- The monetary policy of zero and negative interest rates — if it is consistently thought through — leads to the demise of (what little is left of) the free society as we know it in the Western world. The destructive effects of a negative interest rate policy are not immediately obvious to most people, because the path toward negative interest rates may be accompanied by an artificial economic upturn that gives the impression that the economy looks good, even though it effectively lives off its substance.Only gradually, the damage becomes visible. Economic growth is dwindling; political conflicts over income distribution are increasing; the state becomes more and more powerful; the degree of freedom for citizens and businesses decreases; and at some point, asset prices collapse and the bubble bursts as economic performance becomes increasingly impaired: Companies make less profit, jobs are lost, and consumers must rein in their demand.All this leads to economic impoverishment and, most likely, eventually to political chaos. The negative interest rate policy proverbially cuts off the branch on which the welfare democracy of the Western world is sitting. The harmful consequences of a negative interest rate policy are already clearly visible today. If central banks are not prevented from pushing interest rates to zero or into negative territory, this will turn out to be one of the greatest tragedies of our time.
I enjoyed the doom-saying for the simple reason that the business intelligentsia are making noises about how negative interest rates are not only okay, they're the natural state of affairs. Having the libertarians come out of the woodwork to scream the end is nigh is a welcome counterpoint, methinks. The author has a legitimate beef here: if the government is going to make the loaning of money for profit economically unviable they're going to severely pervert the incentives of the marketplace and perverting the incentives of the marketplace for libertarians is like pissing in the holy water for catholics. I agree with the basic point that the government manipulating the economy is a long way from the free market we supposedly espouse. I disagree that having command aspects in the economy is the end of western civilization.
He makes a fair point. If credit rationing becomes necessary it will be the government exerting more control over the economy than a lot of us are comfortable with. Picking winners and losers doesn't sound good. The problem is assuming even for a second that that's anywhere close to "planned economy." A "planned economy" is the state deciding to nationalize most private enterprise, not the central bank engaging in credit rationing. The whole point of this is to encourage economic growth because it has slowed to a crawl. And unlike an actual planned economy, they can always go back to a positive interest rate. It's a short-term experiment. Generally central bankers aren't in the business of trying to cripple the market. I feel like we're on the verge of another recession. Not for any external reason, but just due to the business cycle. It's been 11 years.
Some wag on twitter pointed out that if the people the right called "radical leftists" were actually radical leftists, they'd be in favor or seizing the means of production, not medicare-for-all and that what counts as "radical left" in the United States is center-right most anywhere else. I dunno. I've read maybe twenty books on the Great Recession. I've read four or five on the Great Depression. Economics is a science filled with jargon and jargon is a tool for obfuscation. Watchmaking is all about wheels and pinions because gears and axles are understood by all and the fuckers started measuring things by ligne a hundred years after the adoption of the metric system so I've gained a bit of a perspective on the unguent powers of jargon... ...and all this song'n'dance waving-of-hands about nobody knows what causes recessions? It's fucking bullshit. Purest, unadulterated bullshit. A recession happens when you write off the debts on your balance sheet as un-collectable. Plain and simple. That's it. Because see when you won WWI? All that money Germany owed you was an asset and when Germany crashed their economy it wasn't anymore. All those war reparations that were going to pay off the munitions factories and shipyards in the UK suddenly became a hole in the balance sheet and the munitions factories and shipyards didn't get paid. The US spent 52% of its GDP on WWI and that money disappeared into a fuckin' hole because wars.destroy.money. WWII was fought with rationing and deprivation by all sides - the UK didn't exit rationing until 1954 ffs. Meanwhile Woodrow Wilson told Truman that he could have vengeance or peace but not both so we went with the Marshall Plan instead of the Treaty of Versailles and Command Economied Europe and Japan into UN-sanctioned Potemkin capitalism and lo and behold, massive post-war boom. But a lot of that post-war boom was bought with future promises that we're now having to pay off with fewer workers, fewer resources and a much higher cost-of-living. There are more people over 65 in Japan than there are under 15 and Japan has been under 1% interest since 1996. The workers born under McArthur's GHQ are retiring with nothing to prop them up but hikikomori. Recessions are where your assets become liabilities.