All posts in category Federal Reserve

Dangerous bubble fears

Here is Swedish central bank governor Stefan Ingves in an op-ed piece in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet last week:

“I also have to take responsibility for the long term consequences of today’s monetary policy…And there are risks associated with an all too low interest rate over a long period, which cannot be ignored.”

Said in another way if we keep interest rates too low we will get bubbles. So despite very clear signs that the Swedish economy is slowing Ingves would not like to ease monetary policy. Ingves in that sense is similar to many central bankers around the world. Many central bankers have concluded that the present crisis is a result of a bubble that bursted and the worst you could do is to ease monetary policy – even if the economic data is telling you that that is exactly what you should.

The sentiment that Ingves is expressing is similar to the view of the ECB and the fed in 2008/9: We just had a bubble and if we ease too aggressively we will get another one. Interestingly enough those central banks that did well in 2008/9 and eased monetary policy more aggressively and therefore avoided major crisis today seem to be most fearful about “bubbles”. Take the Polish central bank (NBP). The NBP in 2009 allowed the zloty to weaken significantly and cut interest rates sharply. That in my view saved the Polish economy from recession in 2009 – Poland was the only country in Europe with positive real GDP growth in 2009. However, today the story is different. NBP hiked interest rates earlier in the year and is now taking very long time in easing monetary policy despite very clear signs the Polish economy is slowing quite fast. In that sense you can say the NBP has failed this year because it did so well in 2009.

The People’s Bank of China in many ways is the same story – the PBoC eased monetary policy aggressively in 2009 and that pulled the Chinese economy out of the crisis very fast, but since 2010 the PBoC obviously has become fearful that it had created a bubble – which is probably did. To me Chinese monetary policy probably became excessively easy in early 2010 so it was right to scale back on monetary easing, but money supply growth has slowed very dramatically in the last two years and monetary policy now seem to have become excessively tight.

So the story is the same in Sweden, Poland and China. The countries that escaped the crisis did so by easing monetary conditions. As their exports collapsed domestic demand had to fill the gap and easier monetary policy made that possible. So it not surprising that these countries have seen property prices continuing to increase during the last four years and also have seen fairly strong growth in private consumption and investments. However, this now seem to be a major headache for central bankers in these countries.

I think these bubble fears are quite dangerous. It was this kind of fears that led the fed and the ECB to allow monetary conditions to become excessive tight in 2008/9. Riksbanken, NBP and the PBoC now risk making the same kind of mistake.

At the core of this problem is that central bankers are trying to concern themselves with relative prices. Monetary policy is very effective when it comes to determine the price level or nominal GDP, but it is also a very blunt instrument. Monetary policy cannot – and certainly should not – influence relative prices. Therefore, the idea that the central bank should target for example property prices in my view is quite a unhealthy suggestion.

Obviously I do not deny that overly easy monetary policy under certain circumstances can lead to the formation of bubbles, but it should not be the job of central bankers to prick bubbles.

The best way to avoid that monetary policy do not create bubbles is that the central bank has a proper monetary target such as NGDP level targeting. Contrary to inflation targeting where positive supply shocks can lead to what Austrians call relative inflation there is not such a risk with NGDP level targeting.

Let’s assume that the economy is hit by a positive supply shock – for example lower import prices. That would push down headline inflation. An inflation targeting central bank – like Riksbanken and NBP – in that situation would ease monetary policy and as a result you would get relative inflation – domestic prices would increase relative to import prices and that is where you get bubbles in the property markets. Under NGDP level targeting the central bank would not ease monetary policy in response to a positive supply shock and inflation would drop ease, but the NGDP level would on the other hand remain on track.

However, the response to a demand shock – for example a drop in money velocity – would be symmetric under NGDP level targeting and inflation target. Both under IT and NGDP targeting the central bank would ease monetary policy. However, this is not what central banks that are concerned about “bubbles” are doing. They are trying to target more than one target. The first page in the macroeconomic textbook, however, tells you that you cannot have more policy targets than policy instruments. Hence, if you target a certain asset price – like property prices – it would mean that you effectively has abandoned your original target – in the case of Riksbanken and NBP that is the inflation target. So when governor Ingves express concern about asset bubbles he effective has said that he for now is not operating an inflation targeting regime. I am sure his colleague deputy governor Lars E. O. Svensson is making that argument to him right now.

I don’t deny that bubbles exist and I am not claiming that there is no bubbles in the Swedish, Polish or Chinese economies (I don’t know the answer to that question). However, I am arguing that monetary policy is a very bad instrument to “fight” bubbles. Monetary policy should not add to the risk of bubbles, but “bubble fighting” should not be the task of the central bank. The central bank should ensure nominal stability and let the market determine relative prices in the economy. Obviously other policies – such as tax policy or fiscal policy should not create moral hazard problems through implicit or explicit guarantees to “bubble makers”.

Japan has been in a 15 year deflationary environment with falling asset prices and a primary reason for that is the Bank of Japan’s insane fear of creating bubbles. I doubt that the Riksbank, NBP or the PBoC will make the same kind of mistakes, but bubbles have clearly led all three central banks to become overly cautious and as a result the Swedish, the Polish and the Chinese economy are now cooling too much.

I should stress that I do not suggest some kind of “fine tuning” policy, but rather I suggest that central banks should focus on one single policy target – and I prefer NGDP level targeting – and leave other issues to other policy makers. If central banks are concerned about bubbles they should convince politicians to implement policies that reduce moral hazard rather than trying to micromanage relative prices and then of course focus on a proper and forward looking monetary policy target like NGDP level targeting.

PS Note that I did not mention the interest rate fallacy, but I am sure Milton Friedman would have told governor Ingves about it.
PPS You can thank Scandinavian Airlines for this blog post – my flight from London to Copenhagen got cancelled so I needed to kill some time before my much later flight.

Related posts:

Boom, bust and bubbles
The luck of the ‘Scandies’
Four reasons why central bankers ignore Scott Sumner’s good advice

19 Comments
by Lars Christensen on October 22, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bubbles, China, ECB, Federal Reserve, Lars E. O. Svensson, NGDP Targeting
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on October 22, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/10/22/dangerous-bubble-fears/

Bernanke says Friedman would have approved of Fed’s recent actions – I think is he more or less right

Ben Bernanke today in a speech further tried to explain the Fed’s recent policy actions. As Scott Sumner says in a comment: “The Fed seems to be getting a bit more market monetarist each day”. That might be slightly too optimistic of what is going on at the Fed and I remain frustrated about about two things in how Bernanke is communicating. First he is focusing on real variables (the labour market) rather than on nominal variables. Second, his discussion of the monetary transmission mechanism is overly focused on yields and interest rates rather than on money creation. That said, I continue to believe that the Fed is moving in the right direction. Bernanke’s speech today is further prove of that and I must say I feel increasingly optimistic that this will pull the US economy out of the crisis.

I am particularly encouraged by the following comments from Bernanke (my bold):

“In the category of communications policy, we also extended our estimate of how long we expect to keep the short-term interest rate at exceptionally low levels to at least mid-2015. That doesn’t mean that we expect the economy to be weak through 2015. Rather, our message was that, so long as price stability is preserved, we will take care not to raise rates prematurely. Specifically, we expect that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economy strengthens. We hope that, by clarifying our expectations about future policy, we can provide individuals, families, businesses, and financial markets greater confidence about the Federal Reserve’s commitment to promoting a sustainable recovery and that, as a result, they will become more willing to invest, hire and spend.”

Bernanke is beginning more clearly to spell out how his monetary policy rule looks like. This is what is needed is he whats to get the help from the Chuck Norris effect to reestablish nominal stability and pull the US economy out of this crisis.

Interestingly enough Bernanke was asked after his speech today whether he thinks Friedman would have supported the fed’s recent actions. Bernanke was stated that he was a “big fan” of Milton Friedman and then said that “I think he would’ve supported what we are doing”. I think Bernanke is broadly speaking correct. I am very sure that Friedman would have had the same reservation that I note about, but I am also pretty sure that he would have made the same recommendation regarding the US economy today as he did regarding the Japanese economy in 1997:

“The answer is straightforward: The Bank of Japan can buy government bonds on the open market, paying for them with either currency or deposits at the Bank of Japan, what economists call high-powered money. Most of the proceeds will end up in commercial banks, adding to their reserves and enabling them to expand their liabilities by loans and open market purchases. But whether they do so or not, the money supply will increase.

There is no limit to the extent to which the Bank of Japan can increase the money supply if it wishes to do so. Higher monetary growth will have the same effect as always. After a year or so, the economy will expand more rapidly; output will grow, and after another delay, inflation will increase moderately. A return to the conditions of the late 1980s would rejuvenate Japan and help shore up the rest of Asia.

Japan’s recent experience of three years of near zero economic growth is an eerie, if less dramatic, replay of the great contraction in the United States. The Fed permitted the quantity of money to decline by one-third from 1929 to 1933, just as the Bank of Japan permitted monetary growth to be low or negative in recent years. The monetary collapse was far greater in the United States than in Japan, which is why the economic collapse was far more severe. The United States revived when monetary growth resumed, as Japan will.

The Fed pointed to low interest rates as evidence that it was following an easy money policy and never mentioned the quantity of money. The governor of the Bank of Japan, in a speech on June 27, 1997, referred to the “drastic monetary measures” that the bank took in 1995 as evidence of “the easy stance of monetary policy.” He too did not mention the quantity of money. Judged by the discount rate, which was reduced from 1.75 percent to 0.5 percent, the measures were drastic. Judged by monetary growth, they were too little too late, raising monetary growth from 1.5 percent a year in the prior three and a half years to only 3.25 percent in the next two and a half.

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.”

James Pethokoukis uses the same quote in his comment on Bernanke – and I have used the quote earlier in discussing what Friedman would have said about European monetary policy. While I think that the situation in the euro zone today is very similar to the situation in Japan 1997 I would also argue that the US economy is in somewhat better shape today that Japan in the late 1990s. This of course means that some caution is warranted regarding monetary easing in the US, but to me at least the risks on US inflation still remain on the downside.

Again see the Friedman’s quote above and what Bernanke said today (quoted from Joe Weisenthal on Business Insider):

“We didn’t allow the fact that interest rates were very low to fool us into thinking that monetary policy was accommodative enough.”

It is very nice to see that Bernanke now finally is recognizing this. I would hope a all of his central banking colleagues around the world – particularly in Europe would understand this.

Finally I don’t think the Fed is all there yet. NGDP level targeting is much preferable to what the Fed is now trying to implement. Furthermore, I would hope Bernanke and his colleagues would try to get a bit more of a monetarist perspective on the monetary transmission mechanism instead of the continued focus on interest rates.

PS George Selgin has a slightly related blog post on freebanking.org discussing Austrians’ and Market Monetarists’ view of “Intermediate Spending Booms”

Update: Matt O’Brien has an excellent piece on Narayana Kocherlakota amazing transformation,

6 Comments
by Lars Christensen on October 1, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve, George Selgin, James Pethokoukis, Milton Friedman, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on October 1, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/10/01/bernanke-says-friedman-would-have-approved-of-feds-recent-actions-i-think-is-he-more-or-less-right/

An empirical – not a theoretical – disagreement with George, Larry and Eli

Last week George Selgin warned us (the Market Monetarists) about getting to excited about the recent actions of the Federal Reserve. Now fellow Free Banker Larry White raises a similar critique in a post on freebanking.org.

Here is Larry:

“While saluting Sumner 2009…I favor an alternative view of 2012: the weak recovery today has more to do with difficulties of real adjustment. The nominal-problems-only diagnosis ignores real malinvestments during the housing boom that have permanently lowered our potential real GDP path. It also ignores the possibility that the “natural” rate of unemployment has been hiked by the extension of unemployment benefits. And it ignores the depressing effect of increased regime uncertainty.”

Larry’s point is certainly valid and Bill Woolsey has expressed a similar view:

“Targeting real variables is a potential disaster.  Expansionary monetary policy seeking an unfeasible  target for unemployment was the key error that generated the Great Inflation of the Seventies.  Employment or the employment/population ratio could have the same disastrous result.”

I have already in an earlier post addressed these issues. I agree with Bill (and George Selgin) that it potentially could be a disaster for central banks to target real variables and that is also why I think that an NGDP level target is much preferable to the rule the fed now seems to try to implementing. Both Larry and George think that the continued weak real GDP growth and high unemployment in the US might to a large extent be a result of supply side problems rather than as a result of demand side problems. Eli Dourado makes a similar point in a recent thoughtful blog post. Bill Woolsey has a good reply to Eli.

To me our disagreement is not theoretical – the disagreement is empirical. I fully agree that it is hard to separate supply shocks from demand shocks and that is exactly why central banks should not target real variable. However, the question is now how big the risk isthat the fed is likely to ease monetary policy excessively at the moment.

In my view it is hard to find much evidence that there has been a major supply shock to the US economy. Had there been a negative supply shock then one would have expected inflation to have increased and one would certainly not have expected wage growth to slow. The fact is that both wage growth and inflation have slowed significantly over the past four years. This is also what the markets are telling us – just look at long-term bond yields. I would not argue that there has not been a negative supply shock – I think there has been. For example higher minimum wages and increased regulation have likely reduced aggregate supply in the US economy, but in my view the negative demand shock is much more import. I am less inclined to the Austrian misallocation hypothesis as empirically significant.

A simple way to try to illustrate demand shocks versus supply shocks is to compare the development in real GDP with the development in prices. If the US primarily has been hit by a negative supply shock then we would have expect that real GDP to have dropped (relative to the pre-crisis trend) and prices should have increased (relative to the pre-crisis trend). On the other hand a negative demand shock will lead to a drop in both prices and real GDP (relative to pre-crisis trend).

The graph below shows the price level measured by the PCE core deflator – actual and the pre-crisis trend (log scale, 1993:1=100).

The next graph show the “price gap” which I define as the percentage difference between the actual price level and the pre-crisis trend.

Both graphs are clear – since the outbreak of the Great Recession in 2008 prices have grown slower than the pre-crisis trend (from 1993) and the price gap has therefore turned increasingly negative.

This in my view is a pretty clear indication that the demand shock “dominates” the possible supply shock.

Compare this with the early 1990s where prices grew faster than trend, while real GDP growth slowed. That was a clear negative supply shock.

That said, it is notable that the drop in prices (relative to the pre-crisis trend) has not been bigger when one compared it to how large the drop in real GDP has been, which could be an indication that White, Selgin and Dourado also have a point – there has probably also been some deterioration of the supply side of the US economy.

Monetary easing is still warranted

…but rules are more important than easing

I therefore think that monetary easing is still warranted in the US and I am not overly worried about the recent actions of the Federal Reserve will lead to bubbles or sharply higher inflation.

However, I have long stressed that I find it significantly more important that the fed introduce a proper rule based monetary policy – preferably a NGDP level target – than monetary policy is eased in a discretionary fashion.

Therefore, if I had the choice between significant discretionary monetary easing on the one hand and NGDP level targeting from the present level of NGDP (rather than from the pre-crisis trend level) I would certainly prefer the later. Nothing has been more harmful than the last four years of discretionary monetary policy in the US and the euro zone. To me the most important thing is that monetary policy is not distorting the workings of the price system and distort relative prices. Here I have been greatly inspired by Larry and George.

I have stressed similar points in numerous earlier posts:

NGDP level targeting – the true Free Market alternative (we try again)
NGDP targeting is not about ”stimulus”
NGDP targeting is not a Keynesian business cycle policy
Be right for the right reasons
Monetary policy can’t fix all problems
Boettke’s important Political Economy questions for Market Monetarists
NGDP level targeting – the true Free Market alternative
Lets concentrate on the policy framework
Boettke and Smith on why we are wasting our time
Scott Sumner and the Case against Currency Monopoly…or how to privatize the Fed

I think we Market Monetarists should be grateful to George, Larry and Eli for challenging us. We should never forget that targeting real variables is a very dangerous strategy for monetary policy and we should never put the need for “stimulus” over the need for a strictly ruled based monetary policy. And again I don’t think the disagreement is over theory or objectives, but rather over empirical issues.

As our disagreement primarily is empirical it would be interesting to hear what George, Larry and Eli think about the euro zone in this regard? Here it to me seem completely without question that the problem is nominal rather than real (even though the euro zone certainly has significant supply side problems, but they are unrelated to the crisis).

—-

Update: David Beckworth and George Selgin joins/continue the debate.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 24, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bill Woolsey, Eli Dourado, Federal Reserve, George Selgin, Larry White, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 24, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/24/an-empirical-not-a-theoretical-disagreement-with-george-larry-and-eli/

Kocherlakota’s revelation

This is from Bloomberg:

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota said the central bank should hold the main interest rate near zero until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent, marking the first time he has linked policy to a specific economic goal.

“As long as the FOMC is continuing to satisfy its price stability mandate, it should keep the fed funds rate extraordinarily low until the unemployment rate has fallen below 5.5 percent,” Kocherlakota said today in the text of remarks prepared for a speech in Ironwood, Michigan, referring the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee.

…Kocherlakota today embraced a proposal by Chicago Fed President Charles Evans to calibrate monetary policy based on specific economic goals. Evans advocates holding to near-zero rates until the jobless rate falls below 7 percent or inflation reaches 3 percent.

“My thinking has been greatly influenced by his,” Kocherlakota said, referring to Evans. “By increasing monetary accommodation, the Committee can better meet its employment mandate while still satisfying its price-stability mandate,” Kocherlakota said to business and community leaders at Gogebic Community College.

…”It’s an appropriate time to start thinking about when to begin the process of reversing the level of accommodation,” Kocherlakota said on May 9. “Six to nine months down the road, we should be thinking about initiating our exit strategy.”

Today, Kocherlakota said, “the FOMC can provide more current stimulus if people believe that liftoff will be triggered by a lower unemployment rate.”

Kocherlakota said today the central bank should give itself leeway by allowing inflation to deviate from its 2 percent target, saying the FOMC could contemplate raising rates if inflation rises above 2.25 percent. History suggests it’s unlikely inflation will rise above that point as long as the jobless rate remains above 5.5 percent, he said.

“The current economic impact of both forms of accommodation — low interest rates and asset purchases — depends on when the public believes that accommodation will be removed,” Kocherlakota said. Confident the Fed will keep the fed funds rate near zero until achieving 5.5 percent unemployment, “people will spend more today, and that will drive up economic activity,” he said.

This is pretty sensational – it seems like Kocherlakota finally understands. And it is it not only Kocherlakota. In fact it seems like there has been a completely transformation of the thinking at the Federal Reserve. I have no clue what happened at the Fed, but something happened. And it is good…

PS Just so it is 100% clear – I don’t think it is a good idea to target real variables like the unemployment rate and that it would make much more sense to introduce a proper NGDP level target, but at least variations of the Evans rules as suggested by Kocherlakota is much better than the status quo.

Update: See the entire speech here and a summary of Kocherlakota’s “liftoff plan”.

Update 2: Scott Sumner also comments on Kocherlakota.

14 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Charles Evans, Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Kocherlakota
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 20, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/20/kocherlakotas-revelation/

Our pal George tells us not to rest on our laurels

Even though George Selgin never said he was a Market Monetarists – he dislikes labels like that – he is awfully close to being a Market Monetarist and many of us are certainly Selginians. So when George speaks we all tend to listen.

Now George is telling us not to rest on our laurels after the Federal Reserve took “a giant leap” after it effectively announced an Evans style policy rule. I have called the Fed’s new rule the Bernanke-Evans rule. There is no doubt that the Market Monetarist bloggers welcomed fed’s latest policy announcement, but George is telling us not be carried away.

Here is George:

In the title of a recent post Scott Sumner jokingly wonders whether, having been credited by the press for badgering Ben Bernanke’s Fed until it at last cried “uncle!” by announcing QE3, he now needs to worry about going down in history as the guy who gave the U.S. its first episode of hyperinflation.

Well, probably not. But if Scott and the rest of the Market Monetarist gang don’t start changing their tune, they may well go down in history as the folks responsible for our next boom-bust cycle.

I’m saying that, not because, like some monetary hawks, I’m dead certain that no substantial part of today’s unemployment is truly cyclical in the crucial sense of being attributable to slack demand. I have my doubts about the matter, to be sure: I think it’s foolish, first of all, to assume that 8.1% must include at least a couple percentage points of cyclical unemployment just because it’s more than that much higher than the postwar average… Still, for for the sake of what I wish to say here, I’m happy to concede that some more QE, aimed at further elevating the level of nominal GDP to restore it to some higher long-run trend value to which the recession itself and overly tight monetary policy have so far prevented it from returning, might do some good.

But although QE3 is in that case something that might do some real good up to a point, it hardly follows that Market Monetarists should treat it as a vindication of their beliefs. On the contrary: if they aim to be truly faithful to those beliefs, they ought to find at least as much to condemn as to praise in the FOMC’s recent policy announcement. And yes, they should be worried–very worried–that if they don’t start condemning the bad parts people will blame them for the consequences. What’s more, they will be justified in doing so.

So what are the bad parts? Two of them in particular stand out. First, the announcement represents a clear move by the Fed toward a more heavy emphasis on employment or “jobs” targeting:

If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.

Yes, there’s that bit about fighting unemployment “in a context of price stability,” and yes, it’s all perfectly in accord with the Fed’s “dual mandate.” But monetarists have long condemned that mandate, and have done so for several good reasons, chief among which is the fact that it may simply be beyond the Fed’s power to achieve what some may regard as “full employment” if the causes of less-than-full employment are structural rather than monetary. The Fed should, according to this view, focus on targeting nominal values only, which can serve as direct indicators of whether money is or is not in short supply. Many old-fashioned monetarists favor a strict inflation target because they view inflation as such an indicator. Market Monetarists are I think quite right in favoring treating the level and growth rate of NGDP as better indicators. But the Fed, in insisting on treating the level of employment as an indicator of whether or not it should cease injecting base money into the economy, departs not only from Market Monetarism but from the broader monetarist lessons that were learned at such great cost during the 1970s. If Market Monetarists don’t start loudly declaring that employment targeting is a really dumb idea, they deserve at very least to get a Cease & Desist letter from counsel representing the estates of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz telling them, politely but nonetheless menacingly, that they had better quit infringing the Monetarist trademark.

So what is George saying? Well, it is really quite obvious. Monetary policy should focus on nominal targets – such a price level target or a NGDP level target – rather than on real target like an unemployment target (as the fed now is doing). This is George’s position and it is also the position of traditional monetarists and more important it has always been the position of Market Monetarists like Sumner, Beckworth and myself.

So just to make it completely clear….

…It is STUPID to target real variables such as the unemployment rate 

There is no doubt of my position in that regard and that is also why I and other Market Monetarists are advocating NGDP level targeting. The central bank is fully in control the level of NGDP, but never real GDP or the level of unemployment.

With sticky prices and wages the central bank can likely reduce unemployment in the short run, but in the medium term the Phillips curve certainly is vertical and as a result monetary policy cannot permanently reduce the level of unemployment – supply side problems cannot be solved with demand side measures. That is very simple.

As a consequence I am also tremendously skeptical about the Federal Reserve’s so-called dual mandate. To quote myself:

” …I don’t think the Fed’s mandate is meaningful. The Fed should not try to maximize employment. In the long run employment is determined by factors completely outside of the Fed’s control. In the long run unemployment is determined by supply factors. In my view the only task of the Fed should be to ensure nominal stability and monetary neutrality (not distort relative prices) and the best way to do that is through a NGDP level target.”

Is the glass half empty or half full?

It is clear that it has never been a Market Monetarists position to advocate that the Fed or any other central bank should target labour market conditions, but this is really a question about whether the glass is half full or half empty. George is arguing that the glass is half empty, while his Market Monetarist pals argue it is half full.

The reasons why the Market Monetarists are arguing the glass is half full are the following:

1) The fed has become much more clear on what it wants to achieve with its monetary policy actions – we nearly got a rule. One can debate the rule, but it is certainly better than nothing and it will do a lot to stabilise and guide market expectations going forward. That will also make fed policy much less discretionary. Victory number one for the Market Monetarists!

2) The fed has become much more clear on its monetary policy instrument – it is a about increasing (or decreasing) the money base by buying Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). To Market Monetarists it is not really important what you buy to increase the money base – the point is the monetary policy is conducted though changes in the money base rather than through changes in interest rates. This I think is another major monetarist victory!

3) The fed’s policy actions will be open-ended – the focus will no long be on how much QE the fed will do, but on what it will do and the fed will – if it follows through on its promises – do whatever it takes to fulfill its policy target.  Victory number three!

It is certainly not perfect, but it certainly is a major change compared to how the fed has conducted monetary policy over the past four years. We can of course not know whether the fed will change direction tomorrow or in a month or in a year, but we are certainly heading in the right direction. I am sure that George would agree that these three points are steps in the right direction.

But lets get to the “half empty” part – the fed’s new unemployment target. George certainly worries about it as do I and other Market Monetarists. Bill Woolsey makes this point very clear in a recent blog post. However, I think there is an empirical difference in how George see the US economy and how most Market Monetarists see it. In George’s view it is not given that the present level of unemployment in the US primarily is a result of demand side factors. On the other hand while most Market Monetarists acknowledge that part of the rise in US unemployment is due to supply side factors such as higher minimum wages we also strongly believe that the rise in unemployment has been caused by a contraction in aggregate demand. As a consequence we are less worried that the fed’s new unemployment target will cause problems in the short to medium term in the US.

In that regard it should be noted that the so-called Evans rule mean that the fed will ease monetary policy until US unemployment drops below 7% or PCE core inflation increases above 3%. Fundamentally I think that is quite a conservative policy. In fact one could even argue that that will not be nearly enough to bring NGDP back to a level which in anyway is comparable to the pre-crisis trend.

We should listen to our pal George and continue advocacy of NGDP level targeting 

The fact that I personally is not overly worried about a conservative Evans rule (7%/3%) will lead to a new boom-bust as George seem to suggest does, however, not mean that we should stop our advocacy. While we seem to have won first round we should make sure to win the next round as well.

It is therefore obvious that we should continue to strongly advocate NGDP level targeting and we should certainly also warn against the potential dangers of unemployment targeting.

Finally I would also argue that Market Monetarists should step up our campaign against moral hazard. There is no doubt the failed monetary policies over the past four years have led to an unprecedented increase in explicit and implicit government guarantees to banks and other nations. These guarantees obviously should be scaled back as fast as possible. A rule based monetary policy is the best policy to avoid that the scaling back of such too-big-to-fail procedures will lead to unwarranted financial distress. This should do a lot to ease George’s fears of another boom-bust episode playing out as the US and the global economy start to recover. (See also my earlier post on moral hazard and the risk of boom-bust here.)

Similarly if we are so lucky that the fed’s new policy set-up will be start of the end of the slump then Market Monetarists should be as eager to fight excessive monetary easing as we have been in fighting overly tight monetary policy. In that regard I would argue that I personally have a pretty solid track record as I was extremely critical about what I saw as overly easy monetary policy in the years just prior to the crisis hit in 2007-8 in countries like Iceland and the Central and Eastern European countries.

So George, there is no reason to worry – we don’t trust the fed more than you do…

PS I stole (paraphrased) my headline from one of George’s Facebook updates.

Update: Scott Sumner also comments on George’s post and George has a reply.

Josh Hendrickson has a related comment.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bernanke-Evans rule, Bill Woolsey, David Beckworth, Federal Reserve, George Selgin, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 16, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/16/our-pal-george-tells-us-not-to-rest-on-our-laurels/

The fiscal cliff and the Bernanke-Evans rule in a simple static IS/LM model

Sometimes simple macroeconomic models can help us understand the world better and even though I am not uncritical about the IS/LM model it nonetheless has some interesting features which from time to time makes it useful for policy analysis (if you are careful).

However, a key problem with the IS/LM model is that the model does not take into account – in its basic textbook form – the central bank’s policy rule. However, it is easy to expand the model to include a monetary policy rule.

I will do exactly that in this post and I will use the Federal Reserve’s new policy rule – the Bernanke-Evans rule – to analysis the impact of the so-called fiscal cliff on a (very!) stylised version of the US economy.

We start out with the two standard equations in the IS/LM model.

The money demand function:

(1) m=p+y-α×r

Where m is the money supply/demand, p is prices and y is real GDP. r is the interest rate and α is a coefficient.

Aggregate demand is defined as follows:

(2) y=g-β×r

Aggregate demand y equals public spending and private sector demand (β×r), which is a function of the interest rate r. β is a coefficient. It is assumed that private demand drops when the interest rate increases.

This is basically all you need in the textbook IS/LM model. However, we also need to define a monetary policy rule to be able to say something about the real world.

I will use a stylised version of the Bernanke-Evans rule based on the latest policy announcement from the Fed’s FOMC. The FOMC at it latest meeting argued that it basically would continue to expand the money base (in the IS/LM the money base and the money supply is the same thing) to hit a certain target for the unemployment rate. That means that we can define a simple Bernanke-Evans rule as follows:

(3) m=λ×U

One can think of U as either the unemployment rate or the deviation of the unemployment rate from the Fed’s unemployment target. λ is a coefficient that tells you how aggressive the fed will increase the money supply (m) if U increases.

We now need to model how the labour market works. We simply assume Okun’s law holds (we could also have used a simple production function):

(4) U=-δ×y

This obviously is very simplified as we totally disregard supply side issues on the labour market. However, we are not interested in using this model for analysis of such factors.

It is easy to solve the model. We get the LM curve from (1), (3) and (4):

LM: r= y×(1+δ×λ)⁄α+(1/α)×p

And we get the IS curve by rearranging (2):

IS: r =(1/β)×g-(1/β)×y

Under normal assumptions about the coefficients in the model the LM curve is upward sloping and the IS curve is downward sloping. This is as in the textbook version.

Note, however, that the slope of the LM does not only depend on the money demand’s interest rate elasticity (α), but also on how aggressive  (λ) the fed will react to an increase in unemployment.

The Sumner Critique applies if λ=∞

The fact that the slope of the LM curve depends on λ is critical. Hence, if the fed is fully committed to its unemployment target and will do everything to fulfill (as the FOMC signaled when it said it would step up QE until it hit its target) then λ equals infinity (∞) .

Obviously, if λ=∞ then the LM curve is vertical – as in the “monetarist” case in the textbook version of the IS/LM model. However, contrary to the “normal” the LM curve we don’t need α to be zero to ensure a vertical LM curve.

Hence, under a strict Bernanke-Evans rule where the fed will not accept any diviation from its unemployment target (λ=∞) the (government) budget multiplier is zero and the so-called Sumner Critique therefore applies: Fiscal policy cannot increase or decrease output (y) or the unemployment (U) as any fiscal “shock” (higher or lower g) will be fully offset by the fed’s actions.

The Bernanke-Evans rule reduces risks from the fiscal cliff

It follows that if the fed actually follows through on it commitment to hit its (still fuzzy) unemployment target then in the simple model outlined above the risk from a negative shock to demand from the so-called fiscal cliff is reduced greatly.

This is good news, but it is also a natural experiment of the Sumner Critique. Imagine that we indeed get a 4% of GDP tightening of fiscal policy next year, but at the same time the fed is 100% committed to hitting it unemployment target (that unemployment should drop) then if unemployment then increases anyway then Scott Sumner (and myself) is wrong – or the fed didn’t do it job well enough. Both are obviously very likely…

I am arguing that I believe the model presented above is the correct model of the US economy. The purpose has rather been to demonstrate the critical importance of a the monetary policy rule even in a standard textbook keynesian model and to demonstrate that fiscal policy is much less important than normally assumed by keynesians if we take the monetary policy rule into account.

11 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Bernanke-Evans rule, Federal Reserve, Fiscal policy, IS/LM model, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy rules, Sumner Critique, The Great Recession, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 15, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/15/the-fiscal-cliff-and-the-bernanke-evans-rule-in-a-simple-static-islm-model/

I think Ben just did it…

This is what I in a post earlier today asked the Federal Reserve to do:

Rather for example the Fed could just start at every regular FOMC meetings to state for example that “the expectations is now that without changes in our policy instrument we will undershoot our policy target and as a consequence we today have decided to use our policy instrument to increase the money base by X dollars to ensure that we will hit our policy target within the next 12 months. We will increase the money base further if contrary to our expectations policy target is not meet.”

I must admit Ben Bernanke nearly got it right! Here is from the FOMC’s statement:

“The Committee is concerned that, without further policy accommodation, economic growth might not be strong enough to generate sustained improvement in labor market conditions.  Furthermore, strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook.  The Committee also anticipates that inflation over the medium term likely would run at or below its 2 percent objective….

…To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at the rate most consistent with its dual mandate, the Committee agreed today to increase policy accommodation by purchasing additional agency mortgage-backed securities at a pace of $40 billion per month. 

…The Committee will closely monitor incoming information on economic and financial developments in coming months.  If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability. “

So we nearly got what I asked for: 1) A clear target – not an NGDP level target, but a light Mankiw rule/Evans rule based on the Fed’s dual mandate. 2) A clear instrument to increase the money base: Mortgage backed securities. 3) A promise to do more if the target is not hit.

Now the markets should do a lot of the additional lifting.

I think it would be ungrateful to ask for more – yes, yes it is not NGDP level targeting and a lot of things can go wrong, but today I think we can take a little victory lap. This is excellent news for the US economy and for the global economy. Then we can hope that we in the coming months will get an even more clear defined “Bernanke rule” so we finally can back to a rule based rather than a discretionary monetary policy.

Related posts:

Scott Sumner has two comments (here and here) on the FOMC decision.

David Beckworth also has a comment and so has David Glanser.

While Scott and two times David share my general happiness about the Fed’s actions our friend Marcus Nunes is less euphoric. Marcus as always been the skeptic among the Market Monetarist bloggers, but he has also often been right so maybe we should be a little bit careful in not being carried away.

Update: Dajeeps and JPIrving are also happy.

Update 2: Our friend Mayor(!) Bill Woolsey also comments on the fed. Bill is as happy as the rest of us with the progress in the thinking of the FOMC, but he also correctly raises some points about the dangers of targeting real variables such as unemployment rather than focusing on nominal variables such as the NGDP level. Bill’s comment in many ways can be seen as the Market Monetarist reply to George Selgin’s friendly reminder to us (the Market Monetarists) that we should not become too friendly with the fed exactly because the fed is now so clearly targeting a real variable. Bill post was however (I think) written prior to George’s comment. Needless to say I agree with George and Bill. The FOMC’s actions is major step forward, BUT I am certainly also somewhat uncomfortable with the fact that the fed now so clearly targeting a real – rather than a nominal – variable.

10 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 13, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/13/i-think-ben-just-did-it/

Time to end discretionary monetary policy!

This week has been nearly 100% about monetary policy in the financial markets and in the international financial media. In fact since 2008 monetary policy has been the main driver of prices in basically all asset classes. In the markets the main job of investors is to guess what the ECB or the Federal Reserve will do next. However, the problem is that there is tremendous uncertainty about what the central banks will do and this uncertainty is multi-dimensional. Hence, the question is not only whether XYZ central bank will ease monetary policy or not, but also about how it will do it.

Just take Mario Draghi’s press conference last week – he had to read out numerous different communiqués and he had to introduce completely new monetary concepts – just take OMT. OMT means Outright Monetary Transactions – not exactly a term you will find in the monetary theory textbook. And he also had to come up with completely new quasi-monetary institutions – just take the ESM. The ESM is the European Stability Mechanism. This is not really necessary and it just introduce completely unnecessary uncertainty about European monetary policy.

In reality monetary policy is extremely simple. Central bankers can fundamentally do two things. First, the central bank can increase or decrease the money base and second it can guide expectations. It is really simple. There is no reason for ESM, OMT, QE3 etc. The problem, however, is that central banks used to control the money base and expectations with interest rates, but with interest rates close to zero central bankers around the world seem to have lost the ability to communicate about what they want to do. As a result monetary policy has become extremely discretionary in both Europe and the US.

That need to change as this discretion is at the core the uncertainty about monetary policy. Central bankers therefore have to do two things to get back on track and to create some kind of normality. First, central banks should define very clear targets of what the want to achieve – preferably the ECB and the Fed should announce nominal GDP targets, but other target might do as well. Second, the central banks should give up communicating about monetary policy in terms of interest rates and rather communicate in terms of how much they want to change the money base.

In terms of changes in the money base the central banks should clarify how the money base is changed. The central bank can increase the money base, by buying different assets such as government bonds, foreign currencies, commodities or stocks. The important thing is that the central banks do not try to affect relative prices in the financial markets. When the Fed is conducting it “twist operations” it is trying to distort relative prices, which essentially is a form of central planning and has little to do with monetary policy. Therefore, the best the central banks could do is to define a clear basket of assets it will be buying or selling to increase or decrease the money base. This could be a fixed basket of bonds, currencies, commodities and stocks – or it could just be short-term government bonds. The important thing is that the central bank define a clear instrument.

This would remove the “instrument uncertainty” and the ECB or the Fed would not have to come up with new weird instruments every single month. Rather for example the Fed could just start at every regular FOMC meetings to state for example that “the expectations is now that without changes in our policy instrument we will undershoot our policy target and as a consequence we today have decided to use our policy instrument to increase the money base by X dollars to ensure that we will hit our policy target within the next 12 months. We will increase the money base further if contrary to our expectations policy target is not meet.” 

In this world there would be no discretion at all – the central bank would be strictly rule following. It would use its well-defined policy instrument to always hit the policy target and there would be no problems with zero bound interest rates. But most important it would allow the financial markets to do most of the lifting as such set-up would be tremendously more transparent than what they are doing today.

Today we will see whether Ben Bernanke want to continue distorting relative prices and maintaining policy uncertainty by keeping the Fed’s highly discretionary habits or whether he want to ensure a target and rules based monetary policy.

PS a possibility would of course also be to use NGDP futures to conduct monetary policy as Scott Sumner has suggested, but that nearly seems like science fiction given the extreme conservatism of the world’s major central banks.

3 Comments
by Lars Christensen on September 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Ben Bernanke, ECB, Federal Reserve, Mario Draghi, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, Scott Sumner
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on September 13, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/09/13/time-to-end-discretionary-monetary-policy/

The fiscal cliff and why fiscal conservatives should endorse NGDP targeting

One of the hottest political topics in the US today is the so-called fiscal cliff. The fiscal cliff is the expected significant fiscal tightening, which will kick in January 2013 when the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 expires – unless a deal is struck to postpone the tightening. The fiscal cliff is estimated to amount to 4% of GDP – hence a very substantial fiscal tightening.

So how much should we worry about the fiscal cliff? Keynesians claim that we should worry a lot. The Market Monetarist would one the other hand argue that the impact of the fiscal cliff will very much depend on the response of the Federal Reserve to the possible fiscal tightening. If the Fed completely ignores the impact of the fiscal cliff on aggregate demand – if there will be any – then it would be naive to argue that there would be no impact at all on aggregate demand – after all a 4% tightening of fiscal policy in one year is very substantial.

On the other hand if the Federal Reserve had an NGDP target then the impact would likely be minimal as the Fed “automatically” would fill any “hole” in aggregate demand created by the tightening of fiscal policy to keep nominal GDP on track. This of course is the Sumner critique – the fiscal multiplier will be zero under NGDP targeting or inflation targeting for that matter.

Note that I am not making any assumptions about the how the economy works. Even if we assume we are in a Keynesian world, where the “impulse” to aggregate demand from a fiscal tightening would be negative an NGDP targeting regime would ensure that the world would look like a “classical world” (fiscal policy will have no impact on aggregate demand). This by the way would also be the case under inflation targeting – which of course is closer to the actual policy the Fed is conducting.

Said in another we should expect that if fiscal policy indeed would be strongly negative for aggregate demand in the US and push inflation sharply down then the likelihood of more aggressive monetary easing from the Fed would increase and hence sharply reduce any negative effect on aggregate demand (note that nominal GDP is really just another word for aggregate demand – at least according to Market Monetarists like myself). Therefore, we should probably be significantly less worried than some Keynesians seem to be.

Furthermore, it is notable that the US stock market continues rise and inflation expectations have been inching up recently. This is not exactly an indication that the US is facing a sharp drop in aggregate demand in 2013. We can obviously not know why the markets seem so relatively relaxed about the fiscal cliff, but I would think that the reason is that the markets are pricing in a combination of a political compromise that significantly reduces the fiscal tightening in 2013 and also is pricing an increased likelihood of QE3 becoming a reality.

So the conclusion is that Keynesian fears about the scale of the shock to aggregate demand is somewhat overblown as a combination of the Sumner critique and political logrolling will probably reduce the negative shock. We, however, can’t be sure about that so wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to worry about this issue? NGDP level targeting could seriously reduce the worries about fiscal shocks.

Fiscal conservatives should endorse NGDP targeting

Both in the US and the euro zone calls for scaling back fiscal consolidation have been growing larger and politicians like the French President Hollande and from Keynesian economists like Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have even demanded fiscal stimulus. To me it is pretty simple – the state of public finances in most euro zone countries and the US is horrible so I fundamentally don’t think that most countries can afford much fiscal stimulus. That said, I also think that the calls for austerity is somewhat hysterical and I find it rather unlikely that the markets would react very negative if the US budget deficit became 1-2 percentage points of GDP larger next year – just look at US treasury yields it is not so that the markets are telling us that the US economy is on the verge of bankruptcy. The markets are often wrong, but government default rarely happens out of the blue.

However, from a public choice perspective we should probably think that the deeper a country falls into recession the more likely it is that the wider public will vote for politicians like Hollande and policy makers are more and more likely to start listening to economists like Paul Krugman. That unfortunately will do very little to ending the crisis. Fiscal stimulus is not the answer to our problems – monetary easing is.

So fiscal conservatives are likely going to face more and more resistance – whether we like it or not. On the other hand if the central bank was operating a credible NGDP level target then fiscal conservatives could argue that negative impact of fiscal consolidation would be met by an easing of monetary policy to keep NGDP on track. Therefore there would be no reasons to worry about fiscal tightening hitting growth and increasing unemployment.

Even better imagine that the Federal Reserve tomorrow announced that it would do as much monetary easing needed to bring back NGDP to its pre-crisis trend by for example raising  NGDP by 15% from the present level by the end of 2013. Do you then think anybody would worry about a fiscal tightening of 4% of GDP? I think not.

Therefore, the conclusion is clear to me. Fiscal conservatives should endorse NGDP level targeting as it completely would undermine any Keynesian arguments for postponing fiscal consolidation. Furthermore, a commitment to keep NGDP on track would also likely make fiscal consolidation much less unpopular and therefore the likelihood of success would also increase.

Finally I would highlight two historical examples of successful fiscal consolidation. In the mid-1990s both the US and the UK undertook significant successful fiscal reforms that led to a significant improvement in the public finances. Both was undertaken while monetary conditions was eased significantly. As a result there was very little opposition to fiscal consolidation at the time and there was basically no negative impact on US and UK growth. In fact both economies grew robustly through out the fiscal consolidation phase. This of course is the opposite of the German experience from the early 1990s where the Bundesbank completely “neutralized” any stimulus from fiscal expansion in connection with the Germany reunification (See my earlier post on that topic here.)

PS Above I have not given any attention to the supply side effects of the “scheduled” tax hikes that follows as a result of the US fiscal cliff. NGDP level targeting would not deal with that problem and the issue should certainly not be ignored. Tax hikes can never increase the long-term growth potential of any economy, but the issue is not going to have any visible impact on real GDP growth in 2013 or 2014 for that matter. Supply side effects mostly work with long and variable lags. Furthermore, I am not arguing that one should ignore the fiscal cliff just because the Fed has the power to counteract it. After all the Fed’s performance in recent years has not exactly been impressive so a political compromise would probably be helpful for US growth in 2013 – at least it would reduce some risks of the US falling back into recession.

PPS this is my blog post #400 (including guest posts) since I started blogging last year.

—-

Related posts:
Market Monetarism vs Krugmanism
Guest blog: NGDP Targeting is NOT just for Central Banks! (David Eagle)
The Bundesbank demonstrated the Sumner critique in 1991-92
“Meantime people wrangle about fiscal remedies”
Please keep “politics” out of the monetary reaction function
Is Matthew Yglesias now fully converted to Market Monetarism?
Mr. Hollande the fiscal multiplier is zero if Mario says so
Maybe Jens Weidmann and Francios Hollande should switch jobs
There is no such thing as fiscal policy

9 Comments
by Lars Christensen on August 24, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bundesbank, Federal Reserve, Fiscal policy, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Sumner Critique
Tagged , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on August 24, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/08/24/the-fiscal-cliff-and-why-fiscal-conservatives-should-endorse-ngdp-targeting/

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

37 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

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

« Older Posts
Newer Posts »