Economist's View

Fed Watch: FOMC Forecasts - Reality or Fantasy?

Tim Duy analyzes the economic projections in the minutes from the June FOMC meeting:

FOMC Forecasts - Reality or Fantasy?, by Tim Duy: It takes some time to work through the minutes from the June FOMC meeting. They are, in the words of David Altig, "meaty." Altig concentrated his remarks on the implications of the Fed's balance sheet explosion. I found myself pulled to the various economic projections spread throughout the minutes. Do those projections pass the laugh test? Are they realistic? Are they optimistic? Or just plain delusional? I think a little of all those descriptions are accurate.

The staff's projections comes first, and appear to be what Calculated Risk describes as an "immaculate recovery":

In the forecast prepared for the June meeting, the staff revised upward its outlook for economic activity during the remainder of 2009 and for 2010…The staff projected that real GDP would decline at a substantially slower rate in the second quarter than it had in the first quarter and then increase in the second half of 2009, though less rapidly than potential output. The staff also revised up its projection for the increase in real GDP in 2010, to a pace above the growth rate of potential GDP. As a consequence, the staff projected that the unemployment rate would rise further in 2009 but would edge down in 2010. Meanwhile, the staff forecast for inflation was marked up. Recent readings on core consumer prices had come in a bit higher than expected; in addition, the rise in energy prices, less-favorable import prices, and the absence of any downward movement in inflation expectations led the staff to raise its medium-term inflation outlook. Nonetheless, the low level of resource utilization was projected to result in an appreciable deceleration in core consumer prices through 2010.

Looking ahead to 2011 and 2012, the staff anticipated that financial markets and institutions would continue to recuperate, monetary policy would remain stimulative, fiscal stimulus would be fading, and inflation expectations would be relatively well anchored. Under such conditions, the staff projected that real GDP would expand at a rate well above that of its potential, that the unemployment rate would decline significantly, and that overall and core personal consumption expenditures inflation would stay low.

Leaving aside inflation (which will stay low over the long term if you assume that expectations remain anchored), the staff upgraded the forecast for 2009, is expecting growth to rebound to potential next year (which, is now less than six months away) and then accelerate further in subsequent years. Is such optimism justified? Yes and no.

I think it is fair to say that mounting evidence points to the formation of a rather clear bottom in the most recent stage of this economic cycle. Hear I refer to the sharp contractions beginning in late 2008, not to the "official" start of the recession in December 2007. Indeed, I think one would have to be almost blind to not see the clear signals emerging in a wide range of data, such as the ISM data:

See also consumption data:

"Congress Must not Touch the Federal Reserve"

Mark Gertler says the Fed's independence should not be compromised:

Congress must not touch the Federal Reserve, by Mark Gertler: The economy was experiencing the worst recession since the war. In Congress, members were beginning to wonder whether the Federal Reserve’s intervention strategy was extracting too great a toll on the economy. Some started to suggest publicly that it may be time to rein in the central bank’s independence.

Sound familiar? Though they bear a strong resemblance to ... today, the events I refer to in fact happened in the early 1980s, in the midst of what was then the most serious economic crisis since the Depression. The head of the institution under threat of losing its independence was none other than Paul Volcker.

Of course, Mr Volcker would go on to be recognised as one of the great central bankers of modern times. He would do so by standing firm against political pressures. By continuing on the course he set out, the economy recovered and a new era of price and output stability began. ... In the Volcker era, the political outcry occurred in the midst of the economic contraction that the Fed had engineered to tame inflation. The costs of the policy were plain to see, but the long-term benefits that would eventually emerge were difficult for many to imagine at the time.

The Fed’s role has been different this time round. Rather than trying to slow the economy, it has been acting to contain the damage brought on by the most complex financial crisis of modern history. By the accounts of many, the Fed has acted masterfully under difficult circumstances. ...

Given that hard times remain, nonetheless, it is natural that Congress is questioning the Fed, just as it did in the early 1980s. ... Unfortunately, the Fed cannot demonstrate what would have happened to the economy if it had not intervened in the way it did. Many observers agree that the situation would be far worse than it is today. Yet discussions of reining in central bank powers proceed as if the financial system would have stabilised itself without any Fed intervention.

The Fed well understands the lesson from the Volcker era that it can be effective only when it resists political attempts to influence its decisions. One can only hope that sober voices in Congress who appreciate the importance of central bank independence will help keep Capitol Hill from taking any measures that do permanent damage to the Fed.

A more constructive route for Congress would be to proceed with regulatory reform that would prevent a repeat of the current situation. At the core of the crisis is an antiquated regulatory system that permitted large financial institutions to take excessive risks. By giving the Fed the ability to monitor risk-taking by these institutions, Congress would diminish greatly the likelihood the central bank would again need to intervene directly in private credit markets.

The Fed may not have been perfect in its response to this or previous crises, but that doesn't mean that a less independent Fed would have done better. Taking away Fed independence - including subjecting the Fed to audits by the GAO - would be a mistake. In addition, if we are going to strengthen regulatory authority so that we can better monitor and reduce systemic risk that threatens the financial system - and we should - that authority needs to be in the hands of an independent entity, and the Fed is the natural place for this. Finally, its role in regulating system-wide risk is complementary to many of its other activities. For example, its role as a systemic risk regulator would involve monitoring risk within large institutions. Should a bank get into trouble, that would be helpful in assessing whether the bank should be granted access to the discount window in its capacity as lender of last resort.

We need to maintain an independent Fed, to give the Fed the powers it needs to monitor and regulate the level of overall risk, and to give the Fed the authority it now lacks to put banks through an orderly bankruptcy process so it can avoid bailing out financial institutions that are in trouble and a threat to overall the financial system.

Update: See Willem Buiter for a longer, more detailed version of many of the same points, e.g.:

Probably the single most damaging  failure of the US Treasury, the US Congress and the US financial regulators was there inability/unwillingness to create a special resolution regime (SRR) with structured early intervention and prompt corrective action for all systemically important financial institutions (those too big, too complex, to interconnected, too international or too politically connected to fail in the ordinary Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 way).  ...

But however weak its past performance and credentials, they are rock-solid compared to those of the other candidate institutions. ...

Only the Fed can fulfill the macro-prudential regulator-supervisor role.  That is because it has the short-term deep pockets.  It is the source of the ultimate, unquestioned liquidity in the economy, through its monopoly of the issuance of base money.  Without the short-term deep pockets, a macro-prudential regulator/supervisor cannot act as lender of last resort, market maker of last resort or provider of enhanced credit support.  It would be ... toothless...

He also makes this point:

The problem with this solution of the macro-prudential regulator/supervisor problem is that it is incompatible with central bank operational independence as interpreted since 1989 or thereabouts. ... When the central bank plays a quasi-fiscal role, as the Fed has been doing on an unprecedented scale in the current crisis, the fullest possible degree of accountability to the Congress, the tax payer and the citizens is essential.  The Fed has no mandate to engage in quasi-fiscal operations, even when it is for a good cause.  ...

If the same institution, the central bank, has to be in charge of both normal monetary policy and systemic risk regulation (albeit jointly with the Treasury for the systemic risk role), there is no elegant, first-best solution.  Either monetary policy will be driven by politicians whose macroeconomics is limited to a partial understanding of the Keynesian cross and whose monetary policy views can be summarised by the proposition that the have never seen an official policy rate so low they would not want it even lower, or the central bank continues to act as an off-budget, off-balance sheet special purpose vehicle of the Treasury.

You pick.

Okay. As much as possible, monetary policy should be kept out of the hands of politicians.

Update: Jim Hamilton (I also signed the petition a day or two ago):

I joined many of my colleagues in urging Congress and the President to remember just how valuable an independent central bank is for the ordinary citizens of this country. You may not pay much attention to central bank independence. But you'll miss it when it's gone.

Money Monopoly

Marshall Auerback says California is challenging the federal monopoly on money creation:

Schwarznegger to Obama: Watch and Learn, by Marshall Auerback: According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Republicans and Democrats alike embraced legislation last Friday that would make California IOUs legal tender for all taxes, fees and other payments owed to the state.

Effectively, California is using its IOUs to create a currency. If this bill passes it would allow California to deficit spend just like the Federal Government and with the IOU's acceptable as payment of state taxes, it instantly imparts value to them. In effect, what you have is a state of the union creating a sovereign currency right under the noses of Treasury, Fed. They are stumbling their way into it... It will be viewed as a stop gap measure at first, and then could very well become entrenched as states realize they have a way to escape balanced budget requirements. ...

The ... Federal government retains this monopoly under our existing monetary arrangements. If California is successful here in allowing its IOUs to pay tax, it has profound constitutional ramifications. ...

It will be interesting to see what the exchange rate is between California IOU and US currency - the IOUs do offer a yield, so should be less than par by design. I wonder if NY is next.

This is like some sort of return to the 13 colonies with all kinds of ersatz currency floating about. It's hard to believe the Rubinite wing of the Democrats will just let it be, given the threat it represents to Wall Street's prevailing economic interests, but it is an understandable response...

There are political benefits for Obama...: If the Federal government allows this proposal of the state of California to go unchallenged, it would relieve the President of a major political quandary, which is, does he help California and then open himself to aid requests from other states?..., or, does he let California go and lose 56 electoral votes in the next election?

By allowing them to "solve" their own problem in the manner proposed by the legislation he avoids the quandary. And ... they just might let them do it until the import is fully understood.

It is true that this legislation represents a profound break from all federal laws. It is almost bound to incur some sort of constitutional challenge, representing as it does, a profound threat to the Federal government's currency monopoly powers. But this is another instance where Obama's inattentiveness to the ramifications of the states' respective fiscal crises has come back to haunt him. This situation would not have arisen had Obama embraced a simple revenue sharing plan with the states (so that the states' respective fiscal policies would be working in harmony with his proposals, rather than mitigating the impact of the Federal fiscal stimulus), as recommended by any number of prominent economists...

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. As California goes, will the nation follow? ...

Setting aside the particulars of the California case and whether or not the IOUs are actually functioning as money - that's debatable - very, very generally, the federal government has a budget constraint just like everyone else, well sort of like everyone else anyway -- most of us can't levy taxes or print money. Federal government finances must satisfy

G - T = ΔM + ΔB,

where Δ means "change in," G is government spending, T is taxes, M is the money supply, and B is bonds. The left-hand side is the deficit, and the right-hand is how it is financed. Thus, when G is greater than T so that there is a deficit in a given budget period, it must be financed by printing new money (ΔM) or issuing new bonds (ΔB). (If it helps, think of G as being 100 and T being 70 so that the deficit is 30. The deficit can be financed by printing 30 new dollars, by borrowing 30 dollars from the public, or some combination of the two)

Now, for states, ΔM is zero since that would be money creation, and they are not allowed to do that. Thus, a state's budget constraint is:

G - T = ΔB

This must be satisfied each budget period. Because this constraint must hold each budget period, notice what happens if there is a legal or political debt limit -- in some states it is effectively B=0 -- and B is already at the limit (which means ΔB cannot be positive since that would add to the debt). If the state's budget deficit rises in a recession due to decreased tax revenue and increased spending on social services, then G must fall to eliminate the deficit, or new taxes must be levied, and the cutback in spending and/or increase in taxes makes the recession worse.

But what if a state was suddenly granted the power to print money? Then it could pay for that year's deficit without increasing bonds (i.e. debt) any further, i.e. G - T could be financed solely by ΔM if it so chooses. That is, the state now has the constraint

G - T = ΔM + ΔB

If B is maxed out politically or legally so that ΔB must equal zero (or be negative), then a deficit, G - T, could still be financed with ΔM.

Having fifty different currencies isn't necessarily bad, there are pros and cons to having a single currency across all fifty states, i.e. to forming currency union. With a currency union, individual members lose the ability to conduct independent monetary policy - there is one money and one policy so everyone in the group gets the same treatment - but that is less costly when the the economic differences among the members of the union is small and the same policy is generally applicable. There are many advantages to having a single currency (no exchange rate uncertainty and lower transactions costs to name just two), and for countries considering forming a currency union, there is a list of factors that are cited as working for or against unification. Many of these factors involve social, political, economic, and geographic factors, and generally, though not always, the more similar the countries are, the more likely it is that a currency union will be beneficial (e.g. similar levels of development, a similar mix of products, similar legal institutions, same language). In the case of the fifty states within the U.S., I believe the advantages of a single currency far outweigh the disadvantages, and states should not be allowed to create their own currencies.

Did Greenspan Make a Mistake in 2001-2004 by Keeping Too Rates Low?

David Beckworth says Brad DeLong can quit wondering, Greenspan's "low interest rate policy in the early-to-mid 2000s was truly a mistake" [Update: see Brad Delong for more]:

Yes Brad, the Fed's Low Interest Rate Policy Was a Mistake, by David Beckworth: Brad Delong is wondering whether the Federal Reserves' low interest rate policy in the early-to-mid 2000s was truly a mistake:

There is, however, active debate over whether there was a fourth mistake: whether Alan Greenspan's decision in 2001-2004 to push and keep nominal interest rates on Treasury securities very very low in order to try to keep the economy near full employment was a fourth mistake...I am genuinely not sure which side I come down on in this debate.

Brad's uncertainty is understandable given he invokes the entire 2001-2004 time frame. For during this period there was a time when the U.S. economic recovery was sputtering along (2001-2002) and a time when the recovery began to take hold (2003-2004). It was during this latter period that Fed's low interest rates were a big mistake. But even for that period I think Brad is misreading the data:

People claim that the Greenspan Federal Reserve "aggressively pushed the interest rate below its natural level."... [T]he market interest rate[, however,] was if anything above the natural interest rate in the early 2000s... You ... cannot argue that he aggressively pushed the interest rate below its natural level. The low interest rate was at its natural level.

I think the evidence shows the opposite. The natural interest rate is a function of individual's time preferences, productivity, and the population growth rate. Of these three components, the one that changed the most in 2003-2004 was productivity as can be seen in the figure...

DeLong: Sympathy for Greenspan

Brad DeLong can't decide whether or not Greenspan made a mistake when he kept interest rates low after the collapse of the dot.com bubble:

Sympathy for Greenspan, by J. Bradford DeLong, Commentary, Project Syndicate: In the circles in which I travel, there is near-universal consensus that America’s monetary authorities made three serious mistakes that contributed to and exacerbated the financial crisis. ... US policymakers erred when:

-the decision was made to eschew principles-based regulation and allow the shadow banking sector to grow with respect to its leverage and its compensation schemes, in the belief that the government’s guarantee of the commercial banking system was enough to keep us out of trouble;

-the Fed and the Treasury decided, once we were in trouble, to nationalise AIG and pay its bills rather than to support its counterparties, which allowed financiers to pretend that their strategies were fundamentally sound;

-the Fed and the Treasury decided to let Lehman Brothers go into uncontrolled bankruptcy in order to try to teach financiers that having an ill-capitalised counterparty was not without risk, and that people should not expect the government to come to their rescue automatically.

There is, however, a lively debate about whether there was a fourth big mistake: Alan Greenspan’s decision in 2001-2004 to push and keep nominal interest rates on US Treasury securities very low in order to try to keep the economy near full employment. In other words, should Greenspan have kept interest rates higher and triggered a recession in order to avert the growth of a housing bubble? ...

Full employment is better than high unemployment if it can be accomplished without inflation, Greenspan thought. If a bubble develops, and if the bubble ... collapses, threatening to cause a depression, the Fed would have the policy tools to short-circuit that chain. In hindsight, Greenspan was wrong. But the question is: was the bet that Greenspan made a favourable one? ...

I am genuinely unsure as to which side I come down on in this debate. ... What I do know is that the way the issue is usually posed is wrong. People claim that Greenspan’s Fed “aggressively pushed interest rates below a natural level.” But what is the natural level? In the 1920’s, Swedish economist Knut Wicksell defined it as the interest rate at which, economy-wide, desired investment equals desired savings, implying no upward pressure on consumer prices, resource prices, or wages as aggregate demand outruns supply, and no downward pressure on these prices as supply exceeds demand.

On Wicksell’s definition — the best, and, in fact, the only definition I know of — the market interest rate was, if anything, above the natural interest rate in the early 2000’s: the threat was deflation, not accelerating inflation. The natural interest rate was low because, as the Fed’s current chairman Ben Bernanke explained at the time, the world had a global savings glut (or, rather, a global investment deficiency). ...

Greenspan’s mistake — if it was a mistake — was his failure to overrule the market and aggressively push the interest rate up above its natural rate, which would have deepened and prolonged the recession that started in 2001.

But today is one of those days when I don’t think that Greenspan’s failure to raise interest rates above the natural rate to generate high unemployment and avert the growth of a mortgage-finance bubble was a mistake. There were plenty of other mistakes that generated the catastrophe that faces us today.

I have argued the Fed's decision to keep interest rates low contributed to the bubble, but was not itself the sole cause of it. As to whether the Fed made a mistake, I'll just note that the tradeoff wasn't quite as stark as Brad implies, i.e. there were other policy instruments that Fed could have used to limit the housing bubble. Regulation is certainly one means the Fed had to that end, but Fed communication could have helped too. If Greenspan had, for example, told people to stay away from mortgages because they were toxic rather than implicitly encouraging them to invest in housing, things might have been different.

Would limiting the bubble through regulation, communication, or other means have limited the employment response, the primary worry? I don't think so, at least not enough to matter. The money would have been invested somewhere, housing had an opportunity cost after all, so the next best alternatives would have been pursued to the extent that they were profitable (and many would have been, just not as profitable - apparently anyway - as investing in housing and mortgages). So people still would have been employed somewhere as the money was invested, just not in housing, and that would have helped to insulate us from the housing crash. (And a lot of them might still have those jobs, unlike the people who depended upon the housing markets for employment.)

So narrowly, keeping interest rates low and employment high was the right thing to do. The mistake was letting all of the action brought about by those low rates, or most of it anyway, occur in a single sector, housing, rather than using regulation and other means to limit the flow of resources into the housing market in pursuit of profits based upon the misperception of risk. Those resources could have been redirected into other sectors and put to productive use rather than wasted building houses nobody wants, and achieving this result did not require the Fed to aggressively raise the target rate, it only needed to use the other tools it already had available.

Unfortunately, however, those tools were not used, and the ideology Greenspan brought to the Fed played a large role in this outcome.

Fed Watch: A Tangled Policy Web

Tim Duy:

A Tangled Policy Web, by Tim Duy: Incoming data continues to confirm an emerging period of relative economic tranquility following the financial storm of 2008. Importantly, the bleeding in consumer spending has been staunched, despite ongoing job losses that look likely to remain a feature of the American economic landscape for months to come. But incoming data also point to America's sustained and perplexing dependence on foreign capital inflows - a dependence that suggests an underlying economic vulnerability that has yet to be addressed. Whether it needs to be addressed next month, next year, or next decade is still a question that continues to haunt the followers of global macro trends.

The most recent Personal Income and Outlays report, for May 2009, highlights many of the trends currently impacting the evolution of economic activity. The headline jump in incomes, like that of the previous month, was driven by federal stimulus. Declining private wage and salary disbursements are a more telling indicator of the health of household finances, and are consistent with ongoing labor market weakness. The best bet is the that private wage gains remain subdued, even as conditions stabilize. Although the apparent peak of initial claims is in the rearview mirror, persistent high levels of claims points to a jobless recovery.

Of course, in the absence of federal stimulus, the underlying weak income growth indicates sustained pressures on consumer spending power. Indeed, the numbers tell a clear story of stabilization, but little to suggest that a V shaped recovery for consumer spending is at hand:

In addition, the report adds further credence to the claims that American's long affair with spending has ended in a bitter divorce, with the saving rate climbing to its highest level in 15 years. To be sure, some of the increase is likely not sustainable in the short run, as it partly reflects a time lag between federal stimulus and the spending it was meant to encourage. That said, the underlying saving increase is tempering the impact of stimulus spending, as households sock some of it away for the next rainy day and/or pay down crippling debt loads, effectively turning private debt into public debt. And note that large shifts in consumer behavior are not required to have significant macroeconomic implications. Small changes across households - a little less, percentage wise, spending here and there adds up. From Bloomberg:

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.

"Pure Political Theater, and I Don't Like It"

Jim Hamilton:

On grilling the Fed Chair, Econbrowser: I got a bit angry at accounts of the latest appearance of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke before the U.S. Congress. ...

It is one thing to have different views from those of the Fed Chair on particular decisions that have been made-- I certainly have plenty of areas of disagreement of my own. But it is another matter to question Bernanke's intellect or personal integrity. As someone who's known him for 25 years, I would place him above 99.9% of those recently in power in Washington on the integrity dimension, not to mention IQ. His actions over the past two years have been guided by one and only one motive, that being to minimize the harm caused to ordinary people by the financial turmoil. Whether you agree or disagree with all the steps he's taken, let's start with an understanding that that's been his overriding goal.

These interrogations reveal more about those doing the grilling than they reveal about Bernanke. I see this as pure political theater, and I don't like it.

If Congress wants to explore more usefully the wisdom and motives behind some of the decisions that have been made, it might want to investigate why some legislators are now pushing for Fannie and Freddie to guarantee a riskier category of mortgage condo loans.

Big Government Ben?

The GOP is targeting Bernanke as "a champion of government intrusion and an ally of President Obama":

G.O.P. to Paint Bernanke as Ally of Big Government, by Edmund L. Andrews and Louise Story, NY Times: In a peculiar role reversal, Republican lawmakers are mounting a ferocious attack on the Republican chairman of the Federal Reserve, while Democrats are coming to his defense.

Ben S. Bernanke ... will be grilled on Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about his role in orchestrating Bank of America’s controversial takeover of Merrill Lynch late last year.

The House investigation is heavily colored by partisanship. President Obama is proposing to give the Federal Reserve formidable new powers to regulate giant institutions, including Bank of America, that could pose risks to the financial system.

Republicans, along with some Democrats, argue that the Fed already has too much power.

Unhappy about the huge bank bailouts that the Fed arranged with the Treasury Department during the Bush administration, many Republicans are even more displeased that Mr. Bernanke is now working hand-in-glove with the Obama administration.

The result is a set of dueling narratives and agendas, all of which will be on full display when Mr. Bernanke testifies on Thursday. ...

Despite Mr. Bernanke’s Republican roots, and the fact that President Bush nominated him to be Fed chairman, the Republican memo prepared for the hearing on Thursday describes Mr. Bernanke as a champion of government intrusion and an ally of President Obama. ...

I don't think this is an attempt to negatively influence Obama's decision on Bernanke's reappointment as Fed chair as some have been hinting because that would not be in the GOP's best interest. There are open positions on the Federal Reserve Board, so even if Bernanke didn't resign as is customary in the event he was not reappointed - and nothing says he must - Obama would still be free to appoint a new Fed Chair from outside the present Board membership.

Obama would certainly appoint someone who shares his regulatory vision, and that person would likely be confirmed (e.g. someone like Janet Yellen would likely be confirmed even if there was lots of grumbling), so I don't see how the appointment of a new Fed chair would do anything but strengthen the support for the type of regulatory oversight the administration envisions. That's not what the GOP wants.

Instead, this looks much more like an attempt to by the GOP to maintain its usual anti-regulatory, anti-government stance by arguing that the Fed should not to be trusted with the powers envisioned in the proposed regulatory reform legislation. So the real goal is the Fed as an institution, Bernanke is simply the target being used to make that the point. E.g.:

The vast extent of the Fed’s actions in the past two years to commit trillions of dollars in government money to support the economy has raised significant concerns on Capitol Hill, some of which will be aired on Thursday when Bernanke testifies before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Congressional investigators have been looking into the Fed’s role in encouraging Bank of America to purchase Merrill Lynch... Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member on the Oversight Committee, said on Wednesday that the Fed engaged in a “cover-up” and hid details about the merger, completed in January 2009, from other federal agencies.

Meanwhile, lawmakers from both parties are raising questions about Obama’s proposal to grant the Fed broad new powers to prevent another crisis.

Those concerns could make the next confirmation process far more contentious than the six that have occurred in the last two decades.

And:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said, “It won’t be my decision whether he is held over or not, but right now I’m concerned that they have lost their independence and are too cozy with Treasury.”

It looks like we are going to get some version of a strategy that has the GOP saying that given what happened to the financial system, of course we need more oversight and regulation of the financial system. But any particular piece of legislation that is proposed will be fought tooth and nail by the GOP as being far too intrusive, granting the government too much power, and generally going far beyond what is needed to solve the problem. The fact that the will for reform will diminish with time works in their favor, and if they can string things out long enough with this strategy, the result will be that the legislation eventually passes in a much weaker form, or it won't ever pass at all.

Just ignore them. Altering a few words:

The Republicans, with a few possible exceptions, have decided to do all they can to make the Obama administration a failure. Their role in the financial regulation debate is purely that of spoilers who keep shouting the old slogan — Government is always the problem, never the solution! — hoping that someone still cares.

FOMC Press Release

Not much new here, except perhaps the emphasis that the FOMC does not see inflation as a problem to be immediately concerned about. (Also, the WSJ notes that "officials deleted previous references to the risk that inflation could persist below desired rates, an indication that they don't see deflation as a risk." The Financial Times adds that the FOMC "maintained that it was moving ahead with its $300bn Treasury purchase plan and said that it would 'continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities'. It made no changes to its previously announced plans for the total volume of purchases or for timing." Bloomberg makes the same points.):

Press Release, Release Date: June 24, 2009,  For immediate release: Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in April suggests that the pace of economic contraction is slowing. Conditions in financial markets have generally improved in recent months. Household spending has shown further signs of stabilizing but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are cutting back on fixed investment and staffing but appear to be making progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales. Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee continues to anticipate that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will contribute to a gradual resumption of sustainable economic growth in a context of price stability.

The prices of energy and other commodities have risen of late. However, substantial resource slack is likely to dampen cost pressures, and the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. As previously announced, to provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of up to $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt by the end of the year. In addition, the Federal Reserve will buy up to $300 billion of Treasury securities by autumn. The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.

Bernanke, Summers, or Yellen? None of the Above?

Should Ben Bernanke be reappointed as Fed chair?:

Bernanke Set to Defend Record as Reappointment Debate Begins, by Scott Lanman, Bloomberg: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will defend his unprecedented actions to prevent a financial collapse as debate on whether he should be reappointed begins. Bernanke, whose term expires Jan. 31, faces lawmakers at a hearing this week...

President Barack Obama has said the Fed chief has done an “extraordinary job” without committing to reappoint him. ...

At stake is whether Bernanke ... pilots the Fed into an expanded financial-supervision role after overseeing the most aggressive use of the Fed’s powers since the Great Depression. ...

Bernanke has helped thaw credit markets and put the economy on a path toward recovery. Odds favor the former Princeton University economist, a Republican: Reappointment may be less disruptive to investors, and no first-term president has replaced a sitting chairman in 30 years. Many on Wall Street and in Washington view it as likely Bernanke will be reappointed.

“There’s a very strong case for reappointment,” said Douglas Lee... “Removing a Fed chairman who is generally perceived to have done an outstanding job would be an enormous problem.” ...

Still, any Obama decision may be half a year away, and the economy and financial markets could shift again. ...

Besides keeping Bernanke, Obama’s options include appointing Summers or Janet Yellen...

Summers ... is considered the front-runner should the president want a change. San Francisco Fed President Yellen ... was previously a Fed governor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and would be the first female Fed chief.

Summers wants the job...

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said he’s “very pleased” with Bernanke. “Beyond that I wouldn’t say” anything about a renomination...

I'd reappoint him. If forced to choose between Yellen and Summers, I'd choose Yellen.

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:

Obama's Wall Street Joural Interview

Given recent debates around here on regulating the shadow banking sector, it was nice to see that the first thing Obama mentions in response to a question about why financial markets failed is an outdated "regulatory system that ... did not encompass the non-bank sector":

Transcript of Obama’s Interview With the Journal, Washington Wire:  A transcript of The Journal’s interview with President Obama, which touches on financial-regulatory reform, the power of free markets, health care and Bernanke’s future at the Fed. ...

Question: Thank you for doing this, very much. ... Obviously a lot of things went wrong in the markets in the last year. Where do you think they failed?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that there are some immediate and obvious culprits. We had a regulatory system that was outdated that did not encompass the non-bank sector. We had a securitization market that had separated borrowers and lenders and investors in ways that allowed everybody to take risks, with nobody feeling accountable or feeling their money was at stake. We had I think banks who were incented to boost their profits with some of these same risky financial instruments, and you didn’t have the kind of systemic oversight that would anticipate the enormous failures that could arise if any link in the chain broke. So that set of regulatory problems is what we are looking to solve in the proposals I’ll put forward tomorrow.

You then have, though, just to finish up, I think you’ve got a broader structural problem in our economy in which our last two recoveries had been based on bubbles, and a massively overleveraged consumer, a massively overleveraged corporate sector, and a financial system that didn’t have much restraint.

And so the question for us is how do we create the foundation for a more sustainable model of economic growth, one that doesn’t impinge on the dynamism of the free market, the innovative products that are critical and the entrepreneurship that creates jobs, but also recognizes that the levels of debt and a model that’s premised on an endless supply of foreign dollars is not one that is going to be sustainable over the long term. ...

Paul Krugman: Stay the Course

It's too soon to ease up on monetary and fiscal policy:

Stay the Course, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: The debate over economic policy has taken a predictable yet ominous turn: the crisis seems to be easing, and a chorus of critics is already demanding that the Federal Reserve and the Obama administration abandon their rescue efforts.

For those who know their history,... this is the third time ... that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts ... have reached their limit. ...

The first example of policy in a liquidity trap comes from the 1930s. The U.S. economy grew rapidly from 1933 to 1937, helped along by New Deal policies. America, however, remained well short of full employment.

Yet policy makers stopped worrying about depression and started worrying about inflation. The Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy, while F.D.R. tried to balance the federal budget. Sure enough, the economy slumped again, and full recovery had to wait for World War II.

The second example is Japan in the 1990s. After slumping early in the decade, Japan experienced a partial recovery... Policy makers responded by shifting their focus to the budget deficit, raising taxes and cutting spending. Japan proceeded to slide back into recession.

And here we go again.

On one side, the inflation worriers are harassing the Fed. The latest example: Arthur Laffer... Meanwhile, there are demands from several directions that President Obama’s fiscal stimulus plan be canceled. Some ... argue ... the economy is already turning around. Others claim that government borrowing is driving up interest rates, and that this will derail recovery.

And Republicans, providing a bit of comic relief, are saying that the stimulus has failed, because the enabling legislation was passed four months ago — wow, four whole months! — yet unemployment is still rising. This suggests an interesting comparison with ... Ronald Reagan, whose 1981 tax cut was followed by no less than 16 months of rising unemployment.

O.K., time for some reality checks.

First of all,... unemployment is very high and still rising. That is, we’re not even experiencing the kind of growth that led to the big mistakes of 1937 and 1997. It’s way too soon to declare victory.

What about the claim that the Fed is risking inflation? It isn’t. Mr. Laffer seems panicked by a rapid rise in the monetary base... But a rising monetary base isn’t inflationary when you’re in a liquidity trap. America’s monetary base doubled between 1929 and 1939; prices fell 19 percent. Japan’s monetary base rose 85 percent between 1997 and 2003; deflation continued apace.

Well then, what about all that government borrowing? All it’s doing is offsetting a plunge in private borrowing — total borrowing is down, not up. Indeed, if the government weren’t running a big deficit right now, the economy would probably be well on its way to a full-fledged depression.

Oh, and investors’ growing confidence that we’ll manage to avoid a full-fledged depression — not the pressure of government borrowing — explains the recent rise in long-term interest rates. These rates, by the way, are still low by historical standards.

To sum up: A few months ago the U.S. economy was in danger of falling into depression. Aggressive monetary policy and deficit spending have, for the time being, averted that danger. And suddenly critics are demanding that we call the whole thing off, and revert to business as usual.

Those demands should be ignored. It’s much too soon to give up on policies that have, at most, pulled us a few inches back from the edge of the abyss.

"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.

Fed Watch: Rate Hike?

Tim Duy responds to talk of a rate hike:

Rate Hike?, by Tim Duy: Seriously, a rate hike in this environment?  Or anytime before the end of 2009?  At the moment, I just can't see it happening.  That said, long rate are higher, and inflation expectations in some corners of the market are rising.  What is going on?  My explanation for recent market action revolves around three themes:

1.)Financial Armageddon appears to have been avoided - at least for the moment.  The "all but explicit" implicit guarantee that no significant US financial institution will be allowed to fail established a return to financial stability.  And with that stability comes an end to the flight to safety that buoyed Treasury prices.  Something off a conundrum for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - cheap financing of the staggering US deficit appears to be dependent on financial instability.

2.)Recent inflation numbers are not exactly what I would call benign.  The trend in core PCE is not  deflationary:

I think deflation fears were always overblown - the current batch of monetary policymakers are simply dead set against such an outcome.  The deflation trade, like the flight to safety, needed to be priced out of Treasury's and TIPS.  The outcome:  Breakeven spreads are up sharply.

3.) The US, in aggregate, is borrowing less from the world than a year ago.  But make no mistake, we still rely on capital inflows to maintain a substantial US current account deficit.  Lacking a flight to safety, it is not clear that private investors are willing to support that deficit at 2.75%.  Or even 4%, for that matter.  That fact that foreign central banks are accumulating Dollars is proof positive that private investors don't want to do the job - and the transition in central bank purchases from the long end to the short end suggest that even they grow weary of this game.   Remember, the argument that "Japan ran a massive budget deficit so we can too" falls apart when you recognize that for decades Japan has been able to rely entirely on internal savings to finance the deficit.  My interpretation: The invisible hand (apologies to Gavin Kennedy) is still pushing for lower US consumption to bring the external accounts into better balance - and that means higher rates to maintain inflows while suppressing the pace of economic growth.  I understand this is in direct conflict with the output gap story; reconciling the two, I believe, requires an admission that the US economy is terribly structurally imbalanced internally.  We may have excess capacity, but not excess capacity to make anything anybody real wants.     

Where do Federal Reserve policymakers stand on recent dynamics?  Turning to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke:

Anna Schwartz: The Fed's Performance "Has been Disappointing"

I disagree with Anna Schwartz with respect to the Lehman Brothers bailout - she contends that the trouble started when the (ill-advised) rescue of Bear Stearns set up expectations that Lehman would be treated similarly - but if Bear Stearns or another large bank had been allowed to fail instead, I think we would have seen the same panic in financial markets. But as noted below, I don't disagree with all of her criticisms of the Fed:

Taking Stock: Lessons from History, MarketPlace [audio]: Kai Ryssdal: ...Anna Schwartz [is] 93 years old, an economist for more than 60 of them. Still working, every day, at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City. Her area of expertise is monetary policy... Specifically, she's an expert in how the Fed blew it during the Great Depression... When I sat down with her in her office..., she made it clear she's none too happy about all of Washington's bailouts, or how the Fed and the Treasury chose who got one and who didn't.

Schwartz: I think both Bush and the Obama administration have not been as hard headed with banks, it has been too lax. And instead if they had said if you cannot raise capital in the market, there is no reason for the government, the people of this country, to provide capital.

Ryssdal: OK, but wait a minute. Didn't we try that with Lehman Brothers last September? And there are people who will say that only made everything worse. ...

Schwartz: No, the trouble with the way the Fed operated when it rescued Bear Stearns, the market then believed this was a signal of the way the Federal Reserve would perform. If the Fed and the Treasury made a candid statement to the market: We will help a bank, which basically is solvent. We will not do that for a bank, which is on the verge of bankruptcy. And then the market understands there are principles. That's why when Lehman Brothers was permitted to fail, the market was simply bewildered. Because here you had treated Bear Stearns in this kindly fashion, and what reason was there not to do the same when Lehman Brothers arose?

Ryssdal: Now do you think the market has figured out what the policy of the federal government is toward these rescues by now? It's been six, seven months since Lehman Brothers.

Schwartz: The market is just bewildered. Bernanke came into office insisting that the Fed would be much more transparent... But I don't believe that it's lived up to that. If the market understood what the Fed was planning in each case, and could see a design, then I think the market would have reacted much more positively.

Ryssdal: It sounds like you're frustrated with Chairman Bernanke...

Schwartz: Well, I think that that's a fair statement. ...Bernanke's ... performance ...[s]eemed to be ... ad hoc and introduced without considering all the implications.

Ryssdal: You know, Alan Greenspan was lionized in this country for many years. And then a year ago went up to Capitol Hill and said, "You know what, I blew it." Does he get the appropriate amount of credit and/or blame for this whole thing?

Schwartz: Well, I think the verdict of history will be different with regard to his stature than it has been so far.

Ryssdal: In your mind, these toxic assets, the bad assets that these banks still have on their books, are they still a big problem or have they worked their way through the system now?

Schwartz: No, and I think the big shortcoming of the Obama administration, and Bush before that, was that it didn't make a concerted effort to get rid of these assets. I mean in a sense it's a condemnation of the Federal Reserve. They did not respond to securitization, which is the basic condition for the creation of these toxic assets. Neither Alan Greenspan or anybody else at the Fed seemed to be concerned.

Ryssdal: Securitization, that is the buying and selling of these packages of mortgages. There are those who will say it contributed a lot to the economic growth in this country. Do you buy that?

Schwartz: Well, I suppose the people who made money on it will say, Sure. But you have to be able to divine what you're letting yourself in for,... nobody took action to say, "Wait a minute. What are we doing when we are permitting these mortgage companies to issue these securities backed by a pool of mortgages of varying quality, and you don't know how to price the security?" Nobody raised that question.

Ryssdal: When an economic historian comes along in 25 or 30 years and tries to do for this episode what you and Professor Friedman did for the Great Depression, what's their verdict going to be...?

Schwartz: ...I don't know whether the verdict will be charitable. It's always possible to find reasons why other alternatives were not really available. But I think on the whole the performance has been disappointing. Because now two years and more after Bernanke came into office we don't see visible signs of change for the better.

For me, the failure to develop and quickly implement a plan for removing toxic assets from bank balance sheets has been the biggest policy failure. It's looking now like we may eventually get through this downturn without having ever put an effective toxic asset removal plan in place (though the administration claims they are still trying), and some contend that means we never needed a plan in the first place. But I disagree. We will never know the answer to this counterfactual, but I believe that if we has responded with a program quickly - a year an a half ago say and maybe even before that - I don't think the downturn would have been as severe. Yes, it's a hard problem to value these assets, but that's what made it essential to get it resolved - having assets on bank books that nobody wants anything to do with because their value is unknown is partly what has kept asset markets frozen (and banks that are allowed to overvalue these assets to appear solvent are in no hurry to get this resolved). Getting a toxic asset program in place quickly - even if it meant assuming some risk of losses by the government - would have made a difference.

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.

Bernanke: Current Economic and Financial Conditions and the Federal Budget

[A simulated interview based upon the speech Current economic and financial conditions and the federal budget, by Ben Bernanke, Chair, FRB (lightly edited - deletions only).]

Thanks for agreeing to this, I didn't think you would. Before turning to financial market conditions and the effects of the federal budget, the main topic today, let's start by getting your assessment and overview of the economy:

The U.S. economy has contracted sharply since last fall, with real gross domestic product (GDP) having dropped at an average annual rate of about 6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of this year. Among the enormous costs of the downturn is the loss of nearly 6 million jobs since the beginning of 2008. The most recent information on the labor market--the number of new and continuing claims for unemployment insurance through late May--suggests that sizable job losses and further increases in unemployment are likely over the next few months.

What about the "green shoots" you talked about not too long ago? Are they withering or growing?

Recent data suggest that the pace of economic contraction may be slowing. Notably, consumer spending, which dropped sharply in the second half of last year, has been roughly flat since the turn of the year, and consumer sentiment has improved. In coming months, households' spending power will be boosted by the fiscal stimulus program.

So does that mean household consumption is likely to improve soon?

A number of factors are likely to continue to weigh on consumer spending, among them the weak labor market, the declines in equity and housing wealth that households have experienced over the past two years, and still-tight credit conditions.

What about housing, how do you see things there?

"Thank Goodness for Independent Central Banks"

Kevin O’Rourke:

Angela Merkel has just given us a compelling reason to be grateful for central bank independence.

Karl Whelan comments:

Before this turns into a party for our loyal and dedicated Austrian following, let me whole-heartedly agree with Kevin. Ms. Merkel seems not to see the contradiction in her intervention calling for a “return to independent and sensible monetary policies”. Independent from whom?

Ms. Merkel condemns the combined judgement of Bernanke, King, and Trichet, presumably because her own advisers think they know better. For me, this conjures up visions of Mrs. Thatcher and Sir Alan Walters and all the other vagaries of politically controlled British monetary policy prior to 1997.

Thankfully, M. Trichet is genuinely independent and will continue to do as he sees best.

Now back to the Austrians …

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.

Fed Watch: A Return to a Nasty Dynamic?

Tim Duy:

A Return to a Nasty External Dynamic?, by Tim Duy: At the moment, the economic dynamic is exceedingly complicated. An understatement, I fear. The crosscurrents in the data and the markets are treacherous, and I suspect will have Fed officials scratching their heads. Hold steady with existing plans? Step up the liquidity provisions? More actively engage plans to tighten policy? The latter option seems almost inconceivable; for the moment, the debate will focus on the issue of further easing. At this point, I think the Fed will sit tight, allowing further easing to come from the already active TALF program, rather than expanding outright purchases of Treasuries.

The core issue is the steep rise in Treasury yields, which apparently were kept in check only by the expectation that the Fed would continued to gobble up the endless stream of securities issues by the US Treasury. The Fed sank that hypothesis at the last FOMC meeting, and a subsequent statement by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made clear that the Fed does not have a 3% target on 10 year Treasury yields. Since then, yields have climbed as high as 3.75% before prices rebounded today, bringing yields down to 3.61%. Should we be concerned with the gains?

Brad DeLong argued a few weeks ago that the Fed's reluctance to cap rates was a policy error in the making. Indeed, it would seem that rising yields are toxic for debt heavy balance sheets, especially where housing is concerned. Officials repeatedly point to the importance of supporting housing prices, a policy that would be undermined as rising Treasury yields boost mortgage rates higher. And while we have seen some stability in recent months in existing homes sales - of which foreclosures and distressed sales are no small part - the recent Case-Shiller data makes clear that housing markets remains under severe pricing pressure:

Home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas fell in March more than forecast as foreclosures surged, threatening to extend the housing slump.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.7 percent from March 2008, matching the drop in the year ended in February. The measure declined 19 percent in January, the most since data began in 2001.

In contrast is the view that rising yields signal an unambiguously positive environment in future months, a sentiment echoed by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner:

Geithner, 47, also said that the rise in yields on Treasury securities this year “is a sign that things are improving” and that “there is a little less acute concern about the depth of the recession.”

Likewise, Alan Blinder is confused by thoughts that the Fed would attempt to control yields at all:

Blinder said he’s “more dubious” about the Treasury purchases themselves. Any reduction in long-term rates makes it more difficult for U.S. banks to generate earnings to make up for what the Fed estimated earlier this month would be $600 billion in losses under adverse economic conditions. “It makes it harder for them to earn their way out,” he said.

So we are stuck with two apparently contrasting views. On one hand, rising long rates and the related steepening of the yield curve should indicate improving economic conditions - after all, rising yields simply imply that market participants are gaining confidence to put their money to work in more risky endeavors. The steeper yield curve should boost bank earnings and, in time, encourage lending. On the other hand, higher yields may undermine support for the housing market, thus extending the downturn. The Wall Street Journal believes the Fed is choosing the positive spin:

Federal Reserve officials believe the recent sharp rise in yields on U.S. Treasury bonds could reflect a mending economy and a receding risk of financial catastrophe, suggesting the central bank won't rush to react -- even though some investors see danger in the government's rising cost of borrowing.

The WSJ is most likely correct. Indeed, I too want to believe the first story; the steep yield curve should be a clear signal that economic activity is poised to soar. Two things are holding me back. First, the 10-2 spread went positive in mid-2007, which should have indicated that the expected Fed easing later that year would catch fire and the economy would be clear of recession territory by mid-2008. Oops - the signal was premature. Something was different (just as I had come to embrace the yield curve's signals). My second concern is that rising yields indicate capital is fleeing the US, and the shape of the yield curve is being influenced significantly by shifts in patterns of foreign central bank purchases. And while the resulting depreciation of the Dollar will support US growth over time, the transition can be very disruptive. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal story quoted above does not point to this possibility.

"Stay the Course"

Having made the same points about not pulling back on monetary and fiscal policy too soon, I can hardly disagree with this call to "avoid a replay of the policy disasters of 1936-37":

It’s No Time to Stop This Train, by Alan Blinder, Commentary, NY Times: Contrary to what you may have heard from some doomsayers, 2009 is not 1930 redux. ... But even if another depression is next to impossible, there is still the danger that next year, or the year after, might turn into 1936. Let me explain.

From its bottom in 1933 to 1936, the G.D.P. climbed spectacularly (albeit from a very low base), averaging gains of almost 11 percent a year. But then, both the Fed and the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt reversed course.

In the summer of 1936, the Fed looked at the large volume of excess reserves piled up in the banking system, concluded that this mountain of liquidity could be fodder for future inflation, and began to withdraw it. This tightening of monetary policy continued into 1937, in a weak economy that was ill-prepared for it.

About the same time, President Roosevelt looked at what seemed to be enormous federal budget deficits, concluded that it was time to put the nation’s fiscal house in order and started raising taxes and reducing spending. This tightening of fiscal policy transformed the federal budget... — a swing of four percentage points in a single year. (Today, a swing that large would be almost $600 billion.)

Thus, both monetary and fiscal policies did an abrupt about-face in 1936 and 1937, and the consequences were as predictable as they were tragic. The United States economy, which had been rapidly climbing out of the cellar from 1933 to 1936, was kicked rudely down the stairs again... The moral of the story should be clear: Prematurely changing fiscal and monetary policies ... can be hazardous to the economy’s health.

Wow, we’ve learned a lot since the ’30s, right? Well, maybe not. For the echoes of 1936 are being heard right now, even before the current recession hits bottom. If you’ve been paying attention, you know that a number of critics of the Fed are sounding alarms over the huge stockpile of excess reserves it has created... The clear inference is that some of it should be withdrawn before it’s too late.

On the fiscal side, many of President Obama’s critics are complaining vociferously about the huge federal budget deficits. Try to ignore, if you can, the sheer hypocrisy of many Congressional Republicans... But whatever the motives, the worries of today’s deficit hawks sound eerily reminiscent of Roosevelt in 1936 and 1937.

Fortunately, Mr. Bernanke is a keen student of the Great Depression who will not allow the Fed to repeat the errors of 1936-37. But his critics, both inside and outside the Fed, are already branding his policies as dangerously inflationary, and no Fed chairman wants to be called an inflationist.

Similarly, I hope and believe that President Obama will not transform himself from the spendthrift Roosevelt of 1933 to the deficit-hawk Roosevelt of 1936 — at least not until the economy is back on solid ground. That said, a growing flock of budget hawks are already showing their talons. They will have their day — but please, not yet. To avoid a replay of the policy disasters of 1936-37, both the Fed and our elected officials must stay the course. ...

We'll see. I'm not as sure as he is that the desire to get health care reform passed this fall won't dominate the need to maintain stimulative policies. One of the big objections to health care reform is how we will pay for it (a preliminary CBO estimate suggests it will cost a little over 1 trillion). Suppose the economy continues to stay recessed and the choice becomes health care reform verus another stimulus package. What will be chosen? What should be chosen? (The answer is that one shouldn't be traded against the other, we should do both since they deal with different problems. One problem is to stabilize the economy in the short-run. The other is to provide health care universally and at the same time rein in health care costs to bring the budget into balance in the longer run. While each stands on its own merits, the politics would be unlikely to allow us to do both, and I'm guessing health care reform will be the administration's first priority.)

Fed Watch: Not So Green Wednesday

Tim Duy says "the green shoots story has been overplayed," and the Fed - despite its worries about inflation - is likely to pursue additional easing:

Not So Green Wednesday, by Tim Duy: Federal Reserve policymakers are working overtime to temper expectations of additional quantitative easing. From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve considers the recent jump in Treasury yields more as a reflection of a better economic outlook than a signal it needs to step up purchases of U.S. government debt, according to central bank officials who declined to be identified.

This follows Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's efforts to discredit the idea that 3% is a magic number:

The move above 3% isn’t fundamentally important, [Bernanke] suggested. “We are not targeting a particular interest rate” with the long term Treasury note purchase program, he said.

The confusion over the Fed's policy intentions stems from the now familiar conflict between what the Fed defines as "credit easing" and what market participants define as "quantitative easing." The latter requires some quantitative goal, something the Fed acknowledges. But no such target has been defined, nor has the Fed committed to a 3% rate. This is something of a failure of Fed communications - they cannot adequately define their policy intentions to a group of market participants yearning for the simple target rates they have come to expect. But committing to a rate target would rob policymakers of a signal that the economy was improving. Former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley:

The situation poses a “dilemma” for the Fed, because if the rise in yields reflects “erroneous market views” about the economy, it will hold back growth, said former Fed Governor Lyle Gramley. “The Fed is probably scratching its head at the moment and will wait and not react until the smoke clears,” said Gramley, who is now a senior economic adviser with New York-based Soleil Securities Corp.

And no doubt there is still plenty of smoke. So much, in fact, that practitioners are extremely at odds over what signal we should get from the Taylor Rule. From Bloomberg:

Fed Watch: Turning Which Corner?

Tim Duy:

Turning Which Corner, by Tim Duy: Is the economy turning a corner? And, if so, which corner is it turning? In my view, economic activity has been influenced by two separate trends since 2007. One is the structural response to an over-leveraged household sector that pushed the US economy into what was initially a mild recession. The second trend is the sharp cyclical recession that began in earnest in the second half of 2008 as the commodity price shock decimated already weakened households and the deepening credit crunch cut financing for a broad swath of firms. Excess capacity emerged throughout the economy, triggering the familiar phenomenon of rising unemployment. Difficult though they may be, the cyclical dynamics do not last indefinitely - generally speaking, output declines stop well short of zero GDP and unemployment will not rise to 100%. Market participants are rightly anticipating the economy is turning the corner on the cyclical trend. But I suspect we have a long path ahead of us on the structural challenge poised by overleveraged households - suggesting that the green shoots we hear so much about will yield little more than stunted growth. This is why Bernanke and Co. are more likely to fertilize the fields than plan for the next harvest.

If there is one picture that sums up the cyclical story of the past year, it is the path of real consumption:

The "Apparent Abdication of Responsibility"

Tyler Cowen says congress is letting others take the responsibility - and the potential blame - for decisions it ought to be making:

There’s Work to Be Done, but Congress Opts Out, by Tyler Cowen, Economic View, NY Times: The longer the financial crisis runs, the more policy makers at the Treasury, the White House and the Federal Reserve are working around Congress rather than with it. It’s not that anyone is behaving illegally or unconstitutionally, but rather that Congress seems to want to be circumvented and to delegate more power to the executive branch as well as to the Fed, at least temporarily.

While Congressional leaders are consulted on the major policies, Congress is keeping its distance, perhaps to minimize voter outrage. This way, Congress can claim credit if a recovery comes, but deny responsibility if the price tag ends up higher than advertised or if banks seem to be receiving unfair benefits from the government.

Trillions of dollars of financial commitments have been made without explicit Congressional approval. ... The traditional division of labor among policy makers was that the Fed determined the quantity of money in the economy — it set monetary policy — and Congress decided precise government expenditures — it handled fiscal policy. These new programs blur that distinction and, in essence, the Fed is running some fiscal policy. ... A full description of important financial policies handled outside of Congress would more than fill this column and would add up to trillions of dollars in potential commitments and guarantees.

Many economists are happy to see technocrats play such a big role in the current emergency in the belief that the Obama administration and the Fed have more economic expertise — and more incentives to care about policy at the national level — than Congress does. But if that is true, we should be nervous about the future. A Congress that won’t accept much responsibility for the financial bailouts, for example, is unlikely to rise to the occasion when the time comes to make tough decisions on the budget. ...

Both Democrats and Republicans are at fault for this apparent abdication of responsibility. The Republicans are focused on blaming the Democrats for bailouts, since they know the policies can go through without their support. The Democrats want to enjoy the benefits of making commitments and guarantees without accepting accountability or responsibility for them.

It's a common theme in American history that crises expand the power of the executive branch of government, and that is part of what is happening here. Even the Federal Reserve, which ... is supposed to be quasi-independent, has ceded much of its power to the Treasury. ... Just as the Bush administration brought a growth of executive power in foreign policy and surveillance, so executive power has grown when it comes to economic policy; that development spans the administrations of both Mr. Obama and George W. Bush.

On any single policy, the abdication of Congressional responsibility may not be a problem. Sometimes it is good to let the technocrats have their way. In the longer run, though, the United States requires a Congress courageous enough to accept responsibility for potentially unpopular policies. We are moving further away from that every day.

Fed Watch: Despite Green Shoots, Odds Favor More Easing

Tim Duy:

Despite Green Shoots, Odds Favor More Easing, by Tim Duy: The Fed took an interesting risk by holding policy steady on Wednesday.With green shoots all the rage, policymakers are ready to step to the sidelines as they monitor the progress of their many programs.And clearly, they must have known that the 3% level on 10-year Treasuries was dependent on the expectation that policymakers would expand the pace of outright purchases of those assets, but are betting that economic conditions will remain sufficiently weak to prevent a crippling increase in rates. Still, given that policymakers still see the economy in decline, albeit at a slower rate, the odds favor additional easing in the months ahead, especially considering expectations of a widening output gap. Recall that labor markets, and the threat of deflation, kept the Fed easing well past the end of the recession in 2001.

Short of an outbreak of inflation, or a unexpected and unlikely surge of growth, there is little reason to think that the Fed is ready to bring policy to a sustained pause. And an imminent rise in inflation remains an outside risk for the Fed; the focus remains consistently on disinflation or, worse yet, outright deflation.  A key paragraph is:

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.

FOMC Press Release

The Fed released this statement after its meeting today. They note the economy has "improved modestly," and the plan is to continue the policies outlined after their last meeting:

"Libertarian Dogma and the Fed"

Henry Kaufman:

How libertarian dogma led the Fed astray, by Henry Kaufman, Commentary, Financial Times: The Federal Reserve has been hobbled by ... major shortcomings that were primarily responsible for the current and several previous credit crises.

...My second major concern ... is the Fed’s prevailing economic libertarianism. At the heart of this economic dogma is the belief that markets know best and that those who compete well will prosper, while those who do not will fail.

How did this affect the Fed’s actions and behaviour? First, it explains to a large extent why the Fed did not strongly oppose the removal of Glass-Steagall restrictions. Second, it also helps explain why the Fed failed to recognise that abandoning Glass-Steagall created more institutions that were “too big to fail”.

Third, it diminished the supervisory role of the Fed... [The] Fed’s ... tilt toward an economic libertarian approach pushed supervision a notch down just at a time when financial market complexity was on the rise.

Fourth, as hands-on supervision slackened, quantitative risk modelling became increasingly acceptable. This approach ... was far from adequate. But it worked hand in glove with a philosophy that markets knew best.

Fifth, adherence to economic libertarianism inhibited the Fed from using the bully pulpit or moral suasion to constrain market excesses. It is difficult to believe that recourse to moral suasion by a Fed chairman would be ineffective. ...

Sixth, the Fed’s increasingly libertarian philosophy underpinned its view that it could not know how to recognise a credit bubble but knew what to do once a bubble burst. This is a philosophy plagued with fallacies. ...

By guiding monetary policy in a libertarian direction, the Fed played a central role in creating a financial environment defined by excessive credit growth and unrestrained profit seeking. ... At a minimum, the Fed’s sensitivity to financial excesses must be improved.

Fed Watch: TALF Disappointment and the Fed's Balance Sheet

Tim Duy says the Fed is likely to step up its purchases of long-term sucurities:

TALF Disappointment and the Fed's Balance Sheet, by Tim Duy: Mark Thoma directs us to a Washington Post article detailing the slow start-up of the Federal Reserve's much discussed but little used TALF program. At this juncture, a critical constraint appears to be counterparty risk - no one trusts the US government to hold parties to their contractual obligations:

Sources involved in the program said private investors have been reluctant to work with the government, which they view as an unreliable business partner. ... There are restrictions on the business activities of participants in the program. ... But perhaps more significant ... is a fear that the government could retroactively change the terms, exacting new limits on what investors can pay their executives, for example, or trying to claw back profits that firms make in the program. ...

Perhaps TALF will gain traction in the months ahead. For now, however, I imagine that no amount of lipstick is able to conceal what must be official disappointment with the program. The question on my mind is will slow take up on TALF induce the Federal Reserve to step up its purchases of mortgage assets and longer term Treasuries. From the last Fed minutes:

"Depression Lurks Unless There’s More Stimulus"

Robert Shiller says we need to continue with the monetary and fiscal policies we are pursuing, but both efforts need to be larger:

Depression Lurks Unless There’s More Stimulus, by Robert Shiller, Commentary, Bloomberg: In the Great Depression ... the U.S. government had a great deal of trouble maintaining its commitment to economic stimulus. “Pump- priming” was talked about and tried, but not consistently. The Depression could have been mostly prevented, but wasn’t. ...

In the face of a similar Depression-era psychology today, we are in need of massive pump-priming again. We appear to be in a much better situation due to the stronger efforts to date. Still, there is a danger that, because of a combination of faulty economic theory and inadequate appreciation of human psychology, as well as deep public anger, we will not continue with such stimulus on a high enough level. ...

In our analysis of the current economic crisis, we conclude that the government should have two targets. One would be a joint fiscal-monetary policy target. The same kind of expansionary policies embodied in the government expenditure stimulus and tax cuts that are already being tried have to be done on a big enough scale and for a long enough time in the future. ...

The government should also have a credit target. Once again, we are calling for more of the same kinds of existing policies... Achieving this requires new approaches, like those announced by the Bernanke Fed and the Obama administration, but on a continuing and even larger scale. ...

In this crisis, acceptance of these measures is being replaced with outrage. It is increasing the blood pressure of the public, and that can’t continue without damage to our system. ... It is time to face up to what needs to be done. The sticker shock involved will be large, but the costs in terms of lost output of not meeting either the credit target or the aggregate demand target will be yet larger.

It would be a shame if we are so overwhelmed by anger at the unfairness of it all that we do not take the positive measures needed to restore us to full employment. That would not just be unfair to the U.S. taxpayer. That would be unfair to those who are living in Hoovervilles...; it would be unfair to those who are being evicted from their homes, and can’t find new ones because they can’t find jobs. That would be unfair to those who have to drop out of school because they, or their parents, can’t find jobs.

It is now time to keep our eye on the ball and set clear targets to fix a system that broke when our animal spirits got out of bounds.

The Need to Monitor and Regulate Risk

I'm participating in this week's TPMCafe Bookclub:

Liaquat Ahamed joins us this week at Book Club for a discussion of Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World. An economic history of the liquidity crisis from 1914 through the Great Depression, Ahamed focuses on four central bankers and their larger-than-life personalities: Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lords of Finance details the four men's attempts to return the economy to the gold standard - and how a series of bad decisions brought the four major banks (and their respective economies) to the brink of collapse. ...

Joining the discussion are James Galbraith,... of ... the University of Texas at Austin; Sidney Blumenthal, former aide to President Clinton and Senior Fellow for the New York University Center on Law and Security; Julian Zelizer, Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University; Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City; Mark Thoma, Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon; and Nathan Newman, Policy Director for the Progressive Legislative Action Network.

Here's my first entry:

The Need to Monitor and Regulate Risk: At the end of his introductory essay, Liaquat Ahamed asks two questions. One is:

...has the structure of the economy changed so much ... that the traditional instruments of policy we thought we could rely on to jumpstart the economy will no longer work?

New approaches are required, but it's not so much the nature of the economy that has changed, it's that we forgot or never fully learned the lessons of the Great Depression.

One of the lessons of the Great Depression should have been that the financial authorities need to monitor and regulate excessive build-ups of systemic risk. In addition, once a crash occurs and fear is one of the main factors that is causing markets to freeze up, financial authorities need to know how to quickly reduce risk - they need some means of removing the questionable assets from the market place - and this must be done in a politically palatable, least cost manner.

The Fed can manage risk in two ways, through regulation and through the buying and selling of financial assets. For example, the Fed can use regulation to prevent firms from holding some types of risky assets, or to limit the amounts they can hold, and it can use things such as margin requirements to help to control leverage. Through open market operations, the Fed can trade safe assets such as Treasury Bills for risky assets, and in the process change the proportion of risky to non-risky assets held on the balance sheets of the public and private sectors.

I think policymakers failed on two counts. ...[...continue reading...] [Full discussion]

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: More on Inflation Expectations

Tim Duy looks at the strength of the Fed's commitment to its inflation target, and its ability to hit the target that it sets:

More on Inflation Expectations, by Tim Duy: Thinking about the issues raised in my piece last week, it is worthwhile to spend more time on actual inflation and inflation expectations within the context of the Fed's policy of "credit easing." Consider as a starting point the recent work by John Williamson at the San Francisco Fed who concludes:

This analysis highlights the central roles of economic slack and inflation expectations in the risk of deflation over the next several years. The evidence indicates that a substantial increase in slack can lead to deflation, but the depth and duration of the deflation depends on how well anchored inflation expectations are. Two policy implications can be drawn from this and other research on deflation. First, a central bank should take appropriate actions to stem the emergence of substantial slack in the economy and thereby reduce the risk of deflation. Second, it should clearly communicate its commitment to low positive rates of inflation. An example of such communication is the Federal Open Market Committee's recently released long-run inflation forecasts. Such words, backed by appropriate actions, reinforce the anchoring of inflation expectations and reduce the chances of a deflationary spiral.

Conventional wisdom of the Fed's policy describes quantitative easing as an effort to boost inflation expectations. This flows from the fact that the Fed Funds rate is at zero, therefore a further decrease in the real rate can only be achieved by boosting inflation expectations. To me, however, the Fed has not committed to a program of raising inflation expectations. Instead, they are reiterating their existing commitment to a low, stable rate of inflation. Consider the most recent FOMC statement:

Are the Economy’s ‘Green Shoots,’ Real or Imagined?

Is recovery just around the corner?:

Room for Debate, NY Times Blog: Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he is seeing “green shoots” showing up in the economic landscape, “as some confidence begins to come back.” ... The latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds that Americans are more optimistic about the economy and the direction of the country than they were in January. ...

Is there reason to believe that Mr. Bernanke’s view is not wishful thinking?

• Hopeful Glimmers, But Not Enough, by Mark Thoma
• We haven't Seen the Worse, by Tyler Cowen
• In a Desert, Anything Looks Like New Growth, by Roger Altman
• Kicking Our Addiction, by Charles Lewis
• Repress Compulsive Optimism, by James Galbraith

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.

Lessons from the New Deal

The Senate committee for Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing today on "Lessons from the New Deal":

Panel 1

• Honorable Christina Romer
  Chair, Council of Economic Advisors

Panel 2

• Dr. James K. Galbraith
  Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair
  Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin
• Dr. J. Bradford DeLong
  Professor of Economics
  University of California Berkeley
• Dr. Allan M. Winkler
  Professor of History
  Miami (Ohio) University
• Dr. Lee E. Ohanian
  Professor
  University of California, Los Angeles

Here's the video:

View archive webcast (starts at the 29:00 minute mark)

Fed Watch: The Fed Understands

Tim Duy on the risks to the Fed's independence, and on whether the Fed's insistence that some actions be conducted in secret "damages the democratic process":

The Fed Understands, by Tim Duy: Willem Buiter (via Yves Smith) argues that the Fed's actions over the past eighteen months has placed its independence at risk:

Without a firm guarantee up front that the Federal government will fully re-capitalize the Fed for losses suffered as a result of the Fed’s exposure to private credit risk, the Fed will have to go cap-in-hand to the US Treasury to beg for resources. Even if it gets the resources, there is likely to be a price tag attached – that is, a commitment to pursue the monetary policy desired by the US Treasury, not the monetary policy deemed most appropriate by the Fed.

Butier's tone suggests that the Fed is not aware of these risks. But I think the opposite is very much the case - the Fed is agonizing over this issue.  See the Fed-Treasury accord that was issued earlier this week; it is a clear effort on the part of the Fed to firmly establish its independence.  Note also that some policymakers have made clear their concerns about mixing monetary and fiscal policy.  Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker hit on the point this week:

Fed Watch: Looking for a Bottom

Are we about to reach bottom? If and when we do, will we bounce back upward and recover, or will we bounce along the bottom in a series of fits and starts as the economy stagnates at a sub-par equilibrium?

Tim Duy:

Looking For a Bottom, by Tim Duy: Given the length and depth of the current recession, it is natural for analysts to start looking for a bottom.  In such an environment, bad news will be ignored while the seemingly good news is overblown.  For example, the most recent initial unemployment claims report indicates that labor markets continue to deteriorate; we have yet to see a turning point consistent with improved conditions.  Likewise, the durable goods report was heralded as a positive sign, but the jump in this volatile series needs to be taken in context of the severe drop the previous month.  The chart of nonair/nondefense new orders is not particularly encouraging: 

That said, things will eventually get less worse, if only because some sectors, such as new residential housing, will hit a bottom.  And that bottom is not likely to be zero, and, I suspect, that bottom will be late this year or, at worst, early next year.  That should not, however, be confused with an optimistic outlook, as the durability and strength of the eventual recovery is in doubt.  I am confident that the economy will not spiral downward endlessly; I am more worried that the we will be left at a suboptimal equilibrium chiefly characterized by low growth and persistently high unemployment.

Calvo: We Need a Global Lender of Last Resort

Guillermo Calvo argues that we need to establish a global lender of last resort (see also "Central Authority Necessary" and Brad DeLong's "We Need a Hegemon Who Won't Drive Us Crazy..."):

Lender of last resort: Put it on the agenda!, by Guillermo Calvo, Vox EU: The subprime crisis is a massive failure of the shadow banking system that has affected all corners of the capital market and triggered worldwide deleveraging. We are in a severe credit crunch. Savers distrust private-sector dissavers, which gives rise to a fall in aggregate demand and a search for safe assets (“flight to quality”).

Therefore, the first priority should be to increase credit to the private sector. The trouble is that the process of deleveraging – partly explained by the virtual disappearance of investment banks – induces banks to lower their risk exposure. This is evident in the failure to produce noticeable credit expansion, despite bank recapitalisation and the US Federal Reserve’s absorption of commercial paper. Moreover, the credit crunch depresses asset prices and further discourages credit expansion, launching the economy into a vicious cycle.

Fiscal stimulus packages are second-best. These packages can help restore liquidity in the private sector and consequently increase capacity utilisation and employment. But rapid effects are unlikely, because output is credit-constrained and liquidity accumulation is time-consuming. Thus, solutions should aim directly at restoring credit availability.

Fed Watch: Fed-Treasury Accord

Tim Duy on the Fed's efforts to maintain its independence:

Fed Treasury Accord, by Tim Duy: The Fed and Treasury released a joint statement yesterday afternoon that was lost amid the official release of the Geithner Plan (hat tip Across the Curve).  Clearly, it reveals the concerns of the Federal Reserve that its expansive role in the crisis will eventually threaten monetary independence, and thus wants that right/privilege reasserted:

The Federal Reserve's independence with regard to monetary policy is critical for ensuring that monetary policy decisions are made with regard only to the long-term economic welfare of the nation.

The need for such a statement was heightened by last week's FOMC decision to expand the balance sheet via outright purchases of Treasury securities (in addition to mortgage backed securities).  Considering the massive amount of red ink fiscal authorities are expected to spill for the foreseeable future, the Fed's action could be interpreted as the first salvo in a campaign to monetize deficit spending. I do not believe that this is the interpretation the Fed intends.   Indeed, I believe this is one reason the Fed has shied away from the term "quantitative easing."  Note Bernanke & Co. always place the expansion of the balance sheet in terms of the improving the functioning of private capital markets. See Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech last Friday:

These purchases are intended to improve conditions in private credit markets. In particular, they are helping to reduce the interest rates that the GSEs require on the mortgages that they purchase or securitize, thereby lowering the rate at which lenders, including community banks, can fund new mortgages.

The stated intent is not supporting fiscal stimulus, creating inflationary expectations, nor even fighting deflation.  The Fed expects they will withdraw their extraordinary liquidity operations when financial conditions stabilize (see Monday's Wall Street Journal).  They expect they will have the political freedom to do so; but the deeper they delve into financial markets, the more politicized their activities become. 

The broad points, with my comments:

"The Judgments of the Market are True and Righteous Altogether"

Christopher Carroll with an evidence based rebuttal to the "risk-is-holy view" advocating a free market, hands off approach to the financial crisis, and a call for the Fed to do what it always does in a crisis, manage the price of risk (which means going beyond measures such as the purchase of long-term government securities and taking risky assets onto the Fed's balance sheet):

Punter of last resort, Christopher D. Carroll, Vox EU: The financial meltdown that shifted into high gear last September has flushed into public view many surprising facts. One of the strangest is the existence, in the economics profession, of a bizarre religious cult. This cult adheres to the dogma that the “price of risk” is the Holy of Holies that can properly be set only by the immaculate invisible hand of the financial marketplace; and cult members seem to believe, to paraphrase President Lincoln from a rather different context, that “If the Market wills that the economic crisis continue until every dollar of economic activity created by the taking of risk shall be repaid by another dollar destroyed by a newfound fear of risk, so it still must be said that the judgments of the Market are true and righteous altogether.”

The deep origins of the cult, as always, are obscure; presumably they lie properly in the field of psychoanalysis. But to the extent that overt origins can be traced, the wellspring is the literature that attempts to explain the Mehra and Prescott (1985) ‘equity premium puzzle.’ The ‘puzzle,’ in a nutshell, is that asset prices have not, historically, exhibited a relationship between risk and return that is easy to reconcile with the rational behavior of a representative agent facing perfect markets. Many of the responses to this challenge start with the assumption that asset prices must be always and everywhere rational, and then proceed to work out the kind of preferences or environment that can rationalize observed prices. This game brings to mind Joan Robinson’s comment that “utility maximization is a metaphysical concept of impregnable circularity,” and Larry Summers’s remark (quoted by Robert Waldmann) that the day when economists first started to think that asset prices should be explained by the characteristics of a representative agent’s utility function was not a particularly good day for economic science. Oddly, even the failure of this literature to produce a widely agreed solution to the ‘puzzle’ does not seem to have weakened participants’ belief in the soundness of the intellectual framework within which asset prices are a puzzle.

Nor does the assumption that asset prices are always and everywhere perfect reflect the actual past practice of economic policymaking during crises. As DeLong (2008) has recently reminded those of us who are susceptible to the lessons of history (see also Kindleberger (2005)), the “lender of last resort” role of the central bank has always been, during a panic, to short-circuit the catastrophic economic effects of a collapse of financial confidence (in today’s terminology, ‘an increase in the price of risk’).¹

Some economists, of course, view narrative history in the DeLong and Kindleberger mode as irrelevant to the practice of their science; they prefer hard numbers to mere narrative. For the numerically inclined, however, Figures 1a and 1b should be persuasive; they show that controlling a market price of risk is something the Federal Reserve has done since it first opened up shop. The top figure depicts a measure of what we are now pleased to call the ‘risk-free’ rate of interest in the United States – essentially, the shortest-term interbank lending rate for which data are available (on a consistent basis) from before and after the founding of the Fed.² Figure 1b shows the month-to-month changes in this interest rate. The only reason this rate is now viewed as ‘risk-free’ is that the Fed takes away the risk.³

Figure 1a

Figure 1b

Do the advocates of the risk-is-holy view really believe that we were better off in a real free-market era when interbank rates could move from 4 percent to 60 percent from one month to the next (as happened in 1873)? And how long do they think such a system would last? It was, after all, the intolerable stresses caused by financial panics that ultimately led to the founding of the Federal Reserve, in the face of adamant opposition from people holding financial-markets-are-perfect, believe-me-not-your-lying-eyes views that are eerily similar to dogmas that continue to be propounded today. The panic of 1907, in which J.P. Morgan effectively stepped in as a private lender of last resort, constituted the last straw for the unregulated financial system that preceded the managing of risky rates that we have had since the creation of the Fed.

A less extreme version of essentially the same dogma states that while it is acceptable for the central bank to suppress the aggregate risk that would otherwise roil short-term interest rates, the Fed should ignore all other manifestations of financial risk. It is, if anything, harder to construct a coherent economic justification of this point of view than of the strict destructionist view that says the Fed should not exist at all. But there is, at least, a perception that this way of operating is hallowed by time and practice: Since the Fed, the story goes, has spent most of its history ignoring risk, it shouldn’t change that now.

But even this milder dogma does not match the facts. Recent work by Robert Barbera, Charles Weise, and David Krisch,⁴ shows that over the “Taylor Rule” era of systematic monetary policy (roughly since 1984), the Federal Reserve’s choice of the short run interest rate has been powerfully correlated to market-based measures of risk such as the difference between the interest rates on corporate bonds and corresponding maturity Treasuries. When risk has been high, the Fed has felt the need to stimulate the economy by cutting short-term rates, and vice-versa.

Given the Fed’s pattern of past responses to risk and economic conditions (as embodied in risk-augmented Taylor rules), the implied value of the short term interest rate right now should be somewhere below negative 3.3 percent (actually even lower, since these projections do not reflect the dire recent news). Since interest rates cannot go below zero, the Fed must do something else to boost the economy. The obvious answer is to do everything possible to rekindle the appetite for risk – even if that means taking some of that risk onto the Fed’s balance sheet. This could be accomplished under some interpretations of the still-evolving Term Asset Lending Facility and has already happened in the case of some other, bolder, Fed actions that have been properly viewed as necessary to prevent financial collapse (Bear Stearns; the takeover of the commercial paper market). How much to buy, and which assets to buy, and how to minimize the political risks, are all difficult questions. But the danger of doing too little is far greater, at present, than the danger of doing too much.

The voices that say the Fed should do nothing at all, or nothing beyond perhaps some purchases of longer-dated Treasury securities, are not the voices of reason; they represent a howling dogma that was discredited in 1844 (when the Bank of England received its first implicit authority to intervene during panics; see DeLong (2008)), was discredited again in the panic of 1907, and again during the Great Depression (by being adopted in an extreme form), and is in the process of being discredited yet again today. (In fairness, during ordinary times it is probably wise for the authorities to avoid attempting systematic manipulation of the price of risk, for all the reasons Kindleberger (2005) and Robert Peel (1844) articulated. But this is no ordinary time).

Let’s put it this way: Simple calculations show that the current price of risk as measured by corporate bond spreads amounts to a forecast that about 40 percent of corporate America will be in bond default in the near future.⁵ The only circumstance under which this is remotely plausible is if government officials turn these dire forecasts into a self-fulfilling prophecy by failing to intervene forcefully in a way that quells the existential terror currently afflicting the markets. While I realize that some economists (and some politicians) might be willing even to undergo another Great Depression as the steep price of clinging to their faith, those of us who do not share that faith should not have to suffer such appalling consequences.

As the Economist magazine might put it, the problem is that the ‘punters’ (investors) who normally populate the financial marketplace and risk their fortunes for the prospect of return, have fled from the field in terror. Back when the financial system was almost entirely based on banks, the solution to such a problem was that the Federal Reserve would act as the ‘lender of last resort’ to quell the panic. In the new financial system where banks are a much smaller share of the financial marketplace than they once were, the Fed’s appropriate new role seems clear: It needs to intervene more broadly than before, in public markets (as has already been done for the commercial paper market) as well as for banks; it needs, in other words, to step up to the plate and become the punter of last resort.

References

FOMC: "Economic Conditions are Likely to Warrant Exceptionally Low Levels of the Federal Funds Rate for an Extended Period"

The news in this press release from the FOMC is the plan to purchase "up to an additional $750 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities," to buy "up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months" and other moves such as "increased purchases of agency debt this year by up to $100 billion" designed to bring down long-term interest rates:

"Grading Obama on the Economy"

I was asked about the grade of "F" the WSJ gave to the economic policies of Obama and Geithner:

Grading Obama on the economy, by Mark Thoma, Comment is Free, UK Guardian: Obama hasn't received high marks for his handling of the financial crisis. Does he deserve a failing grade?

The Obama administration's economic policies received a low average rating from 54 economists participating in a recent poll appearing in the Wall Street Journal, low enough to allow the paper to award an "F" grade to the president and US Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner. (Ben Bernanke fared a bit better.)

However, there was considerable variation across the 54 responses, perhaps because the question was too broad. In particular, when assessing the administration's policy successes or failures to date, it's important to separate the stimulus package from the bailout package, and to separate the economics from the politics.

Though they are often confused, the stimulus package is intended to jump-start the economy and is largely independent of Geithner and the Treasury, while the bailout policies are directed at repairing the financial sector and are, to a large extent, a direct product of the Treasury's efforts.

The economic policies underlying the stimulus package do not, in my opinion, deserve a failing grade, or anything close to that. The policies the administration would have liked to have implemented were based upon solid principles. But I was disappointed with the actual legislation.

The problem was the politics, not the economics. The administration did not get out in front and dominate the political message. Instead, the framing was left to the opposition, and that forced compromises in the stimulus legislation that limited its potential effectiveness, perhaps to the point of falling below the critical threshold needed to get the economy moving.

For example, the bill that actually emerged slanted too much toward tax cuts that are likely to be saved rather than spent, thus reducing the impact on aggregate demand. There was not enough help for state and local governments, and there was not enough help for struggling households who have taken big balance sheet and employment hits as the crisis has unfolded. So while I would give the policy design decent marks, the actual implementation has fallen short, largely due to a tendency to compromise instead of taking control of the political battlefield.

The financial bailout suffers from a similar problem, but here the economics have been problematic as well. The plan has been slow to develop, and does not seem to recognise the nature of the problem. However, this may be due to fear of the politics associated with nationalisation rather than a lack of understanding of the problem and then potential solutions to it. Or it could be from a genuine belief that nationalisation ought to be a last resort.

But all of the false steps, the hesitation, the lack of a firm commitment to a particular course of action look to me like they have been driven by a desire to find some way, any way, of avoiding the political consequences of doing what they know needs to be done in their heart of hearts: take temporary control of the banks, separate the good assets from the bad, recapitalise the banks as necessary, then sell the reconstituted banks back to the private sector.

But instead of leading the political argument, they have allowed the opposition to dominate the political landscape and that has forced the administration's hand in terms of the policies they are able to pursue. In the case of the financial sector, it's time to stop hoping that muddling along until the economy recovers will somehow solve the problem, and to get out in front and lead. As for the stimulus package, the message is the same. Given that the first package may not be enough due to the lack of a proper political foundation, and therefore that a second round may be needed, it would be helpful to begin paving the political path forward here as well.

Bernanke on 60 Minutes

[Ben Bernanke's Greatest Challenge]

Greenspan: The Fed Didn't Do It

Alan Greenspan takes on John Taylor's claim that the Fed caused the housing bubble, and he warns against "micromanagement by government" regulators. Greenspan says the Fed couldn't have caused the housing bubble because it lost control over long-term interest rates once financial markets became globalized, and those were the rates that caused the problem:

The Fed Didn't Cause the Housing Bubble, by Alan Greenspan, Commentary, WSJ: ...The Federal Reserve became acutely aware of the disconnect between monetary policy and mortgage rates when the latter failed to respond as expected to the Fed tightening in mid-2004. Moreover, the data show that home mortgage rates had become gradually decoupled from monetary policy even earlier...

[T]he presumptive cause of the world-wide decline in long-term rates was the ... surge in growth in China and a large number of other emerging market economies that led to an excess of global ... savings... That ... propelled global long-term interest rates progressively lower between early 2000 and 2005.

That decline in long-term interest rates across a wide spectrum of countries statistically explains, and is the most likely major cause of ... the global housing price bubble. ... I would have thought that ... such evidence would lead to wide support for ... a global explanation of the current crisis.

However, starting in mid-2007, history began to be rewritten, in large part by ... John Taylor... Mr. Taylor unequivocally claimed that had the Federal Reserve from 2003-2005 kept short-term interest rates at the levels implied by his "Taylor Rule," "it would have prevented this housing boom and bust." This notion has ... taken on the aura of conventional wisdom.

Aside from the inappropriate use of short-term rates to explain the value of long-term assets, his statistical ... analysis carries empirical relationships of earlier decades into the most recent period where they no longer apply.

Moreover,... the "Taylor Rule" ... parameters and predictions derive from model structures that have been consistently unable to anticipate the onset of recessions or financial crises. Counterfactuals from such flawed structures cannot form the sole basis for successful policy analysis or advice, with or without the benefit of hindsight. Given the decoupling of monetary policy from long-term mortgage rates,... the Fed ... could not have "prevented" the housing bubble. ...

It is now very clear that the levels of complexity to which market practitioners at the height of their euphoria tried to push risk-management techniques and products were too much for even the most sophisticated market players to handle properly and prudently.

However, the appropriate policy response is not ... heavy regulation. That would stifle important advances in finance that enhance standards of living. ... The solutions for the financial-market failures ... are higher capital requirements and a wider prosecution of fraud -- not increased micromanagement by government entities. ... Adequate capital and collateral requirements ... will not be overly intrusive, and thus will not interfere unduly in private-sector business decisions.

If we are to retain a dynamic world economy capable of producing prosperity and future sustainable growth, we cannot rely on governments to intermediate saving and investment flows. Our challenge in the months ahead will be to install a regulatory regime that will ensure responsible risk management..., while encouraging them to continue taking the risks necessary and inherent in any successful market economy.

We seem to have a disagreement on the scope of regulation. Ben Bernanke:

Bernanke Calls for Broader Regulations, WSJ: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said regulators should be given broad new powers to oversee financial markets... Among his recommendations were tougher capital requirements for big banks, limits on investments by money-market mutual funds, and the introduction of some mechanism that would allow the U.S. to wind down big financial institutions and possibly run them temporarily. ...

The recommendations were largely consistent with measures being pushed by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.), who is expected to be a key architect of the new financial regulation. ...

Mr. Bernanke ... also pushed for much tougher policies over ... big companies. "Any firm whose failure would pose a systemic risk must receive especially close supervisory oversight of its risk-taking, risk management and financial condition, and be held to high capital and liquidity standards," Mr. Bernanke said. ...

I'm in agreement with Greenspan's response to Taylor to the extent that following the Taylor rule wouldn't have stopped the crisis, but I think the low interest rate policy pursued by the Fed is part of the story and served to magnify other factors. As for regulation, relying mainly upon enhanced capital requirements as Greenspan proposes isn't enough, so I'm at least where Bernanke with respect to close supervisory oversight of firms who pose a systemic risk. But I'd go even further and - to the extent possible - break up the firms into smaller entities and sever their interconnections until they no longer posed a threat to begin with. This is harder than it sounds, or so I'm told, but I'd still pursue the option.