Research Topics
Publications on Federal debt
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If Government Can Print Money, Why Does It Borrow?
One-Pager No. 72 | May 2024Recently, the neglected question of why the US government borrows, given that it can print money, has arisen in the context of discussions surrounding a new documentary, Finding the Money. As L. Randall Wray observes in this one-pager, Modern Money Theory has been providing answers to this question for some time; and, he argues, it is a topic that mainstream economists are ill-equipped to address, since very few concern themselves with the monetary operations that underlie the question of why a currency-issuing government issues debt.Download:Associated Programs:Author(s): -
Are Concerns over Growing Federal Government Debt Misplaced?
One-Pager No. 68 | November 2021With the US Treasury cutting checks totaling approximately $5 trillion to deal with the COVID-19 crisis, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argues that when it comes to the federal government, concerns about affordability and solvency can both be laid to rest. According to Wray, the question is never whether the federal government can spend more, but whether it should. And while there are still strongly held beliefs about the negative impacts of deficits and debt on inflation, interest rates, growth, and exchange rates, with two centuries of experience the evidence for these concerns is mixed at best.Download:Associated Programs:Author(s): -
The Central Bank “Printing Press”: Boon or Bane?
Working Paper No. 640 | December 2010Remedies for High Unemployment and Fears of Fiscal Crisis
In recent years, the US public debt has grown rapidly, with last fiscal year’s deficit reaching nearly $1.3 trillion. Meanwhile, many of the euro nations with large amounts of public debt have come close to bankruptcy and loss of capital market access. The same may soon be true of many US states and localities, with the governor of California, for example, publicly regretting that he has been forced to cut bone, and not just fat, from the state’s budget. Chartalist economists have long attributed the seemingly limitless borrowing ability of the US government to a particular kind of monetary system, one in which money is a “creature of the state” and the government can create as much currency and bank reserves as it needs to pay its bills (this is not to say that it lacks the power to impose taxes). In this paper, we examine this situation in light of recent discussions of possible limits to the federal government’s use of debt and the Federal Reserve’s “printing press.” We examine and compare the fiscal situations in the United States and the eurozone, and suggest that the US system works well, but that some changes must be made to macro policy if the United States and the world as a whole are to avoid another deep recession.
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Does Excessive Sovereign Debt Really Hurt Growth?
Working Paper No. 603 | June 2010A Critique of This Time Is Different, by Reinhart and Rogoff
The worst global downturn since the Great Depression has caused ballooning budget deficits in most nations, as tax revenues collapse and governments bail out financial institutions and attempt countercyclical fiscal policy. With notable exceptions, most economists accept the desirability of expansion of deficits over the short term but fear possible long-term effects. There are a number of theoretical arguments that lead to the conclusion that higher government debt ratios might depress growth. There are other arguments related to more immediate effects of debt on inflation and national solvency. Research conducted by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff is frequently cited to demonstrate the negative impacts of public debt on economic growth and financial stability. In this paper we critically examine their work. We distinguish between a nation that operates with its own floating exchange rate and nonconvertible (sovereign) currency, and a nation that does not. We argue that Reinhart and Rogoff’s results are not relevant to the case of the United States.
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