Bitcoins and El Salvador

I haven't written about bitcoin in a long while, in part because it is somewhat irrelevant, like all notions of a future dominance of private currencies (another of Hayek's incredible blunders; more problems with Hayek here and here). Note that nation states are fine and well, and not going anywhere, and hence national currencies will remain dominant. Only a weak state without its own currency (El Salvador is dollarized; on that see here and here) would make bitcoins legal tender. But more on that later.

Even though it's discussed in my old post, let me first explain why bitcoin makes little sense as a currency. The first thing to note about bitcoiners is that they think that the state management of the currency is prone to abuse, and that the value of money, and, hence the price level (or its change, i.e. inflation) suffers as a result. The slow and persistent mining of bitcoins, in this view, is what leads to a stable price level. The value of money depends on its scarcity, according to some version of the Quantity Theory of Money (or if they were more sophisticated some notion of a natural rate, and that would work at full employment). Of course, that notion breaks down pretty fast, since inflation is seldom related to excess printing of money by the central bank.

Note that the value of bitcoins has recently collapsed from about 60,000 to around 33,000. It's closer to 34,000 or so now. At any rate, to make things simpler, and rounding things up, the price has been halved, in dollars. In other words, if you bought with one bitcoin something that costed US$60,000 now you need approximately 2 bitcoins rather than one to buy the same thing. Prices doubled in bitcoins in just a few days. That's a doubling of the price level, an increase of 100%, or very high inflation in bitcoins. So inflation in bitcoins (and in any currency really) has little relation with the amount of money. Exchange rate depreciation is crucial, as well as other costs (on alternative theories of inflation see here).

In other words, bitcoin is simply an asset, as gold since it was demonetized almost 50 years ago by Nixon, with the closing of the gold window (or 1968, if you take the link to Fed notes). It is something that is purely relevant for speculation, contrary to some other financial assets that might be relevant for other uses, even industrial uses like gold. Don't get me wrong, block chain technology and digital currencies might become relevant, but that would be once national governments and central banks, which are moving slowly in that direction, decide to adopt them.

I haven't read much on Bukele's decision to make bitcoin legal tender. But the notion that this would be good for the population is crazy. Notice that if you send one bitcoin, and the value collapses before its collected and changed back to dollars, in a period in which the price is reduced by half, then the person receives half the amount of dollars. The fluctuations of asset prices could be wild, and the losses staggering. And El Salvador depends heavily on remittances from the US; something around 20 percent of GDP. The only possible relevant use for bitcoins is for illegal transactions, other than speculation in which someone can win huge amounts, while many lose their pants. Other than that, this is a decision that compounds other terrible decisions taken by previous administrations, like dollarization and entering the free trade agreement with the US.

On Keynes and the Quantity Theory

Slow posting will continue for quite a while. Backlogged with work. At any rate, I've been reading (almost done now) Richard Davenport-Hines new book on Keynes, Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes. Nothing new really. And that should not be a surprise after the biographies by Skidelsky and Moggridge.

There are many little issues here and there, which is inevitable, given Keynes' own contradictions, and the overwhelming number of interpretations of his work. There is one point, which is repeated by Davenport-Hines, based on a monetary interpretation of the development of the Principle of Effective Demand (PED), which I think is completely misguided. He says that: “Keynesian economics developed from its progenitor’s rejection of the quantity theory of money [QTM].” Not really. The theory developed from the rejection of Say's Law. The rejection of the QTM is a side effect.

In fact, in terms of the monetary views, Keynes had moved from the QTM in his Tract in 1923, to a Wicksellian model in his Treatise in 1930, with endogenous money, to having exogenous money, and, in that respect being closer to the QTM, in the General Theory (GT) in 1936. Many posties like the Treatise more than the GT for that reason. I prefer the GT, since it has investment and savings being adjusted by income (PED), rather then the rate of interest. And he at least tries to get rid of the notion of a natural rate of interest in the GT.

Davenport-Hines gets closer to the real contribution of the GT, and the reasons for its development, when quoting Austin Robinson, who said in 1947:

“a great step forward in economic thought when Keynes insisted that we should have a general theory – a theory which was valid not only with full (or near-full) employment, but also with unemployment – and that we should know clearly which of the propositions of economics were universally valid, and which were valid only in conditions in which it might be true that an increase of one activity was possible only at the expense of another activity. In the Cambridge thought of my time I believe that no single forward step has been so important.”

The real revolutionary thing in the GT is that the system does not have a tendency to full utilization of resources, no natural rate.* Full employment is one possibility. That's why his theory was general. What Keynes was trying to reject is the neoclassical version of Say's Law, that implies that changes in the rate of interest guarantee that investment equilibrates to full employment savings.

In fact, changes in aggregate demand, and that would include increases in the exogenous supply of money, would have inflationary consequences with full employment. Keynes' views on inflation remained very conventional, as they had been during the German hyperinflation, based on excess demand.

* To do that requires getting rid of the marginal efficiency of capital, but that's another story.

Keynes and the abandonment of the Quantity Theory of Money

I've been reading Peter Temin and David Vines new book Keynes: Useful Economics for the World Economy (see also this). It is a very introductory and conventional reading of Keynes, with the distinctive characteristic that describes the development of Keynes' ideas in the proper historical context. This is good, since Temin is an illustrious economic historian. But he is not a history of economic thought scholar, and that has important implications in this case.

If there is any doubt about the conventional reading of Keynes, one is reminded by them that Keynes theoretical innovation is that: "he abandoned the assumption that prices are flexible which had been made by almost all previous economists—including by him in his Treatise on Money—for the more appropriate assumption for the 1930s: sticky prices.” No notice that the whole chapter 19 of the General Theory (GT) is about wage and price flexibility to show that it does not solve the unemployment problem, and it actually makes it worse.

But that is not the the main problem with the book. That is, in fact, the common reading among both Old and New Keynesians, with the latter providing microfoundations for rigidities. The authors claim that: “in order to free the analysis from the assumption of full employment, Keynes had to free himself from the Quantity Theory too.” Actually that is incorrect, since one can have endogenous money, and abandon the Quantity Theory of Money (QTM), without getting rid of Say's Law, or the neoclassical version of it which implies full employment, as indeed Keynes had done in the Treatise on Money (TM), his Wicksellian book.

The view of the Keynesian Revolution as a movement from price flexibility to price rigidity is well documented, and even if it has no basis in Keynes, it might acceptable to some authors. Krugman, who is not a historian of thought, explicitly says he does not care what Keynes actually said, for example. Note that saying that Keynesian policies are necessary as a result of price rigidities is not the same that saying that Keynes actually said that. And for historians of economic thought the difference is important.

More problematic is the idea of the Keynesian Revolution as a movement away from the QTM. There is a lot of scholarship in this direction, including some from Keynes' own disciples, like Richard Kahn in his The Making of the Keynesian Revolution. Actually in the GT Keynes goes back to an exogenous money approach, and in that sense is closer to the QTM than in the TM, which had endogenous money. The important thing in the GT is that Keynes noted that the natural rate of interest in his TM should be abandoned. That is, the idea that the interest rate brings investment into equilibrium with full employment savings had to be substituted by the notion of changes in income bringing savings into equilibrium with autonomous investment. The theory of interest or monetary theory comes later as a result of the abandonment of the Loanable Funds Theory. This is not to say that the abandonment of the Quantity Theory of Money is not important, but clearly it is not sufficient to lead to a theory of effective demand. 

The book also tries to show that there is a continuity in thinking between The Economic Consequences of the Peace and the discussions about the reorganization of the world economy at Bretton Woods. This is hard to defend, in particular since the book itself shows that Keynes' theoretical views changed as a result of the economic policy events, like the return to the Gold Standard at the pre-war parity, and the Great Depression. One of the important things about Keynes is exactly that, as stated in the phrase often attributed to him, when he was proven wrong, he changed his mind.

Some thoughts on currency crises and overshooting

So I've been teaching an international finance class, after a long while I might add. The discussion of currency crises models I think is interesting, since it is very revealing of the mainstream assumptions about the long run. Typical discussion would imply that in the long run the Quantity Theory of Money (QTM) and Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hold. PPP means simply that the exchange rate adjusts for differences between the domestic and foreign price levels. Hence, we have that S =P/P*, where the star indicates foreign variable. If in addition we believe with the QTM that the central bank (CB) controls prices by controlling the money supply, then the CB can control the exchange rate indirectly.

In the figure below the 45o line shows the equilibrium levels of the exchange rate (S) as the price level, which is related to the money supply. Now suppose that the central bank fixes the exchange rate at S1 (the graph is based on Dornbusch representation in his classic paper; for now disregard the QQ curve). If the money supply is below the level that corresponds to P1, then the fixed exchange rate is too depreciated for the current stock of money, stimulating exports, discouraging imports, and leading to Current Account (CA) surpluses. In this case, the central bank would accumulate international reserves. The accumulation of reserves leads to increasing money supply and the economy moves to a new equilibrium.

If the central bank follows the rules of the game and it is credible (and the assumptions are also valid, meaning the economy has a tendency to full employment and increase in money supply only affect prices) then the money supply increases/decreases with the CA surpluses/deficits and the system converges to a stable equilibrium. However, if the commitment to the fixed-peg is not credible, and the rules of the game are not followed, then problems might arise. Imagine a situation in which the monetary authority continues to print money, to finance fiscal deficits for example, and the fixed exchange rate would now be below its equilibrium value (below the 45o line). Beyond the equilibrium point the central bank would start losing reserves. At some point, say when the money supply reaches the money supply level compatible with P2, the stock of reserves would be depleted. At this point, the central bank cannot defend the exchange rate anymore and the exchange rate jumps to S2. The Krugman model basically assumed exactly this, with the difference that if agents have rational expectations (perfect foresight in this case), then they would have an advantage to try to speculate against the currency before reserves are exhausted.*

In the model above the currency crisis occurs because the CB does not follow a monetary policy consistent with the fundamentals, that is, prints too much money to finance the government. Although, not immediatly obvious the model above is a simplified version of the Mundell-Fleming (MF) model, in the long run, when prices rather than income is the adjusting variable.In this case, the MF model can be represented with the exchange rate and prices, rather than output, as the adjusting variables. The QQ curve is a downward sloping curve, since higher prices increase money demand (or reduce the real money supply), leading to a higher rate of interest and a more appreciated exchange rate (lower S). Note the QQ curve is just the old LM for an open economy.

Also, because the QTM and PPP hold it must be true that increases in money supply lead to higher prices which lead to a proportional change in the nominal exchange rate, for a given foreign price and foreign money supply. In other words, the 45o degree line which corresponds to the proportional changes in domestic prices and the nominal exchange rate must still hold. We can derive the IS curve too, which would be upward sloping, but it is unnecessary, since if PPP holds then the economy must be in the long run on the 45o degree line.**

Dornbusch's trick, which was considered the first New Keynesian model (featuring both rational expectations and price rigidities), is that the nominal exchange rates adjusts faster than prices, then an increase in money supply would shift the QQ (LM) curve upwards. An increase in money supply reduces the domestic interest rate, leading to a depreciation of the currency. The economy moves from point A to point B. Then as depreciation increases net exports, and a lower rate of interest leads to more investment, there will be excess demand in the goods market, and for an economy that is at full employment, prices would go up. As prices go up, then the economy moves down the new QQ’ curve from point B to C, since with higher prices money demand increases and the rate of interest must increase (less than the initial decrease) causing some appreciation (less than the initial depreciation). At the new equilibrium the exchange rate is more depreciated than at the original equilibrium, but because of the short run rigidity of prices, the exchange rate overshoots its equilibrium value in the short-run. The point was that even if markets were efficient, in the sense that with price flexibility they tend to full employment and to the equilibrium exchange rate (PPP), the use of the exchange rate to deal with shocks might lead to excessive volatility.

There are many problems with the long run MF model (meaning the one solved in the S-P space). The obvious one is the notion that price flexibility leads to full employment, something that Keynes long ago suggested was NOT the case. Although Keynes was aware of the possibility of the system returning to full employment with price flexibility, he suggested that if lower prices had a negative impact on firms that are indebted, then investment would fall. In his own words: "indeed if the fall of wages and prices goes far, the embarrassment of those entrepreneurs who are heavily indebted may soon reach the point of insolvency, — with severely adverse effects on investment." In other words, with price flexibility the IS shifts back, and there is no tendency to full employment. That means that one should stick with the solution of the model in S-Y space, if one wants to introduce the open economy (one such model, without full employment and many other mainstream characteristics is available here).

Alternative (classical-Keynesian, post-Keynesian or whatever you prefer to call them) models would not only emphasize the role of quantity adjustments, but also the the sustainability of the current account (CA), rather than fiscal deficits in the explanation of currency crises. While conventional currency crises models of all generations (including the more heterogeneous 3rd generation models) suggest that at the heart of currency crisis there is a fiscal crisis, post-Keynesians emphasize terms of trade shocks and hikes to foreign rates of interest, highlighting the role of the balance of payments constraint in currency crises. Note that the economy in this view is not at full employment, and, hence the effect of fiscal expansions is not on prices, but on the level of activity. Higher level of income leads to increasing imports and a deteriorating CA. It’s the deteriorating CA and not the fiscal deficits that matter and the CA position might worsen even if the fiscal accounts are balanced. Further, after a currency crisis the central bank hikes the rate of interest, increasing the costs of debt-servicing, and, hence, government spending, at the same time that the recession reduces the revenue, leading to a weakening of the fiscal accounts. In this case, it is the external currency crisis that causes the domestic fiscal crisis. Causality is reversed. My two cents.

* Later models, like Obstfeld's, shown that if the costs of defending the parity are high, for example because in order to preclude the loss of reserves associated with a currency attack, the central bank hikes the rate of interest and pushes the economy into a recession, then there is a chance that self-fulfilling speculation might lead to a crisis.

** The IS curve would be positively sloped and steeper than a 45o line, since depreciation creates excess demand in the goods market. To restore equilibrium, domestic prices would have to increase, though proportionately less, since an increase in domestic prices affects aggregate demand, both via the relative price effect and via higher interest rates.

PS: I had posted before on my course here, were there is a link to Serrano and Summa's critique of the MF model.

Art Laffer: "I Was Wrong About Inflation." No Kidding!

Arthur Laffer said that: "Usually when you find the model this far off, you've probably got something wrong with the model, not that the world has changed... inflation does not appear to be monetary base driven." For the whole story go here.

PS: For an heterodox analysis of money and inflation, see here.