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| ■はじめに |
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| 筆者は情報工学が専門で2大学で講師をさせていただいているが、その中に高校新教科「情報」の先生となる教職講座「情報と職業」がある。その始めに終戦以降の日本や世界経済の変遷を教えるのであるが、大学が用意した教科書（丸善）では、石油ショックやプラザ合意は出てくるが、あの「最大事件」に関する記述が、なぜか無い。 最大事件とは、1971年の【ニクソンショック】である。 それまで「紙幣」という紙キレであっても、一定量の金（ゴールド）と交換できるという前提が、その価値を裏付けていた。だがそれ以降、通貨は【単なる紙キレ】となり、コンピュータが発達した現在ではそれ以上、つまり【単なる数字】に過ぎないのだぞ。…と学生に教えても、いまいちピンと来ない。そこで次の「2つのモデル」を示すと、学生達から「解り易い！」と好評でしたので、皆様にもぜひ紹介させてください。 |
| 【麻雀モデル】 |
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| この世に、Aさんを含む4人しか人口がないと仮定して、4人で麻雀をした。Aさんは麻雀がとても弱くて、毎日何十万円もカモられる。累積「赤字」は天文学的だ。しかしAさんは全然困らない。それはどういう場合に可能か？ 答えは、Aさんが銀行家で、皆が「Aさん銀行のおカネ」を使っている場合であり、かつ、他の3人が（頭が悪く“カラクリ”が理解できず）それを容認した場合である。 |
| 【無税国家モデル】 |
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| 最近よく経済専門家がTVで、『国家も、皆さんの家庭と同じで、収入（税収）より多くの支出をすれば赤字が…、だから増税』、と国民を欺いている。本来国家は、税を全く取らんでも運営可能なんだよ。学生達の表情＝
(?_?) 答えは、通貨発行を、日銀でなく、国（特に国会）が行えば、無税が可能である。そんな事したらインフレになりますよ！…など、ステレオタイプの質問がくる。 だから、国民が選んだ国会が通貨を発行する。もちろん発行量は大事で、GNPの5％程度の通貨発行量であれば、後述の金持ち税と合わせて国家予算を賄える。すると年5％程度のインフレになるため、例えば100万円を持っていた人の場合は95万円に目減りする。この5万円の目減りが、実は税金ともいえる。これはNHKと民放の違いに似ている。NHKは有料、民放は無料に思えるが、実は皆が買う製品に広告費としてオンされている。 金持ち税だけは残しておきたい。トヨタのような超儲けた会社や、年収1億円以上のお金持ちからは富の再分配の概念からして取ればいい。しかし一般庶民は無税。消費税も無ければ消費を刺激し、「適度」なインフレと円安は輸出企業を助けるだろう。 国家が通貨を発行して原則無税、これは決して変な事ではない。日本でも昔は国税を払う人は稀有であったし、アメリカでもそうだ。合衆国憲法第一条八節五項には、連邦議会のみが通貨を発行できるとある。(しかし1913年に民間組織のFRB連銀が現れてから通貨発行権を奪われたまま） もう一つ、日銀は国の機関であると思う人がいたら、認識を改めていただきたい。明治憲法発布が1889年、日本初の内閣が1885年、日銀はそれ以前の1882年に、資本金1億円で設立された民間組織だ。しかも1998年施行の新日銀法により実質完全独立権を得ている。 なおPHP研究所が無税国家論を論じているが、多くを民営化して小さな政府にしたら無税にできるという内容で、通貨発行の本質をつく筆者の論とはまったく異なる。 |
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| ■おわりに |
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| 学生達の表情＝
(･_･)！ 皆さんも、目が点になりながらも、目から鱗でしょうか？ でもきっと、経済が専門の方ほど反論がおありだと思います。そうした方には『虚構の終焉』(PHP研究所）という本をお奨めします。 さぁこれを機会に、あなたも「グローバル研」に入会されませんか。楽しい議論をお待ちしております。 |
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| Richard Werner, chief economist and managing director of Profit
Research Center, a Tokyo-based financial think tank, is challenging conventional
wisdom about the Bank of Japan. The German-born, Oxford-educated economist,
who was visiting researcher at the central bank from 1992 to 1993, said
that independence granted to the Bank of Japan one year ago was not democratic
or in the public interest. According to Werner, the Bank of Japan makes
crucial monetary decisions at its own discretion without the scrutiny
of politicians--democratically elected representatives of the people.
He said the Bank of Japan had used a secret monetary policy tool--the
quantity of credit--to manipulate the economy, which resulted in a prolonged
recession. During an interview with The Daily Yomiuri, Werner warned against
excessive independence of the Bank of Japan and urged that it be more
transparent and accountable to the public, particularly regarding the
quantitative monetary policy. Daily Yomiuri: It has been one year since the Bank of Japan Law was revised to grant more independence to the central bank. Do you think the BOJ has gained true independence from the Finance Ministry and politicians? Werner: Yes, unfortunately. According to the new BOJ Law, the BOJ is basically not accountable to anybody for what it is doing. But that is actually nothing new. It is a little-known fact that even before the BOJ Law changed, the Japanese central bank already enjoyed complete independence. Not in terms of setting interest rates, but in terms of a much more powerful, yet secret monetary policy tool, namely the quantity of credit creation. By pretending to use interest rates as a policy tool, the BOJ has never been held accountable for its actual monetary policy. What monetary policy can the central bank take to overcome the recession? The Japanese recession is due to a credit crunch. In this situation, lowering interest rates does not help, as it is no use to small firms to be told that we have zero interest rates when they cannot borrow at any rate. Fiscal stimulus packages do not work either. Why does fiscal policy not work? They issue bonds and they put them in the bond market (to finance fiscal packages). That means they take the money out of the bond market, which means (they take money) out of the economy. What we need is the quantitative expansion of purchasing power--what is called credit creation. Finally, politicians are realizing this is what we need. The key way of doing it is to ask the BOJ to create money or print money. That is why we had this discussion about direct underwriting of government bonds by the BOJ. Unfortunately, the politicians are too late--they have changed the BOJ Law so that the BOJ can do what it wants--and for seven years, the BOJ has refused to create a recovery by printing money and buying bonds. Do such BOJ operations inevitably trigger inflation? Inflation happens when you boost the economy above the maximum potential economic growth rate. Japan's actual growth rate is actually negative. Japan's maximum, noninflationary, potential growth rate is around 4 percent. We can print money for many years without inflation. To keep the economy steadily at 4 percent, there would be no inflation. Of course, you should bail out banks and have banks create more money. The other way to increase credit creation would be for the government to fund fiscal spending not by issuing bonds, but by borrowing directly from banks. The Finance Ministry does not know this because it does not understand the credit creation process. The BOJ knows this, but it has no interest in telling the Finance Ministry. The irony is that more people understand this now--politicians from the prime minister, the finance minister to Liberal Democratic Party politicians are calling on the BOJ to buy more bonds and print more money--but it is too late because the BOJ is now independent. Politicians, democratically elected representatives of the Japanese population, have no control over the number one economic tool of the country's monetary policy. The bank can do what it wants with monetary policy. Are you saying that granting independence to the Bank of Japan works against public interests? It is against the Japanese people and it is against democracy, and real decisions are going to be made by people who are not elected, in some meeting rooms of the bank. Could you explain how the Bank of Japan created the bubble economy? The bubble was due to excess credit creation by banks for lending for speculative purposes. Why did banks lend so much? The answer is that the BOJ forced banks to lend through a mechanism that the BOJ has always kept secret from the public. I got all the proof that this is what the bank did through direct credit controls, which took the form of informal guidance. This was an extralegal form of forcing banks to lend more. Why did the Bank of Japan force banks to lend so much money? Before answering that question, let's look at what else the BOJ did. Perhaps we can piece it together. Each time, every month or every quarter, when someone at the bank loan and planning departments of the BOJ told banks to lend more--by 10 percent or 15 percent--bankers were quite scared at that time. They told me that they did not understand why they had to lend so much. Even BOJ officials who had given orders to the banks also told me this was crazy. They were told by people high up at the BOJ to do this. The Finance Ministry has nothing to do with the credit controls of the BOJ. Credit controls started during the war as part of controls on the economy and they continued throughout the postwar era. The BOJ in its official statement said that they were abolished in 1981, but it is not true. Why did the Bank of Japan force banks to lend more? One explanation would be that the BOJ is simply not capable and what has happened in the past 15 years is a string of policy mistakes. If that explanation is true, then the conclusion is that the BOJ must be stripped of its power because it is totally incompetent. There is another explanation: The BOJ knew what it was doing. That explanation could follow from an observation of who was actually benefiting from what is now happening in Japan. In the last 50 or 60 years, the Finance Ministry has been the most powerful force in Japan, with its power base being regulations. The BOJ has lobbied a long time for deregulation and an economy with very little bureaucratic interference. Who is in control in such an economy? The central bank is in control, because that is the only institution that is left in which power can be wielded by creating and allocating money. The Finance Ministry in three years will be nothing but a tax, budget and fiscal office. That is the end of the Finance Ministry. The BOJ has won its secret war with the ministry and is completely in control of the country, at the incredible cost of 5 million unemployed--and to the detriment of democracy. |
関連サイト： http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/ark/KEIZAI.HTM