The standard narrative is that money serves three functions:
Central banks have the mandate of ensuring that these functions all work smoothly so as to best serve the economy. When they don’t, problems with the monetary system can snarl up the real economy. For instance, if there is an insufficient supply of money to meet the demand for medium of exchange, then interest rates will spike up. The most familiar role of the central bank is in providing more base money so as to avoid crises of that type. Where things become murkier is when there is a deflationary slow down with great demand for money as a store of value. That situation is profoundly different and in such circumstances, interest rates can fall to zero. Should we expect the central bank to be able to deal with a situation of that type? In the 1930s that economic condition was prevalent. Something similar reappeared in Japan twenty years ago and now has spread across much of the developed world.
Market monetarists such as Scott Sumner make the case that lack of nominal economic growth is always down to unmet demand for money and it is vital that the central bank meets any such demand whether it is driven by a requirement for medium of exchange or by a desire to hold money as a store of value. However, a key distinction between demand for money as a medium of exchange and demand as a store of value is that monetary base can be a limiting factor for the medium of exchange role. Whenever banks settle up the net payment transactions that have occured between customers of one bank and another, base money is the only form of money they can use. The amount of base money required for that purpose is very small in terms of the total value of financial assets in the economy but nonetheless vital. By contrast there is nothing special about base money when it comes to providing the store of value role. Any other form of risk free broad money will serve that role just as well. Asset holders seeking to hold wealth as money will readily exchange other assets for base money but they will just as readily hold wealth in the form of broad money such as short term, risk free, debt securities. That is why interest rates are at the zero-bound; that after all is what it means for interest rates to be at the zero-bound.
So if the central bank takes it upon itself to conduct quantitative easing (QE) to appreciably alter the supply of money applicable for the store of value role, it has a massively larger job on its hands. Furthermore, broad money is readily constructed outside the central bank by the commercial financial system. To some extent, the increase in the money supply from QE gets offset by the shadow banking system reducing its output of broad money because demand for broad money is being met by QE.
I think the most crucial issue to examine is whether unmet demand for money as a store of value is actually what is impeding the economy and if so, what that implies. In an idealized system, financial intermediation would match those who had savings with those who had need of finance for ventures that would subsequently pay a return. A problem arises when financial savings have instead built up on the basis of lending to fund unaffordable consumption, house price inflation and financial speculation. Servicing such debts has been based indirectly on further credit expansion providing the necessary flow of funds. When much of the wealth in an economy is based on such a shaky foundation, asset holders seek money as a store of value rather than risk being caught up in a collapse in asset values.
Some economists such as Bill Mitchell advocate massive government deficit spending as a way to extricate ourselves from this situation. That could provide a flow of funds to enable debtors to service their debt burden and could provide ample risk free government debt securities as a way for savers to hold wealth. What actually seems to be being done is a toned down version of that approach. Just enough deficit spending is reluctantly being eked out to keep debts serviced and asset prices aloft. In the USA, QE is being used to purchase mortgage backed securities and in the UK the government is backstopping mortgage lending. This provides support for asset holders who don’t trust that asset prices won’t collapse. Meanwhile debtors are weighed down with debt servicing costs and unemployment squanders much potential that we instead permanently loose. The tragedy is that this scenario could persist pretty much indefinitely or even get worse over time.
As bad as our current situation is, I have grave doubts about the longer term consequences of taking the Bill Mitchell massive deficit route. My view is that the best option could be to ensure that money circulates through the system by replacing all current taxes with a tax on gross asset values and paying everyone a citizens’ dividend.
Related previous posts:
Does QE increase the preference for cash as a way to store wealth?
Monetary policy, the 1930s and now.
Sustainability of economic growth and debt.
Bail out the customers not the banks.
Rich people could benefit if everyone else were also rich.
Political Consequences of risk free financial assets.
Related stuff on the web:
Money creation in the modern economy -Bank of England (link added 19March2014 ht JKH)
The Myth of Japan’s Failure -E. Fingleton -NewYorkTimes
The Supply and Demand for Safe Assets -Gary Gorton, Guillermo Ordonez
Capitalism for the masses- Ashwin Parameswaran
The Road to Debt Deflation, Debt Peonage, and Neofeudalism -Michael Hudson
direct economic democracy 