that might be the right policy, but in practice those who disproportionately hold existing government obligations disproportionately hold political power, and resist the issue of new obligations which might dilute the value of existing claims... Absent an accommodative stock of government obligations, recessions would be crucibles that separate the deserving from the undeserving rich, and would thin the ranks of the rich generally. Recessions should be periods that decrease inequality, but the availability of default-risk free claims whose purchasing power is politically protected inverts the dynamic.which, in essence, i think is:
...a government's 'solvency constraint' is not a function of any accounting relationship or theories about the present value of future surpluses. A government's solvency constraint ultimately lies in its political capacity to levy and enforce the payment of taxes... Note that a government's 'political capacity to levy and enforce payment of taxes' depends first and foremost on the quality of the real economy it superintends. The value that a government is capable of taxing if necessary to sustain the value of its obligations increases with the value produced overall. A government that wishes to be solvent should first and foremost interact with the polity in a manner that promotes productivity. Secondly, the political capacity to levy taxes depends upon either the legitimacy of or the coercive power of the state. A government that wishes to sustain the value of its obligations must either gain the consent of those it would tax or maintain an infrastructure of compulsion... I like to imagine excessively coercive regimes are inconsistent with overall productivity...that is all :P
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posted by The Whelk at 9:46 AM on April 14, 2011 [3 favorites]