Tag: FOMC

From FT.com April 17, 2012

The Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve is no longer expected to announce a further round of monetary easing when it concludes its two day meeting in Washington on Wednesday. The fact that the hawks have lost enthusiasm for more quantitative easing is scarcely surprising, given the fall in unemployment, and the stickiness of inflation.

But until very recently the hawks have not been in control of the committee. What is more surprising is that the powerful group of doves which includes Ben Bernanke, Bill Dudley and Janet Yellen, and which normally has disproportionate weight on the FOMC, has also taken QE off the agenda .

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Posted in Central Banks |

Interpreting the Fed: what Bernanke really told us

August 10, 2011 4:00 pm by Gavyn Davies

Opinion is sharply divided about what the Fed intended to signal in the statement issued on Tuesday. Some have seen the statement as very dovish, because it said that the Fed intended to leave short rates at “exceptionally low levels” until mid 2013 – the first time that a specific date of this sort has ever been set by the FOMC.

Others, however, concluded that the statement contained nothing really new, since the markets had already assumed that short rates would be close to zero for the next two years. Furthermore, the fact that there were three dissents from the majority decision has led some to deduce that the further large step to more quantitative easing (QE3) is still a long way off. On this view, nothing really changed.

One way of trying to assess whether the Fed eased policy on Tuesday is to use the Taylor Rule, which translates economic conditions into the “appropriate” setting for monetary policy.

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Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

Bernanke and the divided Fed

July 13, 2011 5:15 pm by Gavyn Davies
Ben Bernanke

Ben Bernanke. Image by EPA.

The financial markets seem determined to interpret today’s statement by the Fed chairman in a dovish light, but a careful reading of his words does not support that point of view. True, Mr Bernanke outlined the possible ways in which monetary policy might be eased further if recent economic weakness should prove more persistent than expected. But he gave equal weight to the possibility that “the economy could evolve in a way that would warrant less-accommodative policy”.

There was no hint in the text about which of these outcomes he considered the more likely. We already knew from yesterday’s FOMC minutes for the June meeting that the committee is split about the likely evolution of policy, and we were waiting to see today whether the chairman would throw his weight behind either the doves or the hawks. He failed to do either.

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Posted in Macroeconomics, US |

Money, bonds and the US debt ceiling

July 5, 2011 4:31 pm by Gavyn Davies

The ongoing discussions in Washington about the US public debt ceiling are raising some interesting ideas, some of which are highly unorthodox. One such idea is that the debt ceiling itself can simply be ignored because any attempt by Congress to restrict the ability of the United States to meet its debts appears, on the surface, to contravene section four of Amendment XIV of the Constitution.

This Amendment states that “The validity of the public debt…shall not be questioned.” I will leave this matter for debate among constitutional lawyers (see here and here), but as a simple economist I would question whether the US would retain its triple A status if the administration continued to make payments in contravention of an explicit act of Congress, which the President believed to be unconstitutional. What would happen to the “full faith and credit” of the United States if the Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the President was wrong?

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Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, US |

New York Fed Chief lends his weight to the doves

October 4, 2010 3:48 pm by Gavyn Davies

William Dudley, the President of the New York Fed, is an intellectual heavyweight with whom I was fortunate enough to work for a couple of decades. Long experience has taught me not to ignore his views on the economy. He made an important speech last Friday,  spelling out the dovish view on monetary policy which is currently held by the most senior members of the FOMC, probably including Ben Bernanke.

Although the speech was careful to go no further than the statement which followed the last FOMC meeting in September, it explained in considerable detail why the Fed now believes that inflation is too low, and why he at least also believes that a further round of QE is the right response to the situation.

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Posted in Macroeconomics, Monetary policy, Recession |

Gavyn Davies

on macroeconomics

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A blog on macroeconomics, economic policymaking and the financial markets. Gavyn usually writes about a key topic of the week on Sunday.

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Gavyn Davies is a macroeconomist who is now chairman of Fulcrum Asset Management and co-founder of Prisma Capital Partners. He was the head of the global economics department at Goldman Sachs from 1987-2001, and was chairman of the BBC from 2001-2004.

He has also served as an economic policy adviser in No 10 Downing Street, an external adviser to the British Treasury, and as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Gavyn Davies is an active investor and may have financial interests and holdings in any of the topics about which he writes. The views expressed are solely those of Mr Davies and in no way reflect the views of Prisma Capital Partners LP, Fulcrum Asset Management LLP, their respective affiliates or representatives. This material is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice or recommendations. Readers are urged to seek professional advice before making any investments.

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