Fed minutes

Bill McBride and I agree this is the key takeaway.

That is, the Fed still sees the risks as asymmetrical and therefore prefers to err on the side of ease. So stocks soar on the belief that low rates from the Fed will support earnings and valuations, as interest rates stay low believing the Fed will keep rates lower for longer.

Theory and evidence, however, continues to support my narrative that 0 rates and QE are deflationary and contractionary biases, and therefore the economy won’t accelerate as hoped for and as forecast by those believing otherwise.

FOMC Minutes: “Costs of downside shocks to the economy would be larger than those of upside shocks”

Note: Not every member of the FOMC agrees, but I think this is the key sentence: “the costs of downside shocks to the economy would be larger than those of upside shocks because, in current circumstances, it would be less problematic to remove accommodation quickly, if doing so becomes necessary, than to add accommodation”.

Professor Andrea Terzi quoted on CNBC

Well done!!!!

You’d think he’d turn to Brits like Charles Goodhart who wrote volumes on it for the last 50 years!
;)

How QE may be doing more harm than good

By Paul Gambles

May 7 (CNBC) — I’ve spent the last few weeks talking almost entirely about the Bank of England’s (BoE) latest research findings – and that we’re headed toward what could be the most almighty economic and market meltdown ever seen unless we embark on drastic changes in economic policy.

The default reaction to this has tended to be a mixture of incredulity and confusion, with most people wondering “What’s Gambles going on about now?” This piece is an attempt at proclaiming a pivotal moment in economic understanding at a key time for the global economy.

The findings in question are contained in the BoE’s Quarterly Bulletin. The paper’s introduction states that a “common misconception is that the central bank determines the quantity of loans and deposits in the economy by controlling the quantity of central bank money — the so-called ‘money multiplier’ approach.”

This “misconception” is obviously shared by the world’s policymakers, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the People’s Bank of China, not to mention the Bank of England itself, who have persisted with a policy of quantitative easing (QE).

QE is seen by its adherents, such as former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, as both the panacea to heal the post-global financial crisis world and also the factor whose absence was the main cause of the Great Depression. This is in line with their view that central banks create currency for commercial banks to then lend on to borrowers and that this stimulates both asset values and also consumption, which then underpin and fuel the various stages of the expected recovery, encouraging banks to create even more money by lending to both businesses and individuals as a virtuous cycle of expansion unfolds.

The theory sounds great.

However it has one tiny flaw. It’s nonsense.

Back in June 2011, when CNBC’s Karen Tso asked me why I was so critical of Ben Bernanke, an acknowledged academic expert on The Great Depression, I explained that I couldn’t justify the leap of blind faith demanded by Bernanke’s neo-classical monetarist theories.

Professor Hyman Minsky was one of the first to recognize the flaw in those theories. He realized that in practise, in a credit-driven economy, the process is the other way round. The credit which underpins economic activity isn’t created by a supply of large deposits which then enables banks to lend; instead it is the demand for credit by borrowers that creates loans from banks which are then paid to recipients who then deposit them into banks. Loans create deposits, not the other way round.

In the BoE’s latest quarterly bulletin, they conceded this point, recognizing that QE is indeed tantamount to pushing on a piece of string. The article tries to salvage some central banker dignity by claiming somewhat hopefully that the artificially lower interest rates caused by QE might have stimulated some loan demand.

However the elasticity or price sensitivity of demand for credit has long been understood to vary at different points in the economic cycle or, as Minsky recognized, people and businesses are not inclined to borrow money during a downturn purely because it is made cheaper to do so. Consumers also need a feeling of job security and confidence in the economy before taking on additional borrowing commitments.

It may even be that QE has actually had a negative effect on employment, recovery and economic activity.

This is because the only notable effect QE is having is to raise asset prices. If the so-called wealth effect — of higher stock indices and property markets combined with lower interest rates — has failed to generate a sustained rebound in demand for private borrowing, then the higher asset values can start to depress economic activity. Just think of a property market where unclear job or income prospects make consumers nervous about borrowing but house prices keep going up. The higher prices may act as either a deterrent or a bar to market entry, such as when first time buyers are unable to afford to step onto the property ladder.

Dr Andrea Terzi, Professor of Economics at Franklin University, also suggests that many in the banking and finance industry, who often have trouble with the way academics teach and discuss monetary policy, will find the new view much closer to their operational experience. “The few economists who have long rejected the ‘state-of-the-art’ in their models, and refused to teach it in their classrooms, will feel vindicated,” he adds.

Foremost among those economists is Prof Steve Keen: a long-time proponent of the alternative view, endogenous money. Having co-presented with Prof. Keen, I’ve been taken with the way that his endogenous money beliefs stand up to ‘the common sense test.’ The proverbial ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ knows that borrowing your way out of debt while your returns are dwindling makes no sense. Friedman and Bernanke couldn’t see that.

Ben Bernanke positioned himself as a student of history who had learned from the mistakes of the past. Dr. Terzi questions this, “This view that interest rates trigger an effective ‘transmission mechanism’ is one of the Great Faults in monetary management committed during the Great Recession.”

“The reality is that the level of interest rates affects the economy mildly and in an ambiguous way. To state that monetary policy is powerful is an unsubstantiated claim.”

For a central bank to recognize that its economic understanding is flawed is a major admission. However, unless it takes the opportunity to correct its policy in line with this new understanding then it will repeat the same old mistakes.

The world’s central banks are steering a course unwittingly directly towards a repeat of the 1930s but on a far greater scale. It’s not yet clear that there is any commitment to change this course or indeed whether there is still time to do so. Either way, it will be very interesting to see what future economic historians make of Ben Bernanke’s contribution to economic policy.

QE is a Tax

QE is a Tax

By Chris Mayer

May 2 — QE is a tax.

That’s an odd thing to say about the Fed’s bond-buying stimulus program, known as quantitative easing, or QE. But the reality of QE is different than what most people think…

To talk about this, I sought out Warren Mosler, a former hedge fund manager and now trailblazing economist. (I first introduced Mosler to you in your February letter, No. 120. See “How Fiat Money Works.”) So on one Sunday afternoon, with Mosler in Italy and me in Gaithersburg, Md., we chatted on Skype about the Fed and its doings.

Mosler was also a successful banker, and he talks about this stuff with the ease that comes from deep familiarity with the plumbing of the system. The U.S. system, importantly, is one of floating exchange rates and a nonconvertible currency. Meaning the government does not fix the price of the dollar against anything (contra what is done in Hong Kong, where they peg their currency to the dollar). And it is not convertible into anything except itself. (You can’t present your dollars to the Fed and demand gold, for instance.)

With those parameters, we started with a simple question: What would the natural rate of interest be if the government didn’t try to interfere in the interest rate market? (“Natural rate” in this context means the risk-free, nominal rate of interest.)

“In some sense, QE is undoing what the Treasury has done.”

Well, before we can answer that, think about the ways the government interferes in the interest rate market. There are two ways, Mosler points out. The first is that the government pays interest on bank reserves, which are essentially checking accounts held at the Fed. Currently, that rate is 25 basis points, or 0.25%.

The second is to offer “alternative accounts at the Fed called Treasury securities.” These are essentially savings accounts and pay higher interest than the checking accounts (or reserve accounts).

“If we eliminated these things, there would no interest paid on reserves, and there would be no securities,” Mosler says. “So the natural rate of interest would be zero.” Like in Japan for 20 years.

Note this doesn’t mean there would be no interest rates. It means absent these interventions, the market would determine interest rates based on credit risk, etc. But there would be no floor — no risk-free rate, no natural rate — put in place by the government.

“Not that you should do it that way,” Mosler says, “but that’s the way to look at it. The base case is zero. Then the Treasury comes in and offers $17 trillion in securities. And that’s a distortion, to some degree. If the Fed did QE and bought them all back, it would put you back to where you started. In some sense, QE is undoing what the Treasury has done.” When the Fed buys securities, it is as if the Treasury never issued them in the first place.

Or as Mosler puts it in a tidy, eight-page paper (more on that in a bit):

It can be argued that asset pricing under a zero interest rate policy is the “base case” and that any move away from a zero interest rate policy constitutes a (politically implemented) shift from this “base case.”

In other words, the government doesn’t have to pay 3% on a 10-year note, as it does today. It doesn’t have to issue bonds at all. It creates dollar deposits (money) in member bank reserve accounts when it spends. By issuing securities/offering alternative interest-bearing accounts, the government pays a lot of interest to the economy.

“So in that sense,” Mosler says, “issuing securities means paying higher rates than the overnight rate. It is a spending increase and has an inflationary bias by adding net financial assets to the system.”

The mainstream view says that when the government sells Treasury securities, it is taking money out of the system, that it’s a deflationary thing to do and it offsets the inflationary effect of deficit spending. “Not true at all,” Mosler says. “Selling Treasuries does not take money out.” What’s happening is akin to a shuffle between checking accounts and savings accounts.

Let’s turn back to the case of QE, where the Fed buys securities. In this case, the economy loses the interest income from those securities.

“QE takes money out of the economy,” Mosler says, “which is what a tax does.” Hence, as noted above, QE is a tax.

“The whole point of QE is to bring rates down,” Mosler says. “If it does bring rates down, that means the rest of the securities the Treasury sells pay less interest too. So it lowers government interest expense even more. Because the government is a net payer of interest, lower rates mean it pays less interest.”

But does it help the economy? Hard to see how it does. Mosler has an interesting take here. I’ll paraphrase as best I can.

Let’s say people ask why the Fed is buying securities. Well, to help the economy. So now people have to think about whether that policy will work or not. If it’s going to work, that means the Fed’s going to be raising rates, because the economy will be getting stronger. The only time QE will bring rates down is if investors think the policy won’t work. It’s a policy that works through expectations, and it works only if investors think it won’t work.

“It’s a disgrace,” he says.

“On top of that, most investors don’t understand it,” Mosler says. “You’ve got the Chinese reading about how the Fed is printing money. And they go and buy gold. There are knock-on effects all over the world, and portfolios are shifting based on perceptions.”

QE, then, because it costs the private sector interest income and doesn’t add money to the economy, is not inflationary. “The evidence is that it is not inflationary,” Mosler says.

Let’s look at it another way. The bank of Japan has been trying to create inflation for 20 years. The Fed’s been trying to create inflation as hard as it can. The European Central Bank too. “It is not so easy for a central bank to create inflation,” he says, “or you’d think one of these guys would’ve succeeded.

“People act like you have to be careful because one false move on inflation expectations and, bang, you have hyperinflation,” Mosler chuckles. “If you know what that false move is, tell Janet Yellen [the current Fed chief], because she’s trying to find it.”

Though he no longer runs a hedge fund, Mosler is still involved in financial markets. He has a portfolio he runs for himself and for other people. I asked him if he fears interest rates going up.

“It could happen,” he says. “It’s a political decision where rates go.”

And that’s a good place to leave it. Because it brings us back to the beginning. Without the government wading into the interest rate market, the base rate would be zero. And everybody would be working off that. But instead, we have the Fed trying to find monetary nirvana.

As Mosler says, it’s a disgrace.

These are challenging ideas, I know. If you want to read more, look up “The Natural Rate of Interest is Zero,” a tightly reasoned, accessible eight-page paper by Mathew Forstater and Warren Mosler. You can find it free online.

qe letter reprinted

Thanks!

And I’m sure Barry remembers who was on the other side of that trade!
;)

2010 Reminder: QE = Currency Debasement and Inflation

By Barry Ritholtz

November 15 — One of my biggest complaints about the media is the lack of accountability. People say things on TV in print an on radio, and then . . . Poof! No consequences. They influence public perception of issues, affect policy debates, drive legislation.

This is a perfect example of a stern warning of currency debasement and inflation due to QE. Let me point out this was made 3 years ago today hence, it has been terribly wrong.

I wont give you advice but I keep track of who is consistently wrong, whose histrionic forecasts are both silly and wrong. Their future comments are valued accordingly.

e21 Team | 11/15/2010

To: Chairman Ben Bernanke
Federal Reserve
Washington, DC

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We believe the Federal Reserves large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called quantitative easing) should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Feds objective of promoting employment.

We subscribe to your statement in The Washington Post on November 4 that the Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economys problems on its own. In this case, we think improvements in tax, spending and regulatory policies must take precedence in a national growth program, not further monetary stimulus.

We disagree with the view that inflation needs to be pushed higher, and worry that another round of asset purchases, with interest rates still near zero over a year into the recovery, will distort financial markets and greatly complicate future Fed efforts to normalize monetary policy.

The Feds purchase program has also met broad opposition from other central banks and we share their concerns that quantitative easing by the Fed is neither warranted nor helpful in addressing either U.S. or global economic problems.

Respectfully,

Cliff Asness
AQR Capital

Michael J. Boskin
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Former Chairman, Presidents Council of Economic Advisors

Richard X. Bove
Rochdale Securities

Charles W. Calomiris
Columbia University Graduate School of Business

Jim Chanos
Kynikos Associates

John F. Cogan
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Former Associate Director, U.S. Office of Management and Budget

Niall Ferguson
Harvard University
Author, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

Nicole Gelinas
Manhattan Institute & e21
Author, After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Streetand Washington

James Grant
Grants Interest Rate Observer

Kevin A. Hassett
American Enterprise Institute
Former Senior Economist, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve

Roger Hertog
Hertog Foundation

Gregory Hess
Claremont McKenna College

Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Former Director, Congressional Budget Office

Seth Klarman
Baupost Group

William Kristol
Editor, The Weekly Standard

David Malpass
GrowPac, Encima Global
Former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary

Ronald I. McKinnon
Stanford University

Joshua Rosner
Graham Fisher & Co., Inc.

Dan Senor
Council on Foreign Relations
Co-Author, Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israels Economic Miracle

Amity Shlaes
Council on Foreign Relations
Author, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

Paul E. Singer
Elliott Management Corporation

John B. Taylor
Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Former Undersecretary of Treasury for International Affairs

Peter J. Wallison
American Enterprise Institute
Former Treasury and White House Counsel

Geoffrey Wood
Cass Business School at City University London

(Institutional Affiliations are for Information Only)

Comments on Volcker article

Here’s my take on the Volcker article

My comments in below:

The Fed & Big Banking at the Crossroads

By Paul Volcker

I have been struck by parallels between the challenges facing the Federal Reserve today and those when I first entered the Federal Reserve System as a neophyte economist in 1949.

Most striking then, as now, was the commitment of the Federal Reserve, which was and is a formally independent body, to maintaining a pattern of very low interest rates, ranging from near zero to 2.5 percent or less for Treasury bonds. If you feel a bit impatient about the prevailing rates, quite understandably so, recall that the earlier episode lasted fifteen years.

The initial steps taken in the midst of the depression of the 1930s to support the economy by keeping interest rates low were made at the Fed’s initiative. The pattern was held through World War II in explicit agreement with the Treasury. Then it persisted right in the face of double-digit inflation after the war, increasingly under Treasury and presidential pressure to keep rates low.

Yes, and this was done after conversion to gold was suspended which made it possible. And they fixed long rates as well/

The growing restiveness of the Federal Reserve was reflected in testimony by Marriner Eccles in 1948:

Under the circumstances that now exist the Federal Reserve System is the greatest potential agent of inflation that man could possibly contrive.
This was pretty strong language by a sitting Fed governor and a long-serving board chairman. But it was then a fact that there were many doubts about whether the formality of the independent legal status of the central bank—guaranteed since it was created in 1913—could or should be sustained against Treasury and presidential importuning. At the time, the influential Hoover Commission on government reorganization itself expressed strong doubts about the Fed’s independence. In these years calls for freeing the market and letting the Fed’s interest rates rise met strong resistance from the government.

Not freeing the ‘market’ but letting the Fed chair have his way. Rates would be set ‘politically’ either way. Just a matter of who.

Treasury debt had enormously increased during World War II, exceeding 100 percent of the GDP, so there was concern about an intolerable impact on the budget if interest rates rose strongly. Moreover, if the Fed permitted higher interest rates this might lead to panicky and speculative reactions. Declines in bond prices, which would fall as interest rates rose, would drain bank capital. Main-line economists, and the Fed itself, worried that a sudden rise in interest rates could put the economy back in recession.

All of those concerns are in play today, some sixty years later, even if few now take the extreme view of the first report of the then new Council of Economic Advisers in 1948: “low interest rates at all times and under all conditions, even during inflation,” it said, would be desirable to promote investment and economic progress. Not exactly a robust defense of the Federal Reserve and independent monetary policy.

But in my humble opinion a true statement!

Eventually, the Federal Reserve did get restless, and finally in 1951 it rejected overt presidential pressure to maintain a ceiling on long-term Treasury rates. In the event, the ending of that ceiling, called the “peg,” was not dramatic. Interest rates did rise over time, but with markets habituated for years to a low interest rate, the price of long-term bonds remained at moderate levels. Monetary policy, free to act against incipient inflationary tendencies, contributed to fifteen years of stability in prices, accompanied by strong economic growth and high employment. The recessions were short and mild.

I agreed with John Kenneth Galbraith in that inflation was not a function of rates, at least not in the direction they believed, due to interest income channels. However, the rate caps on bank deposits, etc. Did mean that rate hikes had the potential to disrupt those financial institutions and cut into lending, until those caps were removed.

In general, however, the ‘business cycle’ issues are better traced to fiscal balance.

No doubt, the challenge today of orderly withdrawal from the Fed’s broader regime of “quantitative easing”—a regime aimed at stimulating the economy by large-scale buying of government and other securities on the market—is far more complicated. The still-growing size and composition of the Fed’s balance sheet imply the need for, at the least, an extended period of “disengagement,” i.e., less active purchasing of bonds so as to keep interest rates artificially low.

Artificially? vs what ‘market signals’? Rates are ‘naturally’ market determined with fixed fx policies, not today’s floating fx.

In fact, without govt ‘interference’ such as interest on reserves and tsy secs, the ‘natural’ rate is 0 as long as there are net reserve balances from deficit spending.

Nor is there any technical or operational reason for unwinding QE. Functionally, the Fed buying securities is identical to the tsy not issuing them and instead letting its net spending remain as reserve balances. Either way deficit spending results in balances in reserve accounts rather than balances in securities accounts. And in any case both are just dollar balances in Fed accounts.

Moreover, the extraordinary commitment of Federal Reserve resources,

‘Resources’? What does that mean? Crediting an account on its own books is somehow ‘using up a resource’? It’s just accounting information!

alongside other instruments of government intervention, is now dominating the largest sector of our capital markets, that for residential mortgages. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to note that the Federal Reserve, with assets of $3.5 trillion and growing, is, in effect, acting as the world’s largest financial intermediator. It is acquiring long-term obligations in the form of bonds and financing those purchases by short-term deposits. It is aided and abetted in doing so by its unique privilege to create its own liabilities.

The Fed creates govt liabilities, aka making payments. That’s its function. And, for example, the treasury securities are the initial intervention. They are paid for by the Fed debiting reserve accounts and crediting securities accounts. All QE does is reverse that as the Fed debits the securities accounts and ‘recredits’ the reserve accounts. So it can be said that all QE does is neutralize prior govt intervention.

The beneficial effects of the actual and potential monetizing of public and private debt, which is the essence of the quantitative easing program, appear limited and diminishing over time. The old “pushing on a string” analogy is relevant. The risks of encouraging speculative distortions and the inflationary potential of the current approach plainly deserve attention.

Right, with the primary fundamental effect being the removal of interest income from the economy. The Fed turned over some $100billion to the tsy that the economy would have otherwise earned. QE is a tax on the economy.

All of this has given rise to debate within the Federal Reserve itself. In that debate, I trust that sight is not lost of the merits—economic and political—of an ultimate return to a more orthodox central banking approach. Concerning possible changes in Fed policy, it is worth quoting from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s remarks on June 19:

Going forward, the economic outcomes that the Committee sees as most likely involve continuing gains in labor markets, supported by moderate growth that picks up over the next several quarters as the near-term restraint from fiscal policy and other headwinds diminishes. We also see inflation moving back toward our 2 percent objective over time.

If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the Committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of [asset] purchases later this year. And if the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we would continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around midyear.

In this scenario, when asset purchases ultimately come to an end, the unemployment rate would likely be in the vicinity of 7 percent, with solid economic growth supporting further job gains, a substantial improvement from the 8.1 percent unemployment rate that prevailed when the Committee announced this program.

I would like to emphasize once more the point that our policy is in no way predetermined and will depend on the incoming data and the evolution of the outlook as well as on the cumulative progress toward our objectives. If conditions improve faster than expected, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. If the outlook becomes less favorable, on the other hand, or if financial conditions are judged to be inconsistent with further progress in the labor markets, reductions in the pace of purchases could be delayed.

Indeed, should it be needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase in the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability.

Implying QE works to do that.

I do not doubt the ability and understanding of Chairman Bernanke and his colleagues. They have a considerable range of instruments available to them to manage the transition, including the novel approach of paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, potentially sterilizing their monetary impact.

Reserves can be thought of as ‘one day treasury securities’ and the idea that paying interest sterilizing anything is a throwback to fixed fx policy, not applicable to floating fx.

What is at issue—what is always at issue—is a matter of good judgment, leadership, and institutional backbone. A willingness to act with conviction in the face of predictable political opposition and substantive debate is, as always, a requisite part of a central bank’s DNA.

A good working knowledge of monetary operations would be a refreshing change as well!

Those are not qualities that can be learned from textbooks. Abstract economic modeling and the endless regression analyses of econometricians will be of little help. The new approach of “behavioral” economics itself is recognition of the limitations of mathematical approaches, but that new “science” is in its infancy.

Monetary operations can be learned from money and banking texts.

A reading of history may be more relevant. Here and elsewhere, the temptation has been strong to wait and see before acting to remove stimulus and then moving toward restraint. Too often, the result is to be too late, to fail to appreciate growing imbalances and inflationary pressures before they are well ingrained.

Those who know monetary operations read history very differently from those who have it wrong.

There is something else that is at stake beyond the necessary mechanics and timely action. The credibility of the Federal Reserve, its commitment to maintaining price stability, and its ability to stand up against partisan political pressures are critical. Independence can’t just be a slogan. Nor does the language of the Federal Reserve Act itself assure protection, as was demonstrated in the period after World War II. Then, the law and its protections seemed clear, but it was the Treasury that for a long time called the tune.

And didn’t do a worse job.

In the last analysis, independence rests on perceptions of high competence, of unquestioned integrity, of broad experience, of nonconflicted judgment and the will to act. Clear lines of accountability to Congress and the public will need to be honored.

And a good working knowledge of monetary operations.

Moreover, maintenance of independence in a democratic society ultimately depends on something beyond those institutional qualities. The Federal Reserve—any central bank—should not be asked to do too much, to undertake responsibilities that it cannot reasonably meet with the appropriately limited powers provided.

I know that it is fashionable to talk about a “dual mandate”—the claim that the Fed’s policy should be directed toward the two objectives of price stability and full employment. Fashionable or not, I find that mandate both operationally confusing and ultimately illusory. It is operationally confusing in breeding incessant debate in the Fed and the markets about which way policy should lean month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter with minute inspection of every passing statistic. It is illusory in the sense that it implies a trade-off between economic growth and price stability, a concept that I thought had long ago been refuted not just by Nobel Prize winners but by experience.

The Federal Reserve, after all, has only one basic instrument so far as economic management is concerned—managing the supply of money and liquidity.

Completely wrong. With floating fx, it can only set rates. It’s always about price, not quantity.

Asked to do too much—for example, to accommodate misguided fiscal policies, to deal with structural imbalances, or to square continuously the hypothetical circles of stability, growth, and full employment—it will inevitably fall short. If in the process of trying it loses sight of its basic responsibility for price stability, a matter that is within its range of influence, then those other goals will be beyond reach.

Back in the 1950s, after the Federal Reserve finally regained its operational independence, it also decided to confine its open market operations almost entirely to the short-term money markets—the so-called “Bills Only Doctrine.” A period of remarkable economic success ensued, with fiscal and monetary policies reasonably in sync, contributing to a combination of relatively low interest rates, strong growth, and price stability.

Yes, and the price of oil was fixed by the Texas railroad commission at about $3 where it remained until the excess capacity in the US was gone and the Saudis took over that price setting role in the early 70’s.

That success faded as the Vietnam War intensified, and as monetary and fiscal restraints were imposed too late and too little. The absence of enough monetary discipline in the face of the overt inflationary pressures of the war left us with a distasteful combination of both price and economic instability right through the 1970s—a combination not inconsequentially complicated further by recurrent weakness in the dollar.

No mention of a foreign ‘monopolist’ hiking crude prices from 3 to 40?

Or of Carter’s deregulation of nat gas in 78 causing OPEC to drown in excess capacity in the early 80’s?

Or the non sensical targeting of borrowed reserves that worked only to shift rate control from the FOMC to the NY fed desk, and prolonged the inflation even as oil prices collapsed?

We cannot “go home again,” not to the simpler days of the 1950s and 1960s. Markets and institutions are much larger, far more complex. They have also proved to be more fragile, potentially subject to large destabilizing swings in behavior. There is the rise of “shadow banking”—the nonbank intermediaries such as investment banks, hedge funds, and other institutions overlapping commercial banking activities.

Not to mention restaurants letting people eat before they pay for their meals. This completely misses the mark.

Partly as a result, there is the relative decline of regulated commercial banks, and the rapid innovation of new instruments such as derivatives. All these have challenged both central banks and other regulatory authorities around the developed world. But the simple logic remains; and it is, in fact, reinforced by these developments. The basic responsibility of a central bank is to maintain reasonable price stability—and by extension to concern itself with the stability of financial markets generally.

In my judgment, those functions are complementary and should be doable.

They are, but it all requires an understanding of the underlying monetary operations.

I happen to believe it is neither necessary nor desirable to try to pin down the objective of price stability by setting out a single highly specific target or target zone for a particular measure of prices. After all, some fluctuations in prices, even as reflected in broad indices, are part of a well-functioning market economy. The point is that no single index can fully capture reality, and the natural process of recurrent growth and slowdowns in the economy will usually be reflected in price movements.

With or without a numerical target, broad responsibility for price stability over time does not imply an inability to conduct ordinary countercyclical policies. Indeed, in my judgment, confidence in the ability and commitment of the Federal Reserve (or any central bank) to maintain price stability over time is precisely what makes it possible to act aggressively in supplying liquidity in recessions or when the economy is in a prolonged period of growth but well below its potential.

With floating fx bank liquidity is always infinite. That’s what deposit insurance is all about.
Again, this makes central banking about price and not quantity.

Feel free to distribute.

Dudley still doing wrong

He still thinks bond buying is stepping on the gas pedal, when it’s actually the brake pedal.

Latest Jobs Report Gives Me Pause, Says Fed’s Dudley

April 16 (Reuters) — An influential Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday the weak March jobs report made him more cautious on how far the economy has come, and underscores the need for the U.S. central bank to keep buying bonds apace.

In a breakfast address, New York Fed President William Dudley said he expects “sluggish” economic growth of 2 to 2.5 percent this year and only a modest decline in unemployment. The labor market, he said, has not yet shown the substantial improvement the Fed seeks.

A paltry 88,000 new jobs were created last month, well below expectations, while the jobless rate fell by a tenth to 7.6 percent because droves of Americans gave up the search for work.

“While I don’t want to read too much into a single month’s data, this underscores the need to wait and see how the economy develops before declaring victory prematurely,” said Dudley, a permanent voting member of the Fed’s monetary policy committee and a close ally of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

“I’d note that we saw similar slowdowns in job creation in 2011 and 2012 after pickups in the job creation rate and this, along with the large amount of fiscal restraint hitting the economy now, makes me more cautious,” he told the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce.

Was Quantitative Easing A Tax?

Good to see someone telling it like it is!

Was Quantitative Easing a Tax?

By John Carney

March 29 (CNBC) — In the last of his four lectures to students at George Washington University, Ben Bernanke explained how the Fed’s quantitative easing programs worked. As it turns out, they were akin to a tax hike.

This aspect of government asset purchase-and-resale-for-profit programs is not well understood. I explained it in terms of a Treasury program last week.

A tax takes dollars out of the private sector, leaving households and businesses with fewer dollars and the government with more dollars. When the government buys something for $10 and sells it back to the private sector for $12, the net effect is the same as if the government had taxed away those $2.

Bernanke doesn’t come out and call quantitative easing a tax. But he comes close.

“The Fed’s asset purchases are not government spending, because the assets the Fed acquired will ultimately be sold back into the market. Indeed, the Fed has made money on its purchases so far, transferring about $200 billion to the Treasury from 2009 through 2011, money that benefited taxpayers by reducing the federal deficit,” he explains in one of the prepared slides.

Here’s a good rule of thumb. If something reduces the federal deficit, it is either the equivalent of a spending cut or a tax hike.

Fed WSJ Article on QE/Twist

From: Fed Weighs ‘Sterilized’ Bond Buying if It Act

Many Fed officials believe strongly the bank reserves it has created as part of this money creation aren’t an inflation threat. But they are acutely aware of a popular perception, also held by a few inside the Fed itself, that the money the Fed has created could cause an inflation problem down the road.

Karim writes:

Dealing with perceptions not reality.

GE to 3M Pension Pain Mounts as Rates Boost Liabilities

Feel free to forward to your local Fed President, to remind them that rate cuts do remove income from savers and from the economy in general, as the economy is a net saver to the tune of the cumulative govt debt (to the penny). (And not to forget the $80 billion or so per year of lost income due to QE.)

Lower rates remove income from ‘savers,’ with everyone who works for a living and contributes to any kind of retirement plan a ‘saver.’

Yes, with most major corporations, the additional contributions come from earnings, which reduces shareholder incomes rather than employee earnings.

But in any case, contributions to retirement funds are ‘demand leakages’ that directly or indirectly reduce income and, to some degree, reduce spending.

The obvious fiscal response should be along the lines of a FICA suspension to sustain sales, output, and employment…

GE to 3M Pension Pain Mounts as Rates Boost Liabilities

By Thomas Black

February 28 (Bloomberg) — General Electric Co. (GE), Boeing Co. (BA) and 3M Co. (MMM) will join big U.S. employers in making a record $100 billion in 2012 pension contributions, 67 percent more than two years ago, as low interest rates boost companies’ liabilities.

Payments may total $400 billion from 2011 through 2015 to ease underfunding at the 100 largest defined-benefit programs, according to consultant Milliman Inc., which estimated that assets in January were enough to cover less than three-fourths of projected payouts.

“It’s been called the wall of contributions,” said Alan Glickstein, a senior retirement consultant at Towers Watson & Co. (TW) in New York. “All of a sudden this thing jumps up and stays there for a few years. That’s what it looks like — a wall.”

Companies from defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) to aviation-electronics maker Honeywell International Inc. are caught in a vise: the Federal Reserve Board’s vow to keep rates at current levels until 2014 means pension plans’ fixed-income investments are stagnating just as new rules shorten the time available to shore up funding.

“They’re going to have to kick money in,” said John Ehrhardt, a consulting actuary at Seattle-based Milliman. “We’re basically seeing historically low interest rates driving historically high employer contribution requirements.”

That’s money that won’t go back to shareholders through dividends or buybacks, or toward expansion, said Kevin McLaughlin, a pension risk management specialist with consultant Mercer in New York.

Seven Years

Under the federal Pension Protection Act, which was passed in 2006 and mostly took effect in 2008, tighter accounting rules gave employers seven years to fully fund their retirement plans and required them to use a specified, market-based rate of return to compute liabilities instead of a company estimate.

Those liabilities are calculated by projecting future payments and discounting to the present based on interest rates pegged to a basket of corporate bonds. Liabilities rise when rates fall — and the Fed has held its discount rate at 0.75 percent since February 2010, down from as high as 6.25 percent in June 2007. The Fed said Jan. 25 it expected rates to stay at current levels until 2014.

3M’s pension plan in the U.S., which started 2011 with assets of $11.6 billion, shows the challenge for employers.

Assets rose to $12.1 billion by year’s end because of investments and contributions, even after payments of $680 million, according to a Feb. 16 filing. At the same time, the funding shortfall more than tripled, to $2.4 billion, because projected benefit obligations rose 18 percent to $14.5 billion.

‘Liabilities Did Increase’

“With the declining interest rates here in 2011, our liabilities did increase,” 3M Chief Financial Officer David Meline said Feb. 23 at a Barclays Plc industrial conference.

While 401(k) savings accounts are more common at younger companies, traditional manufacturers such are among the employers most affected by the pension pinch because they’re still making payments under defined-benefit plans. St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M’s 2012 pension contribution will almost double to as much as $1 billion.

Pension expense is “a variable that we consider among many when we look at a company and what it could mean to their profitability,” said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Philadelphia-based Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, which manages $54 billion. “If that were something that we said we wouldn’t want to own, we’d probably have a fairly limited universe of companies we could buy.”

S&P Industrials

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Industrials Index (S5INDU), whose 61 companies include manufacturers such as Boeing with defined- benefit programs, climbed 10 percent this year through yesterday, topping the S&P 500’s 8.7 percent gain.

Boeing’s pension cost will jump to $2.6 billion, 63 percent more than a year earlier, the company said in January. GE told investors in December it plans to add $1 billion, the first contribution since 1987, and expects to add about $2.1 billion in 2013. The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company closed its U.S. defined-benefits pension plan to all new hires this year.

Honeywell (HON) probably will make a contribution of as much as $1 billion, after low interest rates dashed a goal of full funding in four years, CFO Dave Anderson said. The plan was 83 percent funded at the end of 2011.

‘Little Bit Longer’

“I’d hoped to be there by 2015 to have more of a full resolution of that issue, but it’s going to take a little bit longer probably,” Anderson said in an interview. “Interest rates are at historic low levels and there’s no change in sight for that.”

Pension sponsors usually average rates over 24 months, so 2012 may be the peak year for companies’ pension contributions, said Glickstein of Towers Watson.

“We have a very unusual governmental intervention in the wake of a financial crisis,” he said. “Whatever other merits it may have, it’s clearly distorting the measures of pension obligations and putting a lot of extra pressure on plan sponsors.”

Lockheed Martin anticipated the rise in liabilities by pumping $6 billion into its plan over the last three years, curbing the projected 2012 contribution to $1.1 billion, according to a company filing.

Many pension plans, including GE’s, were overfunded before the December 2007 onset of the worst recession since World War II. Then pension assets began shriveling as stocks slumped, and lower interest rates increased liabilities.

Funding Levels

For the 100 largest defined-benefit plans, average funding levels sank to 74 percent in January from 105 percent in 2007, according to Milliman. Some companies may need to funnel cash to their pension plans for years.

Pension plan assets at Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) covered only about 40 percent of obligations at the end of 2011, down from 47 percent the previous year, according to the carrier’s latest annual report. The funding shortfall widened to $11.5 billion from $9.3 billion in 2010, the filing showed.

Even after Delta ended pilots’ pensions before its 2007 bankruptcy exit and closed other plans to new hires, CFO Hank Halter said Jan. 25 that the airline still expects to contribute as much as $675 million in 2012. Defined-benefit programs taking new employees fell 26 percent in six years to 20,381 in 2009, according to the latest U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. figures for plans with 25 or more workers.

The threat of future contributions is driving many sponsors of defined-benefit plans to seek ways to blunt risk, said Jeffrey Saef, chief of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK)’s investment strategy and solutions group in Boston. That often means using more fixed-income investments to help match pension assets more closely to liabilities, he said in an interview.

Clients struggling with the cash drain from pensions have a universal query, Saef said: “‘When will it go away?’”

With Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s thumb on interest rates, that won’t be any time soon, said McLaughlin, the Mercer consultant.

“Right now, everybody is hoping for the best, which is equity markets performing and interest rates not falling any lower,” he said.

The Fed’s operation tweet vs twist

Seems to me the force keeping yields down on the short end can be called operation tweet, as the Fed is simply announcing its forecasts for lower rates, which are subject to immediate change, data dependent.

But with operation twist, the Fed actually buys the longer term securities vs just talking about them, as it also lightens up on the shorter term securities.

So after the current knee jerk reaction to tweet I’m looking at the ramifications of twist to dominate.