M4 Definition

M4 is a broad money supply measure. Briefly, M4 includes all notes and coins in circulation, deposits at banks and building societies, plus assets which are considered relatively liquid (short-term bonds, commercial paper)

M4 growth is currently negative. M4 lending to private sector is currently 6.0% lower compared to past 12 month (July 2012)

Within this growth of M4, there have been different trends. As this article at FT shows, a major contributor to M4 growth in period 2009-11 has been the impact of quantitative easing (Could UK Money Supply collapse post Q.E ?).

M4 Lending  Deposits

M4 net lending (Bank of England code: LPMVQJY) from financial institutions to the private sector has shown negative growth since July 2010.

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Between 1999 and 2008, there was a rapid growth in public sector employment in the UK. This mirrored a sharp increase in government spending (see: post on spending under labour.)

The justification for the increased public sector employment was to deliver better service in the NHS. However, critics argue that the increase in public sector employment reflected growing bloat in the civil service and management divisions of the NHS.

Since 2009, shortly after the recession began, public sector employment has fallen quite considerably as the government have looked for spending cuts and trimming back previous excesses. Critics of these austerity measures argue that to reduce government employment in the middle of a recession, with falling output and confidence has  made the recession worse and prevented unemployment from coming down. However, others point to the (relatively small) growth of private sector employment as a justification for cutting surplus government jobs.

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This is an article published in the LSE about the Austrian view of the Eurozone crisis ‘The Work of Hayek shows why EU governments can’t spend their way out of problems‘

I’ve attempted to summarise the article, but I advise reading it for yourself:

1. The recent boom and bust was caused by artificially low interest rates and capital flows which caused an inefficient use of resources.
2. The current period of high unemployment and low interest rates means there is much idle capital and labour unused – waiting to work out how best to be used. (analogy use of jigsaw pieces waiting to be put together by the market)
3. Governments always lack the knowledge of how to efficiently make use of these resources, but instead will choose the most electorally popular types of government spending. Therefore, if the government spends money it will inevitably go on the wrong areas of the economy and just make things worse. Therefore, the government shouldn’t intervene.
4. So what can we do? Allow private enterprise to decide how to use these idle resources. The only thing we should do is remove barriers to enterprise and competition, e.g. cut regulation, taxes and state intervention. In a free market, the price signals of profit, loss and prices will enable a return to market equilibrium and full employment. It may take time, but it will happen eventually.
5. ‘Before the advent of Keynesianism, most recessions were very short lived as producers were left free to shuffle the jigsaw pieces into better combinations’

Some things struck me about the article.

• There is a lack of specific examples relating to the current crisis. It is hard to find any examples of a country where government spending has fallen and there has been impressive economic recovery. In fact, the opposite seems to happen, with the deepest recession in those countries with harshest austerity policies.
• The main argument seems to be the unwavering faith in the inevitable failure of any type of government intervention.
• The idea that before the advent of Keynesianism most recessions were very short lived is highly dubious (to be polite). It inconveniently ignores (for example):

• The Great Depression  (1929-37) The great depression did last a long time. The Great Depression only really ended when countries embarked on Keynesianism (mostly in form of military spending). Those countries who embarked on military spending ended recession earlier than others.

• The recession of 1815–1821. widespread

• foreclosures, bank failures and negative market sentiment.

• The tendency to lump all government intervention together is lazy. Keynesianism doesn’t advocate tariff barriers. To impose tariff barriers can contribute to an economic downturn, but just because tariffs can be harmful doesn’t mean it is wrong to pursue countercyclical fiscal policy. It is a very different type of government intervention.
• Keynesianism isn’t about bigger government. A feature of the Keynesian fiscal policy is that it should be countercyclical. For example, in this piece Simon Wren-Lewis argues that EU fiscal policy was too loose in the run-up to the 2008 crisis.

” In my view, fiscal policy in many Eurozone countries outside Germany was insufficiently tight before 2008, but for most not because it implied a build-up of government debt.   The problem was that private sector demand was too strong, encouraged by large capital inflows from abroad and real estate bubbles

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