All posts in category Financial markets

Monetary disorder – not animal spirits – caused the Great Recession

If one follows the financial media on a daily basis as I do there is ample room to get both depressed and frustrated over the coverage of the financial markets. Often market movements are described as being very irrational and the description of what is happening in the markets is often based on an “understanding” of economic agents as somebody who have huge mood swings due to what Keynes termed animal spirits.

Swings in the financial markets created by these animal spirits then apparently impact the macroeconomy through the impact on investment and private consumption. In this understanding markets move up and down based on rather irrational mood swings among investors. This is what Robert Hetzel has called the “market disorder”-view. It is market imperfections and particularly the animal spirits of investors which created swings not only in the markets, but also in the financial markets. Bob obviously in his new book convincingly demonstrates that this “theory” is grossly flawed and that animal spirits is not the cause of neither the volatility in the markets nor did animal spirits cause the present crisis.

The Great Recession is a result of numerous monetary policy mistakes – this is the “monetary disorder”-view – rather than a result of irrational investors behaving as drunken fools. This is very easy to illustrate. Just have a look first at S&P500 during the Great Recession.

The 6-7 phases of the Great Recession – so far

We can basically spot six or seven overall phases in S&P500 since the onset of the crisis. In my view all of these phases or shifts in “market sentiment” can easy be shown to coincide with monetary policy changes from either the Federal Reserve or the ECB (or to some extent also the PBoC).

We can start out with the very unfortunate decision by the ECB to hike interest rates in July 2008. Shortly after the ECB hike the S&P500 plummeted (and yes, yes Lehman Brother collapses in the process). The free fall in S&P500 was to some extent curbed by relatively steep interest rate reductions in the Autumn of 2008 from all of the major central banks in the world. However, the drop in the US stock markets did not come to an end before March 2009.

March-April 2009: TAF and dollar swap lines

However, from March-April 2009 the US stock markets recovered strongly and the recovery continued all through 2009. So what happened in March-April 2009? Did all investors suddenly out of the blue become optimists? Nope. From early March the Federal Reserve stepped up its efforts to improve its role as lender-of-last resort. The de facto collapse of the Fed primary dealer system in the Autumn of 2008 had effective made it very hard for the Fed to function as a lender-of-last-resort and effectively the Fed could not provide sufficient dollar liquidity to the market. See more on this topic in George Selgin’s excellent paper  “L Street: Bagehotian Prescriptions for a 21st-Century Money Market”.

Here especially the two things are important. First, the so-called Term Auction Facility (TAF). TAF was first introduced in 2007, but was expanded considerably on March 9 2009. This is also the day the S&P500 bottomed out! That is certainly no coincidence.

Second, on April 9 when the Fed announced that it had opened dollar swap lines with a number of central banks around the world. Both measures significantly reduced the lack of dollar liquidity. As a result the supply of dollars effectively was increased sharply relatively to the demand for dollars. This effectively ended the first monetary contraction during the early stage of the Great Recession and the results are very visible in S&P500.

This as it very clear from the graph above the Fed’s effects to increase the supply of dollar liquidity in March-April 2009 completely coincides with the beginning of the up-leg in the S&P500. It was not animal spirits that triggered the recovery in S&P500, but rather easier monetary conditions.

January-April 2010: Swap lines expiry, Chinese monetary tightening and Fed raises discount rate

The dollar swap lines expired February 1 2010. That could hardly be a surprise to the markets, but nonetheless this seem to have coincided with the S&P500 beginning to loose steam in the early part of 2010. However, it was probably more important that speculation grew in the markets that global central banks could move to tighten monetary conditions in respond to the continued recovery in the global economy at that time.

On January 12 2010 the People’s Bank of China increased reserve requirements for the Chinese banks. In the following months the PBoC moved to tighten monetary conditions further. Other central banks also started to signal future monetary tightening.

Even the Federal Reserve signaled that it might be reversing it’s monetary stance. Hence, on February 18 2010 the Fed increased the discount rate by 25bp. The Fed insisted that it was not monetary tightening, but judging from the market reaction it could hardly be seen by investors as anything else.

Overall the impression investors most have got from the actions from PBoC, the Fed and other central banks in early 2010 was that the central banks now was moving closer to initiating monetary tightening. Not surprisingly this coincides with the S&P500 starting to move sideways in the first half of 2010. This also coincides with the “Greek crisis” becoming a market theme for the first time.

August 27 2010: Ben Bernanke announces QE2 and stock market takes off again

By mid-2010 it had become very clear that talk of monetary tightening had bene premature and the Federal Reserve started to signal that a new round of monetary easing might be forthcoming and on August 27 at his now famous Jackson Hole speech Ben Bernanke basically announced a new round quantitative easing – the so-called QE2. The actual policy was not implemented before November, but as any Market Monetarist would tell you – it is the Chuck Norris effect of monetary policy: Monetary policy mainly works through expectations.

The quasi-announcement of QE2 on August 27 is pretty closely connected with another up-leg in S&P500 starting in August 2010. The actual upturn in the market, however, started slightly before Bernanke’s speech. This is probably a reflection that the markets started to anticipate that Bernanke was inching closer to introducing QE2. See for example this news article from early August 2010. This obviously is an example of Scott Sumner’s point that monetary policy works with long and variable leads. Hence, monetary policy might be working before it is actually announced if the market start to price in the action beforehand.

April and July 2011: The ECB’s catastrophic rate hikes

The upturn in the S&P500 lasted the reminder of 2010 and continued into 2011, but commodity prices also inched up and when two major negative supply shocks (revolutions in Northern Africa and the Japanese Tsunami) hit in early 2011 headline inflation increased in the euro zone. This triggered the ECB to take the near catastrophic decision to increase interest rates twice – once in April and then again in July. At the same time the ECB also started to scale back liquidity programs.

The market movements in the S&P500 to a very large extent coincide with the ECB’s rate hikes. The ECB hiked the first time on April 7. Shortly there after – on April 29 – the S&P500 reached it’s 2011 peak. The ECB hiked for the second time on July 7 and even signaled more rate hikes! Shortly thereafter S&P500 slumped. This obviously also coincided with the “euro crisis” flaring up once again.

September-December 2011: “Low for longer”, Operation twist and LTRO – cleaning up your own mess

The re-escalation of the European crisis got the Federal Reserve into action. On September 9 2011 the FOMC announced that it would keep interest rates low at least until 2013. Not exactly a policy that is in the spirit of Market Monetarism, but nonetheless a signal that the Fed acknowledged the need for monetary easing. Interestingly enough September 9 2011 was also the date where the three-month centered moving average of S&P500 bottomed out.

On September 21 2011 the Federal Reserve launched what has come to be known as Operation Twist. Once again this is certainly not a kind of monetary operation which is loved by Market Monetarists, but again at least it was an signal that the Fed acknowledged the need for monetary easing.

The Fed’s actions in September pretty much coincided with S&P500 starting a new up-leg. The recovery in S&P500 got further imputes after the ECB finally acknowledged a responsibility for cleaning up the mess after the two rate hikes earlier in 2011 and on December 8 the ECB introduced the so-called 3-year longer-term refinancing operations (LTRO).

The rally in S&P500 hence got more momentum after the introduction of the 3-year LTRO in December 2011 and the rally lasted until March-April 2012.

The present downturn: Have a look at ECB’s new collateral rules

We are presently in the midst of a new crisis and the media attention is on the Greek political situation and while the need for monetary policy easing in the euro zone finally seem to be moving up on the agenda there is still very little acknowledgement in the general debate about the monetary causes of this crisis. But again we can explain the last downturn in S&P500 by looking at monetary policy.

On March 23 the ECB moved to tighten the rules for banks’ use of assets as collateral. This basically coincided with the S&P500 reaching its peak for the year so far on March 19 and in the period that has followed numerous European central bankers have ruled out that there is a need for monetary easing (who are they kidding?)

Conclusion: its monetary disorder and not animal spirits

Above I have tried to show that the major ups and downs in the US stock markets since 2008 can be explained by changes monetary policy by the major central banks in the world. Hence, the volatility in the markets is a direct consequence of monetary policy failure rather than irrational investor behavior. Therefore, the best way to ensure stability in the financial markets is to ensure nominal stability through a rule based monetary policy. It is time for central banks to do some soul searching rather than blaming animal spirits.

This in no way is a full account of the causes of the Great Recession, but rather meant to show that changes in monetary policy – rather than animal spirits – are at the centre of market movements over the past four years. I have used the S&P500 to illustrate this, but a similar picture would emerge if the story was told with US or German bond yields, inflation expectations, commodity prices or exchange rates.

Appendix: Some Key monetary changes during the Great Recession

July 2008: ECB hikes interest rates

March-April 2009: Fed expand TAF and introduces dollar swap lines

January-April 2010: Swap lines expiry, Chinese monetary tightening and Fed raises discount rate

August 27 2010: Bernanke announces QE2

April and July 2011: The ECB hike interest rates twice

September-December 2011: Fed announces policy to keep rate very low until the end of 2013 and introduces “operation twist”. The ECB introduces the 3-year LTRO

March 2012: ECB tightens collateral rules

27 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, George Selgin, Keynes, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, QE, Scott Sumner, The euro, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 25, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/25/monetary-disorder-not-animal-spirits-caused-the-great-recession/

Fear-of-floating, misallocation and the law of comparative advantages

The first commandment of central banking should be thou shall not distort relative prices. However, central bankers often tend to forget this – knowingly or unknowingly. How often have we not heard stern warnings from central bankers that property prices are too high or too low – or that a currency is overvalued or undervalued. And in the last couple of years central bankers have even tried to manipulate the shape of the bond yield curve – just think of the Fed’s “operation twist”.

Central bankers are distorting relative prices in many ways – by for example by trying to prick bubbles (or what they think are bubbles). Sometimes the distortion of relative prices is done unknowingly. The best example of this is when central banks operate an inflation target. Both George Selgin and David Eagle teach us that inflation targeting means that central banks react to supply shocks and thereby distort relative prices. In an open economy this will lead to a distortion of the relative prices between trade goods and non-traded goods.

As I will show below central bankers’ eagerness to distort relative prices is as harmful as other distortions of relative prices for example as a result of protectionism and will often lead to numerous negative side-effects.

The fear-of-floating – the violation of the Law of comparative advantages

I have recently given a bit of attention to the concept of fear-of-floating. Despite being officially committed to floating exchange rates many central banks from time to time intervene in the FX markets to “manage” the currency. As I have earlier noted a good example is the Norwegian central bank (Norges Bank), which often has intervened either directly or verbally in the currency market or verbally to try to curb the strengthening of the Norwegian krone. In March for example Norges Bank surprisingly cut interest rates to curb the strengthening of the krone – despite the general macroeconomic situation really warranted a tightening of monetary conditions.

So why is Norge Bank so fearful of a truly free floating krone? The best explanation in the case of Norway is that the central bank’s fears that when oil prices rise then the Norwegian krone will strengthen and hence make the non-oil sectors in the economy less competitive. This is what happened in 2003 when a sharp appreciation of the krone cause an “exodus” of non-oil sector companies from Norway. Hence, there is no doubt that it is a sub-target of Norwegian monetary policy to ensure a “diversified” Norwegian economy. This policy is strongly supported by the Norwegian government’s other policies – for example massive government support for the agricultural sector. Norway is not a EU member – and believe it or not government subsidies for the agricultural sector is larger than in the EU!

However, in the same way as government subsidies for the agricultural sector distort economic allocation so do intervention in the currency market. However, while most economists agree that government subsidies for ailing industries is violating the law of comparative advantages and lead to a general economic lose in the form of lower productivity and less innovation few economists seem to be aware that the fear-of-floating (including indirect fear-of-floating via inflation targeting) have the same impact.

Lets look at an example. Let say that oil prices increase by 30% and that tend to strengthen the Norwegian krone. This is the same as to say that the demand curve in the oil sector has shifted to the right. This will increase the demand for labour and capital in the oil sector. In a freely mobile labour market this will push up salaries both in the oil sector and in the none-oil sector. Hence, the none-oil sector will become less competitive – both as a result of higher labour and capital costs, but also because of a stronger krone. As a consequence labour and capital will move from the non-oil sector to the oil sector. Most economists would agree that this is a natural market process that ensures the most productive and profitable use of economic resources. As David Ricardo taught us long ago – countries should produce the goods in which the country has a comparative advantage. The unhampered market mechanism ensures this.

However, if the central bank suffers from fear-of-floating then the central bank will intervene to curb the strengthening of the krone. This has two consequences. First, the increase in profitability in the oil sector will be smaller than it would have been had the krone been allowed to strengthen. This would also mean that the increase in demand for capital and labour in the oil sector would be smaller than it would have been if the krone had been allowed to float completely freely (or had been pegged to the oil price). Second, this would mean that the “scaling down” of the non-oil sector will be smaller than otherwise would have been the case – and as a result this sector will demand too much labour and capital relative to what is economically optimal. This is exactly what the central bank would like to see. However, I think the example pretty clearly shows that such as policy is violating the law of comparative advantages. Relative prices are distorted and as a result the total economic output and welfare will be smaller than would have been the case under a freely floating currency.

It is often argued that if the oil price is very volatile and the krone (or another oil-exporting country’s currency) therefore would be more volatile and as a consequence the non-oil sector will see large swings in economic activity and it would be in the interest of the central bank to reduce this volatility and thereby stabilise the development in the non-oil sector. However, this completely misses the point with free markets. Prices should be allowed to adjust to ensure an efficient allocation of capital and labour. If you intervene in the market process allocation of resources will be less efficient.

Furthermore, the central bank cannot permanently distort relative prices. If the currency is kept artificially weak by easier monetary policy it will just inflated the entire economy – and as a result capital and labour cost will increase – as will inflation – and sooner or later the competitive advantage created by an artificially weak currency will be gradually eaten by higher prices and wages. In an economy where wages and prices are downward rigid – as surely is the case in the Norwegian economy – this will created major adjustment problems if oil prices drops sharply especially if the central bank also try to curb the weakening of the currency (as the Russian central bank did in 2008). Hence, by trying to dampen the swings in the FX rates the central bank will actually move the adjustment process from the FX markets (which is highly flexible) to the much less flexible labour and good markets. So even though the central bank might want to curb the volatility in economic activity in the non-oil sector it will actually rather increase the general level of volatility in the economy. In an economy with fully flexible prices and wages the manipulation of the FX rate would not be a problem. However, if for example wages are downward rigid because interventionist labour market policy as it is the case in Norway then a policy of curbing the volatility in the FX rate quite obviously (to me at least) leads to lower productivity and higher volatility in both nominal and rate variables.

I have used the Norwegian economy as an example. I should stress that I might as well have used for example Brazil or Russia – as the central banks in these countries to a much larger degree than Norges Bank suffers from a fear-of-floating. I could in fact also have used the ECB as the ECB indirectly suffers from a fear-of-floating as the ECB is targeting inflation.

I am not aware of any research on the consequences for productivity of fear-of-floating, but I am sure it could be an interesting area of research – I wonder if Norge Banks is aware how big the productive lose in the Norwegian economy has been due to it’s policy of curbing oil price driven swings in the krone. I am pretty sure that the Russian central bank and the Brazilian central bank have not given this much thought at all. Neither has most other Emerging Market central banks that frequently intervenes in the FX markets. 

PS do I need to say how to avoid these problems? Yes you guessed right – NGDP level targeting or by pegging the currency to the oil price. If you want to stay with in a inflation targeting framework then central bank central bank should at least target domestic demand inflation or what I earlier inspired by David Eagle has termed Quasi-Real inflation (QRPI).

PS Today I am spending my day in London – I wrote this on the flight. I bet a certain German central banker will be high on the agenda in my meetings with clients…

8 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Eagle, Exchange rate policy, Exchange rates, Fear-of-floating, Financial markets, George Selgin, Norway, Quasi-Real Price Index, Russia
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 9, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/09/fear-of-floating-misallocation-and-the-law-of-comparative-advantages/

Hjalmar Schacht’s echo – it all feels a lot more like 1932 than 1923

The weekend’s Greek elections brought a neo-nazi party (“Golden Dawn”) into the Greek parliament. The outcome of the Greek elections made me think about the German parliament elections in July 1932 which gave a stunning victory to Hitler’s nazi party. The Communist Party and other extreme leftist also did well in the Greek elections as they did in Germany in 1932. I am tempted to say that fascism is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. At least that was the case in Germany in 1932 as it is today in Greece. And as in 1932 central bankers does not seem to realise the connection between monetary strangulation and the rise of extremist political forces.

The rise of Hitler in 1932 was to a large extent a result of the deflationary policies of the German Reichbank under the leadership of the notorious Hjalmar Schacht who later served in Hitler’s government as Economics Ministers.

Schacht was both a hero and a villain. He successfully ended the 1923 German hyperinflation, but he also was a staunch supporter of the gold standard which lead to massive German deflation that laid the foundation for Hitler’s rise to power. After Hitler’s rise to power Schacht helped implement draconian policies, which effectively turned Germany into a planned economy that lead to the suffering of millions of Germans and he was instrumental in bringing in policies to support Hitler’s rearmament policies. However, he also played a (minor) role in the German resistance movement to Hitler.

The good and bad legacy of Hjalmar Schacht is a reminder that central bankers can do good and bad, but also that central bankers very seldom will admit when they make mistakes. This is what Matthew Yglesias in a blog post from last year called the Perverse Reputational Incentives In Central Banking.

Here is Matt:

I was reading recently in Hjalmar Schacht’s biography Confessions of the Old Wizard … and part of what’s so incredible about it are that Schacht’s two great achievements—the Weimar-era whipping of hyperinflation and the Nazi-era whipping of deflation—were both so easy. The both involved, in essence, simply deciding that the central bank actually wanted to solve the problem.

To step back to the hyperinflation. You might ask yourself how things could possibly have gotten that bad. And the answer really just comes down to refusal to admit that a mistake had been made. To halt the inflation, the Reichsbank would have to stop printing money. But once the inflation had gotten too high for Reichsbank President Rudolf Havenstein to stop printing money and stop the inflation would be an implicit admission that the whole thing had been his fault in the first place and he should have done it earlier…

…So things continued for several years until a new government brought Schacht on as a sort of currency czar. Schacht stopped the private issuance of money, launched a new land-backed currency and simply . . . refused to print too much of it. The problem was solved both very quickly and very easily…

…The institutional and psychological problem here turns out to be really severe. If the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee were to take strong action at its next meeting and put the United States on a path to rapid catch-up growth, all that would do is serve to vindicate the position of the Fed’s critics that it’s been screwing up for years now. Rather than looking like geniuses for solving the problem, they would look like idiots for having let it fester so long. By contrast, if you were to appoint an entirely new team then their reputational incentives would point in the direction of fixing the problem as soon as possible.

Matt is of course very right. Central banks and central banks alone determines inflation, deflation, the price level and nominal GDP. Therefore central banks are responsible if we get hyperinflation, debt-deflation or a massive drop in nominal GDP. However, central bankers seem to think that they are only in control of these factors when they are “on track”, but once the nominal variables move “off track” then it is the mistake of speculators, labour unions or irresponsible politicians. Just think of how Fed chief Arthur Burns kept demanding wage and price controls in the early 1970s to curb inflationary pressures he created himself by excessive money issuance.  The credo seems to be that central bankers are never to blame.

Here is today’s German central bank governor Jens Weidmann in comment in today’s edition of the Financial Times:

Contrary to widespread belief, monetary policy is not a panacea and central banks’ firepower is not unlimited, especially not in the monetary union. First, to protect their independence central banks in the eurozone face clear constraints to the risks they are allowed to take.

…Second, unconditional further easing would ignore the lessons learned from the financial crisis.

This crisis is exceptional in scale and scope and extraordinary times do call for extraordinary measures. But we have to make sure that by putting out the fire now, we are not unwittingly preparing the ground for the next one. The medicine of a near-zero interest rate policy combined with large-scale intervention in financial markets does not come without side effects – which are all the more severe, the longer the drug is administered.

I don’t feel like commenting more on Weidmann’s comments (you can pretty well guess what I think…), but I do note that German long-term bond yields today have inch down further and is now at record low levels. Normally long-term bond yields and NGDP growth tend to move more or less in sync – so with German government 10-year bond yields at 1.5% we can safely say that the markets are not exactly afraid of inflation. Or said in another way, if ECB deliver 2% inflation in line with its inflation target over the coming decade then you will be loosing 1/2% every year by holding German government bonds. This is not exactly an indication that we are about to repeat the mistakes of the Reichbank in 1923, but rather an indication that we are in the process of repeating the mistakes of 1932. The Greek election is sad testimony to that.

PS David Glasner comments also comments on Jens Weidmann. He is not holding back…

PPS Scott Sumner today compares the newly elected French president Francois Hollande with Léon Blum. I have been having been thinking the same thing. Léon Blum served as French Prime Minister from June 1936 to June 1937. Blum of course gave up the gold standard in 1936 and allowed a 25% devaluation of the French franc. While most of Blum’s economic policies were grossly misguided the devaluation of the franc nonetheless did the job – the French economy started a gradual recovery. Unfortunately at that time the gold standard had already destroyed Europe’s economy and the next thing that followed was World War II. I wonder if central bankers ever study history…They might want to start with Adam Tooze’s Wages of Destruction.

Update: See Matt O’Brien’s story on “Europe’s FDR? How France’s New President Could Save Europe”. Matt is making the same point as me – just a lot more forcefully.

24 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 8, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Glasner, Deflation, ECB, Economic and monetary history, euro crisis, Financial markets, Gold Standard, Greece, Hjalmar Schacht, Scott Sumner, The euro, The Great Depression, The Great Recession
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 8, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/08/hjalmar-schachts-echo-it-all-feels-a-lot-more-like-1932-than-1923/

Forget about those black swans

It has become highly fashionable to talk about “black swans” since the crisis began in 2008 and now even Scott Sumner talks about it in his recent post “Don’t forget about those black swans”. Ok, Scott is actually not obsessed with black swans, but his headline reminded me how much focus there is on “black swans” these days – especially among central bankers and regulators and to some extent also among market participants.

What is a black swan? The black swan theory was popularized by Nassim Taleb in 2007 book “The Black Swan”. Taleb’s idea basically is that the financial markets underprice the risk of extreme events happening. Taleb obviously felt vindicated when crisis hit in 2008. The extreme event happened and it had clearly not been priced by the market in advance.

Lets go back to back to Scott’s post. Here he quotes Matt Yglesias:

Here’s a fun Intrade price anomaly that showed up this morning. The markets indicate that there’s more than a 3 percent chance that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney will win the presidential election. That’s clearly way too high.

Scott then counter Matt by saying that we should not forget “something unusual happening”:

1.  One of the two major candidates is assassinated, and the replacement is elected (as in Mexico’s 1994 election.)

2.  Ditto, except one pulls out due to health problems, or scandal.

3.  A third party candidate comes out of nowhere to get elected.

Scott is of course right. All this could happen and as a consequence it would obviously be wrong if the market had price a 100% chance that nobody else than Obama or Romney would become US president.

Scott and I tend to think that financial markets are (more or less) efficient and as a consequence we would not be gambling men. Scott nonetheless seem to think that the odds are good:

“But 3% is low odds.  It’s basically saying once in ever 130 years you’d expect something really weird to happen in US presidential politics during an election year.   That’s a long time!  Given all the weird things that have happened, how unlikely is it?  Some might counter that none of the three scenarios I’ve outlined have occurred in the US during an election year (my history is weak so I’m not certain.)  But mind-bogglingly unusual things have happened on occasion.  On November 10, 1972, what kind of odds would Intrade have given on neither Nixon nor Agnew being President on January 1 1975?”

Scott certainly have a good point, but I will not question the market on this one. The market pricing is the best assessment of risk we have. If not there would be money in street ready to pick up for anybody – and there is not. Obviously Taleb disagrees as he believe that markets tend to underprice risk. However, I fundamentally think that Taleb is wrong and I don’t see much evidence that market underprice black swan events. The fact that rare events happen is not evidence that the market on average underprice the likelihood of this events.

The fashion long-shot bias and central banks

In the evidence from betting markets seem to indicate that if anything bettors tend to have a favourite-longshot bias meaning that they tend to overprice the likelihood that the favourite will loose elections or sport games. Said in another way if anything bettors tend to overprice the likelihood of a black swan events. I happen to think that this is not a market problem in markets in general, but it nonetheless indicates that if anything the problem is too much focus on black swan events rather than too little focus on them.

This to a very large extent has been the case of the past 4 years – especially in regard to central banking and banking regulation. There seem to be a near-obsession among some policy makers that a new black swan could turn up. How often have we heard the talk about the major risk of bubbles if interest rates are kept too low too long and most of the new financial regulation being push through across the world these days is justified by reference to the risk of some kind of black swan event.

Media and policy makers in my view have become obsessed with extreme events happening – you will be reminded about that every time you go through the security check in any airport in the world.

The obsession with black swan events is highly problematic as the cost of policy makers obsessing about very unlikely events happening lead them to implement very costly regulation that lead to massive waste of resources. Again just think about how many hours you have spend waiting to get through airport security over the last couple of years and if you think that is bad just think of the cost resulting from excessive new regulation of the global financial markets. So my suggestion is clearly to forget about those black swans!

Finally three book recommendations:

Risk by Dan Gardner that tells about the “politics of fear” (of black swans).

The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan explains why democracy tend to lead to irrationality while market lead to rationality. Said in another way policy makers would be more prone to focus on black swans than market participants in free markets would be.

Risk, Uncertain and Profit – Frank Knight’s classic. If you are really interested in the issues of risk and uncertainty then there is no reason at all to read Taleb’s books (I have read both The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness – they are “fun” and something you can read while you are waitin in line at the security check in the airport, but it is certainly not Nobel prize material). Instead just read Knight’s classic. It is much more insightful. It is actually something that frustrates me a great deal about Taleb’s books – there is really nothing new in what he is saying, but he claims to have come up with everything himself.

4 Comments
by Lars Christensen on May 4, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Efficient-Market Hypothesis, Financial markets, Reading recommendations, Scott Sumner
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 4, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/04/forget-about-those-black-swans/

Higher oil prices and higher bond yields – good or bad news?

Recently (since December) we have seen US bond yields start to inch up and at the same time oil prices (and other commodity prices) have also inched up. This seem to be a great worry to some commentators – “Higher oil prices and higher bond yields will kill the fragile recovery” seem to be the credo of the day. This, however, reveals that many commentators – including some economists – have a hard time with basic demand-and-supply analysis. Said, in another way they seem to have a problem distinguishing between moving the supply curve and moving the demand curve along the supply curve.

Oil prices can increase for two reasons. First, oil prices can increase because there has been a drop in the supply of oil or expectations that that will happen in the future – for example due to war somewhere in the Middle East. Or second oil prices can increase because of increased global demand due to easier monetary conditions globally (an increase in global NGDP growth). The first effect is a move of the supply curve to the left. The second is move on the supply curve. This difference is extremely important when we talk about the impact on the global economy – first is bad news and the second is good news for the global economy.

What we need to know when we look at market action is to know why asset prices are moving and the best way to do that is to compare how different asset markets are moving.

As I have shown in my previous post higher long-term bond yields is an indication of higher future growth in nominal GDP. Therefore, if both oil prices and long term bond yields are inching upwards then it is probably a pretty good indication that monetary conditions are getting easier – and NGDP growth is expected to increase. To further confirm this is might be useful to look at equity prices – if global equity prices also are inching upward then I think one can safely say that that reflect a shift in the global AD curve to the right – hence global NGDP growth is expected to increase. This actually seem to be what have been happening since the ECB introduced the so-called 3-year LTRO in December.

On the other hand if oil prices continue to rise, but equity prices start to decline and bond yields inch down – then it is normally a pretty good indication that a negative supply shock just hit the global economy. That, however, does not seem to be the case right now.

I continue to find it odd that so many economists are not able to use the most useful tool in the the economist’s toolbox – the supply-and-demand diagram. It is really pretty simple. However, how often have we not heard that rising inflation will hurt the consumer and kill the recovery? This is really the same story. Inflation can increase because of higher nominal demand or because of lower supply. If demand is increasing – monetary conditions are becoming easier – then there really is no need to worry about the recovery. In fact we know that there is a close positive correlation between NGDP growth and RGDP growth in the short-run so any indication of higher NGDP growth in the present situation should really be expected to lead to higher RGDP growth.

So next time you hear somebody say that higher oil prices or higher bond yields might kill the recovery ask them to explain what they mean in a demand-and-supply diagram. If they move the supply curve to the left – then you need to ask them how they explain that global stock prices have been increasing as well…of course is stock prices indeed been falling then their analysis is of course correct…

PS needless to say we can of course have a situation where both the supply curve and the demand curve is moving at the same time. This often happens when central banks are unable to distinguishing between demand and supply shock. Hence, if inflation increase due to a negative supply shock as was the case in 2011 and then central banks react by tightening monetary conditions as the ECB did in 2011 then you get both the supply curve and the curve moving…(The ECB obviously made this policy mistake because somebody forgot to draw supply-and-demand diagrams…).

UPDATE: Our friend Jason Rave has a comment on a similar topic over at his blog Macro Matters. As me Jason is not worried about rising oil prices if they indeed do reflect higher global demand.

9 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 21, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Financial markets, General economic theory, Inflation, Monetary policy
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 21, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/21/higher-oil-prices-and-higher-bond-yields-good-or-bad-news/

Understanding financial markets with MV=PY – a look at the bond market

Recently I have been thinking whether it would be possible to understand all financial market price action through the lens of the equation of exchange – MV=PY. In post I take a look at the bond market.

The bond market – its about PY expectations

A common misunderstanding among economic commentators is to equate easy monetary conditions with low bond yields. However, Milton Friedman long ago told us that bond yields are low when monetary policy have been tight – and not when it has been loose. Any Market Monetarist will tell you that monetary conditions are getting easier when nominal GDP growth is accelerating and and getting tighter when NGDP growth is slowing. So with this Friedmanite and market monetarist insight in mind there should be a relationship between higher bond yields and higher nominal GDP growth. Hence, when market participants expect MV to increase then we should also see bond yields increase.

The graph above shows the correlation between 10-year US bond yields and US NGDP growth. The graph illustrates that there is a fairly close correlation between the two series. Higher bond yields and higher NGDP hence seem to go hand in hand and as we know MV=PY we can conclude that higher bond yields is an indication of looser monetary policy. Furthermore, we should expect to see bond yields to increase – rather than decrease – when monetary policy is eased. Or said in another way – any monetary action that does not lead to an increase in bond yields should not be considered to be monetary easing. 

Therefore, given the present slump we are in we should not be worried that rising bond yields will kill off the recovery – rather we should rejoice when long-term bond yields are rising because that is the best indictor that monetary conditions are becoming easer and that that will push up nominal GDP.

The brief discussion above in my view confirms some key market monetarist positions. First, financial markets are good indicators of the stance of monetary policy. Second, monetary policy works through expectations – with long and variable leads. Third low bond yields is an indication that monetary policy has been tight and not that it is loose.

UPDATE: In my original post I had used some wrong data. Clare Zempel kindly notified me about the mistake(s). I am grateful for the help. As a consequence of the wrong data I have revised part of the original text.

UPDATE 2: David Beckworth has an excellent post arguing the exactly the same as me: “the recent rise in long-term yields can be interpreted as the bond market pricing in a rise in the expected growth of aggregate demand.”. And take a look at David’s graph showing the relationship between expected NGDP growth and 10-year bond yields. Great stuff!

19 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Economic and monetary history, Efficient-Market Hypothesis, Financial markets, Milton Friedman, MV=PY
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 20, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/20/understanding-financial-markets-with-mvpy-a-look-at-the-bond-market/

Chuck Norris just pushed S&P500 above 1400

Today S&P500 closed above 1400 for the first time since June 2008. Hence, the US stock market is now well above the levels when Lehman Brothers collapsed in October 2008. So in terms of the US stock market at least the crisis is over. Obviously that can hardly be said for the labour market situation in the US and most European stock markets are still well below the levels of 2008.

So what have happened? Well, I think it is pretty clear that monetary policy has become more easy. Stock prices are up, commodity prices are rising and recently US long-term bond yields have also started to increase. As David Glasner notices in a recent post – the correlation between US stock prices and bond yields is now positive. This is how it used to be during the Great Moderation and is actually an indication that central banks are regaining some credibility.

By credibility I mean that market participants now are beginning to expect that central banks will actually again provide some nominal stability. This have not been directly been articulated. But remember during the Great Moderation the Federal Reserve never directly articulated that it de facto was following a NGDP level target, but as Josh Hendrickson has shown that is exactly what it actually did – and market participants knew that (even though most market participants might not have understood the bigger picture). As a commenter on my blog recently argued (central banks’) credibility is earned with long and variable lags (thank you Steve!). Said in another way one thing is nominal targets and other thing is to demonstrate that you actually are willing to do everything to achieve this target and thereby make the target credible.

Since December 8 when the ECB de facto introduced significant quantitative easing via it’s so-called 3-year LTRO market sentiment has changed. Rightly or wrongly market participants seem to think that the ECB has changed it’s reaction function. While the fear in November-December was that the ECB would not react to the sharp deflationary tendencies in the euro zone it is now clear that the ECB is in fact willing to ease monetary policy. I have earlier shown that the 3y LTRO significantly has reduced the the likelihood of a euro blow up. This has sharply reduced the demand for save haven currencies – particularly for the US dollars, but also the yen and the Swiss franc. Lower dollar demand is of course the same as a (passive) easing of US monetary conditions. You can say that the ECB has eased US monetary policy! This is the opposite of what happened in the Autumn of 2010 when the Fed’s QE2 effectively eased European monetary conditions.

Furthermore, we have actually had a change in a nominal target as the Bank of Japan less than a month ago upped it’s inflation target from 0% to 1% – thereby effectively telling the markets that the bank will step up monetary easing. The result has been clear – just have a look at the slide in the yen over the last month. Did the Bank of Japan announce a massive new QE programme? No it just called in Chuck Norris! This is of course the Chuck Norris effect in play – you don’t have to print money to see monetary policy if you are a credible central bank with a credible target.

So both the ECB and the BoJ has demonstrated that they want to move monetary policy in a more accommodative direction and the financial markets have reacted. The markets seem to think that the major global central banks indeed want to avoid a deflationary collapse and recreate nominal stability. We still don’t know if the markets are right, but I tend to think they are. Yes, neither the Fed nor the ECB have provide a clear definition of their nominal targets, but the Bank of Japan has clearly moved closer.

Effective the signal from the major global central banks is yes, we know monetary policy is potent and we want to use monetary policy to increase NGDP. This is at least how market participants are reading the signals – stock prices are up, so are commodity prices and most important inflation expectations and bond yields are increasing. This is basically the same as saying that money demand in the US, Europe and Japan is declining. Lower money demand equals higher money velocity and remember (if you had forgot) MV=PY. So with unchanged money supply (M) higher V has to lead to higher NGDP (PY). This is the Chuck Norris effect – the central banks don’t need to increase the money base/supply if they can convince market participants that they want an higher NGDP – the markets are doing all the lifting. Furthermore, it should be noted that the much feared global currency war is also helping ease global monetary conditions.

This obviously is very good news for the global economy and if the central banks do not panic once inflation and growth start to inch up and reverse the (passive) easing of monetary policy then it is my guess we could be in for a rather sharp recovery in global growth in the coming quarters. But hey, my blog is not about forecasting markets or the global economy – I do that in my day-job – but what we are seeing in the markets these days to me is a pretty clear indication of how powerful the Chuck Norris effect can be.  If central banks just could realise that and announced much more clear nominal targets then this crisis could be over very fast…

————-

PS For the record this is not investment advise and should not be seen as such, but rather as an attempt to illustrate how the monetary transmission mechanism works through expectations and credibility.

PPS a similar story…this time from my day-job.

10 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 15, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in David Glasner, ECB, Efficient-Market Hypothesis, euro crisis, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, Guido Mantega, Inflation Targeting, Japan, Josh Hendrickson, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, The euro, The Great Moderation, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism, Uncategorized, Velocity
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on March 15, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/15/chuck-norris-just-pushed-sp500-above-1400/

Long and variable leads and lags

Scott Sumner yesterday posted a excellent overview of some key Market Monetarist positions. I initially thought I would also write a comment on what I think is the main positions of Market Monetarism but then realised that I already done that in my Working Paper on Market Monetarism from last year – “Market  Monetarism – The  Second  Monetarist  Counter-­revolution”. 

My fundamental view is that I personally do not mind being called an monetarist rather than a Market Monetarist even though I certainly think that Market Monetarism have some qualities that we do not find in traditional monetarism, but I fundamentally think Market Monetarism is a modern restatement of Monetarism rather than something fundamentally new.

I think the most important development in Market Monetarism is exactly that we as Market Monetarists stress the importance of expectations and how expectations of monetary policy can be read directly from market pricing. At the core of traditional monetarism is the assumption of adaptive expectations. However, today all economists acknowledge that economic agents (at least to some extent) are forward-looking and personally I have no problem in expressing that in the form of rational expectations – a view that Scott agrees with as do New Keynesians. However, unlike New Keynesian we stress that we can read these expectations directly from financial market pricing – stock prices, bond yields, commodity prices and exchange rates. Hence, by looking at changes in market pricing we can see whether monetary policy is becoming tighter or looser. This also has to do with our more nuanced view of the monetary transmission mechanism than is found among mainstream economists – including New Keynesians. As Scott express it:

Like monetarists, we assume many different transmission channels, not just interest rates.  Money affects all sorts of asset prices.  One slight difference from traditional monetarism is that we put more weight on the expected future level of NGDP, and hence the expected future hot potato effect.  Higher expected future NGDP tends to increase current AD, and current NGDP.

This is basically also the reason why Scott has stressed that monetary policy works with long and variable leads rather than with long and variable lags as traditionally expressed by Milton Friedman. In my view there is however really no conflict between the two positions and both are possible dependent on the institutional set-up in a given country at a given time.

Imagine the typical monetary policy set-up during the 1960s or 1970s when Friedman was doing research on monetary matters. During this period monetary policy clearly was missing a nominal anchor. Hence, there was no nominal target for monetary policy. Monetary policy was highly discretionary. In this environment it was very hard for market participants to forecast what policies to expect from for example the Federal Reserve. In fact in the 1960s and 1970s the Fed would not even bother to announce to market participant that it had changed monetary policy – it would simply just change the policy – for example interest rates. Furthermore, as the Fed was basically not communicating directly with the markets market participant would have to guess why a certain policy change had been implemented. As a result in such an institutional set-up market participants basically by default would have backward-looking expectations and would only gradually learn about what the Fed was trying to achieve. In such a set-up monetary policy nearly by definition would work with long and variable lags.

Contrary to this is the kind of set-up we had during the Great Moderation. Even though the Federal Reserve had not clearly formulated its policy target (it still hasn’t) market participants had a pretty good idea that the Fed probably was targeting the nominal GDP level or followed a kind of Taylor rule and market participants rarely got surprised by policy changes. Hence, market participants could reasonably deduct from economic and financial developments how policy would be change in the future. During this period monetary policy basically became endogenous. If NGDP was above trend then market participant would expect that monetary policy would be tightened. That would increase money demand and push down money-velocity and push up short-term interest rates. Often the Fed would even hint in what direction monetary policy was headed which would move stock prices, commodity prices, the exchange rates and bond yields in advance for any actual policy change. A good example of this dynamics is what we saw during early 2001. As a market participant I remember that the US stock market would rally on days when weak US macroeconomic data were released as market participants priced in future monetary easing. Hence, during this period monetary policy clear worked with long and variable leads.

In fact if we lived in a world of perfectly credible NGDP level targeting monetary policy would be fully automatic and probably monetary easing and tightening would happen through changes in money demand rather than through changes in the money base. In such a world the lead in monetary policy would be extremely short. This is the Market Monetarist dream world. In fact we could say that not only is “long and variable leads” a description of how the world is, but a normative position of how it should be.

Concluding there is no conflict between whether monetary policy works with long and variable leads or lags, but rather this is strictly dependent on the monetary policy regime and how monetary policy is implemented. A key problem in both the ECB’s and the Fed’s present policies today is that both central banks are far from clear about what nominal targets they have and how to achieve it – in some ways we are back to the pre-Great Moderation days of policy uncertainty. As a consequence market participants will only gradually learn about what the central bank’s real policy objectives are and therefore there is clearly an element of long and variable lags in monetary policy. However, if the Fed tomorrow announced that it would aim to increase NGDP by 15% by the end of 2013 and it would try to achieve that by buying unlimited amounts of foreign currency I am pretty sure we would swiftly move to a world of instantaneously working monetary policy – hence we would move from a quasi-Friedmanian world to a Sumnerian world.

Without rules we live in Friedmanian world – with clear nominal targets we live live in Sumnerian world.

PS Today is a Sumnerian day – hints from both the Fed and the ECB about possible monetary tightening is leading to monetary policy tightening today. Just take a look at US stock markets…(Ok, Greek worries is also playing apart, but that is passive monetary tightening as dollar demand increases)

15 Comments
by Lars Christensen on March 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in ECB, Economic and monetary history, Efficient-Market Hypothesis, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, Milton Friedman, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, Monetary policy rules, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Reading recommendations, Scott Sumner, The Great Moderation, The Great Recession, Transmission mechanism
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on March 6, 2012

https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/03/06/long-and-variable-leads-and-lags/

The Compensated dollar and monetary policy in small open economies

It is Christmas time and I am spending time with the family so it is really not the time for blogging, but just a little note about something I have on my mind – Irving Fisher’s Compensated dollar plan and how it might be useful in today’s world – especially for small open economies.

I am really writing on a couple of other blog posts at the moment that I will return to in the coming days and weeks, but Irving Fisher is hard to let go of. First of all I need to finalise my small series on modern US monetary history through the lens of Quasi-Real Indexing and then I am working on a post on bubbles (that might in fact turn into a numbers of posts). So stay tuned for these posts.

Back to the Compensated dollar plan. I have always been rather skeptical about fixed exchange rate regimes even though I acknowledge that they have worked well in some countries and at certain times. My dislike of fixed exchange rates originally led me to think that then one should advocate floating exchange rates and I certainly still think that a free floating exchange rate regime is much preferable to a fixed exchange rate regime for a country like the US. However, the present crisis have made me think twice about floating exchange rates – not because I think floating exchange rates have done any harm in this crisis. Countries like Sweden, Australia, Canada, Poland and Turkey have all benefitted a great deal from having floating exchange rates in this crisis. However, exchange rates are really the true price of money (or rather the relative price of monies). Unlike the interest rate which is certainly NOT – contrary to popular believe – the price of money. Therefore, if we want to change the price of money then the most direct way to do that is through the exchange rate.

As a consequence I also come to think that variations of Fisher’s proposal could be an idea for small open economies – especially as these countries typically have less developed financial markets and due to financial innovation – in especially Emerging Markets – have a hard time controlling the domestic money supply. Furthermore, a key advantage of using the exchange rate to conduct monetary policy is that there is no “lower zero bound” on the exchange rate as is the case with interest rates and the central bank can effectively “circumvent” the financial sector in the conduct of monetary policy – something which is likely to be an advantage when there is a financial crisis.

The Compensated dollar plan 

But lets first start out by revisiting Fisher’s compensated dollar plan. Irving Fisher first suggested the compensated dollar plan in 1911 in his book The Purchasing Power of Money. The idea is that the dollar (Fisher had a US perspective) should be fixed to the price of gold, but the price should be adjustable to ensure a stable level of purchasing power for the dollar (zero inflation). Fisher starts out by defining a price index (equal to what we today we call a consumer price index) at 100. Then Fisher defines the target for the central bank as 100 for this index – so if the index increases above 100 then monetary policy should be tightened – and vis-a-vis if the index drops. This is achieved by a proportional adjustment of  the US rate vis-a-vis the the gold prices. So it the consumer price index increase from 100 to 101 the central bank intervenes to strengthen the dollar by 1% against gold. Ideally – and in my view also most likely – this system will ensure stable consumer prices and likely provide significant nominal stability.

Irving Fisher campaigned unsuccessfully for his proposals for years and despite the fact that is was widely discussed it was not really given a chance anywhere. However, Sweden in the 1930s implemented a quasi-compensated dollar plan and as a result was able to stabilize Swedish consumer prices in the 1930s. This undoubtedly was the key reason why Sweden came so well through the Great Depression. I am very certain that had the US had a variation of the compensated dollar plan in place in 2008-9 then the crisis in the global economy wold have been much smaller.

Three reservations about the Compensated dollar plan

There is no doubt that the Compensated dollar plan fits well into Market Monetarist thinking. It uses market prices (the exchange rate and gold prices) in the conduct of monetary policy rather than a monetary aggregate, it is strictly ruled based and it ensures a strong nominal anchor.

From a Market Monetarists perspective I, however, have three reservations about the idea.

First, the plan is basically a price level targeting plan (with zero inflation) rather than a plan to target nominal spending/income (NGDP targeting). This is clearly preferable to inflation targeting, but nonetheless fails to differentiate between supply and demand inflation and as such still risk leading to misallocation and potential bubbles. This is especially relevant for Emerging Markets, which undergoes significant structural changes and therefore continuously is “hit” by a number of minor and larger supply shocks.

Second, the plan is based on a backward-looking target rather than on a forward-looking target – where is the price level today rather than where is the price level tomorrow? In stable times this is not a major problem, but in a time of shocks to the economy and the financial system this might become a problem. How big this problem is in reality is hard to say.

Finally third, the fact that the plan uses only one commodity price as an “anchor” might become a problem. As Robert Hall among other have argued it would be preferable to use a basket of commodities as an anchor instead and he has suggest the so-called ANCAP standard where the anchor is a basket of Ammonium Nitrate, Copper, Aluminum and Plywood.

Exchange rate based NGDP targeting for small-open economies

If we take this reservations into account we get to a proposal for an exchange rate based NGDP target regime which I believe would be particularly suiting for small open economies and Emerging Markets. I have in an earlier post spelled out the proposal – so I am repeating myself here, but I think the idea is worth it.

My suggestion is that it the the small open economy (SOE) announces that it will peg a growth path for NGDP (or maybe for nominal wages as data might be faster available than NGDP data) of for example 5% a year and it sets the index at 100 at the day of the introduction of the new monetary regime. Instead of targeting the gold price it could choose to either to “peg” the currency against a basket of other currencies – for example the 3-4 main trading partners of the country – or against a basket of commodities (I would prefer the CRB index which is pretty closely correlated with global NGDP growth).

Thereafter the central bank should every month announce a monthly rate of depreciation/appreciation of the currency against the anchor for the coming 24-36 month in the same way as most central banks today announces interest rate decisions. The target of course would be to “hit” the NGDP target path within a certain period. The rule could be fully automatic or there could be allowed for some discretion within the overall framework. Instead of using historical NGDP the central bank naturally should use some forecast for NGDP (for example market consensus or the central bank’s own forecast).

It could be done, but will anybody dare?

Central bankers are conservative people and they don’t go around and change their monetary policy set-up on a daily basis. Nonetheless it might be time for central banks around the world to reconsider their current set-up as monetary policy far from having been successfully in recent years. I believe Irving Fisher’s Compensated dollar plan is an excellent place to start and I have provided a (simple) proposal for how small-open economies might implement it.

7 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 26, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Economic and monetary history, Emerging Markets, Exchange rate policy, Exchange rates, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, General economic theory, Gold prices, Gold Standard, Irving Fisher, The Great Depression, The Great Recession
Tagged , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on December 26, 2011

https://marketmonetarist.com/2011/12/26/the-compensated-dollar-and-monetary-policy-in-small-open-economies/

Monetary policy can’t fix all problems

You say that when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Reading the Market Monetarist blogs including my own one could easing come to the conclusion that we are the “hammer boys” that scream at any problem out there “NGDP targeting will fix it!” However, nothing can be further from the truth.

Unlike keynesians Market Monetarists do think that monetary policy should be used to “solve” some problems with “market failure”. Rather we believe that monetary policy should avoid creating problems on it own. That is why we want central banks to follow a clearly defined policy rule and as we think recessions as well as bad inflation/deflation (primarily) are results of misguided monetary policies rather than of market failures we don’t think of monetary policy as a hammer.

Rather we believe in Selgin’s Monetary Credo:

“The goal of monetary policy ought to be that of avoiding unnatural fluctuations in output…while refraining from interfering with fluctuations that are “natural.” That means having a single mandate only, where that mandate calls for the central bank to keep spending stable, and then tolerate as optimal, if it does not actually welcome, those changes in P and y that occur despite that stability“

So monetary policy determines nominal variables – nominal spending/NGDP, nominal wages, the price level, exchange rates and inflation. We also clearly acknowledges that monetary policy can have real impact – in the short-run the Phillips curve is not vertical so monetary policy can push real GDP above the structural level of GDP and reduce unemployment temporarily. But the long-run Phillips curve certainly is vertical. However, unlike Keynesians we do not see a need to “play” this short-term trade off. It is correct that NGDP targeting probably also would be very helpful in a New Keynesian world, however, we are not starting our analysis at some “social welfare function” that needs to be maximized – there is not a Phillips curve trade off on which policy makers should choose some “optimal” combination of inflation and unemployment – as for example John Taylor basically claims. In that sense Market Monetarists certainly have much more faith in the power of the free market than John Talyor (and that might come to a surprise to conservative and libertarian critics of Market Monetarism…).

What we, however, do indeed argue is that if you commit mistakes you fix it yourself and that also goes for central banks. So if a central bank directly or indirectly (through it’s historical actions) has promised to deliver a certain nominal target then it better deliver and if it fails to do so it better correct the mistake as soon as possible. So when the Federal Reserve through its actions during the Great Moderation basically committed itself and “promised” to US households, corporations and institutions etc. that it would deliver 5% NGDP growth year in and year out and then suddenly failed to so in 2008/9 then it committed a policy mistake. It was not a market failure, but rather a failure of monetary policy. That failure the Fed obviously need to undo. So when Market Monetarists have called for the Fed to lift NGDP back to the pre-crisis trend then it is not some kind of vulgar-keynesian we-will-save-you-all policy, but rather it is about the undoing the mistakes of the past. Monetary policy is not about “stimulus”, but about ensuring a stable nominal framework in which economic agents can make their decisions.

Therefore we want monetary policy to be “neutral” and therefore also in a sense we want monetary policy to become invisible. Monetary policy should be conducted in such a way that investors and households make their investment and consumption decisions as if they lived in a Arrow-Debreu world or at least in a world free of monetary distortions. That also means that the purpose of monetary policy is NOT save investors and other that have made the wrong decisions. Monetary policy is and should not be some bail out mechanism.

Furthermore, central banks should not act as lenders-of-last-resort for governments. Governments should fund its deficits in the free markets and if that is not possible then the governments will have to tighten fiscal policy. That should be very clear. However, monetary policy should not be used as a political hammer by central banks to force governments to implement “reforms”. Monetary policy should be neutral – also in regard to the political decision process. Central banks should not solve budget problems, but central banks should not create fiscal pressures by allowing NGDP to drop significantly below the target level. It seems like certain central banks have a hard time separating this two issues.

Monetary policy should not be used to puncture bubbles either. However, some us – for example David Beckworth and myself – do believe that overly easy monetary policy under some circumstances can create bubbles, but here it is again about avoiding creating problems rather about solving problems. Hence, if the central bank just targets a growth path for the NGDP level then the risk of bubbles are greatly reduced and should they anyway emerge then it should not be task of monetary policy to solve that problem.

Monetary policy can not increase productivity in the economy. Of course productivity growth is likely to be higher in an economy with monetary stability and a high degree of predictability than in an economy with an erratic conduct of monetary policy. But other than securing a “neutral” monetary policy the central bank can not and should not do anything else to enhance the general level of wealth and welfare.

So monetary policy and NGDP level targeting are not some hammers to use to solve all kind of actual and perceived problems, but  who really needs a hammer when you got Chuck Norris?

——
Marcus Nunes has a related comment, but from a different perspective.

13 Comments
by Lars Christensen on December 22, 2011  •  Permalink
Posted in Bubbles, Chuck Norris, Chuck Norris Effect, David Beckworth, Federal Reserve, Financial markets, George Selgin, MM Research agenda, Monetary institutions, Monetary policy, NGDP Targeting, Nominal Income Targeting, Selgin's Monetary Credo
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Lars Christensen on December 22, 2011

https://marketmonetarist.com/2011/12/22/monetary-policy-cant-fix-all-problems/

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