著者
岩田 佳久
出版者
経済理論学会
雑誌
季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.52, no.3, pp.77-88, 2015-10-20 (Released:2017-09-19)

It is well known that there are two opposed views of the asset price rising, Fed view and BIS view. Fed view advocates "Clean up the mess" strategy, which leaves the asset price rising and eases credit boldly in the burst of the bubble. On the other hand, BIS view advocates "Lean against the wind" strategy, which tightens credit proactively at the asset price rising. The opposition between the two views also exists in the debate of Global Imbalances in the 2000s. Bernanke, Fed view, argues that "Global saving glut" flows into US and makes the current account deficit (i.e. net capital inflow) larger in US and the interest rate lower in the world. On the other hand, Borio, BIS view, objects that the excess savings in national economic accounting system is irrelative to the bank ability to expand credit and to set the interest rate, and that what is influential on the asset price rising is not net capital inflow but gross one. Borio's argument is superior to Bernanke on the financial economy, but has some weaknesses when it is reviewed from the point of the Marxian economics. This paper tries to develop the Marxian credit theory. Firstly, Borio accepts the concept of ex ante saving and investment though he thinks little of it in determination of the market interest rate. As we can see in the debate between Keynes and Ohlin in 1937, ex ante saving is not lending the saving but financing the investment by the credit creation. Secondly, Borio emphasizes that money (credit money) is made by credit creation from nothing, ex nihilo. But, though the recent Marxian economics also accepts that money is created by the banks, it emphasizes that credit money anticipates the reflux of money in the future. Credit money is backed by the value of commodity or the ability to gain money, such as the labor's ability to gain wage and the government's ability to collect tax. That is, credit money is not created from nothing, but based on the value of commodities or on the ability to realize the value in the future. Thirdly, the interest rate is determined at the level where banks can gain the average profit. Marx explained the level of interest rate from the relation between demand and supply of money capital. But the bank, as a capital, self-valorizing value, gains the general profit rate on the invested capital through the competition in the same sector and among the all sectors.