Fooled by Stimulus

Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management has written one of the more important market commentaries I think I have ever read.

In studying the government debt market, we have inadvertently been led to question the economic theory that most fervently justified recent government spending programs: that of Keynesian economics. The so called “beautiful theory” of Keynesian economics is arguably the most influential economic theory of the 20th Century, shaping the way Western democracies approached the balance between free market capitalism and government initiatives. Like many beautiful theories, however, Keynesianism has ultimately succumbed to the ugly facts. We firmly believe the Keynesian miracle is dead. The stimulus programs are simply not producing their desired results, and the future debt costs associated with funding these programs may cause far greater strife in the future than the problems the stimulus was originally designed to address.

.........There are a number of studies we have come across that suggest stimulus is the wrong approach. The first is a 2005 Harvard study by Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig that discusses the effects of fiscal policy shocks on the underlying economy. Mountford and Uhlig explain that from the mid-1950’s to year 2000, the maximum economic impact of a two percent increase in government spending was an ensuing GDP growth of approximately three percent. A two percent spending increase inevitably requires an increase in taxes. Due to the nature of interest costs, however, the government would have to raise taxes by MORE than two percent in order to pay back the initial borrowing. According to their data, this increase in taxes would generally lead to a seven percent drop in GDP. As they state in their study: “This shows that when government spending is financed contemporaneously that the contractionary effects of the tax increases outweigh the expansionary effects of the increased expenditure after a very short time.” Stated simply, ‘borrowing to stimulate’ has never worked as planned because the cost of paying back the borrowed funds surpassed the immediate benefits of the stimulus.

In a follow-on study, Harald Uhlig estimated that an approximate $3.40 of output is lost for every dollar spent on stimulus. Another study on the same subject by C’ordoba and Kehoe (2009) went so far as to say that, “massive public interventions in the economy to maintain employment and investment during a financial crisis can, if they distort incentives enough, lead to a great depression.”

If the conclusions of these studies are even close to being correct, we are now in quite a predicament – not just in the US, but across the Western world. Remember that the 2007-08 meltdown was only two years ago, and as we highlighted in April 2009 in “The Elephant in the Room”, the US government has spent more on stimulus and bailouts, in percentage of GDP terms, than it did in the Gulf War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Vietnam War, the Korean War and World War I combined. All that spending was justified by the understanding that it would generate sustainable underlying growth. If it turns out that that assumption was wrong, have the governments made a fatal mistake?

........Since Keynesian economics is no longer relevant, some are now arguing that tax cuts will save the day. Two of the academic studies we reviewed suggest that tax relief is a much stronger stimulus to the economy than government spending, and under normal circumstances this is probably true. But we are not in a normal economic environment. Even if the tax cuts implemented by George Bush in 2006 are extended by the next Congress, the US will still face the ‘Keynesian Endpoint’. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in January 2010 states the following: “In our Alternative simulation, which assumes expiring tax provisions are extended through 2020 and revenue is held constant at the 40-year historical average; roughly 93 cents of every dollar of federal revenue will be spent on the major entitlement programs and net interest costs by 2020.” Extending tax cuts won’t solve anything.

In the end, Keynesian stimulus ultimately fooled us all. It roped in the politicians of the richest countries and set them on an unsustainable course of debt issuance. Recent Keynesian stimulus has even managed to fool the sophisticated economic models designed by central banks. The process of accounting for massive government spending ‘confuses’ the models into calculating a recovery trajectory when it doesn’t exist. The Bank of England confirmed this with its announced £3.5 million overhaul of its current model due to its inability to generate accurate inflation and recession forecasts.

Keynesian stimulus can’t be blamed for all our problems, but it would have been nice if our politicians hadn’t relied on it so blindly. Debt is debt is debt, after all. It doesn’t matter if it’s owed by governments or individuals. It weighs on the institutions that issue too much of it, and the ensuing consequences of paying off the interest costs severely hinders governments’ ability to function properly. It suffices to say that we need a new economic plan – a plan that doesn’t invite governments to print their way out of economic turmoil. Keynesian theory enjoyed a tremendous run, but is now for all intents and purposes dead... and now it’s time to pay for it. Literally.