Economist's View

Producer Prices Rise 1.8 Percent. Should the Fed be Worried about Inflation?

According to data released today, producer prices rose 1.8 percent last month. Should the Fed be worried about inflation?

My answer is here.

The Relationship Between Budget Deficits, Fed Independence, and Inflation

At MoneyWatch, some of the pressures the Fed might come under in the future if the government debt continues to rise, and the important role that Fed independence plays in making sure that the debt is not inflated away:

Budget Deficits, Fed Independence, and Inflation, by Mark Thoma: I have been critical of both Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke for giving recommendations concerning fiscal policy during their testimony before congress. In Greenspan's case, it was his comments about tax cuts that I found problematic, while for Bernanke it was his comments on entitlements.

But monetary and fiscal policy are connected, and the Fed chair should talk about the impact that a growing debt level might have monetary policy. That is, while I don't think the Fed chair should give advice on the specifics of fiscal policy, the chair should make clear how fiscal policy choices will affect or constrain monetary policy. ...[...continue...]...

"The Wrong Jobs Summit"

Brad DeLong says the wrong people are meeting at the jobs forum:

The wrong jobs summit, by Brad DeLong, Commentary, The Week: The White House is hosting a jobs summit this week. I, however, cannot but think that ... it will be the wrong people talking about the wrong things.

Let me back up. Ever since the 1930s, economists trying to analyze the determinants of spending have focused on two of the economy’s markets: the market for liquidity and the market for savings. ...

For the government to boost jobs, it must to do something to change the balance of supply and demand in either the market for liquidity or the market for savings. In general, the ... Federal Reserve ... acts to tweak supply and demand in the market for liquidity. The president and Congress act to tweak supply and demand in the market for savings. ...

Right now, if you ask the decisive members of congress—by which I mean the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, or the most conservative Democrats and most liberal Republicans in the Senate —why the president and the Congress are not doing more to reduce unemployment and boost spending and income, the answer you’ll get is ... well, you probably wouldn't get an intelligible answer.

But if you did get an explanation for the lack of congressional action it would go something like this: Attempts to ... boost spending would (a) increase the national debt burden on future taxpayers and (b) lead to a large decline in bond prices and a boost in interest rates. Why? Because businesses would try to increase their liquidity to support higher spending, driving up interest rates, which, in turn, would cause businesses to cut back on investment, thus neutralizing most or all of the stimulative policies.

Similarly, if you were to ask the Federal Reserve why it isn’t doing more to reduce unemployment and boost spending and income, the answer you would get is this: Spending is in no way constrained by a shortage of liquidity..., indeed we have “flooded the zone” with liquidity. As a result, the Fed is disinclined to pursue additional tweaks ... in ... liquidity because it fears such efforts would fuel destructive inflation in the future without boosting employment and spending in the present.

Both of these arguments are comprehensible... But they cannot both be true at the same time. Either the economy is so awash in liquidity that the Federal Reserve cannot do much to boost spending—in which case additional spending by the government won’t generate any substantial rise in interest rates. Or additional government spending will crowd out investment...—in which case the economy is not awash in liquidity, and quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve could do a lot right now to boost spending and employment.

It appears that what we have here is a failure to communicate. ...

Thus we need a jobs summit right now. We need the White House's National Economic Council and key congressional “centrists” on one side and the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee on the other to meet. Those two groups seem to have very inconsistent views of the economic situation. ... Something has to give. If they could reach agreement on whose view ... is likely correct, then a rescue plan—entailing either more government spending or greater liquidity—would become obvious.

Until that “jobs summit” is convened, others are moot.

Worries about Budget Deficits and Inflation: Let’s Avoid Repeating Our Mistakes

At MoneyWatch:

Worries about Budget Deficits and Inflation: Let’s Avoid Repeating Our Mistakes, by Mark Thoma: There is a lot of concern about the future course of the economy, and there are two separate worries that are getting confused. The purpose of this post is to distinguish between the two sets of worries, and to discuss whether the worries are justified. ...

"A New Approach to Gauging Inflation Expectations"

Good news for those worried about inflation: A new measure of inflation expectations indicates that "longer-term inflation expectations remain near historic lows, in the neighborhood of 2 percent":

A New Approach to Gauging Inflation Expectations, by Joseph G. Haubrich, Economic Commentary, FRB Cleveland: This Economic Commentary explains a relatively new method of uncovering inflation expectations, real interest rates, and an inflation-risk premium. It provides estimates of expected inflation from one month to 30 years, an estimate of the inflation-risk premium, and a measure of real interest rates, particularly a short (one-month) rate, which is not readily available from the TIPS market. Calculations using the method suggest that longer-term inflation expectations remain near historic lows. Furthermore, the inflation-risk premium is also low, which in the model means that inflation is not expected to deviate far from expectations.

Policymakers at the Federal Reserve and other central banks continually face the “Goldilocks” question—is monetary policy too tight, too loose, or just right? It would help if the central bank knew what real interest rates and expected inflation actually were, but these are not easy to observe. Visible indicators of these factors, such as Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS), survey measures of expected inflation, and nominal interest rates, are useful, but none of them alone quite tells the whole story. Nominal interest rates change with both real rates and expected inflation; survey measures ask about only a few horizons, and measures of inflation expectations coming from inflation-protected securities conflate expectations with risk premia. Uncovering a purer measure is possible, but it takes a careful combination of the available data and the application of economic theory.

This Economic Commentary explains a relatively new method of uncovering inflation expectations and real interest rates and describes what light those numbers can shed on the current status of the U.S. economy.

People’s expectation of inflation enters into nearly every economic decision they make. It enters into large decisions: whether they can afford a mortgage payment on a new house, whether they strike for higher wages, how they invest their retirement funds. It also enters into the smaller decisions, that, in the aggregate, affect the entire economy: whether they wait for the milk to go on sale or buy it before the price goes up.

Real interest rates also play a key role in many economic decisions. When businesses invest—or don’t—in plants and equipment, when families buy—or don’t—a new car or dishwasher, they are making judgments about the real return on the object and the real cost of borrowing. As such, real interest rates can be an important guide to monetary policy. As Alan Greenspan once explained,¹ keeping the real rate around its equilibrium level (which is determined by economic and financial conditions), has a “stabilizing effect on the economy” and it helps direct production “toward its long-term potential.”

Paul Krugman: Misguided Monetary Mentalities

We need to avoid thinking and acting in ways that got us into trouble in the past:

Misguided Monetary Mentalities, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: One lesson from the Great Depression is that you should never underestimate the destructive power of bad ideas. And some of the bad ideas that helped cause the Depression have, alas, proved all too durable: in modified form, they continue to influence economic debate today.

What ideas am I talking about? The economic historian Peter Temin has argued that a key cause of the Depression was ... the “gold-standard mentality.” By this he means not just belief in the sacred importance of maintaining the gold value of one’s currency, but a set of associated attitudes: obsessive fear of inflation even in the face of deflation; opposition to easy credit, even when the economy desperately needs it, on the grounds that it would be somehow corrupting; assertions that even if the government can create jobs it shouldn’t, because this would only be an “artificial” recovery.

In the early 1930s this mentality led governments to raise interest rates and slash spending, despite mass unemployment, in an attempt to defend their gold reserves. And even when countries went off gold, the prevailing mentality made them reluctant to cut rates and create jobs.

But we’re past all that now. Or are we? ...[A] modern version of the gold standard mentality ... could undermine our chances for full recovery.

Consider first the current uproar over the declining international value of the dollar. The truth is that the falling dollar is good news. For one thing, it’s mainly the result of rising confidence: the dollar rose ... as panicked investors sought safe haven in America, and it’s falling again now that the fear is subsiding. And a lower dollar is good for U.S. exporters...

But if you get your opinions from, say, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, you’re told that the falling dollar is a ... sign that the world is losing faith in America (and especially, of course, in President Obama). ...

And ... there are worrying signs of a misguided monetary mentality within the Federal Reserve system itself. In recent weeks there have been a number of ... Fed officials ... calling for an early return to tighter money... What’s ... extraordinary ... is the idea that raising rates would make sense any time soon. After all, the unemployment rate is a horrifying 9.8 percent and still rising, while inflation is running well below the Fed’s long-term target. This suggests that the Fed should be in no hurry to tighten — in fact, standard policy rules ... suggest that interest rates should be left on hold for the next two years or more, or until the unemployment rate has fallen to around 7 percent.

Yet some Fed officials want to pull the trigger on rates much sooner. To avoid a “Great Inflation,” says Charles Plosser of the Philadelphia Fed, “we will need to act well before unemployment rates and other measures of resource utilization have returned to acceptable levels.” Jeffrey Lacker of the Richmond Fed says that rates may need to rise even if “the unemployment rate hasn’t started falling yet.”

I don’t know what analysis lies behind these itchy trigger fingers. But it probably isn’t about analysis, anyway — it’s about mentality, the sense that central banks are supposed to act tough, not provide easy credit.

And it’s crucial that we don’t let this mentality guide policy. We do seem to have avoided a second Great Depression. But giving in to a modern version of our grandfathers’ prejudices would be a very good way to ensure the next worst thing: a prolonged era of sluggish growth and very high unemployment.

"Gold Buggery"

Barkley Rosser:

Washington Post Puffs Gold Buggery, by Barkley Rosser: The business section of today's Washington Post contains one of the most ridiculous news stories I have seen yet. I would not mind if this were a column, but "What's Making Gold a Hot Commodity" by Frank Ahrens is supposedly a news story, and as such it should not contain whoppingly erroneous statements without some correction. So, Ahrens himself says the following: "In the long term, with each new dollar introduced into the system, each dollar you hold becomes worth less. That's more than just inflation, which we think of as simply rising prices. That's debasement of not only our currency, but the globe's reserve currency." It may well be that nonsensical thinking such as has this pushed the price of gold back over $1,000 per ounce again, but why should a business section reporter repeat it without the slightest doubt. It is not even good monetarism, as monetarists only view money supply expansions beyond growth of real output and not offset by velocity changes as inflationary.

A bit later, Ahrens uncritically quotes Peter Boockvar, an equities trader at Miller Tabak: "It amazes me that any self-respecting central banker is not alarmed that gold is over $1,000 an ounce and the dollar is trading at all-time record lows." All-time record lows? Only against gold. Currently the dollar is about 1.46 against the euro, while it hit 1.5990 in July 2008. It is around 92 against the yen, but in 1995 got as low as 79.95. It is a bit over 1.5 against the pound, but was at 1.98 last year (and further back in history was over 4.0). Utter drivel.

I do recognize that later in the article Ahrens brings up some factors that might caution people a bit against buying gold too frenziedly, such as how much of it is held by central banks, and how little demand for it is due to industrial use (only about 10%). But he never mentions that it has already been above $1,000 twice before, only to fall back, and in the late 1970s was much higher in real terms, at well over $800, only to fall very far below that and stay well below that for decades. The warnings could have been a bit clearer, along with avoiding mindlessly repeating totally ridiculous non-facts spouted by wacko gold bugs.

"Would Growth in the U.S. Debt be Inflationary?"

David Andolfatto explains why a worldwide shortage of safe, liquid assets may help the U.S. to avoid the inflationary consequences of high debt levels:

Why the Growing Level of U.S. Debt May Not be Inflationary, by David Andolfatto: History shows that high levels of government debt are frequently associated with inflation. The reason for this seems clear enough. At some point, maturing debt needs to paid back. At high enough levels of debt, rolling the debt over is no longer feasible. Cutting back government spending and raising taxes is politically difficult. The easy way out is simply to print new money. As the money supply expands, inflation results.

Let us consider the U.S. Unlike most other economies, there appears to be a huge worldwide demand for U.S. Treasuries and U.S. dollars (which can be thought of as zero-interest Treasuries). A large scale increase in the supply of these government debt instruments need not lead to a depreciation in their value if there is a correspondingly large scale increase in the worldwide demand for these objects. What is the evidence that this may be happening?

Foreigners Snap Up Treasuries Even as US Debt Keeps Rising

But why should this be so? What accounts for what appears to be an insatiable demand for US debt, especially in the wake of the recent financial crisis?

Ricardo Caballero of MIT offers some hints in a very interesting piece entitled: On the Macroeconomics of Asset Shortages. After reading this paper, I started thinking in the following way. Tell me what you think.

There is a high and growing demand for low-risk assets, both as a store of value, and as collateral objects in payment systems (e.g., repo and credit derivatives markets). This growth has exploded over the last 20 years or so; and stems from the demand from emerging economies and innovations in the financial sector. There is a worldwide "shortage" of good quality (low-risk) assets, like U.S. Treasuries (which explains their relatively low yield). Indeed, many of the innovations in the financial sector can be interpreted as the private sector's response to this shortage: the creation of "low-risk" tranches of MBSs allowing these objects to substitute for U.S. Treasuries as collateral in the rapidly expanding repo market. ...

If this is more or less true, then the implication is this: The massive increase in the supply U.S. Treasury debt may very be "socially optimal" in the sense that the U.S. government is simply supplying the world with an asset that is in very high demand (which, in turn, means that the demanders obviously find some value in the existence of such an asset). To the extent that this "new demand regime" remains stable, the added supply of U.S. Treasuries will impose no financial burden on the U.S. (indeed, they make off like bandits, as the Treasuries are ultimately purchased by exporting goods and services to the U.S.).

The million dollar question, of course, is whether the high world demand for U.S. debt will persist long into the future (and whether the U.S. government will "overissue" debt beyond what is called for by this new high-demand regime). Who knows what will happen. But it appears to me that IF the U.S. government plays its cards right, it may very well enjoy its higher debt levels without the prospect of inflation. U.S. citizens will benefit (from the sales of Treasuries for goods) and the world will be grateful to hold a stable asset.

Well, maybe. But that was a big IF. What could possibly go wrong?

The future level of the debt in the U.S. is not a worry if we get effective health care reform (rising health care costs are the major source of projected future deficits). But if a debt problem does exist, I'm not sure the main risk is inflation since I expect the Fed to hold the line on debt monetization. If so, if the Fed does hold the line, then the pressure would be on government spending and taxes. If congress cannot solve the debt problem by cutting spending and/or raising taxes, the result would likely be high interest rates that crowd out private investment. In any case, what this says to me is that to the extent that this demand for safe assets exists, debt levels can be carried at a lower interest rate than otherwise, and this reduces concerns about crowding out (perhaps this is one of the reasons why long-term interest rates have remained relatively low, financial markets recognize this demand exists, believe the demand is large enough to matter, and believe it will continue for some time into the future).

"Tell me what you think."

*****

[On the relationship between debt and inflation, much of the evidence comes from developing countries. Here's one story about why debt and inflation might be related. Often a developing country will decide to run a government deficit to, say, build new roads, bridges, dams, etc. They are trying to build up the infrastructure. The idea is that the future growth that will come from this spending will allow the debt to be paid off. It's an investment in the future of the country -- borrow now, invest the money in needed infrastructure projects, and then use the resulting increase in future economic output to pay for spending (though much less noble motives for increasing debt exist as well).

How can this debt be paid for in the interim, i.e. during the time period when the projects are being built and before the expected growth is realized? The alternatives are to increase taxes, print the money, or borrow the money.

The countries can't increase taxes, these are developing countries and the tax base is insufficient. The whole point of the infrastructure projects is to begin to change that through economic growth.

If they can't tax, then can they borrow the money? Probably not domestically since, again, they are a developing country with little wealth. The necessary funds aren't available domestically. So that leaves borrowing from foreigners. Is that possible? Not if they have defaulted in the past. If they have defaulted, nobody may be willing to take the risk of lending them money, and if the money comes from international agencies such as the IMF, it may come with so many restrictions that it does no good. And even if the money can be borrowed, at some point it must be paid off, and if the promised growth does not materialize (and overly optimistic promises make this likely), investors will be unwilling to allow the debt to be rolled over. The point is that, for developing countries, supporting government spending through taxes or borrowing may not be feasible. This leaves only two choices, giving up on the spending projects, or printing money to pay for them. Printing money - and the inflationary consequences that follow - is often the choice that is made.

Developed countries are not so constrained. They have much more latitude to borrow from their own citizens or from foreigners, they have the ability to raise substantial sums through taxation, and often their infrastructure and other needs aren't as dire. In addition, they can generally count on future growth to help to pay for the borrowing. For all these reasons, developing countries aren't necessarily forced to pay for spending by printing new money and creating inflation.]

"Bernanke's Bold Prose"

Mohammed El-Arian says Ben Bernanke can talk all he wants, but the credibility of his message about inflation depends upon the actions of fiscal authorities and is thus largely out of his hands:

Mohamed El-Erian on Bernanke’s bold prose, FT Alphaville: From Pimco’s chief executive…

While it may not rank quite as high as his appearance on the US news show ‘60 Minutes’ a few months ago, Chairman Bernanke’s Op Ed in today’s Wall Street Journal is nevertheless notable and important. It represents a bold attempt by the Federal Reserve to reach out broadly and pre-empt mounting concerns about the challenges facing monetary policy.

Bernanke’s bottom line is clear:  “Overall, the Federal Reserve has many effective tools to tighten monetary policy when the economic outlook requires us to do so.”   ... Bernanke is signaling that the Fed is aware of the need to re-assure markets of its ability to strike that delicate balance between deflationary and inflationary concerns. ...

While ... this is important, it does not constitute major news as such.  Indeed, Bernanke has today confirmed a view that has increasingly prevailed in financial markets:  there will be no early hike in interest rates; and when the time comes to tighten monetary policy, the sequence will involve dealing first with the excess reserves. Yet this is not sufficient to ensure that the US is indeed able to balance well deflationary and inflationary risks.

To move from a necessary condition to one that is both necessary and sufficient, one must also consider what, increasingly, is the large elephant in the room when it comes to policies — namely, the design and conduct of fiscal policy.  This is an area where challenging short and longer-term imperatives need to be reconciled over time, and at several level of local, state and national governments. ...

After being heavily involved in stabilizing a highly disrupted economy, the Fed is transitioning from the driver seat to the passenger seat.

By virtue of its greater flexibility and responsiveness, the Fed ended up assuming the main role in responding to the crisis, with fiscal and other agencies (including the FDIC) playing important support roles. It is now the turn of the fiscal agencies to assume the main role, with the Fed and others playing the support roles.

Bottom line:  we have now entered the phase where fiscal policy is the more important determinant of the ability of the US to balance the risks of deflation and those of inflation. And, here, the jury is still out.

If we fail to make the changes in health care reform that are needed to bring the long-term budget into better balance, there will come a time when the Fed faces a choice about whether to monetize the debt and create inflation, or to refuse to monetize the debt potentially send interest rates very high causing the economy to stall. So it's not completely out of their hands. The Fed has faced this choice before, and its independence allowed it to send a message to fiscal authorities that it was willing to take whatever steps are necessary, including causing a recession, to prevent monetizing the debt and creating an inflationary environment. As Thomas Sargent notes in his book "Dynamic Macroeconomic Theory":

A game of chicken seemed to be occurring in the United States from 1981 to 1985 because the Fed announced a policy that is feasible only if the budget swings toward balance in a present value sense, whereas Congress and the President set in place plans for government expenditures and taxes that imply prospective net-of-interest deficits so large that they are feasible only if the Fed eventually creates more inflation. In such a situation, something has to give.

And, due to the degree of independence that it had, it wasn't the Fed that eventually gave in. With a less independent Fed, I'm not sure we get that outcome. (I should note that people such as Jamie Galbraith argue that fighting inflation during this time period was the wrong policy to pursue - one part of the the argument is that it suppressed wages and made workers worse off - but this is a point on which we disagree, and the general view within the profession is that the Volcker Fed acted wisely.)

Ben Bernanke: The Fed's Exit Strategy

Ben Bernanke says that when the economy starts to recover, the Fed will take the steps needed to prevent an outbreak of inflation (the substance of the arguments can be found in the full version):

The Fed’s Exit Strategy, by Ben Bernanke, Commentary, WSJ: The depth and breadth of the global recession has required a highly accommodative monetary policy. Since the onset of the financial crisis nearly two years ago, the Federal Reserve has reduced the ... federal-funds rate ... nearly to zero. We have also greatly expanded the size of the Fed’s balance sheet through purchases of longer-term securities and through targeted lending programs aimed at restarting the flow of credit.

These actions have softened the economic impact of the financial crisis. They have also improved the functioning of key credit markets...

My colleagues and I believe that accommodative policies will likely be warranted for an extended period. At some point, however, as economic recovery takes hold, we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem... We are confident we have the necessary tools to withdraw policy accommodation, when that becomes appropriate, in a smooth and timely manner.

The exit strategy is closely tied to the management of the Federal Reserve balance sheet. When the Fed makes loans or acquires securities, the funds ... ultimately appear in the reserve accounts held at the Fed by banks and other depository institutions. These reserve balances now total about $800 billion, much more than normal. ...

But as the economy recovers, banks should find more opportunities to lend out their reserves. That would produce faster growth in broad money (for example, M1 or M2) and easier credit conditions, which could ultimately result in inflationary pressures—unless we adopt countervailing policy measures. When the time comes to tighten monetary policy, we must either eliminate these large reserve balances or, if they remain, neutralize any potential undesired effects on the economy. ...

[W]e have two broad means of tightening monetary policy at the appropriate time: paying interest on reserve balances and taking various actions that reduce the stock of reserves. We could use either of these approaches alone; however, to ensure effectiveness, we likely would use both in combination. ... [T]hese policies would help to raise short-term interest rates and limit the growth of broad measures of money and credit, thereby tightening monetary policy.

Overall, the Federal Reserve has many effective tools to tighten monetary policy when the economic outlook requires us to do so. As my colleagues and I have stated, however, economic conditions are not likely to warrant tighter monetary policy for an extended period. We will calibrate the timing and pace of any future tightening, together with the mix of tools to best foster our dual objectives of maximum employment and price stability.

As I've said many times, I'm not particularly worried about inflation, reserves can be removed or neutralized as described. The worry is not so much that they will be too slow at removing reserves, it's that they will get trigger happy and start raising interest too soon potentially stalling the recovery or perhaps even sending the economy back downward. The Fed will need to be sure that things are getting better before beginning to raise interest rates, that's why it's good to hear them use the phrase "extended period" twice when describing how long interest rates will stay low. But there are long lags associated with monetary policy, and by the time the Fed knows for sure that economy is heading solidly in the right direction, it won't have much time left to reverse course and begin removing reserves. Even so, they need to be patient and avoid the more serious mistake of raising interest rates too soon.

What's behind Recent Changes in Long-Term Interst Rates?

Martin Feldstein says we need to cut social programs so that we don't "weaken demand in the near term and hurt economic incentives in the long run":

The Fed must reassure markets on inflation, by Martin Feldstein, Commentary, Financial Times: The interest rate on 10-year US Treasury bonds almost doubled in six months, rising from 2.26 per cent last December to 3.98 per cent in mid-June, before decreasing slightly in recent days. This sharp rise happened despite the Federal Reserve’s ... policy aimed at lowering long-term rates by buying $300bn of Treasuries and promising to buy more than $1,000bn of mortgage securities. ...

There is no single reason for the sharp rise in rates... The simplest explanation for the higher 10-year rate is that many investors now expect inflation to rise. ... The prospective decline of the dollar is also a potential source of inflation. ...

But such an explanation is deceptively easy. ... Those scared by Lehman Brothers’ collapse wanted the safety and liquidity of ordinary Treasury bonds, causing their yields to fall sharply...

Treasury yields rose this month to their level a year earlier because improving market conditions meant investors were no longer willing to pay for the extreme liquidity of Treasuries. Inflation was thus not the only, and perhaps not even the main, reason for the rise in rates.

Why did the Fed’s massive buying of long-term Treasury bonds not hold down the bond rate? The answer is that bond markets are less impressed by the $300bn of Fed purchases than by the official projection of $10,000bn of government borrowing over the next decade... The resulting crowding out of private investment will require higher future interest rates, and that is reflected in current long-term rates.

A further reason long rates remain high is a fear that foreign buyers may not be willing to continue buying dollar bonds to finance a large US current account deficit.

In short, higher long-term interest rates reflect investors’ concern about future inflation, future fiscal deficits and the future willingness of foreign investors to purchase US bonds. ...

It would be wrong for the Obama administration and Congress to reduce the fiscal stimulus in 2009 or 2010, since there is no clear evidence of a sustained upturn. But it would be equally wrong to allow the national debt to double to 80 per cent of GDP a decade from now. Increasing taxes even more than proposed would weaken demand in the near term and hurt economic incentives in the long run. The fiscal deficit should therefore be reduced by curtailing the increases in social spending that the president advocated in his election campaign.

The Fed must also be careful not to tighten too soon. But it needs to reassure markets that it will prevent the excess reserves of the banks from financing a surge of inflationary lending when the economy begins to expand. It must make clear now that it will be willing to do so even if that involves big rises in short-term rates.

Here's (my interpretation of) Paul Krugman's argument about the source of recent movements in long-term interest rates:

There are two reasons long-term rates might rise, first more worries about the debt and inflation in the future would drive rates up, and second the prospect of better economic conditions in the future would have the same effect, rates would go up.

Suppose we receive bad news about the current state of the economy. That should cause expectations of lower output growth in the future, and hence lower tax revenues and higher spending on social programs than would exist with a stronger economy. So the bad news should cause an expectation of a larger deficit and more inflation worries, and that would drive long-term interest rates up (these worries would also make foreign central banks less likely to fund US borrowing which would reinforce the increase in long-term interest rates).

But if it is future economic conditions that are driving the changes in long-term interest rates, bad news about the economy should drive rates down.

Last week, we received bad news about the economy. If the debt/inflation/foreign lending story is correct, long-term rates should have gone up. If the state of the economy story is driving rates, rates should have fallen. What did long-term rates actually do? They fell.

Mishkin: How to Get the Fed Out of Its 'Box'

Frederic Mishkin is worried about the long-run budget and how it constrains what the Fed can do:

How to Get The Fed Out Of Its 'Box', by Frederic Mishkin, Commentary, WSJ: When the Federal Open Market Committee meets this Tuesday and Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will face a serious dilemma.

Since the last committee meeting six weeks ago, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has risen by around ... 0.70%,... the interest rate on 30-year mortgages has risen by a similar amount. The rise in long-term interest rates ... has the potential to choke off economic recovery and lead to further deterioration in the housing market. ... Does the situation call for the Fed to expand its purchases of Treasury bonds to lower long-term interest rates?

To answer this question, we need to look at why long-term interest rates have risen. Here, there is good news and bad news. One cause ... is the more positive economic news..., particularly in financial markets. The bad news is ... the deteriorating fiscal situation, with massive budget deficits expected for the indefinite future. ...

Although an expansion of Treasury bond purchases by the Fed would have the benefit of lowering long-term interest rates temporarily to stimulate the economy, in the current environment it could be dangerous for two reasons. First, it might suggest that the Fed is willing to monetize Treasury debt. The Fed does not, and should not, ... be an enabler of fiscal irresponsibility. Second, if the Fed loses its credibility to resist pressures to monetize the debt it could cause inflation expectations to shift upward, thereby leading to a serious problem down the road.

The Fed is boxed in. The slack in the economy that is likely to persist for a very long time suggests the need for stimulative monetary policy... The fiscal situation argues against this policy action, because it would weaken the Fed's inflation-fighting credibility.

How can the Fed get out of the box and pursue the expansionary monetary policy that is needed...? The answer is that the Obama administration and Congress have to get serious about long-run fiscal sustainability. Large budget deficits naturally occur during severe recessions..., fiscal stimulus to promote economic recovery ... in a severe recession is a sensible prescription.

However, the failure to take steps to get future budgets under control is a recipe for disaster. Not only does it make it difficult for the Fed..., but it may even make the fiscal stimulus package less effective. After all, if you know that the government is issuing a lot of debt ... you can expect to pay much higher taxes in the future. With the prospect of higher taxes, you will be less likely to spend today.

How can the Obama administration and Congress help the Fed do its job and help the fiscal stimulus package work? It needs to address exploding spending on entitlements -- Social Security and particularly Medicare -- which are causing future deficit projections to be so bleak.

One possibility is to establish a nonpartisan commission on entitlement reform, along the lines of the National Commission on Social Security in the early 1980s. ... Another is taxing health-care benefits as part of any package to reform health care. Taxing health-care benefits would ... generate large amounts of revenue. It would also increase the incentive for people to lower the costs of their health care. There are surely many other ways to promote more fiscal responsibility.

The Fed can assist this process. It could indicate that implementing measures that would promote fiscal sustainability will be rewarded with Federal Reserve actions to bring long-term Treasury rates down. Deals like this have been successfully made in the past. In the current extremely difficult economic environment, we surely need such a deal now.

As has been pointed out here many times, the inflation and interest rate concerns are likely overblown, as is the worry that consumption will suffer significantly due to the expectation of taxes in the future, and hence the motivation to attack entitlements is not as strong as suggested. Also, there is also at least some question about the Fed's ability to control long-term interest rates.

But beyond that the projected increase in health care costs is the biggest problem with the long-run budget by far, and the Obama administration is trying to reform the health care system. So the administration is attempting to "address exploding spending on entitlements," at least the one that is actually exploding - there's no sense in which the projected increase in the deficit due to Social Security can be described as "exploding" - and if the Fed, Mishkin, or anyone else wants to assist with that effort with deals or op-eds that promote the necessary reform, I'm sure the administration would welcome their help.

Blinder: Why Inflation isn't the Danger

Alan Blinder isn't worried about inflation:

Why Inflation Isn’t the Danger, by Alan S. Blinder, Economic View, NY Times: Some people with hypersensitive sniffers say the whiff of future inflation is in the air. ... Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy. Let me explain.

First, the clear and present danger, both now and for the next year or two, is not inflation but deflation. ... Core inflation near zero, or even negative, is a live possibility for 2010 or 2011.

Ben S. Bernanke ... and his colleagues have been working overtime to dodge the deflation bullet. To this end, they cut the Fed funds rate to virtually zero last December and have since relied on a variety of extraordinary policies known as quantitative easing to restore the flow of credit. ... But quantitative easing is universally agreed to be weak medicine compared with cutting interest rates. So the Fed is administering a large dose — which is where all those reserves come from.

The mountain of reserves on banks’ balance sheets has, in turn, filled the inflation hawks with apprehension. ... Will the Fed really withdraw all those reserves fast enough as the financial storm abates? If not, we could indeed experience inflation. Although the Fed is not infallible, I’d make three important points:

One Third of the Prices within the CPI Fell Last Month

Is Greg Mankiw correct to say that deflation worries are overstated? Here's Laurel Graefe of the Atlanta Fed:

CPI: The left and the right of it, macroblog: We got a good reading of May's inflation numbers this week. On both the producer and the consumer sides, price measures for the month came in well short of market expectations. The prospect of deflation has been getting a good deal of coverage in the blogosphere; see Andy Harless' blog, Economist's View, and Paul Krugman's column.

Greg Mankiw, however, points out that a trimmed mean estimate of the consumer price index (CPI), which removes the large relative price changes in each month, makes the deflation story seem a bit, uh, exaggerated.

"As every grade school student learns when the teacher reports results of the latest test, the average of any data set can be thrown off by a few extreme outliers; the median is a more robust statistic to estimate the central tendency in the data.

"Right now, the two measures of inflation are diverging substantially. The standard CPI shows deflation over the past year, but that average is due to a few anomalous sectors, such as energy. If you look at the median CPI, which shows what a more typical price is doing, the inflation rate does not look very unusual."

While the median is certainly a valuable way to look at inflation, there is also some interesting information that can be gleaned from breaking down the whole distribution of prices.

The chart below (hat tip to Brent Meyer at the Cleveland Fed) shows another interesting feature of yesterday's CPI release. Notice the clear downward shift in the distribution of CPI component price changes. Over half of the prices within the CPI market basket posted declines at or below 1 percent last month, up from an average of 29 percent in 2008, with a whopping one-third of the price index posting declines in May.

Of course, one month does not a trend make, but the month's price numbers were nonetheless noteworthy.

"A Long Way to Inflation"

Andy Harless says we're not even close to experiencing an outbreak of inflation:

A Long Way to Inflation, by Andy Harless: Most of the media seem to have interpreted today’s lower-than-expected increase in the producer price index as good news. ... Personally, I was more worried about deflation, and I still am. The inflation risk, if it exists at all, is in the distant future, and you could even argue that deflation in the short run increases the risk of high inflation in the long run. It’s hard for me to see how falling prices today are good news at all. And prices – excluding food and energy – did fall in May according to the PPI.

You might worry about energy and commodity prices feeding through to the broader price level. I’m worried about that too, but not in the way you might think. Undoubtedly some of that feed-through is already happening, and it hasn’t been enough to keep core producer price growth on the positive side of zero. I’m worried about what happens when commodity prices (1) stop rising (which they must do eventually) and/or (2) start falling again (which they may well do if the recent increases have been driven largely by unsustainable forces such as stockpiling by China). If core prices are already falling, and only energy prices are keeping the overall PPI inflation rate positive, what happens when energy prices stop rising?

Lucas: Inflation is not the Biggest Worry

I thought maybe conservatives should hear from one of their own. Nobel prize winner Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago said the following in November:

The recession is the more immediate problem, Robert Lucas: In a financial crisis things happen fast... The responsibility of the Federal Reserve in this situation is to provide more cash reserves, and in that sense they are doing their job. ... This is good central banking.

Should we be concerned that people will just hold on to the new reserves and continue to reduce spending? Some of that is surely happening, but more reserves can always be added.

Should we be concerned about inflation? Of course, always.

But right now the recession is the more immediate problem. If inflation resumes, reserves can be taken out as quickly as they were added. This is a classic lender-of-last-resort situation and it is important to maintain focus.

In my view, these are the most important considerations for US policy today. I think if the current Federal Reserve lending policies are continued aggressively our chances of avoiding a recession larger than that of 1982 are very good. At this point, I think this is the best that can be hoped for and it is a lot better than a replay of the 1930s.

Importantly: "reserves can be taken out as quickly as they were added."

"Price Stability and the Monetary Base"

The Atlanta Fed's David Altig takes issue with Arthur Laffer. This is another way of saying that money sitting in banks as excess reserves is not inflationary (my related comments are here and here - scroll down in both cases):

Price stability and the monetary base, by David Altig: Arthur Laffer, as several readers (and friends) have pointed out to me, is taking aim at the Fed:

"… as bad as the fiscal picture is, panic-driven monetary policies portend to have even more dire consequences. We can expect rapidly rising prices and much, much higher interest rates over the next four or five years, and a concomitant deleterious impact on output and employment not unlike the late 1970s.

"About eight months ago, starting in early September 2008, the Bernanke Fed ... radically increased the monetary base—which is comprised of currency in circulation, member bank reserves held at the Fed, and vault cash—by a little less than $1 trillion. The Fed controls the monetary base 100%..."

...The increase in the U.S. monetary base has indeed been something to behold, and the Laffer article gives a good explanation about why you might be worried about that:

"Bank reserves are crucially important because they are the foundation upon which banks are able to expand their liabilities and thereby increase the quantity of money.

"...Banks now have huge amounts of excess reserves, enabling them to make lots of net new loans…

"At present, banks are doing just what we would expect them to do. They are making new loans and increasing overall bank liabilities (i.e., money). The 12-month growth rate of M1 is now in the 15% range, and close to its highest level in the past half century."

OK, but in my opinion it is a bit of a stretch—so far, at least—to correlate monetary base growth with bank loan growth:

Let's call that more than a bit of a stretch.

The Laffer argument is in large part about what the future will bring. But we know that the payment of interest on bank reserves—which we have discussed in this forum many times (here and here, for example)—means a higher demand for reserves in the future than in the past. This change, of course, means that levels of the monetary base that would have seemed scary in the past will become the new normal. How big can the "new normal" be? That's a good question, and one I will continue to contemplate. But the assertion in the Laffer article that "a major contraction in monetary base" is required cannot be supported by either current evidence or simple economic theory.

There is, however, more. Whatever policy choices are required to deliver a noninflationary environment going forward, Mr. Laffer seems convinced that the central bank is not up to making them:

"Alas, I doubt very much that the Fed will do what is necessary to guard against future inflation and higher interest rates. If the Fed were to reduce the monetary base by $1 trillion, it would need to sell a net $1 trillion in bonds. This would put the Fed in direct competition with Treasury's planned issuance of about $2 trillion worth of bonds over the coming 12 months. Failed auctions would become the norm and bond prices would tumble, reflecting a massive oversupply of government bonds."

On this I will just turn to my boss, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, who addressed this very issue in a speech given today at the National Association of Securities Professionals Annual Pension and Financial Services Conference in Atlanta:

"The concerns about our economic path are crystallized in doubts expressed in some quarters about the Federal Reserve's ability to fulfill its obligation to deliver low and stable inflation in the face of very large current and prospective federal deficits. In a word, the concerns are about monetization of the resulting federal debt.

"I do not dismiss these concerns out of hand. I also recognize that the task of pursuing the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and sustainable growth will be greatly complicated should deliberate and timely action to address our fiscal imbalances fail to materialize. But I have full confidence in the Federal Reserve's ability and resolve to meet its inflation objectives in whatever environment presents itself. Of the many risks the U.S. and global economies still confront, I firmly believe the Fed losing sight of its inflation objectives is not among them."

'Nuff said, for now.

"The Bond War"

 What is the bond market telling us?:

The Bond War, by Daniel Gross, Slate: It's fair to say that 10-year and 30-year Treasury bonds are not subjects that enthrall the American public... In the last six months, however, the state of those bonds has become the subject of feverish argument in the economic elite. The interest rate of the 10-year Treasury bond has spiked from 2.07 percent in December 2008, when the world was falling apart, to a recent high of 3.715 percent on June 1... Now factions led by economist Paul Krugman and historian Niall Ferguson are feuding bitterly about the import of these charts. In late April, Krugman and Ferguson squared off at a New York Review of Books/PEN panel, and they've continued with an op-ed war in the Financial Times and New York Times (Ferguson here and Krugman here).

In a nutshell, Ferguson and his allies believe that the rising bond yields prove that markets are worried about the inflation that will inevitably result from the fiscal policies of the Obama administration and the Fed. ... Ferguson's fears have been echoed by the planet's leading inflation-phobe German Chancellor Angela Merkel and by influential Stanford economist John Taylor. Turn on CNBC, and you're likely to hear talk about bond-market vigilantes, the mass of traders who sell bonds and push interest rates up in order to warn governments not to spend freely.

Krugman and his fellow travelers couldn't disagree more. Far from being a sign of failure and impending disaster, they say, the rising bond yields actually signal success and impending improvement. ... Clear-headed as always, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times notes: "The jump in bond rates is a desirable normalisation after a panic. Investors rushed into the dollar and government bonds. Now they are rushing out again. Welcome to the giddy world of financial markets." This line of argument makes sense...

In ... this instance, the Fergusonians lack credibility. H.L. Mencken tagged the Puritans as people possessed of the "haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Ferguson represents a strain of intellectual Toryism bedeviled by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be getting social insurance. ... Their solution to the problem of large deficits always seems to be to cut entitlements and never to raise taxes.

As for the bond vigilantes, have you noticed that they seem to surface only when a Democrat is in the White House? Stanford's John Taylor didn't write many articles about the inflationary aspects of rapidly expanding deficits when the Bush administration and Congress were turning surpluses into huge deficits, massively increasing government spending, and creating a new Medicare prescription drug entitlement. He was working in the Bush Treasury Department. ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, seemed to split the difference yesterday. "However, in recent weeks, yields on longer-term Treasury securities and fixed-rate mortgages have risen," he told Congress. "These increases appear to reflect concerns about large federal deficits but also other causes, including greater optimism about the economic outlook, a reversal of flight-to-quality flows, and technical factors related to the hedging of mortgage holdings."

Will the Debt be Monetized?

David Altig doesn't think the recent concern that the debt will be monetized is fully justified:

Debt and money, macroblog: If you are hunkered down on inflation watch, yesterday's news offered some soothing words. From Reuters:

Chinese officials have expressed concern that heavy deficit spending and an ultra-loose monetary policy could spark inflation, eroding the value of China's U.S. bond holdings.

But [U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner said: "We have a strong, independent Fed and I am completely confident they have the ability to do their job under the law, which is to keep inflation stable and low over time..."

And from Bloomberg:

He said that there was 'no risk' of the U.S. monetizing its debt...

Concerns about such monetization arose in the wake of the FOMC's decision at its March meeting to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities and that decision's coincidence with the very large fiscal deficits contemplated in President Obama's budget proposals. Those concerns have accelerated as longer-term Treasury yields have moved higher since. ...

I will offer just a little perspective in the form of the chart below, which shows the recent and (near-term) prospective shares of federal debt held by the Federal Reserve. The red line represents the share of debt that will be held by the Fed at the end of fiscal year 2009 if the $300 billion Treasury purchase program is completed and the federal deficit emerges as currently predicted by the Congressional Budget Office.

Paul Krugman: The Big Inflation Scare

Money sitting in banks doing nothing but providing insurance is not inflationary, and worries that rising government debt will force policymakers to generate inflation are unfounded:

The Big Inflation Scare, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Suddenly it seems as if everyone is talking about inflation. Stern opinion pieces warn that hyperinflation is just around the corner. And markets may be heeding these warnings: Interest rates on long-term government bonds are up, with fear of future inflation one possible reason...

But does the big inflation scare make any sense? Basically, no — with one caveat I’ll get to later. And I suspect that the scare is at least partly about politics...

First.... It’s important to realize that there’s no hint of inflationary pressures in the economy right now. ... Deflation ... is the ... present danger.

So if prices aren’t rising, why the inflation worries? Some claim that the Federal Reserve is printing lots of money, which must be inflationary, while others claim that budget deficits will eventually force the U.S. government to inflate away its debt.

The first story is just wrong. The second could be right, but isn’t.

Now, it’s true that the Fed has ... been buying lots of debt both from the government and from the private sector, and paying for these purchases by crediting banks with extra reserves. And in ordinary times, this would be highly inflationary: banks, flush with reserves, would increase loans, which would drive up demand, which would push up prices.

But these aren’t ordinary times. Banks aren’t lending out their extra reserves. They’re just sitting on them — in effect, they’re sending the money right back to the Fed. So the Fed isn’t really printing money after all.

Still, don’t such actions have to be inflationary sooner or later? No. The Bank of Japan ... purchased debt on a huge scale between 1997 and 2003. What happened to consumer prices? They fell. ...

Is there a risk that we’ll have inflation after the economy recovers? That’s the claim of those who look at projections that federal debt may rise to more than 100 percent of G.D.P. and say that America will eventually have to inflate away that debt...

Such things have happened in the past. ... But ... modern examples are lacking. Over the past two decades, Belgium, Canada and ... Japan have all gone through episodes when debt exceeded 100 percent of G.D.P. And the United States itself emerged from World War II with debt exceeding 120 percent of G.D.P. In none of these cases did governments resort to inflation to resolve their problems.

So is there any reason to think that inflation is coming? Some economists have argued for moderate inflation as a deliberate policy, as a way to encourage lending and reduce private debt burdens. I... made a similar case for Japan in the 1990s. But the case for inflation never made headway ... then, and there’s no sign it’s getting traction with U.S. policy makers now.

All of this raises the question: If inflation isn’t a real risk, why all the claims that it is?

Well,... it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy. And their goal seems to be to bully the Obama administration into abandoning those rescue efforts.

Needless to say, the president should not let himself be bullied. The economy is still in deep trouble and needs continuing help.

Yes, we have a long-run budget problem, and we need to start laying the groundwork for a long-run solution. But when it comes to inflation, the only thing we have to fear is inflation fear itself.

Global Imbalances and Future Crises

I've been trying to figure out how much danger there is of a sudden unwinding of global imbalances that could extend and potentially deepen the recession. I've been worried there is a chance this could happen, but Barry Eichengreen explains that there are "two hopes for avoiding this disastrous outcome":

Fix global imbalances to avert future crises, by Barry Eichengreen, Commentary, Project Syndicate: Future history books, depending on where they are written, will take one of two approaches to assigning blame for the world’s current financial and economic crisis.

One approach will blame lax regulation, accommodating monetary policy, and inadequate savings in the US. The other, already being pushed by former and current US officials like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, will blame the immense pool of liquidity generated by high-savings countries in East Asia and the Middle East. All that liquidity, they will argue, had to go somewhere. Its logical destination was the country with the deepest financial markets, the US, where it raised asset prices to unsustainable heights.

Note the one thing on which members of both camps agree: the global savings imbalance – low savings in the US and high savings in Chinaand other emerging markets – played a key role in the crisis... Preventing future crises similar to this one therefore requires resolving the problem of global imbalances. ...

Whether there is a permanent reduction in global imbalances will depend mainly on decisions taken outside the US, specifically in countries like China. One’s forecast of those decisions hinges, in turn, on why these other countries came to run such large surpluses in the first place.

One view is that their surpluses were a corollary of the policies favouring export-led growth that worked so well for so long. China’s leaders are understandably reluctant to abandon a tried-and-true model. They can’t restructure their economy instantaneously. ... They need time to build a social safety net capable of encouraging Chinese households to reduce their precautionary saving. If this view is correct, we can expect to see global imbalances re-emerge once the recession is over and to unwind only slowly thereafter.

The other view is that China contributed to global imbalances not through its merchandise exports, but through its capital exports. What China lacked was not demand for consumption goods, but a supply of high-quality financial assets. It found these in the US, mainly in the form  of Treasury and other government-backed securities, in turn pushing other investors into more speculative investments.

Recent events have not enhanced the stature of the US as a supplier of high-quality assets. And China, for its part, will continue to develop its financial markets and its capacity to generate high-quality financial assets internally. But doing so will take time. Meanwhile, the US still has the most liquid financial markets in the world. This interpretation again implies the re-emergence of global imbalances once the recession ends, and their very gradual unwinding thereafter.

One development that could change this forecast is if China comes to view investing in US financial assets as a money-losing proposition. US budget deficits as far as the eye can see might excite fear of losses on US Treasury bonds. A de facto policy of inflating away the debt might stoke such fears further. At that point, China would pull the plug, the dollar would crash, and the Fed would be forced to raise interest rates, plunging the US back into recession.

There are two hopes for avoiding this disastrous outcome. One is relying on Chinese goodwill to stabilise the US and world economies. The other is for the Obama administration and the Fed to provide details about how they will eliminate the budget deficit and avoid inflation once the recession ends. The second option is clearly preferable. After all, it is always better to control one’s own fate.

China and the Dollar

Andy Xie expects the dollar to collapse:

If China loses faith the dollar will collapse, by Andy Xie, Commentary, Financial Times: Emerging economies such as China and Russia are calling for alternatives to the dollar as a reserve currency. The trigger is the Federal Reserve’s liberal policy of expanding the money supply to prop up America’s banking system and its over-indebted households. ...[T]he Fed may be forced into printing dollars massively, which would eventually trigger high inflation or even hyper-inflation and cause great damage to countries that hold dollar assets in their foreign exchange reserves.

The chatter over alternatives to the dollar mainly reflects the unhappiness with US monetary policy among the emerging economies that have amassed nearly $10,000bn in foreign exchange reserves, mostly in dollar assets. ...[T]he US situation is unique: it borrows in its own currency, and the dollar is the world’s dominant reserve currency. The US can disregard its creditors’ concerns for the time being without worrying about a dollar collapse. ...

The faith of the Chinese in America’s power and responsibility, and the petrodollar holdings of the gulf countries that depend on US military protection, are the twin props for the dollar’s global status. Ethnic Chinese ... may account for half of the foreign holdings of dollar assets. ...

The US could repair its balance sheet through asset sales and fiscal transfers instead of just printing money. ... The country’s vast and unexplored natural resource holdings could be auctioned off. Americans may view these ideas as unthinkable. It is hard to imagine that a superpower needs to sell the family silver to stay solvent. Hence, printing money seems a less painful way out. ...

Other currencies are not safe havens either. ... Central banks are punishing savers to redeem the sins of debtors and speculators. Unfortunately, ethnic Chinese are the biggest savers.

Diluting Chinese savings to bail out America’s failing banks and bankrupt households, though highly beneficial to the US national interest in the short term, will destroy the dollar’s global status. Ethnic Chinese demand for the dollar has been waning already. ...

America’s policy is pushing China towards developing an alternative financial system. ... Its recent decision to turn Shanghai into a financial centre by 2020 reflects China’s anxiety over relying on the dollar system. The year 2020 seems remote... However, if global stagflation takes hold, as I expect it to, it will force China to accelerate its reforms to float its currency and create a single, independent and market-based financial system. When that happens, the dollar will collapse.

Barry Eichengreen explains why using SDRs as a reserve currency, as has been suggested by the governor of the People's Bank of China, is not as easy as it might seem:

Commercialize the SDR now, by Barry Eichengreen, Commentary, Project Syndicate: Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, made a splash prior to the recent G-20 summit by arguing that the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights should replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. ...

Sympathizers acknowledged the contradictions... Central banks understandably seek more reserves as their economies grow. But if those reserves mainly take the form of dollars, then their rising demand allows the United States to finance its external deficit at an artificially low cost. In turn, this allows unsustainable imbalances to build up, leading to an inevitable crash. ...

But skeptics question whether the SDR could ever replace the dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency, for the simple reason that the SDR is not a currency. It is a composite accounting unit in which the IMF issues credits to its members. Those credits ... cannot be used in the other transactions in which central banks and governments engage. ... This means that the SDR is not an attractive unit for official reserves.

This would not be easy to change. Despite the trials and tribulations of the American economy, dollar securities remain the dominant form of reserves because of the unparalleled depth and liquidity of US markets. Central banks can buy and sell dollar securities without moving those markets. There is also the convenience factor: dollars are widely used in a variety of other transactions. As a result, not even the euro has seriously challenged the dollar as the dominant reserve currency. ...

If China is serious about elevating the SDR to reserve-currency status, it should take steps to create a liquid market in SDR claims. It could issue its own SDR-denominated bonds. ... Of course, an earlier attempt was made to create a commercial market in SDR-denominated claims ... in the 1970’s... But these efforts ultimately went nowhere. The dollar being more liquid, its first-mover advantage proved impossible to surmount.

Overcoming that advantage now would require someone to act as market-maker ... and subsidise the market in its start-up phase. The obvious someone is the IMF. The Fund could stand ready to buy and sell SDR claims to all comers, ... at narrow bid/ask spreads competitive with those for dollars. ...

Transforming the SDR into a true international currency would require surmounting other obstacles. The IMF would have to be able to issue additional SDRs in periods of shortage... The IMF’s management would also have to be empowered to decide on SDR issuance, just as the Fed can decide to offer currency swaps. For the SDR to become a true international currency, in other words, the IMF would have to become more like a global central bank and international lender of last resort.

For worries about inflation, see Inflation Nation by Alan Meltzer (and also see Krugman's response, A History Lesson for Alan Meltzer).

[Note: A lot of people have noted the apparent contradiction in the concern from Krugman over deflation, and from Meltzer over inflation, e.g. Mankiw for one, but here's an example of this from Mankiw's colleague, Martin Feldstein, within the same article. It's simply a short-run, long-run distinction.]

Paul Krugman: Falling Wage Syndrome

Are we doing enough to reduce the risk that we’ll face a sustained period of deflation and stagnation?:

Falling Wage Syndrome, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Wages are falling all across America. Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at The Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market: workers don’t dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don’t think they can find other jobs.

Whatever the specifics, however, falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they’re a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.

First things first: anecdotes about falling wages are proliferating, but how broad is the phenomenon? The answer is, very.

It’s true that many workers are still getting pay increases. But there are enough pay cuts out there that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cost of employing workers ... rose only two-tenths of a percent in the first quarter of this year — the lowest increase on record. Since the job market is still getting worse, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if overall wages started falling later this year.

But why is that a bad thing? After all, many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs. What’s wrong with that?

The answer lies in one of those paradoxes...: workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment. ... So there’s no benefit to the economy from lower wages. Meanwhile, the fall in wages can worsen the economy’s problems on other fronts.

In particular, falling wages, and hence falling incomes, worsen the problem of excessive debt: your monthly mortgage payments don’t go down with your paycheck. America came into this crisis with household debt as a percentage of income at its highest level since the 1930s. Families are trying to work that debt down by saving more ... but as wages fall, they’re chasing a moving target. ... Things get even worse if businesses and consumers expect wages to fall further in the future. ...

Concern about falling wages isn’t just theory. Japan ... is an object lesson in how wage deflation can contribute to economic stagnation.

So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn’t enough: we need a real recovery.

There has been a lot of talk lately about green shoots and all that, and there are indeed indications that the economic plunge that began last fall may be leveling off. The National Bureau of Economic Research might even declare the recession over later this year.

But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come — which is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy weak.

To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America will turn into Japan — that we’ll face years of deflation and stagnation — seems, if anything, to be rising.

Here's a graph of the Phillips curve over the last two and a half years (2006:Q3 - 2008Q4) as measured by the year over year percentage change in the employment cost index (total compensation) versus the civilian unemployment rate:

Artificially restraining wages from falling is not the correct response, the key is to drive the unemployment rate down so that the labor market tightens and wages rise in response. That is why it's essential that stimulus programs provide a boost to employment, and I've wondered from the start if the stimulus programs we enacted have focused enough on providing employment opportunities. Building new infrastructure does provide long-term benefits, and that gives political cover to the large government expenditure and tax cuts that were enacted, but infrastructure projects alone do not give the maximum possible boost to employment. Providing jobs - some of which may not directly boost long-run productivity - is an essential component of short-run stabilization policy, and there is more that we could do to give unemployed workers opportunities for employment until jobs begin to reappear in the private sector.

Feldstein: Deflation Raises Questions about Global Recovery

Martin Feldstein has two worries. He's worried about deflation in the short-run, and about inflation in the longer run:

Deflation raises questions about global recovery, by Martin Feldstein, Project Syndicate: The rate of inflation is now close to zero in the US and several other major countries. The Economist recently reported that economists it had surveyed predict that consumer prices in the US and Japan will actually fall this year as a whole, while inflation in the euro zone will be only 0.6 percent. South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand will also see declines in consumer price levels. ...

Deflation is potentially a very serious problem, because falling prices — and the expectation that prices will continue to fall — would make the current economic downturn worse in three distinct ways.

The most direct adverse impact of deflation is to increase the real value of debt. ... [T]he price level could conceivably fall by a cumulative 10 percent over the next few years. If that happens, a homeowner with a mortgage would see the real value of his debt rise by 10 percent. Since price declines would bring with them wage declines, the ratio of monthly mortgage payments to wage income would rise.

In addition..., deflation would mean higher loan-to-value ratios for homeowners, leading to increased mortgage defaults... A lower price level would also increase the real value of business debt, weakening balance sheets and thus making it harder for companies to get additional credit.

The second adverse effect of deflation is to raise the real interest rate... Because ... central banks have driven their short-term interest rates close to zero, they cannot lower rates further in order to prevent deflation from raising the real rate of interest. Higher real interest rates discourage credit-financed purchases by households and businesses. This weakens overall demand, leading to steeper declines in prices.

The resulting unusual economic environment of falling prices and wages can also have a damaging psychological impact on households and businesses. ... If prices fall at a rate of 1 percent, could they fall at a rate of 10 percent? ... Such worries undermine confidence and make it harder to boost economic activity.

Some economists have said that the best way to deal with deflation is for the central bank to flood the economy with money in order to persuade the public that inflation will rise in the future... In fact, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan are doing just that under the name of “quantitative easing.”

Not surprisingly, central bankers who are committed to a formal or informal inflation target of about 2 percent per year are unwilling to abandon their mandates openly and to assert that they are pursuing a high rate of inflation. Nevertheless, their expansionary actions have helped to raise long-term inflation expectations toward the target levels. ...

Ironically, although central banks are now focused on the problem of deflation, the more serious risk for the longer term is that inflation will rise rapidly as their economies recover and banks use the large volumes of recently accumulated reserves to create loans that expand spending and demand.

Feldstein: Inflation is Looming

Martin Feldstein is worried about inflation

Inflation is looming on America’s horizon, by Martin Feldstein, Commentary, Financial Times: ...The unprecedented explosion of the US fiscal deficit raises the spectre of high future inflation. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the president’s budget implies a fiscal deficit of 13 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009 and nearly 10 per cent in 2010. Even with a strong economic recovery, the ratio of government debt to GDP would double to 80 per cent in the next 10 years.

There is ample historic evidence of the link between fiscal profligacy and subsequent inflation. But historic evidence and economic analysis also show that the inflationary effects can be avoided if the fiscal deficits are not accompanied by a sustained increase in the money supply and, more generally, by an easing of monetary conditions. ...

A fiscal deficit raises demand when the government increases its purchase of goods and services or, by lowering taxes, induces households to increase their spending. ... If the fiscal deficit is not accompanied by an increase in the money supply, the fiscal stimulus will raise short-term interest rates, blocking the increase in demand and preventing a sustained rise in inflation.

So the potential inflationary danger is that the large US fiscal deficit will lead to an increase in the supply of money. This inevitably happens in developing countries that do not have the ability to issue interest-bearing debt and must therefore finance their deficits by printing money. ...

[T]he large US fiscal deficits are being accompanied by rapid increases in the money supply and by even more ominous increases in commercial bank reserves that could later be converted into faster money growth. ...

The link between fiscal deficits and money growth is about to be exacerbated by “quantitative easing”, in which the Fed will buy long-dated government bonds. While this may look like just a modified form of the Fed’s traditional open market operations, it cannot be distinguished from a policy of directly monetising some of the government’s newly created debt. Fortunately, the amount of debt being purchased in this way is still small relative to the total government borrowing.

The Fed is also creating a massive increase in liquidity by its policy of supplying credit directly to private borrowers. Although these credit transactions do not add to the measured fiscal deficit, the unprecedented Fed purchases of more than $1,000bn of private securities have led to the enormous $700bn increase in the excess reserves of the commercial banks. The banks now hold these as interest-bearing deposits at the Fed. But when the economy begins to recover, these reserves can be converted into new loans and faster money growth.

The deep recession means that there is no immediate risk of inflation. ... But when the economy begins to recover, the Fed will have to reduce the excessive stock of money and, more critically, prevent the large volume of excess reserves in the banks from causing an inflationary explosion of money and credit.

This will not be an easy task since the commercial banks may not want to exchange their reserves for the mountain of private debt that the Fed is holding and the Fed lacks enough Treasury bonds with which to conduct ordinary open market operations. It is surprising that the long-term interest rates do not yet reflect the resulting risk of future inflation.

The government budget constraint is:

(Government spending including interest on the debt) - (Taxes) =
      (Change in the Money supply) + (Change in the Bond supply)

Or, more simply:

G - T = ΔM + ΔB

The left-hand side, government spending (G) - taxes (T), is the government deficit (surplus if the value is negative). The right-hand side shows the two ways of paying for the deficit, printing new money, ΔM, (the change in the money supply can raise prices) and borrowing from the public by issuing new bonds, ΔB (the change in debt can raise interest rates and lower growth).

Let's start with Feldstein's comments about developing countries. Suppose you are a developing country and you want to improve your country's growth rate, and you think the key is infrastructure spending. You run a deficit to accomplish this, fully intending to pay it back out of higher future growth (which may not actually happen).

But how will you pay for that spending on new infrastructure? You, as the dictator, could raise taxes but you are a poor country and the wealth and income base just isn't there to support a higher tax level. You could borrow the money, but once again the wealth level in your own country isn't high enough to allow that, so if you borrow, it will have to be from foreigners. But, unfortunately, there are some defaults in your country's recent past and the international community won't lend to you without restrictions that you just aren't willing to take on.

So once international credit dries up, becomes prohibitively expensive, or comes with too many restrictions, and if taxes cannot be raised enough, there is but one choice to pay for the infrastructure spending and the deficit it causes, print the money, and it's a choice developing countries often find themselves making. The result of these persistent deficits, then, is persistent growth in the money supply - month after month more money has to be printed to cover government operations - and the result is inflation.

Feldstein's point about quantitative easing monetizing debt can also be explained in terms of this equation. Under quantitative easing, the Fed prints new money, and uses it to purchase long-term government bonds. Thus, the right-hand side of the equation above is unchanged overall, but the money component gets larger while the bond component gets smaller as the Fed purchases government debt. (Note that the money supply also goes up if the Fed purchases private sector bonds rather than government bonds since new money has to be printed to pay for them, another one of Feldstein's points.)

Once we begin to recover, there are three ways to reduce the inflationary pressures from the growing money supply. First, we could simply reduce the money supply. How do you do that? By selling bonds to the public. Feldstein's worry is that the Fed has bought so many private sector bonds (and traded for government bonds in the process) that it won't have enough government bonds to reduce the money supply by as much as needed, and nobody will want to purchase the private sector bonds unless the price is very low, or, saying the same thing, the interest rate is [excessively] high. But high interest rates are undesirable so reducing the money supply may be difficult.

The second choice is to raise taxes. It might happen, but my inclination is to say good luck with that. But I hope I'm wrong, and maybe we can make some headway here. Third, we could reduce government spending. I don't know what the administration's goals are as to the size of government over the long-term, so I can't say for sure how much of the stimulus spending is considered to be temporary, and how much is intended to be permanent, e.g. for health care reform. But much of it was sold to the public as temporary, and I expect the administration to make good on that commitment (though "good luck with that" comes to mind again, but I'm still hopeful). If it doesn't, other goals such as health care reform could be compromised.

And speaking of health care reform, that's where the focus needs to be. The budget worries twenty years from now have little to do with the temporary stimulus measures we are taking today, going forward health care costs are the most important issue by far in terms of the budget, and everything else revolves around solving that problem.

So am I worried about inflation? Somewhat, particularly when I hear that the Fed's independence is likely to come under review by congress. Whatever doubts you have about the Fed's commitment and ability to keep inflation low in the future, I have little doubt that congress would choose to monetize the debt when faced with tough choices about how to solve a deficit problem (would congress have done what Volcker did?). I still have faith in the Fed, but as you can see from the government budget constraint above, what the Fed can do is dependent upon the actions of congress. If deficits persist, it could come down to a choice by the Fed to monetize the deficit - and risk inflation - or allow government debt to pile up and risk high interest rates. Volcker chose low inflation over high interest rates when confronted with a similar choice, but it's not completely clear to me at this point what this Fed will do in the same situation, and how much cooperation they can expect from congress in terms of reducing the deficit.

Deflation?

With the decline in consumer prices announced today, people are beginning to talk about the risk of deflation once again, though it doesn't appear there's much worry since the decline was driven mainly by energy prices:

For the first time in over a half century, the prices U.S. consumers pay for goods and services are lower on average than they were one year ago.

Still, government price data for March suggest the risk of sustained, broad-based price declines known as deflation remains fairly remote, since the drops are still mostly centered in energy and energy-related products.

Separately, capacity use at U.S. factories fell to a record low in March, reflecting the severe toll the recession is taking on manufacturing.

Here's how John Williams at the SF Fed sees it:

Core and overall measures of price inflation have fallen considerably, reflecting declines in commodity prices and the emergence of considerable economic slack. We expect core inflation to continue to edge down, reaching 1 percent in 2010. Given the weakness of the U.S. and global economies, the outlook for inflation is highly uncertain. Some Phillips-curve inflation forecasting models based on the view that inflation expectations are unanchored predict a high probability of deflation next year. In contrast, Phillips-curve models based on the well-anchored inflation expectations seen over the past 16 years indicate little probability of deflation and predict inflation rising towards 2 percent over the next two years.

Woodward and Hall: The Fed Needs to Make a Policy Statement

Susan Woodward and Robet Hall on concerns about inflation:

More and more one hears the concern that the Fed has embarked on an expansionary policy that will result in high inflation once the economy returns to normal. John Taylor, a leading expert in this area, put the argument as follows...

[T]he question John Taylor posed–how can the Fed control inflation in coming years when it is committed to have a large volume of reserves outstanding to finance its purchases of illiquid assets?–has a simple and effective answer...

The (good, but wonkish) answer is here.

Fed Watch: Johnson and Kwak vs. Bernanke

Tim Duy says that if the Fed is trying to raise inflationary expectations through quantitative easing, they are not doing a very good job:

Johnson and Kwak vs. Bernanke, by Tim Duy: Simon Johnson and James Kwak of the Baseline Scenario argue in today's Washington Post that the Fed risks triggering an inflationary spiral despite the current gaping output gap  (see also Mark Thoma's comments here).  I believe that Johnson and Kwak are perpetuating a misunderstanding about Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's policy intentions, namely boosting inflation expectations.  This is an understandable extension of the widely cited policy of quantitative easing.  But despite the widespread use of the term quantitative easing, I still believe this is not Bernanke's understanding of the Fed's policy stance (see also David Altig).  And, I would argue, if this is indeed the Fed's policy, Bernanke is doing a very bad job at implementation.

The key paragraph in Johnson and Kwak that I take issue with is:

Then in March, the Fed said that it will begin buying long-term Treasury bonds on the open market, hoping to push down long-term interest rates (by increasing the amount of money available for long-term lending) and thereby stimulate borrowing. The implication is that the Fed will finance these purchases by creating money. Not only that, but Bernanke wants us to know exactly what the Fed is doing; he hopes to push up our expectations of future inflation, so that wages and prices will nudge upwards, not downwards.

The implicit assumption is that the Fed is expanding the money supply via a policy of quantitative easing with the explicit goal of raising inflation expectations.  First off, as Bernanke said once again today, he does not describe policy as quantitative easing:

In pursuing our strategy, which I have called "credit easing," we have also taken care to design our programs so that they can be unwound as markets and the economy revive. In particular, these activities must not constrain the exercise of monetary policy as needed to meet our congressional mandate to foster maximum sustainable employment and stable prices.

Pay close attention to Bernanke's insistence that the Fed's liquidity programs are intended to be unwound.  If policymakers truly intend a policy of quantitative easing to boost inflation expectations, these are exactly the wrong words to say.  Any successful policy of quantitative easing would depend upon a credible commitment to a permanent increase in the money supply.  Bernanke is making the opposite commitment - a commitment to contract the money supply in the future.  Is this any way to boost inflation expectations?  See also Paul Krugman:

In that case monetary policy can’t get you there: once the interest rate hits zero, people will just hoard any additional cash – we’re in the liquidity trap. The only way to make monetary policy effective once you’re in such a trap, at least in this framework, is to credibly commit to raising future as well as current money supplies.

If Bernanke really intends to raise inflation expectations, he is making an elementary error by reiterating his intention to shrink the Fed's balance sheet in the future.  The current increase in money supply is thus transitory and should not affect future expectations of inflation. I can't see him making such an elementary error, which suggests that Bernanke's word should be taken at face value; he intends policy to be "credit easing," not the oft-cited "quantitative easing."

To be sure, the Fed is setting the stage for inflation if the price for their efforts to stabilize the financial system is monetary independence.  The Fed is very, very aware of this risk; expect policymakers to keep reiterating Bernanke's intention to maintain independence.  Note that he made this point in the quote above, and makes it again later in the same speech:

The FOMC will continue to closely monitor the level and projected expansion of bank reserves to ensure that--as noted in the joint Federal Reserve-Treasury statement--the Fed's efforts to improve the workings of credit markets do not interfere with the independent conduct of monetary policy in the pursuit of its dual mandate of ensuring maximum employment and price stability. As was also noted in the joint statement, to provide additional assurance on this score, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have agreed to seek legislation to provide additional tools for managing bank reserves.

Johnson and Kwak also attempt to deal with the central criticism of inflation worries:  How can inflation emerge given the gaping output gap?  They solve this puzzle by analogizing the US to an emerging economy:

But is the United States really a normal advanced economy anymore? We seem to have taken on some features of so-called emerging markets, including a bloated (and contracting) financial sector, overly indebted consumers, and firms that are trying hard to save cash by investing less. In emerging markets there is no meaningful idea of "slack;" there can be high inflation even when the economy is contracting or when growth is considerably lower than in the recent past.

The challenge in my mind is that institutions in the US, primarily the relationship between management and labor, are not conducive to sustained inflation as they are in emerging markets.  Desperation among workers is more likely to take hold.  From today's Wall Street Journal:

Despite what objectives they may have put atop their resumes, when asked to describe the work they really wanted, the job seekers largely had the same goal: "I'll take anything right now."

In many cases, that desperation means that even educated workers must trade down to jobs below their potential and with lower pay. That results in painful, long-term effects, from hurting their own career advancement to displacing those with less education or experience.

Frankly ,I don't see a clear transition mechanism within the US economy to generate sustained inflation in this environment.  I am somewhat more sympathetic to another threat Simon and Kwak identify:

We do not want to become more like Argentina in 2001-2002 or Russia in 1998, when currencies collapsed and inflation soared.

If the US Dollar cracked - a frequent fear of mine during the past year - and commodity prices surge, and the Fed effectively accommodated that price increase by easing policy further to counter the negative demand effect, which would effectively be a permanent increase in the money supply, then I can tell a story about an inflationary spiral.  Such a story did not look ridiculous last year as oil was heading toward $150.  Now, however, it is a lot harder to tell.  Too many "ifs" and "maybes."  A story that hangs together much better after a six-pack than my recent snack of sugar and caffeine.

Bottom line:  I reiterate my concerns that the media and market participants are using the term "quantitative easing" too loosely.  I understand that this complaint falls on largely deaf ears.  If Bernanke is using quantitative easing to boost inflation expectations, then I think we need to seriously address the likely ineffectiveness of any such policy when Fed officials repeatedly promise to shrink the balance sheet in the future.  In other words, they are explicitly committing to a temporary increase in the money supply.  There is no reason to believe this will meaningfully impact inflation expectations.  Such expectations, however, could be generated via a policy error.  The error the Fed fears the most is they lose independence, the increase in money supply becomes permanent, and that political pressures force sustained increases in the money supply.  Consequently, look for officials to consistently repeat their intentions to remain independent.

Inflation and the Fed

Simon Johnson and James Kwak argue that Ben Bernanke is "radically redefining his institution," and that his "willingness to pump money into the economy risks unleashing the most serious bout of U.S. inflation since the early 1980s, in a nation already battered by rising unemployment and negative growth."

This is, in essence, a question about whether inflation expectations are anchored or not, and that is also the key question is this discussion of the odds of deflation by John Williams of the SF Fed. He argues that the previous decades can be broken into a recent time period in which expectations appear to be well-anchored, the time period 1993 through 2008 is cited in the linked discussion, and a time period in the late 1960s and the 1970s when inflation expectations do not appear to be anchored (based upon Orphanides and Williams 2005). The paper also notes that recent surveys of professional forecasters are consistent with anchored expectations.

But past history shows us that expectations can move from one state to the other, from untethered to tethered, and there's no reason that cannot happen again, but in the other direction. So here I agree with Martin Wolf, it's dependent upon the credibility of policymakers. So long as people believe that the Fed is committed to preventing an outburst of inflation, and that they are capable of carrying through on that commitment, expectations will remain well-anchored. But if people believe that that Fed's hands are tied because of the harm reducing inflation would bring to the real economy, an out of control deficit, or due to political considerations that force them to accept inflation they could and would battle otherwise, then we have a different situation and long-run inflation expectations will change accordingly.

So there is nothing at all - except the credibility of the central bank - that guarantees expectations will remain anchored. I still believe that the Fed can and will prevent an inflation problem from developing, and I am not alone, but there are respected analysts who see it otherwise, or who are at least very worried, and that means the public can't be too far behind (the original is quite a bit longer, and explains the argument in more detail):

The Radicalization of Ben Bernanke, by Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Commentary, Washington Post: Timothy Geithner and his predecessor Henry Paulson have been the public faces of the U.S. government's battle against the global economic crisis. But even as the secretaries of the Treasury have garnered the headlines -- as well as popular anger surrounding bank bailouts and corporate bonuses -- another official has quickly amassed great influence by committing trillions of dollars to keep markets afloat, radically redefining his institution and taking on serious risks as he seeks to rescue the American economy. Without a doubt, this crisis is now Ben Bernanke's war.

Bernanke has become the country's economist in chief, the banker for the United States and perhaps the world, and has employed every weapon in the Federal Reserve's arsenal. He has overseen the broadest use of the Fed's powers since World War II, and the regulation proposals working their way through Congress seem likely to empower the institution even further. Although his actions may be justified under today's circumstances, Bernanke's willingness to pump money into the economy risks unleashing the most serious bout of U.S. inflation since the early 1980s, in a nation already battered by rising unemployment and negative growth.

If he succeeds in restarting growth while avoiding high inflation, Bernanke may well become the most revered economist in modern history. But for the moment, he is operating in uncharted territory. ...

In short, Bernanke is making the biggest bet placed by a U.S. central banker in decades, wagering that he can pull the economy out of a deep crisis by creating money without unleashing high and long-lasting inflation.

Will it work? In a normal advanced economy, creating hundreds of billions of dollars in new money would not foster runaway inflation. As long as the economy is underperforming ... stimulating the economy will only cause that "slack" to be taken up, the theory goes. Only when unemployment is low again can workers demand higher wages, forcing companies to raise prices.

But is the United States really a normal advanced economy anymore? We seem to have taken on some features of so-called emerging markets, including a bloated (and contracting) financial sector, overly indebted consumers, and firms that are trying hard to save cash by investing less. In emerging markets there is no meaningful idea of "slack;" there can be high inflation even when the economy is contracting or when growth is considerably lower than in the recent past.

If the United States is indeed behaving more like an emerging market, inflation is far easier to manufacture. People quickly become dubious of the value of money and shift into goods and foreign currencies more readily. Large budget deficits also directly raise inflation expectations. This would help Bernanke avoid deflation, but there is a great danger that unstable inflation expectations will become self-fulfilling. We do not want to become more like Argentina in 2001-2002 or Russia in 1998, when currencies collapsed and inflation soared. ...

Bernanke, the soft-spoken but authoritative academic, has redefined the Federal Reserve on the fly and exercised powers that Greenspan never dared touch. Bernanke's strategy is risky, and only time will determine whether he is being brave in averting a larger crisis, or reckless in unleashing inflation that could increase quickly and uncontrollably. Today, Bernanke's gamble looks like the worst possible alternative, apart from all the others.

FRBSF: The Risk of Deflation

If you think inflation expectations are "unanchored," then you should be worried about deflation (Note: inflation forecast from the SF Fed's most recent economic outlook):

The Risk of Deflation, by John Williams, FRBSF Economic Letter: The worsening global recession has heightened concerns that the United States and other economies could enter a sustained period of deflation, as did Japan in the 1990s and the United States during the Great Depression. Indeed, a popular version of the well-known Phillips curve model of inflation predicts that we are on the cusp of a deflationary spiral in which prices will fall at ever-increasing rates over the next several years. A sizable and persistent deflation would likely worsen already very difficult global economic and financial problems. Macroeconomic forecasters, however, generally view such a dire outcome as highly unlikely. The most recent Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) puts only a 1-in-20 chance of core price deflation this year or in 2010. Are we on the brink of years of deflation, or are the professional forecasters right? This Economic Letter examines the risk of deflation in the United States by reviewing the evidence from past episodes of deflation and inflation.

"Expanding Balance Sheets and Inflationary Policy"

Has Fed policy been overly expansionary, so much so that inflation is inevitable?:

On expanding balance sheets and inflationary policy, by David Altig: Here's a question I hear a lot (most recently during the Q&A portion of a speech delivered yesterday by my boss, Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart): Has monetary policy become so expansive that the central bank's mandate to maintain price stability has been fundamentally compromised? Is the increase in the scale of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet inherently inflationary?

Jim Hamilton covered much of the territory implied by these questions in a very extensive Econbrowser post not too long ago, but the distinction between money creation and Fed balance sheet expansion continues to be confounded. ... The record though ... is that not all of that $2 trillion represents an increase in the money supply:

Only the blue portion of the graph above represents "pumping reserves into the banking system"—a fact that was covered pretty well in the aforementioned Econbrowser post—and in an even earlier post at News N Economics. In simple terms, the size of the Fed's balance sheet is not the same thing as the size of the monetary base (the sum of currency in circulation and reserve balances kept by banks with the Federal Reserve).

Of course, John Taylor's point was not that all of the increase in the balance sheet has amounted to pumping in reserves, just that a lot of it has, which is clearly true. But even here there may be less to the potential inflationary impact than meets the eye. In his speech at the London School of Economics earlier today, Chairman Bernanke explained:

"Some observers have expressed the concern that, by expanding its balance sheet, the Federal Reserve is effectively printing money, an action that will ultimately be inflationary. The Fed's lending activities have indeed resulted in a large increase in the excess reserves held by banks. ... However, banks are choosing to leave the great bulk of their excess reserves idle, in most cases on deposit with the Fed. Consequently, the rates of growth of broader monetary aggregates, such as M1 and M2, have been much lower than that of the monetary base."

Last week Greg Mankiw had a nifty graph (courtesy of Professor Bill Seyfried of Rollins College) of the so-called money multiplier precisely illustrating the point:

The money multiplier ... fell considerably when the Fed introduced the payment of interest on bank reserves.

That said, despite the fall in the money multiplier, the M1 measure of money has also expanded fairly noticeably since late summer:

 

The increase in M2—a slightly broader measure of money that adds to M1 items like savings accounts and time deposits—has been somewhat slower but still on the rise:

 

From December 2007 through August of last year, M1 and M2 grew by about 1.2 percent and 3.9 percent respectively. Since September—after which the rapid expansion of the Fed's balance sheet began and the Fed began to pay interest on reserves—the corresponding growth rates have been 13.4 percent and 5.9 percent.

Are those growth rates substantial? That is a tricky question—whether a particular growth rate of money is substantial or not can only be determined in relation to the pace of money demand (which has almost certainly accelerated as interest rates have fallen and the taste for safe and liquid assets risen). But I take two lessons from our early experience with the asset-oriented policies emphasized in the Bernanke and Lockhart speeches. First, expansions of the balance sheet need not imply expansions of the money supply. Furthermore, as Chairman Bernanke emphasized, the Fed has the capacity to contract reserves going forward...

The second lesson, clear in the M1 and M2 charts above, is that despite the payment of interest on reserves and near-zero federal funds rates, it is still possible to induce increases in the broad money supply through the standard channel of injecting reserves into the banking system.

Whatever direction you think the money supply ought to go, these observations should come as comforting news.

Update: See also Bernanke on the Fed's balance sheet by Jim Hamilton.

Mishkin: "In Praise of an Explicit Number for Inflation"

Frederic Mishkin argues that the Fed needs to adopt an explicit inflation target since this would help to insulate against the threat of deflation:

In praise of an explicit number for inflation, by Frederic Mishkin, Commentary, Financial Times: Many central banks throughout the world have adopted an explicit, numerical ... inflation target. The US Federal Reserve is currently not one of them, but it is discussing this possibility. In the current circumstances with the economy in freefall, is ... an increased commitment to stabilising inflation the right thing to do...? My answer is absolutely yes. Adopting an explicit, numerical inflation objective is exactly what is needed right now to help the US economy to recover.

The usual argument for establishing a transparent and credible commitment to a specific numerical inflation objective is that it provides a firm anchor for long-run inflation expectations, thereby directly contributing to the objective of low and stable inflation. ... However, not as well recognised is that an inflation target can help prevent inflation from falling too low. At this critical juncture that benefit can have enormous value. ...

The danger right now is not that inflation expectations will ... become unanchored in the negative direction. Indeed,... if they fall further they could lead to two dangerous consequences.

First, there would be an increased likelihood inflation would become persistently negative: that is deflation. Experiences of deflation in the Great Depression and the “lost decade” in Japan suggest it causes great hardship. Second, with the federal funds rate near zero and therefore unable to go lower, persistent deflation would raise the effective cost of borrowing to households... Despite an interest rate of zero, monetary policy would become highly contractionary.

How would adopting an explicit numerical inflation objective help? First, a commitment ... would provide ... incentives for the Fed ... to stick to its word and ... make monetary policy sufficiently expansionary in the future. Research has shown a lack of such commitment was one reason why unconventional monetary policy actions such as quantitative easing by the Bank of Japan were ineffective...

Second, when the financial system starts to recover, to keep future inflation under control the Federal Reserve will need to drain the massive amounts of liquidity it has pushed into the financial system... A commitment to an explicit numerical inflation objective would ... subject the Fed to public pressure if it was not taking the necessary steps to make this happen.

Critics of inflation targeting fear adoption of an explicit numerical inflation objective might lead to too little focus on stabilising economic activity. ...That is why the term “inflation targeting” is somewhat of a misnomer because it does not mean the central bank should try to hit the target over a fixed horizon.... In addition, an explicit numerical inflation objective by the Federal Reserve would be adopted only if it was consistent with the dual mandate ... of both price stability and stability of economic activity.

Fed Watch: Zero, But Not Quite Quantitative Easing

Can the Fed's current policy be described as quantitative easing?:

Zero, But Not Quite Quantitative Easing, by Tim Duy: On the surface, the Fed’s recent statement should not have been much of a surprise. It was remarkably consistent with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent policy speech. And it leaves little illusion that the US economy is mired in anything but the worst recession since the Great Depression.

My takeaways from the statement were straightforward:

1.) Since the effective funds rate was trading well below the Fed’s target, and it was economically unimportant in any event, just take the target to a range near zero. I assume that given the instability of financial markets, they thought it best not to prescribe a specific target, but a range instead.

2.) The Fed committed to low rates indefinitely, giving market participants faith that they can extend Treasury purchases further out along the yield curve without fear of a sharp policy reversion in the near future. (Does the Fed’s commitment to low rates leave Treasuries as the last one way bet?)

3.) Not surprisingly, economic weakness, not inflation, is the primary concern. There is no reason for near term optimism.

4.) Policy will focus on the tools that reveal themselves in the Fed’s balance sheet. Those tools may be expanded to include outright purchases of longer dated Treasuries.

The final point is worth considering further, especially since the Fed brought forth a “senior Fed official” to elaborate on the statement. I don’t quite understand the need for secrecy – why not have Bernanke himself just step up to the plate? In any event, the secret official took pains to explain that this policy did not constitute quantitative easing. First, the statement:

The focus of the Committee's policy going forward will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet at a high level.

What struck me on the first read was the commitment to maintain the balance sheet at a high “level.” I think the use of the word “level” was deliberate – quantitative easing implies a commitment to a steady expansion, or rate of change, in the balance sheet. The Fed is offering no such commitment at this time. Is this the proper interpretation? From the senior official:

The Fed said in its statement today that it will be using its balance sheet to support credit markets and the economy. Some analysts have called the approach quantitative easing — effectively expanding the money supply once interest rates cannot be eased further — as Japan did during its economic turmoil.

But the senior Fed official said the central bank’s approach is distinct from quantitative easing and different from what the Japanese did.

What, stop….the arrogance of Fed officials never ceases to amaze me! Note that this official accuses “[S]ome analysts” as misinterpreting the Fed’s policy stance. I have written on this in the past:

…What we have now is an expansion of the balance sheet to accommodate liquidity measures. This may pave the way to quantitative easing, but still maintains the Fed Funds rate as the primary target.

But then why do they keep saying they have a policy of quantitative easing? This first crossed my radar when reviewing a recent interview with Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher. I discounted his reference to quantitative easing as Fisher is something of a colorful character who often talks before he thinks. But subsequent policymakers repeated the term. Earlier this week New York Fed President Gary Stern was quoted by Stephen Beckner:

Asked whether the doubling in size of the balance sheet represents "quantitative easing," Stern said "I don't think that's a bad statement. I think the world is a little more complicated than that, but I don't think that's a bad statement."

So, just to be clear, it is not just “some analysts” who are confused by the Fed’s policy – the confusion spills over to Fed policymakers as well. Maybe analysts would not be confused if Fed officials would simply stick to one set of talking points.

According to the official, we are not in the realm of quantitative easing. What is the distinction?

The Fed’s balance sheet has two sides, the official explained: assets with securities the Fed holds (including loans, credit facilities, mortgage-backed securities) and liabilities (cash and bank reserves). Japan’s quantitative easing program focused on the liability side, expanding cash in the system and excess reserves by a large amount. The Fed’s focus, however, is on the asset side through mortgage-backed securities, agency debt, the commercial paper program, the loan auctions and swaps with foreign central banks. That’s designed to improve credit-market functioning, the official said. By expanding the balance sheet by making loans, the official explained, the focus is not on excess reserves but on the asset side. That securities-lending approach directly affects credit spreads, which is the problem today — unlike Japan earlier, where the problem was the level of interest rates in general, the official said.

Fed policy has been directed at improving credit market functioning, thereby acquiring assets, of which the expansion of liabilities is simply a side affect of the policy, not the policy itself. The Fed apparently views deliberate expansion of liabilities – a commitment of x% percent growth in some monetary aggregate via Treasury purchases – as quantitative easing. A commitment to increase the balance sheet at a steady pace (the first derivative) rather than maintain a high level. We are not there yet.

Is this distinction important? Or just semantics? I believe it is important, as the latter, a move to target the liabilities side of the balance sheet, would imply that the Fed is deliberately trying to stoke an inflationary fire. This may become the future policy, but for now the Fed is simply trying to keep the financial system from collapsing. Inflation would be an accident, not a deliberate policy effort, at least from the Fed’s point of view. For the moment, the policy remains insufficient to ward off deflationary pressures long as the rest of the world refuses to accept the burden of global adjustment.

The problem, in my mind, is that the rest of the world either refuses or is simply incapable of shouldering some of the burden of global adjustment. This inability to adjust appears to be the end result of almost thirty years of global acceptance and US indifference to external imbalances. Global consumption and production patterns, both spacially and intertemporally, are so misaligned that it looks like we are all now in a race to the bottom together. An amazing global policy failure. So, so depressing.

So when does Fed policy truly become inflationary? Currently, I am thinking it becomes inflationary when policymakers become desperate enough to attempt to use monetary policy to entirely offset the headwinds blowing against economic activity. When they truly attempt to target asset prices to “fix” the housing market. When they decide the easiest answer to the excessive build up of debt is to inflate it away. At that point, policy will shift from the asset side of the balance sheet to the liability side. That is when Treasury and the Fed will risk a disorderly adjustment of the Dollar. Hopefully we will not get there. But I suspect that is when the tide will turn for the Fed.

Rogoff: Embracing Inflation

Kenneth Rogoff says inflation is the answer:

Embracing inflation, by Kenneth Rogoff, guardian.co.uk/Project Syndicate: It is time for the world's major central banks to acknowledge that a sudden burst of moderate inflation would be extremely helpful in unwinding today's epic debt morass.

Yes, inflation is an unfair way of effectively writing down all non-indexed debts... Price inflation forces creditors to accept repayment in debased currency. ... Unfortunately, the closer one examines the alternatives, including capital injections for banks and direct help for home mortgage holders, the clearer it becomes that inflation would be a help, not a hindrance.

Modern finance has succeeded in creating a default dynamic of such stupefying complexity that it defies standard approaches to debt workouts. Securitisation, structured finance and other innovations have so interwoven the financial system's various players that it is essentially impossible to restructure one financial institution at a time. System-wide solutions are needed.

Moderate inflation in the short run – say, 6% for two years – would not clear the books. But it would significantly ameliorate the problems...

No one wants to relive the anti-inflation fights of the 1980s and 1990s. But right now, the global economy is teetering on the precipice of disaster. ... Unless governments get ahead of the problem, we risk a severe worldwide downturn unlike anything we have seen since the 1930s.

FRBSF: Oil Prices and Inflation

Do changes in oil prices impact core inflation? That is, do changes in oil prices - which are excluded from core measures - pass through over time and raise prices generally? According to this, the answer is no, at least in the U.S.:

Oil Prices and Inflation, by Michele Cavallo, FRBSF Economic Letter: As oil prices have climbed over the last several years, the memory of the 1970s and early 1980s has not been far from the minds of the public or of monetary policymakers. In those earlier episodes, rising oil prices were accompanied by double-digit overall inflation in the U.S. and in several other developed economies. Indeed, central bankers say they are determined not to let this experience recur, emphasizing that they intend to maintain their credibility with the public in securing low inflation and achieving stable and well-anchored inflation expectations. In pursuing these goals, a key measure policymakers often focus on is core inflation; this may seem surprising, since core inflation excludes energy prices, among other things. However, one justification for looking at a measure that excludes energy prices is that they are typically quite volatile; for example, after rising steadily and hitting a record of about $145 per barrel in July, oil prices then fell to under $100 per barrel in September. Temporary oil price increases do not tend to pass through to the prices of non-energy goods and services when the central bank is credible—that is, when inflation expectations are well-anchored—and, therefore, will not result in persistently higher overall inflation.

This Economic Letter examines the impact of rising oil prices on core inflation over the last decade for four economies: the U.S., the euro area, Canada, and the U.K. I find some evidence that rising oil prices have had a positive and significant effect on core inflation in the euro area, but I find no systematic evidence that rising oil prices have had a significant impact on core inflation in the U.S., Canada, or in the U.K.

"Do not Abandon Inflation Targets"

Frederic Mishkin says that contrary to what some people have argued, there's no need to abandon inflation targeting because of the crisis. However, it is important to adjust the time it will take for inflation to return to its target level for the size of the shock - the larger the shock, the more time that is needed to get inflation back on track:

Do not abandon inflation targets, by Frederic Mishkin, Commentary, Financial Times: Inflation targeting is now facing its greatest challenge... High energy and other commodity prices have led to inflation rates well above the inflation target ... at the same time that the financial markets are reeling from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Some critics of inflation targeting have argued that under the present circumstances, such targeting should be abandoned.

Is inflation targeting an idea that ... cannot cope with the stress of the present environment? ... Would the need to hit the inflation target ... kick the economy when it is down?

To the contrary. I believe that inflation targeting, with some flexibility built in, is exactly what is needed right now. Inflation targeting establishes a transparent and credible commitment to a specific numerical inflation objective that provides a firm anchor for long-run inflation expectations...

Additionally, the presence of a firm nominal anchor gives the central bank greater flexibility to respond decisively to adverse demand shocks. Such a commitment helps ensure that an aggressive policy easing – which might be needed to counteract the blow to the economy from the current financial crisis – is not misinterpreted as signalling a shift in the central bank’s inflation objective... A continuing, strong commitment to retain the same inflation target is exactly what is needed at the current juncture.

But how can an inflation target remain credible if monetary policy responds to adverse demand shocks when inflation is well above the target, as has happened recently? This is where flexibility comes in.

The modern science of monetary policy argues that it should not try to get inflation to within a tight range over short time horizons. To do so would only result in excessive fluctuations in economic activity. It argues, instead, that when shocks to the economy are sufficiently large, inflation might have to approach the target gradually over time and this could be longer than the two years that is usually assumed as a reasonable time horizon...

Trying to get inflation down to the target too quickly will impose an unnecessary cost on the economy, and is actually likely to weaken the credibility of the central bank. Both the public and the central bank know that the central bank is unable to sustain an overly tough policy stance because if it did so the government might very well take steps to weaken its independence. An overly tough policy stance could then undermine the support for the inflation targeting policy and unhinge longer-run inflation expectations, actually leading to worse outcomes... Instead, the central bank should articulate a desired path for inflation that gets to the target over a reasonable time horizon...

Inflation targeting has been a significant step forward in improving the conduct of monetary policy. ...[H]owever,... that inflation targeting practice needs to keep evolving in a more flexible direction, with a focus on what should be the best path for inflation...

Indeed, a more flexible approach to inflation targeting might make it more attractive to countries that have not adopted this monetary policy strategy, such as the US...

Mishkin: Don't Worry about Inflation

I don't have any disagreement with this:

Don't Worry About Inflation, by Frederic S. Mishkin: ...The Consumer Price Index (CPI) last month rose more than 5% over a year earlier, way above a rate that is consistent with price stability. At the same time, the federal-funds rate is at 2%, so the real interest rate on federal funds -- the interest rate adjusted for inflation -- has turned very negative.

Will this low real interest rate lead to inflation spiraling out of control? Shouldn't the Fed react...? The answer is no.

It is certainly true that central banks should be worried about high headline inflation caused by high commodity prices. After all, households daily pay for energy and food items, and they are a big chunk of people's budgets. But central banks cannot control relative prices for food and energy. When a cold snap freezes the Florida orange crop or a tropical storm hits the gasoline refineries along the Gulf Coast, monetary policy cannot reverse the resulting spikes in prices...

Particularly volatile items like food and energy, which are included in headline ... inflation, are inherently noisy and often do not reflect changes in the underlying rate of inflation...

Common Misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index

The BLS responds to criticism about the CPI. The answers are on the continuation page:

Common Misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index: Questions and Answers, BLS: An August 2008 Monthly Labor Review article by BLS economists John Greenlees and Robert McClelland reviews and analyzes some common misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index (CPI.) Those analyses are summarized here:

1. Has the BLS removed food or energy prices in its official measure of inflation?
2. The CPI used to include the value of a house in calculating inflation and now they use an estimate of what each house would rent for -- doesn't this switch simply lower the official inflation rate?
3. When the cost of food rises, does the CPI assume that consumers switch to less expensive and less desired foods, such as substituting hamburger for steak?
4. Is the use of "hedonic quality adjustment" in the CPI simply a way of lowering the inflation rate?
5. Has the BLS selected the methodological changes to the CPI over the last 30 years with the intent of lowering the reported rate of inflation?
6. Does the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculate the CPI the same way as other nations? Do any differences in method keep the US CPI lower than the CPIs of those other nations?

DeLong: Is Inflation the Right Battle?

Brad DeLong asks whether we should be more concerned with inflation or with unemployment:

Is inflation the right battle?, by J. Bradford DeLong, Project Syndicate: The Federal Reserve and other central banks are coming under pressure from two directions these days: from the left, they are pressured to do something to expand demand and hold down global unemployment; from the right, they are pressured to contract demand to rein in inflation.

This is a situation ripe for trouble, because one of these two diagnoses must be wrong. If the world’s central banks raise interest rates while the major problem is insufficient global demand, they might cause a depression. If they do not raise interest rates while the major problem is inflation, they might cause ... a stubborn wage-price spiral like that of the 1970’s that can be unwound only with a later, deeper depression.

I see the left as being correct — this time — in the global economy’s post-industrial North Atlantic core. Headline inflation numbers are the only indication that rising inflation is a problem, or even a reality. The ... indicators of developed-country nominal wage growth show no acceleration... And “core inflation” measures show no sign of accelerating inflation either.

The United States is experiencing a ... financial meltdown... In normal times, the Fed’s response — extremely monetary stimulus — would be highly inflationary. But these are not normal times. Indeed, the Fed’s monetary policy has not been sufficient to stave off a US recession, albeit one that remains so mild that many doubt whether it qualifies as the real animal.

The European Central Bank’s response has been analogous to the Fed’s, but less forceful... And in Western Europe, too, GDP is now declining.

In brief, the major central banks on both sides of the Atlantic have responded to the financial crisis, but they have not overreacted. ...

Yet headline inflation is soaring, and, not surprisingly, gets the headlines. This reflects three developments. First, the world has, for the moment at least, reached its resource limits, and we are seeing a big shift in relative prices... The result of this relative price shift is headline inflation.

Second, inside the US, the return of the dollar toward its equilibrium value is carrying with it import price inflation. Costs to US consumers are rising and making them feel poorer, not because they have become poorer, but because the previous pattern of global imbalances exaggerated their wealth. Global rebalancing is painful for American consumers, and shows itself as higher headline inflation. ...

Finally, ... China’s policy of export subsidies through currency manipulation was always bound to become unsustainable in the long run because it was bound to generate substantial domestic inflation. Now it is also generating substantial pain for other developing countries as China’s booming economy outbids them for resources. But it is politically impossible for the Chinese government to alter its exchange-rate policy under pressure without some “concession” from the US, and a tightening of US monetary policy could be sold as such a “concession.”

But this overlooks what ought to be at the center of the discussion: higher US unemployment right now ... offers few benefits, if any, for stabilizing US prices. Nor is a US that cuts back on import purchases more rapidly in the interest of any export-oriented developing economy – including China.

Why Do We Use Core Inflation?

There is a lot of confusion over the Fed's use of core inflation as part of its policy making process. One reason for confusion is that we using a single measure to summarize three different definitions of the term "core inflation" based upon how it is used.

Peak Inflation?

John Berry joins those saying there's no reason to panic about inflation:

Inflation's Peak Signaled by Tame Labor Costs, by John M. Berry, Commentary, Bloomberg: U.S. inflation reached its highest level in more than a quarter-century this summer. The good news is that the worst of the price increases probably is behind us.

The surge in commodities prices ... drove the year-over-year increase in consumer prices, to 5.6 percent in July. Now, with the prices of ... many ... commodities in retreat, the month-to-month changes in the consumer price index will settle down.

The bad news is that the drop in inflation won't be sudden... What's reassuring is the absence of signs that the surge in inflation has triggered a wage-price spiral. ... While that's hardly cause for celebration among workers who have seen their inflation-adjusted pay fall, some of that loss is being regained as the cost of gasoline comes down. ...

The break in commodity prices is ... good news for Federal Reserve officials, whose prediction that inflation would moderate was based largely on the expectation that such prices wouldn't rise forever. ...

Commodity prices haven't just stopped rising, they have declined. And so long as the outlook for economic growth is weak in the U.S. and Europe, and slowing in many other regions, a quick rebound in commodity prices seems unlikely.

Similarly, productivity growth was strong in the first half of this year, and while slower economic expansion in the second half probably means productivity gains will be smaller, they won't disappear. ...

While the U.S. inflation outlook has improved, there is still a risk that something goes wrong. And even if it doesn't, the Fed's 2 percent target for the overnight lending rate is too low to be maintained indefinitely.

That said, it's ''a good time to be patient, because I do think we will see better news on the inflation front,'' in part because of falling oil prices, Gary Stern, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, said yesterday in an interview.

Let's hope he's right.

FRBSF: Long-Run Inflation Expectations

Here is more evidence that there is no need for the Fed to panic about inflation (see Jim Hamilton's comments also). This research asks if monetary policy been successful at keeping inflation expectations well-anchored and finds that "long-run inflation expectations have remained relatively stable, while the measures of risk compensation have been more variable":

Treasury Bond Yields and Long-Run Inflation Expectations, by Jens Christensen, FRBSF Economic Letter: The mandate of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy is to pursue price stability and maximum employment; while not formally defined for U.S. monetary policy, price stability generally is assumed to imply a "low" and predictable rate of inflation over a period of time. One way to gauge the success of monetary policy in meeting the mandate regarding price stability is to look at expectations of inflation, which, as studies have shown, influence future inflation rates. If monetary policy is successful at keeping expectations well-anchored by maintaining credibility in its commitment to price stability, then, for example, financial market participants would tend to "look through" rises in inflation and not radically change expectations about the rate of inflation over the longer run. Given the elevated rate of overall inflation over the past year, a highly pertinent issue is whether market participants are "looking through" the recent numbers on inflation and still see Federal Reserve policy as being consistent with longer-run price stability.

To address that issue, in this Economic Letter I use data on nominal and real Treasury yields to extract the market-implied expected inflation and study its behavior since the beginning of 2007. In particular, I use a model of the term structure of interest rates that allows for a decomposition of the compensation for inflation in nominal Treasury yields into compensation for inflation risk and compensation for expected inflation. The analysis indicates that long-run inflation expectations have remained relatively stable, while the measures of risk compensation have been more variable.

Inflationary Expectations and Wage-Price Spirals

I think raising interest rates to combat inflation is unnecessary, the increase in prices behind the run-up in inflation is largely driven by real rather than monetary factors, and once the adjustment in relative prices has stabilized at a point that balances global commodity demands and supplies, and once the adjustments have passed through the system, prices will stabilize. In addition, at this point, there are no signs of a wage-price spiral. But I also think cutting interest rates (e.g.) would be a mistake as this would risk creating inflationary expectations that become self-fulfilling, i.e. it would potentially undermine the Fed's inflation fighting credentials and risk generating the wage-price inflation spiral we wish to avoid:

Why those ‘expectations’ matter, by Samuel Brittan, Commentary, Financial Times: The words “inflationary expectations” must by now be familiar to every newspaper reader... Yet a few years ago they were unknown outside specialist circles. ...

They appeared in academic debate as early as the 1970s and 1980s in relation to the so-called monetarist controversy. The key contention of the monetarists was not about the need for money supply targets, as technocrats assumed, but that monetary policy rather than direct intervention in wage or price setting was the right method of tackling inflation. Their opponents believed that this could only work by creating a slump in which millions would lose their jobs. The more thoughtful monetarists did not deny that there was a transitional cost in squeezing inflation out of the system. But the severity of that cost would depend on how credible the policy was. If the main economic actors believed that policymakers would stick to their guns, they would base their actions on the assumption of modest inflation and would frame their behaviour accordingly and settle for moderate increases in pay and prices. If on the other hand they expected the policy to be eventually abandoned, any monetary squeeze would indeed have its main effect in reduced output and employment.

These contentions have been the basis of policy in many countries, at least for the past decade and a half. ... Higher prices for energy, food and imports are pushing consumer price index inflation well above ... target and will continue to do so well into 2009 and thus exert a downward pressure on living standards and real wages. Yet “these increases in commodity prices cannot by themselves increase sustained inflation unless other prices begin to rise at a faster rate. And it is the task of the monetary policy committee to ensure that they do not.” If it succeeds, the reduction in living standards will be a one-off affair... What is surprising is not that inflationary expectations have increased after recent shocks, but that they have increased so little, especially for the medium term. ...

"America Must Not Act Rashly over Inflation"

I agree with this - the Fed should not be in a hurry to raise interest rates due to concerns about inflation. This inflation, unlike some in the past, is being driven by increases in the price of oil, food, and other commodities, it's not primarily the result of excessive increases in liquidity (money growth).

Inflation that is driven by excessive money growth needs to be controlled, and the solution is for the central bank to reduce the growth in liquidity by increasing interest rates. But inflation that is driven by changes in relative prices is different. These price changes are providing important signals to the economy about where resources are needed most and about the opportunity cost of employing them, and we don't want to mute those signals (though it is sometimes useful to attenuate the signals and smooth the adjustment). Eventually, the relative prices of these goods will increase enough to bring global growth in demand and global growth in supply back into balance, at which point prices will stabilize and so will inflation. The increase in relative prices is necessary to bring the underlying fundamentals driving supply and demand growth back into balance. As Mark Gertler says below, "the relative increase in energy and food prices is something beyond the central bank’s control...," but once the relative price increases have occurred, inflation should subside on its own. The biggest danger to the economy is further credit market troubles, not inflation, and increasing interest rates in an attempt to stave off inflation would increase the risk lower output growth, lower employment, and prolonged stagnation in the economy:

America must not act rashly over inflation , by Mark Gertler, Commentary, Financial Times: The startling jump in US consumer price inflation ... has sparked concern over whether the economy is entering an inflationary spiral similar to that of the 1970s.

Lost in most of the commentary about inflation has been a careful inspection of its underlying mechanics. Almost all the recent increase in headline consumer price index inflation is due to rocketing energy and food prices. Inflation excluding energy and food is significantly lower.

The increase in the core CPI over the past year was just 2.4 per cent, slightly above the Federal Reserve’s comfort zone of 1 to 2 per cent. The feeding through of food and energy costs to core prices did produce an uptick this past month. Over the coming year, however, below-capacity output growth and softening oil and commodity prices are likely to push core inflation back towards the comfort zone.

Why care about headline inflation versus core inflation? Simply put, a sustained move of headline inflation to the levels of the 1970s is unlikely without an accompanying increase in the core component. The reason is simple: although they can be highly persistent, rapid increases in the relative prices of energy and food cannot go on indefinitely. Once this process dies down, as long as core inflation remains anchored, headline inflation must converge to it. ...

Indeed, there are signs that the forces that have pushed headline above core inflation are beginning to reverse course. ...

Could it be that high headline inflation is unmooring inflation expectations, leading us back to the 1970s through this painful route? Some measures of inflation expectations are edging upwards. This needs to be taken seriously. However, where we should expect the impact of increasing expectations to show up is exactly in the behaviour of core prices and wages.

So far this is not happening. Not only has core inflation remained stable but the growth in nominal unit labour costs, on which most pricing of core items is based, also remains benign. It may very well be that the Fed’s reputation for keeping core inflation stable has kept the expectations relevant for price- and wage-setting in line. Also relevant is that ... wage- setters appear to understand that, however unfortunate, the relative increase in energy and food prices is something beyond the central bank’s control that they must live with. ...

Keeping inflation under control is a real concern and I do not mean to suggest otherwise.

What is required, however, is a policy response that recognises the complexities of the inflationary process, including its global nature, and not a simple knee-jerk reaction. From Japan in the 1990s we know that a fractured credit system can induce prolonged stagnation, even in an advanced economy. Given the uncertain condition of the US financial and real sectors, the goal should be to achieve price stability in a way that continues to keep low the possibility that this economy could suffer a similar fate.

Macroeconomic Models and Monetary Policy

Paul De Grauwe is critical of the macroeconomic models used by central banks:

Cherished myths fall victim to economic reality, by Paul De Grauwe, Commentary, Financial Times: ...But that is not the world of the macro­­economic models that are now in use in central banks. The world of these models is one of supernatural and God-like creatures for which the world has few secrets. These creatures can perfectly compute the risks they take and estimate with great precision how an oil price shock will affect their present and future production and consumption plans. They may not be able to predict each shock, but they know the probability distribution of these shocks. Thus the risk involved in financial instruments is correctly evaluated by individuals populating these models.

These superbly informed individuals want the central bank to keep prices stable so that as consumers they can optimally set their consumption plans with minimal uncertainty, and as producers they can set prices equal to marginal costs (plus a mark-up). If the central banks keep prices stable, these individuals, helped by well-functioning markets, will take care of all the rest and ensure that the outcome is the best possible one. This is a world in which free and unfettered markets are always efficient.

This is also a world where individual agents cannot make systematic mistakes. Their consumption and production plans are optimal. They will never build up unsustainable debts. In the world of these macroeconomic models financial crises should not occur. And if they do, it cannot be because of malfunctioning markets. Governments that impose silly constraints on rational individuals are messing things up, and central banks that do not keep their promises to maintain price stability are the source of macroeconomic instability. ...

There is a danger that the macro­economic models now in use in central banks operate like a Maginot line. They have been constructed in the past as part of the war against inflation. The central banks are prepared to fight the last war. But are they prepared to fight the new one against financial upheavals and recession? The macroeconomic models they have today certainly do not provide them with the right tools to be successful.

There is quite a bit of research on monetary policy that is devoted to the issues he is worried about, particularly the literature on adaptive learning. See here, and some of his publications here for and example from a European central bank. These ideas are also well-known and of considerable interest to the US Fed, e.g. one example is here, but there are many more. Some of the recent work of Chris Sims is also of interest in this regard:

...Most recently, theories that postulate deviations from the assumption of rational, computationally unconstrained agents have drawn attention. One branch of such thinking is in the behavioral economics literature (Laibson, 1997; Benabou and Tirole, 2001; Gul and Pesendorfer, 2001, e.g.), another in the learning literature (Sargent, 1993; Evans and Honkapohja, 2001, e.g.), another in the robust control literature (Giannoni, 1999; Hansen and Sargent, 2001; Onatski and Stock, 1999, e.g.).

This paper suggests yet another direction for deviation from the seamless model, based on the idea that individual people have limited capacity for processing information. That people have limited information-processing capacity should not be controversial. It accords with ordinary experience, as do the basic ideas of the behavioral, learning, and robust control literatures. The limited information-processing capacity idea is particularly appealing, though, for two reasons. It accounts for a wide range of observations with a relatively simple single mechanism. And, by exploiting ideas from the engineering theory of coding, it arrives at predictions that do not depend on the details of how information is processed.

Returning to the article above criticizing macroeconomic models, the author goes on to explain why he thinks the reliance of central banks on macroeconomic models is a problem:

This intellectual framework helps to explain the single-minded focus of many central bankers on inflation. Clearly, inflation is important and maintaining price stability is an important task of the central bank. It is not the only task, though. Financial stability is equally important. But this dimension is completely absent from the macroeconomic models now in use.

Perhaps more attention to financial market instability is warranted, there's a lot of work on that currently underway, but as this overview of the learning literature makes clear, if you drop the rational expectations assumption and assume agents must learn about their economic environment (one means of generating financial market instability), it may still be that the an aggressive response to inflation is optimal:

Expectations, Learning and Monetary Policy: An Overview of Recent Research, by George W. Evans and Seppo Honkapohja, July 16, 2008: ...contemporaneous Taylor-type interest-rate rules should respond to the inflation rate more than one for one in order to ensure determinacy and stability under learning...

So central banks' focus on inflation comes solely from examination of standard macroeconomic models.

The point is that, unlike the implication in the article, central banks are quite anxious to explore the implications of agents that are less than fully informed or fully rational, how that impacts behaviors such as risk assessment, and to examine the implications of financial market instability. They are particularly interested in how these factors impact the conduct of stabilization policy. The models aren't perfect, and standard models do miss a lot of these elements, but standard models are not all we have and central bankers are quite aware of, and actively engaged in exploring the policy implications of alternative theoretical structures that can tell us more about these issues.

Are Inflation Expectations Becoming Unglued?

This Economic Letter argues the Fed has not lost credibility as an inflation fighter. The idea is to estimate a model of expectations through 2003 or 2005, i.e. to just use data where credibility is still present, forecast inflation expectations through the end of the sample, and compare the forecast of inflation expectation to the actual value of inflation expectations (from surveys). If expectations are losing their anchor, then the predicted expected inflation rate should lie below the the actual expected inflation rate since the predicted rate will be based only upon data that came before the potential loss of credibility. I'm not sure how much weight to give this evidence since I have questions about the adequacy of the adaptive expectations model used to forecast future inflation expectations, which the authors argue is forced upon them by limited data availability:

Unanchored Expectations? Interpreting the Evidence from Inflation Surveys, by Wayne Huang and Bharat Trehan, FRBSF Economic Letter: Recent surveys have shown that households are expecting higher inflation in the future. These readings, coming at the same time as surging commodity prices, have raised concerns that inflation expectations are no longer well-anchored and that the Fed has lost credibility. Unstable expectations could stoke higher inflation and possibly lead to a return to the stagflation of the 1970s.

In this Economic Letter, we argue that focusing only on whether the level of expected inflation has gone up may not be the best strategy for determining whether there has been a loss in credibility. Instead, it may be more useful to try to determine whether there has been a change in the way households and firms perceive the inflation process (and consequently form expectations about inflation). We use two surveys of inflation expectations, one based on household respondents, and the other on professional forecasters, to examine this issue. In neither case do we find evidence suggesting that expectations have recently become unanchored, even though consumer expectations of inflation have clearly gone up.

Should William Poole Say "I Told You So"?

Questions for William Poole:

Seven Questions: How Bad Will It Get?, Foreign Policy: When William Poole warned in 2003 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lacked the capital to weather a financial storm, his advice went unheeded. Five years later, the outspoken former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is far too polite to say “I told you so,” but he does have a message for the Fed: Wait too long to tackle inflation, and you’ll face an even worse recession in the years to come.

Foreign Policy: What’s your diagnosis of what happened to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

William Poole: First of all, they had too little capital to withstand adverse circumstances. And the adverse circumstances were the severe downturn in housing, the decline in house prices, and the rising default rate on mortgages. I don’t know of anyone who early enough was saying that there would be a major national decline in house prices, so I can’t hold them to that standard, but I can hold them to a standard of holding adequate capital to be able to withstand unforeseen circumstances. That’s what capital is for. ...

FP: Now, there has obviously been some turmoil in the banking sector. ... Analysts are wondering where the line is in terms of what banks are considered “too big to fail.” Where would you draw that line?

WP: I like the way that Greenspan used to put it and probably still does put it, that no firm should be too big to fail. Some might be too big to liquidate quickly and may require some support until they can be wound down, but there should be no firm too big to fail. We don’t know yet what the nature of the bailout of Fannie and Freddie is going to be, but I believe the plan would be to pay off at par all of the regular obligations. They are being turned into full faith and credit obligations of the United States government. ...

FP: NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, who has been sounding the alarm for quite a while, told Bloomberg News that we’re seeing the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression.

WP: I think that’s right, but let’s go back and revisit the Great Depression for a moment. ... There was a total and complete collapse of the banking system, and the economy that had functioned on credit and deposits was suddenly left to function on hand-to-hand currency. We aren’t anywhere close to that and we won’t get close to that because of ample Federal Reserve resources and also intellectual understanding that would not permit that to happen.

FP: How bad will it get, then?

WP: We are going to have failures of large numbers of firms, financial firms in particular..., failures of smaller commercial banks ... that were the most heavily involved in real estate are the ones at the greatest risk. ...

FP: Meanwhile, consumer prices are rising at their fastest rate in 17 years. Does that mean the Fed is running out of tools to keep growth going?

WP: All the financial turmoil that we’ve just been talking about—the tightening of credit...—that’s putting downward pressure on the economy, and the big increase in fuel prices is also putting downward pressure on real activity. ... There is a growing amount of unemployment in those sectors, and the Federal Reserve is trying to support economic activity by holding the federal funds rate ... at its current level. If the downturn in employment becomes much more severe, the Fed might even cut rates.

Now, to me, the inflation problem is actually part of what is depressing economic activity, because the generalized inflation that I think we have underway—although it’s not showing up in core inflation and wages just yet—is showing up in the depreciating dollar, and the depreciating dollar directly feeds through to increased energy prices and food prices. So, the depreciation itself is leading to depressed economic activity.

Moreover, if the inflation really starts to go into wages and into the core ... price indices—it will probably develop a fair amount of momentum and the Federal Reserve is not going to be able to reverse it even with a tighter monetary policy for probably a year or two, maybe even three. If the policy is too expansionary too long and we end up with a real inflation problem, all we’re doing is trading a bigger recession later for a smaller recession now.

On the too big to fail issue, I don't think it is the size of firms alone that is the problem. For example, suppose that we take a firm too big to fail and break into two smaller firms of one half the original size. If the factors that would have caused the one large firm to fail would have also caused the two smaller firms to fail, then we really haven't accomplished much, the size of the banking disaster will be the same. The problems that affected the GSEs came from factors they did not anticipate, factors that were out of their control. In such a situation, it's not clear to me that having more firms specializing in the same business is any safer than one combined firm. Maybe if there are 100 firms a few will pursue safer strategies and survive, but if we then have 97 smaller banks in trouble rather than just one large bank having problems, the scale of the problem is essentially the same and it would be harder, not easier, to take action to shore up the system since it would take 97 separate arrangements rather than just one.

For that reason, I think regulators should consider the overall size of certain classes of risky activity in addition to the size of individual firms. If a risky activity is too large a component of the financial system, and there isn't adequate backup in the event of widespread default, it doesn't matter whether problems bring down a large number of small firms or one large one, the result will be the same.

I don't mean to say that large firms shouldn't be broken up. Even with a (seemingly) well diversified portfolio, i.e. one that avoids over exposure to any particular type of risky asset, size alone could be a risk should a very large firm fail, though hopefully diversification would make failure less likely. I'm saying that breaking firms up into smaller pieces isn't enough in and of itself to reduce the risk of massive financial meltdown. We also need to worry about the overall magnitude of particular classes of risk and how concentrated those risks are within particular sectors of financial markets. If x is a big part of overall financial activity, i.e. if a bad outcome involving x could cause a financial meltdown, one firm doing nothing but risky activity x isn't much (or any) safer than ten firms doing nothing but risky activity x (scale effects could even increase the likelihood of failure).

So I think three things should come under consideration. First, the size of individual banks. Unless scale effects justify it (a natural monopoly argument, in which case it would be heavily regulated), no firm should to large enough to bring down the economy by itself in the event it fails. Second, no particular class of risky assets should be large enough to pose a threat to the financial system. Either the overall size of the asset class should be constrained, or the degree of risk should be limited. Third, the risk from particular classes of asset should not be concentrated in a small number of firms or concentrated within a particular sector if that group of firms or that sector is, collectively, too big to fail.

Social Safety Nets, Inflation Fighting, and Market Discipline

I've had some differences with Barney Frank in the past over Fed policy, but here he makes an interesting point. Why do European central banks respond more aggressively to inflation than the US central bank? Could it be the difference in social safety nets?:

Frank Says Stronger Social Safety Net Would Free Fed, by  –Michael S. Derby, Real Time Economics: There are many reasons why the Federal Reserve is boxed in on monetary policy, but Rep. Barney Frank Wednesday found a new dimension to the central bank’s dilemma. ...

Ben Bernanke and his fellow policy makers are facing a worrisome mix of tepid growth, troubled financial conditions and rising price pressures... The weak economy and market tumult call for rate cuts. But the energy-driven price gains and deteriorating expectations for future prices call for rate increases.

That’s left the Fed stuck at its current rate of 2%, very likely for an extended period. But according to Frank, if the U.S. social safety net weren’t so miserly, the Fed might actually have more room to take on inflation. ... “The relative insufficiency of our social safety net vis-a-vis what you have in Western Europe constrains monetary policy,” Frank said.

If the U.S. offered more support for the unemployed and displaced, “the Federal Reserve would then be freer…to slow down the economy in the knowledge this would not have a disproportionately negative effect” on the working population. That part of the population is already losing notable ground in economic terms, he said. ...

And, contrary to what you might hear - sometimes based upon the argument that we are not in a technical recession - "families are facing hardship":

Bernanke: Recession or Not, Families Are Hurting, by Sudeep Reddy: ...At a House hearing, Mr. Bernanke — responding to a lawmaker’s question about Americans’ economic pain ...[and] whether a recession is underway. ...

“Whether it’s a technical recession or not is not all that relevant,” Mr. Bernanke said. “It’s clearly the case that for a variety of reasons families are facing hardship.” ...Mr. Bernanke recounted the “numerous difficulties” facing the economy: “ongoing strains in financial markets, declining house prices, a softening labor market, and rising prices of oil, food, and some other commodities.” ...

As to whether this is a technical recession, “I don’t see why that makes a great deal of difference,” Mr. Bernanke said, adding that the terminology doesn’t play into the Fed’s policy decisions.

In other what are you whining about news, prices are up, and the ability of workers to buy goods and services is down:

U.S. consumer prices soared at their fastest annual pace in nearly two decades last month... Even more worrisome for policymakers than the headline inflation jump may be signs that food and energy prices are starting to filter through the broader economy, as evidenced by sharp price gains last month in housing, transportation and services. ...

The consumer price index jumped 1.1% in June..., the second-highest increase since 1982 and the highest since 2005. Excluding food and energy, it advanced 0.3%. ...

Consumer prices swelled 5% on a year-over-year basis, the highest rate since May 1991. The core CPI grew a more modest 2.4% compared to June 2007, though that's still well above the Fed's long-term goal of 1.5% to 2%. Over the past three months, core inflation rose at a 2.5% annual rate. ...

In a separate report, the Labor Department said the average weekly earnings of U.S. workers, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.9% in June, suggesting incomes aren't keeping pace with prices...

I'm not sure that I agree with Robert Reich that the episode we are currently experiencing proves that the Great Moderation was more luck than anything else, particularly that it disproves Fed policy made any difference. There is a lot of empirical evidence pointing to more aggressive inflation fighting as a key factor in the Great Moderation (e.g. Has Monetary Policy become More Effective? by Jean Boivin and Marc P. Giannoni, and On the Sources of the Great Moderation by Jordi Galí and Luca Gambetti are two recent contributions in this area), and we don't know how bad the current episode might have been had the Fed, say, followed a 1970s-type policy prescription (that is, even though we had bad luck - a large shock hit causing large effects - without moderation through Fed policy the state of the economy could have been much worse). But I do agree with his call for increased social insurance:

The End of the Great Moderation, the Bailouts of Freddie & Fannie and Wall Street, and the Tattered Safety Net for Everyone Else, by Robert Reich: As we bail out Wall Street along with Freddie and Fannie and all the top financial executives who have been pocketing tens of millions a year, yet allow millions of homeowners and jobless Americans to sink, it's worth contemplating what's happening to the American economy and to our social safety nets.

What economists have called "The Great Moderation" - a period when the business cycle evened out, and neither inflation nor recession posed much of a threat- began in the mid-1980s, and now appears to be over. It was good when it lasted. But it led the nation to think we didn't need much by way of social insurance.

No one knows for sure what caused the Great Moderation. Some had credited increased sophistication of financial markets and the wisdom of the Federal Reserve Board. Hindsight suggests it was more luck than anything else.

Well, folks, it turns out the great moderation was something of a fluke, and now tens of millions of Americans are in trouble with no safety net to help them.

That's because the apparent end of the boom and bust cycles led us to assume the economy would no longer impose huge, unexpected, and arbitrary losses on large numbers of Americans. So we basically got rid of the safety nets. We abolished welfare, let unemployment insurance wither, and paid scant attention when corporations eliminated defined-benefit pensions and cut health insurance benefits. We even stopped worrying about the safety of small investors, allowing federal deposit insurance to shrink as a proportion of total savings (witness the recent bank run in California).

But now we have to rethink safety nets. Right now, nets are being spread for the wrong people. The giants of Wall Street along with Fannie and Freddie get bailed out but there's still no relief in sight for most homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. Corporations that don't deliver on their pension obligations are helped but there's nothing for retirees and small investors whose savings are drying up because of Wall Street's decline. Small investors are losing their shirts but the Fed stands by to help the biggest.

Yet I have to believe the end of the Great Moderation will eventually result in a broader safety net. Maybe not the old forms of social insurance, but new ones like universal health insurance, earnings insurance, and savings accounts in which the dollars you put away are supplemented by government dollars.

The very rich, fattest investors, and the biggest corporations don't need safety nets. Now that the booms and busts are back, the rest of us do.

I don't advocate protecting the financial system to bailout the "very rich, fattest investors, and the biggest corporations," it's the people who would need the social safety net if the broader economy fails that are the concern. We need both enhanced social insurance and a stable financial system. For stabilizing the financial system, the trick going forward will be to develop mechanisms that are able to prevent financial meltdowns, but avoid rewarding the people who brought about the potential for collapse. I think regulation that prevents behaviors that lead to these kinds of problems is our best chance, but we can't anticipate everything possible problem that might occur and there are times when insuring against collapse requires us to hold our noses and clean things up as best we can. But that should be a last resort. As for how the social safety net fits into this, much like the ability to fight inflation, the ability to discipline market participants - to let those who made bad bets, bad decisions, etc. suffer losses or other penalties - is also enhanced when a stronger social safety net is present.

"All This Need Not End Horribly"

Ken Rogoff says if we don't hit the brakes on global growth soon, we're headed for a train wreck:

Time to put the brakes on this runaway train, by Kenneth Rogoff, Commentary, Project Syndicate: The global economy is a runaway train that is slowing, but not quickly enough. That is what the extraordinary run-up in prices for oil, metals, and food is screaming at us.

The spectacular and historic global economic boom of the past six years is about to hit a wall. Unfortunately, no one, certainly not in Asia or the US, seems willing to bite the bullet and help engineer the necessary co-ordinated retreat to sustained sub-trend growth, which is necessary so that new commodity supplies and alternatives can catch up.

Instead, governments are clawing to stretch out unsustainable booms, further pushing up commodity prices, and raising the risk of a once-in-a-lifetime economic and financial mess. All this need not end horribly, but policy makers in most regions have to start pressing hard on the brakes, not the accelerator. ...

I am puzzled that so many economic pundits seem to think that the solution is for all governments, rich and poor, to pass out even more cheques and subsidies so as to keep the boom going. Keynesian stimulus policies might help ease the pain a bit for individual countries acting in isolation. But if every country tries to stimulate consumption at the same time, it won’t work. A general rise in global demand will simply spill over into higher commodity prices, with little helpful effect on consumption. Isn’t this obvious? Yes, there is still a financial crisis in the US, but stoking inflation is an incredibly unfair and inefficient way to deal with it.

Some central bankers tell us not to worry, because they will be much more disciplined than central banks were in the 1970 s...

But this time is different. ... The historic influx of new entrants into the global workforce, each aspiring to western consumption standards, is simply pushing global growth past the safety marker on the speed dial. As a result, commodity resource constraints ... are hitting us...

Wait a second, you say... Won’t high prices cause people to conserve on consumption and seek out new sources of supply? Yes... But the process takes time...

The ... current expansion is unusual in that ... labour constraints are not the problem. On the contrary, the effective global labour force keeps swelling.

No, this time, commodity resources are the primary constraint, rather than a secondary problem, as in the past. That is why commodity prices will just keep soaring until world growth slows down long enough for new supply and new conservation options to catch up with demand.

This runaway-train global economy has all the hallmarks of a giant crisis in the making — financial, political, and economic. Will policy makers find a way to achieve the necessary international co-ordination? Getting the diagnosis right is the place to start. The world as a whole needs tighter monetary and fiscal policy. It is time to put the brakes on this runaway train before it is too late.

Let's see if I can play along with the train game, but with a different set-up. In this version of the game, if you hit the breaks too hard, passengers can get injured (workers can lose their jobs). And if the train is riding on a shaky infrastructure (meaning the financial system), perhaps it's on a long bridge you aren't too sure about (you are worried the financial system might collapse and bring the economy, or "train," down with it), then slamming on the breaks may not be the best thing to do, especially if there's a hill (recession) beyond the bridge that will slow the train down in any case, or a long straight section that will allow ample room to slow the train down gently. It depends upon how fast the train is going at the time, how likely it is that hitting the breaks while still on the bridge will cause the bridge to collapse, how many passengers will be injured from slamming on the breaks even if the bridge doesn't collapse, how good the brakes are, and what the terrain is like beyond the bridge (e.g., the magnitude of the expected slowdown).

So even with a train that's going too fast, a level speed for the moment followed by a measured level of braking once the train is on solid ground might be best.

I also think it matters whether the inflation is being driven by relative price changes due to world growth, or by excessive demand from interest rates that are too low and from stimulative fiscal policy. Implicit in the argument above, if I read it correctly, is that it's the latter - it's inflation from excessive liquidity and from stimulative fiscal policy, and if so, I agree that the inflation needs to be moderated as soon as it's safe to do so.

But if the run-up in prices that we are seeing is the result of changes in relative prices driven by underlying fundamentals, then the case for active intervention to slow world demand to "sub-trend growth" is not as clear. While there may be reasons to limit the speed of adjustment and reduce the displacement of labor and other resources to a manageable level, trying to limit price changes that are driven by fundamentals mutes the signals that encourage conservation and the development of solutions to the energy problem (there is also the issue of externalities, but that's a long discussion in and of itself).

This is something that's been on my mind lately because it's very clear that rising prices, even those driven by fundamentals, impose costs on people that they cannot avoid in the short-run, but may be able to absorb better in the long-run, so we don't want to allow the adjustment to happen too fast, or we want to find a way to limit the damage by compensating those who are hurt. Hence, the "sub-trend growth" called for above might be optimal. But it's also clear that high prices and the high profits that come with them serve as the markets equivalent of a prize for innovation - there are big profits waiting for successful innovators that are far, far greater than, say, the amounts McCain is talking about for inventing a better battery - and we don't want to stand in the way of that process. The higher the price, the bigger the prize. So the key is, I think, to allow prices to rise quickly so as to encourage the needed adjustments, but be very aggressive in helping people make it through the transition, those who become unemployed, face high gas and food costs, etc. Unfortunately, however, I don't think it's reasonable to expect that the government will provide such help, at least not enough, not in the current political environment, and that means we'll have to take it a bit slower, and look for other ways to encourage the necessary investment in solutions to the energy problem.

The U.S. Monetary Experience of 1979-1982

This is something I want to have available here for reference, but if anyone is interested in it, so much the better. It is Bennett McCallum's account of the 1979-1982 period in monetary history from his book Monetary Economics: Theory and Policy:

1.3 The U.S. Monetary Experience of 1979-1982

Having briefly highlighted some contrasts between the pre- and post- World War II record, let us now consider a recent episode that has received considerable attention. As a result of the relatively severe inflation of the late 1970s, Volcker and other officers of the Fed became convinced during 1979 that to prevent an extremely unhealthy situation they would need to exercise tighter control over growth of the money stock than in previous years. To facilitate such control,[10] they publicly adopted on October 6, 1979, a new set of operating procedures, procedures that featured increased emphasis on a particular measure of bank reserves (i.e., nonborrowed reserves) and reduced emphasis on short-term interest rates. Their new procedures were supposed to be helpful to the Fed in achieving its targets for money supply growth-targets that it had been announcing since 1975 but failing to achieve in most years.

The practice of announcing these money supply targets, it should be explained, had been reluctantly adopted by the Fed at the insistence of the U.S. Congress.[11] As can be seen from Table 1-3, the targets were not highly precise. For the year ending with the fourth quarter of 1978, for example, the target consisted of a range of values for the money growth rate that extended from 4.0 to 6.5 percent. (The actual value turned out to be 7.2 percent in this year, as can also be seen from Table 1-3.) Given the modest degree of precision sought for, it appeared that the failure to achieve the official targets should in principle be correctible.

The new operating procedures begun in October 1979 were kept in place by the Fed until late 1982, with September 1982 usually regarded as the last month of the episode. Because so-called "monetarist" economists had for many years been recommending tighter money stock control as the best way of fighting inflation, and had often recommended operating procedures with a measure of bank reserves[12] as the key variable, this experience has frequently been termed a "monetarist experiment." Actually, for various reasons, that label is highly inappropriate.[13] But the episode did nevertheless constitute a policy experiment of a sort, and is therefore of considerable interest.

What, then, were the results of this experiment? In one respect the Fed's attempts were successful: by September 1982 the U.S. inflation rate had been reduced from around 11 or 12 percent (per year) to a magnitude in the vicinity of 4 or 5 percent. Other aspects of the outcome were not as planned, however, and were highly unpopular with the public and with most commentators. Of these undesirable side effects, four will be mentioned. First, short-term interest rates rose to levels unprecedented in U.S. history. Over the month of May 1981, for example, the 90-day Treasury bill rate averaged 16.3 percent. Second, the extent of month-to-month variability of interest rates was greater than ever before. Third, in 1981 a recession began that was the most severe since the Great Depression of the 1930s; the nation's overall unemployment rate climbed over 10 percent in the second half of 1982. So while the economy was relieved -- at least temporarily -- of the inflationary pressures that it had been experiencing for about a decade, this relief was apparently[14] obtained at the cost of an unwelcome recession and the associated loss in output.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the episode, however, pertains to the fourth item on our list: the Fed did not succeed in improving its record of money stock control. Instead, the realized growth rates for the years ending in the fourth quarter of 1980, 1981, and 1982 were again outside the specified target range, as indicated in Table 1-3. And monthly values of the growth rate were highly variable, as can readily be seen from Figure 1-1. This is especially striking, of course, because the special operating procedures of 1979-1982 were designed precisely for the purpose of improving money stock control so as better to achieve the monetary growth targets!

The facts that we have just reported are not a matter of dispute - students of the episode agree that inflation came down, unemployment rose, interest rates became high and variable, and money stock targets were not met. What interpretation to place on the facts is, however, another matter. To some economists they suggest that it is unwise to pursue money stock targets, in part because of the putative unreliability of money demand behavior in an economy in which new payments practices and financial assets are constantly being developed.[15] To other economists, however, the experience illustrates how poorly the Fed's procedures were designed for money stock control, and how dangerous it is to allow excessive money growth -- and the inflation that it engenders -- to become established in an economy.[16]

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[10] According, at least, to the Fed's public statements on the subject.

[11] On this topic, see Weintraub (1978).

[12] Total reserves, however, not the nonborrowed reserves measure actually emphasized by the Fed.

[13] In particular, monetarist prescriptions have typically stressed the importance of nearly constant money growth rates and the absence of activist attempts to vary these rates countercyclically. In fact, the Fed did not abstain from activism during 1979-1982 and - as we will see shortly - money growth rates were far from constant. For an elaboration on this argument, see Friedman (1983).

[14] The word apparently is inserted because a few economists would argue that the recession of 1982-1983 was not brought about by the monetary policy under discussion. The viewpoint of such economists is discussed in section 9.7.

[15] For an expression of this view, see Blinder (1981) or Bryant (1983).

[16] These views are expressed by Brunner and Meltzer (1983) and Friedman (1983), among others.