Tag Archives: Output Gap

Fiscal and monetary policy in a liquidity trap

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

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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?

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Consumer borrowing rose $19.3 billion in December

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With the federal deficit coming down it takes more consumer and business borrowing to keep GDP (modestly) growing.

And note that student loans are reportedly responsible for half the gain.

Looks to me like it’s going to take a lot more consumer debt growth just to start lowering the output gap.

The largest gains are traditionally to be had in housing, but still no sign of that sector materially improving.

Nor is a proactive fiscal relaxation in the cards.

If anything there’s risk of taxes going up and more spending being cut.

Consumer borrowing rose $19.3 billion in December

Feb 25 (AP) — Americans accelerated their borrowing in December for the second straight month, running up more credit card debt and taking out loans to buy cars and attend school.

Consumer borrowing rose by $19.3 billion in December after a $20.4 billion gain in November, the Federal Reserve said Tuesday. The two increases were the biggest monthly gains in a decade.

Total consumer borrowing is now at a seasonally adjusted $2.5 trillion. That nearly matches the pre-recession borrowing level. And it is up 4.4 percent from the September 2010 post-recession low.

The rise in borrowing could be a sign that Americans are more confident in the economy. But consumers are also borrowing more at a time when their wages haven’t kept pace with inflation.

The outlook for hiring has improved, which could help boost consumer spending.

In January, companies added 243,000 net jobs, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.

Still, without higher pay, many could pull back further on spending. Consumer spending was flat in December, and the savings rate fell. Consumer spending is important because it accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.

Americans borrowed more on their credit cards in December, likely to buy holiday gifts. A measure of that debt increased by $2.8 billion.

But the bulk of December’s increase was because consumers took out more auto loans and student loans. The category that includes both rose by $16.6 billion.

Ellen Zentner, an economist at Nomura Securities in New York, said that half the gain in that category came from higher student loans. That suggests the weak economy is persuading more people to go back to school.

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Obama Says U.S. Must Reduce Debt, Spur Job Growth

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This is a ridiculous notion that further shows there is no understanding of the monetary system at the highest levels, or the ‘debt’ per se would not be a concern. They obviously don’t understand taxes function to regulate aggregate demand (spending) and not to raise revenue per se.

Reminds me of a story Phil Harvey used to tell about sending 100 dogs into a room with 95 bones in it.
5 dogs don’t get bones.
The sociologists and micro economists examine them, and find that the 5 least intelligent, least aggressive etc. dogs didn’t get bones.
So they train those 5 dogs and repeat the experiment, and this time those dogs do get bones.
Of course, 5 others don’t, because the bone shortage is a macro problem.

Same with unemployment.
The problem is a lack of funding for paid jobs because people would rather save their incomes than spend them on goods and services that require labor to produce.
Short of trying to figure out how to get the population to spend by going deeper into debt (reduce savings) which is about as impossible as it is undesirable, the only solution is to cut taxes or increase govt. spending to provide the needed funding.

If this misunderstanding continues, look for high unemployment, a deflationary backdrop, and the Fed on hold until something changes to reduce the output gap.

Obama Says U.S. Must Reduce Debt, Spur Job Growth

By Kate Andersen Brower

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama said the U.S. economy has pulled “back from the brink” and the government must now “get serious” about reducing debt and helping spur job growth.

Addressing a panel of business and labor leaders and economists, the president said it will require “bold, innovative action” on the part of the government and private industry to bring the unemployment rate down and lay the foundation for future growth.

“We just are not where we need to be yet,” Obama told his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Along with helping spur job growth, “The government is going to have to get serious about reducing our debt levels.”

This was the second time the full board has met to brief the president on ways to create jobs and encourage economic growth. Obama formed the advisory panel in February to provide an “independent voice on economic issues.” Today’s meeting is focusing on creating jobs through innovation.

Along with Volcker, board members include former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson; Robert Wolf, chairman and chief executive officer of UBS Americas; Penny Pritzker, who led Obama’s campaign fundraising effort and is chairman of Pritzker Realty Group; Jeffrey Immelt the chief executive of General Electric Co.; Caterpillar Inc. Chief Executive OfficerJim Owens; and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.


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Assessing the Fed under Chairman Bernanke

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“Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
Keynes, Chapter 12, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

The Fed has failed, but failed conventionally, and is therefore being praised for what it has done.

The Fed has a stated goal of “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long term interest rates” (Both the Federal Act 1913 and as amended in 1977).

It has not sustained full employment. And up until the recent collapse of aggregate demand, the Fed assumed it had the tools to sustain the demand necessary for full employment. In fact, longer term Federal Reserve economic forecasts have always assumed unemployment would be low and inflation low two years in the future, as those forecasts also assumed ‘appropriate monetary policy’ would be applied.

The Fed has applied all the conventional tools, including aggressive interest rate cuts, aggressive lending to its member banks, and extended aggressive lending to other financial markets. Only after these actions failed to show the desired recovery in aggregate demand did the Fed continue with ‘uncoventional’ but well known monetary policies. These included expanding the securities member banks could use for collateral, expanding its portfolio by purchasing securities in the marketplace, and lending unsecured to foreign central banks through its swap arrangements.

While these measures, and a few others, largely restored ‘market functioning’ early in 2009, unemployment has continued to increase, while inflation continues to press on the low end of the Fed’s tolerance range. Indeed, with rates at 0% and their portfolio seemingly too large for comfort, they consider the risks of deflation much more severe than the risks of an inflation that they have to date been unable to achieve.

The Fed has been applauded for staving off what might have been a depression by taking these aggressive conventional actions, and for their further aggressiveness in then going beyond that to do everything they could to reverse a dangerously widening output gap.

The alternative was to succeed unconventionally with the proposals I have been putting forth for well over a year. These include:

1. The Fed should have always been lending to its member banks in the fed funds market (unsecured interbank lending) in unlimited quantities at its target fed funds rate. This is unconventional in the US, but not in many other nations that have ‘collars’ where the Central Bank simply announces a rate at which it will borrow, and a slightly higher rate at which it will lend.

Instead of lending unsecured, the Fed demands collateral from its member banks. When the interbank markets ceased to function, the Fed only gradually began to expand the collateral it would accept from its banks. Eventually the list of collateral expanded sufficiently so that Fed lending was, functionally, roughly similar to where it would have been if it were lending unsecured, and market functioning returned.

What the Fed and the administration failed to appreciate was that demanding collateral from loans to member banks was redundant. The FDIC was already examining banks continuously to make sure all of their assets were deemed ‘legal’ and ‘appropriate’ and properly risk weighted and well capitalized. It is also obligated to take over any bank not in compliance. The FDIC must do this because it insures the bank deposits that potentially fund the entire banking system. Lending to member banks by the Fed in no way changes the asset structure of the banks, and so in no way increases the risk to government as a whole. If anything, unsecured lending by the Fed alleviates risk, as unsecured Fed lending eliminates the possibility of a liquidity crisis.

2. The Fed has assumed and continued to assume lower interest rates add to aggregate demand. There are, however, reasons to believe this is currently not the case.

First, in a 2004 Fed paper by Bernanke, Sacks, and Reinhart, the authors state that lower interest rates reduce income to the non government sectors through what they call the ‘fiscal channel.’ As the Fed cuts rates, the Treasury pays less interest, thereby reducing the income and savings of financial assets of the non government sectors. They add that a tax cut or Federal spending increase can offset this effect. Yet it was never spelled out to Congress that a fiscal adjustment was potentially in order to offset this loss of aggregate demand from interest rate cuts.

Second, while lowering the fed funds rate immediately cut interest rates for savers, it was also clear rates for borrowers were coming down far less, if at all. And, in many cases, borrowing rates rose due to credit issues. This resulted in expanded net interest margins for banks, which are now approaching an unheard of 5%. Funds taken away from savers due to lower interest rates reduces aggregate demand, borrowers aren’t gaining and may be losing as well, and the additional interest earned by lenders is going to restore lost capital and is not contributing to aggregate demand. So this shift of income from savers to banks (leveraged lenders) is reducing aggregate demand as it reduces personal income and shifts those funds to banks who don’t spend any of it.

3. The Fed is perpetuating the myth that its monetary policy will work with a lag to support aggregate demand, when it has no specific channels it can point to, or any empirical evidence that this is the case. This is particularly true of what’s called ‘quantitative easing.’ Recent surveys show market participants and politicians believe the Fed is engaged in ‘money printing,’ and they expect the size of the Fed’s portfolio and the resulting excess reserve positions of the banks to somehow, with an unknown lag, translate into a dramatic ‘monetary expansion’ and inflation. Therefore, during this severe recession where unemployment has continued to be far higher than desired, market participants and politicians are focused instead on what the Fed’s ‘exit strategy’ might be. The the fear of that presumed event has clearly taken precedence over the current economic and social disaster. A second ‘fiscal stimulus’ is not even a consideration, unless the economy gets substantially worse. Published papers from the NY Fed, however, clearly show how ‘quantitative easing’ should not be expected to have any effect on inflation. The reports state that in no case is the banking system reserve constrained when lending, so the quantity of reserves has no effect on lending or the economy.

4. The Fed is perpetuating the myth that the Federal Government has ‘run out of money,’ to use the words of President Obama. In May, testifying before Congress, when asked where the money the Fed gives the banks comes from, Chairman Bernanke gave the correct answer- the banks have accounts at the Fed much like the rest of us have bank accounts, and the Fed gives them money simply by changing numbers in their bank accounts. What the Chairman explained was there is no such thing as the government ‘running out of money.’ But the government’s personal banker, the Federal Reserve, as decided not publicly correct the misunderstanding that the government is running out of money, and thereby reduced the likelihood of a fiscal response to end the current recession.

There are also additional measures the Fed should immediately enact, such banning member banks from using LIBOR in any of their contracts. LIBOR is controlled by a foreign entity and it is counter productive to allow that to continue. In fact, it was the use of LIBOR that prompted the Fed to advance the unlimited dollar swap lines to the world’s foreign central banks- a highly risky and questionable maneuver- and there is no reason US banks can’t index their rates to the fed funds rate which is under Fed control.
There is also no reason I can determine, when the criteria is public purpose, to let banks transact in any secondary markets. As a point of logic, all legal bank assets can be held in portfolio to maturity in the normal course of business, and all funding, both short term and long term can be obtained through insured deposits, supplemented by loans from the Fed on an as needed basis. This would greatly simply the banking model, and go a long way to ease regulatory burdens. Excessive regulatory needs are a major reason for regulatory failures. Banking can be easily restructured in many ways for more compliance with less regulation.

There are more, but I believe the point has been made. I conclude by giving the Fed and Chairman Bernanke a grade of A for quickly and aggressively applying conventional actions such as interest rate cuts, numerous programs for accepting additional collateral, enacting swap lines to offset the negative effects of LIBOR dependent domestic interest rates, and creative support of secondary markets. I give them a C- for failure to educate the markets, politicians, and the media on monetary operations. And I give them an F for failure to recognize the currently unconventional actions they could have taken to avoid the liquidity crisis, and for failure inform Congress as to the necessity of sustaining aggregate demand through fiscal adjustments.


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ECB statements

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ECB’s Stark Says Economy May Recover Sooner Than Forecast

Stark Says State Debt May Boost Long-Term Market Rates, BZ Says

*ECB’S STARK SEES `NO BIG PROBLEMS’ UNWINDING ASSET PURCHASES

*ECB’S STARK COMMENTS IN INTERVIEW WITH BOERSEN-ZEITUNG

*ECB’S STARK SAYS RISING GOVT DEBT MAY BOOST LONG-TERM MKT RATES

*STARK SAYS ECB CONSIDERS RISK OF DEFLATION `VERY SMALL’

*ECB’S STARK SAYS MUST NOT OVERESTIMATE SIZE OF OUTPUT GAP

Higher levels of unemployment will be needed for long term price stability

*ECB’S STARK SAYS POTENTIAL GROWTH RATE HAS PROBABLY DECLINED

Higher levels of unemployment will be needed for price stability

*ECB’S STARK SAYS OUTPUT GAP MAY BE SMALLER THAN SOME THINK

Higher levels of unemployment will be needed for price stability.

*ECB’S STARK SAYS MUST BE CAUTIOUS ABOUT INFLATION OUTLOOK

*STARK: STIMULUS, INVENTORIES WON’T CREATE SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

*ECB’S STARK SAYS ECONOMY MAY RESUME GROWTH SOONER THAN EXPECTED

*ECB’S STARK SEES SIGNS ECONOMY IS STABILIZING

*ECB’S STARK SAYS RATES ARE `APPROPRIATE’


Karim writes:

Stark is also engaging in classic Fed bashing; knowing full-well that the output gap is the key driver of the Fed’s inflation model while the ECB looks at a broader series of measures and places much more emphasis on monetary aggregates


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Plosser the hawk

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Plosser, Dissenting Fed Voter, Says Price Stability Is Priority

By John Brinsley
March 28 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser, who voted against this month’s interest-rate cut, said keeping inflation in check is the “most effective” way of ensuring economic growth and job creation.

“Price stability is not only a worthwhile objective in its own right,” Plosser said in the text of a speech at a conference in Cape Town today. “It is also the most effective way monetary policy can contribute to economic conditions that foster the Federal Reserve’s other two objectives: maximum employment and moderate long-term interest rates.”

Plosser said today that keeping prices steady has to be the primary obligation of the central bank in order to ensure the economy runs as efficiently as possible. Price stability helps an economy’s ability “to achieve its maximum potential growth rate,” he said.

This is the mainstream macro economic position. (Not mine!)

It also addresses the dual mandate in the only logical manner the mainstream theory can address:

Low and stable inflation is the necessary condition for optimal growth and employment.

And they have volumes of maths to back it up.

In an effort to fend off a U.S. recession, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his colleagues have slashed the federal funds rate by 2 percentage points this year, the most aggressive easing in two decades, even as surging oil and food costs threaten to stoke inflation. Plosser and Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher opposed the March 18 decision to cut the Fed’s main lending rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 2.25 percent.

“Stable prices also make it easier for households and businesses to make long-term plans and long-term commitments, since they will know what the long-term value of their money will be,” Plosser said. “Price stability helps a market economy allocate resources efficiently and operate at its peak level of productivity.”

The Fed has lowered its benchmark rate six times in as many months since the collapse of U.S. subprime mortgages started to infect markets around the world in August last year. The world’s biggest financial companies have posted at least $195 billion in writedowns and credit losses tied to American mortgage markets.

“There seems to be a view that monetary policy is the solution to most, if not all, economic ills,” Plosser said. “Not only is this not true, it is a dangerous misconception and runs the risk of setting up expectations that monetary policy can achieve objectives it cannot attain.”

Public misconceptions over what central banks can and cannot do have “risen considerably over the years.” Central banks must therefore effectively communicate their goals and limitations, Plosser said.

The mainstream position is that rather than add to demand to address near term weakness and risk elevating inflation expectations, the government should instead let the output gap (unemployment and excess capacity in general) rise and bring inflation down.

If it does add to demand in an attempt to keep the output gap low and inflation elevates, a much larger output gap will soon be required to reign in the accelerating inflation problem.

The dissenting votes reflect this mainstream view that appears to be playing out in the least desirable way.

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Reuters: payrolls and the output gap

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U.S. Feb payrolls drop for second straight month

by Glenn Somerville

U.S. employers cut payrolls for a second straight month during February, slashing 63,000 jobs for the biggest monthly job decline in nearly five years as the labor market weakened steadily, a government report on Friday showed.

The Labor Department said last month’s cut in jobs followed an upwardly revised loss of 22,000 jobs in January instead of 17,000 reported a month ago. In addition, it said that only 41,000 jobs were created in December, half the 82,000 originally reported.

December was first reported as a ‘very weak’ 17,000 increase, revised to up 82,000 a month later (not ‘as originally reported’ as above) and now further revised to up 41,000.

These are substantial swings with current market sensitivities, and January and February will likely be further revised next month.

At the same time, the unemployment rate fell to 4.8%. The previous increases corresponded to an unexpected jump in the labor force participation rate, which has now fallen back some in line with Fed expectations.

The Fed has long been anticipating that demographic forces would reduce the labor force participation rate and thereby tighten the labor markets.

That is, we are running out of people to hire; so, new hires fall while the unemployment rate stays the same or goes down.

The last several months are consistent with this outlook, and it means the output gap isn’t all that large, as 4.75% unemployment is deemed by the Fed to be full employment with anything less further driving up inflation.

All this makes things more difficult for the Fed:

  • Stagnant GDP
  • Declining labor force
  • Very small output gap
  • Dangerously rising inflation

Without a major net supply response (a 5+ million bdp jump in crude or crude substitutes or drop in demand), crude prices will likely continue to rise. The drop in net demand for OPEC crude that cuased the price to break was about 15 million bdp in the 1980s, for example.

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Bloomberg: from Fisher the hawk

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While Fisher is perhaps the most hawkish voting member and voted against Bernanke at the last meeting, continuously rising crude/food prices and a not so large output gap are causing more voting members to firm their anti-inflation rhetoric in recent weeks:

Fisher Says Credit Markets May Not Force Fed to Act

by Naga Munchetty and Scott Lanman

Enlarge Image/Details

(Bloomberg) Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said investors shouldn’t assume that rising credit costs will force the central bank to cut interest rates as deeply as it did in January or in an emergency meeting.

“We reacted with very deliberate actions that took place over a very short timeframe” in January, Fisher said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Paris. “That shouldn’t lead markets to expectations that we will continue to react in that manner.”

Fisher also downplayed speculation that the Fed is set to reduce its benchmark interest rate before policy makers’ next scheduled session on March 18. Yesterday, yields on agency mortgage-backed securities rose to a 22-year high relative to U.S. Treasuries, while the cost to protect corporate bonds from default climbed to a record.

“I would discourage you from thinking that simply because of a significant action in the credit markets, like we had yesterday, that suddenly we’re going to have an Open Market Committee meeting, and that suddenly we’re going to move Fed funds rates in response,” said Fisher. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Traders see a 100 percent chance that the Fed will lower its 3 percent benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point this month, according to futures contracts. The probability a month ago of such a move was 30 percent.

`Process’ Turmoil
At the same time, Fisher said that the credit-market turmoil “has to be processed.”

That is, the Fed is more inclined to give markets time to work things out. While demand is weak, the output gap has remained modest.

And now, with inflation and inflation expectations elevated, they need a larger output gap to bring it down (rising MNOG).

The world’s 45 biggest banks and securities firms have written off $181 billion since the beginning of 2007, reflecting the collapse of the U.S. subprime-mortgage market.

Without a failure, so far, and without the feared supply-side constraints. Yes, credit standards have tightened, but not due to actual ‘money shortages’.

“There’s a danger if the Fed reacts to new information immediately,” said Fisher, 58, a former money manager and U.S. Senate candidate who joined the Dallas Fed in 2005. “But obviously we take into account all the information as closely as we can.”

Fed officials have cut the target for the overnight interbank lending rate by 2.25 percentage points since August, taking it to 3 percent. The 1.25 percentage point of reductions in January was the fastest easing of policy in two decades. Yields on two-year Treasuries fell to 1.41 percent at 11:55 a.m., the lowest since 2003, as traders anticipate further cuts.

Fisher was the lone voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee who dissented from the Jan. 30 decision to reduce the rate by a half point.

Jobs Report
The FOMC’s decisions in January were in response to a “weaker prospect for the economy,” Fisher said.

Which is why he voted against it. When the risks shifted from ‘market functioning induced collapse’ to ‘slowing demand/weaker GDP/larger output gap’, he stepped aside.

The U.S. Commerce Department releases February payroll- growth and unemployment figures at 8:30 a.m. Washington time today. The jobless rate probably rose to a two-year high and payrolls increased at a quarter of last year’s pace as builders and manufacturers fired more workers, economists said before the report.

A modestly larger output gap is expected. Fisher and others aren’t so sure that it will be large enough to bring down the rate of inflation, as it’s still going up even with current weakness.

Yes, inflation is a lagging indicator, but oil prices are a leading indicator and drive future inflation for years down the road.

Fisher was in Paris for a conference on globalization, inflation and monetary policy, hosted by France’s central bank. In a speech before the interview, Fisher said “persistent” increases in commodity prices make it harder for central bankers to determine precisely how much inflation may be rising.

Exactly. And so far, the rate cuts are seen to have been driving down the dollar, driving up crude prices and future inflation, and not doing a whole lot for market functioning.

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