Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Not really

Barry Eichengreenb is going string pushing at Project Syndicate.

The Policy Debate Europe Needs
The solution to this conundrum suggested by ECB President Christine Lagarde is greater reliance on fiscal policy. By purchasing government bonds bearing negative interest rates, investors are literally begging European governments to borrow. So long as growth rates remain stuck at low levels because of anemic private spending, a bit of additional public spending is just what the doctor ordered. If the economy nonetheless sinks into recession, fiscal stimulus can be ramped up still further.
The issue in France is pension payouts, they are having nationwide strikes over he issue.  That is a generational transfer issue and there will be no fiscal stimulus in France until it is solved.  That would be a ditto for Greece and Italy.

Adjusting the generational overlap won't happen with fiscal stimulus on the docket,  and that overlap function will be as neutral as possible, if it is to become law. France, for example, should expect a full year devoted to negotiations on the issue, in seriousness. Otherwise their 1.5% growth cannot continue as transportation networks shut.  Germany is no self stimulating and they are just above zero growth.  And illusionary free money in Italy just results in chaos to their political system, a fight between who gets the money now.

 In Britain one might make the case that Brexit need be funded temporarily on debt. That is a restructuring, a bet they are taking on the future.  It must be assumed a positive stimulus by their proportional democracy, so they can borrow to cover restructuring costs.

We do not string push in the sandbox, we close the loops that string pushers create. Instead sandboxers find the congestion points and reconstruct and effective trading pit for the model. Europe is stuck, congested in the middle of generation overlap and that will take precedence. They are doing what Simon Wren suggests, engaging in generational overlap, it is an active verb. String pushing is being crowded out.

Get the order of things.  The next generation does not pay the debt bill years away, they pay it the day after the generations overlap, the day the new pension formula is passed into law. Overlap is both a verb and an event, years to negotiate, then suddenly agreement,, payments start tomorrow at noon. That is not stimulus.

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