page_title: Austerity
section_title: Government budget balance as a sectoral component
hierarchical_section_title: Austerity / Theoretical considerations / Government budget balance as a sectoral component
caption_attribution_description: English: Sectoral Financial Balances in U.S. Economy 1990-2012
context_page_description: Austerity is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both. Austerity measures are often used by governments that find it difficult to borrow or meet their existing obligations to pay back loans. The measures are meant to reduce the budget deficit by bringing government revenues closer to expenditures. This reduces the amount of borrowing required and may also demonstrate a government's fiscal discipline to creditors and credit rating agencies and make borrowing easier or cheaper as a result.
  In most macroeconomic models, austerity policies which reduce government spending lead to increased unemployment in the short term. These reductions in employment usually occur directly in the public sector and indirectly in the private sector. Where austerity policies are enacted using tax increases, these can reduce consumption by cutting household disposable income. This also tends to reduce employment in the short term. Reduced government spending can reduce GDP growth in the short term as government expenditure is itself a component of GDP.
context_section_description: According to economist Martin Wolf, the U.S. and many Eurozone countries experienced rapid increases in their budget deficits in the wake of the 2008 crisis as a result of significant private-sector retrenchment and ongoing capital account surpluses.
  Policy choices had little to do with these deficit increases. This makes austerity measures counterproductive. Wolf explained that government fiscal balance is one of three major financial sectoral balances in a country's economy, along with the foreign financial sector (capital account) and the private financial sector.
  By definition, the sum of the surpluses or deficits across these three sectors must be zero. In the U.S. and many Eurozone countries other than Germany, a foreign financial surplus exists because capital is imported (net) to fund the trade deficit. Further, there is a private-sector financial surplus because household savings exceed business investment.
  By definition, a government budget deficit must exist so all three net to zero: for example, the U.S. government budget deficit in 2011 was approximately 10% of GDP (8.6% of GDP of which was federal), offsetting a foreign financial surplus of 4% of GDP and a private-sector surplus of 6% of GDP.
  Wolf explained in July 2012 that the sudden shift in the private sector from deficit to surplus forced the U.S. government balance into deficit: "The financial balance of the private sector shifted towards surplus by the almost unbelievable cumulative total of 11.2 per cent of gross domestic product between the third quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, which was when the financial deficit of US government (federal and state) reached its peak.... No fiscal policy changes explain the collapse into massive fiscal deficit between 2007 and 2009, because there was none of any importance. The collapse is explained by the massive shift of the private sector from financial deficit into surplus or, in other words, from boom to bust."
  Wolf also wrote that several European economies face the same scenario and that a lack of deficit spending would likely have resulted in a depression. He argued that a private-sector depression (represented by the private- and foreign-sector surpluses) was being "contained" by government deficit spending.
  Economist Paul Krugman also explained in December 2011 the causes of the sizable shift from private-sector deficit to surplus in the U.S.: "This huge move into surplus reflects the end of the housing bubble, a sharp rise in household saving, and a slump in business investment due to lack of customers."
  One reason why austerity can be counterproductive in a downturn is due to a significant private-sector financial surplus, in which consumer savings is not fully invested by businesses. In a healthy economy, private-sector savings placed into the banking system by consumers are borrowed and invested by companies. However, if consumers have increased their savings but companies are not investing the money, a surplus develops.
  Business investment is one of the major components of GDP. For example, a U.S. private-sector financial deficit from 2004 to 2008 transitioned to a large surplus of savings over investment that exceeded $1 trillion by early 2009, and remained above $800 billion into September 2012. Part of this investment reduction was related to the housing market, a major component of investment. This surplus explains how even significant government deficit spending would not increase interest rates (because businesses still have access to ample savings if they choose to borrow and invest it, so interest rates are not bid upward) and how Federal Reserve action to increase the money supply does not result in inflation (because the economy is awash with savings with no place to go).
  Economist Richard Koo described similar effects for several of the developed world economies in December 2011: "Today private sectors in the U.S., the U.K., Spain, and Ireland (but not Greece) are undergoing massive deleveraging [paying down debt rather than spending] in spite of record low interest rates. 
caption: Sectoral financial balances in U.S. economy 1990–2012. By definition, the three balances must net to zero. Since 2009, the U.S. capital surplus and private-sector surplus have driven a government budget deficit.
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