April 27, 2011
It has become fashionable for billionaire types to offer big prizes for all sorts of things: new green technologies, teaching inner city kids, raising poor people in the developing world out of poverty. In this spirit, we really need some enterprising billionaire to offer a big prize for teaching basic national income accounting to the Post’s editorial board.
The lead Post editorial expresses great concern that the world may lose confidence in the dollar, first and foremost because of the country’s budget deficit and debt. If the Post’s editors knew national income accounting then they would understand the contradiction in this position. The only sustainable way to get the budget deficit down is by lowering the value of the dollar. In other words, if it wants lower budget deficits, it should want the dollar to fall.
The logic is simple. The trade surplus is equal to net national savings. This is a definition, sort of like 2+3 being equal to 5. There is no way around it: 2+3 will always equal 5 and the trade surplus will always be equal to net national savings.
When the United States has a large trade deficit, as it does today, then it means that net national savings are negative. This means that either private savings must be negative or public savings must be negative (i.e. we have big budget deficits) or some combination of the two.
In the last decade, we had very low private savings as the budget deficit shrank to just 1.0 percent of GDP. The low private savings were the result of the housing bubble. The bubble led to a huge amount of wasted construction (which counts as investment) and very low household savings as consumers spent based on bubble generated housing equity. While the Post may want a return to bubble driven growth, this is disastrous for the economy and it is certainly not sustainable.
In the absence of very low private sector saving, there is no alternative to having the government run large budget deficits to make the identity balance. (In principle, other investment could rise, but it is very difficult to find formulas to make that happen.) This means that the current trade deficit essentially requires a large budget deficit.
The way out of this story is for the dollar to fall. The Post and its deficit hawk buddies can jump up and down and call all sorts of people all sorts of names but the trade deficit is not going to fall by much unless the dollar falls. A lower valued dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper to foreigners, leading them to buy more of them. It makes imports more expensive for people in the United States, leading us to buy fewer imports.
For this reason, a lower valued dollar is an essential part of any sustainable recovery plan. If the Post’s editors knew national income accounting they were be putting pressure on Bernanke and Geithner to reduce the value of the dollar, not pleading for pledges to a strong dollar.
Unfortunately, the Post’s editors don’t understand national income accounting so we get this confused editorial calling for lower budget deficits and a strong dollar. Isn’t there some billionaire out there willing to put up the prize money so that these people can be taught? Please.
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