Limitless Deficit Financing for Economic Prosperity: Where They Got the Keynes’s Deficit Spending Wrong?

Abstract

The recent wave of recommendations of unlimited credit creation to finance government expenditures to achieve economic growth and prosperity seems to be grounded in misunderstanding Keynes’s countercyclical fiscal policy. Keynes’s deficit spending denotes the stimulus geared towards increasing private investment as opposed to big government spending boosting consumption. Taking Japan as a case study, I showcase that deficit financing meeting Keynesian preconditions, including a sound monetary system, well-developed financial markets, and lower/zero interest rate, may not lead to raising growth and lowering public debts as the proponents predict. I maintain that unlimited credit expansion to the public sector in consumption-based economies, which is the general case for developing countries, is most likely to generate inflation while leaving the economy’s productivity unchanged.