这不是你祖父的货币和财政政策
This Isn't Your Grandfather's Monetary And Fiscal Policy

原始链接: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/isnt-your-grandfathers-monetary-and-fiscal-policy

货币政策和财政政策之间的关系,特别是与美国联邦储备系统(美联储)和美国财政部有关的关系,经常被误解。 两个组织都有不同的角色,但在支出增加期间密切互动。 美联储于 1913 年独立创建,是联邦特许的中央银行系统,通过管理国家货币供应和利率来提供货币政策。 与此同时,共和国早期成立并由行政部门控制的财政部根据国会的立法和指令收税并实施联邦支出。 二战期间,这两个实体在《财政部-美联储协议》中走到了一起,确立了美联储相对于财政部的自主权。 从那时起,美联储的任务就是确保价格稳定和就业最大化,同时保持其“最后贷款人”的角色。 尽管传统观点认为这两个部门是分开运作的,但它们在重大支出时期会协同工作,例如 2020-2022 年的 COVID-19 救援工作,当时美联储与财政部合作,扩大了债券购买和资产负债表持有量。 这些行动导致大规模信贷创造,导致高通胀。 随着 2008-09 年金融危机期间量化宽松 (QE) 的推出,这种伙伴关系发生了独特的转变,其中包括大规模购买国债以提供流动性并支持经济。 另一种被称为“直升机撒钱”的政策工具——以米尔顿·弗里德曼从直升机上投下现金的比喻命名——代表了财政和货币政策的结合。 与量化宽松不同,直升机撒钱不需要资产互换,美联储本质上是将资金分配给个人用于消费或储蓄目的。 使困惑? 并非所有人都同意量化宽松和直升机撒钱之间的差异,无论是属于货币政策还是财政政策,甚至这些措施对整体经济的影响。 然而,理解这两个政策领域之间的联系对于理解当代经济问题至关重要。 总之,美联储和美国财政部之间的合作在过去一个世纪中取得了显着进展。 随着世界的变化,我们思考货币和财政政策的方式以及两者之间的界限也必须随之变化。

相关文章

原文

Authored by Jane Johnson via The Mises Institute,m

Does Any Daylight Exist Between Monetary and Fiscal Policy?

Conventional wisdom has it that the Federal Reserve system (the “Fed”) and the US Treasury Department are two separate entities. Congress created the Fed in 1913 as a legally and financially independent federal agency, privately owned by its member banks, with no funding from the federal budget. The US Treasury, on the other hand, is an Executive-branch cabinet-level department reporting directly to the President, with funding appropriated in the federal budget.

Conventional wisdom also tells us that the Fed’s monetary policy (managing the money supply and interest rates, directed by the Fed’s Chair and Board of Governors) is separate from Treasury’s fiscal policy (collecting taxes and implementing federal spending) at the behest of Congress and the Executive branch).

The modern-day separation of the Treasury and the Fed dates from the 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord, which established the Fed’s independence from the Treasury. During World War II, the Fed agreed to peg interest rates on short-term Treasury bills at 3/8 of 1%. The Accord clarified the separation between Fed monetary policy and Treasury’s debt-management powers, freeing the Fed to fulfill its dual mandates of price stability and maximum employment.

Confusion Between Monetary Policy and Fiscal Policy

Yet as I discovered teaching senior citizens in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, many Americans remain unclear about the Fed’s and Treasury’s respective responsibilities, and how the two entities coordinate when the Fed supplies fresh bank credit to support Treasury’s need for spendable funds.

The Treasury sells bonds to both foreign and domestic investors when federal tax revenues fall short of its spending needs. Once bonds are in the open market, the Fed can then buy them for its own portfolio, creating new bank credit—spendable funds—literally out of “thin air,” sometimes referred to as “monetizing the debt.”

Such Fed credit creation occurred in massive amounts during the 2020-22 Covid era, when the federal government spent $5.2 trillion for congressionally-authorized programs such as enhanced unemployment benefits, employee retention credits, and consumer “stimulus” payments. To accomplish this spending, the Fed cooperatively expanded its balance sheet holdings of securities from $4 trillion to about $9 trillion, using its immense power to create spendable funds. Such massive credit creation arguably caused or exacerbated inflation to over 9% in mid-2022

This Isn’t Your Grandfather’s Monetary and Fiscal Policy

This coordinated Fed-Treasury credit expansion reflects a novel approach to monetary and fiscal policies, as new strategies were developed to satisfy one-off federal spending needs. It began when Ben Bernanke, Fed Chair 2006-14, created Quantitative Easing (QE) during the 2008-09 financial crisis, purportedly to avoid another Great Depression. QE involves massive open-market purchases of Treasury debt—as well as mortgage-backed securities for the first time in the Fed’s history—to flood financial markets with newly-created bank credit in order to support the economy in what was then called the Great Recession.

But There’s More to the Story: “Helicopter Money”

QE might be considered traditional monetary policy on steroids. But another new policy tool might be considered a hybrid of monetary and fiscal policy. Milton Friedman in 1969 first proposed “helicopter money,” a colorful phrase describing a type of stimulus that injects cash into an economy as if it were thrown from a helicopter. Future Fed Chair Bernanke (“Helicopter Ben”) in 2002 referenced helicopter money as a strategy that could be used to avoid price deflation.

A variant of helicopter money was employed during the financial crisis of 2008-09 and again in 2020 during the early months of the Covid pandemic. After Congress authorized consumer “stimulus” payments in the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the IRS deposited prescribed amounts into the bank accounts of qualifying taxpayers. Thus, instead of having to scoop up paper currency dropped from helicopters, taxpayers effortlessly received the funds in their bank accounts. In 2008, the IRS deposited payments ranging from $600 per tax filer plus $300 for each qualifying child, for a total of $152 billion.

In 2020 and 2021, Congress authorized three tranches of pandemic stimulus payments, called “economic impact payments”: The CARES Act in March 2020 authorized $1200 per tax filer plus $500 per child; the Consolidated Appropriations Act in December 2020 authorized $600 per filer plus $600 per child; and the American Rescue Plan in March 2021 authorized $1400 per filer plus $1400 per child. All told, these three tranches distributed $814 billion in 476 million separate payments. Although about 40% of the stimulus payments were spent on consumption, 60% of Americans saved the funds or paid down personal debt.

Are QE and Helicopter Money Different?

QE involves an “asset swap” between the Fed and another economic entity. The Fed purchases Treasury bonds or other financial assets from private parties, adding them to its balance sheet and creating new bank credit. With new bank reserves, depository institutions can then increase their own lending activity to businesses and consumers, the intended result being new economic activity boosting GDP. This asset swap is reversible—as Quantitative Tightening (QT)—if the Fed sells financial assets to reduce the amount of credit outstanding.

But helicopter money is different from QE, and economists don’t all agree whether helicopter drops qualify as monetary policy or fiscal policy. Helicopter drops, unlike QE, do not involve an asset swap, since the Fed simply gives away the money created without increasing assets on its balance sheet.

Some Views on QE and Helicopter Money

John Cochrane of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, considering the Fed to be a vital part of fiscal theory, refers to pandemic spending as “....a one-time $5 trillion fiscal blowout…”, adding that “....the Fed is still important in fiscal theory....[buying] about $3 trillion of the new debt and [converting] it to [bank] reserves.”

Stephen Miran of the Manhattan Institute warns that the Fed has allowed QE to remain in place far too long, engaging in large-scale asset purchases in eleven of the sixteen years since the 2008-09 financial crisis. And recent Fed policy of “run off”—allowing maturing Treasury bonds to leave its balance sheet, as a form of (QT), without replacement by new purchases of like duration—implies that the Fed is intervening in public debt maturity profile decisions that are traditionally left to fiscal authorities. He also describes how the Treasury can interfere in monetary policy, potentially forcing the Fed to sell at large mark-to-market losses on its securities portfolio, rendering QT moot as a monetary policy tool. He opines that, “Allowing Treasury to set monetary policy is extremely dangerous.”

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)—a fringe movement within economics—claims that instead of creating credit to buy Treasury bonds, the Fed should create money to directly fund public expenditures or tax cuts. Further, MMT’s advocates consider helicopter drops a form of fiscal policy, not monetary policy. The Fed creates the helicopter money, but does not acquire any assets such as Treasury securities in exchange for creating new bank reserves. The Fed simply gives away the created funds, and the Fed’s capital declines. It appears that MMT fans might more accurately brand their cause Modern Fiscal Theory (MFT) rather than MMT. Note that the majority of economists do not accept MMT’s views.

What Lies Ahead for Fed and Treasury?

The distinction today between monetary and fiscal policies is muddled. Some may view this as the Fed’s and Treasury’s interfering in each others’ traditional responsibilities, amidst the advent of new strategies and tools such as QE and helicopter money. Others may view this as overly-zealous cooperation between Fed and Treasury to flood credit markets with too much liquidity that can later result in price inflation and/or the inability to reverse the credit creation process as economic conditions change.

Perhaps it is time for a latter-day Treasury-Fed Accord to clarify the respective responsibilities and limits of the Fed and Treasury. Or, more aptly, it is time for Congress to step up its oversight of both the Fed - the independent agency that Congress created in 1913 - and the US Treasury Department, which dates from the earliest days of our Republic.

联系我们 contact @ memedata.com