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Dorn (ed ) monetary alternatives; rethinking government fiat money (2017) - Tài liệu text
Dorn (ed ) monetary alternatives; rethinking government fiat money (2017)
Copyright © 2017 by the Cato Institute
ISBN: 978-1-944424-44-2
eBook ISBN: 978-1-944424-45-9
Cover design: Jon Meyers
PART 1 CENTRAL BANKING AT A CROSSROADS
Chapter 2 Revisiting Three Intellectual Pillars of Monetary Policy
Chapter 3 Understanding the Interventionist Impulse of the Modern Central Bank
Chapter 4 The Fed’s Fatal Conceit
Chapter 5 Alternatives to the Fed?
PART 2 RESTORING A MONETARY CONSTITUTION
Chapter 6 From Constitutional to Fiat Money: The U.S. Experience
Chapter 7 Reductionist Reflections on the Monetary Constitution
Chapter 8 The Implementation and Maintenance of a Monetary Constitution
PART 3 RULES VERSUS DISCRETION
Chapter 9 Commitment, Rules, and Discretion
Chapter 10 Real and Pseudo Monetary Rules
Chapter 11 Legislating a Rule for Monetary Policy
Chapter 12 Nominal GDP Targeting: A Simple Rule to Improve Fed Performance
Chapter 13 Toward Forecast-Free Monetary Institutions
PART 4 ALTERNATIVES TO GOVERNMENT FIAT MONEY
Chapter 14 Gold and Silver as Constitutional Alternative Currencies
Chapter 15 Making the Transition to a New Gold Standard
Chapter 16 Currency Competition versus Governmental Money Monopolies
Chapter 17 The Market for Cryptocurrencies
Chapter 18 Monetary Freedom and Monetary Stability
My, things have changed! In 1986, when the earliest of the papers gathered here first appeared in
print, interest in alternatives to government fiat money was already limited to a small set—not to say
a fringe—of monetary economists and policymakers. Subsequent events only tended to reduce that
interest still further. Paul Volcker’s Fed had managed to rein inflation back to a modest level last seen
in the 1960s. On the heels of that success came the “Great Moderation”—a decline in the severity of
business cycle fluctuations that many experts, after a decade or so, considered permanent. By 2000
Alan Greenspan, who had presided over most of that moderation, had been dubbed the “Maestro.” So
far as Fed officials and many academic economists were concerned, after three quarters of a century
of stumbling, the Federal Reserve System had at last found its sea legs. If it wasn’t the best of all
possible monetary systems, surely it was close enough.
Subsequent events have left that confident view in tatters. The Great Moderation ended, suddenly
and harrowingly, with the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis. The accompanying “Great Recession”
was, among all U.S. downturns, second only to the Great Depression itself in its overall severity. In
responding to it, the Federal Reserve found it necessary to altogether abandon its traditional methods
of monetary policy—the stirrups and reins that saw it through the glory days of the 1980s and 90s—in
favor of untested alternatives.
To say that those alternatives failed to bring about a rapid, or even a complete, recovery from the
crisis, is putting things diplomatically. The unvarnished truth is that disappointment with the Fed’s
post-crisis experiments—and also with its handling of the crisis itself—have raised doubts
concerning its ability to perform the duties Congress has assigned to it.
To appreciate the Fed’s shortcomings is one thing; to propose ways to improve upon it is quite
another. The complacency wrought by the Great Moderation, not to mention the limited interest in
fundamental monetary reform before then, resulted in a dearth of serious inquiries into potentially
superior arrangements. The Cato Institute was, until recently, practically alone among think tanks in
stepping into the breach. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, while journalists and most academic
economists celebrated the Fed’s mastery of scientific monetary management, and other think tanks
avoided the topic of monetary reform, Cato kept the subject alive, offering a safe haven, in the shape
of its Annual Monetary Conference, for the minority of experts that continued to stress the need for
fundamental monetary reform.
Although fundamental reform has been a consistent theme of Cato’s monetary conferences, those
conferences have never been dominated by any one approach to reform. The articles in this book
present a variety of ideas for improving the monetary regime—including proposals for a formal
“monetary constitution,” various monetary rules, competing currencies, and establishing a new gold
standard. The intent of the conferences has always been to encourage serious discussion of not one
but many possible alternatives to discretionary government fiat money. The same purpose also
informed the establishment and naming, in 2014, of Cato’s Center for Monetary and Financial
Any idea for fundamental reform is bound to be controversial; and the proposals offered here are
certainly no exception. Their authors do not agree with one another, and neither I nor Jim Dorn nor
anyone else at Cato agrees—or could possibly agree—with all of them. But while I’m not inclined to
agree with, much less to defend, all of the ideas put forward here, I do want to counter the suggestion
that proposals for doing away with the Fed, or fiat money, or both, amount to a plea to “roll back the
clock” to some bygone era. Just as there’s nothing new under the sun, there are few ideas for
monetary reform that might not have this complaint hurled at them. Champions of the Federal Reserve
Act might, for example, have been accused of attempting to “turn back the clock” to the days of the
Second Bank of the United States. Of course the complaint would have been fatuous, because the Fed,
whatever its shortcomings, was not simply a replica of the Second Bank of the United States.
Similarly, while some of the alternatives proposed here, and especially those that recommend
dispensing with the Fed, or establishing a new gold standard, or both, are necessarily informed by
past experience, it doesn’t follow that their authors regard any past arrangement as ideal, let alone as
an ideal that can be replicated today. In proposing sometimes radical departures from the status quo,
their aim is, not to reverse genuine progress, but to help us move beyond a system that has repeatedly,
and often cataclysmically, failed to deliver the stability its champions promised.
When the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, its powers were strictly limited and the United States
was still on the gold standard. Today the Fed has virtually unlimited power and the dollar is a pure
A limited constitutional government calls for a rules-based, free-market monetary system, not the
topsy-turvy fiat dollar that now exists under central banking. This book examines the case for
alternatives to discretionary government fiat money and the reforms needed to move toward freemarket money.
Central banking, like any sort of central planning, is not a panacea. Concentrating monetary power
in the hands of a few individuals within a government bureaucracy, even if those individuals are well
intentioned and well educated, does not guarantee sound money. The world’s most important central
bank, the Federal Reserve, is not bound by any strict rules, although Congress requires that it achieve
maximum employment and price stability. The failure of the Fed to prevent the Great Recession of
2009, the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s raises
the question, can we do better?
In questioning the status quo and widening the scope of debate over monetary reform, the
fundamental issue is to contrast a monetary regime that is self-regulating, spontaneous, and
independent of government meddling versus one that is centralized, discretionary, politicized, and has
a monopoly on fiat money. Free-market money within a trusted network of private contracts differs
fundamentally from an inconvertible fiat money supplied by a discretionary central bank that has the
power to create money out of thin air and to regulate both banks and nonbank financial institutions.
There are many types of monetary regimes and many monetary rules. The classical gold standard
was a rules-based monetary system, in which the supply of money was determined by market demand
—not by central bankers. Cybercurrencies, like bitcoin, offer the possibility of a private noncommodity monetary base and the potential to realize F. A. Hayek’s vision of competitive free-market
currencies. Ongoing experimentation and technological advances may pave the way for the end of
central banking—or at least the emergence of new parallel currencies.
The distinguished authors in this volume examine the constitutional basis for alternatives to central
banking, the role of gold in a market-based monetary system, the obstacles to fundamental reform and
how they might be overcome, and the advent of cryptocurrencies.
In making the case for monetary reform and thinking about rules versus discretion in the conduct of
monetary policy, it is important to take a constitutional perspective. As early as 1988, James M.
Buchanan argued, at an international monetary conference hosted by the Progress Foundation in
Lugano, Switzerland: “The dollar has absolutely no basis in any commodity base, no convertibility.
What we have now is a monetary authority [the Fed] that essentially has a monopoly on the issue of
fiat money, with no guidelines that amount to anything; an authority that never would have been
legislatively approved, that never would have been constitutionally approved, on any kind of rational
In 1980, just after Ronald Reagan’s election, Buchanan recommended that a presidential
commission be established to discuss the Fed’s legitimacy. There was some support within the
Reagan camp, but Arthur Burns, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, nixed it. As
Buchanan explained at the Lugano conference, Burns “would not have anything to do with any
proposal that would challenge the authority of the central banking structure.”
Buchanan’s aim was “to get a dialogue going . . . about the basic fundamental rules of the game, the
constitutional structure.” There is, he said, “a moral obligation to think that we can improve things.”
That is the spirit of this volume and Cato’s newly established Center for Monetary and Financial
I would like to thank The George Edward Durell Foundation for its long support of Cato’s annual
monetary conferences from which all the articles in this book stem. I also would like to thank George
Selgin for writing the foreword, Kevin Dowd for commenting on various aspects of the project, and
Ari Blask for helping to bring this volume to fruition.
This year marks Cato’s 40th anniversary and the 35th anniversary of the monetary conference. It is
thus an appropriate time to bring out a collection of articles devoted to rethinking government fiat
money and to offer alternatives consistent with limited government, the rule of law, and free markets.
The only adequate guarantee for the uniform and stable value of a paper currency is its
convertibility into specie—the least fluctuating and the only universal currency. I am sensible
that a value equal to that of specie may be given to paper or any other medium, by making a
limited amount necessary for necessary purposes; but what is to ensure the inflexible adherence
of the Legislative Ensurers to their own principles and purposes?
Today we live a world of pure discretionary government fiat monies. Any link of the dollar to gold
ended in August 1971, when President Nixon closed the Treasury’s “gold window,” which had
allowed foreign central banks to freely covert their dollars for gold at the official exchange rate. The
end of convertibility left the dollar without an anchor except for the Federal Reserve’s promise to
maintain price stability. That objective, however, has often been sacrificed in the vain attempt to
promote full employment.
The global financial crisis of 2007–08, increased the Fed’s discretionary authority and ushered in
unconventional policies—notably, largescale asset purchases known as quantitative easing (QE), and
ultra-low interest rates with a lower bound on the federal funds rate near zero. Macro-prudential
regulation was also added to the policy mix. By suppressing interest rates, the Fed has increased risk
taking, misallocated capital, and inflated asset prices. Other central banks have followed suit. When
rates rise, bubbles will burst—and the hoped for wealth effect of monetary stimulus will be
recognized as a pseudo wealth effect.
The politicization of monetary policy and the failure of central banks to generate robust economic
growth have led to calls for rethinking the current monetary regime and for recognizing the limits of
monetary policy. The U.S. Congress has constitutional authority to “coin money” and “regulate the
value thereof” (Article 1, Section 8). Using that authority, some members of Congress have advocated
establishing a bipartisan Centennial Monetary Commission to review the Fed’s performance and to
consider ways to reduce uncertainty, safeguard the long-run value of the dollar, and mitigate financial
The debate over rules versus discretion—and the choice of alternative monetary rules—is at the
heart of this volume. Before discussing those issues, however, the book begins with an overview of
the current state of central banking and the case for restoring a monetary constitution.
The persistence of near-zero interest rates and the failure of the Fed to reduce the size of its
balance sheet pose serious problems for policymakers. If the Fed waits too long to raise rates and end
discretionary credit allocation, distortions in capital markets will worsen. But if it moves too fast,
another recession could occur.
More fundamentally, if central banks are guided by erroneous monetary theory, the damage to the
real economy could be substantial. Experiments with unconventional monetary policy need to be
questioned and alternatives proposed. The authors in Part 1 do so.
Claudio Borio, who heads the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International
Settlements, revisits three “intellectual pillars of monetary policy”: (1) the natural or equilibrium
interest rate is best understood as one consistent with price stability and full employment; (2) money
is neutral in the medium to long run; and (3) deflation is always costly. He argues that none of these
beliefs are sufficient to understand current monetary policy or to guide future policy.
First, the definition of the equilibrium interest rate would be improved by including financial and
macroeconomic stability, not just price stability and full employment. Second, monetary
disequilibrium, as reflected in distorted interest rates and misallocated credit, can persist for 10–20
years; it is not just a short-run phenomenon. Third, one should distinguish between deflation caused
by deficient aggregate demand (as during the Great Depression) and deflation due to productivity
gains. The former should be avoided, but the latter should be welcomed. The Fed and other central
banks typically treat any deflation as bad, while striving to increase inflation. That is a recipe for
trouble. A positive agenda for reform, argues Borio, requires that central bankers recognize that “easy
monetary policy cannot undo the resource misallocations” brought about by distorted interest rates,
and that the focus should be on “facilitating balance sheet repair and implementing structural
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, argues that central banks
should not be in the business of credit allocation and income redistribution. Instead, they should focus
on achieving long-run price stability through traditional open-market operations. He is concerned
about the same distortions discussed by Borio. According to Lacker, intervention in credit markets
“can redirect resources from taxpayers to financial market investors and, over time, can expand moral
hazard and distort the allocation of capital.” In addition, such intervention is “a threat to financial
By engaging in credit/fiscal policy, rather than pure monetary policy, the Fed threatens its
independence and credibility. Thus, Lacker prefers a “Treasuries-only” policy, which he believes
would enable the Fed to better honor its commitment to supply “an elastic currency.”
John Allison, former chairman and CEO of BB&T, is highly critical of the growing power of the
Fed as a result of the financial crisis. He thinks interest rates should be set by markets, not
manipulated by central banks. The Fed’s ultra-low interest rate policy has increased borrowing for
housing consumption, but has had a negative effect on productive private investment. Meanwhile,
burdensome financial regulations have been a poor substitute for strong capital requirements and
The public needs to recognize the limits of central banks and expose the “fatal conceit” that a
centrally planned monetary system can outperform a system based on free markets, individual
responsibility, and well-enforced private property rights. More telling, when central banks try to
allocate credit, they are bound to reduce economic and personal freedom. That is why Allison favors
making “it illegal for the Fed to bail out insolvent firms.” He also advocates eliminating government
deposit insurance and constraining central banks by a monetary rule. Ideally, he would do away with
central banks and adopt free banking under a commodity standard.
Bennett McCallum, professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon University, is “appalled” by the
Fed’s “major excursions into credit policy. . . and thereby into the unauthorized exercise of fiscal
policy.” He favors a rules-based monetary regime that reduces uncertainty and provides a framework
for price level stability. In that regard, he examines several alternatives to discretionary government
fiat money: the gold standard, private competitive currencies, and the Yeager-Greenfield proposal for
stabilizing a broad price index. McCallum recognizes that there is no perfect system, and “the best
that can be done . . . is to adopt institutions that are less subject to temptation than others and that
promise to provide stability of a broad price index.”
As a first step toward monetary reform, McCallum would end the Fed’s dual mandate and have
Congress amend the Federal Reserve Act to make the Fed accountable for a single mandate—longrun price stability. That recommendation is consistent with his earlier proposal for a monetary
feedback rule that would stabilize nominal income growth (McCallum 1989: 336–51; also see White
1999: 223–24).
Preoccupation with the conduct of monetary policy within a given monetary regime can easily
detract from the more fundamental issue of a monetary constitution—that is, the rules of the game that
underlie any monetary regime. Although the Federal Reserve is based on an act of Congress, there is
a higher law of the Constitution that is meant to safeguard the public’s property right in a stablevalued money. It is clear from a careful reading of the U.S. Constitution’s monetary clauses that the
Framers had in mind a monetary system based on convertibility to the precious metals, not one based
on fiat money under a discretionary central bank. In that regard, Milton Friedman (1984: 47) told
members of Congress, “As I read the original Constitution, it intended to limit Congress to a
commodity standard.”
In December 1913, when Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, the United States was still on
the gold standard. World War I put an end to the old monetary order. At first the Federal Reserve was
narrowly limited, but over time its powers grew, especially during periods of crisis. The authors in
Part 2 emphasize the need for a monetary constitution to safeguard the value of money and facilitate
mutually beneficial exchanges. They discuss both the case for restoring the Framers’ monetary
constitution as well as searching for monetary rules that can improve upon the current discretionary
government fiat money regime.1
Richard Timberlake, an emeritus professor of economics and finance at the University of Georgia,
and author of Constitutional Money: A Review of the Supreme Court’s Monetary Decisions (2013),
provides a concise history of the metallic (gold-silver) standard in the United States, the origins of
the Federal Reserve, and the drift toward a pure fiat money system as the Supreme Court and
Congress eroded the Framers’ Constitution. He argues that although it may not be politically possible
to restore the original constitutional monetary system, Congress should remove the Fed’s discretion
by imposing a single mandate: price level stability.
James Buchanan, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986, the
cofounder of the public choice school of economics, and a long-time adherent of “constitutional
economics,” argues for adopting a monetary constitution that has as its primary objective
“predictability in the value of the monetary unit.” He views this as a responsibility of government
akin to protecting private property rights and enforcing contracts. Under current U.S. monetary law,
notes Buchanan, “There exists no monetary constitution . . . . What does exist is an institutionally
established authority charged with an ill-defined responsibility to ‘do good,’ as determined by its
own evaluation.”2
Buchanan contends that modern macroeconomics has diverted attention from the rules needed to
bring about monetary and economic order, and instead has focused on models that operate in an
institutional vacuum. He does not seek to define the optimal monetary rule, but rather to escape
conventional thinking and engage in constitutional dialogue to increase the chances of improving the
monetary regime. By reducing transactions costs, an improved monetary regime would enlarge the
scope for voluntary exchange and increase the wealth of the nation.
Peter Bernholz, an emeritus professor of economics at the University of Basel, relies on his
extensive knowledge of monetary history to explore the problem of implementing and maintaining a
monetary constitution. He argues that long-run price stability “can be maintained only if politicians
and central bankers have no discretionary authority to influence the stock of money.”
In thinking about how to design a monetary constitution and maintain it, Bernholz recommends six
measures, including “a mechanism limiting the stock of money,” a requirement that the monetary
constitution can only be amended by a supermajority vote, and a prohibition against the use of
“emergency clauses.” The money supply could be limited by either a convertibility rule or a quantity
rule. Bernholz favors the former under a pure gold standard—or what Milton Friedman (1961) called
a “real gold standard” (as opposed to a “pseudo gold standard”). In moving to a pure gold standard,
Bernholz would abolish central banks, institute free banking with unlimited liability for shareholders,
and outlaw state-owned banks. Such a laissez-faire monetary system has historical precedents, argues
Bernholz, and would facilitate “innovation in the field of money.”
The long-standing debate over rules versus discretion in the conduct of monetary policy has been
energized by the 2007–08 financial crisis, which caught nearly all economists and policymakers by
surprise. That crisis has led to more powerful central banks with significantly more discretion, which
has increased uncertainty about the direction of monetary policy. The authors in Part 3 argue for
limiting central bank discretion and adopting a rules-based monetary regime.
Charles Plosser, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, draws on work of
Kydland and Prescott (1977) to emphasize the importance of having policymakers commit to a rulesbased monetary regime that anchors expectations about the future path of monetary policy. Plosser is
interested in “institutional design” and strategies to limit the scope of central banks and increase their
credibility. Rather than rely solely on legislated rules, which might politicize monetary policy, he
prefers to have central bankers reform from within. In the case of the Fed, he recommends that the
Federal Open Market Committee release quarterly reports to inform the public on how well actual
policy complies with various monetary rules.
George Selgin, director of Cato’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, distinguishes
between “real and pseudo monetary rules.” The former refer to rules that are “strict” (i.e., rigidly
enforced either by contract or design) and “robust,” in the sense that the “monetary system itself
automatically implements the rule.” In contrast, pseudo monetary rules are neither rigorously enforced
nor robust. Monetary authorities are not subject to penalties for failing to meet targets, policymaking
is myopic, and time inconsistency is endemic. Thus, “a pseudo rule is as likely as discretion to turn
monetary policy into a plaything of politics.” Selgin provides examples of the two types of rules and
concludes that the line between them “is a very fine one, the difference ultimately being one, not in
kind, but in degree to which adherence to a rule is regarded as unbreakable.”
John B. Taylor , a professor of economics at Stanford University, has long argued in favor of
monetary rules over discretion. When he first introduced the famous Taylor Rule in 1993, it was
intended to guide monetary policy, not be enforced by law. “The objective,” notes Taylor, “was to
help central bankers make their interest rate decisions in a less discretionary and more rule-like
manner, and thereby achieve the goal of price stability and economic stability.” Now, with the
increase in the Fed’s discretion and power as a result of the financial crisis, and the Fed’s entry into
credit allocation and unconventional monetary policies, Taylor favors enacting a monetary rule. He
believes it is time for Congress to exercise its constitutional authority over monetary policy but in a
way that does not lead to politicization.
Prior to the Great Recession, central banks gained experience and success using the Taylor Rule,
which can be viewed as a nominal income rule, and inflation targeting. That success, argues Taylor,
should be utilized in designing legislation to improve monetary policy. The key objective should be
“to restore a more strategic rule-like monetary policy with less short-term oriented discretionary
actions.” Taylor proposes legislation that would increase accountability and reduce the temptation to
engage in credit allocation and fiscal policy.
Scott Sumner, director of the Program on Monetary Policy at George Mason University’s Mercatus
Center, is a strong proponent of nominal GDP targeting. One benefit of NGDP targeting is that it
bypasses the issue of assigning weights under the Fed’s dual mandate to achieve price level stability
and maximum employment. All that needs to be done is to set a target path for nominal GDP, which is
the product of the general price level and real output. There is ready data on total spending (or
domestic final sales if that metric is used).3 So if the target is set at 5 percent trend growth, then
market forces will determine real growth and the Fed will supply the monetary base sufficient to hit
the designated nominal GDP target. This strategy avoids having to fine tune monetary policy.
To improve the operation of this monetary rule, Sumner and other “market monetarists” would rely
on a futures market for nominal GDP contracts to keep actual GDP in line with the target. “The
market, not the central bank, would be setting the monetary base and the level of interest rates.” Once
nominal GDP was on a stable growth path, argues Sumner, there would be more transparency, less
chance of contagion from financial crises, and less political pressure on the Fed. Keeping nominal
GDP on a stable growth path would also weaken the case for bailing out large banks, “because
proponents of ‘too big to fail’ could no longer claim that failing to bail out banks would push us into a
Leland Yeager , emeritus professor of economics at the University of Virginia and Auburn
University, favors a price level rule over a nominal income rule. 4 However, he wants to decentralize
and privatize money, define the unit of account “by a comprehensive bundle of goods and services,”
and let competition among private issuers “keep meaningful the denomination of their bank notes and
deposits (and checks) in the stable, independently defined unit.” Those steps would take us much
closer to a forecast-free monetary regime than our current government fiat money system under a
highly discretionary central bank. The reason is simple: absence of high-powered money in Yeager’s
scheme means there would be no “problem of injection effects,” and thus no “need for central
forecasting.”5 Monetary equilibrium would prevail and “any forecasting functions that did remain
would be healthily decentralized under free banking.”
The authors in Part 4 provide a detailed discussion of the case for alternatives to government fiat
money, the types of alternatives that may emerge if the U.S. monetary constitution is restored, and the
legal barriers that need to be removed to permit free entry. Greater monetary freedom would allow
competition and experimentation with alternative currencies, which in turn would produce a more
robust monetary system.
Edwin Vieira Jr. , an attorney and author of Pieces of Eight: The Monetary Powers and
Disabilities of the United States Constitution ([2002] 2011), defends a bimetallic standard as
consistent with the original U.S. Constitution. He thus views gold and silver as “constitutional
alternative currencies,” which could be introduced either by private or government action. His
preference, which has constitutional backing, is to have states (rather than the federal government)
facilitate the transition to constitutional money by offering “electronic gold and silver currencies.” He
provides a blueprint for doing so and explains the benefits of experimentation among the 50 states. If
states were successful in introducing redeemable currencies, private banks would follow suit, and
eventually the Fed would become obsolete.
Lawrence H. White, professor of economics at George Mason University, explains the steps that
would have to be taken to introduce a “new gold standard,” why those steps are theoretically
possible, and the benefits of a “parallel gold standard.” First and foremost, Congress would have to
remove various legal restrictions that prevent the emergence of a gold-based monetary regime. Legal
tender laws would have to be changed, taxes on gold and silver coins would have to be ended,
private suppliers would have to be allowed to offer metallic currencies, and financial institutions
would have to be free to service a gold-based monetary system. The impetus for such a system would
depend on whether the public losses confidence in the current government fiat money regime, which
would be the case if there were runaway inflation. Otherwise, network effects would make it very
difficult to change regimes.
In addition to calling for legalizing a new gold standard, White advocates restoring “a gold
definition of the U.S. dollar.” What he does not recommend is moving to a 100 percent gold backing
for outstanding U.S. currency and demand deposits. The benefit of establishing a new gold standard is
that it would eliminate the need for monetary policy and thus for a central bank. Under a real gold
standard, the money supply responds to money demand—markets not governments determine the
quantity of money. Without a central bank, private competitive banks will have an incentive to keep
redemption promises under binding contracts. As White notes, “competing private banks, which do
face legal and competitive constraints, have a better historical track record than central banks for
maintaining gold redemption.” Those who oppose a new gold standard, such as Barry Eichengreen
(2011), fail to recognize that a real gold standard simply defines the dollar as a fixed amount of gold;
it does not peg any relative price. Moreover, a gold-based regime breeds fiscal prudence and is
feasible given the existing U.S. real gold stock. White concludes that if the political consensus for a
parallel gold standard exists, present-day financial innovations would facilitate the transition to a
Roland Vaubel , emeritus professor of economics at the University of Mannheim, makes the case
for currency competition as opposed to governmental money monopolies. He begins by examining
barriers to currency competition from both foreign central banks and private issuers. Allowing
international currency competition among central banks, argues Vaubel, would lower inflationary
expectations and thus provide the public with more stable-valued currencies. Likewise, he sees the
benefits of private competitive currencies, based on the Hayekian idea that “the monopoly of
government of issuing money . . . has . . . deprived us of the only process by which we can find out
what would be good money” (Hayek 1978a: 5; also see Hayek 1978b).
Vaubel gives a rigorous defense for allowing free entry of private issuers. He also thinks that “if
currency competition is to serve as a mechanism of discovery, government must not prescribe the
characteristics of the privately issued currencies or the organization of the private issuing
institutions.” Finally, he holds that “there is no independent public-good justification for the
government’s money monopoly. The public good argument is redundant.”
Lawrence H. White explores the growing market for cryptocurrencies, which are best understood
as “transferable digital assets, secured by cryptography.” Although bitcoin is the best-known digital
currency, there are now numerous non-bitcoin currencies, collectively known as “altcoins.” The
market for these “competing private irredeemable monies (or would-be monies)” presents an
opportunity to study the feasibility of Hayek’s theory of competitive private currencies. The key
features of bitcoin are its strict quantity constraint and its open source code with a public ledger. It is
also used as a “vehicle currency,” and thus a unit of account, for most altcoins—dollars exchange for
bitcoins that are then used to buy altcoins.
At present cryptocurrencies are a small part of the monetary universe, but White sees a large
potential, especially for use in international remittances. The important point is that experimentation
with digital currencies is likely to improve their monetary characteristics and speed up their
adoption, provided there is free entry. The problem will be to get the public to trust the new
currencies and keep the government from intervening in the emergent market for cryptocurrencies.
Kevin Dowd, professor of finance and economics at Durham University, concludes Part 4 by
critiquing the argument that free-market currencies are inherently unstable and inferior to a
government-directed monetary system. He begins by constructing a hypothetical model of a laissezfaire monetary regime—asking how a free-market in currencies would emerge absent any central
bank—and finds that its operating properties are consistent with stability and optimality. The harmony
that emerges under a market-based monetary system, argues Dowd, stems from the freedom to choose
alternative currencies and the rule of law that binds the system together.
After discussing “the idealized evolution of a free-banking system,” Dowd describes its two key
features: stability and optimality. “Stability” means a laissez-faire monetary system is “selfsustaining,” the supply of its liabilities is “perfectly elastic,” and the price level is well anchored.
“Optimality” means that “all feasible and mutually beneficial trades take place.” These features stem
from the fact that there are no “outside guardians” to upset the spontaneous free-banking order. It is
the lack of monetary freedom, notes Dowd, that leads to crises. Thus, what is needed for monetary
harmony is monetary freedom.
The current system of pure government fiat monies, managed by discretionary central banks, is
inconsistent with monetary freedom and stability. The lack of a rules-based monetary regime and the
barriers to competitive private currencies limit freedom and needlessly and dangerously enhance the
power of central bankers.
The contributors to this volume question the status quo and offer a deeper understanding of the case
for rules versus discretion in the conduct of monetary policy, examine the characteristics and benefits
of alternative rules, and provide a blueprint for making the transition to a free-market monetary
system. It is hoped that their insights will help guide the public and policymakers to rethink current
monetary arrangements and help shape a new monetary order based on freedom and the rule of law.
REVISITING THREE INTELLECTUAL PILLARS
OF M ONETARY POLICY
The Great Financial Crisis has triggered much soul-searching within the economic profession and
the policymaking community. The crisis shattered the notion that price stability would guarantee
macroeconomic stability: financial markets are not self-equilibrating, at least at a price that society
can afford. And it showed that prudential frameworks focused on individual institutions viewed on a
standalone basis were inadequate: a more systemic perspective was needed to avoid missing the
forest for the trees. Hence, the welcome trend of putting in place macroprudential frameworks. But
has this soul-searching gone far enough?
I shall argue that it has not. More specifically, I would like to revisit and question three deeply
held beliefs that underpin current monetary policy received wisdom. The first belief is that it is
appropriate to define equilibrium (or natural) rates as those consistent with output at potential and
with stable prices (inflation) in any given period—the so-called Wicksellian natural rate. The second
is that it is appropriate to think of money (monetary policy) as neutral—that is, as having no impact on
real outcomes over medium- to long-term horizons relevant for policy: 10–20 years or so, if not
longer. The third is that it is appropriate to set policy on the presumption that deflations are always
very costly, sometimes even to regard them as a kind of red line that, once crossed, heralds the abyss.
From these considerations, I shall draw two conclusions. First, I shall argue that the received
interpretation of the well-known trend decline in real interest rates—as embodied, for example, in the
“saving glut” (Bernanke 2005) and “secular stagnation” (Summers 2014) hypotheses—is not fully
satisfactory. Instead, I shall provide a different/complementary interpretation that stresses the decline
is, at least in part, a disequilibrium phenomenon that is inconsistent with lasting financial,
macroeconomic, and monetary stability. Second, I shall suggest that we need to make adjustments to
current monetary policy frameworks in order to have monetary policy play a more active role in
preventing systemic financial instability and, hence, in containing its huge macroeconomic costs. This
would call for a more symmetrical policy during financial booms and busts—financial cycles. It
would mean leaning more deliberately against financial booms and easing less aggressively and,
above all, persistently during financial busts.
Interest rates, short and long, in nominal and inflation-adjusted (real) terms, have been
exceptionally low for an unusually long time, regardless of benchmarks. In both nominal and real
terms, policy rates are even lower than at the peak of the Great Financial Crisis. In real terms, they
have now been negative for even longer than during the Great Inflation of the 1970s (Figure 1, lefthand panel). Turning next to long-term rates, it is well known that in real terms they have followed a
long-term downward trend—a point to which I will return. But between December 2014 and end-
May 2015, on average no less than around $2 trillion worth of long-term sovereign debt, much of it
issued by euro area sovereigns, was trading at negative yields. At their trough, French, German, and
Swiss sovereign yields were negative out to a respective 5, 9, and 15 years (Figure 1, right-hand
panel). While they have ticked up since then, such negative nominal rates are unprecedented. And all
this has been happening even as global growth has not been far away from historical averages, so that
the wedge between growth and interest rates has been unusually broad.
aNominal policy rate less consumer price inflation excluding food and energy. Weighted averages for the euro area (Germany), Japan,
and the United States based on rolling GDP and PPP exchange rates. bYield per maturity; for each country, the bars represent the
maturities from 1 year to 10 years. cFor the United States, January 30, 2015; for Japan, January 19, 2015; for Germany, April 20, 2015;
for France, April 15, 2015; for Switzerland, October 27, 2015; for Sweden, April 17, 2015.
How should we think of these market rates and of their relationship to equilibrium ones? Both the
received perspective and the one offered here agree that market interest rates are determined by a
combination of central banks’ and market participants’ actions. Central banks set the nominal shortterm rate and, for a given outstanding stock, they influence the nominal long-term rate through their
signals of future policy rates and their asset purchases. Market participants, in turn, adjust their
portfolios based on their expectations of central bank policy, their views about the other factors
driving long-term rates, their attitude toward risk, and various balance sheet constraints. Given
nominal interest rates, actual inflation determines ex post real rates and expected inflation determines
ex ante real rates. So far, so good.
But how can we tell whether market rates are at their equilibrium level from a macroeconomic
perspective—that is, consistent with sustainable good economic performance? The answer is that if
they stay at the wrong level for long enough, something “bad” will happen, leading to an eventual
correction. It is in this sense that many economists say that the influence of central banks on short-term
real rates is only transitory.
But what is that something “bad”? Here the two perspectives differ. In the received perspective, it
is the behavior of inflation that provides the key signal. If there is excess capacity, inflation will fall;
if there is overheating, it will rise. This corresponds to what is often also called the Wicksellian
natural rate—that is, the rate that equates aggregate demand and supply at full employment (or,
equivalently, the rate that prevails when actual output equals potential output).
The perspective developed here suggests that this view is too narrow. Another possible key signal
is the build-up of financial imbalances, which typically take the form of strong increases in credit,
asset prices, and risk-taking. Historically, these have been the main cause of episodes of systemic
financial crises with huge economic costs. Think, for instance, of Japan and the Nordic countries in
the late 1980s, Asia in the mid-1990s, and the United States ahead of the Great Financial Crisis or,
going back in time, ahead of the Great Depression (see Eichengreen and Mitchener 2003).
The reasoning is straightforward. Acknowledge, as indeed some of the proponents of the received
view have, that low interest rates are a factor in fueling financial booms and busts. After all,
intuitively, it is hard to argue that they are not, given that monetary policy operates by influencing
credit expansion, asset prices and risk-taking. Acknowledge further that financial booms and busts
cause huge and lasting economic damage—in fact, no one denies this, given the large amount of
empirical evidence. Then it follows that if we think of an equilibrium rate more broadly as one
consistent with sustainable good economic performance, rates cannot be at their equilibrium level if
they are inconsistent with financial stability.
This is partly an issue of the time frame envisaged for the disequilibria to cause damage. In the
received view, it is relatively short, as the focus is on output deviations from potential at business
cycle frequencies. In the view proposed here, it is longer, as the focus is on the potentially larger
output fluctuations at financial cycle frequencies. As traditionally measured, the duration of the
business cycle is up to eight years; by contrast, the duration of financial cycles since the early 1980s
has been 16–20 years (continuous and dashed lines, respectively, in Figure 2) (Drehmann, Borio, and
Tsatsaronis 2012).1
It is not uncommon to hear supporters of the “saving glut” and “secular stagnation” hypotheses say
that the equilibrium or natural rate is very low, even negative, and that this rate generates financial
instability.2 Seen from this angle, such a statement is somewhat misleading. It is more a reflection of
the incompleteness of the analytical frameworks used to define and measure the natural rate concept
—frameworks that do not incorporate financial instability—than a reflection of an inherent tension
between natural rates and financial stability. There is a need to go beyond the full employmentinflation paradigm to fully characterize economic equilibrium.
What I have said applies just as much to the short-term rate, which the central bank sets, as to longterm rates. For there is no guarantee that the combination of central banks’ and market participants’
decisions will guide long-term rates toward equilibrium. Just like any other asset price, long-term
rates may be misaligned for very long periods, except that their misalignments have more pervasive
aThe financial cycle as measured by frequency-based (bandpass) filters capturing medium-term cycles in real credit, the credit-to-GDP
ratio and real house prices; Q1 1970 = 0. bThe business cycle as measured by a frequency-based (bandpass) filter capturing fluctuations
in real GDP over a period from one to eight years; Q1 1970 = 0.
SOURCE: Drehmann, Borio, and Tsatsaronis (2012), updated.
Importantly, the point about how to think of equilibrium rates is not purely semantic. It has firstorder implications for monetary policy, since we all agree that the central bank’s task is precisely to
set the policy rate so as to track the natural or equilibrium rate. I will come back to this point.
Monetary Neutrality Revisited
Let me now turn to the second pillar of received wisdom: the notion of money (monetary policy)
neutrality. The previous analysis already suggests that this notion is problematic. The reason is that
there is a large body of evidence indicating that the costs of financial (banking) crises are very longlasting, if not permanent: growth may return to its pre-crisis long-term trend, but output remains
below its pre-crisis long-term trend (BCBS 2010, Ball 2014).3 Thus, as long as one acknowledges
that monetary policy can fuel financial booms and their subsequent bust, it is logically dubious to
argue that it is neutral.
More recent evidence uncovered by BIS research confirms this point and sheds further light on it. It
does so by investigating the mechanisms through which financial booms and busts cause so much
lasting damage. The work shifts attention from the demand side of the equation, which is where the
literature has gone (e.g., Reinhart and Reinhart 2010, Drehmann and Juselius 2015, Rogoff 2015), to
the supply side, which is just as important (e.g., Cecchetti and Kharroubi 2015). It is well known that
financial busts weaken demand as the interplay of asset prices falls and overindebtedness causes
havoc in balance sheets. But what about the neglected nexus between financial booms and busts,
resource misallocations, and productivity?
By examining 21 advanced economies over the period 1969–2013, our research produces three
findings (Borio et al. 2015b). First, financial booms tend to undermine productivity growth as they
occur (Figure 3). For a typical credit boom, just over a quarter of a percentage point per year is a
kind of lower bound. Second, a good chunk of this, almost 60 percent, reflects the shift of factors of
production (labor) to lower productivity growth sectors. Think, in particular, of shifts into a
temporarily bloated construction sector. The rest is the impact on productivity that is common across
sectors, such as the shared component of aggregate capital accumulation and total factor productivity.
Third, the impact of the misallocations that occur during a boom is much larger if a crisis follows.
The average loss per year in the five years after a crisis is more than twice that during a boom,
around half a percentage point per year. Taking, say, a five-year boom and five post-crisis years
together, the cumulative impact would amount to a loss of some 4 percentage points. Put differently,
for the period 2008–13, we are talking about a loss of some 0.5 percentage points per year for the
advanced countries that saw booms and crises. This is roughly equal to their actual average
productivity growth during the same window. Now, the point is not to take these figures at face value,
but to note that these factors are material and should receive much more attention. The length of the
periods and orders of magnitude involved are definitely large enough to cast doubt on the notion of
monetary policy neutrality.
FINANCIAL BOOMS SAP PRODUCTIVITY BY MISALLOCATING RESOURCESa
aEstimates calculated over the period 1969–2013 for 21 advanced economies. bAnnual impact on productivity growth of labor shifts into
less productive sectors during the credit boom, as measured over the period shown. cAnnual impact in the absence of reallocations
SOURCE: Based on Borio et al. (2015b).
In addition to the implication for the notion of neutrality, the role of misallocations highlights three
further points. First, it is worth broadening the mechanisms behind “hysteresis” to include those that
work through resource misallocations linked to financial booms and busts. The allocation of credit,
over and above its overall amount, deserves much greater attention.
Second, the well-known limitations of expansionary monetary policy in tackling busts appear in a
new light. It is not just that agents wish to deleverage and the transmission through banks is broken;
easy monetary policy cannot undo the resource misallocations.4 For instance, it cannot, and should
not, bring back to life idle cranes when there is oversupply of buildings. In other words, not all output
gaps are born equal, amenable to the same remedies. During financial busts, after the financial system
has been stabilized (crisis management), removing the obstacles that hold back growth is key. This
means first and foremost facilitating balance sheet repair and implementing structural reforms (Borio,
Vale, and van Peter 2010; Borio 2014a; BIS 2014, 2015).
Finally, there is a need for macro models to go beyond the “one good” standard benchmark. To be
sure, a number of models do, and the time-honored distinction between tradables and nontradables is
the best known example. But the workhorse models that underlie policy are, in effect, one-good
models. Unless we overcome this drawback, there is a risk of throwing out the baby with the
The Costs of Deflation Revisited
Let me now turn to the third notion I wish to question: what might be called the deflation
“bogeyman” (Rajan 2015). Is deflation always and everywhere very costly for output? This is indeed
the premise that seems to have underlain monetary policy for quite some time now.
In fact, if one looks at the evidence carefully, the notion does not seem to hold water. Empirical
work, some of it carried out at the BIS, had already reached this conclusion pre-crisis, leading to the
distinction between “good” and “bad” deflations (e.g., Bordo and Redish 2004, Borio and Filardo
2004, Atkeson and Kehoe 2004, Bordo and Filardo 2005). A more comprehensive and systematic
study we carried out this year has confirmed and extended this conclusion (Borio et al. 2015a).
What did we do? We used a newly constructed data set that spans more than 140 years (1870–
2013), covers up to 38 economies, and includes equity and house prices as well as debt, although still
not for all countries in all periods. We then apply a variety of statistical techniques to examine across
monetary regimes the link between deflation and (per capita) output growth and the relative impact of
deflation and asset price declines. We consider both transitory and, even more importantly, persistent
deflations.
We reach three basic conclusions. First, before controlling for the behavior of asset prices, we find
only a weak association between deflation and growth; the Great Depression is the main exception
(Figure 4). Second, we find a stronger link with asset price declines, and controlling for them further
weakens the link between deflations and growth. In fact, the link disappears even in the Great
Depression (Figure 5). Finally, we find no evidence of a damaging interplay between deflation and
debt (Fisher’s “debt deflation”; Fisher 1933). By contrast, we do find evidence of a damaging
interplay between private sector debt and property (house) prices, especially in the postwar period.
OUTPUT COST OF PERSISTENT GOODS AND SERVICES PRICE DEFLATIONSa (THIRTY-EIGHT ECONOMIES,b
1870–2013, VARIABLE PEAKc YEAR = 100)
NOTES: The numbers in the graph indicate five-year averages of post- and pre-price peak growth in real GDP per capita (in percent)
and the difference between the two periods (in percentage points); */**/*** denotes mean equality rejection with significance at the 10,
5, and 1 percent level. In parentheses is the number of peaks that are included in the calculations. The data included cover the peaks,
with complete five-year trajectories not affected by observations from 1914–18 and 1939–45. For Spain, the Civil War observations are
also excluded (1936–39).
aSimple average of the series of CPI and real GDP per capita readings five years before and after each peak for each economy,
rebased with the peaks equal to 100 (denoted as year 0). bAs listed in Borio et al. (2015a: Table 1). cIncludes only persistent deflations in
the price of goods and services (consumer prices) identified as periods following price peaks associated with a turning point in the fiveyear moving average and peak levels exceeding price index levels in the preceding and subsequent five years.
SOURCE: Borio et al. (2015a).
CHANGE IN PER CAPITA OUTPUT GROWTH AFTER PRICE PEAKSa (IN PERCENTAGE POINTSb)
NOTES: The approach underlying the estimated effects shown in the graph is described in Borio et al. (2015a); a circle indicates an
insignificant coefficient, and a filled circle indicates that a coefficient is significant at least at the 10 percent level. Estimated effects are
conditional on sample means (country fixed effects) and on the effects of the respective other price peaks (e.g., the estimated change in
h-period growth after CPI peaks is conditional on the estimated change after property and equity price peaks). For the respective country
samples, see Borio et al. (2015a).
aThe graph shows the estimated difference between h-period per capita output growth after and before price peak. bThe estimated
regression coefficients are multiplied by 100 in order to obtain the effect in percentage points.
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