by Harold Chorney, John Hotson, and Mario Seccareccia
“Governments these days find it easy to defend cuts in services and programs. All they have to do is point to their annual deficits and their total accumulated debts. (As of March, 1994, Canada's public debt was about $546 billion.) This public debt provides the politicians with a convenient excuse for cutting spending or raising taxes. Or both. «We're broke,» they tell us plaintively. «We can't afford to increase public services, or even keep them at their present level.»
A lesson of war
“As the deep recession dragged into 1992, Finance Minister Don Mazankowski said he couldn't do anything about it. His hands were tied, he said. The federal government was broke. The cupboard was bare. The deficit and accumulated national debt were so enormous that his first priority had to be to reduce them — even if that meant prolonging the recession and making it even worse.
“So his budget contained almost nothing to revive the sick economy. With interest payments on the debt gobbling up one-third of tax revenue, his response was to keep taxes high and axe more public services and agencies. Like Martin Luther before him, Mazankowski in effect proclaimed: «Here stand I. I cannot do otherwise.»
“But it doesn't take an economist to see that in fact he could. All you have to do is imagine what the government would do if it got involved in another Gulf War — or if that war were still raging. Would the Finance Minister have brought down the same kind of budget? Would he have said, «We'd like to keep on fighting, but we're broke, so we're calling our troops back»? Not on your life!
“Did Canada surrender half way through World War II because the national debt had grown even larger than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? Of course not! Somehow the extra money was found. If it wasn't by raising taxes or borrowing from the private banks, why, the Bank of Canada simply created all the money the government needed — and at near-zero interest rates, too!
“When World War II ended, the national debt relative to the national income was more than twice as large as it is now. But was the country ruined? Did we have to declare national bankruptcy? Far from it! Instead, Canada's economy boomed and the country prospered for most of the post-war period.
The Bank of Canada has failed in its duty
....
The creation of money
“One of the most pervasive myths about the government deficit is that governments which spend more than they receive in revenue must borrow the difference, thus increasing the public debt.
“In fact, a government can choose to create the needed additional money instead of borrowing it from the banks, the public, or foreigners.
“Business and the conservatives in politics and the media are horrified by the suggestion that the government exercise its right to create more money. They claim it would precipitate another ruinous bout of inflation.
“But money creation is money creation — whether by a private bank or the Bank of Canada. And a government in debt only to the government's own bank is not really in debt at all. If it wants to go through the rigamarole of having the Treasury «borrow» from the central bank and later pay interest, that is a minor matter of bookkeeping. As long as the central bank's profits are returned to the Treasury, the results are much the same as if the Treasury had created the money itself.
“There is no reason why the growth of Canada's money supply (averaging about $22 billion annually in recent years) could not be more substantially created by the Bank of Canada. If that policy had been followed, the federal government would not have been obliged to add to its debts to pay interest on old debts. Instead, the Bank of Canada has produced barely 2% of the money added in recent years, while the chartered banks added the rest as they made loans to households, businesses, and all levels of government. At the very least, the Bank of Canada and the chartered banks should share the privilege of creating money on a 50-50 basis.
“Those who dismiss such a proposal as «inflationary» should be required to explain why it would be more inflationary for the government's bank to create $11 billion and the private banks $11 billion, rather than the present practice of having the government's bank create $0.7 billion and the private banks $21.3 billion!
“Clearly the current problem of the Canadian government's deficit is not its absolute size, or its size relative to the GDP, but the insane way it is being financed. A return to the policies of the World War II era, when the Bank of Canada produced almost one-half of the new money at near-zero interest, would do wonders for the economy, while greatly shrinking the deficit... The first order of business for a post-Mulroney-era government must be to regain effective control of the Bank of Canada and make it the primary source of money creation.
“It is ludicrous for the government to put billions of dollars into circulation by borrowing from the private banks, when it can create the extra money it needs, virtually free.
