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Steve Keen erklärt, wie man “Geld macht”

Steve Keen hat eine Software mit dem Namen Minsky entwickelt, um mit den Grundprinzipien der doppelten Buchführung zu erklären, wie Wirtschaft funktioniert. Hier hat er das System genutzt, um nochmals zu erläutern, wie Geld in die Welt kommt:

  • “(…) capitalist economies are inherently monetary, and you’d think that, after a few centuries of capitalism, we’d understand how money is created. But there are few topics about which there are more myths, and more false answers, than this fundamental question.” – bto: Das wissen langjährige Leser dieser Seiten bereits.
  • “(…) the takeaway is that any operation which increases the Assets of the banking sector creates money. To understand this, you have to understand double-entry bookkeeping—or DEB for short. (…) The key rules in DEB is that all transactions are recorded twice, and each row in a DEB table must sum to zero. All accounts are also classified as either Assets, or Liabilities, or Equity, and the ‘Fundamental Law of Accounting’ is that Assets minus Liabilities equals Equity: the gap between what you are owed (Assets) and what you owe (Liabilities) is your net worth (Equity).” – bto: Keen hat ein Modell der Wirtschaft nach genau diesem Grundsatz gebaut, also nur basierend auf doppelter Buchführung.
  • “(…) a financial operation that creates money must occur on both the Assets and the Liabilities-Equity side of the banking sector’s ledger. Conversely, any operation which occurs only on the Assets side of the banking sector’s ledger, or on the Liabilities-Equity side, does not create money.” – bto: Wenn es zu einer Verlängerung der Bilanz kommt, wird Geld geschaffen. Schrumpft die Bilanz, wird Geld vernichtet.
  • “A bank loan adds an amount to your deposit account at your bank—which is a Liability of the bank—and it adds the identical amount to your loan account at the bank—which is an Asset of the bank. (…) bank lending increases the Assets of the banking sector, and it therefore creates money—which shows up as an increase in your Deposit account.” – bto: Das ist bekannt.
  • “Repayment has the opposite effect: it reduces bank assets, and it therefore destroys money. (…) if you tell the bank to reduce your Deposit account, in return for an identical reduction in your debt to the bank, then precisely that much money is destroyed.” – bto: So ist es eine logische Erklärung.
  • “Bank lending is something that economics textbooks get wrong, and in fact, economics textbooks—which should be a source of wisdom on economics—are actually the primary source of myths about money. The Bank of England said this explicitly, if politely, in 2014: The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks: Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits.”
  • “What about government spending and taxation? Spending adds to the public’s Deposits, with a matching entry in bank Reserves—which are the deposit accounts of the private banks at the Central Bank. Therefore, government spending also creates money, just as bank loans do (…) Since Spending minus Taxation equals the government deficit, this means that a government deficit creates money, while a government surplus destroys it.” – bto: Das ist sehr wichtig, gerade im Euro.
  • “This is also the opposite of what economics textbooks say: to quote from Mankiw’s influential first year economics textbook ‘When its spending exceeds its revenue, the government runs a budget deficit, which represents negative public saving’ (Mankiw 2016, p. 253). But in fact, since the deficit increases Deposit accounts, the deficit represents positive public saving.” – bto: weil die Öffentlichkeit so mehr Geld hält.
  • “(…) let’s look at government borrowing through double-entry bookkeeping eyes. In practice, the government borrows by the Treasury selling Treasury Bonds to the banking sector. Does this create money? (…) Treasury Bond sales do not create money, because everything happens on the Assets side of the banking sector’s ledger: the monetary value of bank holdings of Treasury Bonds rises, but the value of bank Reserves fall by the same amount.” – bto: Es ist also ein Aktivtausch.
  • “What about Central Bank purchases of Treasury Bonds from the banks? (…) I thought that Central Bank bond purchases did create money. But (…), they don’t, because both operations take place on the Asset side of the banks’ ledger: the monetary value of bonds owned by the banks falls, while bank Reserves rise by precisely as much. Therefore, there’s no change in the value of bank Assets from Central Bank purchases. Instead, there’s an Asset swap.” – bto: jetzt wieder zurück von Staatsanleihen zu Zentralbankguthaben.
  • „Banks often sell most of the bonds they buy to non-banks—normally, financial institutions like hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies, etc, rather than the ordinary public. This operation actually destroys money: bank deposits fall, as do bank holdings of Treasury Bonds.” – bto: Auch das ist einleuchtend.
  • “Finally, what about ‘QE’: ‘Quantitative Easing’? This is the Central Bank buying bonds, and whether it creates money depends on who the Central Bank buys from. If it buys from banks, there’s no money creation (…). But QE also included buying bonds from non-bank financial institutions. This does create money—but money that circulates on Wall Street, rather than Main Street.” – bto: Und dann wird es wieder angelegt.