The Great Debate

from James Saft:

Waiting for Europe’s QE to sail

J Saft

Dec 2, 2010 10:17 EST

The good news is that the European Central Bank will probably start a massive additional round of quantitative easing to fight the break-up of the euro zone.

The bad news is that they will, as ever, only choose the right policy, as Winston Churchill said of the Americans, after exhausting all of the alternatives.

Global share markets rallied furiously on Wednesday, fed by hopes that the ECB would increase its bond-buying efforts, a possibility raised by its chief Jean-Claude Trichet in an appearance before the European Parliament. Trichet faces stern opposition inside the ECB from fellow central bankers, notably German Axel Weber, who believe that policy should be normalized rather than loosened.

This opposition, in combination with an unsure political climate, means that euro zone authorities will probably continue to try to buttress, enlarge and formalize the bailout mechanism while trying to maintain the fiction that something approaching normality reigns in European money and bank funding markets.

Why would QE be used to fight the break-up of the euro zone, now being widely discussed as the crisis spreads to ever larger member states?

Because QE, or really we should simply call it the monetization of government borrowing, offers some hope of easing the austerity now being imposed on Ireland and soon to come in Portugal and Spain.

Europe has made a choice to not allow member states to default or to allow their weakened banks to default, as default would threaten banks elsewhere. That leaves weakened economies carrying a crushing amount of debt, debt they will attempt to repay by budget cuts. This is a recipe for an economic death spiral, as a smaller and smaller economy becomes less and less able to shoulder its debt service.

Fed is split but QE2 looks a done deal

John Kemp

Nov 1, 2010 09:17 EDT

- The opinions expressed are the author’s own-

FOMC meetings are usually a strange combination of formality and easy-going familiarity but levity may be in short supply this week. The Fed’s institutional credibility is on the line, and the normal decorum that characterizes relations among committee members has become increasingly strained over the summer.

Divisions between proponents and opponents of a second round of quantitative easing (QE2) have been on display as never before. It is not clear what members will say to one another to fill two days since all the arguments have already been rehearsed in detail and in public over the last six weeks.

In a thinly veiled swipe at his colleagues, Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig has stumped around his patch on the Great Plains denouncing QE as a “dangerous gamble” and “a bargain with the devil”.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser have made no secret of their skepticism or outright opposition to launching QE2 at this point. Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota has questioned whether it will work. Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker has seemed to doubt whether it is necessary.

In contrast, the New York Fed (always the closest to the major money centre banks) and the St Louis Fed (the spiritual home of monetarism in the Federal Reserve System) have openly campaigned for the benefits of a second round of asset purchases.

The final vote to adopt QE2 looks set to be 10-1 (with Hoenig dissenting). But the tally will mask much wider misgivings among the non-voting regional presidents and perhaps among some members of the Board of Governors itself, who will nonetheless fall in line with the chairman to support his authority.

Quantitative easing and the commodity markets

John Kemp

Oct 29, 2010 09:09 EDT

-The views expressed are the author’s own-

A warning by an International Energy Agency (IEA) analyst this week that quantitative easing (QE) risked inflating nominal commodity prices and derailing the recovery drew a withering response from Nobel Economics Laureate Paul Krugman, who labelled the unfortunate analyst the “worst economist in the world”.

According to New York Times columnist Krugman “Higher commodity prices will hurt the recovery only if they rise in real terms. And they’ll only rise in terms if QE succeeds in raising real demand. And this will happen only if, yes, QE2 is successful in helping economic recovery”.

Krugman’s criticism is unfair. There are clear links between QE and investor appetite for commodity derivatives and physical stocks (via the Federal Reserve’s “portfolio balance” effect), and from investors’ holdings of derivatives and physical inventories to cash prices (given the relatively inelastic supply and demand for raw materials in the short term).

In other words, there are financial as well as real economy links between QE and commodity prices. Commodities have some of the characteristics of financial assets as well as physical consumption materials. Via portfolio effects, QE could boost the relative (real) price of commodities even if it did not boost employment and output in the United States by very much.

It is a more open question whether commodity-driven inflation would hinder or promote a recovery in output and employment in the advanced industrial economies. It would reduce the real burden of inherited debts from the boom years. But it would harm savers, and it might harm manufacturers and households, depending on whether increased commodity prices were matched by rising non-commodity consumer prices and wages.

Overall, an unbalanced, commodity-driven inflation would probably be more of a drag on recovery than a help. Reasonable observers have reached different conclusions. In any event, the analyst’s warning was certainly not a “classic freshman mistake” or evidence of a new “Dark Age of economics” that the erudite professor labelled it.

Euro zone faces QE2 pain test

James Saft

Oct 14, 2010 09:23 EDT

QE2 — a second round of quantitative easing — means that soon the U.S., Japan and Britain will all be busily exporting their deflation, raising the question: Just how much pain can the euro zone take?

If by November we have three of the largest economies printing money and buying up their own debt, the outcome — in fact the intention — will be to drive their currencies lower against their trading partners, opening new international markets for their goods and, by raising the price of imported goods, fighting deflation before its debilitating psychology can take hold.

That is the plan, at any rate, and, unless something else happens, it will force the euro up against all major currencies, including, as it is tied to the dollar, the Chinese yuan. The euro has risen about 9.5 percent against the dollar in the past month, a trend that ultimately will murder European exporters and its stock market.

For reasons of history, society and sheer cussedness, the European Central Bank does not seem inclined to join in, though as usual there is dissension.

Speaking in New York on Tuesday ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said that the ECB’s own version of QE, buying bonds of euro zone weak links and other liquidity support, will continue as planned at least until the end of the year, at which point, “We will see.” In contrast governing council member Axel Weber, speaking in the same city on the same day, pointedly called for an end to special measures immediately, saying the risks do not justify the benefits.

Forcing Europe to absorb more of the global deflation is really nothing more than a “back at ya” by the U.S. and others. Europe, in deciding to cling to its currency union and impose austerity on its weaker members, was doing exactly the same thing; exporting deflation, both in terms of a weaker euro and through the desperate actions of Greek and Irish residents who will consume less and must export more.

So, why won’t Europe simply power up its own printing presses and join the currency debasing party? In part it is a matter of history; the old Bundesbank horror, bred in the bone, of the inflation that devastated Weimar Germany.

QE2 to speed triumph of emerging markets

J Saft

Oct 12, 2010 07:49 EDT

While “decoupled” is not the same as “immune”, look for growth and investment performance in emerging markets to be better than in the sclerotic developed world.

In the short term emerging markets will be free riders as the U.S. launches the second round of quantitative easing. A portion of the stimulus generated by “QE2″ will inevitably leak cross border, while the risks of the gambit will fall almost entirely on the U.S. and on dollar-denominated assets.

QE2 is designed to work in two ways: to stimulate investment by making it cheaper to borrow money and to lift consumption by boosting asset prices.

To the extent it succeeds a goodly portion of that consumption will be goods and services purchased by the developed world from emerging markets.

As for investment, in the absence of capital controls U.S. corporations that choose to invest using borrowed money can be counted on to put a lot of the  money to work where opportunities are best: emerging markets.

These facts – that emerging market countries enjoy advantages in production and have better outlooks for growth and investment going forward  – argue that any strategy aimed at reviving economic growth will by definition benefit emerging markets, perhaps disproportionately.

A recently published book, “The Day After Tomorrow” (http://blogs.worldbank.org/growth/node/8745 ) by Otaviano Canuto and 40 fellow World Bank economists argues that developing countries are becoming the new locomotives of global growth, a trend which will be long lasting and growing in strength.

from The Great Debate UK:

Is a bubble burbling in financial markets?

Jane Foley

Nov 4, 2009 14:24 EST

-Jane Foley is research director at Forex.com. The opinions expressed are her own.-

The discrediting of the efficient markets theory in the aftermath of the financial crisis appears to have been accompanied with growing support for the view that rather than efficient in nature, financial markets are predisposed towards the formation of bubbles.

A bubble can simply be defined as an occurrence that begins when the price of an asset has been driven significantly above it "fair" value. According to the efficient markets theory this would not happen.

If bubbles are a natural outcome of financial market activity it is relevant to ask whether the very loose fiscal and monetary policies of many central banks and governments are presently sowing the seeds of the next bubble.

Even though the real economies of the U.S., UK, Eurozone and Japan continue to be defined by expectations of rising unemployment and falling real wages, access to cheap money has already helped restore the profitability of many investment banks.

In turn, this has fed risk appetite which is evident in the rally in stocks since the spring, increased demand for "risky" currencies and a recovery in commodities prices. Brent oil has rallied by 128 percent from its 2009 low. The ability of oil to rally despite the existence of oil supplies well above the seasonal average suggests there is already speculative element in this market which could be in danger of driving prices above their fair value.

This week’s meetings of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have focussed attention not so much on rates, but on the extraordinary policy decisions taken by these central banks in the wake of the financial crisis and whether conditions are ripening in favour of a gradual withdrawal of some of these policies.

from The Great Debate UK:

You never know when rates will rise

David Kuo

Oct 8, 2009 08:04 EDT

-David Kuo, Director at the financial website The Motley Fool. The opinions expressed are his own.-

Go on. Admit it. You didn’t see it coming, did you? You never thought a member of the G20 nations would dare to break ranks and raise interest rates this soon.

But Australia has done just that. The Central Bank of Australia has increased the cost of borrowing by 0.25 percent to 3.25 percent. It is doing what it thinks is right for the country regardless of what the rest may think. Now, Asian countries, keen to avert another bubble, may follow Australia’s lead and ratchet up interest rates before long.

Of course, Australia’s economy is vastly different to the UK’s. It has huge deposits of iron, aluminium and nickel that are in demand by mineral-hungry China. That said, Australia did briefly flirt with a downturn, which it successfully corrected with 21 billion pounds of fiscal stimulus.

But the UK is not Australia. We do not have huge deposits of mineral, and we are not near fasting-growing Asian countries either. What we do have are consumers saddled with over a trillion pounds of debt following a decade of binge borrowing, and a national debt burden of similar magnitude. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will experience demand-led inflation. In fact, consumers are saving more of their household income than they have done for eight years.

The most recent Office for National Statistics report shows that between March and June British households saved 5.60 pounds out of every 100 pounds of household income. That is very different from the first three months of 2008 when we not only failed to save any money, but we even borrowed 50 pence for every 100 pounds of household income.

That said, we are still some way off getting our overstretched household finances back on an even keel. So, the savings ratio could go higher. In fact, it is still some way short of the long-run savings-ratio average of 8 percent of household income.

BoE extends QE, fears 1930s re-run

John Kemp

Aug 6, 2009 10:18 EDT

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –

The Bank of England’s decision to continue with its asset purchase programme, or quantitative easing (QE), at the rate of 50 billion pounds per quarter in Oct-Dec, unchanged from Jul-Sep, shows bank officials are more worried about ending support for the recovery too soon than about risking inflation by leaving it too late.

The problem with QE is that you have to keep buying the same amount of assets each month to maintain the same monetary stance. With interest rates, the Bank can cut them and they stay cut. If asset prices drop with QE, it represents a tightening of monetary policy.

The Bank initially bought 75 billion pounds in the first 3 months (Apr-Jun) and then tapered this to 50 billion in the second three months (Jul-Sep) as the crisis engulfing the banking system and the rest of the economy eased. A cautious approach might have tapered the QE programme again to 25 billion in the final three months of the year before ending it entirely at the start of 2010. But the Bank opted to stick at 50 billion.

Critics point out that the programme has not achieved its announced objective of increasing bank credit and the amount of money in circulation. The rate of growth in M4, the broadest money supply measure, has risen only marginally. But that ignores the counterfactual of what would have happened to M4 in the absence of the programme — it might have fallen sharply.

Growth in the monetary aggregates is, in any event, mostly endogenous. It depends on demand for credit. In the current environment, where many households and businesses have little or no collateral, credit is impaired, and most are focused on paying down debt rather than adding to it, limited growth in M4 is not surprising. Trying to make it grow faster is like force feeding a duck to make foie gras — possible but unnatural.

from The Great Debate UK:

Bank of England faces dilemma on QE extension

John Kemp

Apr 9, 2009 10:18 EDT

-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --

LONDON, April 9 (Reuters) - The Bank of England's terse press statement announcing it will maintain overnight rates at 0.5 percent and continue the existing 75 billion pound quantitative easing (QE) programme gives no clue about whether the Bank intends to extend the programme when the first tranche of asset purchases are completed in June. But officials will have to make a decision soon: unless they signal a commitment to extend QE, gilt yields will rise even further in anticipation that the major buyer in the market will withdraw. The QE programme is dogged by ambiguity about its objectives (which a cynical observer might conclude is deliberate). Officially, the aim is to prevent inflation falling below target by accelerating money supply growth, not manipulate the yield curve for government and corporate debt. In this, the Bank's avowed strategy is more conventional than the Fed's ambitious efforts to determine the cost of credit for borrowers throughout the economy. It is a straightforward quantitative easing patterned on the Bank of Japan, rather than a credit easing patterned on the Fed. If true, the measure of success is how much the money supply has been boosted at the end of the three month period; the Bank should be indifferent about whether ending QE causes yields and borrowing costs to rise. So long as money supply has risen consistent with the inflation target, and the Bank can discern some green shoots of stabilisation if not recovery, officials can declare victory, end the programme, and keep the other 75 billion pounds of asset purchases authorised by the chancellor in reserve. Yields can be left to find their natural level. But many suspect the Bank's real objective is yield control -- in which case it will have to announce another round of buy backs of gilts and corporate bonds in good time, well before the current programme is completed, to shape market expectations. The results of the existing round have been unimpressive. After falling initially, gilt yields are almost back up to the level they were at before the Bank's foray into unconventional monetary policy. The snag is that if the Bank stops buying, other investors will struggle to absorb all the new government paper on offer without a major increase in yield -- pushing up borrowing costs for everyone, precisely what the Bank has sought to avoid. The Bank's dilemma is whether to push on (heightening fears about inflation) or call a halt (risking a spike in yields all the same). Either way, the Bank needs to give the market, as well as the Treasury and the Debt Management Office, plenty of warning about its intentions. (Editing by Richard Hubbard)

from The Great Debate UK:

Quantitative easing a last resort

-Alan Clarke is UK economist at BNP Paribas. The opinions expressed are his own-

As expected, the Bank of England left the Bank Rate unchanged at 0.5 percent at the April meeting, the first unchanged decision since September 2008.

The accompanying statement was short and sweet. The Bank has accumulated 26 billion pounds of asset purchases and will take a further two months to complete the planned 75 billion pounds of purchases - see you next month!

It is disappointing that gilt yields haven't remained low - partly because of firmer economic data, but also because the market is wary of the exit strategy. Hence the statement was a bit of a missed opportunity. The Bank has run out of interest rate ammunition and hence is having to use alternative measures including quantitative easing. Some form of verbal intervention, voicing a desire to get gilt yields lower could have been a cheap and easy way to loosen conditions in the economy.

Ultimately we expect the scale and duration of quantitative easing to be more than most expect. Our models suggest that if the Bank Rate could fall below zero, interest rates "should" be -4 percent. That shows the magnitude of the stimulus that is required from unconventional policy. Given this, we expect Bank purchases of assets to amount to as much as double the 150 billion pound that the Bank is currently authorised to spend.

Quantitative easing is called unconventional policy for a reason. It is the last resort. We don't know if it will work; if it does work we don't know how well it will work or how quickly it will work; we don't know how big any side effects will be. If it was so fast and effective then it wouldn't be unconventional - we wouldn't bother moving the Bank Rate, we would use QE instead.

The point is, it is going to take a long while before we discover if QE has worked. The typical lead time between interest rates and the economy is 12 to 18 months. Hence as a starting point, that is the horizon over which we should be able to conclude whether the programme of asset purchases has worked.