One of the things that the Tres Ricardo keeps telling us is that under Modern Monetary Theory a country just doesn’t have to worry about the FX markets or, indeed, foreigners. Because the central bank can control the amount of money, plus also interest rates. Inflation can and will be dealt with by tax.
The thing being well, no, you can’t control them all:
Erdoğan, a self-described enemy of high interest rates, has repeatedly called for lower borrowing costs. Last weekend, he said Turkey was fighting an economic war against those squeezing it in “the devil’s triangle of interest and exchange rates and inflation”.
Well, yes.
At the last meeting of its monetary policy committee on 22 October, the central bank bucked expectations for a big interest rate hike and held its policy rate steady at 10.25%, triggering sharp losses in the lira.
The bank, which also surprised markets a month earlier when it hiked rates, said it would continue with liquidity measures to tighten money supply. It raised the uppermost rate in its corridor, the late liquidity window, to 14.75% from 13.25%.
However, the lira has continued to slide despite those measures, weakening 30% against the US currency this year to become the worst performer in emerging markets.
Bearishness towards the lira stems from concerns about possible Western sanctions against Turkey, depleted reserves, high inflation and political interference in monetary policy.
Inflation is high – near 50% by many measures. The central bank – OK, if you prefer, the government – keeps printing money to finance spending. They’re doing that monetisation of fiscal policy which is MMT. They need to raise interest rates to support the value of he currency. Or, of course, they can accept the devaluation and keep interest rates where they are. And then end up with more imported inflation.
That is, they can’t control all three at the same time. At least one of them has to go the way they don’t want it to in order to control the other two of FX, inflation and interest rates.
Now, Snippa will tell us that Turkey isn’t a place that can do MMT. Only places with certain economic attributes can. And here’s the thing that I’ve a sneaking suspicion about. Which is that the places which currently meet his criteria for being able to do MMT rapidly won’t once they start to do MMT. That is, the places that can, in theory, get away with the monetisation of fiscal policy are those places with a long record of not doing it. And as soon as they start doing it then the ability to do so without hitting this devil’s triangle rather disappears.
Some sort of corollary of Goodhart’s Law perhaps. As soon as the policy is adopted it stops being able to work.
Aren’t interest rates anti-Islamic?
“the devil’s triangle of interest and exchange rates and inflation”.
I though it was called a trilemma?
I used to pose something similar to our clients when we were doing mobile phone licence bids and roll out:
cost (usually peak capital), quality (density of sites), speed (of roll out toward x% pop coverage) – pick 2.
As to Turkey, I suspect Spud would mutter something about not proper MMT and eventually circle back to real MMTs never been tried.
Bugger, screwed HTML tags.
Or, in engineering…
Light – Strong – Cheap
Pick two.
Cheap, fast, good.
Or for projects: on time, on budget, on spec
Shame about the Turks, they have some clever chaps, a beautiful country and a surprisingly good electronics industry. By rights they should be our new best buds and trade pals given how untrustworthy China is.
But they’re guaranteed to fuck it all up in ridiculous Ottoman adventures and Islamic strongman twattery.
Islam: not even once.
” Now, Snippa will tell us that Turkey isn’t a place that can do MMT. Only places with certain economic attributes can. ”
Like Marx believed that communism could only work in Germany?
No coincidence that Ataturk insisted that islam be sidelined if Turkey was to become a modern state. And no coincidence that as soon as the goatfucking fundamentalists took over, it all reverted back to shite.
My maternal grandfather lost an eye at Suvla Bay in the Dardanelles campaign. He would take his glass eye out and polish it when we played drafts. Most disconcerting.
You can bring inflation in by increasing taxes, which you should do when you reach full employment. Ah, a problem, unemployment in Turkey is around 1 in 8 – is that the ‘full’ level where we start upping taxes, or do we need to print more lira and hold off on taxes until everyone who wants a job has one?
Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité
Pick two.
Liberté and Egalité (of outcomes) are mutually exclusive. “Free people are not equal and equal people are not free” – Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed. You can have as little or as much fraternising as you wish.