Uradni konec tretje runde kvantitativnega sproščanja (QE) v ZDA in rekolekcija učinkov QE v ZDA, V. Britaniji in Japonski sta pokazala tisto, kar pokaže standardni, učbeniški makroekonomski model IS-LM: v času depresije zaradi premajhnega agregatnega povpraševanja in blizu ničelnih obrestnih mer, postane monetarna politika impotetntna. Še tako inovativno in obsežno eksperimentiranje z ukrepi monetarne politike nima učinkov stimuliranje rasti. V takih pogojih je učinkovita zgolj fiskalna politika, ki lahko spodbudi agregatno povpraševanje. Države z več fiskalnega stimulusa so v času te krize rasle hitreje. Države, ki so z varčevanjem zmanjševale povpraševanje, so padle še v globljo recesijo. In kot pravi Anatole Kaletsky v Reutersu (preberite spodaj), je to jasen dokaz, da je Keynes imel prav, da je v času prenizkega agregatnega povpraševanja treba uporabiti fiskalno politiko, monetaristi pa so živeli v zablodi, da je gospodarstvo v takšnih razmerah mogoče spodbuditi z zniževanjem obrestnih mer.

Več o tem v petek v Financah.

The main lesson is that government decisions on taxes and public spending have turned out to be more important as drivers of economic activity than the monetary experiments with zero interest rates and quantitative easing that have dominated media and market attention. Fiscal decisions on budget deficits, taxes and public spending have mostly been debated as if they were largely political choices, with much less influence than monetary policy on macroeconomic outcomes such as inflation, growth and employment. Yet the reality has turned out to be the opposite. While every major economy in the world has followed essentially the same monetary policy since 2008, their fiscal policies have been very different and the divergence in outcomes, especially when we compare the United States and Europe, has been exactly the opposite to what was implied by the rhetoric of most politicians and central banks.

Countries that took emergency measures to reduce public borrowing have mostly suffered weaker growth, as in the case of Britain from 2010 to 2012, Japan this year and the United States after the 2013 “sequester” and fiscal cliff deal. In more extreme cases, such as Italy and Spain, fiscal tightening has plunged them back into deep recession and aggravated financial crises. Meanwhile countries that ignored their deficit problems, as in the United States for most of the post-crisis period, or where governments decided to downplay their fiscal tightening plans, as in Britain this year or Japan in 2013, have generally done better, both in terms of economics and finance. The one major exception has been Germany, where budgetary consolidation has managed to coexist with decent growth, largely because of a boom in machinery exports to Russia and China that is now over, pushing Germany back into the recession its stringent fiscal policy suggested all along.

Thus the six years since 2008 have provided strong empirical support for the supposedly outmoded Keynesian view that government borrowing is more powerful than monetary policy in stimulating severely depressed economies and pulling them out of recession. In a sense, it is odd that the power of fiscal policy has come as a surprise – or that it continues to be categorically denied by the German government and the U.S. Tea Party. The underlying reason why fiscal policy is so important in recessions, and has now come to dominate over monetary policy, is a matter of simple arithmetic that should not be open to debate.

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In the era of high inflation when monetarism was introduced, the idea that interest rates could always be cut by enough to revive private economic activity was reasonable enough. After all, when inflation is running at 5 percent, an interest rate of 1 percent is equivalent to minus 4 percent in real terms, imposing a massive tax on savers and offering a big subsidy to private investors. But this argument fails completely when inflation falls to negligible levels or disappears completely, as in the euro-zone and Japan.

Ironically, therefore, the very success of monetarism and central banking in conquering inflation now means that the era of monetary dominance is over. Keynesian fiscal thinking has triumphed and finance ministers are again more important than central bankers, even though most of them have not yet noticed. Once interest rates fell to zero, traditional monetary management lost its ability to provide further stimulus. And now that central banks are providing “forward guidance” which commits them to very low interest rates for years ahead, monetary policy has also lost its ability to offset fiscal easing and restrain demand.

Vir: Anatole Kaletsky, Reuters