[발췌: Wikipedia] Deficit Spending (Some part of post-Keynesianism)

자료: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deficit_spending ( as of April 7, 2013)

※ 발췌(excerpt):

Conversely, some Post-Keynesian economists argue that deficit spending is necessary, either to create the money supply (Chartalism) or to satisfy demand for savings in excess of what can be satisfied by private investment.

Chartalists argue that deficit spending is logically necessary because, in their view, fiat money is created by deficit spending: one cannot collect fiat money in taxes before one has issued it and spent it, and the amount of fiat money in circulation is exactly the government debt – money spent but not collected in taxes. In a quip, "fiat money governments are 'spend and tax', not 'tax and spend'," – deficit spending comes first. Chartalists argue that nations are fundamentally different from households. Governments in a fiat money system which only have debt in their own currency can issue other liabilities, their fiat money, to pay off their interesting bearing bond debt. They cannot go bankrupt involuntarily because this fiat money is what is used in their economy to settle debts, while household liabilities are not so used. This view is summarized as:

But it is hard to understand how the concept of "budget busting" applies to a government which, as a sovereign issuer of its own currency, can always create dollars to spend. There is, in other words, no budget to "bust". A national "budget" is merely an account of national spending priorities, and does not represent an external constraint in the manner of a household budget.[3]

Continuing in this vein, Chartalists argue that a structural deficit is necessary for monetary expansion in an expanding economy: if the economy grows, the money supply should as well, which should be accomplished by government deficit spending. Private sector savings are equal to government sector deficits, to the penny. In the absence of sufficient deficit spending, money supply can increase by increasing financial leverage in the economy – the amount of bank money grows, while the base money supply remains unchanged or grows at a slower rate, and thus the ratio (leverage = credit/base) increases, which can lead to a credit bubble and a financial crisis.

Chartalism is a small minority view in economics; while it has had advocates over the years, and influenced Keynes, who specifically credited it,[4] it is categorically rejected or ignored by virtually all contemporary mainstream economists. A notable proponent was Ukrainian American economist Abba P. Lerner, who founded the school of Neo-Chartalism, and advocated deficit spending in his theory of functional finance. A contemporary center of Neo-Chartalism is the Kansas City School of economics.

Chartalists, like other Keynesians accept the paradox of thrift, which argues that identifying behavior of individual households and the nation as a whole commits the fallacy of composition; while the paradox of thrift (and thus deficit spending for fiscal stimulus) is widely accepted in economics, the Chartalist form is not.

An alternative argument for the necessity of deficits was given by celebrated American economist William Vickrey, who argued that deficits were necessary to satisfy demand for savings in excess of what can be satisfied by private investment.Larger deficits, sufficient to recycle savings out of a growing gross domestic product (GDP) in excess of what can be recycled by profit-seeking private investment, are not an economic sin but an economic necessity.[5]

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[3] Spain and the EU: Deficit Terrorism in Action, 01/8/2010, New Deal 2.0, Marshall Auerback
[4] See references at Chartalism for the influence on Keynes.
[5] (Vickrey 1996, Fallacy 1)

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• William J. Baumol, Alan S. Blinder (2005). Economics: Principles and Policy. Thomson South-Western. ISBN 0-324-22113-4. 
• Mitchell, Bill: Deficit spending 101 – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3; Neo-Chartalist (Modern Monetary Theory) perspective on deficit spending
• Vickrey, William (October 5, 1996), Fifteen Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism: A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics. Paper was written one week before the author's death, three days before he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
• McGregor, Michael A., Driscoll, Paul D., McDowell, Walter (2010) “Head’s Broadcasting in America: A Survey of Electronic Media”. Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon p. 180