As an update on my earlier post I read somewhere recently (on the DT but I can't find the link now) that the ECB purchased VW bonds as part of its QE program. That is the ECB bought packaged up auto finance loans from VW.
IMHO this does not make the practice any better. It's still crony financing of industry favourites by the simple expedient of the ECB expanding its balance sheet, which it can do ad infinitum. It creates money ex nihilo and uses it to buy VW's bonds. This is money for nothing. It's very similar to Help to (Buy) Sell, in that it is an indirect subsidy to producers (land owners under HtB).
Of course all this brings into question the GDP figures for the Eurozone. If these are being boosted by QE, they must be meaningless since there has been no 'real' growth. Just lots more money pumped into the system.
It's an outrage and it's not going to end well. Is it?
Or, as usual, am I missing something?
Wednesday, 30 September 2015
The ECB and VW
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36 comments:
@L
Can't see that you are.
The only thing that makes this slightly less bad than buying up mortgage bonds is that it will probably lead to more car production, whereas no extra land is produced as a result of buying up MBS. But nonetheless a bad idea.
"If these are being boosted by QE, they must be meaningless since there has been no 'real' growth. Just lots more money pumped into the system."
Depends on what VW do with the cash.
Agreed, it is all very worrying, but as Mombers says, this just brings forward the sale of new cars, so it increases car output in the short term, but then if the ECB stops doing this, it might lead to a fall in output, which is double bad because manufacturers operate best if their output levels are nice and steady. It's nice being taken on as a new employee but it is very bad then being made redundant again etc.
The point, I think, is that the purchase of a VW must come from the production of something else, bratwurst say. What buys the VW is bratwurst. Money just makes the whole transaction feasible. But the ECB doesn't make bratwurst - or anything else come to that - so this is 'money for nothing'.
"so this is 'money for nothing'"
Well yes, so is all theft.
"I think, is that the purchase of a VW must come from the production of something else, bratwurst say. What buys the VW is bratwurst. Money just makes the whole transaction feasible."
No you need money to buy it.
The production of something does not necessarily need the production of something else. It just needs money.
R. Ah, I was wondering what you'd say. I disagree with you.
It'll be more likely that VW sell the loans to the likes of Deutschebank and Commerzbank.
Did the ECB buy them QE style or take them as collateral for soft loans so Germans banks can make a nice spread on Greek bonds etc?
"The production of something does not necessarily need the production of something else. It just needs money."
How do you have money in the absence of any production?
There is production or economic resources supplied in exchange for the cars. The purchasers of the VWs will be bringing economic resources to the market at a later date in exchange for the acquisition of the the cars in the present.
@B
Like Lola and the BoE say, money is created by the stroke of a pen.Where does business get the money to start production? From the banks who create money, not lend their customers' savings. Lola objects to governments creating money in the same way but its really what the Germans are spending it on that's the problem.Should it be spent by the Gov on very high class social housing for sale or rent as the lefties propose in the UK, there'd be no problem.(Providing there was plenty of LVT to deal with land hoarding and speculation.BTW McDonnell led with his chin on Newsnight after his conference speech and said ,as openers, that he was looking at Land Value Tax.Evan Davis didn't notice.[He'll go far as a Homeownerist useful idiot, a somewhat overcrowded profession mind you.]Corbyn said in his big conference speech that he was looking at new ways to deal with land hoarding and land speculation while being on record a s favouring LVT on land banks; Andy Burnham tried to save his leadership campaign by proposing replacing Business rates with LVT.
LVT might be the one thing Corbyn can get his Shadow cabinet to agree on!
"Wondering what you would say"
John T Harvey is the go to man. Read this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/10/07/the-great-recession/
Also:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/04/29/why-the-private-sector-needs-the-government-to-spend-money/
The key issue we have is the Paradox of Productivity. That is that we have enough output for everyone but machines can't buy output.
But you can't just give people money - as that leads to another Paradox - humans want others to do something "of value" before they share their surplus with you, even though rationally there is no need to do that.
It's not the job of the private sector to create jobs.
What Osborne is proposing is a Luddite Manifesto, effectively allowing capital to avoid investing in new machinery, methods and automation. Instead cheap labour is deployed.
Travel around Lincolnshire this spring season and you will see eight individuals strapped to the back of planting machines like some sort of Matrix style cybernetic add-on. They sit there all day sticking plants into the ground in a back-breaking manner. And after dark you will see them drinking cheap liquor by the drainage canals - because they are far from their homeland and there is nothing else to do. It's borderline Victorian.
R. I flatly disagree with you and I think you are very muddled and contradictory. (posting from smartphone, hence brevity)
A hundred years ago, back in the day when we had workable Economic theories and not Autistic Economics (not my term),Major Douglas galvanised ordinary political discussion with the Douglas scheme of Social Credit: basically the Government would fill the "output gap "(the amount of money needed to provide demand for the economy to work at full capacity ) by dishing out a Monthly National Dividend or unearned income for all.Although I wrote articles about LVT and Social Credit many years ago, only LVT has got any kind of political traction now though the basic idea that money is created out of nothing as Douglas envisaged has become orthodox.
DBCR Personally I rate Douglas as semi barking.
"money is created by the stroke of a pen. Where does business get the money to start production? From the banks who create money,..."
Sure you can create a debt without money, but you can't create money without a debt and that debt will, eventually, need to be paid off and for that you need production, or work, to give it another name. Despite the best efforts of the Greeks to demonstrate that you can, it is impossible to borrow your way out of debt.
"Travel around Lincolnshire this spring season and you will see eight individuals strapped to the back of planting machines like some sort of Matrix style cybernetic add-on. They sit there all day sticking plants into the ground in a back-breaking manner"
Are you sure what they are doing isn't weeding? I have seen just such a machine and it is used for weeding organic plants. You can't spray them and the weedmachine (for that is its name http://weedmachine.co.uk/p_gj_lazy_weeder.php) allows the weeders to weed without having to spend all day bent double. Even if they are planting out, it is probably impossible to plant out by machine due to the delicate nature of the young plants, so again, this is something that would be done manually anyway.
"the basic idea that money is created out of nothing as Douglas envisaged has become orthodox."
Doesn't make it correct, though. Please give me an example of the creation of money in the absence of any form of debt.
Here we go again.
VW produces stuff that is worth more than its inputs. It sells its stuff and uses the proceeds to pay its suppliers and workers. For convenience sake, they conduct these transactions in terms of units of 'money' but that is a secondary issue. They could swap all their cars for other people's goods and services of equivalent value and then share these other goods and services between their suppliers, workers and shareholders.
This is completely different to governments printing money (and unprinting it via taxation to give it value) and banks splitting the zero for land and other speculative transactions. Completely different.
I'm all in favour of welfare or citizen's dividend or whatever, but the tokens the government hands out only have value if there is also a tax system, otherwise who would want or need those tokens?
The government doesn't hand out tokens. It transfers debt backed deposits from tax payers to the recipients of government spending. People use deposits because it gives the borrower access to economic resources in the present, and gives the deposit holder access to economic resources in the future.
Oh dear, I see that I have got us back onto 'wot is muny' again.
FWIW I mostly agree with MW, except I do not agree that taxation gives money (aka tokens) its value. I think that that is legal tender laws. In re tax HMRC will accept pretty well anything else that they can 'value' as settlement of a tax debt - land, paintings, classic cars - are some that \i have heard of, and, of course, gold.
@L
Chicken! You come out fighting: money can be created by the state and by banks out of nothing then you back down.
Re Douglas: his problem was nobody believed him when he said banks create money so why does the government borrow off them.The BoE confirmed that Banks create money only in 2014, too late for his acceptance by the dullards.
ts the economic resources supplied by the borrower that give the money its value
DBCR Whoa! I haven't denied that. It is patently obvious that banks create 'money', as in demand deposits created by making a 'loan' as a pair of double entries. Nor have I denied that The Central Bank - as a government department can create 'money' ex nihilo. But that's how it is, now, under the current FRB/Central bank/government/legal tender laws/taxation/rampant cronyism nexus.
It need not be like that.
Personally, I reckon this whole 'money' debate is at the very heart of the problems facing the world. People demand full employment and a full-on welfare systems and homeownerism and no-risk/high rewards and all the toys (conspicuous consumption) without doing the work first to earn it all, and the only way to deliver that lot of conflicting ambitions - i.e. 'gain power' is to pander to them by printing money (aka inflate away the problem).
It's an unholy mess. And the poor bloody worker in the middle, i.e. me and you, are being royally screwed.
@L As you know, I agree with most of this but I don't see how it has come about because "People demand ...without doing the work".If they did, we would be living in a world of robot factories with everybody partly or wholly supported by Social Credit's National Dividends.This system has been imposed on us and many people work shockingly long hours in the Two-Income Trap( see Sen. Elizabeth Warren)just to keep a roof over their heads ,the television working and the car on the road.(We tend to sneer at the Homeownerist cannon fodder who vote to keep house prices moving up while their wages decline in real terms but any political alternative is universally decried as "economically incompetent" .If you don't accept the Hobson's choice you end up with nowhere decent to live.)
BTW since the banks are creating 97% of the money supply right now,there is no reason why creating money per se should be inflationary. The Gov could at least make sure its channelled in some work-encouraging direction rather than into the work-destroying inflation of land values.
@R I've seen those things out in the Fens with groups of Poles sat on the back bent over sticking small plants in the soil which the machines open up and then close behind them round the plants going at a fair clip.
@DBCR. You are confused about 'production'. And are trapped in the 'Frankenstein Complex' of fearing automation. Automation just makes workers more productive. That's the whole point - seeking to do more for less every day.
I repeat, the current settlement encourages a 'something for nothing' attitude, and that is what money printing is.
DBCR, as I see it there's two types of "creating money". The first type is increasing the amount of debt. Since money = debt, if the amount of debt goes up, the amount of money goes up. The second type is debasing the currency, which is what happens when governments literally print money. The amount of debt remains the same, but the number of currency units that debt is denominated in increases, i.e. there are more pounds/dollars/yen around, but each individual pound/dollar/yen is worth less. It's the second type that causes inflation.
Bayard, that is true at Full Capacity.
The problem is that most econ theories assume queues at the barbers don't exist.
I say it again, it is always about real resources. Movements in the financial circuit induce changes in the real circuit.
See:
https://originofspecious.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/printing-money-a-grammatical-fiction/
Why does nobody believe the Bank of England in "Money Creation in the
Modern Economy" (2014)?.(The title is helpful : the BoE explains
how money is created in the modern economy.Most people on here, except me and sometimes lola, know better apparently. And so we go on.
Martin Wolf in the Ft viz"Two cheers for Jeremy Corbyn" is calling for LVT and monetary reform including direct payments to the public.
So the usual timid souls on here better write in and put him right, the silly young fool.
"Bayard, that is true at Full Capacity."
To what do you refer when you say "that is true"?
"Why does nobody believe the Bank of England in "Money Creation in the
Modern Economy" (2014)?"
Any reason why we should believe a wunch of bankers?
Bayard what you said here:
"The second type is debasing the currency, which is what happens when governments literally print money. The amount of debt remains the same, but the number of currency units that debt is denominated in increases, i.e. there are more pounds/dollars/yen around, but each individual pound/dollar/yen is worth less. It's the second type that causes inflation."
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