On WOTCs permissive licences

On WOTCs permissive licences

Earlier this year, Wizards of the Coast, the owners of Dungeons & Dragons, bought D&D Beyond, the premiere and largest web store for the rules of D&D and they are now trialling a new version of the rules called One D&D; they are also planning to release a virtual table top solution and have a new movie in production. Also recently at a Hasbro earnings call, one of their executives stated that D&D was now a lifestyle brand and was under-monetised. This has created a sense of fear amongst 3rd party creators that WOTC will revise their intellectual property sharing agreements to the detriment of themselves and non-Dungeon Master players who have been identified as under spenders. Depending on where you look, this has created a lot of noise; I think there’s a lot of fear being generated, and it interests me to consider the issues in the context of the software industry practice. I think that software industry grew the open source models and the interaction by games vendors such as Wizards with software continues to inform good & bad practice, There's more overleaf ...

Where’s prudence gone?

Where’s prudence gone?

While reading Simmon Hannah’s “A party with socialists in it”, I made a note to talk about Corbynism and Modern  Monetary Theory. I am writing an omnibus, review of that book, but think that a further note on MMT and its role in Corbynism, and the insights and weaknesses it brings to today's crisis might be appropriate. In 2015, Corbyn flirted with MMT but by 2017, McDonnel, Meadway and Wren Lewis had won control of the Party’s economic agenda. The rest of this article looks at the bond market disruptions, FX and the balance of trade, the threat to pension funds, and the extent to which MMT has some useful insights. For more, check out overleaf behind the "Read More" button. ...

Crisis, what crisis!

Crisis, what crisis!

Some aspects of this are hard to understand, here's my attempt. The UK has been in a balance of trade deficit for decades. For most countries it is the main factor in determining foreign exchange rate between sterling (GBP) and other currencies. In the case of the UK, there is significant additional incoming flows buying sterling quoted stocks, bonds and gilts. Sterling has been falling ever since Brexit, in my mind as a result of a drop in confidence due to Brexit and the growing relevance of the balance of payments deficit; the fear of inflation has added to that recently. This article looks at the history of bond prices and interest rates and warns that increasing interest rates may cause mortgage defaults. I conclude, "A triple whammy of inflation, pension losses, and mortgage payment increases, suddenly the UK seems a lot poorer than it was. " The full article and diagrams can be seen overleaf ...

A short note on FX & UK Trade

A short note on FX & UK Trade

Like many, I am considering the macro drivers of the cost of living crisis and I listened to the AEIP podcast with Gary Stevenson. He has an interesting view and argues that the QE funded furlough scheme was in fact a subsidy to the rich and that the fundamental imbalance in the country is the shift of wealth from poor to rich. It’s a version of the argument that the problem is insufficient demand being caused by the continued pressure on medium and low incomes.

He also argues that the massive QE efforts are an effective devaluation which given the relative stickiness of prices with wages being the slowest to change and everything that wages need to buy increasing will exacerbate the squeeze on spending. He also argues that given the choice between working and starving, people will work. The use of the word devaluation led me to look at the following charts

GBP:USD FX from Google Finance

The pound has been falling against the dollar all year, this makes imports, particularly of Oil, but also of Gas and food more expensive.

Balance of Trade: GBP millions

Here we see the balance of trade figures, a more traditional cause of devaluations. With the exception of two months, the UK has been in deficit for the last five years. There are those who contest the the balance of trade causes currency price movements and Sterling in particular is impacted by speculative currency flows. The key drivers of speculation are expected rate of return, which for fixed income assets is driven by the bank rate, and animal spirits about which I think it best not to comment.  …

Are freeports a bad thing?

Are freeports a bad thing?

There’s some pretty cataclysmic stuff being written about the Freeport/Charter City initiatives. I have had a quick poke around and made this, these notes on my wiki. I think the more cataclysmic predictions are not on the table although it’ll be interesting to see what happens in London Gateway wrt to Amazon , the minimum wage and union recognition. The Baker St. Herald is also on the case, documenting the ideological genesis of the idea of Charter Cities and the powerful network of libertarian billionaires pushing them and their [un]desirable end goals. The Institute of Government seems more sanguine and I note that the Economist article says that they lead to a ‘beggar my neighbour’ policy i.e. that the economic activity they generate is more likely to have come from elsewhere inside the [sterling] customs union.

From the Economist, I draw the conclusion that this is a Tory levelling up/regional policy substituting the market for local government/public money. We should also note that levelling up/regional policy is hard, no UK government has been successful for decades and that the ability to deliver one is more difficult outside the EU/Horizon Europe and having lost the EU levelling up funds.

Freeports basically minimise import duties, they are designed to aid manufacturing to allow them to import raw materials more cheaply and not pay tax on the goods twice i.e. once on the way in and once on the way out, if they are to be exported. While having a freeport in Newcastle may make sense for Nissan, I am unclear how one in London will help the UK’s lawyers and management consultants.

I have two conclusions, for those who think that Freeports will damage local democracy, the issue threatening local democracy is money. The Government are squeezing local government budgets to the extent that some are going under, and others are reduced to performing statutory tasks only. The second is that this Brexit Government has admitted that it cannot install the legally required import tax collection system on EU imports; I wonder if Freeports are a means of disguising yet another Brexit failure.  …

Inflation

Inflation

The Bank of England was made ‘independent’ of the Treasury in 1997, although not really, so that it could take the blame for any decisions to increase interest rates, such as those taken earlier this week (£) when the Bank increased bank rate to fight inflation.

How does that work? Inflation is believed to have one of two causes, one is that there is too much demand, chasing too few goods and consumers bid up prices. The other is that import prices are rising and thus have an impact on the domestic price level. These are known as demand-pull, or cost push. The current inflation would seem to be caused by the increase in the cost of imports especially primary energy products, exacerbated by a fall in the exchange rate.

The monetarist theory is that there is a real world and money view of the economy.

i.e.

Prices x Product = Money Supply x Velocity of Money

PQ = Mv

This equation is derived via definitions and algebra and thus there is no proof of causality. Monetarists say that reducing the money supply will reduce prices. This assumes that in the short term both the velocity of money and the amount of product are static. Recent econometric studies suggest that the velocity is not constant, and there has always been a problem of defining what money supply is as it must include some credit and so is very difficult to constrain. We should note that consumer credit can be increased very rapidly so can no longer be consider static.

There can be no doubt from studying economic history, that increasing interest rates to reduce the money supply causes a recession, unemployment and poverty. It’s also highly likely that unionised workers will demand higher wages to defend their living standards. In a world where business is internationally mobile, business will defend its profits by increasing prices and/or off shoring the work; this is the wage-price spiral where an economy has high inflation, both cost push and demand pull and low growth.

The drivers of growth and/or the floor to a recession are investment, exports or government expenditure, especially benefits. Increasing interest rates makes investment and the national debt more expensive. It makes exports cheaper in their foreign markets but of course the big factor in the export price uplift is Brexit. Higher interest rates increases the income on savings and the expense on business and domestic borrowing. A squeeze on profits will cause capital to go overseas, especially if the exchange rate is high although this may be ameliorate by the increasing yield in bonds. The other cause of the economic malaise is the poor investment rates by both the private and public sector in the UK.

There can be no doubt that increasing interest rates will cause unemployment. This is how it reduces demand.

The other option to monetary policy is product supply, direct investment such as the EU’s Horizon Europe programme or price regulation to cause a profit squeeze, tax the energy companies and banks, build more houses, control profits, transfer income from the wealthy to  the poor because the poor spend more of their income and of course rejoining the EU’s single market to reduce both import and export frictional costs.

High interest rates are a choice, a choice of theory and a choice of policy. The inconvenient truth is no-one knows if it works.

ooOOOoo

I conclude with some links to key commentators, professional economists. David Blanchflower, writes in the New Statesman, “The Bank of England is recklessly driving the UK into a deep recession”, he warns of the threat of unemployment, elsewhere on his twitter feed he is highly critical of the Bank and its Governor, Andrew Bailey, He is also quoted in a video clip by C4 on twitter, stating that unemployment hurts people more than inflation, which can be seen to be a declining threat. Anne Petifor exposes the role of the global capital markets in ‘managing’ food and energy costs, Richard Murphy provides a modern monetary critique of the theories. I particularly like his calling out of the role of import prices and speculators,

There is a third reason why the BoE policy will not work. It’s not just the assumption that people have too much to spend that the BoE get wrong. They have actually totally failed to identify the proper cause of this inflation.

The inflation we’re suffering is the result of shortages of oil, gas, fertiliser and food, in the main. Some of these are real (food, in particular). Others are being stoked by speculators who are profiting from them, which is why oil companies are declaring such big profits now

Richard Murphy – On Twitter

The featured image has been taken from Blanchflower’s New Statesman article where he asserts its a BoE MPC authored chart. This I assume can e used under the OGL license.  …

Labour’s macro-economics, “Back to the Future”

Labour’s macro-economics, “Back to the Future”

Starmer made another speech on economics on Monday 25th July. It is reported in the Guardian.

Starmer has been trying to pitch Labour as the party of fiscal prudence and will say: “With me and with Rachel Reeves [the shadow chancellor], you will always get sound finances; careful spending; strong, secure and fair growth. There will be no magic-money-tree economics with us.”

From the Guardian,

This article looks at growth and debt, Starmer and Reeves flirtation with Osbornomics and Reeves' rejection of nationalisation on the grounds of cost, I note countervailing views from Murray and Long Bailey and note that Reeves places herself in the sad queue of shadow chancellors undermining Labour's election chances by 'telling the truth'. There's more overleaf ...

The Tories, the leadership, tax and Brexit

The Tories, the leadership, tax and Brexit

Phil Burton Cartledge analyses the political platforms and accountabilities of the Tory wanabee leaders and their fetish with reducing tax by which they mean corporation tax. The FT reports on business’s response to the proposal, which is lukewarm. They point out that only businesses that make a profit pay corporation tax and that for a business of any complexity[1] and with decent accountants, corporation tax is voluntary. The FT article calls for broader support including demand stimulation albeit through tax cuts, but importantly they raise the issue of VAT on energy (but they pay that too) and  also investment incentives. VAT at 20% is ridiculous and the Govt. should reduce it; it can now we are out of the EU.

Phil talks about the conflicts in Johnson’s electoral coalition and the victory of the rentier capitalists in gutting any meaningful levelling up programmes, which have been reduced to crude electoral bribes. This is a long-term trend. We used to call it Regional Policy and I looked at New Labour’s failure to put this right; they were driven by unproven meso-economic theories and then polluted the programme with concerns about welfare to work and regional assemblies.

I should add that another cause of the failure of a levelling up programme is the loss of EU funds. While business is arguing for re-joining the R&D fund, Horizon Europe[2], some local authorities are now lamenting the losses of the European Regional Development Fund & European Social Fund. This was worth about €4bn[3] p.a. to the UK. The UK Government has never it seems been particularly good at getting EU money for business and people and yet the UK has many of the poorest areas Northern Europe.

It’s another necessary dimension of the ‘closest possible’ relationship. The regional programmes were first launched on the UK’s accession to the EU as a means of reducing the UK’s net contribution to the EU. It seems we’re missing them now.

[1] This does exclude most patron personal services companies so perhaps the policy is designed for them.

[2] Horizon Europe has rules that create an enhanced ‘multiplier’ effect.

[3] This includes UK Gov matching funds.

Image Credit: Ilovetheeu, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons …