Lies, Damned Lies and Austerity

17/05/2012 3 Comments

Today David Cameron once again reiterated his intention to continue down the path of austerity in order to sort out the UK’s economy. David does this a lot and continually comes back to his belief that government spending caused the mess and that only a severe reduction in government spending can restore economic growth. As you probably know, in contrast to David, I am in favour of an economic stimulus.

When I write about that on here I often receive comments along the lines of David’s – that government spending caused the mess in the first place and more of it would just cause an even bigger mess. I have perhaps not addressed this directly in the past so, hold on to your hats, I will do so now.

First of all saying that the cause of the mess was purely the previous government’s spending is a very simplified view. There were many factors that combined to cause the financial crisis. People who say it was simply caused by government spending are conveniently forgetting what the banks were up to. That’s another story though and I do need to address the misconceptions about government spending. I am going to try to explain why I think spending is sometimes a good idea and sometimes a bad idea and why at the moment I think it is a very good idea indeed. So here goes…

Over time the economy swings between periods of growth and periods of contraction. Governments (despite often making claims to the contrary) have never been able to stop this happening and perhaps this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. After all, a government has only simple tools at its disposal and economies are complicated things in which bad things have a habit of finding ways to happen.

Although we should accept that there will always be good and bad periods in the economy we should also appreciate that the government is certainly not powerless to help out. A government can use some of its simple tools to reduce the impact and duration of the bad times when they arrive and bring back the good times as soon as possible.

One of these tools is government spending and to see how this can help we need to first take a look at the private sector. Companies in the private sector have important short-term financial goals. They generally seek to make a profit every year and additionally have certain cash flow considerations (e.g. they need to be able to pay salaries, buy stock, pay rent etc). So if their revenue drops off, they may well look to reduce their spending in line with it. If their revenue increases, they may well look to increase their spending accordingly. For example, if a company is doing badly they may reduce their costs by making redundancies and if a company is doing well they may take on more staff. Simple enough. Let’s look at what happens in economic cycles.

In periods of strong economic growth, lots of companies do well and expand and take on staff. In periods of economic contraction, lots of companies do badly and lots of people lose their jobs.

This means that private sector spending closely follows how well the economy is doing as a whole – when the economy is doing well, private sector spending increases and when the economy is doing badly, private sector spending decreases. These spending swings in the private sector actually amplify the effect of the economic cycle. i.e. the redundancies they make during weak economic times weaken the economy further because unemployed people stop having money to spend and rely on benefits and in weak economic times they cannot easily find new employment.

One way the government (or actually the Bank of England since it is now independent) can influence this is through changes in interest rates. By lowering interest rates, it becomes cheaper for companies to borrow money and they can therefore more easily finance the hard times with less need for cost cutting.

There is a problem with this approach though as you can only cut interest rates so far. Once they are down to almost zero (as they have been in the UK for over three years) then there is no way to stimulate the economy by cutting them further.

Another way the government can influence things is by spending money. When spending in the private sector dries up the government can step in and fill the gap. Governments of developed economies (who borrow in their own currency) can borrow very large sums over very long periods of time and don’t have to worry about the same short term profit or cash flow issues that companies face.

When the private sector is expanding, the government can reduce public spending and let the private sector fill the gap. When the private sector is contracting, the government can increase public spending and fill the gap. If the gap is not filled then we end up with unemployment and recession.

That’s what happens if the government does nothing but now imagine an even worse situation. In this situation the government spending tracks that of the private sector. i.e. when things are going well, the government increases spending and when things are going badly the government reduces public spending. Pushing up government spending when the private sector is trying to expand will help boost the economy a bit but it is an inefficient use of funds because the public and private sectors are in effect competing against one another. Essentially we create a strong supply of jobs for which there is weak demand. In contrast, reducing government spending when the private sector is contracting further amplifies the effect of the downturn. In this situation we are reducing the supply of jobs when there is strong demand. In the latter situation the government may cause a full-blown economic depression from which the economy may take many years to recover.

Actually, that sounds familiar.

Anyway. During the years preceding the economic crisis, the UK was experiencing some unspectacular growth. The Labour government at the time coupled this with some unspectacular increases in government spending when they should have, if they were sensible, made some unspectacular reductions in public spending.

So yes, I agree that they got things wrong. Their increase in spending was certainly fairly benign compared with the current government’s version of what happened but yes, they would have been better to reduce spending overall.

Since the crisis hit, however, the economy has contracted hugely and the private sector has shed millions of jobs. Now we have one of those spending gaps I mentioned and it’s a really big one. This is why government spending now would be a good idea – we’re not competing with the private sector, we are simply trying to increase the supply of jobs to help meet the huge demand. Let me be very clear – I am not saying that fiscal policy under the previous government was right but just because they got it wrong does not mean that we should be backing a plan now that is even wronger.

If it is this simple though, why is our government backing an austerity plan at all? Given the above argument, isn’t it the exact opposite of what they should be doing? Yes it is. Politicians are people with agendas though.

Let me give an example of an agenda. Suppose you were a politician who very much liked rich people. Your ideal UK might consist of low taxes on rich people but that’s expensive so you might try to fund those tax cuts by severely cutting public spending. Of course, since most people are not rich, you couldn’t just say that’s what you were doing because you need more than just rich people’s votes to stay in power. You might therefore invest significant time and effort trying to convince people that government spending during bad economic times was a terrible thing and the only way to restore economic growth was through reducing spending and cutting taxes on rich people.

The government has managed to get away with it quite well so far because the economy is complicated so it’s very hard for people to know whether they are telling the truth or have a hidden agenda. Additionally, the government is extremely effective at misleading the electorate. For most people the “reduce spending when things are bad” makes a lot of sense because they are able to relate it directly to their personal finances. If I have a big credit card bill and my household income drops I’d better cut back spending and pay off my credit card, right? Yes, that’s right for your household but there is a subtle and very important difference between household finance and the economy as a whole.

In your personal finances you are only concerned about your own personal incomings and outgoings. In the economy though, your spending is my income and visa versa. If we decide to kill off spending in the economy we by definition kill off income too. The government continually draws an analogy with personal debt and never takes the time to explain this distinction.

You might say that you accept the above arguments but it’s too late for us to borrow money because we already have so much debt no one will lend to us. You’d be wrong though – we have people queuing up to lend to the UK at the moment. A developed economy borrowing in their own currency (this importantly excludes the Eurozone) has a truly amazing capacity to borrow money cheaply. If you think we’re anywhere near the limit then have a look at Japan’s government debt in comparison:

And guess which of these countries can borrow more cheaply? I’ll give you a clue – it’s the one currently enjoying strong economic growth.

Also worth pointing out on this graph is how little our debt actually increased during the years preceding the financial crisis. Yes, it should have been reducing but it wasn’t exactly the mad spending spree that everyone seems to think it was. Labour left office with more or less the same amount of debt they inherited when they were elected in 1997.

In summary there are three important points in this post that David Cameron doesn’t want you to know because if you know them his argument falls to pieces:

  • Government spending during a period of economic growth and spending during a period of economic contraction are very different things. Just because the former is bad does not mean the latter is.
  • The personal spending analogy does not work when considering the economy as a whole because one person’s spending is another person’s income.
  • There is plenty of scope for the UK to borrow money

I know this post is quite a lot to digest but I have done my best to explain why I think the things that I do. Perhaps you’ve read through the post and think my reasoning is wrong and David Cameron’s is right. Perhaps you think austerity really is the way to restore economic growth. That’s fine, after all David and I each have a theory and at the end of the day that’s all they are – theories.

I suppose though, if I were being really picky, I might point out that the growing evidence strongly supports my one.

RedEaredRabbit

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with , , ,

Depression

25/04/2012 2 Comments

Do you remember that time that Alistair Darling did that terribly apolitical thing of trying to tell the truth and said there was a recession coming that would be the worst since the Great Depression? And then Gordon Brown “unleashed the forces of hell” on him? I think in hindsight, there are a couple of interesting points to make about this event.

The first one, which is important to Christians, is that the forces of hell are clearly far weaker than we were taught at school. As we can see from this recent interview, Darling is alive and well, having suffered little more than a minor singeing of the eyebrows.

Secondly, we can say that Alistair was wrong. The Office for National Statistics published their quarterly Economic Review today and conveniently it contained some figures comparing the current economic cow-pat with that of the Great Depression. The below graph shows their results of comparing quarterly GDP against the pre-crisis peaks. The red line shows how GDP has changed since Q1 2008. The blue line shows how GDP changed for the equivalent period in the Great Depression (starting at Q1 1930).

(I have added a green dot to show when David Cameron came to power.)

Darling got it wrong because the current depression is actually worse than the Great Depression. By this stage in the Great Depression, the UK was going through a period of significant economic growth and had already passed the pre-crisis peak. The UK’s current GDP is still 4.3% lower than it was at the start of 2008.

The report said also, as you have probably heard today, that the UK economy has now contracted in two consecutive quarters and therefore, by the government’s definition, we are once more in recession.

If the government had achieved 0% growth as opposed to -0.2% in the first quarter they would have avoided recession and the media would be reporting it as such. The media, I feel, often puts so much weight on whether we are in or out of recession that we are essentially missing the big picture. Look at the red line on the graph above since David Cameron was elected and you see the real picture. We might be technically sometimes in growth and technically sometimes in recession but what we are actually in is a sustained period of economic stagnation.

Predictably, Cameron and Osborne have each made statements today saying that they will be strong in the face of the recession and stick with their current policy of reducing government spending. It makes me want to weep. Recession, stagnation, whatever you want to call it, this situation was caused by them. The government’s fiscal policy since they took office has been the exact opposite of what was needed to create growth in the economy and the effects are there for all to see.

When proposing a stimulus, I am often told that spending more would send us into a recession! Well, without spending more we’re now back in one but nevertheless I will explain my stimulus thoughts in a bit more detail.

Let’s take a look at say, renewable energy. By 2020 we are legally obliged to have 20% of our energy consumption coming from renewable energy. How’s that going to happen? Well it won’t happen without investing a lot of money building wind farms, tidal power stations and the like. This is money we need to spend anyway – we have agreed to be legally bound to the target. Why not bring the investment forward and spend the money now? The difference in government debt between spending the money now or in a couple of years is nigh on nothing and believe me, we won’t even get close to that target if we don’t get our arses in gear.

Or how about schools? I find it hard to believe that there are not thousands of state-funded schools not needing their ailing buildings, classrooms, gymnasiums fixing and rebuilding.

As you can see, I am not promoting the idea of spending money on things we don’t need – we need to do these things anyway so this money has to be spent sooner or later. All I am proposing is spending it now, at a time that we have economic stagnation and lots of people waiting for the jobs that such spending will create.

The government chose to implement a policy that opposed basic macroeconomic theory and that policy has had exactly the effect that basic economic theory predicts – depression. So how could they have got it so wrong? How could they not see that the fiscal policy they were pursuing was not just erroneous, it was completely irresponsible and entirely negligent?

One may as well ask, how could they not see that cutting tax on the rich at the expense of the poor was a terrible idea? Or, how could they not see that selling places at the Prime Minister’s dinner table in return for influence over government policy, was both morally and democratically abhorrent?

The answer is both surprisingly simple and hugely depressing. This government, (as with many other governments throughout history and throughout the world), did not come into power, assess the circumstances and devise the best possible policies to benefit the population and the country as a whole. They came into power with a particular idea of how they wanted the country to be. It involved private health care, lower taxes on the rich and yes, low government spending.

The fact that basic economics said that cutting spending would screw the economy was totally irrelevant. They probably knew it would. Their efforts have not gone into putting good policies into being but have instead gone into trying to make the country into their Etonian Utopia. They have cleverly coupled this with a massive campaign of bad marketing to mislead the electorate into thinking that all of these things are necessary. They know that economics is not a subject that is easily understood by the majority of the public and know they can use this to their advantage.

In forcing through the changes they wanted to make anyway, they have unnecessarily caused a depression on a scale not seen in recent history. As a direct result of these policies, people have lost their jobs and people have lost their houses.

If the 1930s was the Great Depression, then our current day situation will surely be looked on in history as the Even Greater Depression.

And the most depressing thing of all is that this was completely avoidable.

RedEaredRabbit

Filed under 10 Posts You Should Read, Economics, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

The Austerity Fairy

25/01/2012 13 Comments

Today I’ve been playing with the greatest toy ever created. It’s not a Sony Playstation and it’s not a Pokemon. It’s a Rubik’s Cube.

The Problem

The Problem

One of the things that makes a Rubik’s Cube so great is that the problem you are trying to solve is very easy to understand. From the time you first picked one up, you understood exactly what you had to do – arrange it such that each face of the cube was the same colour.

The Solution

The very best people in the world have solved it in under 10 seconds, putting through around 5 moves per second.

I’ve just tried making 5 moves per second and I couldn’t even get close.

Let’s imagine taking someone who could move the cube this fast but didn’t know what they were aiming at, that is they know there is a single arrangement of the cube they are aiming for but don’t know what it is so they need to try every possible permutation. I done a sum and by my reckoning, assuming they were able to go at 5 moves per second and were able to keep track of every permutation they had tried so that they never hit the same one twice, it would take them around 274 billion years to get through them all and be sure to have hit the solution.

6 seconds vs 274 billion years – the importance of understanding the problem you are trying to solve.

So anyway, the economy is shrinking again – down 0.2% in the final quarter of 2011 :-(

George Osborne was not worried though:

We have the right plan and we’re going to stick with it!

In fairness to him he was half-right. We are going to stick with it.

George thinks the problem is spending. He thinks that as long as we spend less, at some stage the Austerity Fairy will show up and magic the economy back to health.

He blamed firstly, the reckless spending of the Labour government. Let’s get this one out of the way quickly with the IMF data I’ve put on here before. Between 1997 when Labour came to power and 2007, the year before financial meltdown, the UK’s debt as a proportion of its GDP was the lowest in the G7. In every single year:

Government debt as a percentage of GDP (Source IMF)

Government debt as a percentage of GDP (Source IMF)

Yes, the UK is the orange line at the bottom.

Next he blamed Europe. Wait a moment – is that the same Europe who are also awaiting the arrival of the Austerity Fairy? How’s that working out for them? Oh.

Much as George would like it, it’s actually not all everyone else’s fault. The reason George has not solved the problem is because, like the poor bugger spending eternity on a Rubik’s Cube he doesn’t understand the problem he is trying to solve.

The problem isn’t spending. The problem is a lack of growth and rising unemployment. Let me explain why.

In normal economic times when employment is high, if the economy starts looking a little shaky the Bank of England can cut interest rates. Lower interest rates make people want to save less money and spend more. When people spend more the economy picks up. Even Robert Peston knows that.

We are not in normal economic times though. Interest rates have been at an all time low for almost three years and you know what? No one is spending. For the rising number of unemployed this is understandable but for the people who kept their jobs why would they be saving more and spending less with such low interest rates?

It’s fairly simple. In an economic depression, even those people with jobs are scared that they might not have jobs at some time in the not so distant future. What would happen if they were made unemployed? Probably they wouldn’t walk straight into another job so they save. Even with crappy interest rates they save.

We have reduced interest rates pretty much as far as they can go but have still not got people spending again and we have therefore become stuck in something that economists call a liquidity trap. We have nowhere to go with interest rates so as long as the economy is weak no one will spend and as long as no one will spend, the economy will be weak.

This is the problem. Understand that much and the solution is a bit easier to grasp – you plug the gap with government spending until employment goes back up to healthy levels and people are spending again. When people are spending again, then you reduce it.

Even if George were able to grasp the economic problem, it would lead immediately him to a political one. How would he possibly explain to the public that for the past 20 months he had pursued exactly the opposite strategy of the one he should have? It would be political suicide. He’s not going to do that.

Better to take David by the hand and skip off together down the road to nowhere in search of the Austerity Fairy.

RedEaredRabbit

Filed under Economics, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

Economic Bloodletting

19/01/2012 6 Comments

In older times bloodletting was a common medical practice. A doctor would treat a poorly patient by pumping out a few glugs of blood in the hope that it would cure them. The patient would then decline a bit and the doctor would say, “It’s more serious than we thought!” And he’d pump out some more blood. The patient would then get even worse and this bizarre cycle would continue, often until the patient died, at which point the doctor would say, “Well we did our best but they were clearly beyond saving.”

In 2010, the coalition government inherited a poorly economy. (Can you see where I am going with this?) They decided that what it needed was less spending. Less spending they claimed, would have the economy back on its feet in no time.

They predicted that with some much needed spending cuts, economic growth in 2011 would be 2.6%. Then a couple of months later with an even more sickly economy they predicted that with some more spending cuts, 2011 would enjoy economic growth of 2.3%.

November 2010 came though and the patient had deteriorated. 2011 economic growth was now predicted at 2.1% – despite economic bloodletting things were looking bleak. What this patient really needed was… bloodletting.

By March 2011 they had downgraded the annual growth from 2.1% to 1.7% but maintained that the patient’s only hope was spending cuts.

By November, the annual growth prediction was downgraded to 0.9%. We’ll soon see what the real figure was but it is clear that like the quacks of ancient times, the government is unwilling to recognise that there is any link between the treatment and the illness.

Some will disagree that this policy had anything to do with the worsening economy. What is indisputable however, is that the government’s policy of austerity has not led to the economic benefits that they predicted it would.

So let’s think about an alternative policy. Another option is that when the economy is weak we should pursue policies that encourage economic growth and employment. When unemployment rises, there are two immediate consequences. Tax revenues drop and government spending on benefits increases. Then public spending decreases because fewer people have money to spend, and those in employment save more because they are worried about rising unemployment. When public spending decreases, the economy weakens further, the whole thing becomes self-perpetuating and if unchecked we end up where we are today in an economic depression.

The government would say that you can’t spend your way out of recession. They say it all they time. It’s entirely incorrect though – government spending increases economic growth. So a better way of doing things might be to increase spending during a recession and then cut it back once the economy had recovered, employment had gone back up and tax revenues had gone back up. You could also supplement this with some taxes on the wealthy. So we have found a policy that is better than the government’s. Great! Let’s get ‘em!

Oh, hold on. Where’s the opposition gone?

Oh dear.

The Labour party it seems, have decided not to take a stance against the spending cuts. Well, I think they have decided that. If I’m honest I’m not absolutely sure. For the past 18 months they have sort of said that they oppose them but have never really laid out a clear alternative. Now Ed Balls has decided that they would not commit to reversing spending cuts whilst maintaining that the government is cutting “too fast and too hard”.

Well I am confused. If they think we are cutting “too hard” but wouldn’t change the policy of cutting exactly this hard then what exactly are they proposing? Labour seems to have moved from a bit wishy-washy to some bizarre conflict of agreeing with government policies whilst saying they are bad.

If I were Ed Miliband, every time David Cameron said during PM’s Questions, “you can’t spend your way out of recession!” I would stand up and read bits out of a first year Macroeconomics text book to him.

And it doesn’t stop at economic policy. Opposition to the government’s proposed health care reforms have come more from doctors than they have from the Labour party despite the government’s argument being shown to be based on completely false statistics. We have a Secretary of State for Education who thinks we should fire more teachers for poor performance. If I were in opposition I think my criteria for firing secretaries of state would include trying to spend £60m on a boat for the Queen and £400,000 on personally inscribed bibles.

In my frustrated state, I am quickly running out of parties to vote for:

  • The Conservatives –  Implementing poor policies with no end in sight
  • The Labour Party – Unable to convey an alternative
  • The Lib Dems – Presumably I don’t need to explain
  • UKIP – Xenophobic
  • BNP – Racist
  • Green Party – In no way prepared for government but might have to look at them now

Ed Miliband’s time is running out to provide coherent opposition to what is going on. He was a good politician in government but for whatever reason he has been positively ineffective in opposition. A recent poll said that the UK public trusted the coalition more on economic policy than they did the Labour Party. I am in no way surprised by this. While I think the coalition policy is bad, it is at least coherent and clearly communicated. Rather than think of a better one, Labour seems to have given up and said, “That’s popular, let’s say that too!”

And say it they did. In a completely incoherent way.

The Conservatives might be poor when it comes to forming policies to gain economic growth, put people into jobs, or improve education and the NHS but never underestimate their brilliance when it comes to making a crap policy sound like common sense.

It is a fragile brilliance though and as their dumb marketing machine rolls forward we can see quite a few gaping holes at which to aim our wrath. I really do believe that a few carefully placed, well-argued policies could derail the whole thing but sadly I see no sign of them on the horizon.

And so, I am making one last, desperate, heartfelt plea:

Could the real opposition please stand up?

RedEaredRabbit

Filed under 10 Posts You Should Read, Economics, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

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