Should India Print Money To Fight Covid-19?

What Is Debt Monetization Or MMT?

Debt monetisation or monetary finance has been gained much attention under the flag of Modern Monetary Theory, MMT for short. MMT seems to generate some consternation among economists, and indeed people in general. They seem unable to grasp that governments, unlike households or businesses, are not balance-sheet constrained. They can just print money; there is a magic money tree. Indeed, the mechanism by which MMT works is very simple, as depicted in this flow-chart.

The government spends money into the economy – which for a sovereign-currency issuer, comes before taxation. If there is not enough tax revenue to cover the required spending—either because the economy is weak or because the government does not want to tax too much—then bonds are issued to make up the difference. This is the same as in normal economic ‘theory’.

The latter is what we already see in QE – unless one believes that central banks will start running down their balance sheets again. Once the government has spent the money, the normal ‘money-multiplier’ effect works.

The Risk Of The Money Printer

But there are huge risks involved. According to MMT academics, inflation is the only constraint to government spending. But does a country have the power to control its own worst instincts once it does start to print that money, and keep inflation in check? We argue that a country is eligible to adopt MMT without causing side effects in case it meets three criteria:

1. Currency: a country needs its own free-floating currency.
2. Institutional quality: countries need to have the policy discipline to turn off the fiscal taps and raise rates if inflation is too high. Therefore, we also add a filter for the World Bank’s measure of institutional quality, with the metric that the country must be above the median for this global measure.
3. Current account balance: in order to create money domestically and to have it accepted on a stable basis internationally, a country needs to run a structural current account surplus.

Current account metrics

The current account principle in particular needs more explanation. If a country runs a large fiscal deficit, but still runs larger combined household and business (private sector) surpluses, then internationally the country is a net lender, not a borrower: this is the case when a country runs a current account surplus.

In doing so, one can keep control of both (low) interest rates—as long as it faces no inflation problems domestically—and the exchange rate. After all, in traditional economic theory, and practice, a current account surplus, the tendency is for the currency to appreciate, or at least hold its over time.

But if a country runs a structural current account deficit—as India is doing and seeing past the April-June lockdown anomaly of a small surplus, things become problematic. Why? Because the government is spending - with printed money – while households and businesses, collectively, are dis-saving too.

An economy that is dis-saving overall runs an external deficit—that makes it a net borrower from abroad—and that often sees currencies come under downwards pressure anyway. This trend is exacerbated in the case of MMT. Inflation may already be too high, as aggregate demand is running ahead of supply: if so, printing more to spend more simply raises inflation higher. Moreover, from the trade perspective, MMT pushes twin deficit countries deeper into the red.

The same supply-demand imbalance kicks in when capital flows into the country on the other side of the balance of payments. If money is being printed and inflation is going up, a higher interest rate premium is demanded: if that is not delivered then a lower currency will result instead – unless the currency is pegged, but that precludes running MMT in the first place! Even if a foreign investor does not directly demand a lower exchange rate, the supply-demand imbalance in the currency market still comes to bear eventually. In short, the exchange rate will depreciate – and in time lead to imported inflation. Of course, the central bank could step in and intervene using its forex reserves. However, running down on forex reserves can ultimately result in a balance of payments crisis - much more so when the government is printing money to cover a fiscal deficit.

Which Countries Meet The MMT Criteria?

In the end, we argue that only seven countries are eligible to apply MMT in a sustained, responsible manner. These are China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uruguay, Israel, and the United States.

The U.S. is a special case, as it runs a structural current account deficit, but at the same time has the global reserve currency: the U.S. dollar. Since almost all global transactions are made in U.S. dollars, America can rely on financing and production from abroad, without this leading to a strong depreciation of the dollar, rising inflation, and domestic interest rates.

And while the euro area as a whole also has a slight current account surplus, monetary financing is explicitly prohibited by European treaties. Given the large economic differences between the Eurozone member states, the question is whether MMT is sensible at all, especially when certain institutions (such as a common debt security, banking union or budget) have not yet been settled. So for the time being it seems that the T in MMT will continue to dominate in Europe.

What Would Happen If India Were To Adopt MMT?

Despite the warnings outlined earlier, policymakers in many emerging markets seem to think of MMT as the golden ticket from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, especially since inflation and currencies in countries that have adopted QE (which is basically MMT-light) have not yet run into serious trouble… yet.

While the 2002 Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act explicitly forbids the RBI from buying bonds on the primary market, there is an escape clause. So in theory, India could resort to MMT.

Short-term: no accidents

In the short term, debt monetisation in India would not have too many negative repercussions because of massive risk-off sentiment, a point which has been raised by former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. Banks are still reluctant to lend, as they prefer to park excess liquidity at the central bank against the reverse repo of 3.35% instead of receiving a yield of approximately 6% on corporate lending or government bonds. So even if the RBI started buying bonds on the primary market and this cash was spent in the real economy, it would ultimately end up on deposits by banks, which would channel those excess funds again to the RBI. In a low-interest-rate environment, nobody believes inflation could be a problem. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if most young traders have never witnessed a high inflation regime to begin with and, therefore, do not keep an eye on that old-fashioned relic from the past: CPI.

Medium-term risk

However, all of this involves a major medium-term risk, especially since the Indian economy does not meet the conditions for MMT. There is always a lag, similar to an eventual inflationary impact of a demand shift when supply is fixed. To gauge what could be the side effects, we ran a scenario analysis using a system of equations that we integrally solve (see the appendix in this report for all technical details).

Scenario: a second Rs 20 lakh crore package using printed rupees

We have drawn up a scenario to gauge the economic impact of another government stimulus package financed by freshly printed rupees, starting from June-September 2020 onward and spread out over multiple years. We assume a package similar in magnitude to the $270 billion stimulus package announced in May this year, which is equal to 10% of GDP. The major difference is that we assume that this second package is fully financed by freshly printed rupees.

Such a spending boost would certainly have positive effects on the economy. In this report, we have argued that the local equivalent of a Rs 20 lakh crore package could raise GDP growth by 1.8 percentage points in FY21. We assume that a second package of this magnitude would result in a cumulative economic growth of an additional 2 percentage points vis-à-vis the baseline over the coming years, and an increase of India’s structural growth capacity by 6 percentage points.

However, it comes as no surprise that there are some serious side effects, even though the fiscal impulse is short-lived. As a first side effect, our model simulation shows that inflation might spike to 12% on average in calendar 2021, which is more than twice the inflation rate in the baseline and well above the upper band of the RBI’s target range. These are inflation figures we have not witnessed in India for over three decades.

As a second side effect, our simulation shows that the rupee will be crushed: it would depreciate by 16% against the U.S. dollar in 2021 compared to 2020 levels and almost 25% against 2019 levels. Investors seeing their yield being eroded by high inflation would shift their portfolios away from Indian assets. Consequently, the rupee would plunge, which would raise inflation even more, as imports become more expensive.

Fast-rising inflation in combination with a freefall of the currency does not bode well for economic performance. Although we have not calculated the second-order impact on the economy, such as a price-wage-price spiral, we are certain that MMT will ultimately be more damaging to the Indian economy than any short-term prosperity it brings.

Or to put it differently: for India, as for most other economies, the MMT cure is arguably worse than the disease.

Hugo Erken is head of International Economics, Michael Every is head of Financial Markets Research Asia-Pacific, and Erik-Jan van Harn is Economist, at RaboResearch.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.