Cancelar los bonos

Cancelar los bonos? Imprimes dinero, compras bonos en el mercado secundario y como son tuyos, pues los cancelas, total? Si al final te pagas los cupones a ti mismo, no? Que mas da! Y la deduda desaparece por arte de magia, eso es como regalar dinero al mercado, verdad? Los tenedores de bonos, de repente tienen cash para gastar e inflacionar otro activo, seguramente no vayan a la calle a comprar o a prestar, seguramente especulen con activos que tengan buenas perspectivas, como los de los emergentes no BRICS!

MoneyWeek nos dice lo siguiente:

"Lord Adair Turner made a speech last week that many saw as being a closet job application for the Bank of England governor’s job. He argued that the Bank could take even more ‘unconventional’ steps to boost the economy.

Various journalists claimed that he secretly likes the idea of cancelling the government bonds that the Bank already holds.

One academic explanation is that people know that in the future this government debt will have to be paid back, or sold back to the private sector. This will suck money back out of the economy. The private sector knows this, and so in the long run, QE doesn’t make much difference to their overall borrowing and spending decisions.

Central bankers have been at pains to argue that QE is not actually money-printing. Indeed, they and their supporters sneer at this idea as being a simplistic interpretation of what they’re doing.

Trouble is, if they cancel government debt, then it becomes very clear that money-printing is exactly what they’ve been doing.

The velocity of money is ultimately a psychological issue. Everything can look fine one day. But the next, you hit a tipping point where people fear the destruction of the currency more than anything else.

The real danger is that if central banks nakedly print money to fund government spending, then this psychological tipping point will be breached. "