By Carlos García Hernández
Originally published in Spanish in El Común on 13th May 2022
Between May 2nd and 5th, 2022, I had the opportunity to join economist Warren Mosler’s visit to Buenos Aires organized by Pymes para el Desarrollo Nacional and Grupo Bolívar.
In this way, the interest in modern monetary theory has allowed Mosler’s analysis to be oriented towards the specific case of Argentina. It has been a fascinating experience that has taken us to the bowels of the country’s economy.
The organizers asked Mosler to focus his proposal on two things: the possibility of achieving full employment without inflation (an economic state I have dubbed the Lerner point) and Argentina’s latest agreement with the International Monetary Fund.
Mosler presented his proposal at several public events, to managers of the Central Bank, to the leaders of the public financial institution Banco Nación, at the University of Moreno, in a visit to the Río Santiago shipyard and on the radio program Teoría Monetaria Moderna Presenta. His conclusion is that Argentina’s problem is primarily of a fiscal nature, since Argentina currently spends 8% of its GDP on interest payments derived from public debt securities and Mosler estimates that this figure will soon rise to 20%. On the other hand, the official unemployment figure is not very high (7%), but youth unemployment is over 30%. In addition, the real unemployment rate is much higher than the official one and poverty reaches 37.3% with a marginal poverty rate of 8.2%. Added to this is the enormous problem of inflation, which currently stands at 55.1% per year, but is expected to exceed 60% by the end of the year.
The specific measures he proposed were threefold: the adoption of floating exchange rates, a permanent 0% interest rate policy, and the implementation of job guarantees based on employment buffer stocks.
The adoption of floating exchange rates is the measure that would make it possible to carry out the other two, since only floating exchange rates allow for permanent full employment policies and 0% interest rates decided by the central bank. Currently, Argentina has a fixed exchange rate of the peso against the dollar. The reason for this is that there is a belief among the leadership and the general population that Argentina’s main problem is external constraint. Therefore, it is believed that the Argentine peso is worthless and that it is necessary to maintain large foreign exchange reserves in order to import and grow. This puts the Argentine economy at the mercy of financial speculators, since Argentina has to defend the exchange rate by buying Argentine pesos through its dollar reserves. The consequence is that Argentina periodically suffers debt crises and the risk of running out of reserves, which drives up interest rates, inflation and unemployment. Mosler’s proposal is to adopt floating exchange rates so as not to have to defend a fixed exchange rate by means of foreign exchange reserves and for the Argentine economy to function exclusively through the national currency. He gives as an example the debt crises of Mexico in 1994 and Russia in 1998. Both countries adopted floating exchange rate policies in the face of explosive debt crises resulting from fixed exchange rates. The consequence was that after the introduction of floating exchange rates, there was a sharp adjustment in which the Mexican peso and the ruble lost 66% and 75% of their exchange value against the dollar respectively. Thereafter, the value of the currencies stabilized and then gradually recovered. According to Mosler, something similar would happen in Argentina because the Argentine economy is similar to that of Russia and Mexico. Currently, the official exchange rate of the Argentine peso is 116.25 pesos per dollar and the exchange rate in the black market (the so-called blue dollar) is 202 pesos per dollar. Therefore, the devaluation resulting from the floating exchange rates would bring the value of the official peso to approximately the value of the blue dollar. After this adjustment, the value of the peso would stabilize and then recover progressively, as occurred with the Mexican peso and the ruble.
In response to this proposal, Argentine leaders argue that such a devaluation of approximately 60% would increase the price of imports and that the poorest classes would not even be able to buy food for subsistence. However, Mosler argues that this problem would be solved by means of subsidies in pesos to those who need them and an indexation of salaries that require it. In addition, Mosler also points out that the price of Argentina’s exports would become cheaper and therefore the devaluation would increase the country’s exports. In addition, annual inflation is already at about 60% or so, forcing periodic wage indexations. Therefore, floating exchange rates would require a new and final indexation before entering the period of stability.
This leads us to the second proposal, permanent 0% interest rates and the renunciation of issuing any public debt. Currently, Argentine interest rates are 47%. This reflects a self-defeating attitude similar to that of fixed exchange rates. Argentines believe that without very high interest rates like the current ones, the Argentine peso would lose all its value and therefore high interest rates are the only incentive for the currency markets to accept the peso. This generates a constant flow of pesos directly into the international currency markets where pesos are exchanged for dollars. This dynamic floods the foreign exchange markets with pesos and causes the peso to devalue constantly. This, according to Mosler, is the main source of inflationary pressures in Argentina.
Currently, Argentina spends 8% of its GDP on interest payments, but according to Mosler’s estimates, this figure will soon be 20%, mainly due to interest payments on inflation-linked debt securities, real monetary time bombs that already represent 20% of the total public debt and amount to 70 billion dollars. Mosler proposes to eliminate the issuance of public debt securities, since Argentina is a country that enjoys monetary sovereignty and therefore does not need to either collect taxes or issue debt to finance its public spending. He also urges Argentine policymakers to stop talking only about the primary fiscal deficit (which does not include the interest payments derived from the debt) and suggests that when dealing with the fiscal deficit, they should do so taking into account the enormous and unnecessary amount of pesos that are permanently going to the foreign exchange markets to be exchanged for dollars. In response to the unfounded expressions of fear about the value of the peso, Mosler pointed out that the value of the peso corresponds to the Argentine GDP and to all the products that can be purchased with pesos. To maintain that the peso would lose all its value if interest rates were 0% is as absurd as saying that meat, soybeans, grain, gas, oil, tourism and all the products produced by the Argentine economy would lose all their value. That is simply not going to happen, especially at a time when Argentine exports are reaching record levels. As long as taxes have to be paid in Argentine pesos, the value of the peso will never be zero. Only in an unimaginable case in which no taxes would have to be paid in Argentina would the value of the peso be zero.
With floating exchange rates, interest rates would no longer be determined by the markets, but by the Central Bank. Therefore, once floating exchange rates are adopted, the level of interest rates in Argentina should be 0% and the Argentinian government should renounce the issuance of debt securities.
All of the above brings us to Mosler’s last proposal, job guarantees based on employment buffer stocks. This proposal is only sustainable over time with floating exchange rates that avoid having to adopt fiscal austerity measures to defend fixed exchange rates. In addition, the job guarantee would eliminate any inflationary pressures that may have subsisted from floating exchange rates and the elimination of positive interest rates, since guaranteed labour acts as a wage anchor in both downturns and upturns.
As Mosler tirelessly repeated in his expositions, the price level of an economy, and therefore its level of inflation, can only be explained by the price that the State is willing to pay for the goods and services it needs to supply itself. This especially concerns the price of labour reflected in wages, since the origin of all goods and services is socially embodied human labour. According to Mosler, the wage level is not the cause of inflation in Argentina. Therefore, the State would have no difficulty in setting up a program similar to (but broader than) the so-called Plan Jefes y Jefas, which until a few years ago served as a job guarantee in Argentina. Under this model, anyone who wants and is able to work, but cannot find work in either the private sector or the permanent public sector, should receive a transitional job until he or she can be incorporated into work in the private sector or the permanent public sector. The purpose of the job guarantee is not production per se but to demonstrate the beneficiaries’ work capabilities, since the private sector generally only likes to hire people who are already working. Therefore, guaranteed work should be implemented after the government has decided on the desirable size of the public sector to ensure good quality public services.
The job guarantee wage would become the minimum wage of the economy and would act as an automatic price stabilizer in both expansionary and recessionary economic periods, while eliminating poverty and unemployment.
Before going into the IMF agreement, Mosler also pointed out that in Argentina there is a problem with market regulation. According to Mosler, this is due to a high concentration in strategic productive sectors that leads to oligopolistic practices. His proposal is to regulate these oligopolistic markets to limit their excessive profit margins and avoid speculative practices, especially in the banking and primary sectors.
Finally, he delved into the tempestuous field of the agreement with the IMF. This agreement includes a loan of $45 billion and numerous conditionalities that are very harmful to Argentina, such as the issuance of long-term debt securities and fiscal austerity measures. Mosler proposes to replace this agreement with one that is more beneficial to both Argentina and the IMF. His proposal is to repay the loan through a 3% tax on Argentina’s gross exports. These exports amount to a total value of approximately $100 billion per year. Dedicating 3% of that figure to loan repayment would be beneficial to the IMF because it would ensure that it would receive dollars from the only source of dollar inflows into the country, exports. This means that no currency exchange would have to take place to make payments. Moreover, the IMF would no longer have to worry about imposing any kind of conditionality on Argentine policies. For its part, the Argentine government would be able to exercise its political sovereignty without any constraint from the IMF in the form of conditionalities. Moreover, the 3% tax could be deducted from exporters’ other taxes if it deemed it appropriate, so that there would be no mandatory increase in the tax burden.
I believe that the Argentine government should listen to Mosler’s message and implement the measures he proposes. The achievements of an Argentina with full employment, price stability and well-regulated markets would be beyond imagination. If such a situation were sustained over a prolonged period of time, I am convinced that Argentina could once again become the great world economic power it once was and regain its rightful place of relevance on the international scene.
Euro delendus est