followed by TPC:
Chas & Greed:
We do not finance our spending via the bond market. Taxes do not finance spending either. We issue bonds as a form of controlling the Fed Funds rate. It’s a pure monetary operation. Not a fiscal financing operation. We issue bonds to maintain the Fed funds target rate and control excess reserves. People think this is govt debt because that’s how the system works in Europe and under the gold standard. This thinking has never changed despite the dramatic changes in the monetary system after the Nixon shock. I am quite certain that Bernanke understands this (or at least partially), but I am also quite certain that most other people in power do not.
Let’s understand a few things first:
1. foreigners do not fund our spending. That is a fact.
2. The bond market is a monetary tool. NOT a fiscal financing tool.
3. We tax in order to create demand for the currency. In addition, it controls aggregate demand or effectively, the money supply.
I’ll use the example I often use. Please excuse the simplicity, but this can be a mind bending concept if you are textbook taught (trust me, I know the feeling) so I will keep it simple:
I start a productive economy/country and invite my 5 friends to become citizens. Rather than forcing all of us to trade with heavy gold I issue TPC notes. Now, in order to create real demand for these notes I create a tax. This makes you beholden to me via the TPC notes. You MUST have them in your account on April 15th of every year. I’ve created instant demand. This is what the US government does. In return, they spend money on public works, create jobs, supposedly spend money on furthering our nations prosperity (in theory at least) and protection of the nation (a military).
How do I enforce your use of the TPC notes? I create jobs via a military and a police force and pay them well. Don’t want to pay your taxes? Say hello to officer Joe. A group doesn’t want to pay their taxes? You can protest, but if you get out of control I will introduce you to 500 men wearing body armor holding M4 carbines. In other words, don’t question the currency or else….As long an economy is productive, the sovereign nation can enforce the use of said currency, and as long as we don’t issue excessive currency there should always be demand for it. In other words, trust in the national currency is safe as long as the rule of law is maintained, corporations are productive and I maintain my ability to tax you.
I do not borrow from governments or tax to spend as I would if my currency were backed by gold. Interestingly, I can’t TAX you until I’ve credited your accounts with TPC notes. There is no money to be taxed otherwise. So, in effect, I have to SPEND in order to TAX (counter-intuitive to what you have been taught). Taxing debits your accounts (saps liquidity) and crediting is government spending. On my island, I am never revenue constrained. If you don’t pay your taxes I will throw you in jail and confiscate your money. But that doesn’t mean I can spend more when I tax. What do I care if you send me your TPC notes? I can just press a button and credit my “spending” account right after I shred your tattered looking cash. This is what the government actually does. Taxation is essentially a form of maintaining control of private sector spending. Pay your taxes in cold hard cash. The IRS will shred those dollar. They don’t put them in a bag and mail them to the Treasury so they can’t go “spend” it. The only reason they might keep the dollars is if they are pretty and in good condition so they can go back out into circulation.
So what’s the bogey here? What’s the catch? The bogey here is inflation which is constantly moving up and down with the amount of money in the system based on my tax rate, spending, etc. Thus, govt cannot just spend and spend and spend or the extra dollars in the system will chase too few goods and drive up prices. Thus, it’s important to understand that govt cannot just spend recklessly.
In terms of the bond market, the issuance of bonds does not serve the same purpose it did under the gold standard. We actually issued bonds because we were revenue constrained (not enough gold reserves at all times to fund spending without creating massive inflation). Today, we effectively control the value of money in the banking system via bond issuance (a pure monetary operation to control the Fed Funds Target Rate). It can also be thought of as another form of government spending because a treasury bond is basically a savings account. Contrary to popular opinion, QE is actually a deflationary event because it takes an interest bearing instrument out of the private sector’s hands and replaces it with a non-interest bearing deposit. QE is a term that used by people who want to scare you into thinking that the govt is being reckless with their money. The reality is that QE is just an asset swap. Nothing more. Debt monetization is another tool of the fear mongerers who don’t understand that debt monetization is actually impossible so long as the Fed has a target rate. It’s operationally impossible.
The US government is never revenue constrained. They are not like a household or state government. We don’t need China to buy our bonds in order to spend. China gets pieces of paper with old dead white men on them in exchange for real goods and services. They can either hold that money in a checking account at the Fed OR they can do what they wisely do and invest those pieces of paper in what is actually a savings account at the Fed. We also don’t need taxes to spend. The budget deficit is in direct inverse correlation to private sector savings. TO THE PENNY.
This by no means says that the government can just recklessly spend. But it’s imperative that the government spend SOME money otherwise they are simply debiting the system each year via taxation without ever crediting accounts. Just ask yourself what would happen if the govt imposed a one time 100% asset tax?
Many financial theorists actually believe the Great Recession (and the Great Depression) was caused by account SURPLUS. You’ll notice that both events were preceded by great periods of “fiscal competence”, ie, budget surpluses. In reality, the govt had debited too many accounts and forced investors to use too few dollars to chase too many goods. This results in full blown deflation and excessive debt levels (because you borrow what you can’t actually get your hands on). I think the cause is a bit more complex than that but the fact that we are grossly overtaxed and the govt spends very inefficiently is a large contributing factor.
Hope that helps.
