Odličen komentar Simona Wrena-Lewisa, ki argumentira dvoje. Prvič, zakaj bi bil helikopterski denar veliko boljša rešitev od standardne QE politike, vendar še vedno slabši od povsem običajne fiskalne politike. In drugič, da je institucionalna ločitev med denarno in fiskalno politiko (z neodvisnostjo centralne banke), ki je bila dobra rešitev za situacijo (pre)visoke inflacije, po letu 2010 glavni problem, ki onemogoča normalno delovanje fiskalne politike in hitrejše okrevanje. Kriva je za škandalozno paralizo v evro območju.

Zato si je treba izmišljevati “nestandardne ukrepe” monetarne politike kot je QE, čeprav so boljše rešitve na dlani.

To those who say that QE, as operated by the BoE or Fed, would have limited effectiveness in the Eurozone, I have a lot of sympathy. However there is a relatively simple way of making QE much more effective and predictable, and that is for central banks to create money not to buy financial assets but to transfer directly to citizens, which Friedman called helicopter money. John Muellbauer calls this QE for the people. Conventional QE involves buying a large amount of assets with potential losses for the central bank (if the asset price falls) but uncertain effects on demand. Helicopter money involves small transfers with a certain loss to the central bank but much more predictable positive demand effects.

As an institutional innovation, helicopter money has two major drawbacks in countries with their own central bank. [2] First, why innovate when you can implement exactly the same policy through existing means: in macroeconomic terms helicopter money is equivalent to QE plus tax cuts when you have inflation targeting. Second, a fiscal stimulus in the form of temporary additional government spending is likely to be more predictable in its impact than transfers or tax cuts, because you eliminate the uncertainty caused by how much of the transfer or tax cut will be spent.

But if countercyclical fiscal policy is effectively illegal in the Eurozone, these objections do not apply. QE for the people may have additional legal merits within the Eurozone. The ECB is constrained to some (uncertain) extent in its ability to buy government debt. But, as John Muellbauer suggests, mailing a cheque to every EZ citizen using electoral registers would seem to circumvent these legal difficulties.

One objection to the ECB embarking on ‘QE for the people’ is that it goes well beyond the remit of a central bank. [3] Yet the ECB appears to have no qualms on that score: besides routine references for the need for fiscal consolidation and ‘structural reform’, the letter discussed by Paul De Grauwe here shows the ECB requiring detailed changes to labour market regulations and institutions in Spain. So you have to ask why is it OK for the central bank to override the democratic process in this way, but giving money directly to the people is somehow beyond the pale.

If you think that mailing a cheque to every voter in the Eurozone as a solution to continuing recession sounds too good to be true, then you have just rediscovered why recessions caused by demand deficiency when inflation is below target are such a scandalous waste. It is a problem that can be easily solved, with lots of winners and no losers. The only reason that this is not obvious to more people is that we have created an institutional divorce between monetary and fiscal policy that obscures that truth. It was a divorce that did a reasonable job in steering the economy in normal times, and it might discourage fiscal profligacy when demand is strong, but since 2010 it has led to a scandalous paralysis in the Eurozone.  

Vir: Simon Wren-Lewis