-->Hi,
ein neuer Shooting Star in der boomenden C-Branche ist aufgetaucht: Richard A. Werner.
Seine These: Die ZBs"steuern" die Wirtschaft über die Manipulation der Kreditmenge (Menge!), welche die Banken vergeben.
Sein Aha-Erlebnis hatte er in der BoJ, wo er eingangs der 9oer tätig sein durfte. So ähnlich wie dort sieht bzw. vermutet er es überall. Kurzum:"The Central Bankers Conspiracy to Manipulate Everything and Everybody".
Dabei unterlaufen ihm gelegentlich böse handwerkliche Schnitzer, aber das macht doch nichts. Er sagt zur WELT (Posting 29. 3. 03) auf die Frage"Sind die (japanischen) Institute wirklich so gefährdet?"
"Ja. Schuld haben allerdings nicht die Not leidenden Kredite der Bubble Ära. Die sind längst [sic!] abgeschrieben."
Interessant! Denn noch per November 02 lagen die bad debts bei 37 Billionen (unseren Billionen) Yen und per Anfang Februar waren 3,1 Bio. davon runter (AP 7. 2. 03), also 7 Prozent. Über den Stand hatte ich bereits gepostet. Gerechnet wurde über die 132 wichtigsten Banken des Landes.
Dass AP der letzte Dreck ist, wissen war zwar auch seit Chomsky, aber das ist eine andere Baustelle.
Davon dass umgerechnet ca. 370 Mrd CHF"längst abgeschrieben" seien, als Werner seine Behauptung in die WELT posaunte, konnte nicht der Anflug einer Rede geschweige denn der Wahrheit sein.
Aber der Mann ist ja"Japan-Experte" und deshalb glaubt man ihm alles.
Nun kommt Werner mit dem weiteren Teil seiner Verschwörungstheorie daher. Die Zentralbanken, mehr oder weniger alle, wie er, nachzulesen am 17. April 02 im Forum hier, zum Besten gibt, kontrollieren alles durch"informelle, extralegale [sic! - darüber wird sich SB besonders freuen] Guidance".
Das ist natürlich dem dummen Publikum unbekannt und Werner meint: "Als ich Alan Greenspan 1997 traf, bestätigte sich mein Verdacht, dass die Federal Reserve den gleichen Ansatz verfolgt. Ã-ffentlich wird das aber nie zugegeben."
Na klar, sonst wär's ja keine Verschwörung.
Die sind also echt Klasse, die ZBs, schon weil sie sich so gut tarnen können. Aber Richard A. Werner reißt ihnen endlich die Maske vom Gesicht. Die ZBs manipulieren sogar die Finanzmärkte über die Kredite, die Banken vergeben, was immerhin die Frage aufwirft, warum sie in dem von ihm so intensiv durchschauten Japan das ab 1990 nicht fortgesetzt haben.
Immerhin waren die Loans and Discounts der japanischen Banken von 1985 und 1990, also der Zeit, als die Sonne prall das Land beschien, von (in 100 Mio Yen und gerundet) von 2.700.000 auf 4.400.000 gestiegen (logisch, siehe oben,"gesteuert" durch die BoJ) und die Securities in den Assets der Banken von 580.000 auf 1.240.000, was man durchaus als gesamthafte Verdoppelung bezeichnen kann.
Nun waren die Steuerungsraten in den 90er Jahren in der Tat nicht mehr so heftig, die Loans and Discounts stagnierten und die Securities gingen noch auf 1.640.000.
Da hat die BoJ also (extralegal!) dran"gedreht", vermutlich, um alles in jene Grütze zu fahren, als die sich die 34 Billionen Yen bad debts heute darstellen.
Das Motiv dafür liefert Werner ebenfalls: Es ging der BoJ darum, die Banken"billig an ausländische 'Aasgeierfonds' zu verkaufen". Das leuchtet jedem ein. Denn erstens sitzen die Aasgeier irgendwo in Süd-Manhattan und zweitens freuen die sich schon darauf, endlich mal Banken mit ganz vielen Uneinbringlichkeiten ins Portefeuille nehmen zu dürfen. Und drittens ist es extralegal, nanana!
Was Werner auch noch vermutete, dass nämlich die BoJ"hintenrum" die Banken zwingen würde"durch Kreditrückforderung Großbankrotte zu erzeugen" hat sich bisher noch nicht so richtig verwirklichen lassen. Mal sehen, was kommt.
Das Rätsel, warum die"Lending Attitude of Financial Institutions" lt. TANKAN-Bericht von 1992 bis Ende 1997 ununterbrochen positiv war (0 über 20 [!] bis 4, ab 1998 negativ {die Gründe dafür sind nicht schwer zu erraten], ab 2000 wieder positiv, ab 2002 wieder negativ), bleibt ungelöst.
Ebenso, warum lt. Loan Survey (ermittelt unter den Senior Loan Officers bei großen Banken) der "Demand for Loans" so saftig ins Minus gerutscht ist (zuletzt 4-6 03: minus 23).
Aber vermutlich fangen die Agenten der BoJ die Kreditsuchenden schon vor den Banken ab, damit sie nur ja nicht mit ihrem Kreditwunsch an den Tresen treten könnten. Schließlich kontrollieren die Zentralbanken"nicht nur ihre eigene, sondern auch die Bank-Kreditschöpfung". Und wenn niemand an die Quelle tritt, kann aus ihr auch nicht geschöpft werden.
Wie meinen Herr Werner so schön? Das meinen:"Die Politiker sind genauso Puppen im Spiel der Zentralbanken wie alle anderen."
Damit hat die Weltverschwörung eine neue, möglicherweise die finale Dimension erreicht: Ein top-geheimer Club von Notenbänkern steckt hinter dem gesamten Weltgeschehen!
Damit ist auch klar, warum was vor 2 Jahren geschehen ist. Hinter allem steckt nicht die lächerliche Clique um Herrn Bush. Die Strippen wurden ganz woanders in Washington gezogen, nämlich dort, wo keine Einschlagstelle auszumachen ist: Im herrlichen Gebäude des Federal Reserve Boards.
Eeeeendlich hab's auch ich geschnallt.
Mit bekehrtem, kleinlautem und um Gnade winselndem Gruß!
PS.: 5 Sterne für das Buch, Popeye? Nein - 50!
Und für den Aufsatz gibt's gleich 500! Denn am besten hat mir der Passus gefallen:"... the central bank can stimulate demand by simply [sic!] creating more money..." wobei er auf das japanische Gnadenjahr 1995 verweist.
Wie sah's in den 90ern insgesamt aus? (Zahlen gg. Vj. in % 91 - 00, 1995 gefettet):
M1: 5,2, 4,5, 3,0, 5,4, 8,2, 13,7, 8,8, 8,1, 10,5, 8,2
M2+CD: 3,6, 0,6, 1,1, 2,1, 3,0, 3,3, 3,1, 4,0, 3,6, 2,1
Da fragt man sich, warum die Segensperiode ("significant recovery") nicht über 1995 hinaus angehalten hat, wo doch dann das"creating more money" so richtig abzog?
Die Lösung ist ganz einfach: In der Lending Attitude sehen wir diese Sequenz 1994 bis Ende 1995: 8 - 9 - 13 - 14 - 14 - 18 - 20 - 20. (Danach, wie geschrieben, Abfall).
Immerhin: Auch die Geldtheoretiker müssen Werner dankbar sein. Schließlich hat er ihnen endlich auch die Quantitätstheorie des Kredits (!) geschenkt. Dieses muss jetzt nur noch"passend" gemacht werden: bloß nicht mehr in"bubbles", sondern schön in die"real economy".
Aber das kriegen wir auch noch hin. Vielleicht mit zwei Kreditarten: Der eine Kredit darf nur für"financials" inkl. Immobilien verwendet werden, der andere zum Kauf von realen Gütern. Der erste wird direkt von der ZB zugeteilt (Windhundverfahren?), der andere mit Umlaufsteuer belegt. Dann finden Bernanke und viele arme, herumirrende Seelen endlich ihren Frieden.
Nochmals Gruß!
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-->Von einer Reise zurückgekehrt sehe ich den beißenden Kommentar von @dottore zu Werner.
Bei Gelegenheit werde ich versuchen etwas ausführlicher dazu Stellung zu nehmen.
In der Zwischenzeit stelle ich den nachstehenden Auszug aus Werners Buch hier mal vor.
Natürlich nicht der Wahrheitsfindung wegen! Wichtiger scheint es mir nach geistigen Verwandtschaften zu suchen. Vielleicht kommt dem einen oder anderen geneigten Leser ja der eine oder andere Gedanke bekannt vor. Wo haben wir Einiges wohl (vielleicht mit anderen Worten) schon mal gelesen.....?
Popeye
O-Ton: Richard A. Werner, The Princes…., Seiten 105 ff
Government Spending Ineffective
During much of the 1990s, however, most observers analyzing Japan argued that credit growth was slow only because there was no demand for loans in the economy. Their policy prescription: Domestic demand had to be boosted by government spending, and then loan demand would also rise. For a decade, the government followed their advice, thus boosting government debt to historic levels and ruining Japan's fiscal virtue.
Yet we saw already in chapter 4 that the credit market is supply-determined. Money is different from apples and oranges—there is always demand for it. There are always enough entrepreneurs who would like to borrow money and invest in risky projects. Potential credit demand is so large that if banks raised interest rates to equalize demand and supply, the interest rates would rise enough to disqualify conservative and sensible investors, leaving only the high-risk entrepreneurs as bank clients. That is why banks keep interest rates below what would be the market clearing rate and instead select their borrowers: Banks ration credit. The macroeconomic result is the virtually permanent supply-determination of the credit market.
Meanwhile, fiscal spending could not boost demand, because it does not create money. It transfers purchasing power into the hands of, for instance, the construction industry, which receives large-scale government orders. Many economists simply add up these amounts of extra government spending and expect that GDP will be boosted by that amount.2 Again, the fallacy of composition has struck, which is due to the neglect of the government's need to fund its fiscal expenditure. The question is how the fiscal spending is funded. In the case of pure fiscal policy, dominant during the 1990s, the Ministry of Finance would issue government bonds to raise the money. Thus the money for the fiscal stimulation of the private sector is taken from the private sector itself. Investors, such as life insurers, have to pull
the money for the purchase of government bonds out of other investments. We see that fiscal policy does not create new purchasing power but merely reallocates already created purchasing power. Pure fiscal policy is largely growth-neutral.3 Indeed, over the 1990s it has been shown that for every yen the government spent in fiscal stimulation, private demand shrank by one yen.4
Put simply, credit creation determines the size of the economic pie. Fiscal policy determines how that pie is divided up between the private sector and the government. For unchanged credit creation, increased fiscal spending must therefore reduce the amount of purchasing power available in the private sector. Hence, without an increase in credit creation, the private-sector share of the national income pie must shrink (quantitative crowding out). In particular, the main customers of banks, the small firms, suffered from the credit crunch for most of the 1990s. That depressed consumption and hence GDP.
Print Money [sic!]
For more net new transactions to take place, more purchasing power is necessary. This allows an increase in the economic pie. The necessary and sufficient condition for an economic recovery is the creation of new purchasing power. Purchasing power is created by the banking system and the central bank. Policies to create a recovery therefore had to aim at increased credit creation of either one or both of these. Even if policies to help banks were slow in showing results, this would not prevent an immediate recovery—if the central bank fulfils its mandate and creates new purchasing power instead. Since 1992, a recovery in Japan could have been triggered at any time. A sufficient condition would have been for the Bank of Japan to switch on the printing presses.5
Inflation would not have resulted from such money creation. If the economy were operating at full capacity, printing too much money would indeed lead to inflation. That is why under circumstances of deflation and unemployed resources, printing more money will increase demand and reduce deflation. Inflation occurs only once the economy has expanded sufficiently for all factors of input to be fully used, for unemployment to be reduced to a minimum, and for all factories to operate at full capacity; on top of that, demand is boosted beyond this full capacity. In other words, once an economy is fully reflated and growing at the maximum potential growth rate, the central bank would have to slow the printing presses. But in Japan's predicament of the 1990s, there was no such worry.
Money Printing Increases Demand
Of course,"printing money" does not merely mean an increase in paper money. We have seen that nowadays the majority of money takes the form of"book money" or, more correctly,"computer money." The central bank can increase that at any time, without limit, by simply buying assets from the private sector and paying with newly created credit. Economically speaking, it does not matter what the central bank buys. It could buy neckties, toothpaste, or real estate.
The Bank of Japan could, for instance, go out and purchase the house of Mr. Harada. It could entice him to sell by offering a price above the market rate. That would not be a problem for the Bank of Japan, because it could print the money, or, more precisely, create new purchasing power that previously did not exist. It does not matter to Mr. Harada whether he gets the money in the form of paper currency or a BoJ transfer to his bank (which simply means that his bank will get a credit in its books with the Bank of Japan and he in turn will get a credit in his books with his bank). Mr. Harada now has more purchasing power available, and he most likely will use at least a small part of it to buy something else— another house, for example. He transfers the newly printed cash to the seller. That person then goes out and buys something from someone else, and so on. Suddenly, more economic transactions take place, and the reverberations are felt throughout the economy. Increased demand has been created by the BoJ out of nothing.
Central Bank Credit Creation
In reality the Bank of Japan does not buy much real estate (although it has acquired many real estate properties, such as houses, clubs, and recreation facilities for the use of its staff). In order to inject large amounts of money in a short time, the central bank tends to buy government bonds, bills, and commercial paper issued by corporations. When the Bank of Japan buys such paper in the markets, it helps the economy just as much as if it purchased a piece of land.
This can easily be visualized: With the banks paralyzed by bad debt, many medium-sized and small firms are suffering from the credit crunch. One way out is for them to issue debt certificates, such as commercial paper or corporate bonds. This paper can then be bought by the Bank of Japan, which in exchange hands over new yen notes to the firms. Banks may act as intermediaries by first discounting the bills, which the central bank rediscounts. But this does not change the analysis. As a result, the firms are able to receive money that did not exist before. Smaller firms can also receive the funds indirectly, in the form of trade credit from larger firms that issue such debt paper. The result would be the same. When the banks are not doing their job of lending and creating new money, the Bank of Japan can step in and act as a banker to the nation.
There is another way to illustrate how simple"money printing" helps the economy. We have found that pure fiscal spending funded by bonds that are bought by investors cannot stimulate new economic growth. No new purchasing power is created; old purchasing power is merely diverted. But fiscal policy can be made effective if it is backed by credit creation. If the government bonds are not sold to private investors but are bought or underwritten by the central bank, then credit creation increases, and the fiscal stimulation serves to inject this new money. What makes the difference in that case is not the fiscal spending but the action of the central bank to create money. Alternatively, the government can switch funding of the public sector borrowing requirement from bonds to simple loan contracts from banks.
Print Money and Create Parks
London boasts 26.9 square meters of park space per capita, New York 29.3 square meters, and Paris 11.8 square meters. Tokyo, however, comes last in a long list of the world's major cities, with 5.3 square meters per head.6 Moreover, Tokyo has the least park space of all the big Japanese cities. A good way to boost demand, stimulate the economy, invigorate the real estate market, and at the same time increase the quality of life in Tokyo would be for the Bank of Japan to print money and buy up land all over Tokyo to turn into parks and facilities that can be used by the public.7 Printing money to boost park space per head to the relatively low Parisian level could, depending on area and price, inject almost ¥70 trillion into the economy—not dissimilar to one estimate of the size of the bad debts. Of course, other, even more productive uses could be made of newly printed money. Facilities could be established that address public needs, such as an improved medical system or welfare infrastructure for the elderly. In a sense, the recession of the 1990s represented an opportunity to print enormous amounts of money and use them in a beneficial way without what would normally be the price to pay, namely, inflation. Even direct handouts by the central bank to each taxpayer—for instance of ¥2 million each—would be feasible, without any costs. They could simply be considered refunds from the central bank (for failing to deliver the goods).
All these examples serve to demonstrate just how easy it would have been to create an economic recovery as early as 1992 or 1993 to the benefit of Japan and beyond. Millions of unemployed would have found jobs. It was entirely feasible to create a recovery throughout the lost decade of the 1990s if the right policies had been taken.
History Proves That It Works
Printing money to boost demand is not just a nice theoretical idea. It has been tried and tested. We have already seen how the BoJ under Ichimada and the government's Economic Stabilization Board successfully reflated Japan's economy right after 1945, when the banks were in far worse shape than in the 1990s, and when the economy had been devastated by carpet bombing. There are other examples, for instance, the 1930s, when the world was gripped by the Great Depression, which triggered the structural transformation of Japan. Just as in the 1990s, the problem was that banking systems shut down, first in the United States, then Germany, Japan, and other countries.8 As we saw in chapter 4, banking systems are funda-
mentally fragile because they are based on what many would consider fraud: Banks do not actually have the money that they guarantee is being deposited with them. This becomes clear particularly when the money is lent out simultaneously over ninety times for unproductive, speculative purposes and hence in aggregate there is little hope of its being paid back. U.S. banks during the 1920s, for instance, had lent too much to speculators, driving up stock and land prices.9
However, Germany and Japan were the first countries to pull out of the Great Depression. While the U.S. central bank failed to reflate and allowed many banks to go bankrupt, the German and Japanese central banks started to print money sooner. Although it is often said that it was fiscal policy that stimulated the Japanese and German recoveries, it was in fact the creation of new credit that made fiscal policy effective. There is no known example of a country where aggressive central bank money printing did not stimulate demand. Whenever a credit bust follows an excessive credit boom, a recovery happens only after the banks or the central bank expands credit creation again.
Solving the Banking Problem
While the central bank has to kick-start the economy, simultaneously the problem in the banking system needs to be solved. After a decade of failed attempts, it may be appealing to think of this bad debt problem as being complex beyond imagination, but in actual fact it is an issue that could be solved immediately, at zero cost to anyone. And it should have been solved long ago. While banks are burdened with significant amounts of bad debt, they will not fulfill their role of lending and creating money. The only solution is for banks to write off their bad debts and delete them from their books. Since accounts are made up of assets and liabilities (loans are assets for banks, and deposits are liabilities; equity is on the liability side) and the two must always balance, simply deleting the bad assets will not do. Liabilities would exceed assets—which is one definition of insolvency. So in order to be able to write off the bad debts, the banks need to put something else on the asset side of their balance sheet. These are called reserves, and they are put in place of the hole that the write-offs would create in the balance sheet. Put simply, the banks need money.
So what we need to do is to give money to the banks. We are relieved to find that the problem is not more complicated than that. For money, as we know, can be created, either by banks themselves or by the central bank. The simplest solution is therefore for the Bank of Japan to print money and give it to the banks.10 Of course, the Bank of Japan would like to obtain something in return, in order to list it on the asset side of its own balance sheet. These are details. The banks could issue a debt paper, which states that they borrowed the money from the Bank of Japan (for instance, at zero interest). Or they could issue new shares, such as preferred shares, which the Bank of Japan would then buy. Alternatively, they could transfer ownership of the land they own to the Bank of Japan.
Bad Debt Problem Can Be Solved in a Day
If it so wished, the Bank of Japan could have solved the bad debt problem in its entirety within one morning. What it needed to do was to purchase all bad debts from all banks at face value, and pay for them through the creation of new money. The banks would have welcomed this idea, for they would have received cash in excess of market value for loans that had gone bad. What about the Bank of Japan? Would it not suffer huge losses? Actually, no. By purchasing the bad debts at the nominal face value of the 1980s, the central bank would appear to make a loss (since their market value is now much lower). However, the central bank, having a license to print money, always makes a gain: It has zero fund-raising costs and can obtain something that has some value (even if only 10 cents on the dollar) for free. The true cost for the Bank of Japan is zero. It creates the money out of nothing and therefore always gets a good deal. In practice, transferring the cash to the banks does not even involve printing presses, as most of the money is created online in the Bank of Japan's computers. Since the banks all have accounts with the BoJ, it could use its electronic transfer system to rid the banks of all the bad debts within seconds—instead of taking over a decade.
There are of course many variations on this theme. For example, if the central bank is reluctant to show any such assets on its balance sheet, a government institution could be used that buys the bad debts from the banks and itself is funded by issuing bonds or bills to the central bank. The possibilities are there, if there is a will to solve the bad-debt problem.
Not only would there be no costs to the Japanese central bank, more importantly, there would also be no costs to the economy or society at large. If, instead, government money (i.e., tax money) is used to bail out banks, then the taxpayers will have to refund the money in the future. If the BoJ simply prints the money, taxpayers do not incur a liability. Since the economy has been in the grip of deflation, this would also not produce what is normally the cost of excessive credit creation, namely, inflation. In this situation, at best we would get less deflation— which would be a good thing.
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