But there is another way to think about the relationship between fiscal and monetary affairs. When governments run deficits, they can be paid for three ways. First, the debt can be rolled over via additional borrowing. Second, it can be amortized (paid down through tax surpluses). Third, it can be inflated away. This last one is clearly relevant to monetary policy. If fiscal authorities can pressure monetary authorities for favorable policy, the monetary authorities can run the printing presses to erode the real value of the debt.
In this post Alexander W. Salter first debunks the Keynes hydraulic theory. Then he goes on to construct the monetarist theory, whatever that is.
The mistake is assuming we are all trapped with Fed banking, we are not. Home production, gold, shadow banking and Fintech all compete with the Fed's regulated banking. In times of fiscal expansion, the central bank has little measure of its market size, and that fouls all the equations.
He ends with this:
Ultimately it is an empirical question how monetary policy makers respond to fiscal conditions. Given that the era of perpetual trillion-dollar deficits is just over the horizon, however, it seems we will soon have an interesting test case. The economics of politics suggests it is Pollyannaish to assume these difficulties will be navigated in a way that is both economically sound and politically palatable.He means we are too stupid to do a better Nixon Shock. That maybe true of his klan and the central bankers, but in the Sandbox we know how to engineer government defaults, we be good at the theory. The defaults will be much less volatile than we imagine.
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