Financial Despotism and Government Schemes April , 2012
Pablo Paniagua
Habitually in a normal world, when economies are in trouble, growth is lethargic and stock markets have an intrinsically
high
level
of volatility.
Investors tend
to apply the
logical expression “fly to safety” in their financial strategies, meaning that investors are keen to have
long-term government bonds every time they perceive economic instability. This category of
“standard” investment strategy under economic distress was considered a normal answer to standard
central
bank
intervention during economic tribulations. Frequently when the economy is under some sort of recession or contraction, the central banks usually intervene in the monetary system aiming for some rapid stimulus. This is achieved by lowering the short- term interest rates close to zero, which enhance
consumption and self-reliance. When that happens, government
bonds (which are
guided by longer
term interest rates) experience
positive returns. In contrast, there will be some financial assets with shorter maturities, which
would not experience positive returns (because they are anchored to the behavior of shorter rates artificially manipulated and lowered by central banks). This sort of approach
is usually referred to as “riding the yield curve” which assures some positive gains for investors in the long run.
Unfortunately we are not in a regular world any longer. Our current state of affairs is one in
which
even long-term interest rates are also distorted by central banks in an effort to fully
intervene and flatten the entire yield curve. This condition however is not atypical in human history: we have experienced this right after the end of the World War II. During that time, the long-term government
bonds
yield
was around
2
per
cent. Throughout
that
interlude of
manipulation, the US government debt to GDP fell drastically from 116 to 32 per cent. Until
today, this sort of “government deleveraging” had
never been so drastic and effortless.
In an efficient world with free moving capital, the narrative should be quite diverse. If a government aims to reduce their debt through economic distortions caused by negative long-
term
interest rates, investors would anticipate the move and ask for higher compensations. In the worst case scenario, they would look for an alternate safe investment in some other
sobering debt
market, withdrawing their capital and trust in the previous government debt (which had tried to succeed in the intervention
scheme).
This however was not the case during the post World War II period; the Bretton Woods arrangement established capital controls in 1946 so that investors were restrained with keeping their money at home and having to deal
with
the governments yield intervention to pay their outstanding debts.
Consequently for
almost 30 years, investors lived with negative real interest rates, because of this class of western
government’s intervention and
expropriation of wealth. It was then what economists call “financial
repression”.
Returning to our current events, the sort of “financial repression” is much more difficult to achieve nowadays
than during
the Bretton
Woods agreement.
Now investors have very flexible and free mobility of dispersing their capital throughout the world. This allows them to
avoid numerous varieties
of home-land authoritarianism. Especially the kind in which, some local
government would try
to achieve negative
real interest rates to
pay
off their debt.
Unfortunately this is not quite what is happening in the world. What we have experienced since last
year is a class of “financial oppression” similar to the one experienced during the
agreement in
New York, even
if the pact was dissolved long
time ago.
What we seem to be experiencing, is a situation in which the majority of the biggest and most
powerful western central banks have unrestricted and simultaneously intervened their bond
markets with massive government bonds purchases. This distorts long-term interest rates and
flattens worldwide bond yield curves. This massive, systematic and organized central bank bond market intervention is something the world has never experienced
before. And it is the obvious interventionist answer to
free
capital mobility,
similar
to the
one
which
Bretton Woods established (western central bankers
established it in the 40’s with the intention of
control capital and create “financial
authoritarianism”).
Thus what we see now is again the
same
intrusion as 70 years ago, but with a different façade. The central banks conduct this sort
of
coordinated and discretionary intervention now in unison. This is precisely the sort of interference needed to create a global “financial subjugation” and the only way that western governments can simultaneously and discretely deleverage their debt in a painless way.
So what we see currently is negative long-term interest rates in most of the world’s financial capitals: the US, China, Europe and
the
UK are simultaneously experiencing negative real rates. The outcome is the decrease of the outstanding debt’s real value of, both public and private.
Once again, as 70 years ago, savers are the ones paying the price for excessive and bubble-fed debt,
out
of control
private
leveraging, consumption beyond
consumer’s
capacities
of repayment, and
uncontrolled and
unsustainable western
welfare government expending.
The losers in this saga are once again retail long-term investors and normal Main Street savers,
which see their real purchasing power capacity reduced each time central bankers bloat the
economy with
money printing. As Maria
Belen Sbrancia of the University
of Maryland
recognized in a recent working paper, “The negative real interest rate, provided a subsidy to the US government equivalent to 2.3 per cent of GDP a year between 1945 and 1980”.* This
effectively showed us why it is
convenient for central banks and governments to
simultaneously create this environment of negative real interest rates around the financial globe.
Unfortunately, this sort of scheme brings a deplorable signal for the whole society. When savers get to be socially
punished and see their real savings diminished and in contrast,
the over deleveraged consumers, speculator, investors and over-indebted governments always get the
benefits. This indicates
that something is incorrect in the
way
societies deal with irresponsible debt.
Under this situation then savers and the whole society start to question themselves: why should we, as society, worry about our increasing debt and lack of savings?
Why
not better ride the scheme the same way the government and too-big-to-fail institutions do? Sadly, if we as a civilization end up reasoning like that, then the whole pool of real savings
in society will soon deplenish. This dampers the possibilities of further sustainable growth: real savings are the genuine source of long-term
sustainable real growth, not monetary paper based stimulus.
Unfortunately this
“financial repression”
plot ultimately
only discourages
people to save and governments to misbehave
economically. This leads to an end result of
over-consumption sustained only by asset’s stimulation and government activities, rather than industrial
production based on
productivity and
real
savings.
The time will arrive when; the real pool of savings can no longer
sustain productive and
competitive activities because it was being systematically deplenished by negative (moral or monetary) incentives. Then the scheme of “financial despotism” will be set in motion once
again, therefore monetary long-term intervention and government spending will artificially uplift the economy (probably funding non-productive or non-competitive activities), increasing
government debt as a percentage of GDP to unsustainable levels. At the same time this will benefit the conniving planners with real long-term yields reducing the burden and easing their
misbehavior.
History then repeats itself but society nonetheless shuns the fundamental lesson that the
Great Depression and unsustainable government expenditures post World War II taught us. Our new “financial despotism” situation disappointedly accompanies us once again in this
quandary.
* M Belen Sbrancia, “Debt, Inflation, and the Liquidation Effect,” working
paper, August 2011
