Importante artículo que, ha pasado prácticamente inadvertido en los media y la internet hispana. En el mundo anglosajón, al parecer, ha levantado un amplio debate de conceptos cruciales como los de dinero endógeno/exógeno, coeficiente de caja, mecanismos de la emisión de dinero, etc.
El informe del Bank of England al que hace referencia el artículo es éste: "Money Creation in the Modern Economy"
El informe del Bank of England al que hace referencia el artículo es éste: "Money Creation in the Modern Economy"
El artículo, en The Guardian:
The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it | David Graeber | theguardian.com
Version Espanola
La verdad está ahí fuera: el dinero es sólo un reconocimiento de deuda (pagaré), y los bancos están nadando en él
De vuelta en la década de 1930, Henry Ford se supone que comentó que era una buena cosa que la mayoría de los estadounidenses no saben cómo realmente funciona la banca, porque si lo hicieran, "habría una revolución antes de mañana por la mañana".
La semana pasada, algo extraordinario.sucedió .
El Banco de Inglaterra dejó el gato fuera de la bolsa. En un artículo titulado "La creación de dinero en la economía moderna",
Co-escrito por tres economistas de la Dirección de Análisis Monetario del Banco, declararon abiertamente que los supuestos más comunes de cómo funciona la banca son simplemente erróneas, y que el tipo de populista, posiciones heterodoxas más comúnmente asociado con grupos como Occupy Wall Street son correctas. Al hacerlo, han arrojado efectivamente toda la base teórica de la austeridad por la ventana.
Co-escrito por tres economistas de la Dirección de Análisis Monetario del Banco, declararon abiertamente que los supuestos más comunes de cómo funciona la banca son simplemente erróneas, y que el tipo de populista, posiciones heterodoxas más comúnmente asociado con grupos como Occupy Wall Street son correctas. Al hacerlo, han arrojado efectivamente toda la base teórica de la austeridad por la ventana.
Para tener una idea de cuán radical nueva posición del Banco es, considerar el punto de vista convencional, que sigue siendo la base de todo debate respetable en la política pública. La gente pone su dinero en los bancos.
Entonces los bancos se prestan el dinero a interés - ya sea a los consumidores, o para los empresarios que deseen invertir en alguna empresa rentable.
Es cierto que el sistema de reserva fraccionaria no permiten que los bancos se prestan fuera considerablemente más de lo que tienen en reserva, y verdadero, si los ahorros no son suficientes, los bancos privados pueden tratar de pedir más dinero prestado del banco central.
El banco central puede imprimir tanto dinero como desee. Pero también se cuida de no imprimir demasiado. De hecho, a menudo se nos dijeron que esto es por qué existen los bancos centrales independientes en el primer lugar. Si los gobiernos pueden imprimir dinero ellos mismos, seguramente sacar demasiado de él, y la inflación resultante tirarían la economía en el caos. Instituciones como el Banco de Inglaterra o la Reserva Federal de EE.UU. se crearon para regular cuidadosamente la oferta de dinero para evitar la inflación. Es por esto que se les prohíbe financiar directamente el gobierno, por ejemplo, mediante la compra de bonos del tesoro, sino financiar la actividad económica privada que el Gobierno simplemente impuestos.
Es esta concepción la que nos permite seguir a hablar de dinero como si se tratara de un recurso limitado, como la bauxita o el petróleo, para decir "no hay suficiente dinero" para financiar programas sociales, hablar de la inmoralidad de la deuda pública o del gasto público "desplazamiento" del sector privado.
El banco central puede imprimir tanto dinero como desee. Pero también se cuida de no imprimir demasiado. De hecho, a menudo se nos dijeron que esto es por qué existen los bancos centrales independientes en el primer lugar. Si los gobiernos pueden imprimir dinero ellos mismos, seguramente sacar demasiado de él, y la inflación resultante tirarían la economía en el caos. Instituciones como el Banco de Inglaterra o la Reserva Federal de EE.UU. se crearon para regular cuidadosamente la oferta de dinero para evitar la inflación. Es por esto que se les prohíbe financiar directamente el gobierno, por ejemplo, mediante la compra de bonos del tesoro, sino financiar la actividad económica privada que el Gobierno simplemente impuestos.
Es esta concepción la que nos permite seguir a hablar de dinero como si se tratara de un recurso limitado, como la bauxita o el petróleo, para decir "no hay suficiente dinero" para financiar programas sociales, hablar de la inmoralidad de la deuda pública o del gasto público "desplazamiento" del sector privado.
Lo que el Banco de Inglaterra admitió esta semana es que nada de esto es realmente cierto. Citando su propio resumen inicial: "
En lugar de los bancos recibir depósitos cuando los hogares ahorran y luego prestarlos a cabo, los préstamos bancarios crea depósitos" ...
"En tiempos normales, el banco central no fija la cantidad de dinero en circulación, ni es central dinero del banco 'multiplica hasta' en más préstamos y depósitos ".
En otras palabras, todo lo que sabemos, no está mal - es al revés.
En otras palabras, todo lo que sabemos, no está mal - es al revés.
Cuando los bancos hacen préstamos, crean dinero.
Esto es porque el dinero es en realidad sólo un reconocimiento de deuda.
El papel del banco central es presidir a un orden jurídico que otorga efectivamente los bancos el derecho exclusivo de crear pagarés de un cierto tipo, los que el gobierno va a reconocer curso legal por su disposición a aceptar en pago de impuestos.
Realmente no hay límite en la cantidad que los bancos podrían crear, a condición de que puedan encontrar a alguien dispuesto a pedirlo prestado.
Ellos nunca se quedan cortos, por la sencilla razón de que los prestatarios no, en general, toman el dinero y se pone debajo de sus colchones; en última instancia, cualquier dinero para préstamos bancarios, se llevan a cabo sólo para a terminar de nuevo en algún otro banco .
Así que para el sistema bancario en su conjunto, todos los préstamos sólo se convierte en otro depósito. Lo que es más, en la medida en que los bancos necesitan para adquirir fondos del banco central, que puede pedir prestado tanto como quieran; todo esta última realmente se ajusta la tasa de interés, el costo del dinero, no su cantidad. Desde el comienzo de la recesión, los bancos centrales de Estados Unidos y Gran Bretaña han reducido ese costo a casi nada. De hecho, con la "flexibilización cuantitativa" que han estado bombeando de manera efectiva tanto dinero como puedan en los bancos, sin producir efectos inflacionarios.
Lo que esto significa es que el límite real de la cantidad de dinero en circulación no es lo que el banco central está dispuesto a prestar, pero la cantidad qu el gobierno, las empresas y los ciudadanos comunes, están dispuestos a pedir prestado.
Lo que esto significa es que el límite real de la cantidad de dinero en circulación no es lo que el banco central está dispuesto a prestar, pero la cantidad qu el gobierno, las empresas y los ciudadanos comunes, están dispuestos a pedir prestado.
El gasto público es el principal motor de todo esto (y el papel no admite, si usted lee con cuidado, que el banco central no financiar al gobierno, después de todo).
Así que no hay duda del gasto público "desplazamiento" de la inversión privada. Es exactamente lo contrario.
¿Por qué el Banco de Inglaterra viene ahora a admitir todo esto?
¿Por qué el Banco de Inglaterra viene ahora a admitir todo esto?
Bien, una razón es porque es obviamente cierto. El trabajo del Banco es ejecutar realmente el sistema, y en los últimos tiempos, el sistema no ha estado funcionando especialmente bien. Es posible que se decidió que el mantenimiento de la versión de la fantasía- de la economía que ha demostrado ser muy conveniente para los ricos es simplemente un lujo que ya no puede permitirse.
Pero políticamente, esto está tomando un riesgo enorme.
Pero políticamente, esto está tomando un riesgo enorme.
Basta pensar en lo que podría suceder si los titulares de hipotecas se dieron cuenta de que el dinero que el banco le prestó aellos no es verdad , en realidad, los ahorros de la vida de algunos pensionista ahorrativo, pero algo que el banco sólo llevaron a la existencia a través de su posesión de una varita mágica que nosotros, el público, le hemos entregado a ella.
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn't know how banking really works, because if they did, "there'd be a revolution before tomorrow morning".
Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy", co-authored by three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.
To get a sense of how radical the Bank's new position is, consider the conventional view, which continues to be the basis of all respectable debate on public policy. People put their money in banks. Banks then lend that money out at interest – either to consumers, or to entrepreneurs willing to invest it in some profitable enterprise. True, the fractional reserve system does allow banks to lend out considerably more than they hold in reserve, and true, if savings don't suffice, private banks can seek to borrow more from the central bank.
The central bank can print as much money as it wishes. But it is also careful not to print too much. In fact, we are often told this is why independent central banks exist in the first place. If governments could print money themselves, they would surely put out too much of it, and the resulting inflation would throw the economy into chaos. Institutions such as the Bank of England or US Federal Reserve were created to carefully regulate the money supply to prevent inflation. This is why they are forbidden to directly fund the government, say, by buying treasury bonds, but instead fund private economic activity that the government merely taxes.
It's this understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if it were a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say "there's just not enough money" to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public spending "crowding out" the private sector. What the Bank of England admitted this week is that none of this is really true. To quote from its own initial summary: "Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits" … "In normal times, the central bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank money 'multiplied up' into more loans and deposits."
In other words, everything we know is not just wrong – it's backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There's really no limit on how much banks could create, provided they can find someone willing to borrow it. They will never get caught short, for the simple reason that borrowers do not, generally speaking, take the cash and put it under their mattresses; ultimately, any money a bank loans out will just end up back in some bank again. So for the banking system as a whole, every loan just becomes another deposit. What's more, insofar as banks do need to acquire funds from the central bank, they can borrow as much as they like; all the latter really does is set the rate of interest, the cost of money, not its quantity. Since the beginning of the recession, the US and British central banks have reduced that cost to almost nothing. In fact, with "quantitative easing" they've been effectively pumping as much money as they can into the banks, without producing any inflationary effects.
What this means is that the real limit on the amount of money in circulation is not how much the central bank is willing to lend, but how much government, firms, and ordinary citizens, are willing to borrow. Government spending is the main driver in all this (and the paper does admit, if you read it carefully, that the central bank does fund the government after all). So there's no question of public spending "crowding out" private investment. It's exactly the opposite.
Why did the Bank of England suddenly admit all this? Well, one reason is because it's obviously true. The Bank's job is to actually run the system, and of late, the system has not been running especially well. It's possible that it decided that maintaining the fantasy-land version of economics that has proved so convenient to the rich is simply a luxury it can no longer afford.
But politically, this is taking an enormous risk. Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.
Historically, the Bank of England has tended to be a bellwether, staking out seeming radical positions that ultimately become new orthodoxies. If that's what's happening here, we might soon be in a position to learn if Henry Ford was right.
Back in the 1930s, Henry Ford is supposed to have remarked that it was a good thing that most Americans didn't know how banking really works, because if they did, "there'd be a revolution before tomorrow morning".
Last week, something remarkable happened. The Bank of England let the cat out of the bag. In a paper called "Money Creation in the Modern Economy", co-authored by three economists from the Bank's Monetary Analysis Directorate, they stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong, and that the kind of populist, heterodox positions more ordinarily associated with groups such as Occupy Wall Street are correct. In doing so, they have effectively thrown the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.
To get a sense of how radical the Bank's new position is, consider the conventional view, which continues to be the basis of all respectable debate on public policy. People put their money in banks. Banks then lend that money out at interest – either to consumers, or to entrepreneurs willing to invest it in some profitable enterprise. True, the fractional reserve system does allow banks to lend out considerably more than they hold in reserve, and true, if savings don't suffice, private banks can seek to borrow more from the central bank.
The central bank can print as much money as it wishes. But it is also careful not to print too much. In fact, we are often told this is why independent central banks exist in the first place. If governments could print money themselves, they would surely put out too much of it, and the resulting inflation would throw the economy into chaos. Institutions such as the Bank of England or US Federal Reserve were created to carefully regulate the money supply to prevent inflation. This is why they are forbidden to directly fund the government, say, by buying treasury bonds, but instead fund private economic activity that the government merely taxes.
It's this understanding that allows us to continue to talk about money as if it were a limited resource like bauxite or petroleum, to say "there's just not enough money" to fund social programmes, to speak of the immorality of government debt or of public spending "crowding out" the private sector. What the Bank of England admitted this week is that none of this is really true. To quote from its own initial summary: "Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits" … "In normal times, the central bank does not fix the amount of money in circulation, nor is central bank money 'multiplied up' into more loans and deposits."
In other words, everything we know is not just wrong – it's backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. The role of the central bank is to preside over a legal order that effectively grants banks the exclusive right to create IOUs of a certain kind, ones that the government will recognise as legal tender by its willingness to accept them in payment of taxes. There's really no limit on how much banks could create, provided they can find someone willing to borrow it. They will never get caught short, for the simple reason that borrowers do not, generally speaking, take the cash and put it under their mattresses; ultimately, any money a bank loans out will just end up back in some bank again. So for the banking system as a whole, every loan just becomes another deposit. What's more, insofar as banks do need to acquire funds from the central bank, they can borrow as much as they like; all the latter really does is set the rate of interest, the cost of money, not its quantity. Since the beginning of the recession, the US and British central banks have reduced that cost to almost nothing. In fact, with "quantitative easing" they've been effectively pumping as much money as they can into the banks, without producing any inflationary effects.
What this means is that the real limit on the amount of money in circulation is not how much the central bank is willing to lend, but how much government, firms, and ordinary citizens, are willing to borrow. Government spending is the main driver in all this (and the paper does admit, if you read it carefully, that the central bank does fund the government after all). So there's no question of public spending "crowding out" private investment. It's exactly the opposite.
Why did the Bank of England suddenly admit all this? Well, one reason is because it's obviously true. The Bank's job is to actually run the system, and of late, the system has not been running especially well. It's possible that it decided that maintaining the fantasy-land version of economics that has proved so convenient to the rich is simply a luxury it can no longer afford.
But politically, this is taking an enormous risk. Just consider what might happen if mortgage holders realised the money the bank lent them is not, really, the life savings of some thrifty pensioner, but something the bank just whisked into existence through its possession of a magic wand which we, the public, handed over to it.
Historically, the Bank of England has tended to be a bellwether, staking out seeming radical positions that ultimately become new orthodoxies. If that's what's happening here, we might soon be in a position to learn if Henry Ford was right.
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