The macroeconomic policy of the Netherlands is ineffective

Interest rates have been declining for many decades already, and this is a result of structural changes such as the ageing of the population, the increasing income- and capital inequality and technological changes. As a consequence, savings increase and the demand for capital, that should be used to finance investments, decreases. As such, the extremely low interest rates are nothing but a signal from the markets that the macroeconomic policy of the Netherlands and Europe as a whole is ineffective. We save too much and invest too little. Nevertheless, the Dutch political summit has decided to use budgetary surpluses to pay off the government debt. While paying off government debt now in fact costs money.

The CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB) is also contributing to the development of wrong fiscal policy by presenting misleading figures when it comes to giving an indication of whether the current level of government provisions will remain affordable in the long term ('houdbaarheidscijfers'). When calculating these figures, the CPB uses a discount rate of 3%, which is too high. This discount rate should be equal to the risk-free interest on government bonds plus a risk premium that is derived from stock returns. As a result of the low interest rates, the discount rate should now be around 1.5% and probably even lower. The figures, however, lose any economic significance when the discount rate falls below the structural growth rate of the economy, which is now 1.5%.

In the Netherlands we should start worrying about whether our economy has become dynamically inefficient. That is often the case when the discount rates becomes lower than the growth rate of the economy. This indicates that we save too much and consume & invest too little. This conclusion is also underlined by the fact that we have such a large surplus on the current account, of almost 10% of GDP, as well as by the fact that wage- and income development has been very low over the past few years.