All posts tagged Great Recession

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.

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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
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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/

The Hetzel-Ireland Synthesis

I am writing this while I am flying with Delta Airlines over the Atlantic. I will be speaking about the European crisis at a seminar on Friday at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

I must admit that it has been a bit of a challenge to blog in recent weeks. Mostly because both my professional and my private life have been demanding. After all blogging is something I do in my spare time. So even though I wanted to blog a lot about the latest FOMC decision and the world in general I have simply not been able to get out the message. Furthermore – and this will interest many of my readers – Robert Hetzel and his wonderful wife Mary visited Denmark last week. Bob had a very busy schedule – and so did I as I attended all of Bob’s presentations in Copenhagen that week. Bob told me before his presentations that I would not be disappointed and that none of the presentations would be a “rerun”. Bob is incredible – all of this presentations covered different countries and topics. Obviously there was a main theme: The central banks failed.

I must admit after three days of following Bob and having the privilege to hear him talk about the University of Chicago in 1970s and his stories about Milton Friedman I simply had an mental “overload”. I had a very hard time expressing my monetary policy views – and the major policy turnaround at the Fed didn’t make it easier.

Anyway I feel that I have to share some of Bob’s incredible insight after his visit to Copenhagen, but I also feel that whatever I write will not do justice to his views.

So I have chosen a different way of doing it. Instead of telling you what Bob said in Copenhagen I will try to tell the story about how (a clever version of) New Keynesian economics and Monetarism could come to similar conclusions – and that merger is really Market Monetarism.

Why is that? I have for some time wanted to write something about a couple of new and very interesting, but slightly technical paper by Mike Belongia and Peter Ireland. Both Mike and Peter have a monetarist background, but Peter has done a lot work in the more technical New Keynesian tradition. And that is what I will focus on here, but I promise to return to Mike’s and Peter’s other papers.

The other day my colleague and good friend Jens Pedersen sent me a paper Peter wrote in 2010 – “A New Keynesian Perspective on the Great Recession”. When I read the paper I realised how I was going to write the story about Bob’s visit to Copenhagen.

Bob’s and Peter’s explanations of the Great Recession are exactly the same – just told within slightly different frameworks. Bob first wrote a piece on the Great Recession it in 2009 and Peter wrote his piece in 2010.

Peter and Bob are friends and both have been at the Richmond fed so it is not totally surprising that their stories of what happened in 2008-9 are rather similar, but I nonetheless think that we can learn quite a bit from how these two great intellects think about the crisis.

So what is the common story?

In think we have to go back to Milton Friedman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). While at the Richmond Peter while at the Richmond fed in 1995 actually wrote about PIH and how it could be used for forecasting purposes. And one thing I noticed at all of Bob’s presentations in Copenhagen was how he returned to Irving Fisher and the determination of interests as a trade off between consumption today and in the future. Friedman and Fisher in my view are at the core of Bob’s and Peter’s thinking of the Great Recession.

So here is the Peter and Bob story: In 2007-8 the global economy was hit by a large negative supply shock in the form of higher oil prices. That pushed up US inflation and as a consequence US consumers reduced their expectations for their future income – or rather their Permanent Income. With the outlook for Permanent Income worsening interest rates should drop. However, as interest rates hit zero the Federal Reserve failed to ease monetary policy because it was unprepared for a world of zero interest rates. The Fed should of course more aggressively moved to a policy of monetary easing through an increase in the money base. The fed moved in that direction, but it was too late and too little and as a result monetary conditions tightened sharply particularly in late 2008 and during 2009. That can be described within a traditional monetarist framework as Bob do his excellent book “The Great Recession – policy failure or market failure” (on in his 2009 paper on the same topic) or within an intelligent New Keynesian framework as Peter do in his 2010 paper.

Peter uses the term a “New Keyensian Perspective” in his 2010. However, he does not make the mistakes many New Keynesians do. First, for all he realizes that low nominal interest rates is not easy monetary policy. Second, he do not assume that the central bank is always making the right decisions and finally he realizes that monetary policy is not out of ammunition when interest rates hit zero. Therefore, he might as well have called his paper a “New Friedmanite-Fisherian Perspective on the Great Recession”.

Anyway, try read Bob’s book (and his 2009 paper) and Peter’s paper(s). Then you will realize that Milton Friedman and Irving Fisher is all you need to understand this crisis and the way out of is.

I am finalizing this post after having arrived to my hotel in Provo, Utah and have had a night of sleeping – damn time difference. I look forward to some very interesting days at BYU, but I am not sure that I will have much time for blogging.

8 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Irving Fisher, Michael Belongia, Milton Friedman, Peter Ireland, Reading recommendations, Robert Hetzel, The Great Recession
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Posted by Lars Christensen on September 27, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/27/the-hetzel-ireland-synthesis/

David Laidler: “Two Crises, Two Ideas and One Question”

The main founding fathers of monetarism to me always was Milton Friedman, Anna Schwartz, Karl Brunner, Allan Meltzer and David Laidler. The three first have all now passed away and Allan Meltzer to some extent seems to have abandoned monetarism. However, David Laidler is still going strong and maintains his monetarist views. David has just published a new and very interesting paper – “Two Crises, Two Ideas and One Question” – in which he compares the Great Depression and the Great Recession through the lens of history of economic thought.

David’s paper is interesting in a number of respects and any student of economic history and history of economic thought will find it useful to read the paper. I particularly find David’s discussion of the views of Allan Meltzer and other (former!?) monetarists interesting. David makes it clear that he think that they have given up on monetarism or as he express it in footnote 18:

“In this group, with which I would usually expect to find myself in agreement (about the Great Recession), I include, among others, Thomas Humphrey, Allan Meltzer, the late Anna Schwartz, and John Taylor, though the latter does not have quite the same track record as a monetarist as do the others.”

Said in another way David basically thinks that these economists have given up on monetarism. However, according to David monetarism is not dead as another other group of economists today continues to carry the monetarist torch – footnote 18 continues:

“Note that I self-consciously exclude such commentators as Timothy Congdon (2011), Robert Hetzel (2012) and that group of bloggers known as the “market monetarists”, which includes Lars Christensen, Scott Sumner, Nicholas Rowe …. – See Christensen (2011) for a survey of their work – from this list. These have all consistently advocated measures designed to increase money growth in recent years, and have sounded many themes similar to those explored here in theory work.”

I personally think it is a tremendous boost to the intellectual standing of Market Monetarism that no other than David Laidler in this way recognize the work of the Market Monetarists. Furthermore and again from a personal perspective when David recognizes Market Monetarist thinking in this way and further goes on to advocate monetary easing as a respond to the present crisis I must say that it confirms that we (the Market Monetarists) are right in our analysis of the crisis and helps my convince myself that I have not gone completely crazy. But read David’s paper – there is much more to it than praise of Market Monetarism.

PS This year it is exactly 30 years ago David’s book “Monetarist Perspectives” was published. I still would recommend the book to anybody interested in monetary theory. It had a profound impact on me when I first read it in the early 1990s, but I must say that when I reread it a couple of months ago I found myself in even more agreement with it than was the case 20 years ago.

Update: David Glasner also comments on Laidler’s paper.

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Allan Meltzer, Anna Schwartz, David Laidler, Karl Brunner, Milton Friedman, MM Research agenda, Reading recommendations, The Great Depression, The Great Recession
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Posted by Lars Christensen on September 9, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/09/david-laidler-two-crises-two-ideas-and-one-question/

Between the money supply and velocity – the euro zone vs the US

When crisis hit in 2008 it was mostly called the subprime crisis and it was normally assumed that the crisis had an US origin. I have always been skeptical about the US centric description of the crisis. As I see it the initial “impulse” to the crisis came from Europe rather than the US. However, the consequence of this impulse stemming from Europe led to a “passive” tightening of US monetary conditions as the Fed failed to meet the increased demand for dollars.

The collapse in both nominal (and real) GDP in the US and the euro zone in 2008-9 was very similar, but the “composition” of the shock was very different. In Europe the shock to NGDP came from a sharp drop in money supply growth, while the contraction in US NGDP was a result of a sharp contraction in money-velocity. The graphs below illustrate this.

The first graph is a graph with the broad money supply relative to the pre-crisis trend (2000-2007) in the euro zone and the US. The second graph is broad money velocity in the US and the euro zone relative to the pre-crisis trend (2000-2007).

The graphs very clearly illustrates that there has been a massive monetary contraction in the euro zone as a result of M3 significantly undershooting the pre-crisis trend. Had the ECB kept M3 growth on the pre-crisis trend then euro zone nominal GDP would long ago returned to the pre-crisis trend. On the other hand the Federal Reserve has actually been able to keep M2 on the pre-crisis path. However, that has not been enough to keep US NGDP on trend as M2-velocity has contracted sharply relative the pre-crisis trend.

Said in another way a M3 growth target of for example 6.5% would basically have been as good as an NGDP level target for the euro zone as velocity has returned to the pre-crisis trend. However, that would not have been the case in the US and that I my view illustrates why an NGDP level target is much preferable to a money supply target.

The European origin of the crisis – or how European banks caused a tightening of US monetary policy

Not surprisingly the focus of the discussion of the causes of the crisis often is on the US given both the subprime debacle and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. However, I believe that the shock actually (mostly) originated in Europe rather than the US. What happened in 2008 was that we saw a sharp rise in dollar demand coming from the European financial sector. This is best illustrated by the sharp drop in EUR/USD from close to 1.60 in July 2008 to 1.25 in early November 2008. The rise in dollar demand is obviously what caused the collapse in US money-velocity and in that regard it is notable that the rise in money demand in Europe primarily was an increase in demand for dollar rather than for euros.

This is why I stress the European origin of the crisis. However, the cause of the crisis nonetheless was a tightening of US monetary conditions as the Fed (initially) failed to appropriately respond to the increase in dollar demand – mostly because of the collapse of the US primary dealer system. Had the Fed had a more efficient system for open market operations in 2008 then I believe the crisis would have been much smaller and would have been over already in 2009. As the Fed got dollar-swap lines up and running and initiated quantitative easing the recovery got underway in 2009. This triggered a brisk recovery in both US and euro zone money-velocity. In that regard it is notable that the rebound in velocity actually was somewhat steeper in the euro zone than in the US.

The crisis might very well have ended in 2009, but new policy mistakes have prolonged the crisis and once again European problems are causing most headaches and the cause now clearly is that the ECB has allowed European monetary conditions to become excessively tight – just have a look at the money supply graph above. Euro zone M3 has now dropped more than 15% below the pre-crisis trend. This policy mistake has to some extent been counteracted by the Fed’s efforts to increase the US money supply, but the euro crisis have also led to another downleg in US money velocity. The Fed once again has failed to appropriately counteract this.

Both the Fed and the ECB have failed

In the discussion above I have tried to illustrate that we cannot fully understand the Great Recession without understanding the relationship between US and euro zone monetary policy and I believe that a full understanding of the crisis necessitates a discussion of European dollar demand.

Furthermore, the discussion shows that a credible money supply target would significantly have reduced the crisis in the euro zone. However, the shock to US money-velocity shows that an NGDP level target would “perform” much better than a simple money supply rule.

The conclusion is that both the Fed and the ECB have failed. The Fed failed to respond appropriately in 2008 to the increase in the dollar demand. On the other hand the ECB has nearly constantly since 2008/9 failed to increase the money supply and nominal GDP. Not to mention the numerous communication failures and the massively discretionary conduct of monetary policy.

Even though the challenges facing the Fed and ECB since 2008 have been somewhat different in nature I would argue that proper nominal targets (for example a NGDP level target or a price level target) and better operational procedures could have ended this crisis long ago.

—–

Related posts:

Failed monetary policy – (another) one graph version
International monetary disorder – how policy mistakes turned the crisis into a global crisis

32 Comments
by Lars Christensen on July 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Federal Reserve, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, The Great Depression, Velocity
Tagged , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on July 25, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/07/25/between-the-money-supply-and-velocity-the-euro-zone-vs-the-us/

The Sumnerian Phillips curve

In my previous post ”Dude, here is your model” I suggested to model the supply in the economy with what I called a Sumnerian Phillips curve in a attempt to help Scott Sumner formulate a his ”model” of the world.

Here is the Sumnerian Phillips curve:

(1) Y=Y*+a(N-NT)

Where Y is real GDP and Y* is trend growth in real GDP. N is nominal GDP and NT is the central bank’s target for nominal GDP. a is a constant.

Commentator ”Martin” has suggested the following parametre for (1):

Y*=3

NT=5.5

a=0.75

It should be noted that Martin formulates (1) in growth rates rather than levels.

As the graph below shows Martin’s suggestion seems to fit US data very well.

One thing is very clear from the model. The Great Recession was caused by a sharp drop in NGDP. The Fed did it. Nobody else.

It also shows that there is no supply side explanation for the Great Recession. The drop in real GDP can be explained by nominal GDP. It is very simply. Too simple to understand maybe? If you disagree you have to argue that the Fed can not determine nominal GDP – may I then remind you that MV=N=PY. Or maybe we should ask Gideon Gono?

So what are the policy lessons?

Well, first of all if the central bank keeps N growing at a rate comparable with the target then real GDP growth will also remain stable. But if the central bank allow N to drop below target then Y will drop as well. Hence, recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

Obviously the central bank can determine N as we know that MV=N=PY. So it is really pretty simply – ensure a growth rate of the money supply (M) that for a given money-velocity (V) ensures that N growth at a stable rate. Then you sharply reduces the risk of recessions and and you will ensure low and stable Inflation. The Federal Reserve did that during the Great Moderation and I can not see any reason why we can not return to such a situation. Unfortunately central bankers seem to have less of an unstanding of this – particularly in Europe (Is it only me who fell like screaming!?)

19 Comments
by Lars Christensen on June 1, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Scott Sumner, The Great Recession
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on June 1, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/01/the-sumnerian-phillips-curve/

Jens Weidmann, do you remember the second pillar?

Today the ECB is very eager to stress it’s 2% inflation target. However, a couple of years ago the ECB in fact had two targets – the so-called two pillars of monetary policy. The one was the inflation target and the other was a money supply target – the so-called reference value for the growth rate of M3.

The second pillar in many ways made a lot of sense – at least as a instrument for monetary analysis. The second pillar was put into the ECB tool box by the Bundesbank which insisted that monetary analysis was as important as a pure inflation target. Read for example former ECB chief economist and Bundesbanker Otmar Issing’s defense of the two-pillar set-up here.

The starting point for calculating the reference value for M3 was the equation of exchange:

(1) MV=PY

or in growth rates:

(2) m+v=p+y

(2) of course can be re-written to:

(2)’ m=p+y-v

If we assume trend real GDP growth (y) is 2% you can calculate the reference value for m that will ensure 2% inflation over the medium term. You of course also have to make an assumption about velocity. ECB used to think that trend growth in v was -0.5 to -1%.

This give us the following reference growth rate for M3 (m-target):

(3) m-target=2+2-(-1)=5% (4.5% if you assume velocity growth of -0.5%)

Said in another way if the ECB keeps M3 growing at 5% year-in and year-out then inflation should be around 2% in the medium term. An yes, this is of course exactly what Milton Friedman recommend long ago.

2.5% M3 growth is hardly inflationary

Today we got the latest M3 numbers for the euro zone. The calvinists should be happy – M3 decelerated sharply to 2.5% y/y in April. Half of what should be the reference growth rate for M3 – and that is ignoring the fact that velocity has collapsed.

What does that tells us about the inflationary risks in the euro zone? Well, there are no inflationary risks – there are only deflationary risks.

Using the assumptions above we can calculate the long-term inflation if M3 keeps growing by 2.5% – from (2)’ we get the following:

(4) p=m-y+v

(4)’ p=2.5-2+(-1)=-0.5%

So it is official! Monetary analysis as it used to be conducted in the Bundesbank is telling you that we are going to have deflation in the euro zone in the medium term! And don’t tell me about monetary overhang – the ECB is in the business of letting bygones be bygones (otherwise the ECB would target the NGDP LEVEL or the price LEVEL) and by the way the ECB spend lots of time in 2004-7 to explain why money supply growth overshot the target.

Jens Weidmann – monetarist or calvinist?

The Bundesbank brought in monetary analysis and a money supply focus to the ECB so I think it is only fair to ask whether Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann still believe in monetary analysis? If he is true to the strong monetarist traditions at the Bundesbank then he should come out forcefully in favour of monetary easing to ensure M3 growth of at least 5% – in fact it should be much higher as velocity has collapsed, but at least to bring M3 back to 5% would be a start.

I hope the Bundesbank will soon refind it’s monetarist traditions…please make Milton Friedman and Karl Brunner proud!

PS I of course still want the ECB to introduce a NGDP level target, but less would make me happy – a 5-10% target range for M3 (the range prior to the crisis) and a minimum price on European inflation linked bonds would would clearly be enough to at least avoid collapse.

5 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Jens Weidmann, Milton Friedman, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 30, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/30/jens-weidmann-do-you-remember-the-second-pillar/

Who did most for the US stock market? FDR or Bernanke?

My post on US stock markets and monetary disorder led to some friendly but challenging comments from Diego Espinosa. Diego rightly notes that Market Monetarists including myself praises US president Roosevelt for taking the US off the gold standard and that similar decisive actions is needed today, but at the same time is critical of Ben Bernanke’s performance of Federal Reserve governor despite the fact that US share prices have performed fairly well over the last four years.

Diego’s point is basically that the Federal Reserve under the leadership of chairman Bernanke has indeed acted decisively and that that is visible if one look at the stock market performance. Diego is certainly right in the sense that the US stock market sometime ago broken through the pre-crisis peak levels and the stock market performance in 2009 by any measure was impressive. It might be worth noticing that the US stock market in general has done much better than the European markets.

However, it is a matter of fact that the stock market response to FDR’s decision to take the US off the gold standard was much more powerful than the Fed’s actions of 2008/9. I take a closer look at that below.

Monetary policy can have a powerful effect on share prices

To illustrate my point I have looked at the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) for the period from early 2008 and until today and compared that with the period from 1933 to 1937. Other stock market indices could also have been used, but I believe that it is not too important which of the major US market indices is used to the comparison.

The graph below compares the two episodes. “Month zero” is February 1933 and March 2009. These are the months where DJIA reaches the bottom during the crisis. Neither of the months are coincident as they coincide with monetary easing being implemented. In April 1933 FDR basically initiated the process that would take the US off the gold standard (in June 1933) and in March 2009 Bernanke expanded TAF and opened dollar swap lines with a number of central banks around the world.

As the graph below shows FDR’s actions had much more of a “shock-and-awe” impact on the US stock markets than Bernanke’s actions. In only four months from DJIW jumped by nearly 70% after FDR initiated the process of taking the US off the gold standard. This by the way is a powerful illustration of Scott Sumner’s point the monetary policy works with long and variable leads – you see the impact of the expected policy change even before it has actually been implemented. The announcement effects are very powerful. The 1933 episode illustrates that very clearly.

Over the first 12 months from DJIA reaches bottom in 1933 the index increases by more than 90%. That is nearly double of the increase of DJIA in 2009 as is clear from the graph.

Obviously this is an extremely crude comparison and no Market Monetarist would argue that monetary policy changes could account for everything that happened in the US stock market in 1993 or 2009. However, impact of monetary policy on stock market performance is very clear in both years.

NIRA was a disaster

A very strong illustration of the fact that monetary policy is not everything that is important for the US stock market is what happened from June 1933 to May 1935. In that nearly two year period the US stock market was basically flat. Looking that the graph it looks like the stock market rally paused to two years and then took off again in the second half of 1935.

The explanation for this “pause” is the draconian labour market policies implemented by the Roosevelt administration. In June 1933 the so-called National Industrial and Recovery Act was implemented by the Roosevelt administration (NIRA). NIRA massively strengthened the power of US labour unions and was effectively thought to lead to a cartelisation of the US labour market. Effectively NIRA was a massively negative supply shock to the US economy.

So while the decision to go off the gold standard had been a major positive demand shock that on it’s own had a massively positive impact on the US economy NIRA had the exact opposite impact. Any judgement of FDR’s economic policies obviously has to take both factors into account.

That is exactly what the US stock market did. The gold exit led to a sharp stock market rally, but that rally was soon killed by NIRA.

In May 1935 the US Supreme Court ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. That ruling had a major positive impact positive impact as it “erased” the negative supply shock. As the graph shows very clearly the stock market took off once again after the ruling.

FDR was better for stocks than Bernanke, but…

Overall we have to conclude that FDR’s decision to take the US off the gold standard had an significantly more positive impact on the US stock markets than Ben Bernanke’s actions in 2008/9. However, contrary to the Great Depression the US has avoided the same kind of policy blunders on the supply side over the past four years. While the Obama administration certainly has not impressed with supply side reforms the damage done by his administration on the supply side has been much, much smaller than the disaster called NIRA.

Hence, the conclusion is clear – monetary easing is positive for the stock market, but any gains can be undermined by regulatory mistakes like NIRA. That is a lesson for today’s policy makers. Central banks should ensure stable growth in nominal GDP, while governments should implement supply side reforms to increase real GDP over the longer run. That would not undoubtedly be the best cocktail for the economy but also for stock markets.

Finally it should be noted that both FDR and Bernanke failed to provide a clear rule based framework for the conduct of monetary policy. That made the recovery much weaker in 1930s than it could have been and probably was a major cause why the US fell back into recession in 1937. Similarly the lack of a rule based framework has likely had a major negative impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy over the past four years.

PS this post an my two previous posts (see here and here) to a large degree is influenced by the kind of analysis Scott Sumner presents in his book on the Great Depression. Scott’s book is still unpublished. I look forward to the day it will be available to an wider audience.

5 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 28, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve, Scott Sumner, Transmission mechanism
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 28, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/28/who-did-most-for-the-us-stock-market-fdr-or-bernanke/

Tight money = low yields – also during the Great Recession

Anybody who ever read anything Milton Friedman said about monetary policy should know that low interest rates and bond yields mean that monetary policy is tight rather than easy. And when bond yields drop it is normally a sign that monetary policy is becoming tighter rather than easier.

Here is Friedman on what he called the interest rate fallacy in 1997:

“After the U.S. experience during the Great Depression, and after inflation and rising interest rates in the 1970s and disinflation and falling interest rates in the 1980s, I thought the fallacy of identifying tight money with high interest rates and easy money with low interest rates was dead. Apparently, old fallacies never die.”

Unfortunately the old fallacy is still not dead and it is still very common to associate low interest rates and low bond yields with easy monetary policy. Just think of the ECB’s insistence that it’s monetary policy stance is “easy”.

In my previous post I demonstrated that all the major changes in the S&P500 over the past four years can be explained by changes in monetary policy stance from either the ECB or the Federal Reserve (and to some extent also PBoC). Hence, it is not animal spirits, but rather monetary policy failure that can explain the volatility in the markets over the past four years.

What holds true for the stock market holds equally true for the bond market and the development in the US fixed income markets over the past four years completely confirms Milton Friedman’s view that tighter monetary policy is associated with lower bond yields. See the graph below. Green circles are monetary easing. Red circles are monetary tightening. (See more on each “event” in my previous blog post)

I think the graph very clearly shows that Friedman was right. Every time either the ECB or the Federal Reserve have moved to tighten monetary policy long-term US bonds yields have dropped and when the same central banks have moved to ease monetary policy yields have increased.

Judging from the level of US bond yields – and German bond yields for that matter – monetary policy in the US (and the euro zone) can hardly be said to be  easy. In fact it is very clear that monetary policy remains excessively tight in both the US and the euro zone. Unfortunately neither the Fed nor the ECB seem to acknowledge as they still seem to be of the impression that as long interest rates are low monetary policy is easy. I wonder what Friedman would have said? Well, I fact I am pretty convinced that he would have been very clear and would have been arguing with the Market Monetarists that monetary disorder is to blame for this crisis and we only will move out of the crisis once the Fed and the ECB move to fundamentally ease monetary conditions and adopt a rule based monetary policy rather than the present zig-zagging.

PS See also my early post on the connection between monetary policy and the bond market: Understanding financial markets with MV=PY – a look at the bond market
Update: Scott Sumner just made me aware of one of his post addressing the same topic. See here.

Update 2: Jason Rave has kindly reminded me of this Milton Friedman article, which also deals with the interest rate fallacy.

24 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Milton Friedman
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 27, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/27/tight-money-low-yields-also-during-the-great-recession/

International monetary disorder – how policy mistakes turned the crisis into a global crisis

Most Market Monetarist bloggers have a fairly US centric perspective (and from time to time a euro zone focus). I have however from I started blogging promised to cover non-US monetary issues. It is also in the light of this that I have been giving attention to the conduct of monetary policy in open economies – both developed and emerging markets. In the discussion about the present crisis there has been extremely little focus on the international transmission of monetary shocks. As a consequences policy makers also seem to misread the crisis and why and how it spread globally. I hope to help broaden the discussion and give a Market Monetarist perspective on why the crisis spread globally and why some countries “miraculously” avoided the crisis or at least was much less hit than other countries.

The euro zone-US connection

– why the dollar’ status as reserve currency is important

In 2008 when crisis hit we saw a massive tightening of monetary conditions in the US. The monetary contraction was a result of a sharp rise in money (dollar!) demand and as the Federal Reserve failed to increase the money supply we saw a sharp drop in money-velocity and hence in nominal (and real) GDP. Hence, in the US the drop in NGDP was not primarily driven by a contraction in the money supply, but rather by a drop in velocity.

The European story is quite different. In Europe the money demand also increased sharply, but it was not primarily the demand for euros, which increased, but rather the demand for US dollars. In fact I would argue that the monetary contraction in the US to a large extent was a result of European demand for dollars. As a result the euro zone did not see the same kind of contraction in money (euro) velocity as the US. On the other hand the money supply contracted somewhat more in the euro zone than in the US. Hence, the NGDP contraction in the US was caused by a contraction in velocity, but in the euro zone the NGDP contraction was caused to drop by both a contraction in velocity and in the money supply. Reflecting a much less aggressive response by the ECB than by the Federal Reserve.

To some extent one can say that the US economy was extraordinarily hard hit because the US dollar is the global reserve currency. As a result global demand for dollar spiked in 2008, which caused the drop in velocity (and a sharp appreciation of the dollar in late 2008).

In fact I believe that two factors are at the centre of the international transmission of the crisis in 2008-9.

First, it is key to what extent a country’s currency is considered as a safe haven or not. The dollar as the ultimate reserve currency of the world was the ultimate safe haven currency (and still is) – as gold was during the Great Depression. Few other currencies have a similar status, but the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen have a status that to some extent resembles that of the dollar. These currencies also appreciated at the onset of the crisis.

Second, it is completely key how monetary policy responded to the change in money demand. The Fed failed to increase the money supply enough to the increase in the dollar demand (among other things because of the failure of the primary dealer system). On the other hand the Swiss central bank (SNB) was much more successful in responding to the sharp increase in demand for Swiss franc – lately by introducing a very effective floor for EUR/CHF at 1.20. This means that any increase in demand for Swiss franc will be met by an equally large increase in the Swiss money supply. Had the Fed implemented a similar policy and for example announced in September 2008 that it would not allow the dollar to strengthen until US NGDP had stopped contracting then the crisis would have been much smaller and would long have been over.

Why was the contraction so extreme in for example the PIIGS countries and Russia?

While the Fed failed to increase the money supply enough to counteract the increase in dollar demand it nonetheless acted through a number of measures. Most notably two (and a half) rounds of quantitative easing and the opening of dollar swap lines with other central banks in the world. Other central banks faced bigger challenges in terms of the possibility – or rather the willingness – to respond to the increase in dollar demand. This was especially the case for countries with fixed exchanges regimes – for example Denmark, Bulgaria and the Baltic States – and countries in currencies unions – most notably the so-called PIIGS countries.

I have earlier showed that when oil prices dropped in 2008 the Russian ruble started depreciated (the demand for ruble dropped). However, the Russian central bank would not accept the drop in the ruble and was therefore heavily intervening in the currency market to curb the ruble depreciation. The result was a 20% contraction in the Russian money supply in a few months during the autumn of 2008. As a consequence Russia saw the biggest real GDP contraction in 2009 among the G20 countries and rather unnecessary banking crisis! Hence, it was not a drop in velocity that caused the Russian crisis but the Russian central bank lack of willingness to allow the ruble to depreciate. The CBR suffers from a distinct degree of fear-of-floating and that is what triggered it’s unfortunate policy response.

The ultimate fear-of-floating is of course a pegged exchange rate regime. A good example is Latvia. When the crisis hit the Latvian economy was already in the process of a rather sharp slowdown as the bursting of the Latvian housing bubble was unfolding. However, in 2008 the demand for Latvian lat collapsed, but due to the country’s quasi-currency board the lat was not allowed to depreciate. As a result the Latvian money supply contracted sharply and send the economy into a near-Great Depression style collapse and real GDP dropped nearly 30%. Again it was primarily the contraction in the money supply rather and a velocity collapse that caused the crisis.

The story was – and still is – the same for the so-called PIIGS countries in the euro zone. Take for example the Greek central bank. It is not able to on it’s own to increase the money supply as it is part of the euro area. As the crisis hit (and later escalated strongly) banking distress escalated and this lead to a marked drop in the money multiplier and drop in bank deposits. This is what caused a very sharp drop in the Greek board money supply. This of course is at the core of the Greek crisis and this has massively worsened Greece’s debt woes.

Therefore, in my view there is a very close connection between the international spreading of the crisis and the currency regime in different countries. In general countries with floating exchange rates have managed the crisis much better than countries with countries with pegged or quasi-pegged exchange rates. Obviously other factors have also played a role, but at the key of the spreading of the crisis was the monetary policy and exchange rate regime in different countries.

Why did Sweden, Poland and Turkey manage the crisis so well?

While some countries like the Baltic States or the PIIGS have been extremely hard hit by the crisis others have come out of the crisis much better. For countries like Poland, Turkey and Sweden nominal GDP has returned more or less to the pre-crisis trend and banking distress has been much more limited than in other countries.

What do Poland, Turkey and Sweden have in common? Two things.

First of all, their currencies are not traditional reserve currencies. So when the crisis hit money demand actually dropped rather increased in these countries. For an unchanged supply of zloty, lira or krona a drop in demand for (local) money would actually be a passive or automatic easing of monetary condition. A drop in money demand would also lead these currencies to depreciate. That is exactly what we saw in late 2008 and early 2009. Contrary to what we saw in for example the Baltic States, Russia or in the PIIGS the money supply did not contract in Poland, Sweden and Turkey. It expanded!

And second all three countries operate floating exchange rate regimes and as a consequence the central banks in these countries could act relatively decisively in 2008-9 and they made it clear that they indeed would ease monetary policy to counter the crisis. Avoiding crisis was clearly much more important than maintaining some arbitrary level of their currencies. In the case of Sweden and Turkey growth rebound strongly after the initial shock and in the case of Poland we did not even have negative growth in 2009. All three central banks have since moved to tighten monetary policy – as growth has remained robust. The Swedish Riksbank is, however, now on the way back to monetary easing (and rightly so…)

I could also have mentioned the Canada, Australia and New Zealand as cases where the extent of the crisis was significantly reduced due to floating exchange rates regimes and a (more or less) proper policy response from the local central banks.

Fear-of-floating via inflation targeting

Some countries fall in the category between the PIIGS et al and Sweden-like countries. That is countries that suffer from an indirect form of fear-of-floating as a result of inflation targeting. The most obvious case is the ECB. Unlike for example the Swedish Riksbank or the Turkish central bank (TCMB) the ECB is a strict inflation targeter. The ECB does target headline inflation. So if inflation increases due to a negative supply shock the ECB will move to tighten monetary policy. It did so in 2008 and again in 2011. On both occasions with near-catastrophic results. As I have earlier demonstrated this kind of inflation targeting will ensure that the currency will tend to strengthen (or weaken less) when import prices increases. This will lead to an “automatic” fear-of-floating effect. It is obviously less damaging than a strict currency peg or Russian style intervention, but still can be harmful enough – as it clear has been in the case of the euro zone.

Conclusion: The (international) monetary disorder view explains the global crisis

I hope to have demonstrated above that the increase in dollar demand in 2008 not only hit the US economy but also lead to a monetary contraction in especially Europe. Not because of an increase demand for euro, lats or rubles, but because central banks tighten monetary policy either directly or indirectly to “manage” the weakening of their currencies. Or because they could not ease monetary policy as member of the euro zone. In the case of the ECB the strict inflation targeting regime let the ECB to fail to differentiate between supply and demand shocks which undoubtedly have made things a lot worse.

The international transmission was not caused by “market disorder”, but by monetary policy failure. In a world of freely floating exchange rates (or PEP – currencies pegged to export prices) and/or NGDP level targeting the crisis would never have become a global crisis and I certainly would have no reason to write about it four-five years after the whole thing started.

Obviously, the “local” problems would never have become any large problem had the Fed and the ECB got it right. However, the both the Fed and the ECB failed – and so did monetary policy in a number of other countries.

DISCLAIMER: I have discussed different countries in this post. I would however, stress that the different countries are used as examples. Other countries – both the good, the bad and the ugly – could also have been used. Just because I for example highlight Poland, Turkey and Sweden as good examples does not mean that these countries did everything right. Far from it. The Polish central bank had horrible communication in early 2009 and was overly preoccupied the weakening of the zloty. The Turkish central bank’s communication was horrific last year and the Sweden bank has recently been far too reluctant to move towards monetary easing. And I might even have something positive to say about the ECB, but let me come back on that one when I figure out what that is (it could take a while…) Furthermore, remember I often quote Milton Friedman for saying you never should underestimate the importance of luck of nations. The same goes for central banks.

PS You are probably wondering, “Why did Lars not mention Asia?” Well, that is easy – the Asian economies in general did not have a major funding problem in US dollar (remember the Asian countries’ general large FX reserve) so dollar demand did not increase out of Asia and as a consequence Asia did not have the same problems as Europe. Long story, but just show that Asia was not key in the global transmission of the crisis and the same goes for Latin America.

PPS For more on the distinction between the ‘monetary disorder view’ and the ‘market disorder view’ in Hetzel (2012).

11 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Emerging Markets, euro crisis, Exchange rate policy, Exchange rates, Fear-of-floating, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Jeffrey Frankel, Luck, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, MV=PY, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Peg the Export Price (PEP), QE, Robert Hetzel, Russia, The euro, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 11, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/11/international-monetary-disorder-how-policy-mistakes-turned-the-crisis-into-a-global-crisis/

A picture of the Irish economy…

I have been busy, busy in Dublin today. No time (or energy) for a lot of blogging. But here is a picture of the Irish economy – the Irish price level is down 10% since the end of 2007.

Please tell me whether European monetary policy is easy or tight…

8 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 1, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on May 1, 2012

http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/01/a-picture-of-the-irish-economy/

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