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People's Quantitative Easing (PQE) is a policy proposed by Jeremy Corbyn during the 2015 Labour leadership election in August. It would require the Bank of England to create money to finance government investment via a National Investment Bank. [1]
Corbyn proposes to have the Bank of England create money to invest in housing and public transport, described by Corbyn as "People's Quantitative Easing". This would aim to turn the UK into a high-skill, high-tech economy and to build more council houses in order to lower long-term housing benefit costs. To achieve this, the Bank would purchase bonds for a state-owned "National Investment Bank". [2] [3]
The policy is based on ideas put forward by Richard Murphy. [4] Murphy argues it is a policy designed for use in 2020, in the event the economy remains flat despite traditional quantitative easing, with low inflation, low interest rates, high unemployment and low wages. If the economy is growing strongly, PQE would not be needed as increasing tax revenues would pay for necessary investment. [5]
The policy was criticised by other leadership candidates, who claimed it was 'economically illiterate' [6] and would increase the risk of investing in the UK. [7] It would also clash with Article 123 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty which prevents central banks from printing money to finance government spending and could cause a legal battle with the European Court of Justice. [8] [9] The Daily Telegraph wrote that as quantitative easing had the potential to cause inflation; currently the Bank of England holds onto the money it creates and thus has the power to 'unwind QE' by reversing it, whereas if the money had gone into a National Investment Bank, this would not be possible. [10]
On 3 August 2015, Labour's shadow chancellor, Chris Leslie, criticised the proposal on the grounds that it could provoke higher inflation and interest rates. [11]
However, economist Robert Skidelsky offered a qualified endorsement of Corbyn's proposals to carry out PQE through a National Investment Bank, [12] [13] and both The Guardian and the Financial Times have published articles complimenting the idea. [14] [15] The Guardian also published an article by Tony Yates, economist at Birmingham University critical of the proposal. Yates suggested it could encourage reckless spending by governments to finance "pet projects" and could encourage governments to print money to finance pre election booms followed by austerity after a government is reelected and could fuel extreme inflation. Yates is further concerned that high inflation and economic uncertainty tends to hit poor people hardest. [16] The Independent published an article arguing that a limited amount of PQE would usefully increase employment and inflation, reducing the burden of debt accumulated since the financial crisis of 2007–08. [17]
The Daily Telegraph reported that HSBC's chief economist, Stephen King, and Standard Life's senior international economist, Jeremy Lawson, support policies such as People's Quantitative Easing should the economy move into another downturn despite the use of traditional quantitative easing (QE) policies. [18]
In August 2015, Corbyn stated he had had messages of support on his economic policies in general from economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. [19]
Following the formation of the Economic Advisory Committee, announced on 27 September 2015 at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, then BBC News Economics Editor Robert Peston contended that the composition of the panel, which included Simon Wren-Lewis and Joseph Stiglitz, signalled that the policy was probably dead, as he felt that while this particular group of economists would, "back the notion of the government taking advantage of prevailing low interest rates to borrow considerably more for investment in infrastructure," they would not support the ultra formulation of the policy, "for fear that the anti-inflationary credentials of the Bank of England would be destroyed", and that if the policy survived it would be as, "a contingent rainy-day monetary tool, for when the economy is next in direst straits." [20]
In February 2019, the New Statesman claimed People's Quantitative Easing was evocative of Modern Monetary Theory. [21]
In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0%. Inflation reduces the value of currency over time, but sudden deflation increases it. This allows more goods and services to be bought than before with the same amount of currency. Deflation is distinct from disinflation, a slow-down in the inflation rate, i.e. when inflation declines to a lower rate but is still positive.
A liquidity trap is a situation, described in Keynesian economics, in which, "after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference may become virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers holding cash rather than holding a debt which yields so low a rate of interest."
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is a committee of the Bank of England, which meets for three and a half days, eight times a year, to decide the official interest rate in the United Kingdom.
Debt monetization or monetary financing is the practice of a government borrowing money from the central bank to finance public spending instead of selling bonds to private investors or raising taxes. The central banks who buy government debt, are essentially creating new money in the process to do so.
Helicopter money is a proposed unconventional monetary policy, sometimes suggested as an alternative to quantitative easing (QE) when the economy is in a liquidity trap. Although the original idea of helicopter money describes central banks making payments directly to individuals, economists have used the term 'helicopter money' to refer to a wide range of different policy ideas, including the 'permanent' monetization of budget deficits – with the additional element of attempting to shock beliefs about future inflation or nominal GDP growth, in order to change expectations. A second set of policies, closer to the original description of helicopter money, and more innovative in the context of monetary history, involves the central bank making direct transfers to the private sector financed with base money, without the direct involvement of fiscal authorities. This has also been called a citizens' dividend or a distribution of future seigniorage.
Modern Monetary Theory or Modern Money Theory (MMT) is a heterodox macroeconomic theory that describes currency as a public monopoly and unemployment as evidence that a currency monopolist is overly restricting the supply of the financial assets needed to pay taxes and satisfy savings desires. MMT is opposed to the mainstream understanding of macroeconomic theory, and has been criticized by many mainstream economists.
Quantitative easing (QE) is a monetary policy whereby a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds or other financial assets in order to inject money into the economy to expand economic activity. Quantitative easing is considered to be an unconventional form of monetary policy, which is usually used when inflation is very low or negative, and when standard monetary policy instruments have become ineffective.
This is a list of historical rate actions by the United States Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The FOMC controls the supply of credit to banks and the sale of treasury securities. The Federal Open Market Committee meets every two months during the fiscal year. At scheduled meetings, the FOMC meets and makes any changes it sees as necessary, notably to the federal funds rate and the discount rate. The committee may also take actions with a less firm target, such as an increasing liquidity by the sale of a set amount of Treasury bonds, or affecting the price of currencies both foreign and domestic by selling dollar reserves. Jerome Powell is the current chairperson of the Federal Reserve and the FOMC.
James Brian Bullard is the chief executive officer and 12th president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, positions he has held since 2008. He is currently serving a term that began on March 1, 2021. In 2014, he was named the 7th most influential economist in the world in terms of media influence.
Richard Andreas Werner is a German banking and development economist who is a university professor at De Montfort University.
Currency war, also known as competitive devaluations, is a condition in international affairs where countries seek to gain a trade advantage over other countries by causing the exchange rate of their currency to fall in relation to other currencies. As the exchange rate of a country's currency falls, exports become more competitive in other countries, and imports into the country become more and more expensive. Both effects benefit the domestic industry, and thus employment, which receives a boost in demand from both domestic and foreign markets. However, the price increases for import goods are unpopular as they harm citizens' purchasing power; and when all countries adopt a similar strategy, it can lead to a general decline in international trade, harming all countries.
Richard Murphy is a British chartered accountant and political economist who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion. He advises the Trades Union Congress on economics and taxation, and is a long-standing member of the Tax Justice Network. He is a Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University London.
Market monetarism is a school of macroeconomic thought that advocates that central banks target the level of nominal income instead of inflation, unemployment, or other measures of economic activity, including in times of shocks such as the bursting of the real estate bubble in 2006, and in the financial crisis that followed. In contrast to traditional monetarists, market monetarists do not believe monetary aggregates or commodity prices such as gold are the optimal guide to intervention. Market monetarists also reject the New Keynesian focus on interest rates as the primary instrument of monetary policy. Market monetarists prefer a nominal income target due to their twin beliefs that rational expectations are crucial to policy, and that markets react instantly to changes in their expectations about future policy, without the "long and variable lags" postulated by Milton Friedman.
Abenomics refers to the economic policies implemented by the Government of Japan led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since the December 2012 general election. They are named after Shinzō Abe, who served a second stint as Prime Minister of Japan from 2012 to 2020. After Abe resigned in September 2020, his successor, Yoshihide Suga, has stated that his premiership will focus on continuing the policies and goals of the Abe administration, including the Abenomics suite of economic policies.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Member of Parliament for Islington North, stood as a candidate in the 2015 British Labour Party leadership election, in a successful campaign that made him the leader of the Labour Party.
This article summarises the views and voting record of Labour Party MP Jeremy Corbyn, who was the Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom from 12 September 2015 until 4 April 2020.
The British Labour Party's Economic Advisory Committee was in 2015-16 a group of economists, described as experts on globalisation, inequality and innovation, convened by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and reporting to Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, announced on 27 September 2015 at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, and intended to meet on a quarterly basis to discuss and develop ideas around the official economic strategy to be advocated by the Labour Party, but not to set policy. It has been described as a way to give the Shadow Chancellor defensive cover.
Positive Money is a not-for-profit advocacy group based in London and Brussels. Positive Money's mission is to promote a fair, democratic and sustainable economy through reforms of central banks and alternative monetary policy tools. Its current Executive Director is geophysicist Fran Boait.
Quantitative tightening (QT) is a contractionary monetary policy applied by a central bank to decrease the amount of liquidity within the economy. The policy is the reverse of quantitative easing (QE), aimed to increase money supply in order to "stimulate" the economy.
Carbon quantitative easing (CQE) is an unconventional monetary policy that is featured in a proposed international climate policy, called a global carbon reward. A major goal of CQE is to finance the global carbon reward by managing the exchange rate of a proposed representative currency. The representative currency will be an international unit of account and a store of value, because it will represent the mass of carbon that is mitigated and rewarded under the new policy.
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