100 Money And The Public Debt

Article by Irving Fisher (1936), Professor Emeritus of Economics, Yale University, urges Congress to take back the Constitutional money power, redeem the national debt, require banks' demand deposit to be 100% liquid, to avoiding an inelastic loan structure that bursts, leaving frozen loans behind, and avoid 'Global Financial Crises'. Includes a brief biography of Irving Fisher.

Irving Fisher's (1935) classic "100% Money" and the "Chicago Plan" are offering solutions to current problems, are revisited, discussed and critiqued. At the time of publication (March 2015), the Greek national debt and the currency of the Euro Area are in issue. National Debts are incurred by misconceived, if not corrupt, ministers of finance and bureaucrats at their central banks, yielding to private commercial bankers who are creating the money out of nothing. The national debts can be repaid at a stroke of a pen, instead are resulting in needless austerity programs, currency failures, leftist governments and noisy demonstrations on the streets, instead of taking back the banks' illicit money creation in violation of generally accepted accounting principles and concepts of IFRS, and giving it back to the people. Jaromir Benes and Michael Kumhof (2012), both economic researchers at the IMF, have run Irving Fisher's 100% monetary system through carefully calibrated models and found support for each of Fisher's beneficial claims: (1) Smooth business cycles; (2) Stable banks; (3) No national debt(s); (4) Stable debt-free money supply created by a public authority instead of private banks. The tests revealed an additional benefit: (5) A 10% national output gain with zero inflation.

At the height of the Great Depression a number of leading U.S. economists advanced a proposal for monetary reform that became known as the Chicago Plan. It envisaged the separation of the monetary and credit functions of the banking system, by requiring 100% reserve backing for deposits. Irving Fisher (1936) claimed the following advantages for this plan: (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. We study these claims by embedding a comprehensive and carefully calibrated model of the banking system in a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. We find support for all four of Fisher's claims. Furthermore, output gains approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation can drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy.

The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has already been larger, faster, and broader-based than in the previous three waves. Current low interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt. However, emerging market and developing economies are also confronted by weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities, and elevated global risks. A menu of policy options is available to reduce the likelihood that the current debt wave will end in crisis and, if crises do take place, will alleviate their impact.

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