This is our own Nick Rowe on “Boom-Bust”.
Nick is a brilliant monetary thinker – and very entertaining. I would so hope that the likes of the ECB and the Riksbank would listen to people like Nick.
All posts tagged Nick Rowe
The Brilliant Nick Rowe
Posted by Lars Christensen on October 29, 2014
https://marketmonetarist.com/2014/10/29/the-brilliant-nick-rowe/
Monetary sovereignty is incompatible with inflation targeting
When I started working in the financial sector nearly 15 years ago – after 5 years working for government – one thing that really puzzled me was how my new colleagues (both analysts and traders) where thinking about exchange rates.
As a fairly classically thinking economist I had learned to think of exchange rates in terms of the Purchasing Power Parity. After all why should we expect there to be a difference between the price of a Big Mac in Stockholm and Brussels? Obviously I understood that there could be a divergence from PPP in the short-run, but in the long-run PPP should surely expected to hold.
Following the logic of PPP I would – in the old days – have expected that when an inflation number was published for a country and the number was higher than expected the currency of the country would weaken. However, this is not how it really was – and still is – in most countries. Hence, I was surprised to see that upside surprises on the inflation numbers led to a strengthening of the country’s currency. What I initially failed to understand was that the important thing is not present inflation, but rather the expected future changes to monetary policy.
What of course happens is that if a central bank has a credible inflation target then a higher than expected inflation number will lead market participants to expect the central bank to tighten monetary policy.
Understanding exchange rate dynamic is mostly about understanding monetary policy rules
But what if the central bank is not following an inflation-targeting rule? What if the central bank doesn’t care about inflation at all? Would we then expect the market to price in monetary tightening if inflation numbers come in higher than expected? Of course not.
A way to illustrate this is to think about two identical countries – N and C. Both countries are importers of oil. The only difference is that country N is targeting the level of nominal GDP, while country C targets headline inflation.
Lets now imagine that the price of oil suddenly is halved. This is basically a positive supply to both country N and C. That causes inflation to drop by an equal amount in both countries. Realizing this market participants will know that the central bank of country C will move to ease monetary policy and they will therefore move reduce their holdings of C’s currency.
On the other hand market participants also will realize that country N’s central bank will do absolutely nothing in response to the positive supply shock and the drop in inflation. This will leave the exchange of country N unchanged.
Hence, we will see C’s currency depreciate relatively to N’s currency and it is all about the differences in monetary policy rules.
Exchange rates are never truly floating under inflation targeting
I also believe that this example actually illustrates that we cannot really talk about freely floating exchange rates in countries with inflation targeting regimes. The reason is that external shifts in the demand for a given country’s currency will in itself cause a change to monetary policy.
A sell-off in the currency causes the inflation to increase through higher import prices. This will cause the central bank to tighten monetary policy and the markets will anticipate this. This means that external shocks will not fully be reflected in the exchange rate. Even if the central bank does to itself hike interest rates (or reduce the money base) the market participants will basically automatically “implement” monetary tightening by increasing demand for the country’s currency.
This also means that an inflation targeting nearly by definition will respond to negative supply shocks by tightening monetary policy. Hence, negative external shocks will only lead to a weaker currency, but also to a contraction in nominal spending and likely also to a contraction in real GDP growth (if prices and wages are sticky).
Monetary policy sovereignty and importing monetary policy shocks
This also means that inflation targeting actually is reducing monetary policy sovereignty. The response of some Emerging Markets central banks over the past year illustrates well.
Lets take the example of the Turkish central bank. Over the past the year the Federal Reserve has initiated “tapering” and the People’s Bank of China has allowed Chinese monetary conditions to tighten. That has likely been the main factors behind the sell-off in Emerging Markets currencies – including the Turkish lira – over the past year.
The sell-off in Emerging Markets currencies has pushed up inflation in many Emerging Markets. This has causes inflation targeting central banks like the Turkish central bank (TCMB) to tighten monetary policy. In that sense one can say that the fed and PBoC have caused TCMB to tighten monetary policy. The TCMB hence doesn’t have full monetary sovereignty. Or rather the TCMB has chosen to not have full monetary policy sovereignty.
This also means that the TCMB will tend to import monetary policy shocks from the fed and the PBoC. In fact the TCMB will even import monetary policy mistakes from these global monetary superpowers.
The global business cycle and monetary policy rules
It is well-known that the business cycle is highly correlated across countries. However, in my view that doesn’t have to be so and it is strictly a result of the kind of monetary policy rules central banks follow.
In the old days of the gold standard or the Bretton Woods system the global business cycle was highly synchronized. However, one should have expected that to have broken down as countries across the world moved towards officially having floating exchange rates. However, that has not fully happened. In fact the 2008-9 crisis lead to a very synchronized downturn across the globe.
I believe the reason for this is that central banks do in fact not fully have floating exchange rate. Hence, inflation targeting de facto introduces a fear-of-floating among central banks and that lead central banks to import external shocks.
That would not have been the case if central banks in general targeted the level of NGDP (and ignored supply shocks) instead of targeting inflation.
So if central bankers truly want floating exchanges – and project themselves from the policy mistakes of the fed and the PBoC – they need to stop targeting inflation and should instead target NGDP.
PS It really all boils down to the fact that inflation targeting is a form of managed floating. This post was in fact inspired by Nick Rowe’s recent blog post What is a “managed exchange rate”?
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 29, 2014
https://marketmonetarist.com/2014/04/29/monetary-sovereignty-is-incompatible-with-inflation-targeting/
Two cheers for higher Japanese bond yields (in the spirit of Milton Friedman)
I have no doubt that Milton Friedman would have congratulated Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda on the fact that Japanese bond yields continue to rise.
This is what Friedman said about the level of bond yields and interest rates in 1998:
“Initially, higher monetary growth would reduce short-term interest rates even further. As the economy revives, however, interest rates would start to rise. That is the standard pattern and explains why it is so misleading to judge monetary policy by interest rates. Low interest rates are generally a sign that money has been tight, as in Japan; high interest rates, that money has been easy.”
Lets take it again – “As the economy revives, however, interest rates would start to rise”. Hence, the fact the Japanese bond yields are rising – and have done so since he presented his monetary policy regime change in early April – is a very clear sign that Mr. Kuroda’s efforts to get Japan out of deflation is working.
However, not all agree. This is Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph quoting Richard Koo (Ambrose as we know do not agree with Koo):
“Richard Koo…an expert on Japan’s Lost Decade, said the sell-off in recent days has shown that the BoJ may not be able to hold down yields “no matter how many bonds it buys”. This could lead to a “loss of faith in the Japanese government” and the “beginning of the end” for its economy, if handled badly.”
Richard Koo obviously do not understand the monetary transmission mechanism. The purpose of what the Bank of Japan is doing is not to keep bond yields down. The purpose is to increase the money base and increase inflation expectations (to 2%). Both things are of course happening and the markets have not lost faith in the Japanese government or the Bank of Japan. Rather the opposite is the case.
Yes, nominal bond yields are rising – as Friedman and every living Market Monetarist said they would. However, real bond yields have collapsed since the introduction of Japan’s new monetary regime as inflation expectations have picked up. Something Mr. Koo for years has denied the Bank of Japan would be able to do.
Furthermore – and much more important – the markets do not think that the Japanese government is about to go bankrupt. In fact completely in parallel with the increase in inflation expectations the markets’ perception of the Japanese government’s default risk have decreased. Hence, the 5-year Credit Default Swap on Japanese companies has dropped from around 225bp in October last year to around 70bp today and at the same time the CDS on the government of Japan has declined as well – albeit less so.
This is actually not surprising at all. As monetary policy has been eased the expectation for nominal GDP growth has accelerated and as a natural consequence the markets are also starting to price in that the debt-to-NGDP ratio will drop. This is simple arithmetics.
Hence, the markets today feels significantly more comfortable that Japan will not default than was the case prior to Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party won the Japanese elections in September last year.
So it might be that Richard Koo is thinking that Abenomics is the “beginning of the end” for Japan, but I rather think that Abenomics might be the beginning of the end for Mr.Koo’s theory of the balance sheet recession in Japan.
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Nick Rowe has a blog post on the same topic.
Update: Scott Sumner basically put out the same post as me at the same time (at least the headlines are very similar). Scott, however, is slightly less optimistic about Abenomics than I am.
Update 2: And here is Marcus Nunes on a similar topic (why Richard Koo is wrong).
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Posted by Lars Christensen on May 25, 2013
https://marketmonetarist.com/2013/05/25/two-cheers-for-higher-japanese-bond-yields-in-the-spirit-of-milton-friedman/
2008 was a large negative demand shock – also in Canada
Scott Sumner has a follow-up post on Nick Rowe’s post about whether a supply shock or a demand shock caused the Canadian recession in 2008-9. Both Nick and Scott seem to think that the recession in some way was caused by a supply shock.
I must admit that I really don’t understand what Scott and Nick are saying. It is pretty clear to me that the shock in 2008-9 was negative aggregate demand shock.
Lets start with the textbook version of a negative aggregate demand (AD) shock). Here is how a negative demand shock looks in AS/AD model (the growth rate version):
So what happened in Canada? Here is a look at inflation measured by headline CPI and by the price deflator for final domestic sales.
Both measures of inflation were running higher than the Bank of Canada’s official 2% inflation target when the crisis hit in the autumn of 2008.
However, it is pretty clear that inflation slowed sharply and dropped well-below the 2% inflation target in 2009 as the Canadian economy went into recession (real GDP contracted). It is hard to say that this is anything other than a rather large negative AD shock.
Obvioulsy inflation increased above 2% in 2011, but we all know that a major negative supply shock hit in 2011 as global oil prices spiked. In the case of Canada this in fact is both a negative supply shock and a positive demand shock (remember Canada is an oil exporter). That said, the rise in inflation was certainly not dramatic and since 2012 inflation has once again dropped well-below 2% indicating that monetary policy in Canada has become overly tight given the BoC’s 2% inflation target.
I might add that different measures of inflation expectations (both survey and market data) are telling the exact same story. Inflation and inflation expectations eased significantly in 2008-9 and once again in 2012.
And we can tell the same story if we look at the price level. The graph below compares the two measures of prices (CPI and the final domestic demand deflator) with an 2% price path starting in Q3 2008.
Again the picture is clear. The price level – for both measures – are lower than a hypothetical 2% price level path – indicating that Mark Carney and his colleagues in the Bank of Canada have kept monetary conditions too tight over the past 4-5 years – maybe because of a preoccupation with the risk of “bubbles”. Mark Carney might be talking about NGDP level targeting, but he is certainly also speaking quite a bit about “macroprudential indicators” (modern central bank lingo for bubble risk).
Concluding, it is very clear that the Canadian economy was hit by a large negative demand shock in 2008 and initially the BoC has kept monetary policy overly tight and the recent tightening of monetary conditions certainly also looks problematic.
Once again it is monetary policy failure and it is certainly not a negative supply shock, which is to blame for the Canadian recession and sub-trend growth since 2008. Needless to say NGDP tells the exact same story. I should add that the size of this “monetary policy failure” is fairly small compared to for example for example what we have seen in the euro zone.
Reminding Scott about the Sumner Critique
Given the very clear evidence of a negative demand shock I find this comment from Scott somewhat puzzling:
Let’s suppose that the BOC had been targeting NGDP in 2008, when global trade fell off a cliff. How would the Canadian economy have been affected? Many would see the drop in global trade as a demand shock hitting Canada, as there would have been less demand for Canadian exports. In fact, it would be an adverse supply shock. Even if the BOC had been targeting NGDP, output would have probably fallen. Factories in Ontario making transmissions for cars assembled in Ohio would have seen a drop in orders for transmissions. That’s a real shock. No (plausible) amount of price flexibility would move those transmissions during a recession. If the assembly plant in Ohio stopped building cars, then they don’t want Canadian transmissions. If the US stops building houses, then we don’t want Canadian lumber. That’s a real shock to Canada, i.e. an AS shock.
I simply don’t understand Scott’s argument. A negative shock to exports obviously is a negative demand shock. From the perspective of nominal spending a negative shock to exports is a negative shock to money-velocity in the exact same way as a tightening of fiscal policy. Therefore, if the BoC had been targeting NGDP (it actually also goes for inflation targeting) the Sumner Critique would apply – the BoC would offset any negative shock to exports by easing monetary policy (increasing M to offset the drop in V). As a consequence domestic demand would rise and offset the drop in exports. And this obviously applies even if prices are sticky. Yes, the production of transmissions in Ontario drops, but that is offset by an increase in construction of apartments in Vancouver.
However, the point is that the BoC failed to offset the shock to exports and as a consequence prices have been growing slower than implied by BoC’s official inflation target.
There is absolutly nothing special about Canada – its monetary policy failure – the failure is just (a lot) smaller than in the euro zone or the US.
PS I could also have used the GDP deflator as well in my examples above. The story is the same. In fact it is worse! The GDP deflator dropped by more than 4% during 2009. The primary reason for the massive drop in the GDP deflator is that the price of oil measured in Canadian dollars dropped sharply in 2008-9. As drop in the oil price obviously is a negative demand shock as Canada is a oil exporter. The story in that sense is completely the same as what happened to the Russian economy in 2008-9. Had the BoC had followed a variation of an “Export Price Norm” as the Reserve Bank of Australia is doing then the negative shock would likely have been much smaller as was the case in Australia.
PPS JP Irving also comments on the Canadian story.
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Posted by Lars Christensen on March 8, 2013
https://marketmonetarist.com/2013/03/08/2008-was-a-large-negative-demand-shock-also-in-canada/
Scott of course “Recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomena”
Scott Sumner has a new post in which he claims that “I do not think all recessions are caused by demand shocks”. Well, Scott I disagree as I like Nick Rowe believe that “Recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomena”.
It is still Christmas so the rest of this blog post is a re-run (with small corrections) of a post from October 2011, but my views on the matter is unchanged. Read the text with Scott’s comments in mind….
At the core of Market Monetarist thinking, as in traditional monetarism, is the maxim that “money matters”. Hence, Market Monetarists share the view that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. However, it should also be noted that the focus of Market Monetarists has not been as much on inflation (risks) as on the cause(s) of recessions as the starting point for the school has been the outbreak of the Great Recession.
Market Monetarists generally describe recessions within a Monetary Disequilibrium Theory framework in line with what has been outline by orthodox monetarists such as Leland Yeager and Clark Warburton. David Laidler has also been important in shaping the views of Market Monetarists (particularly Nick Rowe) on the causes of recessions and the general monetary transmission mechanism.
The starting point in monetary analysis is that money is a unique good. Here is how Nick Rowe describes that unique good.
“If there are n goods, including one called “money”, we do not have one big market where all n goods are traded with n excess demands whose values must sum to zero. We might call that good “money”, but it wouldn’t be money. It might be the medium of account, with a price set at one; but it is not the medium of exchange. All goods are means of payment in a world where all goods can be traded against all goods in one big centralised market. You can pay for anything with anything. In a monetary exchange economy, with n goods including money, there are n-1 markets. In each of those markets, there are two goods traded. Money is traded against one of the non-money goods.”
From this also comes the Market Monetarist theory of recessions. Rowe continues:
“Each market has two excess demands. The value of the excess demand (supply) for the non-money good must equal the excess supply (demand) for money in that market. That’s true for each individual (assuming no fat fingers) and must be true when we sum across individuals in a particular market. Summing across all n-1 markets, the sum of the values of the n-1 excess supplies of the non-money goods must equal the sum of the n-1 excess demands for money.”
Said in another way, recession is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena in the same way as inflation is. Rowe again:
“Monetary Disequilibrium Theory says that a general glut of newly produced goods can only be matched by an excess demand for money.”
This also means that as long as the monetary authorities ensure that any increase in money demand is matched one to one by an increase in the money supply nominal GDP will remain stable (Market Monetarists obviously does not say that economic activity cannot drop as a result of a bad harvest or an earthquake, but such “events” does not create a general glut of goods and labour). This view is at the core of Market Monetarists’ recommendations on the conduct of monetary policy.
Obviously, if all prices and wages were fully flexible, then any imbalance between money supply and money demand would be corrected by immediate changes prices and wages. However, Market Monetarists acknowledge, as New Keynesians do, that prices and wages are sticky.
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Posted by Lars Christensen on December 25, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/12/25/scott-of-course-recessions-are-always-and-everywhere-a-monetary-phenomena/
Mark Carney comes close to endorsing NGDP level targeting
Here is Mark Carney present governor of Bank of Canada and the next governor of Bank of England:
“If yet further stimulus were required, the policy framework itself would likely have to be changed.19 For example, adopting a nominal GDP (NGDP)-level target could in many respects be more powerful than employing thresholds under flexible inflation targeting. This is because doing so would add “history dependence” to monetary policy. Under NGDP targeting, bygones are not bygones and the central bank is compelled to make up for past misses on the path of nominal GDP (Chart 4).
Bank of Canada research shows that, under normal circumstances, the gains from better exploiting the expectations channel through a history-dependent framework are likely to be modest, and may be further diluted if key conditions are not met. Most notably, people must generally understand what the central bank is doing – an admittedly high bar.20
However, when policy rates are stuck at the zero lower bound, there could be a more favourable case for NGDP targeting. The exceptional nature of the situation, and the magnitude of the gaps involved, could make such a policy more credible and easier to understand.21
Of course, the benefits of such a regime change would have to be weighed carefully against the effectiveness of other unconventional monetary policy measures under the proven, flexible inflation-targeting framework.”
I stole this from Nick Rowe. Thanks for the very good news Nick – it seems like Carney will try to move Bank of England in the right direction and there is no doubt that a number of Cabinet members in Cameron’s government has sympathy for NGDP targeting.
The Bank of England showed the way in 1931 – could it do it again in 2013? I certainly hope so – now we just need an official endorsement of NGDP level targeting from the UK government. George Osborne what are you waiting for?
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Scott Sumner also comments on the good news – as do Britmouse.
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Posted by Lars Christensen on December 12, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/12/12/mike-carney-comes-close-to-endorsing-ngdp-level-targeting/
Patri Friedman on Market Monetarism
Here is Patri Friedman on his blog “Patri’s Peripatetic Peregrinations”:
“I sent a friend an intro to market monetarism (a modern, blogosphere-inspired adjustment to the traditional monetarism my grandfather helped create). He was surprised I believed that printing money could be good, rather than agreeing with the Austrians.”
I am happy to see that Patri has read my paper on Market Monetarism.
There is of course nothing wrong in thinking that “printing money could be good” (under certain circumstances). In fact this is completely in line with what Patri’s grandfather Milton Friedman argued in terms of the Great Depression and the Japanese crisis.
Patri in his post also discusses how a “helicopter drop” could happen in a world of digital cash. Interestingly enough this discussion is similar to a recent internal Market Monetarist debate between Nick Rowe, Bill Woolsey and Scott Sumner about whether money is a medium of exchange or a medium of account. See for example here, here and here. Kurt Schuler also has contributed to the discussion. Finally Miles Kimball similarly has a very interesting post on the case for electronic money.
Patri’s discussion of digital cash to some extent also relates to my own discussion of monetary reform in Africa and the development of mobile based money (See for example here, here, here and here).
Anyway, I am happy to Patri seems to be showing some sympathy for Market Monetarism.
HT Lasse Birk Olesen
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Posted by Lars Christensen on November 11, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/11/11/patri-friedman-on-market-monetarism/
New Market Monetarist book
The Independent Institute is out with a new book edited by our own David Beckworth: Boom and Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession. David of course is one of the founding father of Market Monetarism and despite the somewhat Austrian sounding title of the book the book is primarily written from a Market Monetarist perspective.
I must stress that I have not read book yet (even though I have had a sneak preview of some of the book), but overall the book splits three ways: (1) How the Fed contributed to the housing boom, (2) How the Fed created the Great Recession, and (3) How to reform monetary policy moving forward.
Here is the book description:
“Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to tame the business cycle once and for all. Optimists believed central banking would moderate booms, soften busts, and place the economy on a steady trajectory of economic growth. A century later, in the wake of the worst recession in fifty years, Editor David Beckworth and his line-up of noted economists chronicle the critical role the Federal Reserve played in creating a vast speculative bubble in housing during the 2000s and plunging the world economy into a Great Recession.
As commentators weigh the culpability of Wall Street’s banks against Washington’s regulators, the authors return our attention to the unique position of the Federal Reserve in recent economic history. Expansionary monetary policy formed the sine qua non of the soaring housing prices, excessive leverage, and mispricing of risk that characterized the Great Boom and the conditions for recession.
Yet as Boom and Bust Banking also explains, the Great Recession was not a inevitable result of the Great Boom. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Federal Reserve in fact tightened rather than loosened the money supply in the early days of the recession. Addressing a lacuna in critical studies of recent Federal Reserve policy, Boom and Bust Banking reveals the Federal Reserve’s hand in the economy’s deterioration from slowdown to global recession.
At the close of the most destructive economic episode in a half-century, Boom and Bust Banking reconsiders the justifications for central banking and reflects on possibilities for reform. With the future ripe for new thinking, this volume is essential for policy makers and concerned citizens”
Other founding fathers of Market Monetarism such as Scott Sumner, Nick Rowe, Josh Hendrickson and Bill Woolsey all have also contributed to the book. Furthermore, there are chapters by other brilliant economists such as George Selgin, Larry White and Jeff Hummel.
I think it is very simple – just buy the book NOW! (Needless to say my copy is already ordered).
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Bill Woolsey and Marcus Nunes also comments on the book.
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Posted by Lars Christensen on August 23, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/08/23/new-market-monetarist-book/
Selgin’s challenge to the Market Monetarists
Anybody who have been following my blog knows how much admiration I have for George Selgin so when George speaks I listen and if he says I am wrong I would not easily dismiss it without very careful consideration.
Now George has written a challenge on Freebanking.org for us Market Monetarists. In his post “A Question for the Market Monetarists” George raises a number of issues that deserves answers. Here is my attempt to answer George’s question(s). But before you start reading I will warn you – as it is normally the case I think George is right at least to some extent.
Here is George:
“Although my work on the “Productivity Norm” has led to my being occasionally referred to as an early proponent of Market Monetarism, mine has not been among the voices calling out for more aggressive monetary expansion on the part of the Fed or ECB as a means for boosting employment.”
While it is correct that Market Monetarists – and I am one of them – have been calling for monetary easing both in the US and the euro zone this to me is not because I want to “boost employment”. I know that other Market Monetarists – particularly Scott Sumner – is more outspoken on the need for the Federal Reserve to fulfill it’s “dual mandate” and thereby boost employment (Udpate: Evan Soltas has a similar view – see comment section). I on my part have always said that I find the Fed’s dual mandate completely misguided. Employment is not a nominal variable so it makes no sense for a central bank to target employment or any other real variable. I am in favour of monetary easing in the euro zone and the US because I want the Fed and the ECB to undo the mistakes made in the past. I am not in favour of monetary policy letting bygones-be-bygones. I do, however, realise that the kind of monetary easing I am advocating likely would reduce unemployment significantly in both the euro zone and the US. That would certainly be positive, but it is not my motive for favouring monetary easing in the present situation. See here for a discussion of Fed’s mandate and NGDP targeting.
Said in another way what I want the is that the Fed and the ECB should to live up to what I have called 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“
Back to George:
“There are several reasons for my reticence. The first, more philosophical reason is that I think the Fed is quite large enough–too large, in fact, by about $2.8 trillion, about half of which has been added to its balance sheet since the 2008 crisis. The bigger the Fed gets, the dimmer the prospects for either getting rid of it or limiting its potential for doing mischief. A keel makes a lousy rudder.”
This is the Free Banking advocate George Selgin speaking. The Free Banking advocate Lars Christensen does not disagree with George’s fundamental free banking position. However, George also knows that in the event of a sharp rise in money demand in a free banking regime the money supply will expanded automatically to meet that increase in money demand (I learned that from George). In 2007-9 we saw a sharp rise in dollar demand and the problem was not that the Fed did too much to meet that demand, but rather that it failed to meet the increase in money demand. Something George so well has described in for example his recent paper on the failed US primary dealer system. See here.
However, I certainly agree with George’s position that had monetary policy been conducted in another more rational way – for example within a well-defined NGDP targeting regime and a proper lender-of-last-resort regime – then the Fed would likely have had to expand it’s money base much less than has been the case. Here I think that we Market Monetarists should listen to George’s concerns. Sometimes some of us are to eager to call for what could sound like a discretionary expansion of the money base. This is not really the Market Monetarist position. The Market Monetarist position – at least as I think of it – is that the Fed and the ECB should “emulate” a free banking outcome and ensure that any increase in money demand is met by an increase in the money base. This should obviously be based on a rule based set-up rather than on discretionary monetary policy changes. Both the Fed and the ECB have been insanely discretionary in the past four years.
Back to George:
“The second reason is that I worry about policy analyses (such as this recent one) that treat the “gap” between the present NGDP growth path and the pre-crisis one as evidence of inadequate NGDP growth. I am, after all, enough of a Hayekian to think that the crisis of 2008 was itself at least partly due to excessively rapid NGDP growth between 2001 and then, which resulted from the Fed’s decision to hold the federal funds rate below what appears (in retrospect at least) to have been it’s “natural” level.”
This is a tricky point on which the main Market Monetarist bloggers do not necessarily agree. Scott Sumner and Marcus Nunes have both strongly argued against the “Hayekian position” and claim that US monetary policy was not too easy prior to 2008. David Beckworth prior to the crisis clearly was arguing that US monetary policy was too easy. My own position is somewhere in between. I certainly think that monetary policy was too easy in certain countries prior to the crisis. I for example have argued that continuously in my day-job back in 2006-7 where I warned that monetary conditions in for example Iceland, the Baltic States and in South Eastern European were overly loose. I am, however, less convinced that US monetary policy was too easy – for the US economy, but maybe for other economies in the world (this is basically what Beckworth is talking about when he prior to crisis introduced the concept the Fed as a “monetary superpower”).
However, it would be completely wrong to argue that the entire drop in NGDP in the US and the euro zone is a result of a bubble bursting. In fact if there was any “overshot” on pre-crisis NGDP or any “bubbles” (whatever that is) then they certainly long ago have been deflated. I am certain that George agrees on that. Therefore the possibility that there might or might have been a “bubble” is no argument for maintain the present tight monetary conditions in the euro zone and the US.
That said, as time goes by it makes less and less sense to talk about returning to a pre-crisis trend level for NGDP both in the US and the euro zone. But let’s address the issue in slightly different fashion. Let’s say we are where presented with two different scenarios. In scenario 1 the Fed and the ECB would bring back NGDP to the pre-crisis trend level, but then thereafter forget about NGDP level targeting and just continue their present misguided policies. In scenario 2 both the Fed and the ECB announce that they in the future will implement NGDP level targeting with the use of NGDP futures (as suggested by Scott), but would initiate the new policy from the present NGDP level. I would have no doubt that I would prefer the second scenario. I can of course not speak from my Market Monetarist co-conspiritors, but to me the it is extremely important that we return to a rule based monetary policy. The actual level of NGDP in regard is less important.
And then finally George’s question:
“And so, my question to the MM theorists: If a substantial share of today’s high unemployment really is due to a lack of spending, what sort of wage-expectations pattern is informing this outcome?”
This is an empirical question and I am not in a position to give an concrete answer to that. However, would argue that most of the increase in unemployment and the lack of a recovery in the labour market both in the US and the euro zone certainly is due to a lack of spending and therefore monetary easing would likely significantly reduce unemployment in both the US and the euro zone.
Finally I don’t really think that George challenge to the Market Monetarists is question about wage-expectations. Rather I think George wants us to succeed in our endeavor to get the ECB and the Fed to target NGDP. While George does not spell it out directly I think he share the concern that I from time to time has voiced that we should be careful that we do not sound like vulgar Keynesians screaming for “monetary stimulus”. To many the call for QE3 from the sounds exactly like that and for exact that reason I have cautious in calling for another badly executed QE from the Fed. Yes, we certainly need to call for monetary easing, but no one should be in doubt that we want it within a proper ruled based regime.
I have in a number of posts since I started blogging in October last year warned that we should put more emphasis on our arguments for a rule based regime than on monetary expansion as our call for monetary easing creates confusion about what we really think. Or has I stated it back in November last year my my post “NGDP targeting is not a Keynesian business cycle policy“:
“I believe that much of the confusing about our position on monetary policy has to do with the kind of policy advise that Market Monetarist are giving in the present situation in both the US and the euro zone.
Both the euro zone and the US economy is at the presently in a deep recession with both RGDP and NGDP well below the pre-crisis trend levels. Market Monetarists have argued – in my view forcefully – that the reason for the Great Recession is that monetary authorities both in the US and the euro zone have allowed a passive tightening of monetary policy (See Scott Sumner’s excellent paper on the causes of the Great Recession here) – said in another way money demand growth has been allowed to strongly outpaced money supply growth. We are in a monetary disequilibrium. This is a direct result of a monetary policy mistakes and what we argue is that the monetary authorities should undo these mistakes. Nothing more, nothing less. To undo these mistakes the money supply and/or velocity need to be increased. We argue that that would happen more or less “automatically”…if the central bank would implement a strict NGDP level target.
So when Market Monetarists (have)… called for “monetary stimulus” it NOT does mean that (we) want to use some artificial measures to permanently increase RGDP. Market Monetarists do not think that that is possible, but we do think that the monetary authorities can avoid creating a monetary disequilibrium through a NGDP level target where swings in velocity is counteracted by changes in the money supply…
Therefore, we are in some sense to blame for the confusion. We should really stop calling for “monetary stimulus” and rather say “stop messing with Say’s Law, stop creating a monetary disequilibrium”. Unfortunately monetary policy discourse today is not used to this kind of terms and many Market Monetarists therefore for “convenience” use fundamentally Keynesian lingo.”
I hope that that is an answer to George’s more fundamental challenge to us Market Monetarists. We are not keynesians and we are strongly against discretionary monetary policy and I want to thank George for telling us to be more clear about that.
Finally I should stress that I do not speak on behalf of Scott, Marcus, Nick, 2 times David, Josh and Bill (and all the other Market Monetarists out there) and I am pretty sure that the rest of the gang will join in with answers to George. After all most of us are Selginians.
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Update: George now has an update where is answers his own question. I think it is a good answer. Here is George:
“My further reflections make me more inclined to see merit in Market Monetarists’ arguments for more accommodative monetary policy.”
Update 2: Scott also has a comment on George’s posts. I think this is highly productive. We are moving forward in our understanding of not only the theoretical foundation for Market Monetarism, but also in the understanding of the economic situation.
Udpate 3: Also comments from David Glasner, Marcus Nunes and Bill Woolsey.
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Related posts:
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
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Posted by Lars Christensen on July 8, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/07/08/selgins-challenge-to-the-market-monetarists/
Glasner on “Friedman and Schwartz on James Tobin”
David Glasner is a very nice and friendly person, but I have to admit that David always scares me a bit – especially when I disagree with him. For some reason when David is saying something I am inclined to agree with him even if I think he is wrong. There are two areas where David and I see things differently. One the “hot potato” theory of money and two our view of Milton Friedman. I tend to think that the way Nick Rowe – inspired by Leland Yeager – describes the monetary disequilibrium theory make a lot of sense. David disagrees with Nick. Similiarly I have an (irrational?) love of Milton Friedman so I tend to think he is right about everything. David on the other hand is much more skeptical about Friedman.
Now David has post in which he makes the argument that Friedman nearly had the same view as James Tobin on the hot potato theory of money – which of course is stark opposition to Nick’s view. So now I have a problem – if he is right I must either betray uncle Milt or revise my view of the hot potato theory of money. Ok, that is not entirely correct, but you get the drift.
Anyway I don’t have a lot of time to write a long post and David’s discussion is much more interesting than what I can come up with. So have a look for yourself here.
I will be traveling quite a bit in the coming weeks so I am not sure how much blogging I will have time for. I will be in Riga, Stockholm, London, Dublin, Moscow and New York in the next couple of weeks so I might run into some of my local readers.
PS David sent me Tobin’s article long ago and I must admit that I have not read it carefully enough to be able to argue strongly for or against it.
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Posted by Lars Christensen on April 16, 2012
https://marketmonetarist.com/2012/04/16/glasner-on-friedman-and-schwartz-on-james-tobin/
The Market Monetarist- From excessively easy to excessive tight US monetary policy
- Re-visited: Firefighter Arsonists – the myth of the central bankers as ‘good’ crisis managers
- US monetary policy has become too TIGHT – the Fed risks significantly UNDERSHOOTING it’s 2% inflation target
- ChatGPT, Python, FRED and some NGDP gaps
- Re-visiting R*: Close to the end of the hiking cycle for the Fed
- US inflation set to fall sharply in the coming quarters
- Recession or not? Answering a question the Fed should not care about
- Milton Friedman commented on Powell’s Fed in 1978
- Carl Bildt is puzzled – he should read an economics textbook
- US domestic spending – a closer look at the 2021-22 data
The Market Monetarist 