Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Seven)

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Austerity, Civic Engagement (Activism), Democracy Deferred, Macroeconomic Analysis, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Open Economy Macroeconomics, Political Economy

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LUMPENPROLETARIAT—This week’s edition of free speech radio’s Guns and Butter featured a sixth installment of host Bonnie Faulkner‘s coverage of the 2012 MMT Summit in Rimini, Italy. [transcript below] (See the first broadcast here, the second broadcast here, the third broadcast here, the fourth broadcast here, and the fifth broadcast here.)

Understanding modern monetary theory (MMT, or modern money theory) is vitally important for the working classes with respect to socioeconomic justice and government spending policy. MMT shows us how we can use modern money for public purpose or social spending, such as a job guarantee programme, which can eliminate involuntary unemployment. Full employment is a revolutionary goal, which can alleviate, if not eliminate, sundry social ills. And it is certainly a welcome step toward a more egalitarian, more democratic, and more emancipatory society. Guns and Butter host Bonnie Faulkner was prescient enough to travel to Italy to document this historic MMT Summit event and broadcast a series of weekly installments across American free speech radio.

The 2012 MMT Summit in Rimini, Italy was organised by Italian journalist Paolo Barnard, who worked to bring the revolutionary insights of MMT to the general public. The MMT Summit was held in a large stadium, which hosted an audience of thousands of non-economists, a very rare occurrence. The fact that non-economists are increasingly interested in economics is a testament to the growing awareness of the ways government economic policies affect working class lives.

Part One in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit featured heterodox economists hailing from the radical Economics Department at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, one of the nation’s precious few heterodox economics departments. Dr. Stephanie Kelton gave a brief introduction to “the basics of MMT in four parts”; and Dr. Michael Hudson provided a more historical approach to understanding modern money by discussing “the difference between central bank credit, or money, and commercial banks”. Listen (and/or download) here. [1]

Part Two in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit featured heterodox economist Dr. Alain Parguez, who illustrated how a nation’s money system can go horribly wrong without an understanding of modern monetary theory. This has been the case for Eurozone nations, who have suffered national debt burdens and faced draconian austerity politics from the European Central Bank, since they gave up their monetary sovereignty when they abandoned their respective national/sovereign currencies and agreed to adopt the euro as their currency. Dr. Parguez provided important insights into the origins of the Eurozone, the problematic legal foundations of the European Union following the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, and how the adoption of the euro restricts the economic policy space of the Eurozone nations. Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Part Three in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit, featured economist Dr. Marshall Auerback. Dr. Auerback wears many hats so to speak, including that of a Fellow at Economists for Peace and Security, a research associate with the Levy Institute, and a global portfolio strategist with Madison Street Partners. And, on this occasion, Dr. Auerback is an advocate for MMT-based economic policy proposals. He elaborated on the importance of understanding modern money in order to protect a nation’s monetary sovereignty and, therefore, economic well-being. In so doing, he emphasised the irony of the fact that “the very policies the Allies imposed on Germany after World War I”, which contributed to the development of Nazi Germany and the horrors of World War II, “are now being introduced to some degree by the Germans in countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain”. Listen (and/or download) here. [3]

Part Four in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on remarks presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton. Dr. Kelton further elaborated on modern money theory (MMT) and also offered up emancipatory economic policy proposals, which are feasible with modern money, such as eliminating involuntary unemployment with a federal job guarantee programme in the United States with its sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. Listen (and/or download) here. [4]

Part Five in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on remarks presented by Dr. William K. Black. Dr. Black is a leading criminologist working in the intersectionality of Law and Economics. In this presentation, he described how the role of banks as subordinate to industry has been reversed through a form of fraud, which he calls control fraud. Dr. Black described how control fraud perpetrated by “financial superpredators” was at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, which cost millions of working class Americans their jobs, their homes, and their economic well-being, but enriched elites in the banking and financial sector, or FIRE sector. Listen (and/or download) here. [5]

Part Six in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on remarks presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton. Dr. Kelton is, perhaps, the most well-known advocate for MMT-based economic policy proposals, such as the job guarantee programme, which can end involuntary unemployment. Simply put, as Dr. Kelton teaches, federal taxes don’t pay for anything. And the U.S. government can never go broke. MMT shatters many myths about our money system, taxation, and federal government spending. MMT presents many emancipatory conclusions for the American people (and any nation with a sovereign currency); and MMT exposes the lie, or political theatre, around government deficits and debt ceilings. Listen (and/or download) here. [6]

In this week’s broadcast, Part Seven in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on a panel discussion on how European nations enduring draconian austerity politics from the European Central Bank can exit the Eurozone. Listen (and/or download) here. [7] [See transcript below.]

Messina

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[Transcript by Messina for Guns and Butter, Media Roots, and Lumpenproletariat.]

GUNS AND BUTTER—[25 APR 2012]

“There is an alternative, even under the screwed up EU structure that exists now. The European Central Bank, as the de facto issuer of currency, could act like a sovereign. It could provide the funds to provide the recovery. And the ECB knows that it has this capacity. THEY DON’T WANT TO USE THE CAPACITY TO HELP THE PEOPLE OF EUROPE.

“There is an alternative, even under their screwed up system; and they refuse to use it. And [Mario] Graghi, in his Wall Street Journal interview, two days ago made this explicit where he said, ‘The European model is dead’—the social model. And that he wanted the private sector, the banks, to discipline the governments.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter: Marshall Auerback, Michael Hudson, William K. Black, and Stephanie Kelton from the first economic summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy in February of 2012. Today’s show: ‘A Debate on How to Get Out of the Euro.’

“We begin with economist and portfolio strategist Marshall Auerback. Marshall Auerback is currently a portfolio strategist with Madison Street partners, a Denver-based investment management group. He is a fellow with the Economists for Peace and Security. And a research associate for the Levy Institute. He is a frequent contributor to New Economic Perspectives.” (c. 2:12)

DR. MARSHALL AUERBACK: “I’ve been asked to say a few words on the possibility of Italy leaving the Eurozone. I want to stress that this is not necessarily the first option. I think, in fact, this is a last resort, that should be taken with great care and when all other options have been exhausted. I say this because there are no easy options available to you. And I don’t think we’d be honest if we sugar-coated this. So, this is a political judgment, that you, the Italian people, will have to make. It would be presumptuous of me, as a foreigner to advise you on what course of action to take. So, I’m just going to give a very few specific options as to what would be entailed if Italy were to leave the euro. I have a little paper called ‘Exiting the Euro.’ [Snickers]

(c. 3:16) “Okay, so this is what would have to happen, first of all. To exit the euro for a nation to regain its currency sovereignty. Here are the following changes, that would have to occur. First of all, you would have to reintroduce a new currency or the old lira under monopoly issue. Within this currency the national government could purchase anything that was for sale in that currency, including domestic unemployed labour at the same time the central bank, the bank of Italy, would receive a refund of the capital it had contributed to the European Central Bank and it would also recede back all of the foreign currency reserves that it had moved over to the EU system. The nation’s central bank would then regain control of monetary policy, which means that it and not the bond market could set interest rates along the yield curve and add to banks reserves if necessary.

(c. 4:28) “Okay, now, here’s where it gets more complicated. There is clearly some existing sovereign debt that is denominated in euros. This is a short-term problem because the nation that wanted to exit Italy for example would now have to deal with a foreign currency debt problem. Now, to some extent, some of the transfers back to the central banking system from the ECB would help to offset the euro exposure upon exit from the euro. But I’m not going to lie to you; it would be part of a painful adjustment process. And you may have to default. You would, at that point, have to enter into a negotiated settlement, whereby the creditors accepted your local currency or nothing.

(c. 5:26) “Okay, so, this, I think, is the key issue: Now, some say that the financial markets would make it very difficult to exit. They talk about, for example, the dreaded rating agencies would mark you down in the event of a default and force higher rates on local debt. My response to that is that they’re doing that anyway. [Snickers] What else is new? [Laughs] [Audience Applause]

“I would also add that we have been downgraded in the United States and our borrowing costs have actually gone lower since that time of that downgrade. These are the same organisations, that were calling toxic subprime mortgages ‘AAA’ as recently as 2007. [Applause] I think even Mr. Berlusconi has more credibility than the credit rating agencies.

(c. 6:30) “Now, we would all stress that it’s very important to retain currency sovereignty. But it doesn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever you want. When we talk about the pursuit of public purpose, which we do a lot in MMT., we are discussing ways that the government will spend, so that it promotes employment. At a very minimum, jobs in a public sector Job Guarantee programme for those, that are currently unemployed, so that we can generate real output growth. The government has to use its newly found fiscal freedom to advance public purpose and not to waste public spending on unproductive pursuits. So, what do I mean by unproductive pursuits? Well, obviously, major handouts to zombie banks counts as an unproductive use of government money. You want to give money, as we like to say in America, to Main Street, rather than Wall Street.

(c. 7:38) “Now, there are clearly going to be practical issues involved in changing back to the lira. First of all, you’d have to amend the computer codes. But you’ve had some experience with that. You all remember the Y2K bug. A lot of hard work had to be done to insure that we did not have a meltdown in our computer system.

“So, how do we support the new lira? Well, the Italian government would have to announce that it will begin taxing exclusively in the new currency, in the new lira. And it will also announce that it will make all payments, going forward, in the new lira, not in euros. That’s the main thing. The government can now provision itself and continue to function on a sustainable basis. So, what will be the value of the new lira? Well, that’s where the markets do come into play. The new currency will be allowed to float. The exchange will be determined between willing buyers and sellers at market prices. Now, as I said about the existing euro debt, that will be a subject of negotiation. But now the leverage rests with the government, not with the markets. It can be a long process. Argentina is still negotiating and litigating claims from the time when it depegged its currency in 2001. That hasn’t stopped Argentina from growing or functioning as a real economy. Same thing in Russia; the rouble collapsed in 1998 against the dollar. The banking system was highly disrupted. The capital markets did not function for a number of months, but today we still have a rouble. We still have a Russian banking system. Russia has survived.

“And the other question is what to about euro bank deposits and euro bank deposit loans. Well, for now they remain in place. There is nothing to stop Italy, ordinary Italians from using euros or having euro deposits. Just like there’s nothing stopping you from having dollar deposits or British pound deposits. Panama has decided to dollarize. Nothing that the United States has done prevents Panama from continuing to use the dollar. Okay, so here is, I think, where the Job Guarantee programme, that Stephanie [Kelton] has discussed, is extremely important. I think it’s absolutely essential this be one of the first programmes that’s introduced by the government because the first thing you want to do is to insure there is minimal unemployment. [Applause]

(c. 10:32) “And for any given size government taxes should be adjusted to insure that the labour force, that works for that wage, be kept to a minimum. So, as low taxes as possible. Remember your taxes are no longer funding your spending; you have fiscal freedom. Now, there is some talk about tax evasion. How do you enforce a tax? Personally, I think that this problem is overstated in Italy. But I think you can maximise compliance by introducing a tax on land, a national real estate tax. Obviously, it’s much more difficult to avoid. You can’t move land around. So, it seems to me that’s an effective way to collect taxes. Compliance would be maximised because if the tax isn’t paid, then the state can simply sell the property at auction. Everybody contributes, either, as an owner of the property or the renter, as the owner’s costs would ultimately be passed through to the renters.

(c. 11:40) “I might probably substantially reduce taxes, such as the VAT because that would penalise the ability to spend. And it is a very regressive tax. [Applause]

“Finally, I would say that all lira bank deposits would be fully insured by the government. I would not insure euro deposits, but I would insure lira deposits. Banks would be government regulated and supervised. They would be prohibited from any secondary market activity, which means no derivatives, no credit default swaps [Applause], no trading against your clients. [Applause] Bankers are there to lend, provide capital for businesses and consumers, so that the economy could grow, not to bet against their consumers, as they do today. [Applause] And I’d probably include substantial capital buffer requirements, around 15% to 20%.

“Those are just a few specific suggestions I have. I know we’re going to discuss them in greater detail on the round table, but I thought I’d introduce these now, as there had been considerable demand for this sort of presentation yesterday during the question period. So, thank you very much.” (c. 13:08)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to economist and portfolio strategist Marshall Auerback. We next hear from economist and historian Michael Hudson. Michael Hudson is a Wall Street financial analyst and distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. Today’s show: ‘A Debate on How to Get Out of the Euro.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.”

DR. MICHAEL HUDSON: “I will be talking about the small aspects. But I want to talk about the political frame for this about Italy, the way in which it might leave the Eurozone. I think you should ask why Italy wanted to join to begin with. I think that it hoped that somehow joining Europe would solve its own domestic problems. They hoped that Europe would be a civilising influence, helping it solve its political corruption, its tax corruption, its bad financial structure, and, especially, those of its own big banks. But the fact is Europe is only able to impose financial and fiscal austerity. No matter what happens, Italy is going to have to solve its own political and banking problems itself. It’s going to have to deal with its large families and its oligarchy and its predatory finance by itself. Europe is, obviously, not going to help you because the European Union is on the side of big banking and big finance against you. [Applause]

(c. 15:12) “So, as you discuss the alternatives to remaining in the euro, I think you have to say that, if you leave, it’s not going to be out of weakness, not out of default, but because you’re living on a principled position. And you’re leaving, not be leaving the euro, but by your saying, Europe has left the euro. Europe has been captured by the banks. And you’re saying; here’s how Europe should work. You, here, can outline a declaration of independence for how a good Europe should work and you will lead the way into Europe, the new Europe, not out of the old, bad Europe. [Applause]

(c. 16:04) “The important thing to realise is that every economy is planned. The question is: Who is going to do the planning? Will it be, as Marshall said, by Main Street, by government on behalf of Main Street to help long-term growth, to help employment? Or will it be planned by Wall Street or, even worse, by your bankers, which are even worse, even more predatory, even more enjoying evil than I have ever seen on Wall Street. The bank planning is geared toward austerity, not towards economic advance.

“Contrary to what the newspapers say, bank planning wants governments to run deficits; the neoliberals want larger deficits than have ever been run before. And you have seen from Stephanie [Kelton’s] charts that the deficits in the last three years have been enormous into what she called the private sector. But what was her private sector? It wasn’t the labour markets. It wasn’t into industry. It was bailouts for the bankers. The private sector, itself, is divided into the financial sector and the host economy of production and consumption.

“So, I think that if you’re issuing or thinking about issuing a declaration of economic independence and political independence and saying what you think Europe should be, the fiscal policy of the European Central Bank, which is the European government, should be replaced by parliament.

(c. 18:01) “Today’s European Central Bank tells you: We will tell you about your fiscal policy will be. We central bankers will say what the labour policy will be. We want unemployment. They will say what your central policy will be. That is, stop paying pensions, so that the employers can pay the banks.

“What you want is a dependent central bank, a central bank run by government for the people, not for the commercial bankers, that are seeking to replace democracy with oligarchy. [Applause] A real social democratic government would be a real socialist government. As Stephanie explained, it would run deficits to reflate the economy. Countercyclical spending to reflate the economy and restore employment is called hyperinflation by the neoliberals. Employing Italian labour is called turning Italy into Zimbabwe. You have to realise the Orwellian doublethink that is used here. Your policy should be workplace reform, labour security. And your fiscal policy should be untaxing labour by returning Italy’s tax system to real estate and to wealth off the value added tax, which is the most inefficient, the most costly, tax, onto property and wealth taxes. [Applause]

“And, finally, as to the government spending deficit, if Europe tells you to balance the budget, tell them: Okay, we’re starting by withdrawing from NATO. That will put the fear of gawd [Applause], that will put the fear of gawd into their politicians—namely the United States. So, good luck on your declaration of independence. [Applause]” (c. 20:20)

PAOLO BARNARD: “What’s gonna happen to my bank account? What’s gonna happen to my savings? What’s gonna happen to my shop? Please answer this, please. People are asking. You know? These are the questions that I’m getting.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “What’s happening now? What happens right now is that you’ve lost all power. And they have you completely in their power because of two things and Stephanie [Kelton] has explained them. You are not allowed to have any policy, that keeps people employed because the bond market will destroy you. You are not allowed to have the government step in because of the Stability and Growth Pact. But both of those points of leverage come entirely from the euro. That’s the only reason they have any power. If you have a sovereign currency that floats, the bond markets leave you alone and they go attack the people using the euro. And there is no reason for a Stability and Growth Pact if you’re not on the euro. That’s the only reason it exists. It’s because of the euro. So, it goes away as well. You refuse to deal with it.

(c. 22:02) “What Stephanie [Kelton] showed you, in terms of how your shop works, is the creation of There Is No Alternative where they have shrunk and shrunk and shrunk your policy space to take away every alternative. So, what happens in your shop after you have created and gone back to the lira? Well, that depends on what else you do, how well you adopt theories of Modern Monetary Theory and similar post-Keynesian thought and put people back to work. If you put people back to work, then they have money, then they come to your shop and they buy things. Then you hire workers. That’s called an economic recovery. That’s called a government, that actually works for the people and serves the interests of the people.

“Does it produce inflation? Well, look at the United States. Look at Japan. Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio twice as large, basically. It does not have inflation. It can borrow money for virtually zero. The United States, after the credit-rating agencies downgraded us can borrow money for very close to zero. The United States, because it has not adopted austerity, is growing. I don’t know if the joke will work in Italian; but we say of the Stability and Growth Pact, that it is an oxymoron produced by regular morons. As Stephanie [Kelton] showed you, it does not produce stability. It produces recurrent recessions. And then when they respond to the recession, they make it worse through austerity. And so it’s not growth, it’s Anti-Growth Pact. It shrinks the economy instead of having it grow; and there is only one thing left in the policy space. All of us, simultaneously, must compete for exports.

“Now, first, that’s impossible because of the fallacy of composition. But, second, the very effort is what they want. This is what we’ve been explaining because the effort is—we call it—the road to Bangladesh. Germans have not been the winners under the Hatz policy. German workers’ real wages have fallen. It is only the German bankers and large industrialists who are winners. And the rest of Europe does not have the productivity levels close to Germany. So, the only way to compete under this strategy is to have wages one-fourth the wages a German worker would have.

(c. 25:35) “So, when we were in Ireland the government strategy is to cut Irish wages, so they could outcompete Portugal. But if you go to Portugal the strategy is to cut wages, so that you could outcompete Greeks. And if you go to Greece, the strategy is to cut wages, so that you could outcompete Turkey. And Turkey’s trying to outcompete China. And China soon will be trying to outcompete Vietnam. And, as I say, the bottom line of all of this is you are in Zimbabwe or Bangladesh, not because of hyperinflation, but because of hypercuts in workers’ wages.

(c. 26:26) “So, to bring it back to your little shop. If you get rid of the euro and follow the types of strategies that we’re talking about, you have a shop, that makes more money because it has more customers because you and everyone else are paying your workers enough they can actually live and buy things. So, demand increases. Employment increases. Could you cause hyperinflation? Of course, it is possible to cause hyperinflation. You have to have intelligent policies. But you need not have even serious inflation. Although, frankly, small inflation would be a good thing right now. [Applause]” (c. 27:20)

DR. MICHAEL HUDSON: “Bill talked about German industry running a surplus. But what happens when Germany runs a surplus? You get dollars in exchange. And dollars, as he’s pointed out, are created as a fiat currency to reflate the American economy. So, on a global scale, Europe is supporting Zimbabwe; it’s supporting the United States and any other country. This government is creating its own money and running its own deficit. So, you are plugged into a fiat money system. But it’s a dollar system with whom you’re running a balance of payment surplus. So, your austerity and your exports are designed to promote the United States, whose investors come out and buy Siemens. Siemens is largely owned by U.S. investors now. Siemens doesn’t pay any German taxes; and I could go right down the line with other German companies. So, you have to look at this in a global scale: Your pain is to benefit other countries. And what you want is your own independence, so that your effots will support yourself. [Applause]” (c. 28:49)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to lawyer and former bank regulator William K. Black and economist Michael Hudson. William Black is associate professor of law and economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.

“We next hear from Stephanie Kelton. Stephanie Kelton is associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City; research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute; and director of graduate student research at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability. Today’s show: ‘A Debate On How to Get Out of the Euro.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.” (c. 29:48)

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “The difference with Argentina is that Argentina defaulted. But it didn’t have to launch a new currency. It devalued its existing currency. Okay? Things in Argentina had gotten very bad under IMF austerity. And you ended up with a situation where there was, essentially, no electable party. And that created the conditions, that made an Argentian default and devaluation possible. What was unimaginable before became possible because things had gotten so dire. Argentina was close to being a failed state. But what worked in Argentina was not the default as much as the devaluation. They devalued their currency by 65% on a trade-weighted average against the rest of the world. If this happened in southern European countries, I would expect that the whole trade pattern would be a mess, perhaps collapse for a time. Countries may come out better in the end, but they would come out better in the end with their own currency. So, it seems to me that the best example is not Argentina for what we’re talking about and what Italy one day might decide to do. But Slovenia because Slovenia withdrew and launched their own new currency.

“So, when we were in Ireland, as Bill [Black] mentioned, many, many people asked us what you’re asking us now. If it were easy, Greece probably would’ve done it by now. Everybody wants to know how to get out. Marshall talked about reprogramming the computers. But there’s no undo button for the euro. It’s not easy. And none of us here have ever drafted a blueprint for a country to lay out the steps, that they need to take to withdraw from the currency union and launch their own currency. So, I don’t know if any of us here can answer the detailed questions you so reasonably have. But I know someone who can. I know who drafted the blueprint in Slovenia. So, why don’t we meet next week, we’ll invite him. [Applause] I mean I’m joking, but [Applause] you need—for this level of expertise—you need someone other than the five that you’ve got here today I’m afraid. But it does require a great deal of planning. As I understand it, the gentleman who drafted the Slovenian withdrawal—Slovenia started planning six months ahead of time getting everything in place, accounts, transitions, decisions about when to convert, bank accounts, debt questions, all of the kinds of issues, that Paolo has raised and, that many of you have raised have been dealt with; and in the recent past. And we can get answers to the kinds of questions, that you have. But, unfortunately, I don’t know if any of us here can provide you with adequate answers today.” (c. 33:50)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “Well, a clarification first. [Applause] It was not the default, that caused the crisis in Argentina.”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “No, no.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “The economy collapsed because of the lack of default in some ways.”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “No, no. It was the IMF austerity.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “Right. And it was the fact that Argentina pegged the peso to the dollar, so it effectively created a euro-like situation.”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “And it ended up with a bailout from the IMF.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “And it ended up with a price because the dollar appreciated, that made it very difficult for Argentina to export. And, so, Brazil basically destroyed them in terms of the export markets. And Argentina went from a first-world nation to a third-world nation because of that crisis. As Stephanie said, it’s then the default and the devaluation and the re-adoption of a sovereign currency, that allowed Argentina recover.

“But key things: They did default. They still can’t borrow on conventional terms. As Marshall [Auerback] said, they’re still in litigation, but they’ve averaged over 6% growth in for 15 years. So, yes there are problems. It’s not easy. It’s not clean. But it’s immensely successful. Alright?

“Stephanie is absolutely right that there are an enormous number of technical steps to transition out of the euro back to a new lira. Many of you are old enough to remember that there were months of preparation to convert from the lira to the euro. Right?”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “Years.” (c. 34:58)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “That money went out before to the banks, and there were educational programmes about how all of it would work, and there are reprogramming issues, and such. I can tell you, though, that the fundamental question, however, is the one keyed up by Marshall [Auerback]. Italy—first, there’s no one size fits all—Italy is in a position, that if it regains its sovereignty, it can decide: Do we wish to default or not? You are not like Greece. Greece will default. Ireland will default, unless it continues to be insance. Portugal will default, unless it continue to be insane. Italy is a much richer country.

“If you choose to default it gets messier. And you have to have a different plan. You also have to remember it’s a negotiation. And I would guess most people in this room have negotiated.

“You have to be ready to default. You don’t go around simply threatening to do it without the ability and the plan on what you’re going to do. [Applause]” (c. 37:29)

DR. MARSHALL AUERBACK: “Let me start by saying that most of the things that I suggested this morning were largely based on Warren’s [Mosler’s] proposal. And I’m not trying to suggest that what Warren and I have suggested wouldn’t really work. But I would simply suggest that there would be some disruption. It is operationally feasible, everything, that Warren has suggested. All we are saying is its not the sort of thing that you could decide on the spur of the moment. It doesn’t just happen over five minutes. It does take a degree of planning. There will be negotiations. There will be litigation. It’s very hard to convey that in a blog post. So, it is doable. But I think it would be dishonest of us to suggest that it could be done without any kind of adjustments or any kind of economic disruption.” [applause]” (c. 38:31)

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “I would also add [Applause]; I know that Marshall [Auerback] and I are both in communication with Warren [Mosler] several times a day. We know him well. And we know what his preferred solution to the ongoing solvency crisis is and has always been. The piece, that Paolo [Barnard] is referring to is a piece, that Warren [Mosler] wrote in response to something that someone sent him saying: Europeans are looking for a plan for default. How do you exit the euro? So, he wrote out his thoughts. They wanted an exit plan. And he produced something. But his preferred plan and the one he continues to push is for the ECB to hold this thing together.

“You know the old joke? Why did the man rob the bank? Because that’s where the money is.

“The solution for Warren [Mosler] has always been simple and painless, unlike a messy default. Warren [Mosler] has always said the whole problem could be solved in five minutes, if the ECB would simply write the check. You know why? Because that’s where the money is. They can’t come to you—and the Greeks and the Portuguese and the Irish—and impose austerity and crush your economies trying to extract euros from the people to transfer them to the bondholders because the effects are going to destroy the European Union. The solution is to have the one who creates the money create the money and stop trying to come and get it from the users of the currency.

“So, Warren’s [Mosler] proposal, Marshall [Auerback], I’ll just give it to you quickly, is for the European Central Bank on an annual basis to make a contribution equal to roughly 10% of the Eurozone’s GDP to give it to every member of the European Monetary Union [EMU]. The funds would be divided on a per capita basis, so that Germany would actually receive the largest payment. It would, therefore, not be viewed as a bailout. Everyone gets it, regardless of the size of their deficit or surplus. And you get it on an annual basis. It’s a revenue distribution. It comes from the only entity in the EMU, that can create the euro, provide you with financial resources, that the government can use to run programmes, a Job Guarantee, whatever it is you need here.

“The thing it deals with immediately is the solvency problem, which is what’s crushing you today. It gets the bond markets off your back. It brings interest rates down. And as that happens, your debts become serviceable, sustainable, and it can be dealt with without a default.” (c. 42:07)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’re listening to professor and economist Stephanie Kelton; economist and portfolio strategist Marshall Auerback; lawyer, author, and former bank regulator William K. Black; and Wall Street financial analyst and research professor of economics Michael Hudson. Today’s show: ‘A Debate On How to Get Out of the Euro.’ I’m Bonie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “Warren’s [Mosler] idea is very interesting. Warren [Mosler] points out that there is an alternative, even under the screwed up EU structure now. The European Central bank, as the de facto issuer of currency, it could provide the funds to provide the recovery. And the ECB knows that it has the capacity. They don’t want to use the capacity to help the people of Europe. [Applause] There is an alternative, even under their screwed up system, but they refuse to use it. And [Mario] Draghi, in his Wall Street Journal interview, two days ago made this explicit where he said, ‘The European model is dead’—the social model. And that he wanted the private sector, the banks, to discipline the governments.

“So, let me turn to Paolo’s [Barnard] question. What do you do if—and it’s really a question of devaluation and they’re really two questions; one is the Latvian question, though it’s not unique to Latvia. In Latvia, of course, you could have borrowed in your local currency or you could borrow in the euro. And the interest rate on mortgages was much lower than the euro. So, people borrowed in the euro and the local currency lost tremendous value and it was much harder to repay the mortgages. It happened in Iceland as well.

(c. 44:27) “You have a general problem once you go to the lira, if the euro continues to operate as an alternative where you’re exposing your consumers to potential huge currency risk. And that exposes the banks if it’s your local banks, that are making the loans denominated in euros to substantial credit risk. So, going forward you might want to say, at least, that Italian banks must issue their mortgages in lira, as opposed to euros. So, that’s the going-forward question. And it’s a question for you. And, again, this is our point. There are many questions for you. And Italy has to make its own decisions about how it wants to run its financial system. There’s no one game plan, that tells you the right way.

(c. 45:27) “The second question is what do I do with my mortgage that’s already in euros if we develop a lira and if we decide a la Argentina that we want to devalue? And Randy’s [Wray] point was: If this produces massive problems in the ability to repay, then that is a place where the government should step in using the resources, that Modern Monetary Theory makes clear, and other theories make clear, are available to it, if it has a sovereign currency, and deal with the problem instead of letting millions of Italians go bankrupt. And, yes, that’s very much something that I know we agree with and my guess is there’s a consensus. And, now, someone who’s actually been in Latvia will probably tell me why I’m wrong about Latvia. (c. 46:20)

DR. MICHAEL HUDSON: “I was a research director of the Riga Graduate School of Law and senior consultant to the largest political coalition, the Harmony Centre Party there. Latvia has not devalued its currency against the euro. It has remained in the euro straightjacket. The problem that it’s dealing with is exactly what Professor Black has explained. What do you do if your mortgages are denominated in euros, or sterling, or dollars, and the currency goes down against it?

“We have solicited the advice of international lawyers and the answer is quite simple. First, Latvia redenominates all mortgages in its own domestic currency, then it lets the domestic currency float, or devalue. Any sovereign government can do what President Roosevelt did in the United States in 1933. Contracts in America had a gold clause, saying that the creditors had a right to collect the value in gold. President Roosevelt simply said: We’re America. We can nullify the gold clause. And he did it. And John Maynard Keynes, in London, wrote an article saying President Roosevelt is magnificently right.

“Latvia and Italy have the same option. You can nullify the foreign currency clause in your mortgages and your personal loans and your commercial loans. You can simply redenominate all loans in your own currency. Under international law this can be done. So, follow the U.S. model and do it. [Applause]” (c. 48:16)

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “Paolo [Barnard] just asked me to maybe say one more word about Randy’s [Wray] proposal about the mortgages. It’s not something that we support just here. It’s also something we support in the U.S. We also suffer from a very, very serious problem in our mortgage markets where millions of Americans—we use the term under water in their homes; they owe more on the mortgage than the property is worth and I imagine you’re dealing with a very serious problem with that as well. Marshall [Auerback] and I were looking at the rate of growth of private sector debt in Italy over the last ten years. And we were comparing the rate of growth of public sector debt to the rate of growth in the private sector debt, looking at Italy from 2000 until 2010. And what you find is that the public sector debt has actually increased only modestly over that period, while the private sector debt has absolutely exploded. And, so, mortgage debt is part of that, but it’s not all of that.

“And what you may need and likely need is what so many countries in the world need; the U.S., certainly, does. And that is our own debt restructuring, a writedown. We need a writedown of these debts, so that they become affordable to the people. They aren’t affordable now. So, if you were to leave the euro and launch your own currency, those debts would be redenominated; and they would be written down. And it would be the Italian government’s decision to decide how much to write them down.

“One of the proposals, that we here in the U.S., that some of the MMT economists have supported is that homes, that are currently underwater, could be purchased at a fair market price by the government and then leased back to the owner over time. They wouldn’t lose the home. They wouldn’t have to disrupt their families. But they would be given an affordable payment. And they would be allowed to stay in the home and, ultimately, regain ownership of the property, but on terms very different from the ones, that exist today. [Applause]”

(c. 51:10) “The only other thing I would point out is that even with the inflation, Argentina has been growing between 6% and 10% every year for the past decade. That’s a huge difference from what it was doing under the IMF-sponsored programmes of the 1990s. There is also a large component of commodities-related inflation and that’s in part related, I think, to the financialisation of the commodities complex because you now have Wall Street banks speculating in oil. They speculate on food prices. And these have played a major role in helping to create a significant cost-push inflation in the commodities sector. And this is a question of, again, financial regulation. It’s not something specific to Argentina. [Applause]

(c. 52:14) “Marshall, you know, those high-growth rates, that Argentina managed to achieve were a result, in part, from the fact that Argentina defaulted in the context of a booming global economy. And we sit, today, discussing the possibility of a default in the context of a global economy, that is teetering, I think, on the brink of another recession. And, so, while the rest of the world helped to lift Argentina up, an exit today wouldn’t have that same benefit. But with a sovereign currency and MMT and the ability to craft your own economic policies to create full employment at home, to sustain incomes for the Italian people, you can lift yourselves. [applause]” (c. 52:35)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to professor and research scholar Stephanie Kelton; economist and portfolio strategist Marshall Auerback; lawyer, author, and former bank regulator William K. Black; and Wall Street financial analyst and research professor of economics Michael Hudson.

“Today’s show has been: ‘A Debate on How to Get Out of the Euro.’ This debate concluded the first Italian economic summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. Please visit the University of Missouri, Kansas City, New Economic Perspectives blog at www.neweconomicperspectives.org.

“Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner and Yara Mako. To leave comments or order copies of shows, email us at blfaulkner@yahoo.com. Visit our website at www.gunsandbutter.org.”

Learn more at GUNS AND BUTTER.

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MEDIA ROOTS—[2 MAY 2012] The current Global Recession, which like the Hurricane Katrina disaster, is largely manmade due to poor planning and political will refusing to respond adequately. Italians seem to be ahead of the curve with their response by convening a summit on political economics. Despite a media blackout, over 2,000 Italians packed into a basketball stadium for the first annual grassroots Summit Modern Money Theory 2012 in Rimini, Italy in February. Such a summit on MMT by the Occupy Movement would go far toward increasing our financial and political economics literacy, as a contribution to the various Occupy Movement teach-ins and workshops on political economy toward greater financial literacy, particularly on May Day. Guns and Butter has been broadcasting weekly programmes, featuring highlights from the three-day long event. At Media Roots, we’ve featured the entire series on the MMT Summit.

Perhaps, your Econ 101 experience was like mine; as soon as I got any big ideas, my professor would start dissing ‘command‘ economies and start going on about ‘free market‘ economies. Yet, Dr. Michael Hudson reminds us, “The important thing to realise is that every economy is planned. The question is: Who is going to do the planning?” Dr. Hudson joins his colleagues Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Dr. William K. Black, and Marshall Auerback for the relevant discussion on ‘How to Get Out of the Euro.’ If the banks do the planning, there will be austerity and pain, the people will suffer and lose rights and dignity. If “government, on behalf of Main Street” does the planning “to help long-term growth, to help employment,” then the people stand a fighting chance. MMT explains how this can be done. (Please see transcript below.)

Messina

[snip]

Learn more at MEDIA ROOTS.

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[1] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, this one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 7 MAR 2012, 13:00 PDT.

Programme summary from the archive page at kpfa.org:

“There IS An Alternative To European Austerity: Modern Money Theory (MMT)” with Stephanie Kelton and Michael Hudson in Rimini, Italy. Difference between sovereign and non-sovereign money; what is money; fiat money; gold standard; fixed exchange rates; the Euro; difference between central banks and commercial banks; deflation and inflation; financial war against the economy; credit supply and asset prices; bank lending and capital investment; debt deflation stage and austerity stage of finance capitalism.

[2] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 14 MAR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“The Birth of the European Central Bank: Its Real Agenda” with Alain Parguez at the first Italian Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy.

[3] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 21 MAR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“European Integration: The ECB Laid Bare” with Marshall Auerback. A history of European unification; problems today in the European monetary union; the three Germanys; the fallacy of composition; three possible solutions; Aesop’s Fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper as it applies to the European Union today.

[4] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 28 MAR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“Modern Money Theory and Private Banks” with Stephanie Kelton and Michael Hudson at the economic Summit On Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. Functional finance; business cycle; real costs of unemployment; sovereign currency versus fixed exchange rates and the gold standard; macroeconomic policy; fiscal policy; vulture banks; Latvia as the standard for Europe under neoliberalism.

[5] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 4 APR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“Formula For Fraud” with William K. Black from the first Italian economic Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. How to become a billionaire – the four necessary ingredients in the recipe for fraud; the three sure consequences of banking control fraud; gutting of the underwriting process; Gresham’s Law; The Business Roundtable; hyperinflation of a bubble.

[6] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 18 APR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“Modern Money Theory Explained” with Stephanie Kelton. Myths about taxation and government revenues in a sovereign currency situation; debts and deficits; full social security and price stability; the use of sectoral balances to analyze the financial position of the different sectors of the macro economy; the three sectors of the macro economy; the two rules governing the three sectors; the financial balance model.

[7] Terrestrial radio transmission, 94.1 FM (KPFA, Berkeley, CA) with online simulcast and digital archiving: Guns and Butter, one-hour broadcast hosted by Bonnie Faulkner, Wednesday, 25 APR 2012, 13:00 PST.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“A Debate On How To Get Out of the Euro” with Marshall Auerback, Michael Hudson, William K. Black and Stephanie Kelton in Rimini, Italy. What withdrawal from the Euro system would mean for households and businesses in Italy; how to manage savings; what would likely happen in a return to sovereign currency; how the government and National Bank of Italy could manage the change; monetary and fiscal policy; interest rates; bond markets; loss of national power due to the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact and the inability to set employment policy.

This is Part Seven of a seven-part series:

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part One); 7 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Two); 14 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Three); 21 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Four); 28 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Five); 4 APR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Six); 18 APR 2017.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Seven); 25 APR 2017.

***

[29 MAY 2017]

[Last modified at 20:52 PST on 29 MAY 2017]

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Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Six)

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Austerity, Civic Engagement (Activism), Macroeconomic Analysis, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Open Economy Macroeconomics, Political Economy

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2012 MMT Summit (Rimini Italy), Bonnie Faulkner, Dr. Stephanie Kelton née Bell (b. 1969), Felipe Messina (Media Roots), KPFA, Pacifica Radio Network, Stability and Growth Pact, transcript

Part Four in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on remarks presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton. Dr. Kelton further elaborated on modern money theory (MMT) and also offered up emancipatory economic policy proposals, which are feasible with modern money, such as eliminating involuntary unemployment with a federal job guarantee programme in the United States with its sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. Listen (and/or download) here. [4]

In this week’s broadcast, Part Six in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit focused on remarks presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton. Dr. Kelton is, perhaps, the most well-known advocate for MMT-based economic policy proposals, such as the job guarantee programme, which can end involuntary unemployment. Dr. Kelton explains how our modern monetary system (or money system) actually operates. Since the United States abandoned international convertibility of the U.S. dollar to gold in 1971 under President Nixon, the U.S. dollar is no longer backed by gold. This means that the federal government no longer relies on taxes to fund government spending. Simply put, as Dr. Kelton teaches, taxes don’t pay for anything. And the U.S. government can never go broke. MMT shatters many myths about our money system, taxation, and federal government spending. MMT presents many emancipatory conclusions for the American people (and any nation with a sovereign currency); and MMT exposes the lie, or political theatre, around government deficits and debt ceilings. The American ruling class, of course, has sought to suppress these facts about our money system, which can be employed to work for the American working classes, rather than for the ruling classes, as with the massive bail-outs of bad banks during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008 or with the obscene American military spending on forever wars everywhere. [6] [See transcript below.]

Messina

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[Transcript by Messina for Guns and Butter, Media Roots, and Lumpenproletariat.]

GUNS AND BUTTER—[18 APR 2012] “Modern Money Theory Explained” with Stephanie Kelton.

“MMT emphasises the relationship between the state’s power over its money and its power to do things, real things, to conduct policy in an unconstrained way. It emphasises that the state, because of its power over money, has a form of power to command resources in the economy.” —Dr. Stephanie Kelton

“I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter: Stephanie Kelton. Today’s show: Modern Money Theory Explained.

“Today’s presentation was given at the first Italian grassroots economic summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy in February, 2012.

“Stephanie Kelton is associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, research scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, and director of graduate student research at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability.” (c. 1:45)

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “I’m going to cover some new ground. And I’m also gonna go back and talk a little bit about a few really important concepts in MMT, that Paolo [Barnard] asked me to spend some more time talking about because I, maybe, went a little bit too quickly in one of the previous lessons. So, let’s talk about MMT. And why we think it’s such a revolutionary way to think about so many important economic questions.

“A day ago, two days ago, I forget, I’ve been awake a long time. The Financial Times ran an article on MMT. It was a big deal for us in terms of getting these ideas out there, into the mainstream and taken seriously by politicians, financial writers, and journalists, academics, and even into the hands of regular people, who pick up and read the papers. (c. 2:53)

“The Financial Times piece said that seeing MMT is like seeing an autostereogram, those images that look wavy and like there’s no picture. But if you let your eyes rest long enough, the picture becomes clear. And this is how the Financial Times described MMT. Some people might see it right away. And others will have to spend more time wrestling in their minds with some of the ideas because they’re so counter to everything, that we’ve been taught and that we thought we understood about money and government deficits and debt. (c. 3:39)

“And, so, I wanna go back and talk again about some of those important concepts. We think, most people think, that the government collects taxes from us. And raises money by selling bonds, so that it can finance its expenditures: ‘The government needs our money, in order to spend.’ But MMT rejects that. MMT says that a sovereign currency issuer doesn’t have to go out and get the currency from the users in the economy. The sovereign currency spends its own IOUs, it spends its own money. It creates its own currency. (c. 4:32)

“Not only that, but the taxes they collect from us can’t actually finance anything. And the bonds, that are sold to raise revenue for the state, in a sovereign government, also doesn’t pay for government spending.

“We think of two aspects of monetary channels. We think of a vertical channel; this is where state money becomes important. MMT emphasises that the state spends by issuing, what we call, high-powered money. High-powered money is a fancy word for the currency of the state, the notes, the coins, and also the liabilities of the central bank, that are called bank reserves. (c. 5:27)

“When you and I write a check to the government to pay our taxes, the check goes through a process where our bank account gets debited; and the numbers go down. A government account gets a credit; and the numbers go up. But the money supply, the high-powered money itself, the liabilities of the state are destroyed in the process. They are eliminated from balance sheets. The money has gone down the drain and it can’t be used to finance anything. (c. 6:07)

“In addition to the vertical money—the state money—there is a horizontal aspect in any modern monetary system. Most of the transactions in the private sector don’t involve the government, but private-issued credit money. We can think of this as the leveraging of state money. So, high-powered money is the liability of the government. It sits at the top of the pyramid. And the private sector uses the government’s money to leverage the creation of its own IOUs, its own money, its own debt. (c. 6:58)

“In all modern systems, the central bank targets an overnight interest rate. And then it supplies reserves, on demand, horizontally, at the interest rate, that it sets. It also drains any excess reserves using what we call open market operations, buying and selling government bonds to hit its overnight interest rate target. So, bonds are thought of, more appropriately, not as a financing tool, but as an instrument of monetary policy. Bonds help the government coordinate the reserve add, that is caused by its government spending, with the reserve drain, that’s caused by the collection of taxes.

“In the US, the Treasury and the Fed have a very complex way of coordinating the government’s fiscal operations. Many of us in the MMT school have written about this. It is very complex. It involves a lot of institutional detail and it isn’t something, that we need to cover here today. If you’re interested in finding out how the very detailed operations work, you can look for something published by Scott Fullwiler on the New Economic Perspectives blog. You can look back at an article I published in 2000, in the Journal of Economic Issues, that was called ‘Do Taxes and Bonds Finance Government Spending?‘ (c. 8:52)

“And, of course, Randy Wray’s book, Understanding Modern Money, also deals with some of this. But I’m gonna skip over the operational details and just tell you that when government spends it adds new money to the banking system. When government collects taxes, it takes money out of the banking system. If the government spends more than it takes out, we say that the government has run a deficit. The deficit leaves extra reserves in the banking system. And this triggers a response by the central bank. The extra reserves push the interest rate down. This is different from what conventional economics teaches us. Conventional economics teaches that a government deficit should push interest rates up because the government is thought to compete for some limited pool of savings, and if you want to increase your deficit, you have to pay a higher price to get some of those savings. MMT rejects that.

“We understand that the state creates money, that money is not scarce, that the government doesn’t borrow household saving to finance its deficit, but rather spends first, creating the reserves, that it then drains by selling bonds. So, the private sector loses the reserves and gains the government bonds. This is how bonds are used to maintain interest rates in a sovereign currency setting.

“We use a graph. I don’t know how helpful it is. But the vertical component, is this component, that goes straight up and down, and it shows that Treasury spending adds high-powered money (HPM), that builds up in banks until we pay taxes and then some of that money goes down the drain or banks use the state money to create their own liabilities, lending to private citizens and to private firms, leveraging the state’s money. (c. 11:31)

“So, this is what we like to think of as the vertical and horizontal parts of the story in MMT. It incorporates the credit theory of money, endogenous money theory, and state money. It’s all related to Lerner’s Theory of Functional Finance. In that piece that Lerner wrote, entitled ‘Functional Finance and the Federal Debt,’ Lerner explained that taxes don’t finance anything. The government can’t spend the money it collects. It’s eliminated. And he understood that bond sales are a tool for conducting monetary policy. Conventional economics teaches that bonds are a tool for fiscal policy, that they are financing tools. MMT views that very differently. The bonds are important because they allow the central bank to sell and buy bonds, adding and draining reserves from the banking system in order to hit its interest rate target. (c. 12:44)

“So, we should reject the orthodox theory because it’s wrong. Conventional wisdom on government finance, taxes, and bonds is incorrect. The conventional theory is that if the government were to finance its spending by creating new money that it would be inflationary, hyperinflationary, they usually say. But, in fact, as MMT shows, all government spending is, by definition, financed by the creation of new money. Sometimes, people think that we’re proposing that government do something different, that MMT says sovereign governments should finance their spending by creating new money. We’re just describing the way they do it now. So, this isn’t a policy proposal. It isn’t going to lead to inflation because they already do it that way and it’s not inflationary. (c. 13:52)

“The orthodox position again suggests that the government sells bonds and that they have to compete for some little, limited, pool of financial resource that’s out there, and if the government wants a piece of that pool and private firms want a piece and households want a piece, we have to outbid one another, and the price of those savings goes up. The argument in the textbooks is that as the price goes up, the interest rate rises, that this crowds out other forms of spending. The government comes in and sees that pool and says I want this piece, pushes the interest rate up for all of the other borrowers who want to borrow. (c. 14:43)

“And, so, it crowds out the more efficient kinds of private sector spending to make room for the inefficient big government spending. This is the conventional story. But, of course, this is wrong. The bonds are sold in order to take back government money that was created by running the government deficit in the first place. So, the deficit creates the money that is then made available for purchasing the bonds. The pool of resources is not limited. It grows with deficit spending.

“So, everything that the conventional story teaches, what students in any economics class, in any classroom—as we were told yesterday, in Italy they’re being exposed to an orthodox, neoclassical version of economics that doesn’t apply to governments that issue a sovereign currency.” (c. 15:44)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’re listening to professor and research scholar, Stephanie Kelton. Today’s show: ‘Modern Money Theory Explained.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “MMT emphasises the relationship between the state’s power over its money and its power to do things, real things, to conduct policy in an unconstrained way. It emphasises that the state, because of its power over money, has a form of power to command resources in the economy. The state imposes the tax; that allows the state to get people to want to work and produce and provide things to the state in order to get the money that they need to settle the tax liability. This way, the state has command over how to use society’s resources. It’s not something that’s immediately obvious, but it’s central to MMT. (c. 17:06)

“And, so, at an event like this, what we want to do, as much as anything, is to lift that veil that conceals the potential that the state has to use the monetary system in the public interest. [applause]

“We talked a little bit yesterday about how economists think about the problem of unemployment. Essentially, there are three options when it comes to dealing with the inevitability of unemployment in any market economy. Pure unemployment means that the unemployed sit idle, as a buffer stock of people—human beings—who get no wage and have nothing useful to do. They are assigned no tasks and they have no income.

“Under most systems, there is some form of support for the unemployed, a safety net of some kind. It might be unemployment compensation, a small payment made to the person who’s lost a job and can’t find one. That payment might go on for a period of weeks, months, or even years. All the while, the person is drawing an income, but has no tasks to perform.

“The third option, the one that MMT prefers, is a buffer stock of, not, unemployed, but of employed people. And I talked about this yesterday and we referred to it as an Employer of Last Resort [ELR] programme or a Job Guarantee. In a programme like this, when a person loses a job in the private sector or in the public sector, they have another job to go to. The government does not allow them to sit idle and to pay them to do nothing. It assigns them a useful task, something society needs done. They get a wage. And they get a task.

“We mentioned yesterday that Argentina implemented a form of a Job Guarantee, theirs was called the Jefes Programme. It offered a job to the head of household. It gave them a useful task and it paid them a basic wage. It was highly successful.

“ELR provides people with a transition job, as the economy goes through its normal business cycle of ups and downs. And then business lay off and then rehire workers, these people have a place to go. They don’t sit idle in the unemployed pool. They work in a pool of employed people.

“The Job Guarantee programme performs the task of a genuine automatic stabiliser; no government bureaucrat has to decide whether to spend when unemployment increases. No bureaucrat has to decide; it happens automatically. If you become unemployed and you would like to participate in the Job Guarantee programme, you show up and you’re assigned a task and paid a wage. You may receive training while you’re in the programme. When the private sector recovers and begins hiring again, workers will flow out of the Job Guarantee pool and back into other forms of employment. In this way, the Job Guarantee is a buffer stock programme. It buffers the economy against the inevitable economic cycle. So, society gets workers performing useful tasks; the people get to do something useful that makes them feel like they are contributing members of society. They have wages and benefits instead of nothing or a very minimum with probably no benefit.

“We’ve never had a Job Guarantee programme in the U.S. But we did have an interesting programme that did many of the same kinds of things. Someone in the audience asked yesterday about Roosevelt’s New Deal. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president and the U.S. economy was in the throes of the Great Depression, Roosevelt instituted an alphabet soup of jobs programmes: the WPA was the Works Progress Administration, my grandfather, one of them, worked in the WPA; the CCC was the Civilian Conservation Corps. Some of you have asked about environmental problems and whether MMT has anything to say about environmental policy or energy policy. The CCC was very much concerned with the environmental aspects. The NYA was the National Youth Administration. This was a programme designed, specifically, to deal with the problem of youth unemployment, which we know is a very serious problem in many parts of Europe today. (c. 22:59)

“Roosevelt’s programmes hired the unemployed, gave them a wage, and gave them something useful to do. They built hospitals, schools, parks, bridges, roadways, airports, stadiums, and much, much more. They rebuilt America. The programmes employed millions of Americans in productive and socially useful jobs. Builders, architects, engineers, and even painters, poets, and actors were employed in these programmes. But this is something on a huge scale. It requires the ability to run large government deficits. It requires sovereign money. With sovereign currency and a commitment to functional finance, people can design a democracy that works for them.

“When the people understand this, it eliminates for the policymaker their excuse for not acting. They cannot say, we don’t have the money to do it. Whatever is physically possible is financially feasible. The only constraints that we concern ourselves with, in MMT, are real constraints. We have already overcome in our minds, because of the monetary system and our understanding of it, the financial constraints. They don’t exist. The issuer of the currency can mobilise resources to achieve public purpose. In any democracy, the people should decide what that means. As long as the real resources are available—when I say real resources, I mean the land, the cement, the steel, the real things you need to build roads and bridges and airports and schools, whatever it is that you decide you want and need as a people—as long as those things are available, the government, through its power to tax and spend and power to control its currency, can mobilise those resources for the benefit of all.

“Certain activities are simply too important to be left entirely to markets and their profit motive, as orthodox economics would have it. Care for the environment, energy security, healthcare, income security for the elderly and the dependent, and so on, and so on, are too important to be left to market forces. MMT shows us all that a new and better world is possible. (c. 26:15)

“Okay, so I’m going to turn to a very important concept in MMT—the use of sectoral balances to analyse what’s happening to the financial positions of different sectors in the macroeconomy. We’re gonna begin by recognising that deficits are normal. Capitalist economies, many capitalist economies, run permanent deficits. Surpluses are rare and fleeting in many large, rich countries in the world. For some countries, the deficit emerges the ugly way. The deficit appears because the economy is in trouble. A recession causes rising unemployment and falling income. When incomes fall, tax revenues drop off; deficits explode. You’ve all seen that. There’s an even uglier way to run a deficit and that is to implement fiscal austerity—recession by design. And then there are the good deficits, the kind that MMT understands, doesn’t worry about, and supports. The government can run a deficit by allowing its budget to expand and contract without any arbitrary limit to its size or to the time-frame, under which the deficit is allowed to be sustained. (c. 28:10)

“With the kinds of policies that I’ve outlined, Job Guarantee and beyond, these may require the government to run deficits most, or even all, of the time. So, the question is: Is that good economics?”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’re listening to professor and research scholar, Stephanie Kelton. Today’s show: ‘Modern Money Theory Explained.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.” (c. 28:44)

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “A deficit hawk, we call them in the United States, is someone who is opposed to the deficit on principle. A deficit hawk often favours what they call ‘sound money,’ a gold standard, a monetary union. A deficit hawk would legislate rules that mandate balanced budgets at all times. A deficit hawk believes that there’s no such thing as a good deficit. And a deficit hawk supports immediate austerity to sharply reduce budget deficits.

“A deficit dove is a friendlier bird. A deficit dove supports limited deficit spending in tough economic times. But the doves want the government’s deficit balanced over the business cycle. Deficits in bad times, surpluses in good times, balanced over the cycle.

“A dove supports rules to limit or constrain government spending. Think of the Stability and Growth Pact, which allows small deficits, but also expects surpluses over the cycle. A deficit dove recognises that the deficit is important when the economy turns down and they’re willing to run the deficit in difficult times. But they want austerity after the economy recovers. What are they worried about?

“Both the hawks and the doves are worried about the negative consequences of running a deficit. They are convinced that, at some point, markets will refuse to lend at reasonable rates; interest rates will spike; the debt will become unsustainable; and they think that running large deficits will eventually lead to serious inflation. Paul Krugman is a deficit dove. MMT knows better.

“If the government takes advantage of its status as the issuer of the currency, the government could finance its deficit without borrowing at all. It could be done with no bond sales. This means no discipline from the bond markets. No bond market vigilantes. No solvency problem to deal with. Interest rates would be lower, not higher, as [Paul] Krugman would suggest.

“But what about inflation from running the economy too hot? MMT doesn’t recommend that you run the economy too hot. MMT recommends using deficits to bring the economy up to full employment, not to push it beyond. This is a common criticism that we deal with from our critics who say we want huge deficits and beyond full employment and we never want them to stop and they’ll always be large, and, therefore, we must be insane.

“So, they mischaracterise us, so they can mock us. Functional finance calls upon the government to maintain full employment and price stability. We are as concerned with inflation, as anyone. But we don’t view it as a serious problem when the economy is operating far below full employment with lots of available unused resources. The government has plenty of space to push the economy before inflation should become a relative concern. (c. 33:18)

“Okay, MMT emphasises that you cannot examine, weigh in on, give opinion to, make statements about the size of the government’s deficit or budget overall in isolation. You cannot look at just one sector in the economy when we have a multisector economy. You need to understand how the government’s budget is related to the rest of the economy. To do this, we need a basic understanding of sectoral balances. (c. 34:03)

“So, what did the sectoral balances show? In any given period, they show whether a particular part of the economy is spending more than its income—running a deficit—spending less than its income—running a surplus—or spending just equal to its income—balancing its budget. We have to look at three sectors: two internal sectors—domestic sectors—and one external sector. The internal sectors are your domestic private sector—the combination of all the households and firms in the country put together for analytical purposes—and the domestic public sector—local, state, provincial governments, national government. Outside of the domestic sphere is the external sector. This is the rest of the world. We can call it the foreign sector, foreign governments, foreign households, foreign businesses. (c. 35:20)

“So, we have three sectors and two rules. The two rules are that all three sectors cannot be in surplus at the same time. And all three sectors cannot be in deficit at the same time. These are not my rules. These are the rules of accounting. One person’s surplus is another person’s deficit. The only way for one sector to run a positive balance is for at least one other sector to run a negative balance. You might think of having three coins: heads is positive, tails is negative. Hold three coins in your hand and flip all three, if they all come up heads, throw it out; it won’t work. If they all come up tails, throw it out. You can have two heads and a tail—two surpluses and a deficit—or two tails and a head—two deficits and one surplus. (c. 36:38)

“Balance sheet rules apply. Instinctively, we probably think there’s something inherently better about being in a surplus position. But, remember, we can’t all be in surplus at the same time. It defies the laws of accounting. At least one sector must be in deficit. (c. 37:09)

“Here we see the government sector on the left and the non-government sector on the right. The non-government sector includes domestic households, domestic firms, and the rest of the world, everyone who’s not government. If there’s a surplus in the government sector than, by definition, there is a deficit in the non-government sector. If the government is in deficit, then, by definition, the non-government sector is in surplus. (c. 37:57)

“Two choices: two heads, one tail; two tails, one head. Which one’s better? The private sector needs to be in surplus almost all the time. As a general rule, the private sector cannot survive in a deficit position. Households and firms, as users of the currency, cannot continually spend more than their income. At some point, even the financial wizards of Wall Street will run out of credit-worthy borrowers who are looking to borrow more. When that happens, asset prices go sideways; sales soften; jobless claims go higher; and the economy turns down. Government budget moves into deficit automatically, the ugly way.

“The private sector cannot create net wealth for itself. Businesses, banks, and households together can borrow and lend, but every asset is offset by a liability from someone else in the private sector. The assets and liabilities cancel each other out. We can’t create net financial assets internally by ourselves, as a private sector. Net financial wealth must come from outside the private sector.

“So, where do surpluses come from? Remember that a surplus means that your income exceeds your expenditure. A deficit means you’re spending more than your income. Any one of these sectors—the private sector on the left, the public sector and the foreign sector on the right—any one of them can be in deficit or surplus, but they can’t all be in deficit or surplus together.

“If the government sector is running a deficit, it tends to add to the private sector’s surplus.

“If the rest of the world is running a deficit against Italy, that means Italy has the surplus. Either, a government deficit or a trade surplus will increase the private sector’s net wealth. This is—for those of you who might’ve wondered where the equation came from—it comes from the national income accounting. I’m just showing you, so that you know I’m legitimate. You just move identities around. Trust me, okay? (c. 41:42)

“On one side of the equation, you see where our nation’s income comes from. I call that sources of income. On the other side of the equation, you see how we use our income. Sources and uses have to be equal. We can set these equations equal, move terms to other sides, and write this equation here. Which is the important equation for us? (c. 42:10)

“This is the difference between what the private sector is saving and spending. This is the difference between what the public sector—the government—is spending and collecting. This is the difference between what the rest of the world is buying from you—your exports—and what you are buying from them—imports.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’re listening to professor and research scholar, Stephanie Kelton. Today’s show: ‘Modern Money Theory Explained.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.”

DR. STEPHANIE KELTON: “I mentioned that if the private sector is going to be in surplus, it requires at least one other sector to be in deficit. This is the actual data for Italy. The red line on the bottom shows the government’s budget balance. You can see that in every year, since 1996, the Italian government has run a deficit. You can also see that the bigger the deficit in the government sector, the bigger the surplus in the private sector. Indeed, they almost look like they move exactly opposite to one another. You could even say that as the government goes down, you go up. That’s a different way to think about the government’s deficit. I’m not making it up. (c. 44:08)

“Here’s Ireland. It looks similar. As Ireland’s government deficit exploded, so did the accumulation of financial assets—savings—in the private sector.

“Greece: similar.

“Spain: as deficits increase—here’s Spain at more than 10% deficit to GDP and here’s the Spanish private sector in surplus.

“Germany: Germany runs surpluses on occasion. But what happened to the private sector? As Germany’s budget moved in to surplus, you can see here in this period where the German budget was in surplus and the private sector was driven into deficit, not some place the private sector usually spends much time because the private sector can’t survive in deficit. (c. 45:20)

“Here’s the United Kingdom, Japan, and the United States. The large deficits that have been run since the downturn in the economy following the financial crisis, huge deficits that have terrified the hawks, have helped the private sector rebuild and repair their balance sheets by adding to their financial savings. This makes for a good deficit. The reason that the two lines were not perfect mirror images in the last set of graphs was because I didn’t include the foreign sector. I just wanted to focus you in on the relationship between the public sector’s deficit and the private sector’s surplus.

“Here is a complete picture for the United States. Every area in red shows you the US government’s budget position. Anything that falls below zero indicates a public sector deficit. You’ll notice that the U.S. government is almost always in deficit. The blue represents the private sector’s balance. You’ll notice that the private sector is almost always in surplus. The green represents the foreign balance. It’s been quite some time since the US ran a positive trade surplus. You can see a few back in the early years. We are now running trade deficits, sometimes, fairly substantial ones. And that reduces the private sector’s surplus.

“So, let’s focus in on a specific period of time. The period in the late 1990s and early 2000s when for the first time in decades the US government ran budget surpluses. You can see those surpluses where the red goes into positive territory. These years here represent government budget surpluses. Many people would inherently think that would be a good thing. It shows fiscal responsibility. Not only did they balance the budget, but they put it in surplus. Meanwhile, our current account deficits were huge. The rest of the world was running large positive balances against the US. That reduced US private- sector savings. Surpluses fell. It pushed the private sector into deficit on an unprecedented scale. The private sector went from surviving above the zero line to being pushed below zero. And the private sector remained there for a period of years, spending more than its income, borrowing to do it. And it was all fueled by a massive bubble economy that ended in recession, which drove the public sector’s balance back into deficit where it belongs. (c. 49:16)

“Okay, the last part that I want to introduce this morning is the Financial Balance Model. We are very excited in the MMT world about this model. It was developed by a friend of ours, who is an outstanding economist. His name is Rob Parenteau. He writes on the New Economics Perspectives blog. And he came up with this model. And it is the framework that allows us to compare all three sectors’ budget positions in a graph. Economists like graphs. So, in fact, it’s how you gain credibility in our world. So, one must use models and graphs. (c. 50:15)

“The vertical axis measures the public sector’s budget position. If the government is in surplus, we’ll be in the top half of the graph. If the government is in deficit, we’ll be in the bottom half of the graph. The horizontal axis measure’s the current account, the foreign balance.

“If you’re on the right half of the graph, the current account is in surplus.

“If you’re on the left half of the graph, the current account is in deficit.

“The dashed line shows the private sector’s financial balance set at zero.

“So, every point along the dashed line is a point where the private sector has no surplus and no deficit—spending equals income. Above the dashed line, the private sector is in deficit. Remember what I said: The private sector cannot survive in that territory. Below the dashed line, the private sector is in surplus. Okay? (c. 51:39)

“For a country that issues a sovereign currency, fiat money, no fixed exchange rate, the world is your oyster. You can be anywhere in the graph. There are no rules or reasons that you can’t be located anywhere. But remember the diagonal line, anywhere above that is unsustainable for the private sector. So, the only sustainable space is below that line, the green line.

“What about here for countries that use the euro? Where are you supposed to operate? Well, if you’re playing by the rules, your deficit is not supposed to exceed 3% of your GDP. So, we put in a lower bound at 3%, negative. This is the space that’s available—in theory. What about countries in the Eurozone that run current account deficits? Remember that current account deficit is every where to the left of the vertical line, but you can’t go below 3%. So, countries with a current account deficit, they get that rectangle. Countries that run current account surpluses have a different space. A country with a current account surplus can put its private sector in surplus with a smaller public sector deficit.

“Here’s the situation for a country that uses the euro and also runs a current account deficit. Can you see it? It’s a small space. This is the space that you are given to work with. Anything above the dashed line means a private sector deficit. It’s not a sustainable space for you, for any of us. You must be below the dashed line. But you must also be above the red line. But because you’re running a trade deficit, you’re also to the left of the vertical line. You get only to play in that little triangle. (c. 54:30)

“So, lets talk about what’s happened to Italy. Germany has crushed many members of the Eurozone through its labour policies that began in the early 2000s. Marshall [Auerback] talked last night about the Hirsch Commission and in Agenda 2012, which was Chancellor Schröder’s economic miracle, whereby Germany ‘reformed’ its labour markets by reducing the power of their labour unions and their craft guilds making it easier for their employers to fire people at will, cut unemployment benefits, so that German benefits last about half as long as benefits in the US. They were harsh ‘reforms.’ And as they were being implemented, unemployment, initially, increased. It hurt the German economy, but not for long because that pain was soon transferred to others. (c. 55:45)

“So, I want you to look at this picture: Italy, in 1996, was running a trade surplus of more than 3% of your GDP. You had more fiscal space before the German policies. And now you have that little triangle. It doesn’t give you enough policy space without breaking the Stability and Growth Pact rules it is extremely difficult for you to keep the private sector in surplus and the economy healthy. I would say it’s impossible. (c. 56:22)

“Italy makes it into the small triangle, but not often. Most of the time, though, your deficits have been large enough to compensate for the trade deficits that you run and you’ve been able to keep your private sector in surplus. But that’s because the rules were broken. If you had played by the rules, for the last 14 years, you would have been successful three times.

“Ireland would never be successful. The space is just too small.

“You see Greece. The triangle for Greece is way up in the corner. They can’t play by these restrictive rules, either. (c. 57:05)

“Same problem for Spain.

“Germany, on the other hand does brilliantly, almost every point is to the right of the green line where the private sector is in surplus. Although, Germany breaks the Stability and Growth rules, like everyone else. It’s the large current account surpluses that Germany runs, thanks to all of you. It’s the secret to their success. It’s why they can run smaller deficits, stay out of trouble. You are financing it.” (c. 57:57)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to professor and research scholar, Stephanie Kelton at the Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy. Today’s show: Modern Money Theory Explained.

“Stephanie Kelton is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Research Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute, and Director of Graduate Student Research at the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability.

“She is Creator and Editor of New Economic Perspectives. Her research expertise is in Federal Reserve operations, fiscal policy, social security, healthcare, international finance, and employment policy.

“Please visit the University of Missouri, Kansas City New Economic Perspectives blog at http://www.NewEconomicPerspectives.org. Visit the website for the first Italian Summit on Modern Money Theory at http://www.DemocraziaMMT.info.

“Guns and Butter is produced by Bonnie Faulkner and Yara Mako. To leave comments or order copies of shows, email us at blfaulkner@yahoo.com. Visit our website at http://www.gunsandbutter.org.”

Learn more at GUNS AND BUTTER.

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MEDIA ROOTS—[27 APR 2012] Pacifica Radio’s Guns and Butter has stayed on the drumbeat coverage of the revolutionary economic school of thought, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), broadcasting extensive audio from the grassroots economic summit in Rimini, Italy produced by journalist Paolo Barnard: Summit Modern Money Theory 2012. At Media Roots, we’ve covered the entire series. With this week’s instalment, Dr. Stephanie Kelton’s discussion includes:

“Myths about taxation and government revenues in a sovereign currency situation; debts and deficits; full social security and price stability; the use of sectoral balances to analyze the financial position of the different sectors of the macro economy; the three sectors of the macro economy; the two rules governing the three sectors; the financial balance model.”

Messina

[snip]

Learn more at MEDIA ROOTS.

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Programme summary from the archive page at kpfa.org:

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“The Birth of the European Central Bank: Its Real Agenda” with Alain Parguez at the first Italian Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

This is Part Six of a seven-part series:

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part One); 7 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Two); 14 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Three); 21 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Four); 28 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Five); 4 APR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Six); 18 APR 2017.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Seven); pending.

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[29 MAY 2017]

[Last modified at 18:51 PST on 29 MAY 2017]

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Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Five)

04 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by ztnh in Anti-Austerity, Macroeconomic Analysis, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

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LUMPENPROLETARIAT—This week’s edition of free speech radio’s Guns and Butter featured a fifth installment of host Bonnie Faulkner‘s coverage of the 2012 MMT Summit in Rimini, Italy. [transcript below] (See the first broadcast here, the second broadcast here, the third broadcast here, and the fourth broadcast here.)

Part Four in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit, focused on remarks presented by Dr. Stephanie Kelton. Dr. Kelton further elaborated on modern money theory (MMT) and also offered up emancipatory economic policy proposals, which are feasible with modern money, such as eliminating involuntary unemployment with a federal job guarantee programme in the United States with its sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. Listen (and/or download) here. [4]

This week’s broadcast, Part Five in this Guns and Butter series on the MMT Summit, focused on remarks presented by Dr. William K. Black. Dr. Black is a leading criminologist working in the intersectionality of Law and Economics. In this presentation, he described how the role of banks as subordinate to industry has been reversed through a form of fraud, which he calls control fraud. Dr. Black described how control fraud perpetrated by “financial superpredators” was at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007/2008, which cost millions of working class Americans their jobs, their homes, and their economic well-being, but enriched elites in the banking and financial sector, or FIRE sector. Listen (and/or download) here. [5] [See transcript below.]

Messina

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[Transcript by Messina for Guns and Butter, Media Roots, and Lumpenproletariat]

GUNS AND BUTTER—[4 APR 2012] “Formula For Fraud” with William K. Black from the first Italian economic Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy.

“And here’s the key question: How many of you are bankers? Not many, right? How much brains does it take to make a bad loan? I think we could all do that. So, all the mediocre bankers have no way to make money with honest competition. But they have a sure thing, if they’re willing to follow the fraud recipe.” —Dr. William K. Black

“I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter: William K. Black. Today’s show: ‘Formula For Fraud.’ William Black is Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is a lawyer, academic, and former bank regulator and author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.

“According to William Black, the current crisis is 70 times larger than the Collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry in the late 1980s. Today’s programme includes two of Bill Black’s presentations on Saturday, February 25th, [2012] in Rimini, Italy at the first Italian grassroots economic Summit on Modern Money Theory produced by Italian journalist Paolo Barnard, which featured speakers Stephanie Kelton, William Black, Marshall Auerback, Michael Hudson, and Alain Parguez.

“In today’s show, Black deconstructs the elements, that constitute the recipe for fraud.” (c. 2:05)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “It’s difficult to follow such a raging optimist. [applause] But I can assure you, it’s actually far worse than they say. First, there are no ‘technocrats,’ especially the ‘genius’ technocrats. I suggest a new rule of thumb for judging a ‘genius technocrat.’ They have to be right at least two out of ten times. And there’s not a single economist in Europe, who calls himself a technocrat, that could do the equivalent of making two penalty kicks out of ten. So, I’m going to pick up on some of the things, that Michael [Hudson] has talked about. He quoted Balzac’s famous phrase that behind every fortune lies a great scandal. And I’m going to explain how that works. So, you will now learn how to steal €10 billion euros. [applause] The purpose of this is not so that you will steal €10 billion euros. The purpose is so that you can be an intelligent lion because they feed on sheep. (c. 3:40)

“We’ve been asked to do our talks in four parts. So, unlike Gaul, my speech is divided in four parts. This talk will be about why we suffer recurrent, intensifying, financial crises. Then, I’ll explain how theoclassical economic dogma produces these disasters. The third part will be to explain why our response to the crisis has made it worse. And I, actually, will end on an optimistic note. The fourth part is how we have succeeded in some places at some times and why you can do the same. (c. 4:29)

“Part one sounds like one question: Why do we have recurrent, intensifying, financial crises? But it’s really two questions. The first one asks: What is the cause of these crises? The second one says: Well, wait a minute. We keep on suffering crises. Why don’t we learn the right lessons from these crises? So, part one will focus on what caused the crises. (c. 5:05)

“Part two will focus on why ideology prevents us from learning the right lessons.

“Santayana’s famous phrase, of course, is that those that forget the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them. But, even if we remember the mistakes we’ve made, the new policy we pick could be another mistake. So, part three discusses that, in part.

“But part four says the real tragedy is when you forget the successes of the past, when you have something that you know works and that you refuse to use. Because, as Michael [Hudson] said, there’s not an economics textbook in the world, that warns you that elite CEOs often become wealthy through fraud. And there is a primitive, tribal, taboo in economics in English against using the five-letter eff-word—fraud. When I go and talk to groups of economists, who are traditional, I start out the meeting by asking them each to say out loud the word fraud. You can’t believe how difficult it is for them, even, to utter the word. (c. 6:42)

“So, as I said, the lessons of success, it’s a real tragedy to forget them. And I’m going to quote from George Akerlof and Paul Romer’s famous article, or, at least, an article, that should be famous where the title says it all: ‘Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.’ So, the bank fails or, in the modern era, is ‘bailed‘ out, but the CEO walks away wealthy. And this is what Akerlof and Romer wrote about 20 years ago:

“‘Neither the public, nor economists foresaw that savings and loan deregulation was bound to produce looting, nor, unaware of the concept, could they have known how serious it would be. Thus, the regulators in the field who understood what was happening from the beginning found lukewarm support, at best, for their cause. Now, we know better. If we learn from experience, history need not repeat itself.’ (c. 8:22)

“George Akerlof was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001. So, you might think economists would pay attention. You might think, since this article was written nearly 20 years ago, that the textbooks would mention fraud and looting. They don’t just ignore everyone here. They ignore Nobel Prize winners in Economics.

“So, what, again, was this lesson? It was the regulators in the field, the little people, not the fancy people, who understood from the beginning that deregulation would lead to massive looting. And it was the economists, that ignored them. And after we had proven that it was fraud, after we had sent over a thousand elite bankers and their cronies to prison, after a Nobel Prize winner warned about it, after all those things, they ignored it and produced crisis after crisis, including the one we experience now. (c. 9:59)

“So, what did we know out of that savings and loan crisis, that was widely described at the time as the worst financial scandal in U.S. history? And we have a history rich in scandal. Here is what the national commission, that investigated the causes of the crisis reported:

“‘The typical large failure [grew] at an extremely rapid rate, achieving high concentrations of assets in risky ventures… [E]very accounting trick available was used… Evidence of fraud was invariably present, as was the ability of the operators to ‘milk’ the organisation.’ (c. 11:04)

“That means to loot the organisation. But, speaking of milk, [applause] the frauds I’m describing are in no way limited to the Unites States; they exist in every country. And they are common enough to explain, and they are old enough to explain, what Balzac was saying because many of the wealthy become rich through precisely the scandals, the fraud, I will describe.

“In criminology, we call them financial super predators when we’re being lyrical. When we’re writing journals, we call them ‘control frauds,’ which is boring. Control fraud occurs when the person who controls a seemingly legitimate entity, like Parmalat, uses it as a weapon to defraud. And they can often use this weapon with impunity. In finance, accounting is the weapon of choice. And these accounting frauds cause greater losses than all other property crimes combined; yet, economics, again, never talks about it. Worse, when many of these frauds occur in the same area, they hyperinflate financial bubbles, which is what causes financial crises and mass unemployment. It makes the CEOs wealthy, produces Balzac scandals, and destroys democracy. (c. 13:10)

“In criminology, we talk about criminogenic environments, long words, simple concept. When the incentives are extremely perverse, you will get widespread fraud. So, what makes for perverse incentives? The ability to steal a lot of money and not go to prison and not having to live in disgrace. In practice, that means, in English, the three Ds: deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalisation. Deregulation: You get rid of the rules. Desupervision: Any rules, that remain, you don’t enforce. Decriminalisation: Even if you sometimes sue them and get a fine, you don’t put them in prison. So, that’s the first area—deregulation. (c. 14:20)

“The second area is executive compensation. And what is ideal for accounting fraud? Really high pay based on short-term-reported income with no way to claw it back, even when it proves to be a lie. Those are the most important, but it’s also good, if your assets don’t have a readily verifiable market-value ‘cos then it’s easy to inflate the asset prices and it’s easy to hide the real losses. And, if you want a true epidemic of fraud, if entry into the industry is very easy, then you’ll get much more fraud.” (c. 15:15)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’re listening to lawyer, academic, author, and former bank regulator William K. Black. Today’s show: ‘Formula for Fraud.’ I’m Bonnie Faulkner. This is Guns and Butter.”

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “So, this is what you were waiting for, at least from me. This is the recipe, only four ingredients, that bankers in many parts of the world use to become billionaires. And, again, it’s one that Akerlof and Romer agreed with. So, first ingredient: grow massively. Two: by making really, really crappy loans, but at a higher interest rate. Third ingredient: extreme leverage—that just means a lot of corporate debt. Fourth ingredient: set aside virtually no loss reserves for the massive losses that will be coming. By the way, in Europe, this last ingredient is mandated by international accounting rules, which are incredibly fraud-friendly. And everybody knows that—in accounting—and nobody has changed it. If you do these four things, you are mathematically guaranteed to report record short-term income. This is why Akerlof and Romer referred to it as a sure thing—it’s guaranteed. (c. 17:10)

“There are actually three sure things. The bank will report record profits. The profits, of course, are fictional. The CEO will promptly become wealthy and, down the road, the bank will suffer catastrophic losses. Again, if many banks do this, you will hyperinflate a bubble. This recipe helps explain why bankers hate markets, why bankers hate capitalism, why they hate anything like an effective market.

“So here’s a thought exercise: What if you were a CEO of a bank and you wanted to grow exceptionally rapidly? The first ingredient to the fraud recipe, that means 50% a year. And that’s realistic; that’s what the banks in Iceland, that’s what many of the banks in Europe—continental Europe—and the US also did. How would you do that if you were honest? You’re in a market that’s competitive. The only way to grow that rapidly is to charge far less money—a lower interest rate—for your loans. But if they’re a real market what would your competitors do? They would match your price reduction. You wouldn’t end up making any more loans; and all the banks would be loaning at a lower interest rate. So, here’s the question? Is that a good way to make money as a bank? It’s a terrible thing for a bank, right? So, all the bankers would lose. And that’s why they hate markets. And that’s why banks are the biggest proponents of crony capitalism and the leaders worldwide in crony capitalism. (c. 19:26)

“And that leads us to a discussion of why bad loans are so perfect for bank fraud; you can charge a much higher rate to people who can’t get loans because they can’t repay the loans. And there are millions, tens of millions, of such people. So, you can grow very rapidly. You can charge a higher interest rate. If your competitors do the same thing, it’s actually ‘good’ for you because it hyperinflates the bubble. And the bad loans, you just refinance them and you hide the losses for many more years. (c. 20:22)

“So, the CEO takes no risk; all of this is a sure thing. And here’s the key question: How many of you are bankers? Not many, right? How much brains does it take to make a bad loan? I think we could all do that. So, all the mediocre bankers have no way to make money with honest competition. But they have a sure thing, if they’re willing to follow the fraud recipe. I’m now gonna quote from the person, the economist [James Pierce, NCFIRRE’s Executive Director], who led the national investigation of the savings and loan crisis. And he called this dynamic I’ve just explained, ‘the ultimate perverse incentive.’ So, this is what he said: (c. 21:28)

“‘Accounting abuses also provided the ultimate perverse incentive: it paid to seek out bad loans because only those who had no intention of repaying would be willing to offer the high loan fees and interest required for the best looting. It was rational for operators’—that’s CEOs—‘to drive their banks ever deeper into insolvency, as they looted them.’ (c. 22:12)

“That is how crazy a world that theoclassical economics has built, where the best way, the surest way, to become wealthy, as a bank CEO, is to make the worst possible loans. And to make so many bad loans, they have to gut the underwriting process. Underwriting is what an honest bank does to make sure that it’s going to get repaid. But, if you want to make bad loans, you have to get rid of your effective underwriting. So, this is the key, if you get rid of underwriting. We already established you’re not bankers.

“So, imagine all of you run Competent Honest Bank and you do underwriting. And you can tell can tell high-risk and low-risk borrowers. Low risk borrowers you charge 10%. High-risk borrowers you charge 20%. I run Bill’s Incompetent Bank, I can’t tell risk. So, I charge everybody 15%. Which borrowers come to me? Only the absolute worst borrowers. No good borrower would come because they could borrow at your bank at 10%. So, this is not like a usual risk. In economics, we call this adverse selection. And it means that a bank, that makes loans this way must lose vast amounts of money. No honest banker would operate this way. And the banks, that engage in these frauds, also create criminogenic environments, themselves, to recruit fraud allies. For example, the people, that value homes. If they won’t inflate the value, the dishonest banks won’t use them. Do they need to corrupt every person that values homes? No. 5% of the profession would be fine. They just send all their business to the corrupt—we call them—appraisers in America. And this is called a Gresham’s Dynamic; and it means that cheaters prosper and bad ethics drives good ethics out of the marketplace. (c. 25:18)

“Well, what about compensation? In [the United States of] America, the largest corporations, the largest 100, created a group to lobby, called the Business Roundtable. And you remember our Enron-era frauds, early 2000s? Well, they got embarrassed. And, so, they appointed a task force to look at the frauds. And they named a particular CEO as head of their task force; and he was asked by Business Week, why do we have all these frauds? This is the answer he gave:

“‘Don’t just say: ‘If you hit this revenue number, your bonus is going to be this.’ It sets up an incentive that’s overwhelming. You wave enough money in front of people; and good people will do bad things.’ (c. 26:28)

“And that was Franklin Raines, the head of Fannie Mae, which is now insolvent by about $500 billion dollars. How did Frank Raines know about this perverse incentive? Because he used it at Fannie Mae to produce the frauds, that made him wealthy.

“How about Ireland? This is a report by a Scandinavian banker hired to do an investigation, not a real investigation, of course. He reported:

“‘Bonus targets, that were intended to be demanding through the pursuit of sound policies and prudent spread of risk were easily achieved through volume lending to the property sector.’ (c. 27:25)

“Now, that requires a translation, not because it’s written in English, but because it’s written to be not understood. So, what is he really saying? The bank CEO sets a target for income, that is huge—three times the current income. How can you triple income safely? Wow, if somebody could really do that safely, we’d be happy to pay them a very big bonus, right? But what does he say?

“You don’t have to do it safely. And it isn’t hard. You just follow the fraud formula, the recipe, and it’s a sure thing. It’s easily achieved.

“What’s wrong with his sentence, though?

“He says the targets were intended to be difficult, demanding. And they were intended to be met through prudent lending. (c. 28:34)

“Seriously, you think that? The CEO is deciding how much money he is going to make. Do you think he intended a demanding target or a target that was easily achieved and would make him wealthy?

“So, I will end on this. We need a coast guard for our banks. We can no longer allow CEOs to desert their posts after running their banks aground and causing such great destruction. The cruise ship’s captain’s career is over. But the elite bank CEOs, that destroyed the global economy remain wealthy, powerful, and famous because they looted. They were ‘bailed’ out. They did not leave in a lifeboat in the dark of night. They left in their yachts, yachts that the governments paid for. And no official anywhere in the world has demanded of those bank CEOs who deserted their vessels […] [applause] Grazie.” (c. 30:30)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “Someone called on the Black Plague? I’m here. [audience laughter, applause]

“In this part two, I’m going to talk about why we have recurrent, intensifying crises, why we don’t learn the right lessons from our past crises. And then we’re going to discover something that, of course, you’ve been hearing. The dominant economists are truly terrible at one thing. They are terrible at economics. But occasionally they go beyond economics and they are abysmal on ethics. And they are the leading opponents and dangers to democracy throughout the EU, in particular, but in America as well. (c. 31:40)

“Economists tell us they want to be judged on their predictive ability. We welcome their admission because their record in prediction is pitiful. But, of course, it is precisely the fact that they’ve been wrong about everything important for three decades, that makes them unwilling to admit their error and evermore insistent on continuing their worst policy advice. (c. 32:12)

“As I said economics is particularly awful when it gets into the concept of morality. In my first talk, I read you a quotation from the economist who conducted the study of the savings and loan crisis. And he pointed out that it was ‘rational’ for looters to make bad loans. Well, here is the reaction of one economist, Greg Mankiw, to hearing the work of that national commission and of that Nobel Prize winner-to-be, George Akerlof. He listened to their story and he said—and this is not an off-hand comment; he was the official discussant; he had the paper a week in advance; he thought about these remarks—he said:

“‘[…] it would be irrational for savings and loans [CEOs] not to loot.’

“So, note that he goes from simply a statement about how you maximise fraud by making bad loans to the ethical proposition that if it would be rational action, it must be the appropriate action, even though the rational action is to defraud. (c. 33:40)

“Now, there’s a very interesting book called Moral Markets, that had the unfortunate timing to come out in 2008 because it is a triumphal book about capitalism and about how capitalism makes markets more moral. But even it contains this statement:

“‘Homo economicus is a sociopath. Homo economicus is what happens if people behave the way economists predict that they will behave.’

“And these scholars, who love capitalism, said: if you do that, you will create a nation of sociopaths.

“Greg Mankiw was not a random economist. [Then-]President Bush made him Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, the most prominent economic position in America, after he had said these things. (c. 34:48)

“The next two gentlemen are the leading law and economics scholars on corporate law. And I’m quoting from their treatise in 1991; so, an entire generation of US lawyers have been taught this next phrase:

“‘A rule against fraud is not an essential or […] an important ingredient of securities markets.’

“The key economist there—who is not really an economist, he’s a lawyer—is Daniel Fischel. He worked for three of the worst control frauds, including the absolute worst savings and loan ‘control fraud,’ praised them as the best firms in America, and then wrote this two years later without ever admitting in his book that he had tried his theories in the real world and they had led him to praise the worst frauds. So, this is rank academic dishonesty on top of getting everything wrong. And what happened to Fischel after he got everything wrong? He was made Dean of the University of Chicago Law School, one of the most prominent academic positions in America. (c. 36:15)

“Alan Greenspan also worked for the worst fraud in the savings and loan crisis. Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings. And he personally recruited, as a lobbyist for this worst fraud, the five [bipartisan] US Senators who would intervene with us to try and prevent us from taking enforcement action against the largest violation in the history of our agency because that violation was by Charles Keating and Lincoln Savings. And those five senators became known and ridiculed as the Keating Five. By the way, [Republican Senator] John McCain was one of those senators who met with us. [The other four were Democrats.]

“Alan Greenspan then wrote a letter saying we should allow Lincoln Savings to do these terrible investments because ‘they posed no foreseeable risk of loss to the federal insurance fund.’ Lincoln Savings proved to be the largest cost to the insurance fund. After he had gotten it as wrong, as it is possible to get something wrong, we made him Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So, here you have a record of we promote and honour, in economics, the people who get it spectacularly wrong, as long as they get it wrong for powerful banks, that are frauds. (c. 37:59)

“So, what did they predict? This is the short list. Neoclassical economists predicted, that because markets were efficient they were self-correcting, fraud was automatically excluded, and financial bubbles could not occur.

“They assured us that because of bankers’ interest in their reputations and auditors and appraisers, that they would never commit a fraud and never assist a fraud.

“They predicted that massive financial derivatives would stabilise the economic system.

“They told us, even when the bubble had reached proportions larger than any in the history of the world, that there was no housing bubble in the United States, that there was no housing bubble in Ireland, that there was no housing bubble in Japan, that there was no housing bubble in Spain.

“They told us that if we paid CEOs massive amounts of money based on short-term performance, that was fictional, it would align the interests of the CEO with the shareholders and the public and be the best possible thing. (c. 39:30)

“Every one of these predictions proved utterly false. Actually, every single one of these predictions had been falsified before the economists ever said them; and they did not change.

“What did they do back in the day? They looked at Europe. This is Cato, named, of course, after a famous Roman—a very conservative anti-think tank in the United States. Cato, in 2007, as Iceland was collapsing in massive fraud, said these words:

“‘Iceland’s economic renaissance is an impressive story. Supply-side reforms’—that means tax cuts—‘along with policies, such as privatisation and deregulation, have yielded predictable results.’

“Remember, we’re making predictions.

“‘Incomes are rising, unemployment is almost non-existent, and the government is collecting more revenue from a larger tax base.’

“So, they cut taxes, but overall tax revenue grows because the country is growing at a massive rate. Why? Because the big three banks in Iceland are all accounting control frauds. They are growing at an average rate of 50% every year. And by the time they collapse in 2008, they are ten times the GDP of Iceland. And they suffer 60% losses on their assets. That was their prediction of proof-positive that deregulation, low taxes, privatisation produce economic booms. (c. 41:36)

“They said something very similar about Ireland in an article entitled ‘It’s Not Luck‘:

“Ireland […] boasts the fourth highest gross domestic product per capita in the world. In the mid-1980s, Ireland was a backwater with an average income level 30% below that of the European Union. Today, Irish incomes are 40% above the EU average.

“‘Was this dramatic change the luck of the Irish? Not at all. It resulted from a series of hard-headed decisions that shifted Ireland from big government stagnation to free market growth.’

“And they wrote this in 2007, a year after the Irish bubble had popped and Ireland was going into freefall. And what are we being told now is the answer? Hard-headed decisions, that shift the governments from big government stagnation to free market growth. They have learned absolutely nothing from their past failed ‘predictions.’ In fact, Trichet came to Ireland in 2004 and said Ireland should be the model for nations joining the European Union.” (c. 42:30)

DR. WILLIAM K. BLACK: “But we have seen this movie many times before in many countries. We had seen it in the Savings and Loan Crisis. But then came the Enron-era Crisis and WorldCom. And I’ll focus on just one aspect. Again, we had accounting control fraud, that drove an immense crisis. But what people forget is that most of the world’s largest banks eagerly aided and abetted Enron’s frauds. They knew Enron was engaged in fraud; and they thought that was a good thing because they would get more deal flow, as we say, more volume. These frauds were documented extensively by investigations, hundreds of pages about it. Not a single one of the large conventional bankers were prosecuted. There was a prosecution about Merrill Lynch, which the courts obstructed. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only the government could bring civil suits—against an enforcement action, of course—against banks, that aided and abetted fraud. Think of that! You could have indisputable proof that the bank had aided Enron, knowingly done so, caused you billions in losses, and you could not sue the bank. That’s how bad the law has become in the United States. (c. 45:27)

“So, that left us with, Will the government sue? Well, the Federal Reserve, we now know from recent testimony in front of the national commission, that investigated this current crisis, the leadership actively resisted bringing any action against the banks, even what we call a slap on the wrist. And it was only when the Securities and Exchange Commission took a slap on the wrist that the Federal Reserve was embarrassed into taking any action.

“We also know, from this extraordinary testimony by the long-time head of supervision at the Federal Reserve, that he was deeply disturbed by the fact that most of the largest banks in the world had aided Enron’s fraud. So, he put together a comprehensive briefing for the leadership of the Federal Reserve. At that meeting, the senior officials of the Federal Reserve and the senior economists of the Federal Reserve did not criticise Enron and they did not criticise the banks that aided Enron’s frauds. They were enraged at the supervisor. How dare he criticise banks? And this was the era—and continues, in the United States, to be the era—of reinventing government, which is a neoclassical, neoliberal, be soft on bankers.

“And I witnessed, personally, when our Washington staff came at a training conference and instructed us that we were to refer to banks as our clients. We were the regulators. And we were, not only, supposed to refer to them as clients, we were supposed to treat them as clients. Being a quiet type, I stood up and began protesting; and they simply shouted us down. [applause]” (c. 47:59)

“So, this is occurring in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004. At that point, Italy enters the picture. And Italy enters the picture because of Parmalat. And it enters the picture because, again, you have a massive accounting control fraud where the CEO is looting Parmalat and taking the money out of Italy to tax havens where he can hide it in a wave of special complex corporate forms designed to hide the fraud.

“And what does the Federal Reserve say about all of this? Well, first they brag about their ‘enforcement’ action. Note that they won’t name the large institutions:

“‘In these enforcement actions, certain large institutions were required to revise their risk management practices where examiners found failures by these institutions to identify those transactions, that presented heightened legal and reputational risk, particularly, in cases where transactions were used to facilitate a customer’s accounting or tax objective, that resulted in misrepresenting the company’s true financial condition to the public and regulators.’ (c. 49:42)

“So, this is another passage that requires translation, not because it’s in English, but because it’s in gobbledygook. So, what are they really saying? First, they are bragging about an enforcement action, that they tried very hard not to bring and which was utterly useless. Second, note what their concern is. Their concern is “heightened legal and reputational risk.” They’re worried that when the bank aids Enron or Parmalat’s frauds they’ll get caught and then their reputation will suffer. They’re not worried about Enron’s shareholders. They’re not worried about the 12,000 Enron employees who lose their jobs. They’re not worried about Parma’s economy. None of that matters. They don’t even discuss it. And they’re not worried about morality. Call me old school, but I thought, when I was a regulator, if the banks I was regulating were engaged in fraud, first, my job was to stop it. Second, my job was to remove the CEO from office. Third, my job was to help prosecute him and put him in prison. And, fourth, my job was to sue him, so that he walked away with not a lira or a euro or a dollar. But all of that is gone. [applause] (c. 51:25)

“But you know this because you have probably seen a gem of a film. And you know, probably, what Citicorp called this special vehicle it created to facilitate the looting of Parmalat. Somehow, I think this means black hole; that’s what they called it. And this is so wonderful. Citicorp eventually said it regretted one thing, calling it bucanero. The only thing it was honest about is the only thing it regretted. What it did to Italy in Parma, not so much. (c. 52:15)

“So, what did people find in this crisis? This is the National Commission Report on our crisis:

“‘We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation’s financial markets. The sentries were not at their posts […] due to the widely-accepted faith in the self-correcting nature of the markets and the ability of financial institutions to effectively police themselves.’

“It specifically blames Greenspan and his deregulatory ideology. That could have helped to avoid a catastrophe. (c. 53:05)

“But those are words. Here is an image. The person—yes, this man—he is ‘Chainsaw Gilleran.’ That translates very well into Italian, I see. He was the head of the agency I used to work for. He is standing next to the three leading bank lobbyists in America and the guy who will be his successor. They are poised and posed over a pile of federal regulations. And, if that’s too subtle, they are tied up in red tape. And the message is: We will work with our clients, the banks, to destroy all regulation. And the reason we bring a chainsaw is to make clear that everything will be destroyed. (c. 54:00)

“Well, what about Europe? There was a conservative dissent to the conclusions I’ve just read. They claimed that deregulation could not have been a major cause of the crisis in America because the crisis also occurred in Europe. That’s all they said. They implicitly assumed that Europe must have been tough on bank regulation.

“I will conclude with these words from the report on the Irish Crisis. There were ‘generic weaknesses in EU regulation and supervision.‘ So, the dissent has it exactly wrong. They’re right; it’s important to look at Europe and the same causal mechanism—deregulation, desupervision, and this absurd executive compensation—swept Europe and America. And the economists got what they wanted and predicted it would be wonderful. It produced a catastrophe. [applause]” (c. 55:30)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “You’ve been listening to William K. Black. Today’s show has been ‘Formula for Fraud.’ William Black is Associate Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is a lawyer, academic, and former bank regulator and the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry.

“Please visit the University of Missouri, Kansas City New Economic Perspectives blog at www.NewEconomicPerspectives.org. Visit the website for the first Italian Summit on Modern Money Theory at www.DemocraziaMMT.info.

Learn more at GUNS AND BUTTER.

***

MEDIA ROOTS—[12 APR 2012] Pacifica Radio’s Guns and Butter have faithfully broadcast another potent weekly instalment of compelling discussions from the radical economics summit in Rimini, Italy produced by journalist Paolo Barnard: Summit Modern Money Theory 2012. Media Roots previously transcribed and featured the first, second, third, and fourth consecutive Guns and Butter broadcasts on the MMT Summit. Here we present the most recent coverage of this important and inspiring international economic summit featuring academic Dr. William K. Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.

It’s essential to understand, at least, the basics of how the ruling-class widens inequality. It’s equally important to understand our role in perpetuating that widening inequality by supporting their corrupt political parties, the Democrat and Republican parties, and their counterparts abroad, for which no amount of token reformers, such as Dennis Kucinich or Paul Wellstone or Barbara Lee or you name it, could compensate because corporate funding isn’t intended to benefit the working-class. Dr. Black discusses many economics taboos never mentioned. Similarly, we must acknowledge political taboos never mentioned, such as our rigged two-party system. The days of New Deal Democrats are long gone. It’s high time for expanding beyond U.S.A.’s monopolised two-party dictatorship, which undergirds the vast fraud Dr. Black discusses, as well as virtually every other single-issue, which atomised activists toil against. As U.S.A. faces the masochistic prospect of electing another pro-1% Republican or re-electing the pro-1% Democrat Obama, we bear in mind the role of political parties and their principles, or lack thereof, and our atrophied votes for the least worst, rather than the best possible.

Messina

[snip]

Learn more at MEDIA ROOTS.

***

Programme summary from the archive page at kpfa.org:

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

“The Birth of the European Central Bank: Its Real Agenda” with Alain Parguez at the first Italian Summit on Modern Money Theory in Rimini, Italy.

Broadcast summary from archive page at kpfa.org:

This is Part Five of a multi-part series. Also see these Lumpenproletariat articles:

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part One); 7 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Two); 14 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Three); 21 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Four); 28 MAR 2012.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Five); pending.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Six); pending.
Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Seven); pending.

***

[27 MAY 2017]

[Last modified at 22:18 PST on 27 MAY 2017]

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Monthly Archives: April 2012

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Seven)

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Six)

Guns and Butter: 2012 Modern Monetary Theory Summit in Rimini, Italy (Part Five)

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