Re: Banks cutting foreign currency loans in Eastern Europe


[Skip to the end]

(email exchange)

Thanks!

>   
>   On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 7:25 AM, Bob wrote:
>   

`Panic’ Strikes East Europe Borrowers as Banks Cut Franc Loans

By Ben Holland, Laura Cochrane and Balazs Penz

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg)- Imre Apostagi says the hospital upgrade he’s overseeing has stalled because his employer in Budapest can’t get a foreign-currency loan.

The company borrows in foreign currencies to avoid domestic interest rates as much as double those linked to dollars, euros and Swiss francs. Now banks are curtailing the loans as investors pull money out of eastern Europe’s developing markets and local currencies plunge.

Foreign-denominated loans helped fuel eastern European economies including Poland, Romania and Ukraine, funding home purchases and entrepreneurship after the region emerged from communism. The elimination of such lending is magnifying the global credit crunch and threatening to stall the expansion of some of Europe’s fastest-growing economies.

Plunging Currencies

Since the end of August, the forint has fallen 16 percent against the Swiss franc, the currency of choice for Hungarian homebuyers, and more than 8 percent versus the euro. Foreign- currency loans make up 62 percent of all household debt in the country, up from 33 percent three years ago.

That’s even after a boost this week from an International Monetary Fund emergency loan program for emerging markets and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to pump as much as $120 billion into Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore. The Fed said yesterday that it aims to “mitigate the spread of difficulties in obtaining U.S. dollar funding.”

Plunging domestic currencies mean higher monthly payments for businesses and households repaying foreign-denominated loans, forcing them to scale back spending.

No More Dreaming

The bulk of eastern Europe’s credit boom was denominated in foreign currencies because they provided for cheaper financing.

Before the current financial turmoil, Romanian banks typically charged 7 percent interest on a euro loan, compared with about 9.5 percent for those in leu. Romanians had about $36 billion of foreign-currency loans at the end of September, almost triple the figure two years earlier.

In Hungary, rates on Swiss franc loans were about half the forint rates. Consumers borrowed five times as much in foreign currencies as in forint in the three months through June.

‘Serious Problems’

Now banks including Munich-based Bayerische Landesbank and Austria’s Raiffeisen International Bank Holding AG are curbing foreign-currency loans in Hungary. In Poland, where 80 percent of mortgages are denominated in Swiss francs, Bank Millennium SA, Getin Bank SA and PKO Bank Polski SA have either boosted fees or stopped lending in the currency.

The east has been the fastest-growing part of Europe, with Romania’s economy expanding 9.3 percent in the year through June, Ukraine 6.5 percent and Poland 5.8 percent. The combined economy of the countries sharing the euro grew 1.4 percent in the period.

IMF Help

Ukraine, facing financial meltdown as the hryvnia drops and prices for exports such as steel tumble, on Oct. 26 agreed to a $16.5 billion loan from the IMF.

Hungary on Oct. 28 secured $26 billion in loans from the IMF, the EU and the World Bank. The government forecast a 1 percent economic contraction next year, the first since 1993.

These come with ‘conditions’ which means contractionary fiscal adjustments.

Panicked Customers


Romanian central bank Governor Mugur Isarescu sounded the alarm in June, saying the growth of foreign-currency loans was “excessively high and risky,” especially because Romanians with their communist past aren’t used to the discipline of debt.


`Cheaper, Riskier’

Turkish savings in foreign currencies exceeded loans by about 30 percent as of the end of 2007, according to a January Fitch report. In Poland foreign exchange loans were double deposits, and in Hungary they were triple.

“We’ve been observing a return to a good old banking rule to lend in a currency in which people earn,” said Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, chief executive officer of Poland’s biggest lender, Bank Pekao SA. It stopped non-zloty lending in 2003. “Earlier, banks competed on the Swiss franc market watching only sales levels and not looking at keeping an acceptable risk level.”


[top]

2008-10-31 USER


[Skip to the end]


Personal Income MoM (Sep)

Survey 0.1%
Actual 0.2%
Prior 0.5%
Revised 0.4%

 
A tick better than expected but last month revised down same.

[top][end]

Personal Income YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual 3.9%
Prior 4.3%
Revised n/a

 
Looks to be on the decline as expected.

Lower interest rates are also a drag on income, as households are net savers.

[top][end]

Personal Income ALLX (Sep)

[top][end]

Personal Consumption MoM (Sep)

Survey -0.2%
Actual -0.3%
Prior 0.0%
Revised n/a

 
Worse than expected and took dive as the publicity around the credit crisis petrified businesses and consumers.

[top][end]

Personal Consumption YoY (Sep)

Survey n/a
Actual 3.8%
Prior 4.5%
Revised n/a

 
Heading south but still growing some.

[top][end]

PCE Deflator YoY (Sep)

Survey 4.1%
Actual 4.2%
Prior 4.5%
Revised n/a

 
Higher than expected and staying high even with commodities coming down.

[top][end]

PCE Core MoM (Sep)

Survey 0.1%
Actual 0.2%
Prior 0.2%
Revised n/a

 
Higher than expected.

[top][end]

PCE Core YoY (Sep)

Survey 2.4%
Actual 2.4%
Prior 2.6%
Revised 2.5%

 
Holding firm, at least for now.

[top][end]

Employment Cost Index (3Q)

Survey 0.7%
Actual 0.7%
Prior 0.7%
Revised n/a

 
Well contained.

[top][end]

Employment Cost Index ALLX (3Q)

 
The surveys have a large subjective component, and have all taken dives recently.

[top][end]

RPX Composite 28dy YoY (Aug)

Survey n/a
Actual -17.96%
Prior -17.76%
Revised n/a

[top][end]

RPX Composite 28dy Index (Aug)

Survey n/a
Actual 219.67
Prior 224.28
Revised n/a

[top][end]

Chicago Purchasing Manager (Oct)

Survey 48.0
Actual 37.8
Prior 56.7
Revised n/a

[top][end]

NAPM Milwaukee (Oct)

Survey n/a
Actual 42.0
Prior 46.0
Revised n/a


[top]

Fed macro policy


[Skip to the end]

(email exchange)

>   
>   On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:45 PM, Morris wrote:
>   
>   This is the 64,000 dollar question…will unlimited FED lending to ENTIRE
>   world-with IMF help-created recovery? Push on string? Hyper inflation?
>   Question of the day…would love others inputs.
>   

I’d say yes, it’s inflationary and the channels at least as follows:

1. The outstanding international dollar debt was an expansionary force when it was growing, to the extent the USD borrowings were spent. Some of that USD spending was overseas, some in the US.

Growing debt, if directed towards spending, is expansionary.

For example, you may borrow to build a house, or buy a new car.

But if you borrow to fund financial assets, your pension fund, or to buy mortgage backed securities, for example, it’s merely the rearranging of financial assets.

This increased ‘leverage’ and has no direct effect on demand, beyond the demand created by the financial institutions themselves. This includes all the hiring of employees for the financial sector which all counts as GDP.

(While this may not be deemed ‘useful output’ it is accounted for as GDP, like bridges to nowhere, and does function to support people’s livelihood. Yes, better to have employed them doing something deemed useful, but that’s another story)

2. Should the USD loans default, the financial institutions lose capital, meaning the shareholders (and bondholders, depending on the size of the loss) lose their nominal wealth. This may or may not reduce spending. Most studies say it’s a weak effect at best.

And for each institution to continue to function it needs to replace capital.

(In our ‘loans create deposits’ world, infinite capital is available at the right price, if the government has a policy to sustain domestic demand.)

For US institutions with USD denominated capital, losses result in a reduction of their USD capital.

Their liabilities remain the same, but their assets fall.

And any assets sold to reduce USD funding needs are sold for USD.

3. Institutions with capital denominated in other currencies, go through the same fundamental process but with another ‘step.’

When their USD assets are impaired, they are left with their USD liabilities.

They now have a ‘mismatch’ as non dollar assets including non dollar capital are supporting the remaining USD liabilities.

To get back to having their assets and liabilities matched in the same currency, they need to sell their assets in exchange for USD.

Until they do that they are ‘short’ USD vs their local currency, as a rising USD would mean they need to sell more of their local currency assets to cover their USD losses.

Technically, when the assets they need to sell to cover USD losses are denominated in non dollar currencies, this involves an FX transaction- selling local currency to buy USD- which puts downward pressure on their currencies.

Additionally, they need to continue to fund their USD financial assets, which can become problematic as the perception of risk increases.

4. The Fed’s swap lines ($522 billion outstanding, last i saw) help the rest of the world to fund themselves in USD.

In an effectively regulated environment, such as the US banking system, this works reasonably well but still carries a considerable risk that we decide to take as a nation for further public purpose. (it is believed the financial sector helps support useful domestic output, etc.)

Any slip up in regulation can result in the likes of the S&L crisis, and arguably the sub prime crisis, which results in a substantial disruption of real output and a substantial transfer of nominal and real wealth.

The Fed is lending to foreign CB’s in unlimited quantities, secured only by foreign currency deposits, to world banking systems it doesn’t regulate, and where regulation is for foreign public purpose.

The US public purpose of this is (best I can determine) to lower a foreign interest rate set in London called ‘LIBPR,’ and ‘perhaps’ to ‘give away’ USD to support US exports.

The Fed yesterday, for example, announced $30 billion of said lending to Mexico and Brazil for them to lend to their banks. The Fed must be a lot more comfortable with Mexico and Brazil’s bank regulation and supervision than I am, and certainly than Congress would be if they had any say in the matter.

5. The problem is that once the Fed provides funding to these foreign Central Banks, who then lend it all to their banking systems, they remove the foreign ‘funding pressure’ that was causing rates to be a couple of % higher over their (didn’t change our fed funds rate). Taking away the pressure takes away the incentives of the pressure to repay $US’s introduces.

The Fed is engaging in a major transfer of wealth from here to there. Initially its prevents the transfer of wealth back to the US, as would have happened if they had been forced to repay and eliminated their USD liabilities and losses.

That same force if continued develops into large increases in USD spending around the world as this ‘free money’ going to banking systems with even less supervision and regulation than ours soon ‘leaks out’ to facilitate increasing foreign consumption at the expense of USD depreciation.

Note the bias- the ECB gets an unlimited line and Mexico is capped at $30 billion.

This means the Fed is making a credit judgment of Mexico vs the ECB, which means the Fed is aware of the credit issue.

Conclusion, the Fed is beginning to recognize the swap lines are potentially explosively inflationary, as evidenced by not giving Mexico unlimited access.

The swap lines are also problematic to shut down should that start to happen, just like what shutting down lending to emerging markets did in the past.

Shutting down the swap lines would trigger the defaults that the unlimited funding had delayed, and then some, triggering a collapse in the world economies.

It’s a similar dynamic to funding state owned enterprises- the nominal costs go up and the losses go up as well should they get shut down.

Keeping them going is inflationary, shutting them down a major disruption to output and employment.

It is delaying the circumstances that were headed toward a shut down of the European payments system, but leaving the risks in place for the day the swap lines are terminated.

7. Bottom line- it looks to me that the swap lines are a continuation of the weak dollar policy Bernanke (student of the last gold standard depression) and Paulson have been pushing for the last couple of years.

This time they are ‘giving away’ dollars to foreigners, in unlimited quantities, ultimately to buy US goods and services.

They are doing this to support export led growth for the US, at the direct expense of our standard of living. (declining real terms of trade)

They are doing this to increase ‘national savings’- a notion applicable under the gold standard of the early 1930’s to prevent gold outflows, and where wealth is defined as gold hoards. This notion is totally non applicable to today’s convertible currency.

It is a failure to understand the indisputable Econ 101 fundamental that exports are real costs and imports real benefits.

They believe they are doing the right thing and that this is what’s good for us.

The unlimited swap lines are turning me into an inflation hawk longer term.

But the USD may not go down against all currencies, as potentially the inflation will hit other currencies as well.

Where to hide? I’m back to quality rental properties and energy investments.

The world is moving towards increased demand with no policy to make sure that doesn’t result in increased energy consumption and increasing inflation.

Comments welcome!

Warren


[top]

More on latest Fed swap lines


[Skip to the end]

The Fed is able to unilaterally lend (functionally unsecured) $30 million each to Mexico and Brazil?!?!

There are far more sensible ways to restore prosperity.

Last figures I saw indicate $522 billion in these loans that have been advanced so far.

It’s looking more and more to me like this massive USD lending to foreign CB’s who reloan it to entities with the slimmest of collateral, is both a transfer of real wealth away from the US and a highly inflationary bias.

For the moment it’s halting deflation, but once unleashed there’s no telling where it will go.

Fed Opens Swaps With South Korea, Brazil, Mexico

By Steve Matthews and William Sim

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve agreed to provide $30 billion each to the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore, expanding its effort to unfreeze money markets to emerging nations for the first time.

The Fed set up “liquidity swap facilities with the central banks of these four large systemically important economies” effective until April 30, the central bank said yesterday in a statement. The arrangements aim “to mitigate the spread of difficulties in obtaining U.S. dollar funding.”


[top]

More USD swap lines


[Skip to the end]

The problem is the Fed doesn’t see the risks involved in this program.

They are only seeing ‘success’ as USD interest rates fall for lesser credits around the world.

The question is why they would want USD rates to come down for lower quality borrowers?

This policy does not reduce international USD borrowings.

Instead, it supports and encourages increased USD borrowings with attractive USD rates and terms.

And in unlimited quantities for the ECB, BOE, BOJ, and SNB.

Yes, unlimited USD lending to anyone who can breathe in and out lowers rates.

And as it’s going to several entities that will probably never pay it back, it’s the largest monetary handout/transfer of wealth of all time.

It’s also a policy that, once implemented, historically has become more than problematic to shut down.

US Fed launches four new currency swap lines

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve on Wednesday extended U.S. dollar liquidity aid beyond traditional markets, opening four new $30 billion currency swap lines with Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Singapore.

The temporary arrangements, authorized through April 30, 2009, are aimed at easing global U.S. dollar funding shortages, the Fed said.

“These facilities, like those already established with other central banks, are designed to help improve liquidity conditions in global financial markets and to mitigate the spread of difficulties in obtaining U.S. dollar funding in fundamentally sound and well-managed economies,” the Fed said in a statement released in Washington.

The decision comes a day after the Fed established a $15 billion swap line with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. The U.S. central bank now has 13 swap lines with foreign central banks.


[top]

2008-10-30 USER


[Skip to the end]


GDP QoQ Annualized (3Q A)

Survey -0.5%
Actual -0.3%
Prior 2.8%
Revised n/a

 
A bit better than exected, and longer term the chart shows gradual declining rates of growth of GDP.

Karim writes:

  • GDP weak across the board
  • Economy contracts at 0.3% annualized rate in Q3
  • Sector changes (all annualized)
  • Personal consumption -3.1%
  • Non residential investment -1%
  • Residential investment (housing) -19.1%
  • Exports 5.9% (from 12.3%)
  • Government 5.8%

Government spending to keep the numbers from being a lot worse.

[top][end]

GDP YoY Annualized Real (3Q A)

Survey n/a
Actual 0.8%
Prior 2.1%
Revised n/a

 
Same, been trending down for quite a while.

[top][end]

GDP YoY Annualized Nominal (3Q A)

Survey n/a
Actual 3.4%
Prior 4.1%
Revised n/a

 
Nominal is sagging as well, indicating weakening nominal demand.

[top][end]

GDP Price Index (3Q A)

Survey 4.0%
Actual 4.2%
Prior 1.1%
Revised n/a

 
Higher than expected, but of no concern to a ‘forward looking’ Fed.

[top][end]

GDP ALLX (3Q A)

[top][end]

Core PCE QoQ (3Q A)

Survey 2.5%
Actual 2.9%
Prior 2.2%
Revised n/a

 
Core continues to march higher, and unless crude prices stay at the lows this can continue for several quarters.

[top][end]


Initial Jobless Claims (Oct 25)

Survey 475K
Actual 479K
Prior 478K
Revised 479K

 
Still looks to be moving up.

Karim writes:

  • Initial unchanged at 479k but no hurricane effects so underlying trend weaker by about 12-15k
  • Continuing claims drop 12k from upwardly revised 3727k to 3715k
  • Looks like -250 to -300k on next payrolls.

[top][end]

Continuing Claims (Oct 18)

Survey 3735K
Actual 3715K
Prior 3720K
Revised 3727K

 
Near previous peaks, remains high.

[top][end]

Jobless Claims ALLX (Oct 25)


[top]

Hungary to meet euro terms earlier


[Skip to the end]

Note the contractionary terms highlighted below:

Hungary Pays With Growth Prospects for IMF-Led Bailout Package

By Zoltan Simon

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — Hungary will meet euro-adoption term faster than previously planned after securing a 20 billion-euro ($25.5 billion) aid package to stabilize its recession-bound economy.

The country should adopt the euro “the faster the better,” Economy Minister Gordon Bajnai and Andras Simor, the head of the central bank told reporters today. The aid package will “unequivocally” stem the financial crisis in local markets, Bajnai said.

Hungarian stocks, bonds and the currency plunged this month because of concern that the country may have difficult financing its budget and current account deficits.

The aid package will help Hungary with its balance of payments and increase investor confidence by more than doubling foreign-currency reserves, Simor said.


The central bank, which raised the benchmark interest rate last week to 11.5 percent, the EU’s highest, from 8.5 percent to halt the currency’s plunge, will “think it over” on the direction of monetary policy after the rescue plan, Simor said. The bank continues to aim for price stability, he said.


To reduce country’s reliance on external financing, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany plans to cut spending next year by freezing salaries and canceling bonuses for public workers and reducing pensions. Hungary today also canceled all government bond auctions through the end of the year.

The standby loan, which Hungary can draw on as needed, will more than double the country’s 17 billion euros worth of foreign currency reserves, Simor said. The loan carries an interest rate of 5 percent to 6 percent, a standby fee of 0.25 percent annually and can be repaid in three to five years. Hungary can access the funds until March 2010, Simor said.

Part of the loan will be used to provide liquidity to banks, Simor said, without elaborating. Banks in Hungary have started to curtail or suspend foreign currency lending because of the difficulty in accessing euros and Swiss francs, the most popular foreign currency loans.

Euro applicants must keep inflation, debt and budget deficits within check. Hungary expects consumer prices to rise 4.5 percent, with a budget deficit at 2.6 percent of gross domestic product and declining debt next year.


[top]

Austria abandons bond offering


[Skip to the end]

Not looking at all promising.

Austria abandons bond offering

By David Oakley

Austria, one of Europe’s stronger economies, cancelled a bond auction yesterday in the latest sign that European governments are facing increasing problems raising debt in the deepening credit crisis.

The difficulties of Austria, which has a triple A credit rating, highlights the extent of the deterioration, which saw benchmark indicators of credit risk such as the iTraxx index hit fresh record wides yesterday.

Austria is the fourth European country to cancel a bond offering in recent weeks amid growing worries over its exposure to beleaguered eastern European economies such as Hungary.

Hungary, which has been forced to turn to the International Monetary Fund to shore up its crisis-hit economy, also scrapped an auction for short-term government bills after only attracting Ft5bn ($22.5m) in a Ft40bn offering.

Analysts said Austria had dropped plans to launch a bond next week because investors wanted bigger premiums to offset the credit worries and fears over lending by its banks to eastern Europe.

The Austrian Federal Financing Agency did not give a reason for the move.

Spain, another triple A rated country, and Belgium have cancelled bond offerings in the past month because of the turbulence, with investors demanding much higher interest rates than debt managers had bargained for.

Market conditions have steadily deteriorated in recent days with the best gauge to credit sentiment, the iTraxx investment grade index, which measures the cost to protect bonds against default in Europe, widening to more than 180 basis points, or a cost of €180,000 to insure €10m of debt over five years, yesterday.

This is a steep increase since Monday of last week, when the index closed at 142bp.

Huw Worthington, European strategist at Barclays Capital, said: “These are difficult markets. Austria did not need to raise the money, so it has decided to hold off but, if these conditions persist, it could prove a problem for some governments as their debt needs to be refinanced.”

Analysts warn that the huge pipeline of government bonds due to be issued in the fourth quarter and next year could increase problems for some countries, particularly those already carrying large amounts of debt that needs to be refinanced or rolled over.

European government bond issuance will rise to record levels of more than €1,000bn in 2009 – 30 per cent higher than 2008 – as governments seek to stimulate their economies and pay for bank recapitalisations.

The eurozone countries will raise €925bn ($1,200bn) in 2009, according to Barclays Capital. The UK, which is expected to increase its bond issuance from the current €137.5bn in the 2008-09 financial year, will take the figure above €1,000bn.

Italy, with a debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of 104 per cent, is most exposed to continuing difficulties in the credit markets. Analysts forecast that it will need to raise €220bn in 2009.


[top]

Updates on Fed swap lines


[Skip to the end]

Still don’t have totals for Fed USD swap lines extended to Foreign CBs.

Some info here from last week:

ECB Lending, Liabilities Surge to Records Amid Crisis (Update 1)

By Simon Kennedy

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — The European Central Bank’s lending to banks and its exposure to possible collateral losses jumped to records last week as the battle against the credit crisis forced policy makers to shoulder more risk.

The Frankfurt-based ECB said it loaned banks 773.2 billion euros ($1.02 trillion) through monetary operations, up from 739.4 billion euros a week earlier and a 68 percent surge from the first week of September. Its liabilities to financial institutions rose to 470.3 billion euros, an increase of 4.4 percent from the previous week and up 123 percent since the start of last month.

While I’m less concerned over the ECB’s increased Euro lending it nonetheless indicates problems have not subsided.

The ECB is following the Federal Reserve and other central banks in combating the credit crunch by expanding its balance sheet as it injects more cash into the banking system. The downsides include taking on more risk as it accepts weaker collateral when lending.

“The urgency of the situation means that drastic measures need to be taken,” said David Mackie, chief European economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. “Up until a month ago the balance sheet wasn’t growing. Now the bank is creating more and more money.”

The ECB became more aggressive after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. on Sept. 15 prompted banks to hoard cash worldwide. To spur lending, the central bank has loaned money for longer timeframes and offered banks unlimited amounts of dollars and euros. It last week loosened rules on the collateral it will accept when making loans to include lower-rated securities, certificates of deposit and subordinated debt.

Demand for Cash

The ECB today said it loaned banks 305 billion euros in its regular weekly auction at a fixed rate of 3.75 percent. It also provided $101.93 billion in a 28-day dollar tender at a fixed rate of 2.11 percent, and an additional $22.6 billion, also for 28 days, via a currency swap against euros.

Don’t know what the total USD advances outstanding are.

With the financial crisis spilling over into the economy, demand for banknotes has also jumped. The value of notes in circulation rose to 721.8 billion euros, an increase of 9.7 billion euros from the previous week and 5.4 percent from the start of last month, today’s ECB data showed.

The eurozone is facing a ‘bank run’ as depositors flee to actual cash. This puts the banking system at risk with their current institutional structure.

When Lehman Brothers sought bankruptcy protection, its Frankfurt division owed between 8 billon euros and 9 billion euros to the ECB, the Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 7, without saying where it obtained the information.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has said that while the bank is assuming more risk, it is doing so because of the greater threat of financial meltdown. “We have made decisions which are increasing our risks,” Trichet said in an Oct. 19 interview with France’s RTL Radio. “We are facing a systemic liquidity problem of first importance.”

The ECB’s risk-taking may be paying off. The cost of borrowing euros for three months fell to the lowest level today since Lehman filed for bankruptcy. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks charge each other for such loans dropped 3 basis points to 4.96 percent today, the British Bankers’ Association said. That’s the lowest level since Sept. 12. The overnight dollar rate slid 23 basis points to 1.28 percent, below the Federal Reserve’s target for the first time since Oct. 3.

This would be near my last choice of ways to get term rates down!


[top]

Zero rate!


[Skip to the end]

Yes, but, of course, for the wrong reasons!

They all still act and forecast as if lower rates are expansionary.

This still has no support in theory or practice.

Outstanding government debt means the private (non-government) sectors are net savers.

Households remain net savers.

Lower rates directly cuts personal income.

And lowers costs for businesses including costs of investments that reduce costs.

I do favor a permanent zero interest rate policy.

That would mean the same amount of government spending needs less in taxes to support it (larger deficit).

Ex-Fed Gov. Meyer Makes a Case for a Zero Fed-Funds Rate

By Brian Blackstone

With the U.S. unemployment rate now expected to climb well above 7%, former Federal Reserve governor Laurence Meyer projects that Fed policymakers may have to lower the target federal-funds rate all the way to zero next year.

“However, the expected rise in the unemployment rate, paired with the rising threat of deflation, presents a risk that the FOMC will have to ease even further, perhaps all the way to a zero federal funds rate,” Meyer and Sack wrote in a research note.

Meyer and Sack said they think the jobless rate will rise to as high as 7.5% from 6.1% now. They also expect a significant gross domestic product contraction of 2.8%, at an annual rate, in the fourth quarter, after a projected 0.7% decline in the third. They also expect GDP to fall in the first quarter of next year.

Meyer and Sack expect the Fed’s preferred inflation rate gauge — the price index for personal consumption expenditures excluding food and energy — to moderate to just 1% growth, at an annual rate, by the end of 2010.

“Plugging our interim forecast into our backward-looking policy rule suggests that the federal funds rate should be cut to zero by the middle of next year,” Meyer and Sack wrote.

“Our forward-looking policy rule…gives similar results if we plug in our updated forecast, as it calls for a funds rate of about zero by early 2010,” they wrote.


[top]