There is almost no idiocy to which Japanese politicians and central bankers have not resorted during Japan’s twenty-six years of economic stagnation. Now, apparently, under the tutelage of Benjamin Bernanke, they are about to engage in the ultimate idiocy: helicopter money. From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
Ben Bernanke is one of the most dangerous men walking the planet. In this age of central bank domination of economic life he is surely the pied piper of monetary ruin.
At least since 2002 he has been talking about “helicopter money” as if a notion which is pure economic quackery actually had some legitimate basis. But strip away the pseudo scientific jargon, and it amounts to monetization of the public debt—–the very oldest form of something for nothing economics.
Back then, of course, Ben’s jabbering about helicopter money was taken to be some sort of theoretical metaphor about the ultimate powers of central bankers, and especially their ability to forestall the boogey-man of “deflation”.
Indeed, Bernanke was held to be a leading economic scholar of the Great Depression and a disciple of Milton Friedman’s claim that Fed stringency during 1930-1932 had caused it. This is complete poppycock, as I demonstrated in The Great Deformation, but it did give an air of plausibility and even conservative pedigree to a truly stupid and dangerous idea.
Right about then, in fact, Bernanke grandly promised during a speech at Friedman’s 90th birthday party that today’s enlightened central bankers—led by himself—-would never let it happen again.
Presumably Bernanke was speaking of the 25% deflation of the general price level after 1929. The latter is always good for a big scare among modern audiences because no one seems to remember that the deflation of the 1930’s was nothing more than the partial liquidation of the 100%-300% inflation of the general price level during the Great War.
In any event, Bernanke was tilting at windmills when he implied that the collapse of the US wartime and Roaring Twenties boom had anything to do with the conditions of 2002. Even the claim that Japan was suffering from severe deflation at the time was manifestly false.
In fact, during the final stages of Japan great export and credit boom, the domestic price level had risen substantially, increasing by nearly 70% between 1976 and 1993. It then simply flattened-out—–and appropriately so—-after the great credit, real estate and stock market bubble collapse of 1990-1992.
So even by the evidence of Japan, there was no basis anywhere in the world for Bernanke’s fear-mongering about deflation at the turn of the century.
Instead, Bernanke was already showing himself to be a dangerous academic crank with no compunction about dispensing among democratic politicians the most toxic ideological poison known to history. Namely, an invitation to plunge the public fisc deep into the red so that the central banks would have bonds to buy in their fight against the purported scourge of deflation.
To continue reading: Bernanke’s Black Helicopters Of Money
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