A common
criticism of full reserve banking is that it equals monetarism or Milton
Friedman’s version of monetarism: that’s the idea that controlling the amount
of money is the best way of controlling aggregate demand. E.g. see paragraph
starting “This is very close…” here.
Apart from
Friedman himself, I’ve never come across an advocate of full reserve who
advocates monetarism. Certainly I don’t. Thus presumably most of them agree
with the more conventional view, namely that while the quantity of money (base
money in particular) does have an effect, the ACTUAL PROCESS of expanding that
stock also has an effect, where that is done by simply creating new base money
and spending it into the economy rather than done via QE. Moreover in his
1948 paper, "A monetary and fiscal framework for economic stability" (American Economic Review) he advocates full reserve, he does not put any emphasis on the
monetary rather than fiscal effects of creating new monetary base and spending
it into the economy (or cutting taxes). But looks like he changed his mind on
that later in his career. (BTW that paper is normally available for free online, but it's vanished today.)
Incidentally,
I said “rather than done via QE” above because QE has little effect on the
stock of private sector net financial asserts, while in contrast, a “print and
spend” policy DOES INCREASE that stock.
To illustrate
the above “monetary / fiscal point” if the central bank / government machine
creates and spends enough to employ an extra thousand government employees by
this time next month, and those extra employees are actually hired, then
employment rises by one thousand, all else equal. Revelation of the century
that, wasn’t it?
But note, that
when those extra employees start work, the money supply won’t have risen: that
is, the employment increasing effect comes from what might be called the fiscal
element in “print and spend”.
Of course
the latter point assumes that the economy has spare capacity, i.e. that the
effect of the extra money will not simply be to boost inflation. Plus I’m
ignoring the multiplier to keep things simple, plus I’m assuming no Ricardian
effects. But as Joseph Stiglitz said “Ricardian equivalence is taught in every
graduate school in the country. It is also sheer nonsense.” So my “no
Ricardianism” assumption probably doesn’t fly in the face of the facts too
much.
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