All posts in category Banking crisis

Dear Northern Europeans – Monetary easing is not a bailout

If we want to explain the Market Monetarist position on banking crisis then it would probably be that banking crisis primarily is a result of monetary policy, but also that moral hazard should be avoided and a strict ‘no bailout’ policy should be implemented. However, the fact that Market Monetarists now for example favour aggressive monetary easing in the euro zone, but at the same time are highly skeptical about bailouts of countries and banks might confuse some.

I have noticed that there generally is a problem for a lot of people to differentiate between monetary easing and bailouts. Often when one argues for monetary easing the reply is “we should stop bailing out banks and countries and if we do it we will just create an even bigger bubble”. The problem here is that Market Monetarists certainly do not favour bailouts – we favour nominal stability.

I think that at the core of the problem is that people have a very hard time figuring out what monetary policy is. Most people – including I believe most central bankers – think that credit policy is monetary policy. Just take the Federal Reserve’s attempt to distort relative prices in the financial markets in connection with QE2 or the ECB’s OMT program where the purpose is to support the price of government bonds in certain South European countries without increasing the euro zone money base. Hence, the primary purpose of these policies is not to increase nominal GDP or stabilise NGDP growth, but rather to change market prices. That is not monetary policy. That is credit policy and worse – it is in fact bailouts.

As the ECB’s OMT and Fed’s QE2 to a large extent have been focused on changing relative prices in the financial markets they can rightly be – and should be – criticized for leading to moral hazard. When the ECB artificially keeps for example Spanish government bond yields from increasing above a certain level then the ECB clearly is encouraging excessive risk taking. Spanish bond yields have been rising during the Great Recession because investors rightly have been fearing a Spanish government default. This is an entirely rational reaction by investors to a sharp deterioration of the outlook for the Spanish economy. Obviously if the ECB curb the rise in Spanish bond yields the ECB are telling investors to disregard these credit risks. This clearly is moral hazard.

The problem here is that a monetary authority – the ECB – is engaged in something that is not monetary policy, but people will not surprisingly think of what a central bank do as monetary policy, but the ECB’s attempts to distort relative prices in the financial markets have very little to do with monetary policy as it do not lead to a change in the money base or to a change in the expectation for future changes in the money base.

That is not to say that the ECB’s credit policies do not have monetary impact. They likely have. Hence, it is clear that the so-called OMT has reduced financial distress in the euro zone, which likely have increased the money-multiplier and money-velocity in the euro zone, but it has also (significantly?) increased moral hazard problems. So the paradox here is that the ECB really has done very little to ease monetary policy, but a lot to increase moral hazard problems.

Unfortunately many of those policy makers who rightly are very fearful of moral hazard – normally Northern European policy makers – fail to realise the difference between monetary policy and credit policy. German, Finnish and Dutch policy makers are right in opposing a credit based bailout of South European “sinners”, but they are equally wrong in opposing an monetary expansion.

The paradox here is that Northern European policy markets by opposing monetary easing in the euro zone actually are increasing the problem with moral hazard and bailouts. Hence, when monetary policy is too tight nominal GDP (and likely also real GDP) collapses. As a result debt ratios increase – and this goes for both private and public debt. That will cause both sovereign debt crisis and banking crisis, which is perceived to threaten the future of the euro. The threat to the future of the euro so far has convinced Northern European policy makers to going along with bailouts and implicit and explicit guarantees to banks and countries around the euro zone. Hence, the ECB’s overly tight monetary policy likely have INCREASED moral hazard problems.

Europe needs to return to a system where insolvent banks and countries are allowed to default. We need to end the bailouts. The Northern Europeans are completely right about that. However, we also need to end the deflationary policies of the ECB, which greatly increases public debt and banking problems.

It is certainly not given that even if the ECB brought the NGDP level back to the pre-crisis trend everything would be fine. I am fairly convinced that the removal of implicit and explicit guarantees would force banks and countries to deleverage further.  Moral hazard problems and bailouts have led to excessive risk taking. There is no doubt about that, but if the ECB (and the Fed!) focuses on maintaining nominal stability we can get an orderly return to a market based financial system where credit risks are correctly priced.

And finally solvency problems should not be dealt with through monetary or credit policy. If a country is insolvent then the only answer is an orderly debt restructuring. Similarly if banks are insolvent orderly bank resolution is needed. Monetary policy at the same time should ensure that bank resolution and debt restructuring do not lead to a negative shock to monetary conditions. The best way to do that is to keep NGDP on track.

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Update: This is a greeting to the University of Chicago Monetary Policy Reading Group. This week the group is reading and discussing Ben Bernanke’s classic 1983 paper “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression”. In this paper Bernanke discusses his creditist view of the Great Depression. I believe that  these views are what led the Bernanke Fed to initially response to the Great Depression with credit policies (trying to “fix” the banks) rather than through a focused increase in the money base and the money supply.

My challenge to the UoC Monetary Policy Reading Group they should discuss how Fed policy has evolved from initially to be strongly focused on credit policies (QE2) to moving towards a monetary expansion (the Bernanke-Evans rule) and comparing the Bank of Japan’s new policy which is much more focused on an expansion of the money base rather than an attempt to distort relative prices in the financial markets. This is Friedman versus Bernanke.

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20 Comments
by Lars Christensen on April 22, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, ECB, euro crisis, Moral Hazard
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 22, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/04/22/dear-northern-europeans-monetary-easing-is-not-a-bailout/

“Fragile by design” – the political causes of banking crisis

Charles Calomiris undoubtedly is one of the leading experts on banking crisis in the world. Calomiris has a new book coming out – co-authored with Stephen Haber. The main thesis in the book – “Fragile by Design: Banking Crises, Scarce Credit,and Political Bargains” – is that banking crisis is not an inherent characteristic of a free-market financial system, but rather the outcome of what Calomiris and Haber terms the “Game of Bank Bargains” between the government and special interests and how this game lead to different incentives for excessive risk taking or not.

For natural reasons I have not read the book yet, but in a couple of recent papers and presentations by Calomiris and Haber have spelled out the main ideas of the book (See for example here, here, here and here). I find their large survey of history of banking crisis tremendously interesting and I find it particularly interesting that Calomiris and Haber conclude that the root cause of banking crisis has to be found in what political institutions different countries have. Said in another way the main cause banking crisis is one of “political design”.

One of the main views of Calomiris and Haber is that some countries are a lot more prone to banking crisis than other. Calomiris and Haber list the following countries as particularly prone to banking crisis: Argentina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Brazil, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Thailand, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Turkey, Spain, Sweden and the United States.

Similarly Calomiris and Haber list a number of countries that in general have been crisis free (despite abundant credit):  Bahamas, Malta, Cyprus, Brunei, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macao, South Africa, Italy, Austria, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

The differences between USA and Canada seem to be particularly interesting (discussed in Chapter six of the book). Hence, since 1840 the US have had 14 banking crisis, while Canada have had none and this despite of the fact that credit have been as abundant in Canada as in the US. While the two countries have the a very similar cultural and colonial  history the political institutions in Canada and the USA are very different. These differences in political institutions according to Calomiris and the US have lead to the development of vastly different banking systems in the two countries – “branch banking” in Canada and “unit banking” in the US.

There are a lot more in the book than what I have discussed above and the papers that Haber and Calomiris already have put out are extremely interesting and insightful so I can’t wait to read the book! The book unfortunately is not available on Amazon yet so I haven’t ordered it yet, but I hope that that will soon change.

PS If there is one thing that seems to be missing in Calomiris and Haber’s discussion of the causes of banking crisis then it is a discussion of monetary policy regimes. That is unfortunate in my opinion as there is no doubt that monetary policy failure has played a huge role in the present crisis and in historical crises – something I know at least Calomiris acknowledges.

Update: Charles Calomiris has informed me that “Fragile by Design” also include a discussion of monetary policy regime – for example in the case of Brazil.

Update 2: Here is an recent interview with Charles on Bloomberg TV.

5 Comments
by Lars Christensen on April 20, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, Charles Calomiris, Stephen Haber
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 20, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/04/20/fragile-by-design-the-political-causes-of-banking-crisis/

Forget about the “Credit Channel”

One thing that has always frustrated me about the Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) is that it is assumes that “new money” is injected into the economy via the banking sector and many of the results in the model is dependent this assumption. Something Ludwig von Mises by the way acknowledges openly in for example “Human Action”.

If instead it had been assumed that money is injected into economy via a “helicopter drop” directly to households and companies then the lag structure in the ABCT model completely changes (I know because I many years ago wrote my master thesis on ABCT).

In this sense the Austrians are “Creditist” exactly like Ben Bernanke.

But hold on – so are the Keynesian proponents of the liquidity trap hypothesis. Those who argue that we are in a liquidity trap argues that an increase in the money base will not increase the money supply because there is a banking crisis so banks will to hold on the extra liquidity they get from the central bank and not lend it out. I know that this is not the exactly the “correct” theoretical interpretation of the liquidity trap, but nonetheless the “popular” description of the why there is a liquidity trap (there of course is no liquidity trap).

The assumption that “new money” is injected into the economy via the banking sector (through a “Credit Channel”) hence is critical for the results in all these models and this is highly problematic for the policy recommendations from these models.

The “New Keynesian” (the vulgar sort – not people like Lars E. O. Svensson) argues that monetary policy don’t work so we need to loosen fiscal policy, while the Creditist like Bernanke says that we need to “fix” the problems in the banking sector to make monetary policy work and hence become preoccupied with banking sector rescue rather than with the expansion of the broader money supply. (“fix” in Bernanke’s thinking is something like TARP etc.). The Austrians are just preoccupied with the risk of boom-bust (could we only get that…).

What I and other Market Monetarist are arguing is that there is no liquidity trap and money can be injected into the economy in many ways. Lars E. O. Svensson of course suggested a foolproof way out of the liquidity trap and is for the central bank to engage in currency market intervention. The central bank can always increase the money supply by printing its own currency and using it to buy foreign currency.

At the core of many of today’s misunderstandings of monetary policy is that people mix up “credit” and “money” and they think that the interest rate is the price of money. Market Monetarists of course full well know that that is not the case. (See my Working Paper on the Market Monetarism for a discussion of the difference between “credit” and “money”)

As long as policy makers continue to think that the only way that money can enter into the economy is via the “credit channel” and by manipulating the price of credit (not the price of money) we will be trapped – not in a liquidity trap, but in a mental trap that hinders the right policy response to the crisis. It might therefore be beneficial that Market Monetarists other than just arguing for NGDP level targeting also explain how this practically be done in terms of policy instruments. I have for example argued that small open economies (and large open economies for that matter) could introduce “exchange rate based NGDP targeting” (a variation of Irving Fisher’s Compensated dollar plan).

18 Comments
by Lars Christensen on January 12, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Austrian economics, Banking crisis, Ben Bernanke, Exchange rate policy, Federal Reserve, Irving Fisher, Lars E. O. Svensson, Liquidity trap, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Reading recommendations, Transmission mechanism
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Posted by Lars Christensen on January 12, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/01/12/forget-about-the-credit-channel/

Chain of events in the boom-bust

In my recent post on “boom, bust and bubbles” I tried to sketch a monetary theory of bubbles. In this post I try to give an overview of what in my view seems to be the normal chain of events in boom-bust and in the formation of bubbles. This is not a theory, but rather what I consider to be some empirical regularities in the formation and bursting of bubbles – and the common policy mistakes made by central banks and governments.

Here is the story…

Chain of events in the boom-bust

- Positive supply shocks – often due to structural reforms that include supply side reforms and monetary stabilisation

- Supply side reforms leads to “supply deflation” – headline inflation drops both as a result of monetary stabiliisation and supply deflation. Real GDP growth picks up

- First policy mistake: The drop in headline inflation leads the central bank to ease monetary policy (in a fixed exchange rate regime this happens “automatically”)

- Relative inflation: Demand inflation increases sharply versus supply inflation – this is often is visible in for example sharply rising property prices and a “profit bubble”

- Investors jump on the good story – fears are dismissed often on the background of some implicit guarantees – moral hazard problems are visible

- More signs of trouble: The positive supply shock starts to ease off – headline inflation increases due to higher “supply inflation”

- Forward-looking investors start to worry about the boom turning into a bust when monetary policy will be tightened

- Second policy mistake: Cheerleading policy makers dismisses fears of boom-bust and as a result they get behind the curve on events to come and encourage investors to jump on the bandwagon

- In a fixed exchange rate the exit of worried investors effectively lead to a tightening of monetary conditions as the specie-flow mechanism sharply reduces the money supply

- The bubble bursts: Demand inflation drops sharply – this will often be mostly visible in a collapse in property prices

- The drop in demand inflation triggers financial distress – money velocity drops and triggers a further tightening of monetary conditions

- Third policy mistake: Policy makers realise that they made a mistake and now try to undo it “in hindsight” not realising that the setting has changed. Monetary conditions has already been tightened.

- Secondary deflation hits. Demand prices and NGDP drops below the pre-boom trend. Real GDP drops strongly, unemployment spikes

- Forth policy mistake: Monetary policy is kept tight – often because a fixed exchange rate regime is defended or because the central bank believes that monetary policy already is loose because interest rates are low

- A “forced” balance sheet recession takes place (it is NOT a Austrian style balance sheet recession…) – overly tight monetary policy forces investors and households through an unnecessary Fisherian debt-deflation

- Real GDP growth remains lackluster despite the initial financial distress easing. This is NOT due to an unavoidable deleveraging, but is a result of too tight monetary policy, but also because the positive supply shock that sat the entire process in motion has eased off.

-The country emerges from crisis when prices and wages have adjusted down or more likely when monetary policy finally is ease – for fixed exchange rate countries when the peg is given up

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by Lars Christensen on December 27, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Austrian economics, Banking crisis, Bubbles, General economic theory, MM Research agenda, Monetary policy, Moral Hazard, Uncategorized
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Posted by Lars Christensen on December 27, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/12/27/chain-of-events-in-the-boom-bust/

“Monetary Policy, Financial Stability, and the Distribution of Risk”

I have recently been giving a lot of attention to the work of David Eagle and his Arrow-Debreu based analysis of monetary policy rules. This is because I think David’s work provides a microfoundation for Market Monetarism and adds new dimensions to the discussion about NGDP targeting – particularly in regard to financial stability.

I have now come across a paper that is using a similar model as David’s model. However, this might be a slightly more interesting for the conspiratorial types as this paper is written by a Federal Reserve economist – Evan F. Koeing of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Here is that abstract of Koeing’s paper “Monetary Policy, Financial Stability, and the Distribution of Risk”:

“In an economy in which debt obligations are fixed in nominal terms, but there are otherwise no nominal rigidities, a monetary policy that targets inflation inefficiently concentrates risk, tending to increase the financial distress that accompanies adverse real shocks. Nominal- income targeting spreads risk more evenly across borrowers and lenders, reproducing the equilibrium that one would observe if there were perfect capital markets. Empirically, inflation surprises have no independent influence on measures of financial strain once one controls for shocks to nominal GDP.”

This paper obviously is highly relevant and as the euro crisis just keeps getting worse day-by-day we can always hope that some influential European policy makers read this paper.

After all the euro crisis is mostly a monetary crisis rather than a fiscal crisis – which David Beckworth forcefully demonstrates in a recent comment.

HT Arash Molavi Vasséi

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 11, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Arash Molavi Vasséi, Banking crisis, David Beckworth, David Eagle, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting
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Posted by Lars Christensen on December 11, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/12/11/monetary-policy-financial-stability-and-the-distribution-of-risk/

“Global Banking Glut and Loan Risk Premium”

David Levey has sent me a new paper by Princeton University economics professor Hyun Song Shin on “Global Banking Glut and Loan Risk Premium“. I have unfortunately not had the time to read the paper yet, but it looks quite interesting and I would like to share it with my readers.

Here is the abstract:

“European global banks intermediating US dollar funds are important in influencing credit conditions in the United States. US dollar-denominated assets of banks outside the US are comparable in size to the total assets of the US commercial bank sector, but the large gross cross-border positions are masked by the netting out of the gross assets and liabilities. As a consequence, current account imbalances do not reflect the influence of gross capital flows on US financial conditions. This paper pieces together evidence from a global flow of funds analysis, and develops a theoretical model linking global banks and US loan risk premiums. The culprit for the easy credit conditions in the United States up to 2007 may have been the “Global Banking Glut” rather than the “Global Savings Glut””

Overall, I think the global financial linkages are extremely important in understanding how the Great Recession has played out and Hyun Song Shin’s paper could help us understand these linkages. I am personally very interested in the impact of the European banking sector’s demand for dollar.

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PS While the European crisis continues relentlessly it is hard to find anything positive of cheer you up. However, my colleague Antero Atilla – who long ago has realised that I am obsessed with monetary policy suggested a more fun youtube link today…have a look – it is all about money!

PPS The European crisis, business traveling and a bad flu is likely to keep me a bit away from blogging in the coming days.

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by Lars Christensen on November 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, euro crisis, The Great Recession
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 22, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/22/global-banking-glut-and-loan-risk-premium/

Insufficient powers of (European) central banks

Here is Ben Bernanke and Harold James (1991) on “Insufficient powers of (European) central banks”:

“An important institutional feature of  the interwar gold standard is that, for a majority of the important continental European central banks, open market operations were not permitted or were severely restricted. This limitation on central bank powers was usually the result of the stabilization programs of the early and mid 1920s. By prohibiting central banks from holding or dealing in significant quantities of government securities, and thus making monetization of deficits more difficult, the architects of the stabilizations hoped to prevent future inflation. This forced the central banks to rely on discount policy (the terms at which they would make loans to commercial banks) as the principal means of affecting the domestic money supply. However, in a number of countries the major commercial banks borrowed very infrequently from the central banks, implying that except in crisis periods the central bank’s control over the money supply might be quite weak.”

I wonder whether Ben Bernanke is having the same unpleasant feeling of déjà vu as I am having and what he plans to do about – because apparently nobody in Europe studied economic history.

 

 

 

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by Lars Christensen on November 21, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, Ben Bernanke, euro crisis
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 21, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/21/insufficient-powers-of-european-central-banks/

“Fed greatly destabilized the U.S. economy”

As the European crisis just gets worse and worse I am reminded by what a clever man once said – he is that clever man Ben Bernanke in 2004:

“Some important lessons emerge from the story. One lesson is that ideas are critical. The gold standard orthodoxy, the adherence of some Federal Reserve policymakers to the liquidationist thesis, and the incorrect view that low nominal interest rates necessarily signaled monetary ease, all led policymakers astray, with disastrous consequences. We should not underestimate the need for careful research and analysis in guiding policy. Another lesson is that central banks and other governmental agencies have an important responsibility to maintain financial stability. The banking crises of the 1930s, both in the United States and abroad, were a significant source of output declines, both through their effects on money supplies and on credit supplies. Finally, perhaps the most important lesson of all is that price stability should be a key objective of monetary policy. By allowing persistent declines in the money supply and in the price level, the Federal Reserve of the late 1920s and 1930s greatly destabilized the U.S. economy and, through the workings of the gold standard, the economies of many other nations as well.”

I wonder what he is thinking of his colleagues in the ECB and about his own responsibilities today.

2 Comments
by Lars Christensen on November 16, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, Deflation, Economic and monetary history, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Monetary policy, The Great Depression
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 16, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/16/fed-greatly-destabilized-the-u-s-economy/

The Tragic year: 1931

Benjamin Anderson termed 1931 the “the tragic year” – these are some of the events in that tragic year: 

  1. One of Europe’s largest banks with large exposure to Central and Eastern Europe gets into serious trouble (It is of course Austria’s largest bank Österiechishe Kredit Anstalt – and it of course collapsed)
  2. Europe’s Sovereign debt crisis is threatening financial stability and currency collapse (It’s the Germans that are to blame – they can’t pay their war debts)
  3. Major international banks push for a big country to save the sinners (The US banks ask US president Hoover to help ease the pain on Germany)
  4. Debt restructuring (The Hoover moratorium gives Germany a bit of relief – the US banks are happy to begin with)
  5. Monetary policy keeps deflationary pressures on (The French central bank keeps hoarding gold)
  6. An insane commitment to a failed monetary system (the gold standard mentality keeps the commitment to the gold standard despite the fact that it is killing Europe)
  7. Some countries have had enough and give up the monetary standard (The UK leaves the gold standard – the Scandinavian countries follows suit – and recover fast from the Great Depression)
  8. Technocracy is popular and it suggested that indebted nations should be run by technocrats (The so-called Technocracy Movement became increasingly popular in German)

And here we are 80 years on…do you see any similarities? I wonder what 2012 will bring – in 1932 10 countries (or so…) defaulted…

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on November 15, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, Central and Eastern Europe, Economic and monetary history, euro crisis, Gold Standard, Greece, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, The euro, The Great Depression
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 15, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/15/the-tragic-year-1931/

Germany 1931, Argentina 2001 – Greece 2011?

The events that we are seeing in Greece these days are undoubtedly events that economic historians will study for many years to come. But the similarities to historical crises are striking. I have already in previous posts reminded my readers of the stark similarities with the European – especially the German – debt crisis in 1931. However, one can undoubtedly also learn a lot from studying the Argentine crisis of 2001-2002 and the eventual Argentine default in 2002.

What this crises have in common is the combination of rigid monetary regimes (the gold standard, a currency board and the euro), serious fiscal austerity measures that ultimately leads to the downfall of the government and an international society that is desperately trying to solve the problem, but ultimately see domestic political events makes a rescue impossible – whether it was the Hoover administration and BIS in 1931, the IMF in 2001 or the EU (Germany/France) in 2011. The historical similarities are truly scary.

I have no clue how things will play out in Greece, but Germany 1931 and Argentina 2001 does not give much hope for optimism, but we can at least prepare ourselves for how things might play out by studying history.

I can recommend having a look at this timeline for how the Argentine crisis played out. You can start on page 3 – the Autumn of 2001. This is more or less where we are in Greece today.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on November 2, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Banking crisis, Economic and monetary history, euro crisis, Exchange rate policy, Gold Standard, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, The euro, The Great Depression
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on November 2, 2011

http://marketmonetarist.com/2011/11/02/germany-1931-argentina-2001-greece-2011/

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