Hello, I’m Craig and this is Crash Course
Government and Politics and today we’re finally
gonna talk about a topic I know that you've all been
waiting for: Monetary and Fiscal policy. Hurray!
You haven’t been waiting for monetary and
fiscal policy? Are you sure? I’ve been talking
it up for weeks, you know? Well, let me see
if I can’t convince you to be as excited
as I am. Monetary Policy! Wooo! Fiscal Policy!
Yeah! I want to get fiscal, fiscal.
Come on and get fiscal…
okay let’s start the show.
[Theme Music]
Let’s start with monetary policy because
it’s not at all controversial.
Well, it kind of is controversial, but it’s less
contentious than fiscal policy.
Monetary policy is basically the way the government
regulates the amount of money in circulation
in the nation’s economy. Controlling the money
supply is the primary task of the Federal Reserve
System and since it’s a little bit complicated, I’m going
to talk about the other things that the Fed does first.
The Federal Reserve System was created in
1913 to serve as America’s central bank.
Before then, there were state and local banks
as well as a Bank of the United States, which
was a much more limited central bank.
The Fed is made up of 12 regional banks, and two
boards. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who are appointed by
the President, and the Federal Open Market Committee, 
which is partially appointed by the president.
The Fed has two primary tasks: to control
inflation and to encourage full employment,
and it has four basic functions, but one of
them is way more important than the others.
The Fed is responsible, ultimately for clearing
checks, and for supplying actual currency,
most of which is kept in highly secure facilities
staffed by robots. With laser eyes.
I don’t know if they have laser eyes.
The Fed also sets up rules for banks, although
these can also be set by Congress. But the
most important thing that the Fed does is
loan money to other banks and set interest rates.
That’s why when you hear about the Federal
Reserve, nine times out of ten it’s about
interest rates, because that’s the main
way the Fed controls the money supply.
The Fed loans money to banks, sweet, sweet
money, which they in turn loan out to businesses
and individuals and, like all loans, the Fed
charges interest. The Fed sets the rate on
the interest, called the discount rate, and this determines, mostly, how much money banks will borrow.
The lower the rate, the more banks will borrow
and the more money goes into circulation.
Other banks peg the interest rates they charge
to the Fed’s rate, charging slightly more,
so in this way the Fed determines, or sets,
interest rates in the economy as a whole.
The Fed also creates regulations that control
how much money circulates in the economy.
One of these is the bank reserve requirement, or the
amount of money in cash that a bank has to have on hand.
Now the amount of money that a bank holds
in reserve is only a fraction of the total
amount of money held in deposit at the bank
– that’s why it’s called fractional
reserve banking – but the reserve requirement
is there so that you don’t get catastrophic
bank runs like we saw during the Great Depression
when so many frightened depositors took their
money out of banks that the banks failed.
Raising the reserve requirement reduces the
amount of money in circulation and lowering
it pumps more money into the economy.
The Federal Reserve also sets the interest
rate banks charge to lend money to each other,
which again controls the amount of money that
circulates.
If banks are charging each other a lot of
money to borrow, they won’t borrow as much,
and they won’t lend as much to firms and individuals
and there will be less money in the economy as a whole.
There’s at least one more important way
that the Fed influences the money supply in
the U.S. and that’s through Open Market
Operations.
This is a fancy way to say that the Fed buys
and sells government debt in the form of treasury
bills, or government bonds. When the Fed sells
bonds, it takes money out of the economy,
and when it buys them more money goes into
the economy.
This is the idea behind what was known as
Quantitative Easing, which is really complicated.
To be honest, I’m not crazy about wading
into economics here, and thankfully there’s
a whole other series to do that, but I have
to mention inflation at this point.
Inflation is a general rise in prices that
can be caused by a number of things, but one
of them is the amount of money that circulates.
If there’s more money around, there’s
more that can be spent and this makes it possible
for prices to go up.
But this isn’t an absolute rule, as of 2016
we’ve had years of basically zero interest
rates, which means it’s really cheap to
borrow money, which means that there should
be a lot of money in circulation, yet inflation
remains quite low.
Hey, it’s real cheap to borrow money. Can I borrow two bucks? No! [punches eagle] He never has any money.
Usually low interest rates tend to cause inflation
and reduce unemployment, and high interest
rates are expected to cool down an overheating
economy, but that hasn’t happened much in
the past few years. I’ll say again, I glad
this isn’t an economic series.
It’s important to note here that the Federal
reserve is an independent body, meaning that
its board of governors and chairperson are
not elected or really subject to much regulation
from Congress. And they throw the best parties.
That’s probably why.
This is intentional and probably a good idea.
Ideally, you want people in charge of the
money supply to be able to look after broader
interests than their own re-election, and
this is why the Fed is supposed to be insulated
from politics and remain independent.
Ok, so that’s monetary policy, which is
one lever that the federal government can
use to influence the economy. Increasingly
it’s the only lever, because in America
we have a hard time with fiscal policy.
What’s that, you might be asking? Fiscal
policy refers to the government’s ability
to raise taxes and spend the money it raises.
Since I know that by this episode you’ve
been paying a lot of attention to American
politics, you know that in the past 20 or
30 years, at least, Americans have generally
been reluctant to raise taxes, and somewhat
reluctant to have the government spend money.
The difference between these two goals – spending
money and not raising taxes – largely explains
why we have deficits.
Before we get into tax policy, which I know
is what you’ve been waiting for, calm down,
I need to point out that the way the government
can spend more money on programs than it takes
in taxes is by borrowing it, which the
government does by, you guessed it, selling bonds.
Good thing we talked about Open Market Operations.
Let’s tax the Thought Cafe people with a lot of work,
by talking about taxes and spending in the Thought Bubble.
First, ever since Ronald Reagan came to office
there has been a hostility towards higher
taxes and government spending that is theoretically
based in an idea called supply side economics.
I’m not going to discuss the details of
the theory or even whether it’s right or
wrong or somewhere in between, but the basic
thrust is that if you lower taxes on businesses
and individuals, the individuals will be able
to spend more, the businesses will be able
to invest more, and the economy as a whole
will grow. It’s a simple and politically
powerful idea and has set the terms of the
debate for a generation.
In general, over the past 30 years the trend
is for there to be lower federal taxes and
for them to be less progressive, meaning that
wealthier people pay a lower percentage of
their income in Federal taxes. The wealthy
still pay the largest share of federal taxes
overall, though, so it’s not completely
accurate to say that they aren’t paying.
Since Reagan, and especially during the presidency
of George W. Bush, income tax rates on the
highest earners have fallen, as have taxes
on estates (although they did go up again)
and on capital gains and dividends. President
Obama did raise tax rates, but primarily on
people earning above $450,000 a year.
Corporate tax rates have also declined and
Social Security taxes have gone up, which
is important because this is the federal tax
that most of us are most likely to pay.
Overall the percentage of revenue that the federal
government receives from taxes has held pretty
steady at between 43% and 50%. If you’re
interested in the numbers, for 2013 the government
received almost $2.8 trillion in tax revenues.
And it spent $3.5 trillion, which math tells
us means a deficit of around 700 billion dollars.
Thanks, Thought Bubble. When people say that
they need to cut spending and balance the
budget, this is what they are talking about,
but it’s not quite as simple as just spending
less, because there are some places where
the government can’t cut spending even if they want to.
There are certain items in the federal budget
that must be spent because they are written
into law by Congress. These are called uncontrollables,
or mandatory spending.
One uncontrollable that relates to monetary
policy is interest payments on federal debt.
The government can’t not pay its interest,
otherwise no one would lend us money.
That's just how lending works, or it's
supposed to work.
Farm price supports – subsidies – are
also counted as uncontrollables, and they
are important, but not nearly as important
as the two big-ticket mandatory spending items.
These are social security and Medicare, and
they are paid for with dedicated federal taxes.
They provide income and health insurance for
elderly people and it’s unlikely that the
amounts the government spends on them is going
to decline anytime soon for three reasons.
First, is that the population is aging, meaning
that the percentage of older Americans is
rising in proportion to younger Americans.
This means that more people will be receiving
Social Security payments, which leads us to the second
reason they are unlikely to go down: people like them.
The third reason is more political: older
people tend to vote more regularly, so a politician
who wants to keep their job is unlikely to
vote for cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
So, here’s the thing about the Federal Reserve
and economics: The American economy is really
huge, and really complicated, and has some
issues that need addressing.
Whether you care a lot about budget deficits
or don’t think they're a big deal will depend
a lot on your feelings about economics in general,
but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First, there's only a limited range of programs
on which the government can choose to spend
or not spend. These are called discretionary
spending and when people call for cuts in
government spending, this is what they mean.
By far the largest chunk of government spending
goes into defense, over $600 billion in 2013,
but the next largest item is healthcare for the poor, Medicaid, at $498 Billion.
Nothing else even comes close.
Spending on the Department of Education,
for example, was $41 billion in 2013.
The second thing to bear in mind is that in
addition to cutting spending, the government
could balance its budget by doing what everyone
loves - raising taxes. It's done this on occasion,
but the political consequences can be pretty
tough. Just ask George H.W. Bush.
Finally, the combination of Americans’ aversion
to raising taxes and the government’s limited ability
to cut spending means that monetary policy becomes
its major lever in broad-based macroeconomic policy.
That’s why we paid so much attention to
the Federal Reserve system at the beginning
of this episode, and why you probably should
too.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.
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