• Governments and Markets

    As the global recession takes hold, governments around the world have – with varying degrees of reluctance or enthusiasm – found themselves taking centre stage. This is usually seen as a case of dangerous times requiring special measures. Many commentators and practitioners impatiently await the opportunity to return to what they see as business as usual, so that governments can safely be put back in their boxes.

    This is, however, to misunderstand what has happened. The current role of government is not an unfortunate aberration. The recession has revealed an abiding truth – that the market can deliver its unmatched benefits only if governments are there when needed to make good its deficiencies and act against its excesses.

    The plunge into recession illustrates what happens when market operators become so powerful that governments are unable to restrain market excesses. And the response we now see to recession shows that governments can act to correct market failure in ways that the market, left to itself, cannot. Economies are robust things. They would recover sooner or later without intervention. But – as all but the most purblind now recognise – governments can significantly hasten the recovery process, and thereby limit the misery that recession inevitably brings about.

    The reason for this is that only governments can counter the inevitable tendency of recessions to feed on themselves. For most actors in the economy, the demands of self-interest mean that, in a recession, they spend less, invest less, cut costs, employ fewer people. Each individual decision may be rational and justified, but the cumulative effect for the economy as a whole is that recession is intensified.

    There are those who say that governments should act as though they were individual people or companies. According to this view, governments in a recession should also cut costs, spend less and lay people off. But if governments behave like everyone else, the economy is condemned to a deeper and harsher recession than needs be. Those holding this view are so blinded by an ideological hostility to the very idea of government as to deny Keynes’ statement of the obvious – that governments have a unique responsibility to act counter-cyclically.

    Only governments have the capacity and the duty to defy market logic. Only governments have the resources to over-ride what would normally be market-based self-interest and to substitute for it the wider interest in getting the economy as a whole moving again. Only governments can afford to live with long-term indebtedness if that is what is required in the interests of their shareholders – for which read everyone.

    Government intervention, whether to underpin the liquidity of the financial sector or to stimulate demand in the real economy, may well be necessary if recovery is to be hastened, but it is – importantly – more than a singular response to a singular problem. It is a statement of a wider and ever-present relationship between governments and markets. Markets function best – indeed only function properly at all – if government is ready and willing to second-guess market outcomes. What is true of the economy as a whole and of financial markets is equally true of markets in general. If, for example, we are to save the planet, market regulation will be needed in place of the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.

    There are of course those who would at this point throw up their hands in horror. For them, the debate is about absolutes. The alternative to the unfettered market is state socialism. They do not see that to recognise and correct the deficiencies of the market is the best guarantee that a market economy can sustain itself efficiently and beneficially.

    The recession has laid bare and illustrated in other words that the readiness of government to intervene is the essential condition on which the market can be made compatible with democracy. The whole point of democracy, after all, is that it ensures that the wider and longer-term interest is brought to bear so that the often harsh and unfair outcomes of unfettered market operations are softened and made more acceptable. That is what governments are for. If the market is infallible and must never be challenged, there is no role for democracy. Governments are then merely bit players and democracy merely a sham – a cosmetic trick to provide the illusion that the rich and powerful can be made to account for themselves.

    As Rahm Emanuel remarked, a good crisis should never be wasted. We can profit from this recession if we draw from it the important lesson that the legitimacy conferred by the democratic mandate empowers and requires government to ensure that personal and sectional interests must not prevail over the general interest. There can be no return to the fallacy that the “free” or unfettered market establishes a kind of economic democracy that renders democratic politics irrelevant. The recession and the need for a government response to it may be, one hopes, an exception, but the value of the proposition that democracy rules is a constant.

    Bryan Gould

    17 April 2009

  • Spend Now, Prosper Later

    The global recession dominates the thinking and writing of the world’s best economists – and not surprisingly, they exhibit a wide range of views as to what is really happening. There is not even a consensus about how deep and how long the recession will be, let alone what should be done about it.

    In New Zealand, we are now reaching a more sober assessment of how we will be affected. After an early period that was somewhat akin to a “phoney war”, we are now beginning to realise that the worst may be yet to come.

    We must of course be careful to avoid undue pessimism. Deflation feeds on itself, as people prepare for hard times by battening down the hatches and thereby make the times even harder. But we must also be alert to the policy measures that could help – and there is at least an emerging consensus that the earlier such measures are put in place, the more effective they will be.

    We also know now that the “jobs summit” – however well-intentioned – may have succeeded in creating a sense of pulling together but has not managed to produce much by way of measures to stop the slide into further recession. If we are to be effective, we need to decide now on what needs to be done.

    The time may be right, in other words, to rehearse the arguments for government intervention. Virtually all of the world’s economists agree that the central feature of recession, and of threatened depression, is a deficiency of demand or purchasing power. In New Zealand, we are being hit by a double whammy in this regard; our export markets are contracting at the same time as unemployment and a deflated housing market mean that consumers at home are also spending less.

    Left to itself, an economy will take a long and damaging time to correct this deficiency. But, it will be asked, what can governments do about this, when their own finances are being hard hit by recessionary factors? And if the government spends money it doesn’t have, isn’t this just building up problems for the future?

    Our own Treasury is not immune from this kind of thinking. Its projections show – even without further interventions – a sharp rise in the government deficit in the next year or so, and they then extrapolate that rise so that the deficit appears to soar into the stratosphere over the next decade. This, they say, means we should be cautious about boosting government spending further.

    This is not, however, an accurate way of looking at the issues. There is a good deal of evidence, supported by a growing number of economists, that the key is timing. A dollar spent now to boost the economy could save several dollars in government deficit later on.

    The argument runs as follows. The government deficit rises and falls in line with the fortunes of the economy as a whole. A buoyant economy will generate a large tax revenue so that -as has happened over recent years – the deficit can actually be reduced by paying off debt. A flat or shrinking economy, on the other hand, will increase the deficit, as the government struggles to maintain essential services with falling tax revenues; and if the government does respond by trying to cut the deficit by spending less, this will make matters worse by dragging the economy even lower and making the deficit bigger in the long term.

    If, on the other hand, the government has the courage to intervene now with carefully judged spending so that economic activity is boosted, the recession will end sooner and government finances will improve quicker. What might look like a frightening short-term deficit may well be the best protection against a bigger deficit in the long term. The priority is to spend the government dollar now, when it is most needed and will be most effective in correcting what would otherwise be a growing deficiency of demand.

    Government spending now would of course depend for its efficacy on exactly what it was spent on. If increased government spending went mainly on consumption, little would have been achieved; that is why many believe that tax cuts are not necessarily the most effective means of boosting the economy and countering the recession.

    If, on the other hand, the government spends now on investment projects that will strengthen our economy in the long term, we not only counter the current recession effectively, but will be better equipped to prosper in the future. Investment for this purpose need not be limited to physical facilities in areas like transport, communications and energy, but could also include programmes for improving our research effort and the skills of our people.

    The ideologues and the faint-hearted will quail at the sight of a rising government deficit at this particular juncture. But common sense is our best guide. We are all familiar, in our personal lives and in our businesses, with borrowing now to invest in a more prosperous future. Let’s do it for our country too.

    Bryan Gould

    23 March 2009

    This article was published in the NZ Herald on 26 March.

  • Post-meltdown

    The horror stories keep coming but – even so – it is doubtful whether we have yet grasped in New Zealand the scale and seriousness of what is happening in the global economy, and how greatly we will be affected by it. We know that others are in deep trouble but we see ourselves so far as transfixed spectators rather than actors (or victims) in the drama.

    We may not remain in that comfort zone for long. As the world enters recession, and the markets for our goods are decimated, we will feel the pain. And, although our financial system seems unscathed for the moment, the price we will inevitably pay for being one of the world’s most indebted countries is waiting just round the corner. As foreign investors take their money home, and as our banks have to re-negotiate the credit arrangements on which they rely, stand by for a succession of damaging body blows to the already fragile underpinnings of our economy.

    There is little sign yet that our political and business leaders have grasped the dreadful vulnerability of our position. The cool reception given to the thoughtful paper issued last week by Mark Weldon and David Skilling – with Peter Dunne expressing concern about the impact on the government’s deficit, as though that was the foremost of our worries – shows that we do not yet recognise the imperatives that have driven governments around the world to take steps that would have been unthinkable just a couple of months ago.

    There is of course room for considerable discussion about the precise recommendations of the Weldon/Skilling paper. But it does at least represent the first awareness of the scale of the problem and of the need for new thinking. Even more interestingly, it points the way to a post-meltdown future where the world will (hopefully) never be the same again.

    The paper is notable mainly for its (perhaps unconscious) willingness to slaughter some sacred cows to which we have been solemnly assured for nearly three decades “there is no alternative”. Governments must be kept well away from the main levers of economic policy? No. As the paper now asserts (and as even George Bush agrees), government action is essential. Monetary policy is all that matters? No. The paper says that fiscal policy is now the most important weapon in the armoury. Bankers should be entrusted with the important decisions in our economy? No. As is apparent to everyone, banks worldwide have failed us and must in many cases be taken into public ownership. “Free” markets must be left unregulated and will always produce the best results? No. The market has failed and created a catastrophe. All that matters is the bottom line? No. The goals of economic activity are wider than profit for a few.

    The truth is, in other words, that if we are to survive the crisis in reasonable shape, we must now abandon the nostrums that have proved so self-destructive. We need governments to acknowledge their responsibilities, to take a major role in the rescuing of our economy, to use a much wider range of policy instruments, and to treat markets as hugely valuable servants but dangerous masters.

    We should be in a better position than most to recognise this, since we have given those nostrums a longer and more comprehensive trial than anyone else. While the great super-tankers and luxury liners of the big economies have plied their trade on the great ocean of the global economy, and amassed large fortunes until they suddenly sprang a leak and began to sink, our tiny craft has been waterlogged for years. For us, the dogma of the unregulated “free” market has not led so much to sudden collapse as to long decline.

    We now have the chance, if our leaders have the necessary wit and imagination, not only to change direction in order to escape the worst of the world recession in the short term, but to set a new course which will produce in the medium term a better balanced economy in a world where markets are no longer regarded as infallible.

    The lesson of this crisis is that unregulated markets lead to economic disaster and – even more importantly – that they are incompatible with democracy. If markets are always right and must not be challenged, the result is not only economic meltdown but government by a handful of greedy oligarchs rather than by elected representatives.

    The whole point of democracy is that it ensures that political power will be used to offset the otherwise overwhelming economic power of the big market players. If democratic governments do not, will not or cannot exercise that power to protect their electorates, the course is then set inevitably not only for the crisis we now face but also for the abuses and failures that disfigured our economies in the years preceding the crisis.

    Shouldn’t our politicians be called to account? Shouldn’t these issues be what our general election is all about?

    Bryan Gould

    12 October 2008