[RobertoG]

We look down mainstream economists (macro) because their level of knowledge is more similar to alchemy than to physics, and because they never change their theories never mind what happens in the real world.

For instance (and there are more examples), here(1) is an explanation of how commercial bank loan funds. This explanation comes from the Bank of England, who, I suppose, know a few things about the subject. This explanation, of how reality works, have nothing to do with what a mainstream macroeconomics book explain. How is that possible?

Can you find some physics book that explain something that the engineers say it's not true?

My personal opinion is that, at the end of the day, the problem is that economics is a political subject. Maybe the only political subject that matters, because it's about who does the work and who keep the results. So, it's not incompetence what we are dealing here, but too many different interests trying to control the narrative.

(1). https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2015/banks-are...

[notahacker]

Posts like this support nabla9's point. Contrary to the straw men MMT economists like to draw in their blogs, the majority of modern macroeconomists neither disagree with the Bank of England's explanation of how commercial bank loan funds work, nor is it particularly pertinent to their theories. The money multiplier is not some foundational macroeconomic article of faith, it's a pedagogical tool to illustrate how leverage can expand the money supply beyond the monetary base to first year undergrads (which also happens to be a historically correct explanation of why the private banking sector ended up with de facto money creation privileges)

On the other hand, MMT is deeply concerned with institutional arrangements in the banking system, and still elides central banks and governments in its explanations of how the system works because doing so avoids the inconvenience of explaining that the main reason budget deficits result in long term repayment obligations for governments under current institutional arrangements is because central banks fundamentally disagree with MMTers that systematically buying up all newly emitted government debt and pushing interest rates down to permanent zero is compatible with low inflation.

I think a lot of engineers would have issues with more arcane theoretical stuff like string theory too (and most physicists would have issue with engineers abstracting away certain details because the approximations they work with are good enough...)

[RobertoG]

It seems to me that if the "the majority of modern macroeconomists neither disagree with the Bank of England's explanation" and it's only a pedagogical tool or an historical explanation, they would do well in saying so. Specially to their first year undergrads and in their textbooks.

I have been following this debate for a while and it's only now that we heard "well, of course, we knew it all the time".

>>because central banks fundamentally disagree with MMTers

Maybe central banks disagree but we can't really know, because they are forbidden to buy public debt directly. What is that prohibition but an institutional arrangement? And why are those institutional arrangement in place in the first case? It's true that MMT is deeply concerned about that and it seems pretty relevant to me.

An engineer using Newtonian physics is very aware that is a simplification. Here the situation is the opposite, the physics (the economists) are simplifying away what the engineer (the BOE people) see in the reality, so their theories work.

[notahacker]

The Bank of England article you linked to was mainstream trained economists who devise mainstream economic models in their day job explaining how the money creation process works and why it makes certain classes of model more suitable than others for measuring economic shocks. And the role of credit creation has been part of the loanable funds literature the paper is critical of since "fiat money" was a purely theoretical idea. Ultimately if you overlook the evidence of a link you actually posted yourself in favour of preferring to believe the bad faith characterisation of "what mainstream economists really believe" on blogs written by self-styled dissidents, it says more about you than the economists...

> Maybe central banks disagree but we can't really know, because they are forbidden to buy public debt directly. What is that prohibition but an institutional arrangement? And why are those institutional arrangement in place in the first case? It's true that MMT is deeply concerned about that and it seems pretty relevant to me.

Central banks being unable to lend to governments or purchase government debt directly is a total non-factor in them consistently declining to match government debt emission dollar for dollar with government bond purchases on the secondary market (no MMT economist would disagree either). They are free to complement fiscal expansions with monetary expansions (at least over periods longer than changeable monthly base interest rate targets) as MMT would prefer, or take the opposite approach, which they sometimes do. If central banks thought MMT was fundamentally right, we wouldn't have seen them ever pull money out of the system to push up interest rates...

[RobertoG]

>"[..] it says more about you than the economists..."

I think I will be cavalier about that comment.

>"[..] what mainstream economists really believe [..]"

This is something that always puzzle me in this kind of discussion, maybe you can help me with that. What mainstream economists really believe?

I mean, here (1) is a review of what text-books say about money creation. In my opinion (and it seems yours too) this is not the same that we see in practice.

So, my question would be, do mainstream economist believe different things that what they write in the textbooks?

(1)- https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1057521915001477/1-s2.0-S10575219150...

[notahacker]

Undergraduate physics textbooks provide introductory examples using simple friction-free Newtonian classical mechanics. It's just there isn't a school of dissident physicists citing undergraduate textbooks to argue that the mainstream physics profession consists of stupid ignoramuses who don't believe in friction.

And the reality of money creation is pretty fuzzy too and depends a lot on what you define as "money supply" and the "banking sector" (funnily enough, even pretty basic physics has a degree of this problem too, which is why you get concepts of waves and particles that both fit some of the facts, though you don't get anyone inside or outside the mainstream very strongly committed to arguing against wave-particle duality...).

Ultimately private banks both intermediate between deposits and savers and create credit borrowed from central banks. They're only permitted to do the latter because their role in doing the former makes the government unwilling to let them fail. The "credit creation" emphasisers are right to emphasise that the limits on individual bank credit creation are soft because the "bank capital" they are permitted to borrow against is not a fixed variable, the intermediation emphasisers are right to note that when the commercial banking system borrows more money, the central bank tends to pull money out of the rest of the economy in the very short term, and propose raising interest rates in the slightly less short term, and so the banking system is only really able to expand the money supply when the central bank is comfortable with it doing so.

More generally, it's possible to entirely agree with Werner and MMT on banks' present role being far better described as primarily one of credit creation and entirely disagree with their respective alternative preferred policy approaches to central banking (or vice versa for that matter). What mainstream economists are primarily concerned with is the principle that raising interest rates for a variety of reasons (including but not limited to its effect on demand for bank credit) somewhat reduces inflation (and demand) and lowering them somewhat increases demand (and inflation) which is pretty much the most theoretically and empirically sound conclusion ever reached in macroeconomics (despite a few edge cases where it might not be true).

[RobertoG]

So, if I understand what you are telling me, when, for instance, Krugman, write his text book and his New York Times columns, he is just writing a simplification.

Because he thinks that the notion that private banks create money as an account operation, and they search reserves after giving a credit, and not before, is too complicate for his readers.

Fair enough, but you have to recognize that, then, it's not so strange, and hardly their fault, that MMT economists end writing "straw men" posts (as you said before).

[dragonwriter]

> they would do well in saying so.

IME, the simplifying assumptions are often explicit, so they do.

[hn0]

> On the other hand, MMT is deeply concerned with institutional arrangements in the banking system, and still elides central banks and governments in its explanations of how the system works because doing so avoids the inconvenience of explaining that the main reason budget deficits result in long term repayment obligations for governments under current institutional arrangements is because central banks fundamentally disagree with MMTers that systematically buying up all newly emitted government debt and pushing interest rates down to permanent zero is compatible with low inflation.

I’m not sure what MMT books you’ve been reading...

[dragonwriter]

> The money multiplier is not some foundational macroeconomic article of faith, it's a pedagogical tool to illustrate how leverage can expand the money supply beyond the monetary base to first year undergrads

Particularly, it's a tool for estimating a limit of an effect in a particular idealized policy circumstance and with other simplifying assumptions.

The simplifications don't represent real world conditions, so the computation is of little real-world relevance though the effect is.

Much of a first-year physics text will be simplifications that apply in idealized conditions that are broadly similar, IME.

[nabla9]

I'm well aware of that paper.

Where MMT goes wrong is the relevance of all this. They succumb into "banking mysticism" and assume far too large macroeconomic role to banking.

Banks don’t create demand out of thin air by providing loans.

While banks can create loans "out of thin air" in some extent (careful with technical details), they are limited by their reserves. Central bank controls the size of the money supply, because it is the source of bank reserves and capital requirements.

[hn0]

Richard Werner did empirical tests of the theory you describe, and found it to be false:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191...

And

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105752191...

Economists at the Bank of England re-ran these tests in an attempt to disprove the above theory and found themselves reaffirming it:

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2015/banks-are...

It has since been reaffirmed by other central banks, including the Bundesbank

https://www.bundesbank.de/Redaktion/DE/Downloads/Veroeffentl...

[RobertoG]

>>Banks don’t create demand out of thin air by providing loans.

This is exactly what MMT says (and the reason of their support for fiscal policies), but not what mainstream says.

See the mainstream justification for 'quantitative easing': improve the reserves of the commercial banks so they 'decide' to loan. MMT have always said that this is not how it works. Banks don't loan because they have more money, because banks don't create demand. By the way, MMT have always said also that this was not the way to go but this would not generate inflation, as some critics pointed.

>>While banks can create loans "out of thin air" [..] they are limited by their reserves.

My understanding is that this is not exactly true, and here MMT proves mainstream wrong again. As you say we have to be careful with the technical details.

Banks don't look into how much reserves they have and, then, they decide what they are going to loan. The credit departments of banks loan whenever they think they can make a good business and then the bank search for the reserves.

If they can't find enough reserves in the inter-bank market, they will go to the central bank. The central bank always will cover the commercial bank needs. What the central bank can control is how expensive it's going to be to cover those needs. The money multiplier theory is also wrong.