It is vacation time for the Christensen family. We are in the Christensen vacation home in Skåne (Southern Sweden) and my blogging might reflect that.

There are really a lot of things going on the in world and I would love to write a lot about it all, but there is not enough time. But here are a few observations about recent global events from a monetary perspective.

Egyptian Regime Uncertainty

I am not getting myself into commenting too much on what is going on in Egypt other than I fundamentally is quite upbeat on the Egyptian economy, which I easily could see growth 7-8% y/y in real terms in the next 1-2 decade (with the right reforms!)

Remember the Egyptian population is going from 80 to 90 million within the next decade and the labour will be growing by more than 1% a year in the same period (as far as I remember). With the right reforms that is a major growth boost. So Egypt is a major positive long-term supply side story – short-term it is a major negative supply side story.

What we have in Egypt is of course a spike in what Robert Higgs calls Regime Uncertainty. That is a negative supply shock. The Egyptian central bank should of course allow that to feed through to higher prices – don’t fight a supply shock with monetary policy. There is a lot to say about how Egyptian monetary policy should be different, but monetary policy surely is not Egypt’s biggest problem. If you want to understand Egypt’s problem I think you should read “Why Nations Fail”.

I earlier wrote a post on the implications of recent Turkish political unrest from an AD/AS perspective. I think that post easily could be copy-pasted to understand the economics of the Egyptian crisis.

A Polish deflationary monetary policy blunder

I have followed the Polish economy closely for well over a decade and I love the country. However, recently I have got quite frustrated with particularly the Polish central bank. Yesterday the Polish central bank (NBP) cut its key policy rate by 25bp. No surprise there, but the NBP also (wrongly) said it was the last rate cut in the rate cutting cycle.

Say what? Poland is likely to have deflation before then end of the year and real GDP growth is well-below trend-growth. Not to talk about NGDP growth, which has been slowing significantly. I am not sure the NBP chief Marek Belka realises, but it did not ease money policy yesterday. It tightened monetary policy.

When a central bank tells the markets it will cut interest rates (or expand the money base) less than the markets have been expecting then it is effectively monetary tightening. That was what the NBP did yesterday – pure and simply. Now ask yourself whether that is the right medicine for an economy heading for deflation soon. To me it is a deflationary monetary policy blunder. (I will not even say what I think of the recent FX intervention to prop up the Polish zloty).

A confident Kuroda should not be complacent

This morning Bank of Japan governor Kuroda had press conference on monetary and economic developments in Japan. I didn’t read up on the details – I am on vacation after all – but it seems like Mr. Kuroda was quite confident that what he is doing is working. I agree, but I would also tell Mr. Kuroda that he at best is only half way there. Inflation expectations are still way below his 2% inflation target so his policies are not yet credible enough to declare victory yet. So let me say it again – more work on communication is needed.

Carney’s long and variable leads (I would have hoped)

Mark Carney has only been Bank of England governor since Monday, but it is tempting to say that he is already delivering results. The macroeconomic data released this week for the UK economy have all been positive surprises and it looks like a recovery is underway in the British economy. So why am I saying that Carney is already delivering results? Well because monetary policy is working with long and variable leads as Scott Sumner likes to tell us. There is a wide expectation in the markets that Carney will “try to do something” to ease UK monetary policy and that in itself is monetary easing (this is the reverse of the Polish story above).

However, my story is unfortunately a lot less rosy. The fact is that the market is not totally sure that Carney will be able to convince his colleagues on the Monetary Policy Committee to do the right thing (NGDP targeting) and judging from the markets a major change in policy is not priced in. So Carney shouldn’t really take credit for the better than expected UK numbers – at least not a lot of credit. So there is still no excuse for not doing the right thing. Get to work on an NGDP level target right now.

Summertime reading…

I hope to be able to do some reading while on vacation – at least I brought a lot of books (yes, one of them is about Karl Marx). Take a look…

PS It is 4th of July today. The US declaration of independence is surely something to celebrate and here in the small city of Skyrup in Skåne our neighbour always fly the Stars and Stripes on July 4th so we won’t forget. I like that.