How to Increase the Money Supply, Without Increasing the Government’s Debt

In my August 2012 Globe Asia column, “Money, Where’s the Money?”, I explained why the global economy is still sputtering, and proposed a partial solution. In short, I called for governments (not central banks) to engage in debt market operations – a way to increase the money supply directly, without increasing the overall level of government debt. A number of readers have since contacted me with questions about the specific example I discussed in my column. The most frequent question was:

“Isn’t your proposal just the same as the Fed’s Operation Twist, where the Fed purchases long-term government securities from the public and increases high-powered money?”

The answer is, in short, no – and here’s why:

The first thing that should be noted is that both a central bank and a government can conduct debt market operations. Debt market operations constitute either central bank, or government, transactions with non-banks, which change the bank deposits held by those non-banks. There are many combinations of such operations that can be employed, but with all debt market operations of the type I am envisioning, long-dated debt is replaced with short-dated debt (and so, in one sense, there would be some similarity with Operation Twist).

In my Globe Asia example, however, the government would conduct the debt market operations with no involvement by the central bank. The government would borrow from private banks and purchase outstanding long-dated government debt from the public, and then cancel the debt that had been purchased. The result would be an increase in the money supply, with no change in the monetary base. If the government were instead to borrow from the central bank, both base money and broad money would increase – a fundamental difference.

The central bank could engage directly in debt market operations (and several have done so in recent QE operations). But, in this case, the long-dated bonds purchased by the central bank would end up on the central bank’s balance sheet. The debt would not be canceled out, as it would be if the government was to conduct debt market operations. It is this fact that defines one of the fundamental differences between debt market operations conducted by a central bank and those conducted by a government. A central bank engaged in debt market operations would be left with holdings of long-dated government debt and be exposed to interest rate risk on those securities. It could incur large accounting losses if interest rates were to rise. This would not be the case if the government conducted debt market operations.

Author Steve H. Hanke