INSTABILITY: STRUCTURAL LIMITS TO
D. Conclusion: Taming finance
The theoretical insights and empirical examination of financialization processes, financial crises and inequality reveal a complex and varied picture.
However, a few clear lessons emerge.
First, the dynamics of hyperglobalization tend to enlarge the financial sector, stimulate financial inno-vations and cross-border operations.
Second, such expansion of finance, within each economy and across the global economy, adversely influences income distribution. Growth through such expansion tends to be polarizing in a cumulative man-ner, with versatile asset management and exuberant wealth creation at the top of the distribution scale, but oppressive debt burdens and restricted employ-ment, income generation and social development at the bottom.
Third, financial innovations tend to develop at a faster pace than regulations, particularly where the latter depend on resource-constrained public agen-cies.33 Further, since successful financial innovations depend heavily on making markets, which in turn requires volume,34 they tend to be most lucrative when implemented by larger actors. This adds to concentration tendencies in the financial sector.
Fourth, the greater concentration into larger institu-tions and the weight of the largest operators, in turn,
threaten wider economic stability. The threat of collapse, together with its contagion across a broad swath of economic activities, provides finance with a unique influence over policymakers. The ability of finance to constrain policy space grows commensu-rately with its size relative to that of the real economy, as well as to the size of the top financial institutions relative to the rest.
Fifth, the influence of major financial institutions on government institutions is enhanced by their ability to expand beyond national borders. At the same time, attempts to regulate finance at the global level are limited by two factors. First, national regulators and standard setters need sufficient autonomy in order to take into account country-specific conditions.
However, this entails the risk that the regulations considered will not be able to keep pace with financial innovators operating internationally. Second, global regulations are expected to conform to the conven-tional thinking of how finance works and what kinds of discipline should be imposed on it. Unfortunately, despite the wake-up call from the most recent finan-cial crisis, the recognition that finance is inherently unstable is still not a globally accepted idea. As a result, international financial regulations continue to be subject to the flawed concepts of modern finan-cial theory and behavioural finance which postulate that asset price arbitrage and utility maximization should guide adjustments in a world of free capital
movements. Indeed, the influence of this ideology reaches beyond the financial sector, for example in the design of new accounting standards for small enterprises or governments (e.g. International Public Sector Accounting Standards or IPSAS), as if it were natural, and even desirable, for the accounting practices of all economic organizations in a country to give priority to meeting the information needs of financial investors (Baud and Chiapello, 2017;
Chiapello, 2016).
Sixth, the prima facie expectation that financial crises may serve to contain the power of finance and help to reverse the underlying tendency to inequality does not stand scrutiny. Although some instances of wealth losses and therefore falls in asset values relative to aggregate income can be observed, and despite con-cerns about unregulated finance among experts and the public, what eventually seems to prevail is the intent to return the financial system to its pre-crisis modus operandi. Thus, policy actions are tending to contribute to greater concentration, and to rein-forcing the overarching role of finance. As a result, governments have become more constrained than in the preceding booms. The real economy is not being served by finance; quite the opposite. Employment and wages are being negatively affected, often in a permanent manner. The poor are bearing the greatest brunt of market adjustments and regressive economic policies; cumulative causation is taking effect, and recovery for those at the bottom of the income ladder is generally not as fast as for those at the top. The result is worsening inequality.
Seventh, empirical evidence suggests that when there is a rising trend in income inequality, financial crises become more frequent and widespread. This is because of the relative insufficiency of demand that results from incomes of those at the bottom of the ladder (and in much of the middle) lagging behind aggregate income growth. As a result, profit-makers tend to divert investment into financial innovation that seeks new forms of rent extraction. Regressive income distribution promoted by neoliberal policies therefore exercises a perverse incentive to undertake more financial risk, and risk-taking ventures tend to spread across the global economy. Thus, feedbacks from financial instability in one part of the world frequently transmit to other parts.
These conclusions broadly capture the current state of the global financial system. A continuation of
financialization processes, along with deepening inequality, increases the likelihood of financial cri-ses recurring. For these trends to change in a more inclusive and sustainable direction, policy action is required on various fronts.
Some essential directions of the policies needed to effect change are sketched here, while more compre-hensive policy recommendations are drawn in the last chapter of this Report.
• Policies need to influence primary income dis-tribution in order to contain the rising share of profits in national income and its translation into unequal financial wealth. This can be done through proactive labour and employment policies, includ-ing the introduction of minimum wages tied to acceptable living standards, along with aggregate wage increases linked to average productivity growth.35 Government action should contribute to employment, and should support social and infrastructure spending.
• Redistributive policies should include progres-sive taxes and transfers (Kohler, 2015). The net effect of both rising government tax revenue and social spending can have strong multiplier effects on aggregate demand, employment and technical progress.
• The economic and political power of finance needs to be contained. The financial system should be smaller and less leveraged, and it should focus more on meeting the credit needs of the real economy (Bair, 2014; Wolf, 2015).
Institutions that are “too big to fail” and “too big to prosecute” pose a threat to stable and inclusive societies. Therefore policymakers need to consider breaking up the banks and imposing unlimited liability on partners in investment banks (Shirreff, 2016). More generally, smarter regulations are needed (Persaud, 2015).
• Publicly owned banks can help to subordinate profit motives to social motives and encourage credit for employment creation and investment.
They can also help improve information flows that are needed to advance regulations that keep pace with innovations.
• Capital controls (TDR 2015; Reddy, 2013) need to be considered where required at the national level.
But these should be combined with other reforms to influence the structure, size and governance of banks operating internationally.
INEQUALITY AND FINANCIAL INSTABILITY: STRUCTURAL LIMITS TO INCLUSIVE GROWTH
1 See Duménil and Lévy, 2001; Crotty, 2003; Epstein, 2005; Krippner, 2005; and this TDR, chapter VI.
2 Examples of this approach include Crotty, 2003;
Foster and McChesney, 2012; Lapavitsas, 2013;
Patnaik, 2003; Smith, 2011.
3 Examples of this approach include, Galbraith, 2012 and 2014; Kindleberger, 2000; Plender, 2015; Turner, 2016a and 2016b; Smith, 2011; Stiglitz, 2012;
Taylor, 2010.
4 Although Minsky considered regulation and institu-tional strength to be essential for controlling financial instability, he was a cautious observer of psycho-logical motives and institutional constraints (see also Galbraith (Sr.), 1994; Shiller, 2005; Turner 2016a).
According to Minsky (1986: 220), one of the factors
5 Some experts (Turner, 2016a; D’Arista, 2009) have observed that large financial profits are to a great extent the result of “alchemy” and of developments such as cross-subsidies between trading operations and retail banking, high leverage, public sector support and deposit warranties (see also Bair, 2014;
Haldane, 2014; Kay, 2015; King, 2016).
6 Sheila Bair, Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of the United States from 2006 to 2011,
7 See UNCTAD (2012) for a succinct analysis of the global spillovers from the quantitative easing experiments undertaken by major central banks in the aftermath of the 2008−2009 crisis. These affected market conditions (correlation across asset classes) and portfolio behaviour (risk-on/risk-off, herd behaviour), and further limited the effectiveness of domestic policies.
8 Results for different countries are not necessarily comparable because data availability is not uniform (see, for example, IMF, 2008 and 2016).
9 Some authors have instead used the value added of financial enterprises, usually presented in the institutional accounts that are part of the standards of national accounting. However, those authors nevertheless note some limitations of this as a com- prehensive indicator of financialization (for exam-ple, Turner, 2016b; Polanyi-Levitt, 2013). Haldane (2010) provides a comprehensive discussion about
the limitations of using value added of financial corporations to measure the size of the financial sector. Others have emphasized the increasing
“financialization of the non-financial corporate sector” (Milberg and Winkler, 2010), as well as the pervasive propagation of financialization to broader sectors of government, society and the environment (Brown et al., 2015).
10 Complementary, additional information is drawn from the locational banking statistics produced by the Bank for International Settlements.
11 According to Charles Goodhart (House of Commons Treasury Committee, 2010: Ev.2), what makes large financial institutions “too important to fail” is the fact that while they are “international in life they become national in death”.
12 Data availability for most developed countries is more complete than for developing countries, which makes comparisons difficult. For example, most developing countries do not provide all components institutional changes that accompanied the crea-tion of the euro. But none of these differences can account for the great disparity in levels between the two groups of economies.
13 Non-banking financial institutions and shadow bank-ing institutions are not included in the ranking of the
14 Most of the developing economies’ banks have had large exposure to liabilities incurred in foreign cur-rency, at around 90 per cent of the total, on average, and this has not changed significantly in the past few years (see BIS, Locational Banking Statistics database).
15 Low figures in some developing countries, such as India, can be attributed to the continued existence of many informal financial operations (Ghosh et al., 2012).
16 Fair value in its basic form is defined as the amount for which an asset can be exchanged or a liability settled between knowledgeable, willing partners in an arm’s-length transaction. Fair value accounting applies to assets and liabilities other than those, such as simple debt instruments, held solely for the
Notes
purpose of collecting contractual cash flows (which are measured at amortized cost).
17 See Kumhof et al. (2015) for a review of mainstream literature, and section C (introductory paragraph) and C.1 (above) for a discussion of authors who link both phenomena.
18 According to Laeven and Valencia (2008), “In a systemic banking crisis, a country’s corporate and financial sectors experience a large number of
19 Net (or disposable) income is measured after direct taxes on income (from labour or capital) and direct transfers (such as social protection), which are gen-erally intended to reduce market (or gross) income inequality. Policy measures, such as indirect subsi-dies (e.g. for green energy) or indirect taxes (e.g.
regressive value-added taxes on consumption, a progressive Tobin tax on financial transactions) influ-ence post-fiscal income, while in-kind transfers (e.g.
public services for education or health) determine final income (Kohler, 2015).
20 Personal income inequality can be estimated using two different sources of information, though both have limitations. Survey-based income inequality data are available for a large number of countries, and provide estimates of net incomes (after tax and redistribution) or household consumption. They tend to underestimate inequality because top incomes are underrepresented in samples and top-coded in surveys; that is, instead of reporting the precise level of top incomes, surveys tend to assign them to a single top category of, for example, more than
$1 million (Alvaredo, 2010). Non-truncated fiscal data from the World Wealth and Income Database (http://wid.world) are available for a more limited number of developed and developing countries, but that database does not yet include any transition economy. It provides a more accurate picture of income distribution at the top (before tax), but has underestimate the real extent of income and wealth inequality.
21 Relative measures such as the Palma ratio or income gaps between top and bottom average incomes offer the advantage of highlighting changes among the income groups that historically fluctuate the most and exacerbate income disparities, whereas Gini indices are more synthetic and do not provide such information.
22 Among the 147 episodes identified by Laeven and Valencia (2012), 56 were not backed by sufficient original sources for income inequality estimates in the GCIP database (Lahoti et al., 2014). Despite attempts to improve the quality and comparability of income distribution data (e.g. Conceição and Galbraith, 2000; Solt, 2009; Lahoti et al., 2014), a fundamental limitation is that many developing countries started to conduct income surveys only in the 1980s, or even later. Consequently, changes in inequality cannot be investigated around all financial crises since the 1970s.
23 Inequality between income segments can be meas-ured in absolute terms (income gap in monetary terms) or in relative terms (the ratios between income even if the ratio of income shares decreases, depend-ing on initial income levels. However, the share remains unchanged in the aftermath of financial crises (65 per cent).
24 Owing to the prevalence of singular political cir-cumstances and unusually deep economic recession affecting all income segments in the transition econo-mies during their transformation to market-driven models, along with data limitations (see footnote 20), financial crisis episodes in these economies are not considered in the rest of the empirical analysis.
25 Labelling the recent global financial crisis as a sub-prime crisis misleadingly shifts the blame for the crisis to the demands of asset-poor households in the United States for basic financial intermediation to match their expenditure patterns (such as house mortgages backed by stagnating or declining future income).
26 In charts produced using data from the United Nations GPM database, which is limited to 40 coun-tries, the sample of crisis episodes is reduced further compared to charts based on data from Laeven and Valencia, 2012 and the GCIP, 2016.
27 Besides China, declining private debt is only observed in a few peculiar cases in the run-up to financial crises. Brazil in 1994 and Argentina in 1995 were just exiting a previous financial crisis (in 1990 and 1989, respectively), and Argentina in 1989 had just gone through several economic recessions, which explains why these countries experienced private deleveraging.
INEQUALITY AND FINANCIAL INSTABILITY: STRUCTURAL LIMITS TO INCLUSIVE GROWTH 28
See Cornford (2016) for a critical review of approach- es to assessing macroeconomic costs of financial cri-ses, especially the most recent approaches proposed by the BIS.
29 In post-2001 Argentina, the Program for Unemployed Male and Female Heads of Households (Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar Desocupados) represents a clear example of a successful public intervention in an expansionary direction (Kostzer, 2008). By contrast, Ecuador post-1999, which is also an outlier in the north-west quadrant of figure 5.8, did not adopt a fiscally expansionary redistributive policy. There was a significant increase in public sector invest-ment relative to the previous 10 years of financial instability and weak economic performance, but that increase was mostly driven by windfall gains in the oil-exporting sector. And while inequality measured by the Palma ratio decreased, the income gap actually increased (see figure 5.6).
30 Recalling footnotes 19 and 20, in the United Kingdom, the observed decline in net income inequality can be explained by a rise in the income tax threshold by 1,000 to 11,000 pounds sterling in early 2010, which reduced direct taxes on poorer households, as reflected in the measure of inequality used in figure 5.8. By contrast, austerity measures implemented subsequently, especially the reduction of in-kind transfers, are only imperfectly reflected in this measure. Importantly, wealth inequality remains above its pre-crisis level.
31 Greece may be considered a weak exception to this general pattern, partly because its crisis was not
primarily triggered by private domestic debt, and part-ly because the slow pace of recovery of private sector incomes under a protracted recession has induced greater borrowing in order to maintain spending.
32 Argentina (2001) was an exception to this pattern, as the policies to support employment and household income helped to significantly reduce inequality without having to resort to increases in private sector debt (Galbraith, 2012). Other developing countries, such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand also displayed declining inequality following the Asian financial crisis. However, this assessment is based on truncated survey data (see footnote 20) and is contradicted by whatever fiscal data are available, as in the case of Malaysia, where the top 1 per cent income share increased by about 1 percentage point after 1997.
33 Plender (2015) provides a detailed account of the thousands of pages of intricate regulations proposed by many of the large regulatory bodies.
34 See, for example, Duhon (2012), and Golin and Delhaise (2013), who describe how credit markets expand and banks’ trading floors work.
35 As discussed in earlier TDRs (e.g. 2013 and 2016), the usual objection to protecting minimum wages and allowing growth of labour income at par with productivity is that profits tend to be squeezed, thus discouraging investment. However, if both social and infrastructure policies work in tandem with distribution policies, technical progress, rather than wage repression, becomes the main driver of profit gains (see also Galbraith, 2012).
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