debt issuance

These Folks are Soooo Clever . . .

Joseph M. Firestone — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:38:46 -0400

Last week, Reps. Michael Honda, Keith Ellison, Raul Grijalva, Jan Schakowsky, John Conyers, Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey stalwarts of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) begged for mercy from “the Gang of Eight” in a letter.

Here's what they said and my commentary on their “loser liberalism.”

”Thank you for your work - past and present - towards solving one of the greatest policy challenges facing us today: the unsustainable path of our national debt. We appreciate the bipartisan and collaborative spirit with which you've approached your negotiations. . . .”

Thanks vanguard progressives for embracing the major premise of the austerity ideology, namely that the national debt is on an unsustainable path. I'm here to tell you that this idea is false and also terribly harmful to progressive aspirations to end economic stagnation and get everyone, who wants to be, employed at a living wage. You can't win an argument if you start by agreeing with your opponent's false premise.

The US has a non-convertible fiat currency which it allows to freely float on international markets. It also has no debts in any currency not its own. It also has the constitutional authority to issue currency and coins in unlimited amounts to pay any debt obligations when they fall due. It also has a central bank, the Fed, that can determine the interest rates paid on new debt issuance unilaterally and in spite of any desire on the part of private markets to raise those rates. So, it should be obvious to you and everyone else that it doesn't matter how high our national debt, or our debt-to-GDP ratio is, the US always has the capacity to deficit spend what it needs to in order to buy any goods and services for sale in USD, including the services of all the currently unemployed or under-employed who would like full-time jobs at a living wage.

So, why are they agreeing with the austerity mongers? Why are they validating what the deficit hawks have to say? Why are they engaging in “loser liberalism?” How many times do they have to be told that they'll never persuade anyone that they're in the right when they reinforce the framing of people who want to impoverish the poor and the middle class?

The right way to do this is to send a letter to the Gang of Eight denying that there is any debt/deficit crisis at all and pointing out that the US has many problems, the most important of which is high unemployment; but that the unsustainability of the debt path is not among them. And you should demand that they quit wasting everyone's time and report back to the Congress that there is no debt problem; but that there are many other problems that Congress needs to solve.

”. . . .Given reports that a "down payment" is being considered to allow time to negotiate a broader budget deal, we write today to urge you to set a more balanced path and use only revenue for such a down payment in light of the billions in spending cuts agreed to so far.”

The down payment, of course, isn't necessary because there should be no effort at deficit reduction, but rather a larger deficit than we have now to compensate for the aggregate demand leakage to domestic savings and foreign imports. You need here to point out that the full employment deficit should be more like $1.6 Trillion annually spent on the right things, rather than $1.2 Trillion incurred as a result of doing nothing to get to full employment. There are good and bad deficits. And right now the US is running bad deficits whose fiscal multipliers are relatively small. We need, instead, larger deficits spent on programs that will get people employed.

As far as using only revenue to make that down payment is concerned, it isn't honest to deny that raising revenue from taxes, absent compensating deficit spending, won't cost jobs. It will. If the taxes involve ending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, then the impact on the economy will be only $.30 per dollar taxed, while if it's on the middle class and the poor it will be more like $1.25 subtracted from GDP for every dollar taxed. So clearly, it's preferable to tax the rich, if one has to choose.

But we don't have to choose. We don't need to raise taxes to get money to deficit spend. The government can just create the money in the act of deficit spending. That is what it should do if one is interested in growing GDP and creating jobs.

It does make sense to have higher taxes on the wealthy, if one wants to level the paying field of economic inequality. And I am all for raising taxes on the wealthy for that purpose, since extremes of wealth are destroying our democracy. However, having said that, the issue here isn't one of deficit/debt sustainability. And we should not pretend that it is.

There are two issues. One is getting to full-time employment for everyone, and the other is getting to greater economic equality so that the very rich can't afford to influence politics and buy elections so easily that what most of us want becomes superfluous. Let us address both issues, but let us not conflate them by trying to raise revenue on the rich, while costing jobs for those who need them, because we legislate no compensating deficit spending for those tax increases.

”Over the past few years, the only lasting and substantial contribution we've made to deficit reduction has come from spending cuts. While Democrats have conceded nearly $800 billion in cuts as outlined in the spending caps of the Budget Control Act, this achievement has not been matched by any real commitment on revenue. Not a single cent of our recent efforts towards paying down the debt has come from the revenue side of the ledger. Additionally, because of the lack of specificity in the Budget Control Act, the spending reductions could fall largely to the non-defense discretionary categories. From infrastructure and education to research and small businesses, these investments are critical in keeping our nation economically competitive in the 21st century. Continuing down a course of misplaced cuts is destructive, unsustainable, and an impossible route to the long-term deficit reduction we all seek.”

Right! So since we did the wrong thing by making spending cuts earlier, now we should do the wrong thing again by raising taxes on people without compensating increases in deficit spending? Have the CPC stalwarts ever heard the expression: “two wrongs don't make a right”?

They should never have agreed to the previous spending cuts and to the ridiculous idea of long-term deficit reduction come what may; and they should not now be supporting tax increases without insisting on compensating jobs programs. They should be calling for State Revenue Sharing of $1,000 per person, a Federal Job Guarantee, and a payroll tax holiday until full employment is reached. They should also be making this pledge for progressive candidates for office.

”Therefore, we urge you to send a signal that you are truly serious about brokering a balanced deal by breaking through the revenue stalemate. We believe any "down payment" should set the tone for the hard discussions to come by sidelining intractable pledges that are at odds with basic arithmetic. We believe you can send a strong message to the markets, to the credit rating agencies, and - most importantly - to the American people by adopting a down payment entirely of revenue. . . .”

They shouldn't be doing any deals. Deals on deficit reduction are losers for liberals and progressives. We don't need a deal on the revenue stalemate. What we need is no more deals that sacrifice the interests of poor people and the middle class. The CPC members are in Congress to represent them, not to beg for mercy from knuckle-dragging neanderthals who want to destroy the safety net.

As for the ratings agencies and the markets, don't worry about them. They have nothing to say about interest rates. Order the Fed to keep those interest rates near zero. Get the ratings agencies investigated, indicted and prosecuted for continuing fraud and complicity in causing the crash of 2008, and also for blatantly and fraudulently downgrading the ratings of both the US and Japan when neither nation can ever be forced to go bankrupt. That's what they should be writing letters to the Gang of Eight and doing press releases about, not begging “the Gang” for mercy in relation to further spending cuts.

The CPC letter then goes on to further implore the gang of eight to recognize previous spending cuts falling disproportionately on part of the polulation to take “. . . . into account the policies and priorities that have shouldered a disproportionate burden in the past.”

To that all I can say is fat chance! You don't get anywhere by begging tea party folks for fairness and justice, or mercy. The only way you'll get anywhere is to tell them that the whole CPC will vote against any further spending cuts whatsoever including and especially proposed safety net cuts.

”We look forward to working with you to pass a balanced, economically responsible deficit reduction plan.”

That's been the problem from the beginning. They shouldn't be working with the austerians at all on deficit reduction. The very idea of a long-term deficit reduction plan is stupid because government deficits are private sector savings to the penny, and as long we want to have both more imports than we export and private sector savings as well, we must run deficits or, alternatively, increase private sector debts, and why would anyone in the private economy want to see their debts increase.

Of course, there are times when we might want to decrease private sector savings to dampen demand-pull inflation caused by too much private sector demand. But we haven't had a situation like that since the US was exporting much more than it imported more than 40 years ago; and it is unlikely that we will see that kind of situation for many years to come.

So, there is no long-term deficit reduction plan over the next 10 years that could possibly be “responsible.” Any such plan would tend to depress the economy or decrease private sector savings as long as we're still importing 3-4% of GDP more than we export, and as long as private sector households retain their desire to repair the ~40% of the losses in their balance sheets that occurred during and after the crash of 2008.

And that's why CPC members need to "just say no" to any proposals about long-term deficit reductions, whether those proposals come from Republicans, or whether they come from the President of the United States, himself.

Whoever suggests such a plan is being “irresponsible” and is also being anything but “progressive.” CPC members owe it to the people who elected them to refuse to cooperate, and to commit to that refusal right now, before the election!

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Alan Grayson's Right; But He Misses the Larger Point

Joseph M. Firestone — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:28:00 -0400

Alan Grayson's e-mail on Moody's warning that it might reduce the US's AAA rating, suggested that Moody's was either threatening a downgrade because it wants to get the Bush tax cuts for the rich extended, or, alternatively, that “Moody's is living in what Aristophanes called "Cloud Cuckoo Land."” He says this because Moody's is upset about the possibility that the US may go over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” even though if it did, it would theoretically result in $560 Billion of deficit reduction annually, without further legislative changes, and it makes no sense on the surface for a ratings agency to think that the risk of US bond default is greater when the annual deficit is being reduced by $560 B per year, than by some lesser amount, which is likely to happen if Congress doesn't take us over that “cliff.”

Grayson was right to call attention to this seeming contradiction and the possibility that Moody's is just pressuring Congress to do more for rich people; but I think he should also have made the larger and more important point, that Moody's warning, just like the one it delivered in January of 2010, is an empty threat without significant consequence, even if it were carried out. How do we know that? For a number of reasons.

First, as is widely known, all the ratings agencies including Moody's gave the CDOs and CDSs that led to the collapse of AIG their highest AAA ratings. In addition, they downgraded Japan's credit ratings a long time ago, with no measurable impact on its bond interest rates or costs, even though Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio has continued to increase over time and is now in the neighborhood of 200%. More recently, in April of 2011, Standard & Poor's downgraded the outlook on US debt from stable to negative. What happened thereafter? There was a flight to Treasuries on the International markets and interest rates have fallen more than 1% since S & P delivered its downgrade.

So, one may be forgiven for wondering why anyone should listen to the ratings ravings of Moody's and the other agencies at all. In fact, one may begin to suspect that their ratings have little influence on the bond markets, and also, given the Japanese and US experiences, one might even suspect that the bond markets don't influence to any appreciable degree or control the interest rates that Governments sovereign in their own currency must pay.

Second, since the United States is a nation with a fiat non-convertible currency system, with a floating exchange rate, and no debt denominated in any foreign currency, it is impossible for the United States to be forced into a default by any external party, simply because its ability to create the currency it owes its obligations in, is unlimited. Voluntary default could be caused by a Congress which acts stupidly, and in a manner contrary to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, to constrain the Treasury from paying its obligations when they come due, coupled with a Treasury that accepts Congress's constraint in conflict with the clear admonition of the Constitution that the debts of the United State shall not be questioned.

The objective risk of default by the US Government is not increased by the increased size of the deficit, debt, or debt-to-GDP ratio. And Moody's apparent view that the risk of default is increased by such increases, only shows that Moody's doesn't understand the monetary operations of nations sovereign in their own currencies. Increases in these numbers don't in any way lessen the constitutional authority of the Government (including the Congress) to spend or make money.

It's basic solvency, in other words, is untouched by any deficit reduction deal that may or may not be made by Congress. And, if the Executive uses its own legal currency creation powers, then the economic/fiscal risk of default, as a result of any deficit reduction deal made or not made, is exactly zero. Whatever additional risk exists from a failure to avoid the fiscal cliff, or a negotiated deal that provides for deficit reduction, or doesn't provide for it, is purely political.

It comes only from the possibility that Congress, mistakenly thinking that the Government is like a household, or, for ideological reasons, determined to "starve the beast", might try to constrain the Executive from meeting its obligations, and declare a US default when there is no reason to do so. Even here though, there is actually very little political risk because so many options exist for the Executive to get around any panic that may afflict the Congress.

Third, Moody's warning assumes that its ratings and the bond market itself can actually influence, or even control, the interest rates that Governments like the United States must pay. But the problem is that they don't!

The Federal Reserve, and sometimes the Fed and the Treasury in collaboration, target bond interest rates and set these for the bond markets by manipulating bank reserves. Specifically, one way to do this, is that the Fed can buy long-term debt removing much of it from the market, and the Treasury can cease issuing any more long-term bonds, and can sell only three-month bonds when it issues debt.

Three-month bond interest rates are generally controlled by overnight rates for bank reserves, and overnight rates can be driven down to near zero by flooding the banks with excess reserves. That's basically how the Japanese keep their bond interest rates near zero, and that's how we've been doing the same for some time now. In fact, the Fed announcement just yesterday included plans to buy more long-time securities.

Another move the US can make to remove the effects of the bond markets and the ratings agencies upon public finances, is for Congress to stop requiring new debt issuance in coordination with deficit spending, and for the Treasury to stop issuing debt. In other words, allow Treasury to credit its Fed account to repay debt and spend appropriations already approved by Congress at will.

Alternatively, the Executive Branch could use its legal power to mint proof platinum coins with Trillion dollar face values, and then deposit those coins at the Fed to cause it to issue electronic credits tn the Treasury General Account (TGA) in amounts great enough to remove the need to issue debt instruments in coordination with deficit spending. If we did either of the above things, then the credit rating agencies' impact on the bond market for US sovereign debt would be irrelevant from that day forward.

In short, the bond markets and the ratings agencies aren't in control of US public finances. They are not in a position to influence what our taxing or spending policies ought to be, or whether we will default on our obligations, unless we allow them influence.

So forget about Moody's and its idle threats! They're part of the great austerity distraction preventing us from focusing on our real problems. There's nothing that Moody's and the bond vigilantes can do to hurt us, unless we let them. Let's not let them. Tell them to bring those ratings changes on! Tell them to go ahead and destroy their own credibility, the way S & P did last year!

In fact, let's give them what they deserve for their role in the crash of 2008, and their continuing arrogance and fraudulent ratings behavior designed control various democracies, including our own, since. As Bill Mitchell says in his post on outlawing the credit rating agencies:

"The real question that I always ask is why governments allow these undemocratic criminal organisations to exist. They can just outlaw them. This would force the corporate players to create better ways of informing the markets about their risk characteristics and leave governments alone to do what they are democratically elected to do – advance public purpose.

Further. as part of my preferred financial market reforms I would render illegal a whole swag of derivative assets which would lessen the problem of pricing risk.

It is time to wean the private financial markets off these agencies. The best way would be to declare them illegal.. . . . "

-- Mike Norman provides the same conclusion in this timely video!!!

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Bernie: YOU Stop Caving to Peterson/Obama/#supercommittee

Joseph M. Firestone — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:00:44 -0500

Dear Bernie,

Today, you told the “Democrats stop caving in . . . ” to the interests of corporations, the tea party, wealthy individuals, and the Republicans in Congress. The only problem with your fiery statement is that you began it by “caving in” to them yourself. You did this by immediately legitimizing their frame of reference by saying:

“Here is something we all can agree on: Federal deficits are a serious problem.”

I'm sorry Bernie, we can't all agree on that, because it's just not true, and it's what the Republicans, the Blue Dogs, most Democrats and the Administration are all using to try to bully you and us into agreeing to spending cuts in key discretionary programs and programs like Social Security and Medicare, and also into not moving for more spending on jobs, better entitlement programs, including Medicare for All, and better discretionary programs we need to solve our many national problems.

The idea that Federal deficit spending is a serious problem is the idea, that along with the belief that the Federal debt is getting to be some kind of irresolvable problem, is in back of the whole anti-deficit/debt thrust of the deficit terrorists like Pete Peterson, David Walker, Alice Rivlin, and all the others in Washington including the President. In turn, this thrust has led to the Bowles-Simpson Catfood Commission, and the current so-called supercommittee that you've been fighting so hard 'lo these past months, and the constant drum beat that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) to deficit cutting.

So, when are you going to learn that the only way for you and us to end this fight and to win it, is to deny their basic premises and particularly their foundational idea that the United States of America, the issuer of its own non-convertible floating fiat currency, with no external debt payable in anyone else's currency, and the ultimate source of all US Dollars existing in the world, can run out of the money needed to continue to deficit spend, and to pay all its bills including the principal and interest on all its debts, as well as all Congressional appropriations you and your colleagues may choose to legislate?

You say that the deficit is a serious problem. But I think it's not a real problem at all for at least three reasons that refute TINA.

-- First, because nothing bad needs to happen if we continue to run deficits, as long as we don't do so after our economy is operating at full capacity. But we are very far from that state right now with between 25 – 30 million people wanting full time employment and not being able to get it. So, we can't have demand-pull inflation now. It's impossible.

-- Second, because it's the Congress that is constraining the Government from generating money for its debt repayment, or appropriated deficit spending using means other than taxing or borrowing, because Congress prohibits the Treasury from freely issuing Treasury Notes and also requires that it issue debt before it deficit spends, while at the same time imposing debt ceilings that interfere with borrowing to spend appropriations Congress has already made. So, there is no real problem because the constraints were made by Congress and can be lifted by it in a single afternoon, if it wants to.

There Is An Alternative (TIAA). And it is for Congress to stop requiring the Treasury to issue debt when it deficit spends, and to allow it instead to "mark up" its own accounts at the Fed when it needs to spend an already legislated Congressional appropriation, or to repay past debt and interest.

You should be making the truth of TIAA clear to the American people, Bernie, so that everyone knows that any shortage of money to spend is Congress's own fault, and that there is no debt/deficit problem in the sense of an inability to pay, or a need for China, Japan, or the bankers to lend the Government back the money the Government created in the first place, or a need to cut spending, or a need to raise taxes on anyone, or both, to avoid impending or future solvency.

But instead you're reinforcing their message that there is a serious deficit problem. Now that's what I call “loser liberalism,” Bernie.

-- And Third, there is no problem because even under current law, with its constraints on the Treasury's ability to spend what's required to repay debt or spend Congressional appropriations, it has been legal since 1996 for the Executive Branch to issue 1 oz. proof platinum coins having arbitrary face value in the amount of many Trillions of Dollars, deposit those coins at the Fed, and force the Fed to use its money-creating authority to credit Mint and Treasury Accounts with electronic credits equal to the value of the coin. The money placed in Treasury's accounts as a result of this action need not be spent. In fact, if the Executive minted a $60 T coin, then it could not all be spent because the authority for spending by the Treasury would not extend further than repayment of debt subject to the ceiling as it falls due, and payment implementing Congressional appropriations approved up to now.

So, even if such a coin were issued, spending by the end of the year would be limited to repayment of all intra-governmental debt, including all debt held by the Fed itself, and the Federal spending appropriated by Congress for the remainder of this calendar year. Most of the $60 Trillion would still remain unspent to be used for future debt repayment as the securities fall due, and payment for future Congressional appropriations that would not be covered by tax revenues.

As long as those appropriations don't outrun tax revenues more than is necessary to enable a full employment, full capacity utilization economy, no one has to worry about demand-pull inflation resulting from excessive Government spending. It won't happen. And if there is any inflation from other causes, which is possible, and even probable, if we don't prevent excessive commodity speculation through appropriate laws and their faithful enforcement, any cost-push inflation, won't have anything to do with Government spending.

You can find a more detailed explanation of this coin seigniorage idea and its implications here, here, here, and here. Without going into detail in this open letter, I'll just say that if the President uses coin seigniorage in the way I've outlined, he can fill the public purse with such a large volume of USD electronic credits that no one will be able to say, ever again, that the US has a deficit/debt problem because it is running out of money. And, additionally, in a very few years, the Treasury's payment of the Government's debts as they fall due, without any further debt issuance, to spend Congressional appropriations not covered by tax revenues or other sales, will result in most of the debt subject to the ceiling, except for long-term debt, being paid. There will be very low levels of debt subject to the ceiling and eventually no debt of this kind at all.

So, to summarize, it is not true that “. . . Federal deficits are a serious problem.” And it is not true that we have to do anything to reduce deficits defined as a gap between Federal spending and Federal tax revenues. The whole exercise in deficit reduction that the president and the other deficit terrorists have put this country through has been an immensely wasteful distraction.

As you say in your HuffPo piece:

“This is a pivotal moment in American history. The rich and large corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. Now is the time to answer the question that the Woody Guthrie song poignantly asked, "Which side are you on?" The Democrats must answer boldly that they are on the side of working families and the middle class and that they will fight to protect their interests.”

And you, Bernie, must also answer boldly with the truth. People who are on the side of working families and the middle class, like yourself, cannot continue to say that “we can all agree that there is a serious deficit problem”, because that has been the continuing most important element in the case the deficit terrorists are making.

To defend our ground, and the 99%, we need to deny and defeat that false framing. We cannot reinforce it! We need an alternative framing.

And that framing is, the Federal Government needs no money from anyone to pay its debts and to spend what Congress has appropriated. We are a fully sovereign nation, and as long at we retain that full sovereignty, including its fiscal aspects, the Government can spend/create any money it needs in accordance with the authority given to it by the Constitution of the United States. It is up to the Congress and to the Executive to use that authority as necessary to create and maintain full employment AND price stability, as well as all other aspects of the Public Purpose, as that purpose is defined and specified by the people of the United States of America.

Best,

Joseph M. Firestone, Ph.D.

Connecting the Dots – Deficit Reduction Is Not About Insolvency

Joseph M. Firestone — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 20:09:15 -0400

Warren Mosler

(Editor's note: I'm re-posting this here from moslereconomics.com with a follow-on commentary of my own with the permission of Warren Mosler)

From Warren Buffet to Alan Greenspan,

And from all the responses to the S and P downgrade by
economists and financial professionals from the 4 corners of the world,

THE WORD IS OUT!

The US government is the issuer of the US dollar.

So no matter how large the federal deficit might be:

The US government can always make any payments in US dollars that it wants to.
There is no such thing as the US govt. running out of US dollars.
The US government always has the 'ability to pay' any amount of US dollars at any time.

NOW CONNECT THE DOTS TO:

The US is not dependent on tax revenue or foreign borrowing to be able to spend.

And,
whereas Greece is not the issuer of the euro,
much like the US states are not the issuer of the US dollar,

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE US BECOMING THE NEXT GREECE

There is no such thing as the US getting cut off from spending
by the financial markets and forced to go begging to the IMF
to get US dollars to spend.

Nor is the US government subject to market forces driving up interest rates on US Treasury bills.

EVEN AFTER BEING DOWNGRADED US TREASURY BILL RATES REMAIN NEAR 0%

Why, because, any nation that issues its own currency also sets it's own interest rates.
So in the US, the Federal Reserve Bank votes on the interest rate

SO, THEN,

WHAT IS THE POINT OF DEFICIT REDUCTION?

Suddenly, it's NOT solvency.
The US is suddenly NOT going broke.
Social Security is suddenly NOT broken.
There is suddenly NO risk the US will not be able to make all payments as promised.

So now,

the deficit hawks must CHANGE THEIR REASONS FOR DEFICIT REDUCTION
or shut up!

they must FLIP FLOP
or shut up!

Yes, there is a new reason they can flip flop to.

Inflation.

They can start claiming the current path of deficit spending will lead to inflation.

Fine.

Bring it on!

First, they need to do the research,
as they haven't even thought about this yet.

Then they have to convince Congress to cut social security and medicare
Not because we might become the next Greece
Not because the US government checks might bounce someday
Not because the deficit will burden our grand children

But ONLY because some day,
if we don't do something when the time comes
and even though we don't have an inflation problem now,
and haven't had one in a very long time,
SOME DAY far in the future,
inflation might go from x% to y%.

Fine.

Do you think Congress would take draconian steps now,
during this horrendous recession,
to make things worse
by cutting Social Security?
and by cutting funding or public infrastructure?
and by raising taxes?

How about we get the word out and find out, thanks!

Commentary

Joe Firestone

I'll try my best to spread the news that THE WORD IS OUT! And also spread the further news that the Government can't run out of money, no matter how much it owes and that there is no solvency problem.

So there is also no deficit reduction problem, no national debt problem, or any Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid problems, or grandchildren burden problems based on fears of, or claims about, insolvency unless we pay our debts back!

I have to say however, that even though THE WORD IS OUT that solvency is not a problem, and that the austerity/human sacrifice crowd must now either fall silent or flip flop to inflation as their new rationalization for driving working people into poverty; I don't think for a minute that they will do either one.

Instead, I think they will assume that the news will never get out to most people and that they are free to go on with their same old narrative about possible insolvency making austerity necessary, without people either laughing at them or calling them liars. The MSM is unlikely to notice that the Government can create currency whenever it wants to, and they will just forget about the admissions made this week after the S & P downgrading, and reinforce the old money scarcity story, without missing a step, to please the Peter Petersons, Kent Conrads, Alice Rivlins and David Walkers of this world. The president already did this in a speech he made today.

So, I think that besides doing our best to spread THE WORD, we also need to pressure the President to prove that the United States Government has no solvency problems, and can never run out of money. In other words, we need to call for the President to use very high value Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) to begin to pay back the national debt and also to create a balance in the Treasury General Account (TGA) that is so large that no insolvency claims are even thinkable.

The basic idea is to mint a $60 Trillion platinum coin, turn it into electronic credits at the Fed, use the money, first to pay down $6.2 Trillion in debt immediately and the rest as it falls due, and confront Congress with a balance of of about $52 Trillion in the Treasury General Account (TGA). Then, facing that $52 Trillion in available financial resources, and with the President using the bully pulpit, let's see the austerity/human sacrifice crowd, even with all the money in the world behind them, try to justify voting for spending cuts in entitlements and other much needed areas of domestic spending.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.

How do vanden Heuvel and Meyerson Expect Him to Get By the Austerians

Joseph M. Firestone — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:05:52 -0400

Yesterday, must have been jobs day at The Washington Post since they ran two columns calling for job creation: one by Katrina vanden Heuvel and the other by Harold Meyerson. The crux of vanden Heuvel's column is:

Consistent, tenacious persuasion is an extraordinarily powerful tool. The Republican Party understands this. Over the past several months, it has relentlessly repeated its false mantra that spending cuts create jobs. And the public, in response, increasingly believes this to be true. What then, is to stop the president, powered by a movement of dedicated and mobilized Americans, from making his own case for the economy? What is to stop him from convincing the American people that the things the economy requires are the things we ought to be fighting for? What is required other than will? Great leaders, when confronted by crisis, act.

The answer to this question is that President Obama's been telling people since 2009 that we are running out of money and can't afford programs that aren't deficit neutral, and recently he's made clear that he's for $4 Trillion in spending cuts/tax increases including cuts to entitlements over the next decade. So how can he now argue that we can afford the many things we need to do to create jobs and improve the economy?

Katrina vanden Heuvel doesn't address this question. She advises him about what he ought do to improve the economy; but not on how he can show Congress, a media steeped in neoliberalism, and the people that not only do we need his job creation measures but also that we can afford them. Without that kind of explanation, what good is the exhortation that he should vigorously advocate for job creation policies? The first pushback he'll get to any proposal is “that's irresponsible; we can't afford it”!

I found Harold Meyerson's column a good bit more interesting than Katrina vanden Heuvel's, but no more enlightening about how to get around the “we can't afford it” objection. He says:

Which leaves us with this stark reality: If the federal government doesn’t intervene massively to help the economy, the economy will oscillate between neutral and reverse for many years.

What should that intervention look like? First, don’t just extend the 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee payroll tax, which is normally set at 6.2 percent. Eliminate the tax altogether, for employers and employees, at least temporarily. It would increase by $2,100 the take-home pay, and buying power, of workers making $50,000 annually. It would make it easier for small businesses to resume hiring. . . .

The payroll tax can’t be suspended indefinitely without compromising Social Security, which it funds. Its suspension should end when unemployment falls to a specified level — say, 7 percent.

Interestingly, this is an important provision in Warren Mosler's multi-part Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) --based proposal for creating full employment. Warren's been advocating it for 3 years now. Glad to see Harold Meyerson take it up. Meyerson goes on:

We’ll need other, less fleeting forms of stimulus, too. You should call for renewing aid to state and local governments. . . .

Warren and other MMT economists also advocate state revenue sharing. In Warren's proposal the states would be given $500 per person which they might use to prevent Government lay-offs. Some propose as much as $1,000 per person in revenue sharing.

Meyerson's next and last proposal is:

Infrastructure bank or no, you need a long-term program to make our nation navigable again. . . .

Those kinds of projects may take years to realize. Your first stimulus failed to establish a fast track for creating less-capital-intensive jobs in maintenance, rehabilitating buildings, and child- and elder care. It deferred job creation to state and local governments, which have taken forever to set up even such relatively low-tech endeavors as home-weatherization projects. This time around, you should acknowledge the bottlenecks in your first stimulus and call for a federal job corps to do this kind of work.

This is also reminiscent of an MMT proposal, specifically the MMT Federal Job Guarantee, which would end unemployment in a few months by providing a job at a living wage with fringe benefits to any American who wanted to work.

In sum, even though he doesn't admit it in his column, Meyerson's program is very similar to the program for recovery proposed by MMT economists such as Warren Mosler, L. Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton, and others. Is this a case of MMT reaching the mainstream? That may be the case; but if so it's without attribution.

Both vanden Heuvel's and Meyerson's column, while exhorting him to do things that are undeniably needed by Americans, fail to tell him how, given the Republican House, he can politically beat the drive toward austerity to get them done. Without that, it's hard to see how either of these posts can help anyone. Fortunately, I've already done that here and here.

The ONLY practical way to do it given the current political and institutional constraints in Washington is to use very high value Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) to demonstrate to people that 1) the national debt is being extinguished and will be nearly completely eliminated in 3 years; 2) Congressional Appropriations for deficit spending can be made without issuing debt for the foreseeable future; 3) the Federal Government can never become insolvent (“run out of money”), unless Congress makes that happen; and 4) there's plenty of money available for not only jobs programs like Meyerson's, but also for Medicare for All, rebuilding infrastructure, creating a world class educational system, and all the other critical things the US must do to make things work here again.

The basic idea is to mint a $60 Trillion platinum coin, turn it into electronic credits at the Fed, use the money, first to pay down $6.2 Trillion in debt immediately and the rest as it falls due, and confront Congress with a balance of of about $52 Trillion in the Treasury General Account (TGA). Then, facing that $52 Trillion in available financial resources, and with the President using the bully pulpit, let's see the austerity/human sacrifice crowd, even with all the money in the world behind them, try to justify voting against a job program like Meyerson's or Warren Mosler's. Please see the posts I've linked to above for more details of my proposal.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.

Still Superman?

Joseph M. Firestone — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:31:43 -0400

There have been many reactions to S & Ps action in downgrading the credit rating of the US, Apart from the widespread annoyance and repudiation of S & P and its procedures, there are some who are saying that it won't have much effect on interest rates. Others even saying that it is a “non-event,” and still others saying that S & P should be investigated and prosecuted on a number of grounds. However, I found two views of the “non-event” particularly interesting.

The first was Warren Buffet's quoted by Fox Business news:

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett told the FOX Business Network that S&P's downgrade of the United States' triple-A credit rating "doesn't make sense."

"I don't get it," Buffett told FBN late Friday night. In fact, Buffett reaffirmed his belief in the quality of the United States' credit telling FBN, "In Omaha, the U.S. is still triple A. In fact, if there were a quadruple-A rating, I'd give the U.S. that.”

Buffett also said:

"Think about it. The U.S., to my knowledge owes no money in currency other than the U.S. dollar, which it can print at will. Now if you're talking about inflation, that's a different question."

And so, now we know that Warren Buffett gets a fundamental premise of MMT!

He knows that the US cannot become insolvent because it can make USD at will and it owes nothing that is not denominated in USD!

We can only hope that he'll clue in his friend Barack Obama that the US is NOT running out of money. Perhaps Mr. Buffett even knows about Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) and he can tell his friend Barack that using it would be a good way to give S & P a sharp stick in the eye.

The other reaction was one to my post on S & P tugging Superman's cape. The commenter asserted that, considering the US Government's domination by an increasingly powerful oligarchy, “the US Government is not Superman.” This squares with views being expressed by Yves Smith and others that this downgrade is about a power struggle. People who write about this struggle characterize it differently.

I think it is a power struggle between sovereign nation states and globalizing international elites whose loyalties are to the emerging new international feudalism in which corporations and enormously wealthy individuals wield the only real power. Some write as if they think that nation states are already and irrevocably subordinate to international elites. But I think that is not yet true.

The forces of nationalism are not yet spent, and will still be used against the international elites when the reality of their growing power and its negative impacts on working people are both fully recognized. People still need nation states for physical protection. People without a favored position in the emerging plutocracy still owe their primary loyalties to their nations, and I don't think they will long accept the subordination of their national Governments and institutions to foreign powers, whether those are other nations or international financial interests. At the moment, the influence of globalizing elite institutions is very great and very real; but they still exist and function on the sufferance of nation states and their internal politics, however parasitical they may be.

Even with all its faults and the mess being made by the special interests and the parties, the US is still Superman if we can free ourselves from the constraints imposed by various Congresses in the past, and from the financial lilliputians.

1. As I say in this piece, and Marshall Auerback says in this one, the US (the Fed and the Treasury) can control interest rates contrary to the desires of the bond markets and the vigilantes. There is no realistic prospect that benchmark interest rates will go up unless the Government wants them to.

2. The US can also de-certify the ratings agencies and prosecute rating agency executives for fraud and other violations. I think they'd be well-advised to do so, if only to show S & P who's boss. And

3. The President, finally, can use very high value PPCS and kill the “austerity” trope of the international elites for good.

So, forgive me my optimism, I still think that's Superman!

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.

Standard & Poor's Tugs on Superman's Cape

Joseph M. Firestone — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:24:09 -0400

Last December, my friend, beowulf, had this to say at the time Moody's began to make noises about downgrading US debt. He said:

”I don’t think we’ll see Moody’s or any other rating service based in the US ever downgrade US Treasuries. It would cause a tremendous amount of financial loss and would leave Moody’s and its executives exposed to criminal prosecution. If I were Moody’s general counsel, I’d tell the CEO in no uncertain terms, Do Not Tug On Superman’s Cape.

14th Amendment, Sect. 5

”. . . .the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned”

Criminal Mischief statute

18 US 1361. Government property or contracts

"Whoever willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States, or of any department or agency thereof, or any property which has been or is being manufactured or constructed for the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or attempts to commit any of the foregoing offenses, shall be punished as follows:

If the damage or attempted damage to such property exceeds the sum of $1,000, by a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both; if the damage or attempted damage to such property does not exceed the sum of $1,000, by a fine under this title or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both."

But, Standard & Poor's has decided to tug on Superman's cape by downgrading US debt to Double A status for the first time in history. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see S & P executives frog-marched out of their offices and imprisoned for a year for violating the criminal mischief this statute. After their role in the Crash of 2008, that's the least they should get from an outraged populace. However, I have to say that their action will be of little or no consequence if the Treasury responds correctly to their foolishness.

Contrary to popular belief, and also the apparent belief of this Administration, ratings agencies and the bond market itself don't actually control the interest rates that Governments like the United States must pay. Sure, they will determine interest rates if the Government sits idly by and lets them drive the market.

However, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, can target bond interest rates and set these for the bond markets by manipulating bank reserves. Specifically, one way to do this (As Warren Mosler suggests), is that the Treasury can cease issuing long-term bonds, and sell only three-month bonds. Three-month bond interest rates are generally controlled by overnight rates for bank reserves, and overnight rates can be driven down to near zero by flooding the banks with excess reserves. That's basically how the Japanese keep their bond interest rates near zero, and that's how we can do the same.

Alternatively, another move we can make to remove the effects of the bond markets and the ratings agencies upon public finances, is for the Treasury to stop issuing debt in advance of deficit spending. If we did this, the credit rating agencies and the interest rates in the bond market would be irrelevant from that day forward. And we can do it using Proof Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PPCS) to generate revenues to pay back debt, and deficit spend current or future appropriations.

On the other hand, the ratings agencies are currently hurting US states, and Eurozone nations with their deeply corrupted ratings processes and judgments. We should take very seriously Bill Mitchell's Conclusion in his post on outlawing the credit rating agencies:

"The real question that I always ask is why governments allow these undemocratic criminal organisations to exist. They can just outlaw them. This would force the corporate players to create better ways of informing the markets about their risk characteristics and leave governments alone to do what they are democratically elected to do – advance public purpose.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.

President Obama: Stop Breaking the Law; Use Coin Seigniorage

Joseph M. Firestone — Wed, 18 May 2011 13:57:14 -0400

Yesterday, The United States actually ran over the debt ceiling of $14.294 Trillion by $50 Billion or so, which means that the Treasury has issued $52 Billion more in debt instruments than is allowed by Congress's debt ceiling, which, in turn, means that the current Administration stands in violation of the Law. In reply to this, some will say that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional so the President doesn't need to observe it. However, in the present context, I don't think that's true. Here's my argument.

1) Congress mandates a debt ceiling that Treasury has now exceeded by $52 Billion. So Treasury is currently in violation of the law unless the law in question is unconstitutional.

2) Congress also mandates that all deficit spending must occur after bonds are issued to "make room" for the spending.

3) Congress also prohibits the Federal Reserve from letting Treasury run a negative balance in its account, which is probably just a function of 2).

4) The Constitution (14th Amendment section 4) prohibits anyone from questioning the validity of debts of the United States. In Perry v. United States (1935) the Supreme Court ruled, based on section 4, that voiding a United States government bond is beyond the power of Congress.

Yet another argument that might be applied in this case is based on the idea that the Congressional appropriations providing for Treasury's spending were passed after the current debt ceiling. Since later laws supercede earlier ones, it follows that legislation appropriating Treasury spending supercedes Congress's earlier passage of the debt ceiling.

5) If only 1-4 applied, then 1) would be either unconstitutional or supercede by later law, and the Executive could ignore 1), continue issuing debt and wait for the Courts to tell Congress that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional or superceded.

6) However, the context includes more than 1) -- 4). It also includes the authority for the Executive to employ jumbo coin seigniorage to replenish the Treasury General Account at the Fed and pay all of the obligations of the United States without issuing more debt or even, technically, any more “deficit spending.” As beowulf puts it:

The Secretary has rather broad authority to mint coins, Congress was apparently feeling generous when it authorized platinum coins in 31 USC 5112(k) (“with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe…”). If deficit spending was paid for (eliminated actually) with miscellaneous receipts revenue generated by selling the Fed jumbo denomination coins, and since the Federal Fund Rate can now be pegged with Interest on Reserve payments in lieu selling Treasuries to drain excess reserves, Tsy could fund govt operations indefinitely without ever raising the statutory debt limit.

Beowulf might also have pointed out that national debt can eventually reduced to near zero with the constant use of coin seigniorage. Details of how coin seigniorage would work with citations to legal issues involved are in beowulf's post; and an outline of steps in a procedure is in my recent post.

7) So, since the Executive has a way of paying all obligations without deficit spending by using coin seigniorage and its Constitutional duty is to uphold both the Constitution and the laws of the United States, it follows that the Executive must immediately end its violation of the law, and use coin seigniorage to replenish the TGA as necessary to implement all the spending appropriations passed by Congress and all the previous obligations of the United States.

What else is there to say? The President has no choice in this matter. Congress has appropriated money for particular purposes. It has also passed a debt ceiling, and passed a law providing the Administration authority to engage in jumbo coin seigniorage to get revenue necessary to spend appropriations in the presence of the debt limit. The President is also bound to uphold the Constitutional prescription that no one may question the validity of the debts of the United States, which certainly also implies, in the context of the debt ceiling, that it is the obligation of the President to remove any basis for such questioning by using the authority granted to him to raise all revenue necessary to spend Congressional appropriations. So, what is he waiting for? He should move back into compliance with the Law by immediately using jumbo coin seigniorage, while ignoring the inevitable teeth gnashing by those holding the nation hostage!

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).

Bernie Says: “. . . We're Tired of Bullying . . .”

Joseph M. Firestone — Sun, 15 May 2011 18:44:23 -0400

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

An Open Letter to Bernie

Dear Bernie,

If you're really tired of the bullying then I think you need to stop believing in and start denying the basic premise the Republicans, the Blue Dogs, most Democrats and the Administration are all using to bully you and us into agreeing to spending cuts in key discretionary programs and entitlement programs, and also into not moving for more spending on jobs, better entitlement programs, including Medicare for All, and better discretionary programs we need to solve our many national problems. That premise is that the United States of America, the issuer of its own fiat currency, and the ultimate source of all US Dollars can run out of the money needed to continue to deficit spend and to pay its bills.

Of course, this can't happen Bernie, as long as the Congress doesn't constrain its own constitutional authority to spend by committing to legislation that limits its scope. Right now, Congress is doing that, however.

The requirement that Treasury issue debt before it deficit spends is mandated by Congress, and conflicts somewhat with previous Congressional appropriations creating spending authority. The debt ceiling is another mandate of Congress that conflicts with previously passed spending authority in a very direct way. Making the Federal Reserve Board of Governors an independent agency, rather than an agency under the Treasury Department, constrains the spending power of the Treasury beyond the limits provided by Congressional appropriations themselves.

These constraints, however, are political, not economic. If Congress removes even one of them, then the Federal Government can never run out of money already appropriated by Congress. Even with all three limitations, the Federal Government still cannot run out of money, if the Administration is willing to uphold the Constitution and exercise the full authority to coin money that Congress has granted to the Executive. Where the constitution comes in is that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment doesn't allow the US Government to default on any of its obligations. So, constitutionally, Congress should not be playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States.

Apart from that however, the Executive has sworn to uphold the Constitution, and the Treasury has authority, granted by Congress in the 1990s, to mint platinum jumbo coins with arbitrarily large face values. So, rather than run out of money when it reaches the debt limit the Government can mint however much it needs to implement Congressional appropriations without either taxing or borrowing. You can find a more detailed explanation of this coin seigniorage idea here and here. Without going into detail in this open letter, I'll just say that if the President uses coin seigniorage to meet the debt ceiling crisis, all the Republican's power to bully and hold the Government hostage will be gone outside of the context of the appropriations process itself. We would have “an end to bullying.”

So, if you really want to end it, please call the President's attention to this post and the links I've provided, and point out to him and anyone else who will listen, that he can make the bullying stop, anytime he wants to

Best,

Joseph M. Firestone, Ph.D.

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).

Gallup Scores Another for the Plutocracy

Joseph M. Firestone — Fri, 13 May 2011 15:14:29 -0400

I don't really mean to single out Gallup here. Well, I guess I do; but they're certainly not the only guilty party in the polling industry of doing what I'm about to rail against. Let's begin by stipulating that public polls cannot escape ideological and selection biases in how they frame questions and alternative closed end response choices. Nevertheless, if poll results are to be considered even minimally descriptive of public opinion, they must make a concerted effort to include multiple frames and not exclude response choices that go beyond the dominant ideology. After all what good are polls that channel opinion in pre-determined directions compared to those that allow respondents to express their own tendencies?

Gallup provides a great illustration of illegitimate channeling and ideological bias in its recent poll (April 20-23. 2011). The poll included two questions:

Which do you think is more to blame for the federal budget deficit—[ROTATED: spending too much money on federal programs that are either not needed or wasteful, (or) not raising enough money in taxes to pay for needed federal programs]?

There were three response choices associated with this question:

-- Spending too much on programs;

-- Not raising enough money on taxes

-- No opinion

Of course, the word “blame” in the question assumes that the Federal deficit is a negative and a problem that something should be “blamed” for. Not everyone feels that way. I, for example, think that the deficit is no problem at all, but simply a consequence of the Crash of 2008, and that most of it will go away when we fully recover, which we do not have a large or effective enough deficit to do (yes, I'm assuming that deficits if comprised of effective spending do cause recoveries).

How many people don't think the deficit is a problem? 5%, 20%, 40% Well, probably not 40%; but, if you began polling on the deficit by asking whether people thought it was a serious problem, compared to others that will require deficit spending to solve, you'd probably find that only a minority felt that cutting the deficit was more important than solving the problems that will require continuing or expanding the deficit. When Gallup failed to ask this question first, it destroyed much of the value of its polling results, since, for example, if only 15% of people prioritize doing something about the deficit over solving other problems, then it's not very important whether they, hypothetically, prefer to raise taxes or cut spending in order to cut that deficit?

So, the framing of Gallup's question immediately reduces the usefulness of the results and also channels the reporting in a fictitious context where everyone believes that we must cut the deficit as our highest priority. Apart from the initial framing however, the response choices of raising taxes or cutting spending, simply reinforce the conventional wisdom about the choices available to reduce the deficit, and they ignore another choice, but that Gallup and most of the public has never heard of. That choice is using coin seigniorage to either reduce or eliminate the deficit and the national debt. Coin seigniorage could have been included in the question in this way: “Not using minting of jumbo platinum coins, as authorized by Congress to create enough revenue to reduce or eliminate the deficit.” That's all it would have taken to have given the public another choice in order to find out whether people would be willing to place “the blame” on something else apart from the conventional two options.

There's still another framing issue present in Gallup's formulation of the first question. The question asks people what is more to blame for the Federal deficit. It could have asked what is more to blame for “the national debt.” Which would have been more relevant? Do people care more about the deficit or do they really just care about the national debt, or neither?

Had the question been asked about the national debt, then the alternatives would have been different. In addition to the raising taxes, cutting spending, and coin seigniorage, explanations, there's a fourth explanation: namely that Congress requires the Treasury to issue debt when it deficit spends. Perhaps, we might have had a poll that looked entirely different if the question had focused on the national debt and also included these four things for people “to blame.”

Gallup's second polling question on the deficit reads:

As you may know, Congress can reduce the federal budget deficit by cutting spending, raising taxes, or a combination of the two. Ideally, how would you prefer to see Congress attempt to reduce the federal budget deficit – [ROTATED: only with spending cuts, mostly with spending cuts, equally with spending cuts and tax increases, mostly with tax increases, (or) only with tax increases]?

and the response choices were:

-- Only with spending cuts;
-- Mostly with spending cuts;
-- Equally with spending cuts and tax increases;
-- Mostly with tax increases;
-- Only with tax increases;
-- Other (vol.)
-- No opinion

Of course analogous objections apply to this question and its associated response options as the ones I've already given for the first question. The question implies that only two things can be done about the deficit. But there are at least three. In excluding the third, coin seigniorage, Gallup has biased the results toward alternatives that fit the frames of neo-liberal economics, a paradigm that has resulted in increasing economic and political inequality over the past 40 years.

Notice that so far I've refrained from talking about the results of this poll. That's because I think the results are so biased that they provide no guide to divining the true state of American opinion on these subjects. The questions reflect only the neo-liberal elite perspectives that are rapidly marching us toward plutocracy. They don't tell us how people would feel if they were presented with a more objective framing associated with the policy choices that are possible rather than just the ones that the Congress and the MSM are talking about today.

Imagine, finally, if Gallup's poll had been focused on the national debt and had asked, first of all, if people felt that the national debt was a problem, and then offered all four of the “blame” and policy options for reducing the debt. I think the result of such a poll would have been far more illuminating and had much less ideological bias than we see in this poll. It's too bad that Gallup didn't incorporate the critical perspective and small amount of imagination necessary to take such a poll, because we badly need polling organizations like Gallup to serve us better, by not simply reflecting the frames of conventional wisdom, but also including options in its polls that reflect multiple perspectives.

This is a general problem. The MSM these days are locked into neo-liberal perspectives which provide none except painful solutions to our current problems. The polling organizations should be better than this. They should not reinforce the ideological shackles that have been forged for the American people. But should be more respectful of their founding notions about “a science of public opinion” and do what they can to reflect the true state of opinion in American.

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).