El dinero es creado por la banca privada, no por el banco central. El dinero es tal cuando entra en circulación, y solo lo hace cuando el banco privado da un crédito o adquiere un activo de nueva creación. Al adquirir deuda pública en el mercado secundario, el Banco Central no crea dinero. Es un cambio de composición de activos en ambas partes. El BC adquiere una deuda a un banco a cambio de un activo líquido: saldo de reserva del banco en el BC. Ha aumentado la base monetaria (el pasivo líquido del BC) pero no el dinero en circulación.
Los Bancos no dan crédito -no crean dinero- por el aumento de la base monetaria. Ni por el aumento de los depósitos. Los bancos solo están restringidos por su capital.
It's important to understand that banks are unconstrained by the government (outside of the regulatory framework) in terms of how they create money. When we go through business school we are taught that banks obtain deposits and then leverage those deposits up by 10X or so. This is why we call the modern banking system a “Fractional Reserve Banking” system. Banks supposedly lend a portion of their “reserves”. There’s just one problem here. Banks are never reserve constrained. Banks are always capital constrained. This can best be seen in countries such as Canada where there are no reserve requirements.17 Reserves are used for only two purposes – to settle payments in the interbank market and to meet the Fed’s reserve requirements. Aside from this, reserves have very little impact on the day-to-day lending operations of banks in the USA. This was recently confirmed in a Fed research paper:
“Changes in reserves are unrelated to changes in lending, and open market operations do not have a direct impact on lending. We conclude that the textbook treatment of money in the transmission mechanism can be rejected.”18
El aumento de la base monetaria no es inflacionista (como hemos podido comprobar en estos años de QE)
This is very important to understand because many have assumed that various Fed policies in recent years (such as Quantitative Easing) would be inflationary or even hyperinflationary. But all the Fed has been doing is adding reserves to the banking system in exchange for (mostly) government bonds. Because banks are not reserve constrained, i.e, they don’t lend their reserves or multiply their reserves, this doesn’t necessarily lead to more lending and will not result in the private sector being able to access more capital.
La demanda de crédito es la fuente de la que emana el crédito. El dinero es, en ese sentido, endógeno, creado por la operativa bancaria con su clientela, no por el BC.
Because banks are not reserve constrained it can only mean one thing – banks lend when creditworthy customers have demand for loans (assuming the banking system is healthy and banks are engaging in the business they are designed to transact). Loans create deposits, not vice versa. Banks create new loans independent of their reserve position and the Federal Reserve is in the business of altering the composition of outstanding financial assets in an effort to maintain a target interest rate and maintaining the smoothly operating payments system that it oversees (this is part of monetary policy which only loosely impacts the direct issuance of inside money). In the loan creation process, banks will make loans first (resulting in new deposits) and will find necessary reserves after the fact (either in the overnight market or via the Fed).
Banks don’t use their deposits or reserves to create loans, however. Banks make loans and find reserves after the fact if needed. But since banking is a spread business (having assets that are less expensive than liabilities) the banks will always seek the cheapest source of funds for managing their payment system. That just so happens to generally be bank deposits. This gives the appearance that banks “fund” their loan book by obtaining deposits, but this is not necessarily the case. It is better to think of banking as a spread business where the bank simply acquires the cheapest liabilities to sustain its payment system and maximize profits.
Ideally a nation will desire some degree of reserve currency status, floating exchange rates, no foreign debt, and a symbiotic central bank and treasury design. As I discussed earlier, the European Monetary Union (EMU) is an interesting monetary system in that it is a reserve currency with no foreign debt and floating foreign exchange rate, but the monetary design is incomplete in that the central bank is essentially a foreign entity and there is no central treasury. This renders the nations within the EMU users of the euro rather than issuers of the euro. The UK and Switzerland, by remaining outside the euro, have maintained their status as autonomous currency issuers. It’s important to note that not all countries can remain autonomous for various reasons. There might not be high demand for their currency on foreign exchange markets due to output weakness, they might not have access to resources, they might not have a developed monetary system, or they might prefer to peg their currency to a stronger trade partner in order to remain more competitive. A certain level of exorbitant privilege is involved in having a diverse economy, access to foreign exchange markets, no foreign debts, a developed domestic monetary system, and resource accessibility.
As the global macroeconomic system grows and becomes increasingly intertwined, it will be more and more important to understand the elements of foreign trade. The relationships between different economies will play an enormous role in the growth and prosperity of the global economy in the decades ahead, so when we view the monetary system as a whole, we should always think of it not only in domestic terms but also in a global sense.
Conclusion
Monetary Realism is an operational approach to finance and economics that seeks to describe the operational realities of a modern fiat currency system. It is my hope that a greater understanding of our monetary system through operational realities will result in a less dogmatic, more pragmatic and more rational perspective of our monetary system so as to help us all in achieving the prosperity we desire.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario