Banqueiros centrais: somos todos pós-keynesianos

Sexta-feira, 27 de Janeiro de 2012

João Galamba

Does the ‘money multiplier’, this core concept of monetary theory, exist? Do banks need reserves before they create money? Not according to central bankers. Banks can create money at will, even without reserves, though they will have to find or borrow these reserves afterwards. But as the central bank has to provide these, this is not any kind of constraint, even when the central bank increases the rate of interest. Some quotes which imply that central banks can not control the amount of money by influencing reserves:

Alan R. Holmes, Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1969):

‘In the real world, banks extend credit, creating deposits in the process , and look for the reserves later.’

Nobelpricewinners Finn Kydland en Ed Prescott , Federal Reserve bank of Minneapolis (1990):

‘There is no evidence that either the monetary base or M1 leads the [credit cycle], although some economists still believe this monetary myth. Both the monetary base and M1 series are generally procyclical and, if anything, the monetary base lags the [credit cycle] slightly.’

Charles Goodhart, member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England (2007):

‘The money stock is a dependent, endogenous variable. This is exactly what the heterodox, Post-Keynesians, from Kaldor, through Vicky Chick, and on through Basil Moore and Randy Wray, have been correctly claiming for decades, and I have been in their party on this.’

Piti Distayat en Claudio Bori, Bank for International Settlements (2009):

‘This paper contends that the emphasis on policy-induced changes in deposits is misplaced. If anything, the process actually works in reverse, with loans driving deposits. In particular, it is argued that the concept of the money multiplier is ﬂawed and uninformative in terms of analyzing the dynamics of bank lending. Under a ﬁat money standard and liberalized ﬁnancial system, there is no exogenous constraint on the supply of credit except through regulatory capital requirements. An adequately capitalized banking system can always fulﬁll the demand for loans if it wishes to.’

Seth B. Carpenter, Federal Reserve (2010):

‘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. Specifically, our results indicate that bank loan supply does not respond to changes in monetary policy through a bank lending channel.’

Vitor Constancio, vice president of the ECB (2011):

‘It is argued by some that financial institutions would be free to instantly transform their loans from the central bank into credit to the non-financial sector. This fits into the old theoretical view about the credit multiplier according to which the sequence of money creation goes from the primary liquidity created by central banks to total money supply created by banks via their credit decisions. In reality the sequence works more in the opposite direction with banks taking first their credit decisions and then looking for the necessary funding and reserves of central bank money.’

(aqui)