When I read Ed’s recent piece “Japan: stimulus without reform leads to a policy cul de sac,” I couldn’t help but think he is wrong about Japan.
Supporting aggregate demand
The problem is taxes. In Japan, taxes are too high relative to the desire for spending and savings. Policy makers need to stop taking so many yen away from working people, so that they are able to buy all of the output which they can produce at full employment levels.
The Japanese should have gone for domestic demand-led growth instead of export-led growth. When export growth reversed, the economy went into depression. Even Richard Koo, who has often spoken of a balance sheet recession and has the right approach on Japan, never imagined that such a thing would happen. But it’s easy enough to resolve; simply support domestic incomes with the right tax cuts to sustain domestic demand at desired levels to sustain output and employment.
One can always sustain domestic demand by altering the fiscal balance. In truth, it is as simple as debiting and crediting accounts on the Bank of Japan’s master yen account spread sheet.
Again, a fiscal adjustment can restore domestic demand immediately.
Savings in Japan
The savings rate in Japan is down as a consequence of falling net exports and what was until recently a falling budget deficit. The deficit trend is now reversing in a very ugly way- falling revenues and increased transfer payments. True, private sector savings have fallen which means that Japanese policy makers have run out room for error. I would contend that the vast scale of private savings allowed them to continue to screw up for so long by, for example:
- hiking the VAT in 1996
- introducing ‘fiscal consolidation’ in 2001 (and finally relenting in 2003 when the economy finally started to grow again, until this latest fiasco).
Issuing one’s own fiat currency debt
But, the notion that the country is in a ‘debt trap dynamic’ as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard suggests is ludicrous. Debt is serviced by data entries by the BOJ- debits and credits to securities accounts and transactions accounts at the BOJ. The BOJ can spend/credit accounts at will. It’s just data entry. Spending is not constrained by revenues (this is fiat currency, not a gold standard). In a worst case, ‘over-spending’ causes inflation. But, that happens to be what they are trying to accomplish. Getting some inflation would be considered a success. Moreover, it can easily be reversed by tightening fiscal policy if it comes to that.
It’s really that simple.