US economy muddling through, growing modestly, particularly given the output gap, but growing nonetheless.

Lower crude prices should also help some.

I had guessed the Saudis would hold prices at the $120 Brent level, given their output of just over 10 million bpd showed strong demand
and their capacity to increase to their stated 12.5 million bpd capacity remains suspect. And so with the Seaway pipeline now open (last I heard)
to take crude from Cushing to Brent priced markets I’d guessed WTI would trade up to Brent.

But what has happened is the Saudi oil minister started making noises about lower prices and when ‘market prices’ started selling off the Saudis ‘followed’ by lowering their posted prices, sustaining the myth that they are ‘price takers’ when in reality they are price setters.

So to date, contrary to my prior guess, both wti and brent have sold off quite a bit, and cheaper imported crude is a plus for the US economy. Which is also a plus for the $US, as a lower import bill makes $US ‘harder to get’ for foreigners.

But the trade for quite a while has been strong dollar = weak US stocks due to export pricing/foreign earnings translations, and also because US stocks have weakened on signs of euro zone stress, which has been associated with a weaker euro. So when things seem to be looking up for the euro zone, the euro tends to go up vs the dollar, with US stocks doing better with any sign of ‘improvement’ in the euro zone.

It’s all a tangled case of cross currents, which makes forecasting anything particularly difficult.

Not to mention possible dislocations from the whale, which may or may not have run their course, etc.

And then there’s the news from Greece.

First, they made a full bond payment yesterday of nearly 500 million euro to bond holders who did not accept the PSI discounts. This is confounding for the obvious reasons, signals it sends, moral hazard, credibility, etc. etc. But it’s also a sign the politicians are doing what they think it takes to keep the euro going as the currency of the euro zone. Same goes for the decision to fund Greece as per prior agreements even when there is no Greek govt to talk to, and lots of signs any new govt may not honor the arrangements.

Even if that means tricking private investors out of 100 billion, rewarding those who defy them, whatever. Tactics may be continuously reaching new lows but all for the end of keeping the euro as the single currency.

It also means that while, for example, 10 year Spanish yields may go up or down, the intention is for Spain, one way or another, to fund itself, even if short term. Doesn’t matter.

And more EFSF type discussions. The plan may be to start using those types of funds as needed, keeping the ECB out of it for that much longer, regardless of where longer term bonds happen to trade.

As for the euro zone economy, yes, growth is probably negative, but if they hold off on further fiscal adjustments, the 6%+ deficit they currently are running for the region is probably, at this point, enough to muddle through around the 0 growth neighborhood. The upside isn’t much from there, as with limited private sector credit growth opportunities, and substantial net export growth unlikely, and strong ‘automatic stabilizers’ any growth could be limited by those automatic fiscal stabilizers. Not to mention that this type of optimistic scenario likely strengthens the euro and keeps a lid on net exports as well.

And sad that this ‘bullish scenario’ for the euro zone means their massive output gap doesn’t even begin to close any time soon.

For the US, this bullish scenario has similar limitations, but not quite as severe, so the output gap could start to narrow some and employment as a percentage of the population begin to improve. But only modestly.

The US fiscal cliff is for real, but still far enough away to not be a day to day factor. And it at least does show that fiscal policy does work, at least according to every known forecaster with any credibility, which might open the door to proactive fiscal? Note the increasing chatter about how deficits don’t seem to drive up interest rates? And the increasing chatter about how the US, Japan, UK, etc. aren’t like the euro zone members with regards to interest rates?

Same in the euro zone, where discussion is now common regarding how austerity doesn’t work to grow their economies, with the reason to maintain it now down to the need to restore solvency. This is beginning to mean that if they solved the solvency riddle some other way they might back off on the austerity. And now there is a political imperative to do just that, so things could move in that direction, meaning ECB support for member nation funding, directly or indirectly, which removes the ‘ponzi’ aspect.

The discount rate cut doesn’t actually do anything for the economy- growth or inflation- but does show their concern.

And the relatively low Q1 state lending is showing the actual continuing policy constraint.

As previously discussed, China has what they consider an inflation problem, and there are precious few, if any, examples of inflation fights that didn’t cause hard landings.

Ch Headlines:

China to lower reserve requirement ratio
Q1 GDP slows in 29 provinces, regions
China 2012 Growth Forecast Cut to 8.1%, Citigroup Says
China 2012 Growth Outlook Revised to 8% From 8.2%, JPMorgan Says
China Growth Seen at 13-Year Low by Pimco as Banks Cut Forecast

Not bad, but let’s take it up to the next level.

Comments below:

Fiscal and monetary policy in a liquidity trap

By Martin Wolf

With floating fx, it’s always a ‘liquidity trap’ in that adding liquidity to a system necessarily not liquidity constrained is moot.

Part 1

What is the correct approach to fiscal and monetary policy when an economy is depressed and the central bank’s rate of interest is close to zero? Does the independence of the central bank make it more difficult to reach the right decisions? These are two enormously important questions raised by current circumstances in the US, the eurozone, Japan and the UK.

With floating fx, it’s always about a fiscal adjustment, directly or indirectly.

Broadly speaking, I can identify three macroeconomic viewpoints on these questions:
1. The first is the pre-1930 belief in balanced budgets and the gold standard (or some other form of a-political money).

Yes, actual fixed fx policy, where the monetary system is continuously liquidity constrained by design.

2. The second is the religion of balanced budgets and managed money, with Milton Friedman’s monetarism at the rules-governed end of the spectrum and independent inflation-targeting central banks at the discretionary end.

Yes, the application of fixed fx logic to a floating fx regime.

3. The third demands a return to Keynesian ways of thinking, with “modern monetary theory” (in which monetary policy and central banks are permanently subservient to fiscal policy) at one end of the policy spectrum, and temporary resort to active fiscal policy at the other.

MMT recognizes the difference in monetary dynamics between fixed and floating fx regimes.

In this note, I do not intend to address the first view, though I recognise that it has substantial influence, particularly in the Republican Party. I also do not intend to address Friedman’s monetarism, which has lost purchase on contemporary policy-makers, largely because of the views that the demand for money is unstable and the nature of money ill-defined. Finally, I intend to ignore “modern monetary theory” which would require a lengthy analysis of its own.

This leaves us with the respectable contemporary view that the best way to respond to contemporary conditions is via fiscal consolidation and aggressive monetary policy, and the somewhat less respectable view that aggressive fiscal policy is essential when official interest rates are close to zero.

Two new papers bring light from the second of these perspectives. One is co-authored by Paul McCulley, former managing director of Pimco and inventor of the terms “Minsky moment” and “shadow banking”, and Zoltan Pozsar, formerly at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and now a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund.* The other is co-authored by J. Bradford DeLong of the university of California at Berkeley, and Lawrence Summers, former US treasury secretary and currently at Harvard university. **

Unfortunately, and fully understood, is the imperative for you to select from ‘celebrity’ writers regardless of the quality of the content.

The paper co-authored by Mr McCulley and Mr Pozsar puts the case for aggressive fiscal policy. The US, they argue, is in a “liquidity trap”: even with official interest rates near zero, the incentive for extra borrowing, lending and spending in the private sector is inadequate.

An output gap is the evidence that total spending- public plus private- is inadequate. And yes, that can be remedied by an increase in private sector borrowing to spend, and/or a fiscal adjustment by the public sector towards a larger deficit via either an increase in spending and/or tax cut, depending on one’s politics.

The explanation for this exceptional state of affairs is that during the credit boom and asset-price bubble that preceded the crisis, large swathes of the private sector became over-indebted. Once asset prices fell, erstwhile borrowers were forced to reduce their debts. Financial institutions were also unwilling to lend. They needed to strengthen their balance sheets. But they also confronted a shortage of willing and creditworthy borrowers.

Yes, for any reason if private sector spending falls short of full employment levels, a fiscal adjustment can do the trick.

This raises an interesting question:

Is it ‘better’, for example, to facilitate the increase in spending through a private sector credit expansion, or through a tax cut that allows private sector spending to increase via increased income, or through a government spending increase?

The answer is entirely political. The output gap can be closed with any/some/all of those options.

In such circumstances, negative real interest rates are necessary, but contractionary economic conditions rule that out.

I see negative nominal rates as a tax that will reduce income and net financial assets of the non govt sectors, even as it may increase some private sector credit expansion. And the reduction of income and net financial assets works to reduce the credit worthiness of the non govt sectors reducing their ability to borrow to spend.

Instead, there is a danger of what the great American economist, Irving Fisher called “debt deflation”: falling prices raise the real burden of debt, making the economic contraction worse.

Yes, though he wrote in the context of fixed fx policy, where that tends to happen as well, though under somewhat different circumstances and different sets of forces.

A less extreme (and so more general) version of the idea is “balance-sheet recession”, coined by Richard Koo of Nomura. That is what Japan had to manage in the 1990s.

With floating fx they are all balance sheet recessions. There is no other type of recession.

This is how the McCulley-Pozsar paper makes the point: “deleveraging is a beast of burden that capitalism cannot bear alone. At the macroeconomic level, deleveraging must be a managed process: for the private sector to deleverage without causing a depression, the public sector has to move in the opposite direction . . . by effectively viewing the balance sheets of the monetary and fiscal authorities as a consolidated whole.

Correct, in the context of today’s floating fx. With fixed fx that option carries the risk of rising rates for the govt and default/devaluation.

“Fiscal austerity does not work in a liquidity trap and makes as much sense as putting an anorexic on a diet. Yet ‘diets’ are the very prescriptions that fiscal ‘austerians’ have imposed (or plan to impose) in the US, UK and eurozone. Austerians fail to realise, however, that everyone cannot save at the same time and that, in liquidity traps, the paradox of thrift and depression are fellow travellers that are functionally intertwined.”

Agreed for floating fx. Fixed fx is another story, where forced deflation via austerity does make the maths work, though most often at an impossible social cost.

Confronted by this line of argument, austerians (a term coined by Rob Parenteau, a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College), make three arguments:

1. additional borrowing will add heavily to future debt and so be an unreasonable burden on future generations;
2. increased borrowing will crowd out private borrowing;
3. bond investors will stop buying and push yields up.

Which does happen with fixed fx policy.

In a liquidity trap, none of these arguments hold.

With floating fx, none of these hold in any scenario.

Experience over the last four years (not to mention Japan’s experience over the past 20 years) has demonstrated that governments operating with a (floating) currency do not suffer a constraint on their borrowing. The reason is that the private sector does not wish to borrow, but wants to cut its debt, instead. There is no crowding out.

Right, because floating fx regimes are by design not liquidity constrained.

Moreover, adjustment falls on the currency, not on the long-term rate of interest.

Right, and again, unlike fixed fx.

In the case of the US, foreigners also want to lend, partly in support of their mercantilist economic policies.

Actually, they want to accumulate dollar denominated financial assets, which we call lending.

Note that both reserve balances at the Fed and securities account balances at the Fed (treasury securities) are simply dollar deposits at the Fed.

Alas, argue Mr McCulley and Mr Pozsar, “held back by concerns borne out of these orthodoxies, . . . governments are not spending with passionate purpose. They are victims of intellectual paralysis borne out of inertia of dogma . . . As a result, their acting responsibly, relative to orthodoxy, and going forth with austerity may drag economies down the vortex of deflation and depression.”

Right. Orthodoxy happens to be acting as if one was operating under a fixed fx regime even though it’s in fact a floating fx regime.

Finally, they note, “the importance of fiscal expansion and the impotence of conventional monetary policy measures in a liquidity trap have profound implications for the conduct of central banks. This is because in a liquidity trap, the fat-tail risk of inflation is replaced by the fat-tail risk of deflation.”

The risk of excess aggregate demand is replaced by the risk of inadequate aggregate demand.

And the case can be made that lower rates reduce aggregate demand via the interest income channels, as the govt is a net payer of interest.

In this situation, we do not need independent central banks that offset – and so punish – fiscally irresponsible governments. We need central banks that finance – and so encourage – economically responsible (though “fiscally irresponsible”) governments.

Not the way I would say it but understood.

When private sector credit growth is constrained, monetisation of public debt is not inflationary.

While I understand the point, note that ‘monetisation’ is a fixed fx term not directly applicable to floating fx in this context.

Indeed, it would be rather good if it were inflationary, since that would mean a stronger recovery, which would demand swift reversal of the unorthodox policy mix.

The conclusion of the McCulley-Pozsar paper is, in brief, that aggressive fiscal policy does work in the unusual circumstances of a liquidity trap, particularly if combined with monetisation. But conventional wisdom blocks full use of the unorthodox tool kit. Historically, political pressure has destroyed such resistance. Political pressure drove the UK off gold in 1931. But it also brought Hitler to power in Germany in 1933. The eurozone should take note.

Remarkably, in the circumstances of a liquidity trap, enlarged fiscal deficits are likely to reduce future levels of privately held public debt rather than raise them.

As if that aspect matters?

The view that fiscal deficits might provide such a free lunch is the core argument of the paper by DeLong and Summers, to which I will turn in a second post.

Free lunch entirely misses the point.

Why does the size the balances in Fed securities accounts matter as suggested, with floating fx policy?

Right, they’ve only been doing it for a couple of decades, monetary policy works with a lag…

BOJ’s Shirakawa: Fully Committed To Asset Purchases To Meet 1% Inflation Target

By Chana R. Schoenbergrand and Stephen L. Bernard

April 18 (Dow Jones) — The Bank of Japan remains determined to purchase more assets to meet its 1% inflation target, the central bank’s governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, said Wednesday night in New York.
“The Bank of Japan is fully committed to continuing powerful monetary easing through various measures, including maintaining the policy interest rate at practically zero and purchasing financial assets, until the current goal of year on year CPI inflation at 1% is deemed to be achievable,” Shirakawa said in his speech to the Foreign Policy Association.

But Shirakawa warned of the potential mismatch between what markets expect and what central banking policies can deliver.

Right!
Lower rates!
More QE!

Be patient, monetary policy works with a lag
It’s only been 20 years
Hyper inflation is just around the corner…

Yen Drops Versus Peers as Tankan Fuels Easing Speculation

April 2 (Bloomberg) — The yen weakened versus all of its major peers after a Bank of Japan (8301) report showed that sentiment failed to improve at the nation’s largest companies, stoking prospects the central bank will boost monetary stimulus.

The Japanese currency slid against the dollar and euro as signs that manufacturing is improving in the U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, undermined demand for haven assets. The euro remained higher after a quarterly gain versus the greenback as European governments called for a bigger global financial emergency fund after engineering a firewall to fight the region’s debt crisis.

“The worse-than-expected Tankan survey seems to be fueling talk that the BOJ will ease policy further,” Lee Wai Tuck, a currency strategist at Forecast Pte in Singapore, said about the central bank’s quarterly sentiment survey. “This is probably leading to selling of the yen.”

The yen lost 0.4 percent to 83.18 per dollar as as of 10:19 a.m. in Tokyo. It slid 0.4 percent to 110.97 per euro. Europe’s 17-nation currency was little changed at $1.3341 after rising 3 percent versus the greenback in the three months ended March 31.

The Tankan index for Japan’s largest manufacturers was unchanged last quarter from minus 4 in December, the BOJ said today in Tokyo. That was less than the median estimate of minus 1 in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. A negative number means pessimists outnumber optimists.

BOJ Meetings

BOJ policy board members are scheduled to meet April 9-10 and April 27 this month. The central bank held off from expanding asset purchases at its meeting in March as it monitored improvements in the economy. In February, it expanded bond purchases by 10 trillion yen ($120 billion) and set a 1 percent inflation goal in February.

The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index for the U.S. probably rose to 53 last month from 52.4 in February, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg before the figures are released today.

An index of Chinese manufacturing climbed to 53.1 last month, the highest since March 2011, the logistics federation and the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. The measure has a pattern of rising each March.

Seems all those hyper inflation forecasts haven’t had all that much influence.

;)

Cleveland Fed Estimates of Inflation Expectations

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland reports that its latest estimate of 10-year expected inflation is 1.38 percent. In other words, the public currently expects the inflation rate to be less than 2 percent on average over the next decade.

It was very nice to see Dylan Matthews, who is a young journalist and not an economist, recognize the growing influence of MMT. The piece does get a number of things wrong (perhaps inevitably, given the sheer volume of work we have produced over the last 10-15 years). We’ll be working to clear things up on our various websites (including: new economic perspectives and via our Twitter feed @deficitowl). We hope readers will not jump to erroneous conclusions about MMT. We have gotten a great deal right over the years (the S&P downgrade, the Eurozone debt crisis, QE, US interest rates, inflation, etc.). While the Austrians screamed, “Zimbabwe”, we explained that QE is nothing but an asset swap and that idle reserves — whatever their magnitude — will not “chase” any goods. And while “Keynesians” worried about the impact that large deficits would have on US interest rates, we calmly explained the flaws in the loanable funds framework and insisted that rates would remain low as long as the Fed was committed to low rates (as the Bank of Japan has shown for decades). And while Nobel laureates, like Robert Mundell, were espousing the virtues of a common currency in Europe, we warned that the new design would put bond markets in charge of government policies. At some point, being right should actually count for something.

*DJ Fed’s Plosser:’Monetary Policy Has Exposed Us To Substantial Inflation Risk’

Maybe it’s a learning disability…

Looks like China is still in ‘inflation fighting’ mode as state lending over there is functionally like federal deficit spending here.

As previously discussed, while China may successfully engineer a soft landing in their fight against inflation, I’ve never seen anything but hard landings elsewhere when fighting inflation. And with China a ‘first half/second half’ story, a weak first half generally means an even weaker second half.

China says January lending down 28% from year ago

February 12 (AFP) — Chinese bank lending fell 28 percent in January from a year earlier, official data showed, suggesting Beijing is reluctant to open the credit valves too quickly for fear of reigniting inflation.

State-owned lenders issued 738.1 billion yuan ($117.26 billion) in new loans in January, down 288.2 billion yuan from the same month last year and well short of analyst forecasts for one trillion yuan, the central bank said Friday.

Banks handed out 640.5 billion yuan in loans in December.

Chinese banks typically ramp up lending at the beginning of the year to avoid losing quotas issued by regulators and the effects of changes in monetary policy. Analysts said the weaker-than-expected data partly reflected the earlier than usual Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in January, and the government’s still tight restrictions on credit.

Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics in London, said it was the lowest December to January increase since 2007.

“It is hard to escape the feeling that the weakness of lending was at least partly a reflection of the slow pace at which policy is being eased,” he said.

Late last year the central bank eased lending restrictions on banks and analysts expect similar moves this year as authorities try to spur economic activity and prevent a collapse in the property market.

But most experts had forecast another easing of bank reserve requirements before the week-long Lunar New Holiday and the government’s failure to act suggests it does not expect a sharp slowdown in economic growth.

There is growing evidence that the world’s second largest economy is slowing as turmoil in eurozone countries and weakness in the United States hurts demand for Chinese exports, a key driver of the Asian giant.

The International Monetary Fund this week warned that an escalation of Europe’s fiscal woes could slash China’s economic growth by half this year, and it urged Beijing to prepare stimulus measures in response.

But Chinese leaders, worried about reigniting politically sensitive inflation, have signalled their intention to move cautiously and fine-tune policy as needed.

Reads like inflation fears are still there which should temper growth initiatives:

China economy faces downward risks in 2012

Feb 1 (Reuters) — China’s economy faces downward risks in 2012, as weakening external demand cuts into growth of the country’s export sector, the Finance Minister Xie Xuren said in remarks published on Wednesday.

He also said inflationary pressures in China remain strong as international markets are awash with cash, which has helped push up global commodity prices.

“There exists some downward pressure for the economic growth. As the external demand is now fading clearly, Chinese exporters are facing increasing difficulties,” Xie said in an article published in the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece magazine, Seeking Truth, which was posted on the central government website, www.gov.cn.

China’s economy, which grew at its weakest pace in 21/2 years in the latest quarter, looks to be heading for an even sharper slowdown in coming months, although an official survey of purchasing managers showed a slight upturn in factory production in January.

Xie also emphasized the important role of fiscal policy in maintaining China’s steady and relatively fast economic growth and said Beijing would continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy this year.

China’s fiscal deficit and government debt ratio, both of which remain within a safe and comfortable zone, are expected to give much scope for the government to keep its proactive fiscal policy, Xie added.

China’s nationwide fiscal revenues jumped 25.8 percent to a record high of 10.37 trillion yuan in 2011, leaving the country with a fiscal deficit of 519 billion yuan, lower than the budgeted 900 billion yuan.

“It is necessary and also possible for us to continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy,” he said. Xie also said that his ministry would provide more fiscal support to small to mediumsized enterprises and step up efforts to cut taxes for some selected sectors to restructure the economy away from exports and towards domestic consumption. “We will further improve tax cut policies in some areas to promote the development of enterprises and boost household consumption,” he added. Beijing has unveiled a slew of tax breaks to help cashstrapped small firms cope with rising costs and has also allowed them to issue more bonds and tap other sources of financing to ease the funding squeeze. The finance ministry also vowed to guarantee enough funding for key construction projects in the 12th five year plan period. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao also said at a state council meeting on Tuesday that the central government would back funding to major projects already under way to ensure steady growth in investments.

China 2012 Budget Deficit May Rise Slightly

Feb 1 (Bloomberg) — China’s budget deficit may rise slightly or be almost unchanged this year from 2011, Gao Peiyong, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote in a commentary in today’s People’s Daily.

China may control fiscal expansion this year as maintaining consumer prices is a main problem for the country, Gao wrote

China may cut tax, rather than increase spending to continue conducting positive fiscal policies, according to Gao.

2012 Economic Fundamentals Remain Sound

Feb 1 (Bloomberg) — China’s economic fundamentals remain sound and the country has some advantages that will promote development this year, Finance Minister Xie Xuren wrote in Qiushi article posted on the central government’s website today.

China has “huge” domestic demand potential, Xie writes

China still faces downward pressure on economic growth, “relatively large” inflationary pressure and potential economic and financial risks, Xie writes

China’s deficit rate and debt rate are in a “safe range,” Xie writes

China Says it Will Implement Proactive Fiscal Policy This Year

Feb 1 (Yonhap) — China said Wednesday it will implement a proactive fiscal policy this year in a bid to drive up growth amid growing signs of a global economic slump.

Chinese Minister of Finance Xie Xuren, said in a statement that the government will use financial functions to maintain stable and rapid economic development in China.

China’s economic growth slowed last year, with its gross domestic product growing 8.9 percent on-year in the fourth quarter, slowing from 9.1 percent in the third quarter and 9.5 percent in the second quarter.

Over the course of the year, China’s economy expanded 9.2 percent in 2011 from a year earlier, down from 10.3 percent on-year growth in 2010.

Xie noted that China’s economy is facing downward pressure stemming from external shocks.

“The country’s exports are facing increasing difficulties, affected by significantly weakening external demand,” he said. “New drivers for economic growth need to be developed.”

The country’s export growth has begun slowing on falling global trade.

With global economic uncertainty lingering, including the European fiscal crisis, China has been looking to transform itself into a consumption-oriented economy by raising domestic demand.

Good report!
Additional notations below:

Karim writes:
U.S. GDP growth in Q4 a bit weaker than expected at 2.8%

Perhaps the FOMC had word of this, explaining the unexpected dovishness?

1.9% of that growth accounted for by inventories. Other contributions: (consumer spending 2%, fixed investment 0.4%, government spending -0.9%, net exports -0.1%).

Rebuilding post earthquake supply lines probably now complete.
Govt spending continues weak, as revenues increase some and the federal deficit falls some.
Imports rise quickly with any increase in consumer spending.

In growth terms: (consumer spending 2%, fixed investment 3.3%, government spending -4.6%, exports 4.7% and imports 4.4%).

So stripping away inventories, growth was below trend. Plus savings rate fell back to 3.7% from 3.9%.

Domestic savings down with spending up indicates increasing consumer debt.
The question is whether this is ‘wanted’ as per increased desires to buy on credit,
or because the decline in govt deficit spending ‘forced’ more consumer debt for ‘essentials’

And, core PCE slowed from 2.1% to 1.1%.

Also explains FOMC dovishness as they see risk as asymmetrical, fearing deflation more than inflation.

In sum, will keep QE3 talk very much alive

And somewhat moot, even as Q1 GDP forecasts are being revised down some, as most don’t think QE matters much for the real economy.

What’s becoming understood is that while there is ‘more the Fed can do’
for all practical purposes there is nothing they can do to further support the real economy.

Euro money and lending data shockingly weak in December.

Might partially explain how some banks apparently got the balance sheet room to buy more national govt debt?

In particular, record single month decline in lending to the non-bank private sector (74bn). Of that, 37bn decline in lending to non-financial corporates and 8bn drop in lending to households.

This should be very supportive of additional ECB rate cuts over the next few months.

Preface. I generally subscribe to the view that in free currencies, deficits are mostly self-funding, and ‘enormous’ deficits needn’t be accompanied by higher yields. Government builds a bridge, pays the bridgebuilder, who pays the grocer, who eventually either buys the Treasury or deposits in a bank whose reserves are fungible vs T-bills via the intermediating Fed. Government dissavings and private sector savings are equal and offsetting, as long as the Central Bank has a working spreadsheet and an interest rate target. Yields are just a function of duration needs of savers vs borrowers, but the AMOUNTS always match up. Likewise, I don’t believe that the creation of bank reserves is inflationary or hyper-inflationary; bank lending is capital – not reserve – constrained. Loan officers don’t check the vaults. There is always enough. I continue to marvel at the armies of deficit vigilantes who take aim at Treasuries and JGBs, armed with Gold Standard thinking or even the latest Reinhart/Rogoff, only to retreat 2-3 year later. It didn’t work shorting US Treasuries in 2009-2010 for the ‘money supply’ or ‘deficit spike,’ and that roadside is stacked with corpses. Even the Home Run deficit vigilante hitters who nailed Europe this year (and Europe is, for now, operating as a quasi-Gold standard and an entirely different set of risks) offset those gains with losses betting the other way on the US, UK, and Japan. It’s evident in the returns.

My proposals remain:

1. A full FICA suspension:

The suspension of FICA paid by employees restores spending which supports output and employment.
The suspension of FICA paid by business helps keep costs down which in a competitive environment lowers prices for consumers.

2. $150 billion one time distribution by the federal govt to the states on a per capita basis to get them over the hump.

3. An $8/hr federally funded transition job for anyone willing and able to work to assist in the transition from unemployment to private sector employment.

Call me an inflation hawk if you want. But when the fiscal drag is removed with the FICA suspension and funds for the states I see risk of what will be seen as ‘unwelcome inflation’ causing Congress to put on the brakes long before unemployment gets below 5% without the $8/hr transition job in place, even with the help of the FICA suspension in lowering costs for business.

It’s my take that in an expansion the ‘employed labor buffer stock’ created by the $8/hr job offer will prove a superior price anchor to the current practice of using the current unemployment based buffer stock as our price anchor.

The federal government caused this mess for allowing changing credit conditions to cause its resulting over taxation to unemploy a lot more people than the government wanted to employ. So now the corrective policy is to suspend the FICA taxes, give the states the one time assistance they need to get over the hump the federal government policy created, and provide the transition job to help get those people that federal policy is causing to be unemployed back into private sector employment in a more orderly, more ‘non inflationary’ manner.

I’ve noticed the criticism the $8/hr proposal- aka the ‘Job Guarantee’- has been getting in the blogosphere, and it continues to be the case that none of it seems logically consistent to me, as seen from an MMT perspective. It seems the critics haven’t fully grasped the ramifications of the recognition of the currency as a (simple) public monopoly as outlined in Full Employment AND Price Stability and the other mandatory readings.

So yes, we can simply restore aggregate demand with the FICA suspension and funds for the states, but if I were running things I’d include the $8 transition job to improve the odds of both higher levels of real output and lower ‘inflation pressures’.

Also, this is not to say that I don’t support the funding of public infrastructure (broadly defined) for public purpose. In fact, I see that as THE reason for government in the first place, and it should be determined and fully funded as needed. I call that the ‘right size’ government, and, in general, it’s not the place for cyclical adjustments.

4. An energy policy to help keep energy consumption down as we expand GDP, particularly with regard to crude oil products.

Here my presumption is there’s more to life than burning our way to prosperity, with ‘whoever burns the most fuel wins.’

Perhaps more important than what happens if these proposals are followed is what happens if they are not, which is more likely going to be the case.

First, given current credit conditions, world demand, and the 0 rate policy and QE, it looks to me like the current federal deficit isn’t going to be large enough to allow anything better than muddling through we’ve seen over the last few years.

Second, potential volatility is as high as it’s ever been. Europe could muddle through with the ECB doing what it takes at the last minute to prevent a collapse, or doing what it takes proactively, or it could miss a beat and let it all unravel. Oil prices could double near term if Iran cuts production faster than the Saudis can replace it, or prices could collapse in time as production comes online from Iraq, the US, and other places forcing the Saudis to cut to levels where they can’t cut any more, and lose control of prices on the downside.

In other words, the risk of disruption and the range of outcomes remains elevated.

Another well stated piece from John Carney on the CNBC website:

Modern Monetary Theory and Austrian Economics

By John Carney

Dec 27 (CNBC) — When I began blogging about Modern Monetary Theory, I knew I risked alienating or at least annoying some of my Austrian Economics friends. The Austrians are a combative lot, used to fighting on the fringes of economic thought for what they see as their overlooked and important insights into the workings of the economy.

Which is one of the things that makes them a lot like the MMT crowd.

There are many other things that Austrian Econ and MMT share. A recent post by Bob Wenzel at Economic Policy Journal, which is presented as a critique of my praise of some aspects of MMT, actually makes this point very well.

The MMTers believe that the modern monetary system—sovereign fiat money, unlinked to any commodity and unpegged to any other currency—that exists in the United States, Canada, Japan, the UK and Australia allows governments to operate without revenue constraints. They can never run out of money because they create the money they spend.

This is not to say that MMTers believe that governments can spend without limit. Governments can overspend in the MMT paradigm and this overspending leads to inflation. Government financial assets may be unlimited but real assets available for purchase—that is, goods and services the economy is capable of producing—are limited. The government can overspend by (a) taking too many goods and services out of the private sector, depriving the private sector of what it needs to satisfy the people, grow the economy and increase productivity or (b) increasing the supply of money in the economy so large that it drives up the prices of goods and services.

As Wenzel points out, Murray Rothbard—one of the most important Austrian Economists the United States has produced—takes exactly the same position. He says that governments take “control of the money supply” when they find that taxation doesn’t produce enough revenue to cover expenditures. In other words, fiat money is how governments escape revenue constraint.

Rothbard considers this counterfeiting, which is a moral judgment that depends on the prior conclusion that fiat money isn’t the moral equivalent of real money. Rothbard is entitled to this view—I probably even share it—but that doesn’t change the fact that in our economy today, this “counterfeiting” is the operational truth of our monetary system. We can decry it—but we might as well also try to understand what it means for us.

Rothbard worries that government control of the money supply will lead to “runaway inflation.” The MMTers tend to be more sanguine about the danger of inflation than Rothbard—although I do not believe they are entitled to this attitude. As I explained in my piece “Monetary Theory, Crony Capitalism and the Tea Party,” the MMTers tend to underestimate the influence of special interests—including government actors and central bankers themselves—on monetary policy. They have monetary policy prescriptions that would avoid runaway inflation but, it seems to me, there is little reason to expect these would ever be followed in the countries that are sovereign currency issuers. I think that on this point, many MMTers confuse analysis of the world as it is with the world as they would like it to be.

In short, the MMTers agree with Rothbard on the purpose and effect of government control of money: it means the government is no longer revenue constrained. They differ about the likelihood of runaway inflation , which is not a difference of principle but a divergence of political prediction.

This point of agreement sets both Austrians and MMTers outside of mainstream economics in precisely the same way. They appreciate that the modern monetary system is very, very different from older, commodity based monetary systems—in a way that many mainstream economists do not.

In MM, CC & TP, I briefly mentioned a few other positions on the economy MMTers tend to share. Wenzel writes that “there is nothing right about these views.”

I don’t think Wenzel actually agrees with himself here. Let’s run through these one by one.

1. The MMTers think the financial system tends toward crisis. Wenzel writes that the financial system doesn’t tend toward crisis. But a moment later he admits that the actual financial system we have does tend toward crisis. All Austrians believe this, as far as I can tell.

What has happened here is that Wenzel is now the one confusing the world as it is with the world as he wishes it would be. Perhaps under some version of the Austrian-optimum financial system—no central bank, gold coin as money, free banking or no fractional reserve banking—we wouldn’t tend toward crisis. But that is not the system we have.

The MMTers aren’t engaged with arguing about the Austrian-optimum financial system. They are engaged in describing the actual financial system we have—which tends toward crisis.

They even agree that the tendency toward crisis is largely caused by the same thing, credit expansions leading to irresponsible lending.

2. The MMTers say that “capitalist economies are not self-regulating.” Again, Wenzel dissents. But if we read “capitalist economies” as “modern economies with central banking and interventionist governments” then the point of disagreement vanishes.

Are we entitled to read “capitalist economies” in this way? I think we are. The MMTers are not, for the most part, attempting to argue with non-existent theoretical economies or describe the epic-era Icelandic political economy. They are dealing with the economy we have, which is usually called “capitalist.” Austrians can argue that this isn’t really capitalism—but this is a terminological quibble. When it comes down to the problem of self-regulation of our so-called capitalist system, the Austrians and MMTers are in agreement.

3. Next up is the MMT view (borrowed from an earlier economic school called “Functional Finance”) that fiscal policy should be judged by its economic effects. Wenzel asks if this means that this “supercedes private property that as long as something is good for the economy, it can be taxed away from the individual?”

Here is a genuine difference between the Austrians—especially those of the Rothbardian stripe—and the MMTers. The MMTers do indeed envision the government using taxes to accomplish what is good for the economy—which, for the most part, means combating inflation. They think that the government may need to use taxation to snuff out inflation at times. Alternatively, the government can also reduce its own spending to extinguish inflation.

Note that we’ve come across a gap between MMTers and Rothbardians that is far smaller than the chasm between either of them and mainstream economics, where taxation of private property and income is regularly seen as justified by the need to fund government operations. MMTers and Austrians both agree that under the current circumstances people in most developed countries are overtaxed.

4. Wenzel actually overlooks the larger gap between Austrians and MMTers, which has to do with the efficacy of government spending. Many MMTers believe that most governments in so-called capitalist economies are not spending enough. Most—if not all—Austrians think that these same government are spending too much.

The Austrian view is based on the idea that government spending tends to distort the economy, in part because—as the MMTers would agree—government spending in our age typically involves monetary expansion. The MMTers, I would argue, have a lot to learn from the Austrians on this point. I think that an MMT effort to more fully engage the Austrians on the topic of the structure of production would be well worth the effort.

5. Wenzel’s challenge to the idea of functional finance is untenable—and not particularly Austrian. He argues that the subjectivity of value means it is impossible for us to tell whether something is “good for the economy.” Humbug. We know that an economy that more fully reflects the aspirations and choices of the individuals it encompasses is better than one that does not. We know that high unemployment is worse than low unemployment. All other things being equal, a more productive economy is superior to a less productive economy, a wealthier economy is better than a more impoverished one.

Wenzel’s position amounts to nihilism. I think he is confusing the theory of subjective value with a deeper relativism. Subjectivism is merely the notion that the value of an economic good—that is, an object or a service—is not inherent to the thing but arises from within the individual’s needs and wants. This does not mean that we cannot say that some economic outcome is better or worse or that certain policy prescription are good for the economy and certain are worse.

It would be odd for any Austrian to adopt the nihilism of Wenzel. It’s pretty rare to ever encounter an Austrian who lacks normative views of the economy. These normative views depend on the view that some things are good for economy and some things are bad. I doubt that Wenzel himself really subscribes to the kind of nihilism he seems to advocate in his post.

Wenzel’s final critique of me is that I over-emphasize cronyism and underplay the deeper problems of centralized power. My reply is three-fold. First, cronyism is a more concrete political problem than centralization; tactically, it makes sense to fight cronyism. Second, cronyism is endemic to centralized government decisions, as the public choice economists have shown. They call it special interest rent-seeking, but that’s egg-head talk from cronyism. Third, I totally agree: centralization is a real problem because the “rationalization” involved necessarily downplays the kinds of unarticulated knowledge that are important to everyday life, prosperity and happiness.

At the level of theory, Austrians and MMTers have a lot in common. Tactically, an alliance makes sense. Intellectually, bringing together the descriptive view of modern monetary systems with Austrian views about the structure of production and limitations of economic planning (as well Rothbardian respect for individual property rights) should be a fruitful project.

So, as I said last time, let’s make it happen.

As if QE is an inflationary bias.
They are all clueless.

MMT to the ECB:
QE addresses the solvency issue, not ‘deflation’ or aggregate demand issues.

Bini Smaghi Says ECB Should Use QE If Deflation Risk Arises

By Gabi Thesing

Dec 23 (Bloomberg) — European Central Bank Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said that policy makers shouldn’t shirk from using quantitative easing if deflation becomes a danger to the euro region.

“I do not understand the quasi-religious discussions about quantitative easing,” Bini Smaghi, who will leave his post at the end of the month, said in an interview published yesterday by the Financial Times. The ECB confirmed the comments. “It is appropriate if economic conditions justify it, in particular in countries facing a liquidity trap that may lead to deflation.”

With the tools currently at their immediate disposal, including providing unlimited member bank liquidity,lowering the interbank rate, and buying euro national govt debt, the ECB has no chance of causing any monetary inflation, no matter how hard it might try. There just are no known channels, direct or indirect, in theory or practice, that connects those policies to the real economy. (Note that this is not to say that removing bank liquidity and national govt credit support wouldn’t be catastrophic. It’s a bit like engine oil. You need a gallon or two for the engine to run correctly, but further increasing the oil in the sump isn’t going to alter the engine’s performance.)

Lower rates sure doesn’t do the trick. Just look to Japan for going on two decades, the US going on 3 years, and the ECB’s low rate policies of recent years. There’s not a hint of monetary inflation/excess aggregate demand or inflationary currency weakness from low rates. If anything, seems to me the depressing effect on savers indicates low rates from the CB might even, ironically, promote deflation through the interest income channels, as the non govt sector is necessarily a net receiver of interest income when the govt is a net payer. (See Bernanke, Reinhart, and Sacks 2004 Fed paper on the fiscal effect of changes in interest rates.)

And if what’s called quantitative easing was inflationary, Japan would be hyperinflating by now, with the US not far behind. Nor is there any sign that the ECB’s buying of euro govt bonds has resulted in any kind of monetary inflation, as nothing but deflationary pressures continue to mount in that ongoing debt implosion. The reason there is no inflation from the ECB bond buying is because all it does is shift investor holdings from national govt debt to ECB balances, which changes nothing in the real economy.

Nor does bank liquidity provision have anything to do with monetary inflation, currency depreciation, or bank lending. As all monetary insiders know, bank lending is never reserve constrained. Constraints on banking come from regulation, including capital requirements and lending standards, and, of course credit worthy entities looking to borrow. With the ECB providing unlimited liquidity for the last several years, wouldn’t you think if there was going to be some kind of monetary problem it would have happened by now?

So the grand irony of the day is, that while there’s nothing the ECB can do to cause monetary inflation, even if it wanted to, the ECB, fearing inflation, holds back on the bond buying that would eliminate the national govt solvency risk but not halt the deflationary monetary forces currently in place.

So where does monetary inflation come from? Fiscal policy. The Weimar inflation was caused by deficit spending on the order of something like 50% of GDP to buy the foreign currencies demanded for war reparations. It was no surprise that selling that many German marks for foreign currencies in the market place drove the mark down as it did. In fact, when that policy finally ended, so did the inflation. And there was nothing the central bank could do with interest rates or buying and selling securities or anything else to stop the inflation caused by the massive deficit spending, just like today there is nothing the ECB can do to reverse the deflationary forces in place from the austerity measures.

So here we are, with the ECB demanding deflationary austerity from the member nations in return for the limited bond buying that has been sustaining some semblance of national govt solvency, not seeming to realize it can’t inflate with its monetary policy tools, even if it wanted to.

Post script:

The only way the ECB could inflate would be to buy dollars or other fx outright, which it doesn’t do even when it might want a weaker euro, as ideologically they want the euro to be the reserve currency, and not themselves build fx reserves that give the appearance of the euro being backed by fx.

How High Should Taxes Get on the Wealthy?

By John Carney

Good to see John Carney invoking MMT again!

My conclusion would have been with today’s shortage of aggregate demand we are grossly over taxing for inflation prevention, and so, a FICA suspension is the way to go vs a tax cut for the rich.

But it wasn’t my story.

;)

Seems the logical consequence of hair cutting Greek debt and announcing it may happen to other member nations?

That said, would not surprise me to soon be hearing hints of something like:
‘ECB bond buying not necessarily inflationary if combined with austerity’ coming out of Germany,
triggering a massive ‘relief rally’ that will last until the reality of the austerity part sinks (syncs) in,
as the 10th plague infects the German bonds markets.

*ECB’S STARK SAYS DEBT CRISIS SPREADING TO ‘CORE’ COUNTRIES
*ECB’S STARK SAYS DEBT TOLERANCE IN EUROPE IS DECLINING
*ECB’S STARK SAYS INVESTORS ARE REASSESSING SOVEREIGN DEBT

Good to see Dirk at Goldman is pretty much spot on:

German Economic Commentary : Chancellor Merkel not keen on more a proactive ECB stance

Published November 18, 2011

Chancellor Merkel gave a speech in Berlin yesterday where her main message with respect to stabilisation measures was essentially: No! Merkel rejected the introduction of Eurobonds but also any commitment from the ECB’s side to be the lender of last resort for Euro-zone governments.

There are several arguments the German government/Bundesbank are putting forward against a more pro-active stance of the ECB. First, a more pro-active role would not be in accordance with the treaties. Second, it would create moral hazard as it would reduce the incentive for governments to consolidate and reform. Third, debt monetisation, sovereign debt purchases by the ECB, leads to inflation. The latter argument was echoed by the chairman of the council of economic experts Franz, who said in an interview with FAZ newspaper that debt monetisation is a “deadly sin” for a central bank.

These are valid arguments, but only up to a point. In particular the worries about the inflationary impact of debt monetisation are exaggerated. Sovereign debt purchases of a central bank do not necessarily lead to inflation (see the example of Japan, although it can, see the example of Zimbabwe). It can lead to inflation if these purchases are used to finance an expansionary fiscal policy that will lead to strong growth and demand outpacing supply such that price setters will increase their prices. Fiscal policy, however, will be quite restrictive in the Euro-zone in the coming years. Italy, for example, aims at tightening fiscal policy by almost 3% next year on our estimate (we calculate this as the change in the structural primary fiscal balance). And while it remains to be seen whether the fiscal targets will be met, it is a safe bet that fiscal policy will not be expansionary in the Euro-zone for quite some time.

It can also lead to inflation if there is an excessive debt overhang, i.e. the fiscal position of a country is clearly unsustainable. Put differently the expansion of the monetary side is, even in the long run, not backed by a similar expansion of the real side of the economy. As we have argued in the past we see this only as a remote risk.

What the ECB is currently doing under its SMP is essentially swapping one savings instrument (peripheral sovereign debt) for another (cash) as private sector investors, for various reasons, no longer want to hold peripheral debt. But this has no inflationary implications unless one assumes that investors are spending the cash thereby stimulating demand which then leads to inflation. But these investors are not holding cash because they want to increase their spending, but because they think, rightly or wrongly, that cash is more rewarding from an investment point of view.

There are no easy choices and it would have been, no doubt, better if the ECB had never got in the position it is in now. But the current situation demands a careful weighing of the risk involved with any decision taken. The inflationary risk thereby seems to be getting an unduly high weight in the consideration of German policy makers.

Dirk Schumacher

And this Fed fears deflation a lot more than inflation:

• We see signs that the upside inflation surprises of 2011 have ended. Our new statistical summary of the price components of business surveys such as the ISM, Philly Fed, and NFIB points to decelerating inflation. In addition, our unweighted CPI diffusion index, which measures the breadth of price changes across 178 detailed price categories, fell to its lowest level since late 2010.

Inflation has been above our expectations in 2011, but we expect a substantial part of this surprise to reverse and see core inflation clearly below the Fed’s “mandate-consistent” level of 2% or a bit less by the end of 2012. The reasons are straightforward. There is still a large amount of slack in the US economy; nominal wage inflation remains very low; and much of the inflation pickup of 2011 can be traced to temporary factors such as short-term commodity price pass-through and upward pressure on motor vehicle prices in the wake of the Japanese earthquake. (We do not expect a full reversal of the core inflation pickup because the increase in rent inflation is likely to be more persistent.)

The recent inflation data have started to look more consistent with our view of moderating core inflation. The consumer price index (CPI) excluding food and energy has risen at an annualized rate of just 1.2% over the past two months, the lowest rate since December 2010 Statistically based measures of core inflation such as the Cleveland Fed’s weighted-median and 16% trimmed-mean CPI send a similar message.

Our unweighted CPI diffusion index is also starting to look a bit more benign again. It is constructed by seasonally adjusting all 178 individual CPI categories for which we have sufficient data, calculating the month-to-month change, and then reporting the percentage of categories showing price increases plus half the percentage showing no change. That is, values above 50 indicate that more categories are seeing price increases than decreases; the higher above 50, the greater the breadth of price increases relative to price decreases. (We perform our own seasonal adjustment because the Labor Department only provides seasonally adjusted CPI data for a subset of product categories.) Exhibit 1 below shows our diffusion index. While it is still clearly above the levels of 2009 and 2010, the October 2011 reading was the lowest since November 2010.

Exhibit 1: CPI Diffusion Index Has Started to Slow

To gain more insight into future inflation trends, we have constructed a new measure that summarizes the inflation signal from various business surveys. Specifically, we calculated the first principal components of the price-related questions in the monthly ISM, Chicago PMI, Philly Fed, NFIB, Kansas City Fed, and Richmond Fed business surveys. These questions refer to prices paid, prices received, or wages and salaries and are generally reported as the difference between the percentage of respondents saying that prices rose in the survey month and the percentage saying that prices fell. (Focusing only on prices paid or prices received indexes does not make a significant difference to the results.)

The results are shown in Exhibit 2 below. In general, our business survey indicator of inflation tracks the ups and downs of the core PCE index–the Fed’s favorite measure of underlying inflation–reasonably well. After a significant acceleration in early 2011, the indicator has declined notably in recent months and is now consistent with a deceleration in core PCE inflation from the recent 2%+ level to somewhere closer to 1.5%. This is also consistent with our forecast that inflation will slow over the next year.

Exhibit 2: Business Survey Inflation Shows Recent Deceleration