Sum You Lose

The recent electoral success of the SNP throws the spotlight back on the question of Scottish independence. It seems few people remember that the economic forecasts of the nationalists were discredited within months of last year's referendum. Perhaps therefore a summary of the crucial points might be appropriate.

In December 2013 The SNP published Scotland's Future, a document long on words and short on numbers. Yet amongst the numbers it did contain, one received surprisingly little attention. It was projected that in the first year of independence the Scottish fiscal deficit would be £4.4 billion, or approximately £1,000 for every adult member of the population.

Remember that figure, it is important. At a time when people were blithely talking about being one of the richest countries in the world, creating a more caring society and setting up an oil fund for the benefit of future generations, the numbers actually showed that Scotland was already living beyond its means and proposed to go even further into debt.

In order to arrive at this deficit figure, they made assumptions about likely sources of government revenue. Large receipts were expected from taxes on Scotland's oil and finance industries, which together form a disproportionately large component of our national income. Assumptions were also made that Scotland would continue to use the pound sterling as its currency and that Scotland would run a Balance of Payments surplus. All four of these assumptions were flawed.

Official statistics were pessimistic about future oil prices, given the threatened slowdown of the Chinese economy and the rapidly expanding supply of cheap shale gas from the USA. Alleging deliberate manipulation of the figures to disparage the potential riches of an independent Scotland, the nationalists substituted their own oil price estimate (of over $110 per barrel). In fact the official statistics turned out to have been over-optimistic. In 2015 oil prices are in the range $50 to $60, around half the nationalist projection. So far from supporting an independent Scotland, the oil industry was soon in need of UK government help.

The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer challenged the assumption that Scotland would continue to use the pound sterling. He expressed himself poorly. What he meant to rule out was a currency union by which the rest of the UK would continue to underwrite Scottish finances. Fresh from the 2008 banking crisis in which UK taxpayers had been required to find £46 billion to bail out Royal Bank of Scotland, that was hardly surprising.

His lack of clarity was misrepresented as a threat. "No-one can stop us using the pound," Alex Salmond declared. This was of course true. Surprisingly he did not go on to explain that no-one could stop us using the dollar or the yen or the Zambian Kwacha either.

An independent country may use any foreign currency it likes, provided it can get hold of enough by means of a trade surplus. Panama, for example, uses the US dollar. All that you have to do is give up any desire to control your own monetary policy. If Scotland were to use the pound without a currency union it would have no choice but to accept UK monetary policy as its own.

It also means the Scottish government could only run a fiscal deficit to the extent that it could cover the revenue shortfall with reserves of sterling.

An odd sort of independence, you might think, that resulted in less economic powers than Scotland already has?

When the currency problem became clear, the large Scottish financial institutions announced plans to move their services to UK customers south of the border. This was not simply a brass plate technicality to comply with EU regulations as nationalists claimed.

Banking profits derive from the difference between the interest rates at which banks can borrow and those at which they can lend. Essentially a bank's lending operations create new money and most of the money supply in a modern economy consists of bank deposits, not cash. In order to perform these money-creating operations, banks must be within the jurisdiction of, and accept regulation by, the central bank responsible for that currency. A bank attempting to create new foreign currency would be acting illegally; it can only operate in a foreign currency to the extent that it possesses reserves of that currency.

The net result of this alleged technicality would therefore be twofold.

      1. Scotland's financial institutions would be responsible to the Bank of England and pay their taxes to the UK Treasury.

      2. Without financial exports it is unlikely that Scotland could run a Balance of Payments surplus. This would eliminate the Scottish government's ability to acquire reserves of sterling and thereby to run a fiscal deficit.

Now please remember the important figure that I quoted at the beginning of this article. By the SNP's own projections, the fiscal deficit in the first year of independence was to be £4.4 billion.

This was before accounting for the fall in the oil price and the loss of the financial services industry. It was before losing control of monetary and overall fiscal powers as a result of sterling becoming a foreign currency. This £4.4 billion deficit was actually a serious underestimate, perhaps not within several orders of magnitude of the reality.

Not only would a future Scottish government be unable to afford the promised fairer society, it would have to borrow improbable sums just to keep public spending at present levels.

Why improbable? Because in order to borrow you must first establish that you are creditworthy. Why might the international financial community suspect that Scotland was not creditworthy? Because the SNP threatened that if they did not get their own way on the currency they would walk away from responsibility for Scotland's share of the UK National Debt.

Let us leave aside whether one could throw over this debt without sacrificing Scotland's claim to a share of the national assets and infrastructure which that debt has financed, much of which is not located in Scotland and nearly all of which would need to be replaced by an independent country starting from scratch.

Let us also leave aside the fact that a country involved in a major financial dispute with an existing EU member would struggle to find an easy path to re-joining the EU.

Just consider this single point. What international lenders would offer reasonably priced funds to a new government whose first independent monetary act had been to deny any responsibility for debts accumulated jointly under the previous political union?

I am an economist. But of course I am also human. I might be wrong. To persuade me that I am, would enthusiasts for independence please not shout at me. Just show me your numbers.

And before you do, please check that they add up.

Goodbye Primrose Path

If you see a friend walking towards the edge of a cliff whilst playing a game of blind man's buff, what do you do? Call out a warning, I expect.

You might well be surprised and upset when your friend shouts back, "Scaremonger!" and continues to walk forward.

"No really, there's a cliff!" you call.

"Disgraceful negativism!" he replies, sticking his fingers in his ears and starting to hum "La,la,la - can't hear you!"

Separatists amongst Scots seem to believe that as long as you dress up market forces as pantomime villains and hang a sign round their necks labelling them 'English Tory Scares' you may safely ignore them. Economic laws do not apply in the land of Braveheart.

But isn't it really going a bit far to respond to relocation decisions from major financial institutions by continuing to shout 'Scaremonger'?

Just what counts as economic evidence if capital flight does not?

People who don't trust what might happen at the ballot box are voting with their wallets.

It might be a good time to remove the blindfold and take a look ahead.

Scottish Monetary Policy

If Scotland continues to use sterling despite no longer being part of a currency union, we will have no choice but to accept whatever monetary policy the UK decides upon.  There are 58 million in the UK and 5 million of us.  They will have no more reason to take account of a foreign Scotland when determining their monetary policy than the USA has to take account of Panama when determining theirs.

Deduct the forty odd Scottish Labour seats and the chances are that the next UK government is Conservative.  They will implement Conservative monetary policy in the UK and that policy will apply in Scotland because Scotland will not have its own monetary policy.

Perversely this means that, so long as Salmond’s Currency Plan B remains the use of sterling without agreement,  voting 'yes' in the referendum results in the imposition of a Tory government's monetary policy in Scotland.

Perhaps this is what he means when he promises that Scotland will get what it votes for.

No-one can stop us!

"No-one can stop us using the pound!"

That is true. No-one could stop us using the dollar or the yen either, if we chose to do so. It just wouldn't be smart. Neither would using the pound outside the UK currency union.

No-one can stop Panama and Ecuador using the dollar, so they do use it. But the dollar is a foreign currency, controlled by a foreign country. These two Latin American countries allow the USA to enforce fiscal and monetary discipline upon them because they can't easily do it themselves. They have to generate trade surpluses in order to accumulate domestic spending power. Their governments are not masters of their own economies.

So if Scotland wants to wrest control of monetary policy away from London only to hand it straight back again, this time with no influence over it whatsoever, then yes, no-one can stop us.

On the other hand, good luck generating the trade surplus needed to pay for the promised fairer society after the financial services industry has been forced to move south of the border in order to stay in the same jurisdiction as its lender of last resort. Most Scottish financial products are exported to the UK.

Good luck obtaining a fair share of The Bank of England's foreign currency reserves after you've refused to take a fair share of the UK national debt.

Good luck finding people to purchase Scottish government bonds when you've shown yourself likely to default whenever you don't get what you want.

But we can always console ourselves with the thought that no-one could stop us!

Ask a Silly Question

It is annoying that the standard of the independence debate remains low.  Such an important issue deserves better.

For example, we are told that most people agree with the proposition "decisions about Scotland should be taken in Scotland". What a surprise. Surreptitiously sliding emotional bias into surveys is a standard method of distorting results.

Suppose we consider a few other questions formatted in a similar way. For example, do we agree that "decisions about banks should be taken in banks"? Is it purely a matter for bankers to determine whether our deposits should be invested wisely or repaid on demand? No? Thought not.

Perhaps the Northern Isles might care to claim that decisions about the Northern Isles should be taken in the Northern Isles? How would Edinburgh respond to the assertion that "It's Shetland's oil"?

Let us pursue the logic further. Can anyone think of any reason why decisions about me should be entrusted to anyone but myself? What's all this nonsense about having to obey laws?

It should be fairly obvious that it is almost impossible to take decisions affecting one part of a community that do not affect other parts of that community, sometimes very seriously. For any society to be viable, its members must sacrifice some of their individual freedom to the greater good. The real question is therefore whether the value of the greater good is more than the value of the sacrifice.

Now let's think. What would be a good example? How exactly did Scottish banking get bailed out during the financial crisis? Who is placing the warship orders that could keep the Clyde shipyards open? Who decided to give Scotland a bigger share of UK public spending per head than England?

Or perhaps these are the sort of decisions about Scotland that should be taken in Scotland?