In his recent Spectator Australia article, Darren Brady Nelson argues for a radical, not a reserved review of Australia’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), which he describes as reckless. In Economics Explored episode 179, Darren provides an Austrian economics perspective on central banks, fiat money, and inflation. Show host Gene Tunny wraps up the episode with a discussion of the historical evidence on different monetary systems and inflation, evidence which confirms economies with fiat money are much more inflation prone. Gene then discusses whether a return to the gold standard would be desirable.
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What’s covered in EP179
- Darren’s thoughts on the current review of the Reserve Bank of Australia [1:46]
- How the RBA interprets the stability of the currency objective [6:54]
- What is the Austrian School? [10:19]
- Would the Austrians recommend abolishing the central bank? [21:08]
- The Bank of England’s report on modern banking [25:54]
- The need for a broader review of the Reserve Bank of Australia [30:35]
- Fiat money systems are much more prone to inflation than commodity money systems [34:20]
Links relevant to the conversation
Darren’s bio on the Economics Explored website:
https://economicsexplored.com/regular-guests/
Darren’s opinion piece on the Spectator Australia website:
The RBA (reckless bank of Australia) needs a radical, not reserved, review
Bank of England paper on money creation:
Money creation in the modern economy | Bank of England
Minneapolis Fed paper on fiat money, commodity money, and inflation:
Minority report of the Gold Commission, co-authored by Ron Paul:
The Case for Gold: Minority Report of the US Gold Commission 1982
Alan Greenspan’s autobiography discusses his advice to President Reagan regarding gold:
Another great book on Greenspan which discusses Friedman’s views too:
The Man who Knew: The LIfe & Times of Alan Greenspan*
*You can help support the show by buying a copy of either book via the links above.
Transcript: Why fiat money means higher inflation & why a radical Reserve Bank review is needed w/ Darren Brady Nelson – EP179
N.B. This is a lightly edited version of a transcript originally created using the AI application otter.ai. It may not be 100 percent accurate, but should be pretty close. If you’d like to quote from it, please check the quoted segment in the recording.
Gene Tunny 00:06
Welcome to the Economics Explored podcast, a frank and fearless exploration of important economic issues. I’m your host gene Tunny. I’m a professional economist and former Australian Treasury official. The aim of this show is to help you better understand the big economic issues affecting all our lives. We do this by considering the theory evidence and by hearing a wide range of views. I’m delighted that you can join me for this episode, please check out the show notes for relevant information. Now on to the show. Hello, thanks for tuning in to the show. This is episode 179. In this episode, I chat with my old friend Darren Brady Nelson about his recent spectator Australia opinion piece on the Reserve Bank of Australia. Darren’s piece is titled The RBA reckless Bank of Australia needs a radical not reserved for review. Although Darren’s article focuses on Australia’s Central Bank, the issue is considered irrelevant to central banks around the world such as the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England. Before we get into it, I should note that Darren is coming from a non mainstream school of thought known as Austrian economics. While it’s outside of mainstream economic thinking, I think the Austrian perspective is valuable. Nonetheless, it’s forced me to confront some of the things I take for granted about the modern mixed economy, such as fiat money and the existence of a central bank at all. I’ve had to think more deeply about whether they make sense. Please stick around to the end for some additional thoughts from me. Okay, let’s get into the episode. Darren Brady Nelson, welcome back to the show.
Darren Brady Nelson 01:46
Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a while now actually.
Gene Tunny 01:48
It has Yes, I’ve given you a breakdown. And I’ve tried to get here a broad range of guests on the show. But yes, sir. Good to have you back on the show to chat about some recent work that you’ve done. So work in both public finance or fiscal policy, you could say, and monetary policy. Darren, so we’ve got a monetary policy review in Australia at the moment, and you’ve written a piece on the monetary policy review. And could you just tell us what your thoughts are on that review, please?
Darren Brady Nelson 02:21
Well, look, just to step back slightly from that, you know, I’ve kind of been disappointed over, you know, probably the course of a decade or something like that, that, you know, obviously, it’s good to have a variety of different takes on things like the Reserve Bank are obviously, you know, this review, that’s, you know, nearing the end, I believe the reporting to government next month. But, you know, there’s, there’s this never been, you know, look, I’d love to see kind of more of an Austrian take on things, at least once in a while in the Australian media, or even in Australian think tanks. To tell you the truth, I’d settle for a bit of a Chicago take on things and you just don’t get really neither of those takes for the most part, certainly not in the media. You know, look, I’ve never had a chance to read our friend, Tony, Megan’s take on the Reserve Bank. I know, he wrote an article for spectator, just like the article I’ve just written is meant to be published soon by the spectator, Australia. So I’m not sure his his exact take, and maybe you can tell me if you’ve read his article, I’m not sure, Gene, if you can give a little bit of overview of what how he viewed things, but so I just wanted to kind of bring a little bit of a, you know, an Austrian, take two things, in terms of, you know, linking sort of, you know, the Reserve Bank, the money supply and inflation, in a nutshell. And also, I found that people often didn’t kind of step back. And they, they vaguely mentioned what the Reserve Bank is supposed to do, and kind of leave it at that just kind of go into in to have a very different take than what I wanted to give. So, as not only an economist, but also a former law student, I also wanted to kind of start out and go, Hey, this is, you know, this is what, you know, the legislation says, for instance, about the Reserve Bank, and what they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, and then kind of jump in to, you know, like I said, sort of an Austrian economics take on things and, and also kind of stir the hornet’s nest a little bit, you know, by using a little bit of satire at the beginning and at the end of the article.
Gene Tunny 04:29
Right, okay, so yeah, we might get into a few of those things. So what does the law say? What, what does the what was your analysis of the, of the legal underpinnings or what they’re supposed to do under the is it the Reserve Bank act?
Darren Brady Nelson 04:45
Yeah, I mean, some people really just don’t understand what it is, you know, exactly, you know, sort of made that clear this, this is a central bank, you know, they, they basically have a monopoly control over currency in Australia. And you know, people kind of vaguely maybe understand that, but just to make that kind of really clear, you know, this is what it is. It has some other roles, of course, it has, you know, kind of these other banking, regulatory functions, but they really, you know, those are really to support the main goal, which is, obviously, Reserve Bank’s not unusual, it’s a central bank, very similar to the other central banks around the world, like the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve. But just to remind people, Hey, this is, you know, this is a government entity, it has a monopoly on on money, essentially, but at the same time, it’s required to do, you know, in that context, it’s, it has, you know, some of these broader sort of things, it’s three main things, you know, where it goes under Section 10, A, the stability of the currency, the maintenance of full employment, very, you know, 1940s 50s sort of thing that was thrown in, because the, you know, the Reserve Bank act is from 1959. So, you know, very Keynesian sort of thing there. And the other one kind of, you know, somewhat more vaguely, but, you know, still important, obviously, the economic prosperity and welfare, the people of Australia. Now, you know, look, there’s only so much you can say, in an in an article, even though my article is a bit longer than your average op ed, if you like, but there’s even within that there’s so much you could say, and I couldn’t say, but, you know, obviously like to say the audience, I think they got some issues, because these things conflict, or, you know, you can interpret these things and quite different ways. You know, clearly, I think, you know, I would argue, and I do to some extent, at least I think in my piece is, you know, certainly printing the sort of amounts of money that they have, and not just not just recently, and not just since COVID, but actually over a much longer period of time. is, you know, quick, you know, I would question that that really helps the stability of the currency. You know, that seems to me to be at least something questionable. I think it harms the stability of the currency, but I think it’s at least questionable. It also argued that it actually helps out the other two, I don’t think it may help with statistical, full employment. But does it really help with economically efficient, full employment, much less, you know, actual economic prosperity and welfare? Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.
Gene Tunny 07:19
I was just thinking it was an interesting point you made about stability, the currency. And you don’t think that the growth of the money supply we’ve seen that the RBA has overseen is consistent with stability of the currency, they have essentially redefined stability of the currency, they now we now define stability, the currency is not zero inflation, we define it as a two to 3% inflation on average over the economic cycle. So we’ve accepted a certain, a small well – I won’t make any judgement a lower than average historical average rate of inflation as the target. That’s what they’re going for. And over the last 30 years, they would argue that they’ve achieved that. And it’s much better than the performance in the post war period prior to that. So they would argue that they’ve done a good job at achieving stability of the currency in that regard. But yeah, it just occurred to me that when you said that that’s in the Reserve Bank act, that they’ve redefined what stability actually means, in turn, using that inflation target.
Darren Brady Nelson 08:24
Yeah, look, I mean, it’s fairly easy to pull up what, for instance, CPI looks like, and it’s an, even though CPI is only accounting for, you know, something like 40% of the economy, and we, you know, it’s a big chunk of the economy, but people have this impression that accounts for 100% of the economy or something like that. So even in that context, it’s not a pretty picture, you know, and we’re not talking about just like, oh, for a quarter or two, or for a year or two, we’re talking over, you know, quite long, you know, timeframes, you know, we’re talking from the basically the 1970s, with some flattening out, I would argue, do some pretty good counter reforms, if you like more that counter reforms that, you know, reforms that, you know, would counter some of the bad effects of, of just, you know, kind of having fairly loose monetary policy. And that not equally loose throughout that whole period of time. But, you know, it’s really, really hasn’t had a Volcker, for instance, you know, that I’m aware of, in the same sort of timeframe that, you know, since Volcker appeared on the scene in the late 70s, and has since left it. So putting aside, you know, again, my pieces and obviously, to go, so, do some technical thing to go like, Well, did they meet their own sort of technical requirements, and then just criticise them that way? Because there’s plenty of articles like that. You know, my aim was to point to the broader thing that just looks money like this. And if you look, I mean, CPI doesn’t look good over time. But if you start looking at money supply, whichever one you want to pick, it’s not a pretty picture.
Gene Tunny 10:00
right. Okay, so can I ask what do you mean by an Austrian Economics take?
Darren Brady Nelson 10:05
Yeah, look at that. So for those who don’t know, Austrian Economics is, I mean, I mean, a lot of people even economist for some reason don’t fully are aware that there’s actually different schools of thought, quite a few different schools of thought. And one of them is the Austrian School. It started with Karl Menger, in the sort of mid to late 1800s. He’s also, you know, attributed along with a couple other economists is kind of starting the marginal revolution as well. In the end, they call it Austrian School, basically, because he is actually from Austria. And then some of the other sort of people who followed him like Bomba Virk, Mises, Hayek, etc, they were also literally from the country of Austria. So I guess that stuck, obviously, is the name of the school of thought. I mean, I mean, the very free market, I argue that the there’s certainly the most free market oriented, I’d argue that they’re not the most free market oriented because they have an ideological stance. So you can always say that, you know, certainly, like someone like Mises, certainly, you know, went to great pains to go like, this is what I think the logic and even the data, even though they’re not sort of like the, they’re not, they use data, they’re not they don’t think data, without theory tells you anything, but they would argue that, you know, they take a scientific approach to things like, you know, like other schools of thought would also argue, and, you know, they have very, they, they have the most comprehensive take on understanding money, basically, including, you know, I mentioned Bomba Virg actually Menger even before that, that even from the start Menger Bomba, Varick and Mises were, were and still are kind of, you know, the greatest thinkers on money. Some may argue that you could put Keynes in that category, you know, that was one of his, you know, one of his big sort of focuses prior to him writing the general theory. But, you know, the Austrians certainly have a lot to say, and I think, a lot of credible things to say, with the, you know, you ultimately agree with them or not, you know, I just want to get those kinds of ideas, you know, out there in the Australian public.
Gene Tunny 12:20
Okay, and what are those ideas, Darren, and how are they relevant to the RBI review?
Darren Brady Nelson 12:25
Well, look, I mean, in a nutshell, and, you know, I’ve used this quote, a million times, it seems, you know, using Milton Friedman, who’s not Austrian, but Chicago School, who him and Anna Schwartz, you know, sort of took a an empirical approach if you like, I mean, I don’t think you’re setting out to, if you, like, test the theories of Mises, and people like that as such, but they confirm that, you know, inflation, it’s a monetary phenomenon. And it’s always in, at least in practice, you know, you know, maybe the Chicago school don’t necessarily agree that in theory, things like central banks, are really the root cause of inflation. They certainly agree that in practice, that’s what actually happened in history. So but the Austrians, like I said, they go, they go one step further, they go in great detail, to set out the case of why central banks are at the centre of, of why we have ongoing inflation. And the only way you’ll ever solve the inflation problem is to do something about central banks, and they would argue you have to do something stronger than just holding them within certain bounds. As you know, the Chicago school would argue,
Gene Tunny 13:38
Rod, okay, and I mean, fiat money is relevant to isn’t it? So you’re yes, you’re saying the the issue is that you’ve got a central bank that has the monopoly on fiat money, the monopoly control of the currency, which is fiat money, and they can just print it, they can create it out of thin air. And we saw that during the pandemic in Australia, when they finally the RBA, finally engaged in quantitative easing, the Federal Reserve had done it previously, the Bank of Japan and Bank of England and ECB, but we hadn’t actually gone that we hadn’t taken that step yet. But we did during the pandemic,
Darren Brady Nelson 14:15
well, the Austrians were there to drag, you know, central banks always are involved in a process and printing money out of nothing. Now, quantitative easing, took it to new levels, makes the new mechanisms, new levels, and then obviously, modern monetary theory sort of opens the floodgates to go further than, you know, quantitative easing, but if you like allow within that sort of framework of thinking, and we may get onto this later on, but, you know, the Bank of England produced a couple, you know, excellent papers that an Austrian or a neoclassical or a Keynesian or Chicago can all appreciate. It takes something out of just like, you know, just clearly setting out how does the central bank work, but also You know, just as importantly, how does the banking system more broadly, in cooperation, if you like, with the central banks operate, you know, How is money created? I mean, I think the, the title of the paper is money creation in the modern economy, you know, that sets it out quite nicely, they have a different view of that, the course they don’t think that’s an issue as such, you know, it provided obviously, or you stay within certain bounds and all that type of thing. But it does set out the fact that, you know, money is being created from nothing, which is quite a different system, to what, you know, say, for instance, the gold standard, you know, the classical gold standard with all its whatever foibles it had, because Austrians would argue that there could have been a better gold standard, but fine, there was a gold standard, and even central banks. Were part of that system previously, if you like, and the Bank of England also nicely sets that out that history as well. Yeah. So basically, again, coming back, you know, the Reserve Bank’s not any different from the Bank of England Federal Reserve, largely speaking, I mean, there are differences, you know, obviously, you know, the Federal Reserve, obviously, they’re different sized economies, different sides, sizes of the Australian dollar, the US dollar being traded around the world, obviously, the US dollar is special in the sense that it’s still the reserve currency for the world. So you know, their, their prolific money printing, they can get away with it a lot better than, you know, a smaller economy or economies, it’s not the reserve currency of the world, you can get away with Australia being does punch above its weight, and its currency is traded a lot more than you would expect for a small country. Because of you know, obviously, Australia is a big player in commodities, for instance. And that kind of part of the reason is, Australia, punches above its weight if you like.
Gene Tunny 16:45
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Gene Tunny 17:20
Now back to the show. Now I’m just on the what the RBA review is doing it’s it has rather than a narrower terms of reference is looking at the monetary policy framework inflation targeting is looking at the governance the board, whether we have a separate Monetary Policy Committee, I think that’ll end up being one of the recommendations. And the way that John Humphrys described it to me on his Australian taxpayers Alliance live stream, he just said, Well, look, there’s an Overton window of what it’s going to look at, right? I mean, there’s things that are in the Overton Window, there’s things that are outside, and I think you are advocating that they should they should go outside of that window, they should go outside of what’s conventional and actually think about the role of the the RBA as a central bank, is that the type of thing we need? Is that working for us? Or Are there alternative approaches? Is that what you’re you’re arguing? Darren?
Darren Brady Nelson 18:18
Yeah, look, I think I’ve I pull out some recommendations I did. When for Liberty works at the request of Senator Malcolm Roberts, you know, did a submission to his rural banking inquiry, because he wanted to get on the record. And so did I just kind of some of these broader issues of monetary policy and how they do impact the kind of the more narrow review that he was doing at the time. And, yeah, basically suggests, you know, kind of a three pronged approach, you know, sort of, in a shorter term, doing something, you know, a bit broader than what this current review is doing, but nothing, you know, something that might still be within the Overton Window, as you say, and then, you know, what I’m suggesting over the medium term in the longer term are certainly things that, you know, I guess the average policy person, monetary policy person would think, would be outside the Overton Window, like, you know, the Overton window. It’s a good thing to understand in terms of what is, but it can be a very big obstacle to what should be, but because, because I can point to, you know, the reforms, the Hocking Kingdom reforms of the 19, mid 1980s were, you know, not particularly within the Overton Window, national competition policy when it came along in the early 1990s. Not quite in the Overton window. There’s been a lot of good reforms that that are not in the Overton window. Obviously, you know, there’s obviously a politics involved and making sure that even though it’s not quite the Overton window that you know, you don’t scare the horses too much. And people who who’ve been pushing things In the direction of more and more government interference in the economy, including if you like the more draconian stuff, you know, the the over the top lockdowns, the the censorship, all these sorts of things. Putting aside the fact that no a lot of censorship are done by private companies, but they’re done by the best of government, they’re done by the best of government, if you don’t do it, you know, there’ll be trouble for you, private company. So, you know, it’s it’s certainly not, I don’t think, you know, the libertarians have suggested that, so it’s private property, so doesn’t matter. That’s not right. So, you know, people on the left, in a nutshell, don’t care, a rat’s butt about the Overton window for the most part. They keep on plugging away. And they are largely winning. So which is why I wanted to point out some of these reforms, if you like, went more in the direction of the right centre, right, for instance, including, you know, a Labour Government and including, you know, some liberal governments in the past, things can be done. So the Overton window, you got to be aware of it, you got to understand it. And it’s something you need to deal with, but it shouldn’t be something that just stops you from doing
Gene Tunny 21:08
something. Right. And so what would, what would the Austrians recommend abolition of the central bank? I mean, what would happen? What would you recommend?
Darren Brady Nelson 21:18
But look, you know, look, the Austrians there’s quite a variety of views, even within the look, you know, there’s sort of a high IQ, sort of, like competing currency approach, there’s the Roth bar, it’s more, let’s do a new and improved version of the gold standard, if you like, obviously, these things are digitised. No one’s ever suggesting that, you know, that we carry hunks of gold. That’s fine. If you want to carry hunks of gold with you. You know, it’s probably not going to be a huge market for that. That’s going to be but I mean, they recognise that centuries ago anyway. So like, you know, the gold standard, really, there were people running around with bits of gold with them all the time that that was never the case. You know, because the goldsmith’s figured it out before the official gold standard came around today, certificates, it seemed to be a little bit more convenient, you know, which that’s where actually money came from your paper money, I should say, sorry, paper came from from those certificates. So have John freeze. It, he always has a bee in his bonnet about Murray Rothbard. In particular, his argument that he considers, you know, today’s system of fractional reserve banking to be fraud. You know, from a, from a common law perspective, you know, is that Rothbard is arguing literally, in the laws on the books, that it’s actually fraud. He’s saying, under common law, this would be considered fraud. Yeah, okay, maybe, maybe not. But certainly the market would allow a whole lot of fractional reserve banking, I’m sure there won’t be like a one to one alignment all the time, you know, between, you know, reserves and loans and all that sort of stuff, that’s fine. But there wouldn’t be such a huge disconnect that we have, you know, we’re talking 90% and above disconnect between, you know, safe savings and what’s being lent out, getting back to sort of Rothbard is not given sort of credit for being more practical than he was. Yeah, he goes like, here’s the ideal I want. Yeah, you get rid of central banks, and fractional reserve banking. But any little step in that direction, could be pain. How about is a start? What’s just what’s just audit this thing? And, you know, like they talked about in the US sometimes, so let’s just audit the Federal Reserve. Yeah. What are they up to? How do they do things, but the public know, this is what it is, you know, are you happy with this? Is this make sense? You know, yeah. Do you? Are you happy with the consequent the inflationary consequences? Are you happy with the fact that I mean, this thing is very inexorable. You know, like, it causes the booms and busts as well, at least from an Austrian perspective, because inflation and bubbles, it’s the same thing. Inflation doesn’t uniformly happen. It goes, it ends up in asset bubbles, it goes over here, it goes over there. Some people can make a killing out of really not being very good at what they do. They just, they’re just in the right place at the right time. Now, we’re not talking about discouraging proper entrepreneurialism, sometimes, you know, this is kind of like, you know, sort of not very good, sloppy, property oriented sort of entrepreneurialism. And there’s a lot of it, there’s a lot just, it’s a lot of just kind of transfers from, from the poor to the rich. I mean, let’s just get that all out there and report, I’ll be happy with multiple views, you know, red versus blue type of project, Hey, what are the Keynesian think of this, you know, what are the Austrians think of this, whether neoclassical think of this, you know, you know, get it all out there. And, you know, just make it more transparent would be a great start, rather than this kind of, you know, tweaking at the edges. There’s basically a lot of people in political and business power, who, who obviously liked the system as it is,
Gene Tunny 24:55
or they or they don’t want to, I mean, yeah, they haven’t really thought too deeply about Got it? Yeah, they don’t want to rock the boat too much, perhaps. I think we might have to come back to Rothbard views. That sounds interesting. And because it’s probably we probably don’t have enough time to go into it now. That yeah, I think it’d be worth coming back to that. Because yeah, I’m all for a more wider ranging review. I think it’d be fascinating. I think we chatted about this last time we caught up, but we hadn’t seen the terms of reference yet to the review. And I think you’ve predicted that it’d be quite narrow. And it’d be very, you’d get standard sort of mainstream economists on it as we ended up doing, as we ended up doing. I’m not critical of any of them. I think. But yeah, they could have had a broader terms of reference. For sure.
Darren Brady Nelson 25:44
Just one thing to say that the Rothbard you know, some people go look here, you’re kind of in your libertarian utopia, you don’t understand how the system works. He wrote the very best book on how banking works. modern banking, what’s the book called modern banking, is it? No, it’s called the mystery of banking, the mystery of banking. Okay. It’s in great detail exactly how so it’s basically the Bank of England, you know, they they don’t refer to the mystery of banking, they, but they did a very good job of doing something smaller. Got some really good graphics, you know, in the Bank of England report bits, they’re very much aligned. They just have different conclusions. You know, obviously, they don’t come to the same conclusion that Rothbard does.
Gene Tunny 26:26
Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s the article where they describe how the banks essentially, they’re at the vanguard of creating money, or they’re the, the money supply is endogenous to an extent, because the banks are extending credit. And when they’re extending more new loans and paid back then that’s an expansion of the monetary money supply. Now, the central banks involved, the central bank can influence the money supply. But the banks are heavily in the private banks are heavily involved in it. And I think that’s what they’re arguing with they it’s that endogenous view of the money supply. And yeah, I think it is worth reading. What What was the main takeaway for you out of it, Darren, what the Bank of England wrote, I’m just trying to remember what they what was in those articles.
Darren Brady Nelson 27:16
The main takeaway wasn’t like, wow, I’m surprised. This is how they do it. My main takeaway was, Wow, I’m surprised he said it. And I guess another WoW is Wow, thank you. That’s, you know, they explained it really well. It was a really clear, I mean, rock bards. Book mystery. bankings really big, you know. So, you know, it’s, it’s a tome, it’s huge. So, you know, the Bank of England’s report has both an introduction, if you don’t want to redeem read the more detailed report, but even the more detailed report is nowhere near the size of the mystery of banking, but they’re all saying the same thing in terms of like, describing the process, right. You know, you know, what is central banks do what do the commercial banks to? I mean, so basically, the thing, you know, when right away when someone gets gets a loan, that’s money already. So you’ve just increased the money supply right there. Yeah. They don’t need things to happen. It’s right there. They whack it in your bank account. Obviously, people do all sorts of different things with that. Yeah. But yeah, the right there. So there is one thing I must admit, I figured, you know, fractional reserve banking, or those banks creating money, I knew that I was, you know, over time, I was trying to understand that they were actually printing most of the money. It wasn’t the central banks themselves. But when I saw when I saw the Bank of England, I didn’t realise the percentage was quite as big as it is. They said, 97% 97% of all money. Yeah, in the UK. And it wouldn’t be very different from you know, going to any Western country, it’s probably all gonna be the 90s to some extent, was this, you know,
Gene Tunny 28:54
they actually used the term fountain pen money. Yeah. Okay. So I guess I was even surprised at the size. Right. Yeah. Okay. And so you see that as a, as a confession or just acknowledgement of the Bank of England by the Bank of England of, of how the money supply can grow. And in you’re taking from that, that the system that we have naturally leads to expansion of the money supply into inflation. Is that what you’re inferring? From that, Darren?
Darren Brady Nelson 29:27
Yeah, but basically, it’s, it’s that it’s even more than that. It is literally inflation. But, but obviously, there’s certain levels of inflation, the other can be vary quite a bit. I think it incentivizes, you know, high inflation or certainly, it’s certainly incentivize booms and busts. Yeah, I wouldn’t say necessarily there was a confession or anything like that, but they do actually, early on in the report. Take the method that I certainly read in my economic textbooks, you know, that basically banks are just purely these intermediaries who get savings and then lend them out. Obviously take a little bit of a cut. Okay, fine. That’s, that’s, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that as a business. Yeah. They basically knock that on the head. Yeah. But interestingly enough, they don’t do it in a way that they say this is bad. But for me, I read it and go, you know, because of my kind of Austrian take on things I go, Well, that’s not good. You know, they’re just kind of, they’re just saying, This is what it is basically, it’s not this. They’re not just simply intermediaries. This is what these banks are. And this is how we, as a central bank, interact with those banks. Again, I think any any economist of any school of thought would find it, you know, an informative paper.
Gene Tunny 30:42
Oh, absolutely. I’ve talked about it on the show before I’ll put some links in the show notes. I think it’s good paper. And yeah, I’ll link to your spectator article. Once it’s out. Gee, Darren, there’s so much to talk about. Really appreciate your time, we dealt with some big issues, and we’ve still got more to talk about. Certainly, I want to come back to Rothbard. Yeah, that’s, uh, I’ll have to have a read of his of his book, and mystery of banking. And, yeah, I really appreciate your time. So thanks once more for coming on to the show.
Darren Brady Nelson 31:15
Thank you for having me.
Gene Tunny 31:26
Okay, I hope you found that informative, and enjoyable. I welcome Darren’s call for a broader review of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Given the importance of the Reserve Bank in the economy, we should be thinking about what presuppositions were making about the bank, and we should subject them to critical thought. The current review of the bank appears to take for granted that the reserve bank should continue as an entity and it should retain its extensive powers under the Reserve Bank Act. The review focuses on the appropriateness of the inflation targeting regime and the governance of the bank, but it should be much broader. The reviews Terms of Reference noted explicitly that the review will exclude the RBS payments, financial infrastructure, banking and bank note functions. Arguably, it would have been desirable to review even these functions of the RBA. So I think Darren is on the right track here. Even if I disagree with him over what a broader review would recommend. There are at least two big related questions that a wider review would consider. First, do we need a central bank? That is Do we need a government owned or authorised bank which acts as a bank for other banks and is ultimately responsible for the currency. Secondly, would commodity backed money where money is convertible to gold at a fixed rate? Would that be preferable to fiat money, where money is decreed to be the legal tender of the land by the government and the money supply is the responsibility of the central bank. In a Wi Fi at money presupposes a central bank or an arm of government such as the Treasury which effectively acts as a bank. But a central bank can exist in a commodity money system too, and indeed several such as the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve. They did exist during the years in which the gold standard was in place or some of the years in which the gold standard was in place. A central bank can perform an important role regardless of the monetary standard in place. As the 19th century British polymath Walter Badgett illustrated in Lombard Street, a central bank and perform an important role by acting as a lender of last resort. That is lending to banks when they temporarily get into trouble. And, you know, saving those banks from collapsing and causing lots of hardship. My view is that a central bank is an indispensable part and an unavoidable part of a modern economy. Regarding the second big question, I wouldn’t recommend a return to commodity money by say reintroducing the gold standard. But I will concede that advocates of a gold standard have some good arguments on their side. These arguments are even more appealing in times of high inflation such as the time we’re now living in. Most importantly, in my view, it is clear that fiat money systems are much more prone to inflation, then commodity money systems. A 1998 study by economists at the Minneapolis Fed found that the average inflation rate for the Fed standard observations so this is observations and the data set they’re analysing the average inflation rate for the Fed standard observations is 9.17% per year. The average inflation rate for the commodity standard observations is 1.75%. That’s a big difference. The data set they use contain data on 15 countries including In the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, among others. Every country in the data set had a higher rate of inflation under a feared standard than a commodity standard. What’s going on is that obviously, there are physical constraints on the amount of commodity money available. It’s limited by the rate at which it can be discovered dug up and produced. Under a feared standard, new money is virtually costless to produce. As Darren and I discussed, the central bank and commercial banks are both involved in new money creation. And it’s possible for the money supply to expand faster than the productive capacity of the economy, leading to inflation, there can be too much money chasing too few goods. This is not to say that you can’t have inflation in a commodity money system. For example, there was prolonged inflation in Spain in in the UK in the 16th and 17th centuries, due to new silver mining and Mexico and Peru following European conquest. Still, as the Minneapolis Fed economists point out the average inflation rates over the period in these countries, it was only around one to 1.2% over 100 to 150 years. That’s one to 1.2% per annum. I’ll link to that study in the show notes so you can check it out. To me, it really clearly shows that fiat money systems are much more prone to inflation and you end up with inflation at higher rates than under a commodity money system. While a commodity standard would yield better inflation outcomes and a feared standard, it would be very difficult to return to say the gold standard. US President Reagan appointed a Gold Commission in 1981. To consider whether the US should return to the gold standard. The majority of the commission rejected such a move, and prominent economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, they advised Reagan against the return to gold. GREENSPAN did, however, suggest issuing some US Treasury bonds backed by gold, something which would provide some fiscal disciplined. He did not, however, advocate a full return to the gold standard. GREENSPAN thought that a return to the gold standard would be impractical given the nature of the modern economy with a large role for government and a welfare state. A gold standard requires fiscal discipline for several reasons, which I might have to cover in a bonus episode. One of these reasons is that under a gold standard, a government can’t rely on future inflation to erode the real value of the debt it owes. In his 2007 autobiography, The Age of turbulence, Greenspan wrote the following. I have always harboured a nostalgia for the gold standards inherent price stability, a stable currency was its primary goal. But I’ve long since acquiesced in the fact that the gold standard does not readily accommodate the widely accepted current view of the appropriate functions of government. In particular, the need for government to provide a social safety net. The propensity of Congress to create benefits for constituents without specifying the means by which they are to be funded, has led to deficit spending in every fiscal year since 1970. With the exception of the surpluses of 1998 to 2001, generated by the stock market boom. The shifting of real resources required to perform such functions has imparted a bias toward inflation. In the political arena, the pressure to make low interest rate credit generally available, and to use fiscal measures to boost employment and to avoid the unpleasantness of downward adjustments in nominal wages and prices has become nearly impossible to resist. For the most part, the American people have tolerated the inflation bias as an acceptable cost of the modern welfare state. There is no support for the gold standard today, and I see no likelihood of its return. Austrian economists would say that Greenspan gave into big government into inflation, and there may be some truth in that. But Greenspan’s position is entirely pragmatic. I’ll put some links in the show notes so you can learn more about this fascinating episode of the Gold Commission, and about Friedman’s and Greenspan’s advice to Reagan. I’ll also add a link to the minority report of the Commission which recommended a return to the gold standard. It was co authored by Ron Paul, the noted libertarian politician. I’ll leave it there for now, but I recognise there are several aspects of monetary economics that I need to explore and explain some more. I think the process of money creation and how the central bank can influence the money supply would be good to go over in some depth, as it’s challenging to understand. My conversation with Darren also reminded me that it would be good to look at how we ended up with inflation. targeting in the first place? Why do we think it’s sensible to have a two to 3% inflation target rather than a zero target? I hope you’ll forgive me if I leave these questions to a future episode. Among other topics in coming episodes, I’ll have a closer look at the growing US China tensions and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. geopolitics obviously can have a big impact on economy, so I think it’s important that I cover it on this show. If there are topics you’d like me to cover in future episodes, please let me know. As always, feel free to email me at contact at economics explored.com Thanks for listening. rato thanks for listening to this episode of economics explored. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. You can send me an email via contact at economicsexplored.com or a voicemail via SpeakPipe. You can find the link in the show notes. If you’ve enjoyed the show, I’d be grateful if you could tell anyone you think would be interested about it. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learn about the show. Finally, if your podcasting app lets you then please write a review and leave a rating. Thanks for listening. I hope you can join me again next week.
41:26
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Credits
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