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Showing posts with label 4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4. Show all posts

Saturday, 8 August 2020

Economics for Non Economists 4 - The Marriage of Debt and Profit in Capitalism

 by Girish Menon (Adapted from: Talking to my Daughter about the Economy by Yanis Varoufakis)


How does a new entrepreneur start?

 Let’s call her Indira. Indira will need some money (capital) to hire the factors of production i.e. to pay wages, for raw materials, machines and for rent to start her business. Since she will only get money after she has sold her goods, she has to take a loan to get started and the loan taken to get started is called Debt.

 Also, since the amount of wages, raw materials and rent are decided in advance the only person who does not know what she will end up with at the end of the process is Indira the entrepreneur. Hence achieving a profit becomes the most important goal for Indira in order to survive and not to end up with unpayable debt.

---For earlier articles

Explaining GDP and Economic Growth

Quantitative Easing

What is a Free Market

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 Entrepreneurs as time travellers

 When Indira takes a loan to get started, what is she actually doing? In the format of a sci-fi movie, she is looking into the future through a semi-transparent membrane. Sensing an opportunity, she then pushes her hand into the future and grabs the revenue she will make and pulls her hand back into the present.

 If Indira has discerned the future accurately, then she will be successful and will earn enough to repay the loans that she borrowed to start with. However, if she has predicted the future wrongly then her business will fail and she will be unable to repay her loan and become bankrupt.

 Bankers as time travel agents

 Nowadays bankers create money out of thin air. Yes, they have the power to type the numbers in your bank account and money is created. Since bankers have very few constraints on the amount of money they can conjure, they have great incentive to lend money and earn interest and other fees. After all the more money they create and lend in an economy the greater the profits for themselves.

 Bankers - Heads I win and tails you lose

 Earlier, bankers would lend to entrepreneurs like Indira if they trusted her to able to repay her loan in the future. But nowadays banks have found a way to insulate themselves from Indira’s failure. For example, once a bank has given a loan of say £400,000, then the bank would chop up this loan into little pieces and sell it on to others i.e. in return for lending the bank £100 each; four thousand investors would each be given a share in the £400,000 loan. Thus the bank has already recovered the loan and will make a profit when Indira repays her loan. If Indira goes bankrupt then the four thousand investors will lose their money.

Positive Multiplier

 Suppose Indira is successful, she will hire workers, buy raw materials… these factor suppliers will receive wages and rents and buy more goods and the process of recycling goes on a positive and upward scale increasing GDP, more employment, more new businesses etc.

 The Crash

As the economy grows, banks will lend even larger amounts of loans until it reaches a point when the loans they have made are so vast that the economy cannot keep pace. At this point realization dawns that the large loans will not be repaid and the economy crashes.

 Due to the bank’s enthusiastic lending the once successful Indira may now find it difficult to repay her loan. She will now have to close down her business and the workers and suppliers will no longer get wages or rents. This may affect other businesses and a downward spiral starts resulting in bankruptcies, lower GDP, unemployment….

Debt, Profits and Crashes

Thus debt is indispensable in capitalism. There can be no profit without debt. However, the very same process that generates profits and wealth also generates financial crashes and economic crises.