FALLACY 3 OF FIANCIAL FUNDAMENTALISM

William Vickrey, 1996 Nobel Memorial Award in Economics.

October 5, 1996

Government borrowing is supposed to « crowd out » private investment.

The current reality is that on the contrary, the expenditure of the borrowed funds (unlike the expenditure of taxes revenues) will generate added disposable income, enhance the demand for the products of private industry, and make private investment more profitable. As long as there are plenty of idle resources lying around, and monetary authorities behave sensibly, (instead of trying to counter the supposedly inflationary effect of the deficit) those with prospect for profitable investment can be enabled to obtain financing. Under these circumstances, each additional dollar of deficit will in the medium long run induce two or more additional dollars of private investment. The capital created is an increment to someone’s wealth and ipso facto someone’s saving. « Supply creates its own demand » fails as soon as some of the income generated by the supply is saved, but investment does create its own saving, and more. Any crowding out that may occur is the result, not of underlying economic reality, but of inappropriate restrictive reactions on the part of a monetary authority in response to the deficit.