(Week 12 - Tuesday, Oct. 28)
Debates about the "national debt" (especially as concerns the Federal "debt") are frequently accompanied by admonitions that we need to deal with our "debt" now so our children will not inherit it. Politicians have been professing a sense of urgency about the matter for decades, and the public has come to expect the familiar rhetoric from them. Their proposals are invariably vague and couched in ideological terms, and, it seems, once whoever is elected assumes office the net indebtedness of the nation continues to snowball, except at an accelerated pace.
The "national debt," both public and private, has continued to mount for decades, across the generations, until now it is simply galloping out of control. We are being subjected to the same promises in this election cycle, but the numbers have gotten so immense that it makes one wonder how anyone can have the temerity to utter such claims anymore. It is as if they can't think of anything else to say.
This situation begs a few questions. What is happening here? What is it about debt that we don't get? What are we doing wrong? Is there no way to turn the fiscal corner and finally start paying this thing down? Are we helpless to arrest the mortgaging of our own children's future?
In my view the concern often expressed by politicians and citizens alike about not wanting to burden our progeny's future with our irresponsible financial profligacy is for the most part authentic. The problem is that our most heartfelt efforts are bringing about the very opposite effect. The irony is that the more we resolve to fix the problem, the more we make certain that this downward spiral into "debt" continues. This is a case of unintended consequences run amok.
We are counseled in holy writ, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." (Proverbs 4:7). In not wanting our children to fall into indentured servitude to the moneylenders we have indeed embraced "the principal thing," but as a culture we lack the understanding of how to accomplish it.
To get this understanding, I propose that we start by revisiting the private-bank-loan transaction by which virtually every dollar in circulation comes into being. I ask the reader's patience in that this will require an explanation that will unfold over the length of several columns, but understanding its implications is absolutely crucial to seeing how our children's future can be rescued from the irredeemable "debt" that seemingly threatens to foreclose on it now.
When a person borrows from a bank, the banker does not get the money he is "loaning" from funds on deposit in his vault. Rather, he creates the money with the "writing of a check" (or the electronic equivalent of creating deposits in the borrowers account with a few keystrokes on a computer). In other words, the money did not exist the instant before he "made the loan", but it does now. This is the very moment in which new dollars come into existence within the Federal Reserve System.
Already we can see that the banker is not making a "loan" in the dictionary or common sense meaning of the term. That is, he is not handing over something tangible that he is in possession of, and therefore must now do without until the "borrower" returns it. Instead, he is bringing an abstract value into existence that is essentially conjured "out of thin air." It would be more proper to describe this, not as a "lending", but a "monetization" process. Monetization is the creation and issuance of money as an extension of a commodity that exists and has worth so that it, or goods of equivalent value, can be bought and sold.
The existence of this more accurate terminology notwithstanding, the common practice in the world of banking is to call the issuance from this money-creation process a "loan", which by implication results in a supposed "debt".
(to be continued)
Richard Kotlarz
richkotlarz@gmail.com
The complete set of columns from this series is posted at the following websites.
http://economictree.blogspot.com/
http://www.concordresolution.org/column.htm
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
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