Monetary policy

Has the Fed’s reaction function changed?

April 29, 2012 1:40 pm by Gavyn Davies

Risk assets rose slightly last week, and global equities are still trading within about 2 per cent of their highs for the year. The resilience of equities was slightly surprising in a week which saw both a disappointing set of US GDP data and a Fed policy statement which was on the hawkish side of expectations. Goldman Sachs’ economists commented that the US economy and financial markets are “moving into a tougher environment”, in which the economy is slowing and the Fed is shifting its policy reaction function in a less stimulative direction.

One reason why risk assets have remained firm recently, is that earnings in the latest company reporting season have once again been beating expectations in the US and the eurozone. According to Jan Loeys at JP Morgan, US corporate earnings per share for 2012 Q1 have come in 8 per cent higher than analysts’ expectations, while the drop in eurozone earnings has been 4 per cent less than feared. Clearly, corporate financial strength has been helping investment sentiment, but that would not persist for very long if the Fed really did change its tune on monetary policy. Read more

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Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

Why the Fed has taken QE3 off the agenda

April 3, 2012 9:14 pm by Gavyn Davies

The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on March 13 have surprised the markets. The committee seems to have shifted in a markedly more hawkish direction than was reflected in the statement issued after the meeting, and the bar to quantitative easing 3 now seems to be rather high. Perhaps we should have expected this, given the fact that speeches by chairman Ben Bernanke and Bill Dudley since the meeting had given no hint of any further easing. But the breadth of the committee’s shift away from easing was certainly not expected.

It is easy to find hawkish phrases in the minutes. The US Federal Reserve staff has not only upgraded its real gross domestic product projections, and increased its inflation forecasts, but has also reduced its estimate of the output gap. Only “a couple” of FOMC members saw any case for further easing, and then only if growth falters or inflation falls below target. There was even some discussion of changing the guidance on keeping short rates “exceptionally low” up to the end of 2014, a move which would really shock markets.  Read more

Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

A global experiment in the fiscal/monetary mix

February 19, 2012 2:25 pm by Gavyn Davies

A large and important change is underway in global economic policy. This change will determine whether the developed economies can grow their way out of recession. Although the new strategy has been tried before by individual economies, this is the first time it has been adopted on such a global scale. If it fails, it is far from clear that policy-makers have a ready-made alternative plan waiting in the wings. Read more

Posted in Eurozone, Global economy, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

Is QE still working?

February 8, 2012 3:24 pm by Gavyn Davies

The Bank of England meets on Thursday with expectations running high that the MPC will announce a further large dose of quantitative easing. Even if they pass this month, which seems possible, this is likely to be only a temporary postponement. Whenever it comes, the next move will be another bout of “plain vanilla” QE, involving the purchase of £50-75bn of government bonds, and taking the overall Bank of England holdings to over one third of the total stock of gilts in issue.

Meanwhile, the Fed is still debating whether to increase its holdings of long dated securities, and if so whether to focus once again on government debt, or to re-open its purchases of mortgages. Any further QE would be contentious on the FOMC, but there is probably still a majority in favour.

Central bankers, unlike many others, have not lost faith in the efficacy of QE. The vast majority of them not only believe that additional asset purchases can further reduce long term bond yields at a time of zero short term interest rates, but also that this can increase real GDP growth, compared with what otherwise would have occurred. Are they right? Read more

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Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, UK, US |

Asset market returns in a liquidity trap

January 25, 2012 6:31 pm by Gavyn Davies
Mount Fuji, Japan. AFP/Getty Images

Mount Fuji, Japan. AFP/Getty Images

Until recently, Keynes’ notion of a liquidity trap was of great interest to macro-economists, but was viewed by investors as a rare aberration which, outside Japan, could be safely ignored. In the aftermath of the 2008 credit crunch, all that has changed. Many developed economies seem to be falling into a liquidity trap, and may stay there for several years. What does this imply about asset returns? (This blog is a slightly longer version of an article which first appeared in the FT’s Market Insight column on 24 January, 2012.) Read more

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Posted in Global economy, japan, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy |

How the Fed defeated President Truman to win its independence

January 20, 2012 2:36 pm by Gavyn Davies
Federal Reserve. Getty Images

Getty Images

In 1951, an epic struggle between a US president who stood on the verge of a nuclear war, and a central bank that was seeking to establish its right to set an independent monetary policy, resulted in an improbable victory for the central bank. President Harry Truman, at war in Korea, failed in a brutal attempt to force the Federal Reserve to maintain a 2.5 per cent limit on treasury yields, thus implicitly financing the war effort through monetisation. This victory over fiscal dominance is often seen as the moment when the modern, independent Fed came into existence.

The idea that the central bank should place a cap on the level of bond yields is firmly back on the agenda, at least in the eurozone. This week, Italian prime minister Mario Monti said that he was increasingly optimistic that his country’s bond yields might soon be capped. Although he stopped short of saying that this would be done by the European Central Bank, there really are no other viable candidates to achieve this. Furthermore, many economists are arguing that this is the right policy, since Italy is now following a sustainable budgetary policy which deserves to be rewarded by ECB action in the bond market. Read more

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Posted in Central Banks, Eurozone, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy |

Eurozone crisis might move from acute to chronic phase

December 9, 2011 1:12 pm by Gavyn Davies

Amid all the focus on the UK’s decision to use its veto, it is important not to miss the main economic outcome of the summit, which is that the agreement heralds a new era in European policymaking. The German approach to fiscal policy will now be writ large across the eurozone. This raises three key questions:

  1. How different will this prove to be in practice from the old status quo?
  2. Is it a good idea from an economic point of view?
  3. Does it allow the European Central Bank in future to play the same role in the eurozone as the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have been playing in the US and the UK?

My initial take on the deal is that it will be sufficient to dampen the acute phase of the crisis, but that the absence of a clear long-term strategy for growth means that there could still be a long period of chronic problems ahead. Read more

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Posted in Eurozone, Germany, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, UK |

Mario Draghi’s historic choice

November 2, 2011 7:57 pm by Gavyn Davies
Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi — Getty Images

In Mario Draghi’s first meeting as the new president of the ECB on Thursday, he already faces a decision which could determine the eventual fate of the euro. This is not a decision about whether to cut short term interest rates. They will be cut, decisively, before the year end. Nor is it a decision about the maintenance of non-standard measures to inject liquidity into the eurozone’s banking sector. These measures will be maintained and increased.

Instead, his historic decision will be whether to use the balance sheet of the central bank to purchase the troubled debt of countries like Italy and Spain, and thus effect a large transfer of resources between the member states of the eurozone – a transfer which the political leaders of the zone have so far been unable to undertake. It is becoming increasingly clear that, among European institutions, only the ECB has the constitutional authority and the financial muscle to undertake such a transfer. But is it appropriate territory for a central bank to enter? That is President Draghi’s dilemma. Read more

Posted in Eurozone, Germany, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, Sovereign debt |

All twist, no shout, from the Fed

September 21, 2011 9:57 pm by Gavyn Davies

The Fed decision was fairly close to what was anticipated in this earlier blog – all “twist” and no “shout”. However, on balance, the statement was slightly more dovish than I expected. Concerns about downside risks to economic activity were at least as great as in last month’s FOMC statement, with new downside risks from financial strains being specifically mentioned, and this has swayed the majority of the committee to introduce a slightly more aggressive operation “twist” than expected. Inflation concerns, while marginally greater than in the August FOMC statement, are clearly insufficient to impress the committee, which remains biased towards further easing even after today’s announcement.

 Read more

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Posted in Global economy, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

The impact of Switzerland’s dramatic action

September 6, 2011 9:44 pm by Gavyn Davies

The decision of the Swiss National Bank to set a limit on the strength of the Swiss franc so that it cannot trade below a minimum rate of CHF 1.20 against the euro is one of the most dramatic interventions seen in the foreign exchange markets for many years. The Swiss economy may only account for 0.8 per cent of global gross domestic product, but its currency and the influence of its central bank far outweigh its economic size. Read more

Posted in Currencies, Macroeconomics, Monetary policy |
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