All posts tagged Federal Reserve

How to avoid a repeat of 1937 – lessons for both the fed and the BoJ

The Japanese stock market dropped more than 7% on Thursday and even though we are up 3% this morning there is no doubt that “something” had scared investors.

There are likely numerous reasons for the spike in risk aversion on Thursday, but one reason is probably that investors are getting concerned about the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan getting closer to scaling back monetary easing. That has reminded me on what happened in 1937 – when market participants panicked as they started to fear that the Federal Reserve would move prematurely towards monetary tightening – after the US economy had been in recovery since FDR took the US off the gold standard in 1933.

Going into 1937 both US government officials and the Fed officials started to voice concerns about inflationary pressures, which clearly sent a signal to market participants that monetary policy was about to be tightened. That caused the US stock market to slump and sent the US economy back into recession – the famous Recession in the Depression.

At the core of this policy mistake was the fact that the fed had never clearly defined and articulated a clear monetary policy target after going off the gold standard in 1933. The situation in many ways is similar today.

Market participants in general know that the fed is likely to scale back monetary easing when the US economy “improves”, but there is considerable uncertainties about what that means and the fed still has not clearly articulated its target(s). Furthermore, the fed continues to be very unclear about its monetary policy instruments. Hence, the fed still considers the fed fund target rate as its primary monetary policy instrument while at the same time doing quantitative easing.

These uncertainties in my view certainly make for a much less smooth ‘transition’ in monetary policy conditions in the US. Therefore, instead of focusing on when to scale back “QE” the fed should focus 100% on explaining its target so nobody is in doubt about what the fed really is targeting. Furthermore, the fed needs to stop thinking and communicating about monetary policy in terms of interest rates. The money base and not the interest rate is the key monetary policy instrument in the US and it is about time that the fed acknowledges this.

How about trying the “perfect world”

The best way of getting rid of these monetary policy uncertainties is for the fed to first of all give an explicit nominal target. Preferably the fed should simply state that it will conduct monetary policy in a way to increase nominal GDP by 15% in the coming two years and thereafter target 5% annual NGDP growth (level targeting).

Second, the fed then should become completely clear about its monetary policy. The best thing would be a futures based NGDP targeting. See here for a description about how that would work. Alternatively the fed should clearly spell out a ‘reaction function’ and clearly describe its monetary policy instrument – what assets will the fed buy to expand or contract the money base? It is really simple, but so far the fed has totally failed to do so.

Japanese monetary policy has become a lot clearer after Haruhiko Kuroda has become Bank of Japan chief, but even the BoJ needs to work on its communication policy. Why is the BoJ not just announcing that since it now officially has a 2% inflation target it will ‘peg’ the market expectations for example for 2-year or 5 year (or both) inflation at 2% – and hence simply announce a commitment to sell or buy inflation-linked bonds so the implicit breakeven inflation is 2% on all time horizons at any period in time. This is of course a set-up Bob Hetzel long ago suggested for the fed. Maybe it is time the BoJ invited Bob back to for a visit in Japan?

If the fed and the BoJ in this fashion could greatly increased monetary policy transparency the markets would not be left guessing about what they central banks are targeting or about whether there will be a sudden redrawl of monetary policy accommodation.  Thereby it could be ensured that the scaling back of monetary easing will happen in a disorderly fashion. There is not reason why we need repeating the mistakes of 1937.

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Both David Glasner and Marcus Nunes have related posts.

See also here if you want to read what I wrote about the Japanese “jitters” yesterday in my day-job.

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by Lars Christensen on May 24, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Federal Reserve, Robert Hetzel, The Great Depression
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 24, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/05/24/how-to-avoid-a-repeat-of-1937-lessons-for-both-the-fed-and-the-boj/

Lower (supply) inflation is NOT a reason to ease US monetary policy

Here are two news stories from today:

“U.S. import prices fell in April due to a drop in oil costs, a positive sign for household finances that also pointed to benign inflation pressures.

Import prices slipped 0.5 percent last month, the biggest decline since December, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. March’s data was revised to show a 0.2 percent decline instead of the previously reported 0.5 percent drop.”

And the second one:

“U.S. producer prices recorded their largest drop in three years in April while a reading of manufacturing in New York indicated contraction.

Producer prices slid as gasoline and food costs tumbled, pointing to weak inflation pressures that should give the Federal Reserve latitude to keep monetary policy very accommodative.”

Now some might of course think that this would make Market Monetarists scream for the Federal Reserve to step up monetary easing. However, that would be extremely wrong. There are certainly good reasons for the fed to ease monetary policy, but a drop in inflation caused by a positive supply shock – lower import prices – is certainly not one of them.

At the core of Market Monetarist thinking is that central banks should not react to supply shock – positive or negative. Hence, we are arguing that central banks should target the level of nominal GDP – not inflation.

Therefore, imagine that the fed indeed was targeting the the NGDP level and NGDP was “on track” and a positive supply shock hit. Then the fed would maintain monetary conditions completely unchanged – keeping NGDP on track – and allowed the positive supply shock to feed through to lower inflation (and higher real GDP). This is benign inflation and as such very welcomed as it do not reflect a deflationary and recessionary demand shock. Furthermore, some Market Monetarists like David Beckworth and myself also believe that monetary easing in response to positive supply shocks risks leading to economic misallocation and what Austrian economists call relative inflation.

Lower (supply) inflation is no reason for more QE
…but the fed needs to focus on defining its target

One can certainly argue that NGDP growth is too weak to catch up with the pre-crisis NGDP trend, but on the other hand it is also pretty clear that US NGDP growth is fairly robust. So instead of stepping up quantitative easing in response to lower import prices the fed instead should focus on becoming much more clear on what it wants to achieve. Hence, there is still considerable uncertainty about what the fed really wants to achieve.

Therefore, the fed should become more clear on its target. Preferably of course the fed should adopt an NGDP level target and decide whether the present growth rate of the money base is strong enough to achieve that or not. Regarding that I don’t think that the present policy with a not clearly defined target and the present growth rate of the money base is enough to return NGDP to the pre-crisis trend, but it is nonetheless likely to keep NGDP growing 4-5% and that is likely enough to maintain the present speed of recovery in real GDP and the US labour market. I think that is far too unambitious, but it is certainly better than what we are seeing in Europe.

The paradox – the positive supply shock is “pushing” central banks to do the right thing for the wrong reasons

The paradox, however, is that the recent drop in global commodity prices have pushed down headline inflation around the world and central banks have over the last couple of weeks been responding by cutting interest rates. Hence, Central banks in the eurozone, India, Australia, South Korea, Poland and Israel have all cut rates in recent weeks. While there certainly is very good reasons for monetary easing in nearly all of these countries it a paradox that these central banks now seem to have been “shocked” into easing monetary policy in response to a positive supply shock rather than in response to weak demand growth.

It would clearly be wrong to criticize these central banks for doing the right thing – easing monetary policy – but I also believe that it is important to stress that had monetary policy in these countries been “right” then these central banks would likely have been making a policy mistakes by easing monetary policy at the moment.

In that regard it is of course also important that central banks’ (apparent mental) inability to differentiate between supply and demand shocks often has lead central banks to tight monetary policy in response to negative supply. The ECB’s catastrophic rate hikes in 2011 is a very good example of this. Paradoxically we might be happy at the moment that the ECB’s tendency to react to supply shocks might push the ECB into stepping up monetary easing.

Finally I should stress that the recent decline in inflation globally is certainly not only caused by a positive supply. In fact I have long argued that we are likely heading for deflation in the euro zone due to excessively tight monetary policy. So my discussion above should mostly be seen as an attempt to stress the need for understanding the difference between demand and supply for the conduct of monetary policy. Unfortunately many central bankers seem unable to understand these important difference.

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Update: Market Monetarists think alike – I just realized that Marcus Nunes did a post yesterday that made the exact same argument as me.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 15, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Deflation, ECB, Federal Reserve, Supply shock
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 15, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/05/15/lower-supply-inflation-is-not-a-reason-to-ease-us-monetary-policy/

Chuck Norris beats Wolfgang Schäuble

So far it is has been a remarkable week in the global financial markets. The ’deposit grab’ in Cyprus undoubtedly has shocked international investors and confidence in the ability of euro zone policy makers has dropped to an all-time low.

Despite of the ‘Cyprus shock’ global stock markets continue to climb higher – yes, yes we have seen a little more volatility, but the overall picture is that of a continued global stock market rally. That is surely remarkable when one takes into account the scale of the policy blunder committed by the EU in Cyprus and the likely long-lasting damage done to the confidence in EU policy makers.

I therefore think it is fair to conclude that so far Chuck Norris has beaten German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Or said, in another way the Chuck Norris effect has been at work all week and that has clearly been a key reason why we have not (yet?) seen global-wide or even European-wide contagion from the disaster in Cyprus.

Just to remind my readers – the Chuck Norris effect of course is the effect that monetary policy not only works through expanding the money base, but also through guiding expectations.

When I early this week expressed my worries (or rather mostly my anger) over the EU’s handling of the situation in Cyprus a fixed income trader who is a colleague of mine comforted me by saying “Lars, you have now for half a year been saying that the Fed and the Bank of Japan are more or less doing the right thing so shouldn’t we expect the Fed and BoJ to offset any shock from the euro zone?” (I am paraphrasing a little – after all we were talking on a trading floor)

The message from the trader was clear. Yes, the EU is making a mess of things, but with the Bernanke-Evans rule in place and the Bank of Japan’s newfound commitment to a 2% inflation target we should expect that any shock from the euro zone to the US and Japanese economies would be ‘offset’ by the Fed and the BoJ by stepping up quantitative easing.

The logic is basically is that if an European shock pushes up US unemployment up we should expect the Fed to do even more QE and if that same shock leads to a strengthening of the yen (that mostly happens when global risk aversion increases) then the BoJ would also do more QE to try to meet its 2% inflation target. Said in another way any increase in demand for US dollar and yen is likely to be met by an increase in the supply of dollars and yen. In that sense the money base is ‘elastic’ in a similar sense as it would be under NGDP targeting. It is less perfect, but it nonetheless seems to be working – at least for now.

The fact that markets now expect the supply of dollars and yens to be at least quasi-elastic in itself means that the markets are not starting to hoard dollars and yen despite the ‘Cyprus shock’. This is the Chuck Norris effect at work – the central banks doesn’t have to do anything else that to reaffirm their commitment to their targets. This is exactly what the Federal Reserve did yesterday and what the new governor of Bank of Japan Kuroda is expected to do later today at his first press conference.

So there is no doubt – Chuck Norris won the first round against Wolfgang Schäuble and other EU policy makers. Thank god for that.

 

2 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 21, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Ben Bernanke, Bernanke-Evans rule, Cyprus, euro crisis, Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Haruhiko Kuroda
Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on March 21, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/03/21/chuck-norris-beats-wolfgang-schauble/

Fed NGDP targeting would greatly increase global financial stability

Just when we thought that the worst was over and that the world was on the way safely out of the crisis a new shock hit. Not surprisingly it is once again a shock from the euro zone. This time the badly executed bailout (and bail-in) of Cyprus. This post, however, is not about Cyprus, but rather on importance of the US monetary policy setting on global financial stability, but the case of Cyprus provides a reminder of the present global financial fragility and what role monetary policy plays in this.

Lets look at two different hypothetical US monetary policy settings. First what we could call an ‘adaptive’ monetary policy rule and second on a strict NGDP targeting rule.

‘Adaptive’ monetary policy – a recipe for disaster 

By an adaptive monetary policy I mean a policy where the central bank will allow ‘outside’ factors to determine or at least greatly influence US monetary conditions and hence the Fed would not offset shocks to money velocity.

Hence, lets for example imagine that a sovereign default in an euro zone country shocks investors, who run for cover and starts buying ‘safe assets’. Among other things that would be the US dollar. This would obviously be similarly to what happened in the Autumn of 2008 then US monetary policy became ‘adaptive’ when interest rates effectively hit zero. As a consequence the US dollar rallied strongly. The ill-timed interest rates hikes from the ECB in 2011 had exactly the same impact – a run for safe assets caused the dollar to rally.

In that sense under an ‘adaptive’ monetary policy the Fed is effective allowing external financial shocks to become a tightening of US monetary conditions. The consequence every time that this is happening is not only a negative shock to US economic activity, but also increased financial distress – as in 2008 and 2011.

As the Fed is a ‘global monetary superpower’ a tightening of US monetary conditions by default leads to a tightening of global monetary conditions due to the dollar’s role as an international reserve currency and due to the fact that many central banks around the world are either pegging their currencies to the dollar or at least are ‘shadowing’ US monetary policy.

In that sense a negative financial shock from Europe will be ‘escalated’ as the fed conducts monetary policy in an adaptive way and fails to offset negative velocity shocks.

This also means that under an ‘adaptive’ policy regime the risk of contagion from one country’s crisis to another is greatly increased. This obviously is what we saw in 2008-9.

NGDP targeting greatly increases global financial stability

If the Fed on the other hand pursues a strict NGDP level targeting regime the story is very different.

Lets again take the case of an European sovereign default. The shock again – initially – makes investors run for safe assets. That is causing the US dollar to strengthen, which is pushing down US money velocity (money demand is increasing relative to the money supply). However, as the Fed is operating a strict NGDP targeting regime it would ‘automatically’ offset the decrease in velocity by increasing the money base (and indirectly the money supply) to keep NGDP expectations ‘on track’. Under a futures based NGDP targeting regime this would be completely automatic and ‘market determined’.

Hence, a financial shock from an euro zone sovereign default would leave no major impact on US NGDP and therefore likely not on US prices and real economic activity as Fed policy automatically would counteract the shock to US money-velocity. As a consequence there would be no reason to expect any major negative impact on for example the overall performance of US stock markets. Furthermore, as a ‘global monetary policy’ the automatic increase in the US money base would curb the strengthening of the dollar and hence curb the tightening of global monetary conditions, which great would reduce the global financial fallout from the euro zone sovereign default.

Finally and most importantly the financial markets would under a system of a credible Fed NGDP target figure all this out on their own. That would mean that investors would not necessarily run for safe assets in the event of an euro zone country defaulting – or some other major financial shock happening – as investors would know that the supply of the dollar effectively would be ‘elastic’. Any increase in dollar demand would be meet by a one-to-one increase in the dollar supply (an increase in the US money base). Hence, the likelihood of a ‘global financial panic’ (for lack of a better term) is massively reduced as investors will not be lead to fear that we will ‘run out of dollar’ – as was the case in 2008.

The Bernanke-Evans rule improves global financial stability, but is far from enough

We all know that the Fed is not operating an NGDP targeting regime today. However, since September last year the Fed clearly has moved closer to a rule based monetary policy in the form of the Bernanke-Evans rule. The BE rule effective mean that the Fed has committed itself to offset any shock that would increase US unemployment by stepping up quantitative easing. That at least partially is a commitment to offset negative shocks to money-velocity. However, the problem is that the fed policy is still unclear and there is certainly still a large element of ‘adaptive’ policy (discretionary policy) in the way the fed is conducting monetary policy.  Hence, the markets cannot be sure that the Fed will actually fully offset negative velocity-shocks due to for example an euro zone sovereign default. But at least this is much better than what we had before – when Fed policy was high discretionary.

Furthermore, I think there is reason to be happy that the Bank of Japan now also have moved decisively towards a more rule based monetary policy in the form of a 2% inflation targeting (an NGDP targeting obviously would have been better). For the past 15 year the BoJ has been the ‘model’ for adaptive monetary policy, but that hopefully is now changing and as the yen also is an international reserve currency the yen tends to strengthen when investors are looking for safe assets. With a more strict inflation target the BoJ should, however, be expected to a large extent to offset the strengthening of the yen as a stronger yen is push down Japanese inflation.

Therefore, the recent changes of monetary policy rules in the US and Japan likely is very good news for global financial stability. However, the new regimes are still untested and is still not fully trusted by the markets. That means that investors can still not be fully convinced that a sovereign default in a minor euro zone country will not cause global financial distress.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 19, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Bernanke-Evans rule, Cyprus, euro crisis, Evans rule, NGDP Targeting, Uncategorized
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 19, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/03/19/fed-ngdp-targeting-would-greatly-increase-global-financial-stability/

The ultimate sign of recovery – no reason to freak out about higher bond yields

This is from CNBC.com:

U.S. Treasurys prices eased for a second day after jobless claims data suggested solid improvement in the labor market, while stocks’ gains undermined the appeal of lower-risk government debt.

The Treasury Department auctioned $13 billion of reopened 30-year bonds on Thursday at a high yield of 3.248 percent. The bid-to-cover ratio, an indicator of demand, was 2.43, the lowest level since August.

In the when-issued market, considered a proxy for where the bonds will price at auction, 30-year bonds were yielding about 3.24 percent. The auction followed solid demand in the sales of $21 billion of reopened 10-year notes on Wednesday and $32 billion of three-year notes on Tuesday.

US bond yields continue to inch higher. To me that is the ultimate sign that easier monetary conditions is pushing up nominal GDP (and very likely also real GDP).

But I am afraid that we will soon hear somebody warn us that higher bond yields will kill the recovery. But we of course know that when bond yields and equity prices are rising in parallel then it is normally a very good sign of higher aggregate demand and that is of course exactly what we need.

So if we avoid the biggest fallacy in economics and ask why bond yields are rising then we should find a lot of comfort in the fact that US stock prices are rising as well.

And finally there is some Keynesians out there that can explain to me why global stock prices continue to inch up, bond yields are rising and the US consumer seems completely unaffected despite of the fiscal cliff (I told you so!) and the sequester. Market Monetarists of course have an answer – it is monetary policy dominance – monetary policy can always offset any impact on aggregate demand from a fiscal shock. It is very simple – and is the positive spin on the Sumner Critique. (Here is a model textbook Keynesian should be able to understand).

PS yes you got it right – I am very optimistic both on the markets and on the recovery at least in the US (I have been optimistic for a while – see here and here). My only two fears are that the ECB once again will do something stupid or that we will have a repeat of the mistakes of 19367-37 – premature monetary tightening from the fed. Italian politics is, however, not keeping me awake at night.

Update: I wrote above my worry was the ECB. I should have said the EU/IMF. The terms for the EU/IMF bail out of Cyprus scare me quite a bit. So much for the rule of law…

16 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 14, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bernanke-Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Fiscal cliff, Sumner Critique
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 14, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/03/14/the-ultimate-sign-of-recovery-no-reason-to-freak-out-about-higher-bond-yields/

The graph Bernanke should look at before ‘exiting’ anything

Here is the Federal Reserve’s mandate:

“The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long-term interest rates.”

I don’t think it is the greatest mandate in the world, but it is the Fed’s mandate nonetheless.

I tried to estimate a simple reaction function for the fed based on “employment” (rate, Civilian Employment-Population ratio) and “prices” (PCE core inflation).  The estimation period is 1990 to 2007. 2008-13 is forecast.

Mankiw rule

Take a look at the forecast. The model is “forecasting” that the Fed funds target rate should be -7%!

I will leave it to my readers to judge whether the fed should ‘exit’ its quantitative easing programmes or not.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 11, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 11, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/03/11/the-graph-bernanke-should-look-at-before-exiting-anything/

It’s Frankfurt that should be your worry – not Rome

This week investors have been spooked by the election outcome in Italy, but frankly speaking is there anything new in that shady characters are doing well in an Italian election? Is there anything new in a hung parliament in Italy? Nope, judging from post-WWII Italian political history this is completely normal. Ok, Italian public finances is a mess, but again that not really news either.

So if all this is ‘business-as-usual’ why are investors suddenly so worried? My explanation would be that investors are not really worrying about what is going on in Rome, but rather about what is going on in Frankfurt.

Last year I argued that the ECB had introduced ‘political outcomes’ in its reaction function:

This particularly is the case in the euro zone where the ECB now openly is “sharing” the central bank’s view on all kind of policy matters – such as fiscal policy, bank regulation, “structural reforms” and even matters of closer European political integration. Furthermore, the ECB has quite openly said that it will make monetary policy decisions conditional on the “right” policies being implemented. It is for example clear that the ECB have indicated that it will not ease monetary policy (enough) unless the Greek government and the Spanish government will “deliver” on certain fiscal targets. So if Spanish fiscal policy is not “tight enough” for the liking of the ECB the ECB will not force down NGDP in the euro zone and as a result increase the funding problems of countries such as Spain. The ECB is open about this. The ECB call it to use “market forces” to convince governments to implement fiscal tightening. It of course has nothing to do with market forces. It is rather about manipulating market expectations to achieve a certain political outcome.

Said in another way the ECB has basically announced that it does not only have an inflation target, but also that certain political outcomes is part of its reaction function. This obviously mean that forward looking financial markets increasingly will act on political news as political news will have an impact of future monetary policy decisions from the ECB.

And this is really what concerns investors. The logic is that a ‘bad’ political outcome in Italy will lead the ECB to become more hawkish and effectively tighten monetary conditions by signaling that the ECB is not happy about the ‘outcome’ in Italy and therefore will not ease monetary policy going forward even if economic conditions would dictate that. This is exactly what happened in 2011-12 in the euro zone, where the political ‘outcomes’ in Greece, Italy and Spain clearly caused the ECB to become more hawkish.

The problems with introducing political outcomes into the monetary reaction function are obvious – or as I wrote last year:

Imaging a central bank say that it will triple the money supply if candidate A wins the presidential elections (due to his very sound fiscal policy ideas), but will cut in halve the money supply if candidate B wins (because he is a irresponsible bastard). This will automatically ensure that the opinion polls will determine monetary policy. If the opinion polls shows that candidate A will win then that will effectively be monetary easing as the market will start to price in future monetary policy easing. Hence, by announce that political outcomes is part of its reaction function will politics will make monetary policy endogenous. The ECB of course is operating a less extreme version of this set-up. Hence, it is for example very clear that the ECB’s monetary policy decisions in the coming months will dependent on the outcome of the Greek elections and on the Spanish government’s fiscal policy decisions.

The problem of course is that politics is highly unpredictable and as a result monetary policy becomes highly unpredictable and financial market volatility therefore is likely to increase dramatically. This of course is what has happened over the past year in Europe.

Furthermore, the political outcome also crucially dependents on the economic outcome. It is for example pretty clear that you would not have neo-nazis and Stalinists in the Greek parliament if the economy were doing well. Hence, there is a feedback from monetary policy to politics and back to monetary policy. This makes for a highly volatile financial environment.  In fact it is hard to see how you can achieve any form of financial or economic stability if central banks instead of targeting only nominal variables start to target political outcomes.

Therefore investors are likely to watch comments from the ECB on the Italian elections as closely as the daily political show in Rome. However, there might be reasons to be less worried now than in 2011-12. The reason is not Europe, but rather what has been happening with US and Japanese monetary policy since August-September last year.

Hence, with the Fed effective operating the Bernanke-Evans rule and the Bank of Japan having introduced a 2% inflation target these two central banks effective have promised to offset any negative spill-over to aggregate demand from the euro zone to the US and the Japanese economy (this is basically the international financial version of the Sumner Critique – there is no global spill-over if the central banks have proper nominal targets).

Hence, if Italian political jitters spark financial jitters that threaten to push up US unemployment then the Fed will “automatically” step up monetary easing to offset the shock and investors should full well understand that. Hence, the Bernanke-Evans rule and the BoJ’s new inflation target are effective backstops that reduces the risk of spill-over from Italy to the global markets and the global economy.

However, investors obviously still worry about the possible reaction from the ECB. If the ECB – and European policy makers in general – uses political events in Italy to tighten monetary conditions then we are likely to see more unrest in the European markets. Hence, the ECB can end market worries over Italy today by simply stating that the ECB naturally will act to offset any spill-over from Italy to the wider European markets that threatens nominal stability in the euro zone.

Related posts:
News of Berlusconi once again slipped into the financial section
Spanish and Italian political news slipped into the financial section
Greek and French political news slipped into the financial section
Political news kept slipping into the financial section – European style
“…political news kept slipping into the financial section”

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 28, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Bernanke-Evans rule, ECB, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Italy, Sumner Critique
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on February 28, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/28/its-frankfurt-that-should-be-your-worry-not-rome/

Don’t tell me the ‘currency war’ is bad for European exports – the one graph version

It is said that Europe is the biggest “victim” in what is said to be an international ‘currency war’ (it is really no war at all, but global monetary easing) as the euro has strengthened significantly on the back of the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan having stepped up monetary easing.

However, the euro zone is no victim – to claim so is to reason from a price change as Scott Sumner would say. The price here of course is the euro exchange rate. The ‘currency war worriers’ claim that the strengthening is a disaster for European exports. What they of course forget is to ask is why the euro has strengthened.

The euro is stronger not because of monetary tightening in the euro zone, but because of monetary easing everywhere else. Easier monetary policies in the US and Japan obviously boost domestic demand in those countries and with it also imports. Higher American and Japanese import growth is certainly good news for European exports and that likely is much more important than the lose of “competitiveness” resulting from the stronger euro.

But have a look at European exporters think. The graph below is the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for euro zone new export orders. The graph is clear – optimism is spiking! The boost from improved Japanese and American growth prospects is clearly what is on the mind of European exporters rather than the strong euro.

PMIexport euro zone

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 19, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Currency war, ECB, euro crisis, Federal Reserve
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on February 19, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/19/dont-tell-me-the-currency-war-is-bad-for-european-exports-the-one-graph-version/

Jeff Cox is puzzled – maybe because he never asked anybody about monetary policy

This is CNBC’s Jeff Cox:

Investors who fled in fear over potentially massive tax increases associated with the “fiscal cliff” have barely broken a sweat over corresponding spending cuts that are only two weeks away.

The so-called sequestration of $110 billion a year in discretionary spending will happen March 1 if Congress does not come to an agreement.

With little indication that Washington is anywhere near a compromise similar to the one that avoided the full brunt of the fiscal cliff, markets could be expected to be in full panic mode.

But the post-cliff rally has shown no signs of letting up and the topic has gained little traction around Wall Street.

It is clear that Jeff never read any Market Monetarist blogs. If he had he would have known that monetary policy always overrules fiscal policy – there is monetary policy dominance and therefore financial markets should not be worried about a sizable fiscal tightening.

With the Bernanke-Evans rule the Fed has committed itself to continuing and escalating – if necessary – monetary easing until there is a substantial improvement of US labour market conditions – essentially this is a commitment to increasing aggregate demand. Hence, the Fed is also committed to counteract any negative impact on aggregate demand from a potential tightening of fiscal policy.

I have explained earlier that there is no reason to fear the fiscal cliff as long as there is a ‘monetary backstop’ in the form of the Bernanke-Evans rule:

Even if the fiscal cliff would be a negative shock to private consumption and public spending it is certainly not given that that would lead to a drop in overall aggregate demand. As I have discussed in earlier posts if the central bank targets NGDP or inflation for that matter then the central bank tries to counteract any negative demand shock (for example a fiscal tightening) by a similarly sized monetary expansion.

Even if we assume that we are in a textbook style IS/LM world with sticky prices and where the money demand is interest rate sensitive the budget multiplier will be zero if the central bank follows a rule to stabilize aggregate demand/NGDP.

As I have shown in an earlier post the LM curve becomes vertical if the monetary policy rule targets a certain level of unemployment or aggregate demand. This is exactly what the Bernanke-Evans rule implies. Effectively that means that if the fiscal cliff were to push up unemployment then the Fed would simply step up quantitative easing to force back down unemployment again.

Obviously the Fed’s actual conduct of monetary policy is much less “automatic” and rule-following than I here imply, but it is pretty certain that a 3, 4 or 5% of GDP tightening of fiscal policy in the US would trigger a very strong counter-reaction from the Federal Reserve and I strongly believe that the Fed would be able to counteract any negative shock to aggregate demand by easing monetary policy. This of course is the so-called Sumner Critique.

So Jeff the reason the markets are so relaxed about the so-called sequestration might very well be that the Fed has regained some credibility that it actually is controlling aggregate demand/NGDP. I know it is hard to understand that it is not important what is going on in the US Congress, but the markets really don’t care as long as the Fed is doing its job.

2 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 16, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bernanke-Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Fiscal cliff, Sumner Critique
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on February 16, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/16/jeff-cox-is-puzzled-maybe-because-he-never-asked-anybody-about-monetary-policy/

The root of most fallacies in economics: Forgetting to ask WHY prices change

Even though I am a Dane and work for a Danish bank I tend to not follow the Danish media too much – after all my field of work is international economics. But I can’t completely avoid reading Danish newspapers. My greatest frustration when I read the financial section of Danish newspapers undoubtedly is the tendency to reason from different price changes – for example changes in the price of oil or changes in bond yields – without discussing the courses of the price change.

The best example undoubtedly is changes in (mortgage) bond yields. Denmark has been a “safe haven” in the financial markets so when the euro crisis escalated in 2011 Danish bond yields dropped dramatically and short-term government bond yields even turned negative. That typically triggered the following type of headline in Danish newspapers: “Danish homeowners benefit from the euro crisis” or “The euro crisis is good news for the Danish economy”.

However, I doubt that any Danish homeowner felt especially happy about the euro crisis. Yes, bond yields did drop and that cut the interest rate payments for homeowners with floating rate mortgages. However, bond yields dropped for a reason – a sharp deterioration of the growth outlook in the euro zone due to the ECB’s two unwarranted interest rate hikes in 2011. As Denmark has a pegged exchange rate to the euro Denmark “imported” the ECB’s monetary tightening and with it also the prospects for lower growth. For the homeowner that means a higher probability of becoming unemployed and a prospect of seeing his or her property value go down as the Danish economy contracted. In that environment lower bond yields are of little consolation.

Hence, the Danish financial journalists failed to ask the crucial question why bond yields dropped. Or said in another way they failed to listen to the advice of Scott Sumner who always tells us not to reason from a price change.

This is what Scott has to say on the issue:

My suggestion is that people should never reason from a price change, but always start one step earlier—what caused the price to change.  If oil prices fall because Saudi Arabia increases production, then that is bullish news.  If oil prices fall because of falling AD in Europe, that might be expansionary for the US.  But if oil prices are falling because the euro crisis is increasing the demand for dollars and lowering AD worldwide; confirmed by falls in commodity prices, US equity prices, and TIPS spreads, then that is bearish news.

I totally agree. When we see a price change – for example oil prices or bond yields – we should ask ourselves why prices are changing if we want to know what macroeconomic impact the price change will have. It is really about figuring out whether the price change is caused by demand or supply shocks.

The euro strength is not necessarily bad news – more on the currency war that is not a war

A very good example of this general fallacy of forgetting to ask why prices are changing is the ongoing discussion of the “currency war”. From the perspective of some European policy makers – for example the French president Hollande – the Bank of Japan’s recent significant stepping up of monetary easing is bad news for the euro zone as it has led to a strengthening of the euro against most other major currencies in the world. The reasoning is that a stronger euro is hurting European “competitiveness” and hence will hurt European exports and therefore lower European growth.

This of course is a complete fallacy. Even ignoring the fact that the ECB can counteract any negative impact on European aggregate demand (the Sumner critique also applies for exports) we can see that this is a fallacy. What the “currency war worriers” fail to do is to ask why the euro is strengthening.

The euro is of course strengthening not because the ECB has tightened monetary policy but because the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve have stepped up monetary easing.

With the Fed and the BoJ significantly stepping up monetary easing the growth prospects for the largest and the third largest economies in the world have greatly improved. That surely is good news for European exporters. Yes, European exporters might have seen a slight erosion of their competitiveness, but I am pretty sure that they happily will accept that if they are told that Japanese and US aggregate demand – and hence imports – will accelerate strongly.

Instead of just looking at the euro rate European policy makers should consult more than one price (the euro rate) and look at other financial market prices – for example European stock prices. European stock prices have in fact increased significantly since August-September when the markets started to price in more aggressive monetary easing from the Fed and the BoJ. Or look at bond yields in the so-called PIIGS countries – they have dropped significantly. Both stock prices and bond yields in Europe hence are indicating that the outlook for the European economy is improving rather than deteriorating.

The oil price fallacy – growth is not bad news, but war in the Middle East is

A very common fallacy is to cry wolf when oil prices are rising – particularly in the US. The worst version of this fallacy is claiming that Federal Reserve monetary easing will be undermined by rising oil prices.

This of course is complete rubbish. If the Fed is easing monetary policy it will increase aggregate demand/NGDP and likely also NGDP in a lot of other countries in the world that directly or indirectly is shadowing Fed policy. Hence, with global NGDP rising the demand for commodities is rising – the global AD curve is shifting to the right. That is good news for growth – not bad news.

Said another way when the AD curve is shifting to the right – we are moving along the AS curve rather than moving the AS curve. That should never be a concern from a growth perspective. However, if oil prices are rising not because of the Fed or the actions of other central banks – for example because of fears of war in the Middle East then we have to be concerned from a growth perspective. This kind of thing of course is what happened in 2011 where the two major supply shocks – the Japanese tsunami and the revolutions in Northern Africa – pushed up oil prices.

At the time the ECB of course committed a fallacy by reasoning from one price change – the rise in European HICP inflation. The ECB unfortunately concluded that monetary policy was too easy as HICP inflation increased. Had the ECB instead asked why inflation was increasing then we would likely have avoided the rate hikes – and hence the escalation of the euro crisis. The AD curve (which the ECB effectively controls) had not shifted to the right in the euro area. Instead it was the AS curve that had shifted to the left. The ECB’s failure to ask why prices were rising nearly caused the collapse of the euro.

The money supply fallacy – the fallacy committed by traditional monetarists 

Traditional monetarists saw the money supply as the best and most reliable indicator of the development in prices (P) and nominal spending (PY). Market Monetarists do not disagree that there is a crucial link between money and prices/nominal spending. However, traditional monetarists tend(ed) to always see the quantity of money as being determined by the supply of money and often disregarded changes in the demand for money. That made perfectly good sense for example in the 1970s where the easy monetary policies were the main driver of the money supply in most industrialized countries, but that was not the case during the Great Moderation, where the money supply became “endogenous” due to a rule-based monetary policies or during the Great Recession where money demand spiked in particularly the US.

Hence, where traditional monetarists often fail – Allan Meltzer is probably the best example today – is that they forget to ask why the quantity of money is changing. Yes, the US money base exploded in 2008 – something that worried Meltzer a great deal – but so did the demand for base money. In fact the supply of base money failed to increase enough to counteract the explosion in demand for US money base, which effectively was a massive tightening of US monetary conditions.

So while Market Monetarists like myself certainly think money is extremely important we are skeptical about using the money supply as a singular indicator of the stance of monetary policy. Therefore, if we analyse money supply data we should constantly ask ourselves why the money supply is changing – is it really the supply of money increasing or is it the demand for money that is increasing? The best way to do that is to look at market data. If market expectations for inflation are going up, stock markets are rallying, the yield curve is steepening and global commodity prices are increasing then it is pretty reasonable to assume global monetary conditions are getting easier – whether or not the money supply is increasing or decreasing.

Finally I should say that my friends Bob Hetzel and David Laidler would object to this characterization of traditional monetarism. They would say that of course one should look at the balance between money demand and money supply to assess whether monetary conditions are easy or tight. And I would agree – traditional monetarists knew that very well, however, I would also argue that even Milton Friedman from time to time forgot it and became overly focused on money supply growth.

And finally I happily will admit committing that fallacy very often and I still remain committed to studying money supply data – after all being a Market Monetarist means that you still are 95% old-school traditional monetarist at least in my book.

PS maybe the root of all bad econometrics is the also forgetting to ask WHY prices change.

13 Comments
by Lars Christensen on February 14, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Bank of Japan, Currency war, David Laidler, Denmark, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Mexico, Milton Friedman, Robert Hetzel, Scott Sumner, Sumner Critique, The Great Recession
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on February 14, 2013

http://marketmonetarist.com/2013/02/14/the-root-of-most-fallacies-in-economics-forgetting-to-ask-why-prices-change/

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