James Pethokoukis

By James Pethokoukis
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

WASHINGTON — The curtain finally went up on Ben Bernanke’s one-man show, “Banker-Man: Turn Off the Snark.” It was full of high drama. Just one flubbed line by the embattled star could have sent markets heading for the exits. And although the performance was impressive, Bernanke will need a long-running hit to make taking to the stage pay off.

Such theatrics are common in Europe, but the hour-long televised press conference by the central bank chief was a first for America. The press corps was so eager and twitchy before showtime that a cup of water placed on the lectern triggered the furious firing of camera shutters.

Bernanke entered stage left — costumed in a red-patterned tie — promptly at 2:15 p.m. and took a seat center stage. Act One pretty much stuck to the script, reiterating the day’s statement from the Federal Open Market Committee with some added economic projections.

But Act Two, the audience participation part of the show, was a little more entertaining. Bernanke was pushed to talk about the dollar’s level, reluctant territory for the world’s foremost economic actor. And attendees pressed him on the Fed’s role in higher commodity prices. Bernanke’s improvisational skills were limited. He pointed to the classics of supply and demand. But he provided some helpful notes on Fed statement phraseology, including explanations of how they are sometimes “purposely vague.”

In the end, it was a bit like “Waiting for Godot.” The excitement never arrived. Though he made QE3 seem less likely, Bernanke neither rattled nor reassured investors. But he also left Washington’s political status quo in place.

His denial of guilt in rising headline inflation is sure to further infuriate Republican critics, while Democratic ones will continue to believe he places far too high a priority on controlling prices rather than creating jobs. Indeed, Bernanke artfully dodged a question about just what he considered to be strong employment growth. Will the public now view the Fed as more open? Probably, but phrases like “mandate-consistent levels” won’t play well in the cheap seats.

Most shows need previews to work out the kinks. Wednesday’s debut will be a good rehearsal for Bernanke’s soliloquy when the Fed finally decides to change its policy. That’s when the real reviews will come in.

Interesting piece from Team Reuters that examines that possibility (and what it really means) as a result of all the central bank’s asset buys (bold is mine):

But the Fed’s newfangled policy steps and the potential for credit losses raises, for some experts, the prospect that the Treasury may actually be forced to “recapitalize” the Fed — economist-speak for what others might call a bail-out. That would be a strange role reversal given the Fed’s efforts to ease monetary policy by buying the Treasury’s debt, and it could raise a political firestorm from lawmakers who believed all along the Fed was putting taxpayer money at risk. … Varadarajan Chari, an economics professor at the University of Minnesota and a consultant to the Minneapolis Fed, says that at some point during its exit from easy monetary policies, the Fed actually may go broke — at least on paper. ”The most obvious exit strategy is, when inflation starts to pick up, to stop and reverse asset purchases,” he said. “That’s likely to include requiring the Fed in an accounting sense to see a significant accounting loss.”

The Fed now holds just over $1 trillion in Treasuries, Chari noted, and if inflation rose by a couple of percentage points, it would dent the value of those holdings by about 10 percent, leaving the Fed with a $100 billion loss. “I’m sure it will have some negative political fallout,” Chari said. “But not economic consequences. Their ability to print money means it (insolvency) doesn’t mean anything.”

The problem lies in the basic workings of fixed income. By definition, bond prices decline when their yields or interest rates go up. That means that as the economy recovers and pushes inflation higher, the Fed will move to increase interest rates, pushing down the value of its giant bond portfolio. “What would the international reaction be if the Fed suddenly had to go and be recapitalized?” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Cumberland Advisors and a former head of research at the Atlanta Fed. “I don’t think that would bode well for Treasuries, or for the dollar, or anything else. It would be embarrassing.”

Eisenbeis is right. If and when this happens, the financial nuances will certainly get lost and give plenty of additional ammo (not that they need it) to the anti-Fed movement.

A handy chart from JPMorgan:

Multitasking is hard, even for the Federal Reserve. But by law — yet another horrible policy relic of the 1970s – it has to promote both “maximum employment” and “stable prices.” Some Republicans think it better that the Fed, like its European Central Bank counterpart, focus solely on prices getting neither too hot nor too cold. And an effort by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee is just the start of a GOP push to roll back Team Bernanke’s vast authority.

A just-offered bill by Pence would simply strike the bit about jobs from the Federal Reserve Act. The casus belli is part procedural, part economic. Corker and Pence say the Fed’s attempt to boost the economy by buying bonds usurps the proper fiscal role of Congress and the president. It also risks devaluing the dollar and boosting inflation.

The political context is clear. The opaque, unelected Fed is wildly unpopular with Republicans, particularly those of the Tea Party variety. They blame its interest rate policy for the housing and bank busts. And Bernanke is seen as an enabler of the hated bank bailouts and explosion in government spending under President Barack Obama. Tea Party support would be helpful to Pence if he decides to run for higher office, as he is supposedly considering.

Corker, on the other hand, is just trying to keep his current job. His efforts to forge a compromise with Democrats on financial reform made him enemies on the right where some folks already doubted his conservative bona fides. So clipping the Fed might just help him avoid a Tea Party primary challenge if he runs for reelection in 2012.

But the gentlemen also know the effort makes for sound economics. The existence of the dual mandate is a big reason why the Fed has launched its bond-buying QE2 plan, a triple-bank shot effort to artificially boost jobs by lowering interest rates,  weakening  the dollar (and boosting exports) and lifting stocks (and creating a wealth effect). Now the Fed knows QE2 will make it that much tougher to eventually shrink its balance sheet — thus risking higher inflation —  but feels it has no choice since Congress and the president are unlikely to agree on new, pro-growth fiscal policies. Of course, Fed action also eases the pressure on Washington to act. So instead of cutting taxes to empower business and allow consumer to repair their personal balance sheets, the Fed’s bubble machine gets restarted.

A Republican would have to nab the presidency that year for the Corker-Pence idea to become law. Democrats love the dual mandate and wish the Fed were doing even more to boost jobs. They expanded the Fed’s mandate in 1978 as a way of forcing the central bank to print money. But thankfully things have not worked out that way. The 1980s combo of hard-money Paul Volcker and tax-cutting Ronald Reagan created a low-inflation, high-growth economy that has produced 50 million net new jobs during the past generation.

But the dual mandate gives ample authority and justification for an easy-money Fed chairman to run the presses, particularly is he’s under political pressure to do so. Now Democrats may argue that a mandate change would tie the Fed’s hands in a financial crisis. A Fed chief could easily cite price stability as justification for setting up lending facilities as Bernanke did in 2008 and 2009. After all, U.S. prices fell sharply during the worst of the 2008 downturn. Indeed, one possible future GOP pick to run the Fed doubts whether such rule would limit his policy actions. If Republicans take the White House in two years, he just may find out.

The Fed’s new bond-buying binge will create plenty of commodity speculation and kill the currencies in some emerging markets. IBD’s Jed Graham puts it thusly:

What’s different about quantitative easing — an effort to lower market interest rates by bidding up Treasury debt — is that the Fed has no ability to direct its fire. What’s likely is that much of the investment capital freed up by Fed purchases of Treasury debt will overshoot its target — the U.S. economy — and flow to emerging markets and especially into commodities that serve as a hedge against a falling dollar.

And economist David Rosenberg adds:

Meanwhile, risk assets from equities, to credit, to emerging markets have, in recent months, become correlated with a weaker U.S. dollar in an unprecedented fashion. A weaker dollar, in turn, fits in very well with Ben Bernanke’s reflationary strategy by cheapening exports and buying jobs from abroad, not to mention adding extra impetus to foreign-currency translated corporate earnings. The question is whether the dollar’s descent becomes destabilizing or what the responses to this overt weak dollar policy will be in other parts of the world. Currency wars tend to lead to trade wars and trade wars do not tend to end very well (gold being an exception). … The bite into discretionary spending from the spike in food and energy prices — at exactly the most important shopping time of the year.

I wonder if all this isn’t just an effort by the Fed to force the hand of the new Congress and Obama to boost the economy through fiscal policy.

PIMCO’s Bill Gross puts out a particularly good market letter this month. A few key obervations:

1. He is dubious about QEII.

The Fed’s second round of QE, therefore, more closely resembles an attempted hypodermic straight to the economy’s heart than its mood elevator counterpart of 2009 … The Fed, on Wednesday, however, will decide that it is better to keep the patient on life support with an adrenaline injection and a following morphine drip than to risk its demise and ultimate rebirth in another form.

2. No, he is really dubious.

We are, as even some Fed Governors now publically admit, in a “liquidity trap,” where interest rates or trillions in QEII asset purchases may not stimulate borrowing or lending because consumer demand is just not there. Escaping from a liquidity trap may be impossible, much like light trapped in a black hole. Just ask Japan.

3. Fiscal policy is what’s called for.

Ben Bernanke, however, will try – it is, to be honest, all he can do. He can’t raise or lower taxes, he can’t direct a fiscal thrust of infrastructure spending, he can’t change our educational system, he can’t force the Chinese to revalue their currency – it is all he can do, and as he proceeds, the dual questions of “will it work” and “will it create a bond market bubble” will be answered. We at PIMCO are not sure.

4. The whole deal raises inflationary risks.

Bondholders, while immediate beneficiaries, will likely eventually be delivered on a platter to more fortunate celebrants, be they financial asset classes more adaptable to inflation such as stocks or commodities, or perhaps the average American on Main Street who might benefit from a hoped-for rise in job growth or simply a boost in nominal wages, however deceptive the illusion. Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend; it is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme.

5. The Fed is enabling Washington’s profligacy.

Public debt, actually, has always had a Ponzi-like characteristic. Granted, the U.S. has, at times, paid down its national debt, but there was always the assumption that as long as creditors could be found to roll over existing loans – and buy new ones – the game could keep going forever. Sovereign countries have always implicitly acknowledged that the existing debt would never be paid off because they would “grow” their way out of the apparent predicament, allowing future’s prosperity to continually pay for today’s finance.

Now, however, with growth in doubt, it seems that the Fed has taken Charles Ponzi one step further. Instead of simply paying for maturing debt with receipts from financial sector creditors – banks, insurance companies, surplus reserve nations and investment managers, to name the most significant – the Fed has joined the party itself. Rather than orchestrating the game from on high, it has jumped into the pond with the other swimmers. One and one-half trillion in checks were written in 2009, and trillions more lie ahead. The Fed, in effect, is telling the markets not to worry about our fiscal deficits, it will be the buyer of first and perhaps last resort. There is no need – as with Charles Ponzi – to find an increasing amount of future gullibles, they will just write the check themselves.

I ask you: Has there ever been a Ponzi scheme so brazen? There has not. This one is so unique that it requires a new name. I call it a Sammy scheme, in honor of Uncle Sam and the politicians (as well as its citizens) who have brought us to this critical moment in time. It is not a Bernanke scheme, because this is his only alternative and he shares no responsibility for its origin. It is a Sammy scheme – you and I, and the politicians that we elect every two years – deserve all the blame.

Ed Yardeni gives it a try:

Why is  [Bill Dudley of the Federal Reserve]  so sure that the Fed is so powerful when the CPI inflation rate is so close to zero despite the Fed’s extraordinary efforts to reflate the economy over the past few years? Could it be that while the Fed may be able to control inflation, it can’t do much to stop deflation? Macroeconomists like Mr. Dudley are convinced that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. I agree that rapidly rising inflation is always a consequence of excessively easy monetary policy. Tight monetary policy, if tough enough, can always lower the inflation rate. However, the deflationary pressures of recent years can be attributed to lots of non-monetary developments including the IT revolution, the rebound in productivity growth, the proliferation of free trade following the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of low-wage emerging countries like China. There’s not much that the Fed can do to stop deflation caused by these forces. Indeed, the Fed shouldn’t even try, since such deflation tends to boost the purchasing power of consumers, which is a much better stimulus program than any reflationary policy promoted by the Fed.

Great, great stuff from economic analyst Ed Yardeni, busting some myths and taking names:

1. The U.S. will prosper if the yuan appreciates. The number one urban legend today, in my opinion, is that if the Chinese stopped manipulating their currency and let it appreciate by say 20%, then the U.S. trade deficit would shrink and employment would rebound at a faster pace in the U.S. Didn’t the Chinese do that recently without the expected positive impact on the U.S.? Yes indeed. From mid-2005 through mid-2008, they let the yuan appreciate by 20%. It was then pegged again until it was allowed to move a bit higher in recent days. (See Fig. 26 in our China briefing book linked below.) America’s trade deficit with China was $248.8bn during the 12 months through July of this year. The Chinese simply manufacture lots of merchandise that the U.S. no longer produces because labor costs are too high in the U.S. The standard of living of U.S. consumers has improved as a consequence of cheaper imports. If the ones from China were made more expensive through currency appreciation or tariffs, the goods would be made in and imported from other low wage countries rather than made in the USA again. Besides, among the weakest sectors in the U.S. labor markets are construction and local governments. They have home-grown problems that have nothing to do with China. Productivity gains in sectors with high labor costs have cost some Americans their jobs, while they have boosted the real pay of those who remain employed.

Me:  Indeed, a new study out indicates that offshoring (and immigration) has not cost America jobs.

2. The Fed must continue to ease. Another Fed-inspired legend is that since the federal funds rate is down to zero, it means the Fed can’t do anything more to stimulate the economy. There is some bizarre chatter among Fed officials that based on the Taylor Rule, the federal funds rate should be negative! Indeed, FRBNY President William Dudley recently touted the idea that another $500bn in quantitative easing would be equivalent to lowering the federal funds rate by 50-75bps. The problem is that near-zero interest rates are depressing the interest income of many Americans. Americans may also understand that the only real beneficiary of such low interest rates is the U.S. federal government. So, the Fed is enabling the fiscal excesses of Congress. Eventually, such excesses must lead to higher taxes and higher inflation. In other words, Washington’s irrationally stimulative monetary and fiscal policies are getting offset by depressed rational expectations.

Me:  Low rates create more bubbles as investors search for high yields. The stage is not being set for strong, sustainable economic growth. But the lack of sound fiscal policy is pushing the Fed to act.

3. More fiscal stimulus is necessary. Keynesians continue to promote the fiction that government spending can create jobs through the fiscal multiplier effect. A significant portion of the 2009 fiscal stimulus program was directed at protecting the jobs of state and local public employees. Now that the stimulus is wearing off, they are losing their jobs anyway. The problem is that many of them are retiring early with huge pension benefits, making it impossible for state and local governments to hire more workers. The notion that the stimulus program wasn’t enough and that more deficit-financed government spending is required is nutty. What about more government spending on infrastructure? Congress regularly passes bills that purport to do that, yet the money never seems to show up as new roads, bridges, tunnels, and train tracks.

Me:  States need to restructure, and the their fiscal woes are forcing them to take action. Washington should focus on tax and budget reform ASAP.

Washington continues to twist itself into knots over what to do about the weak economy. Congress can’t bring itself to spend anymore taxpayer dough on “stimulus.” So now it’s the Fed’s turn, apparently (via the WaPo):

One pro-growth strategy would be to strengthen language in Fed policy statements that the central bank’s interest rate target is likely to remain “exceptionally low” for an “extended period.” … Another possibility would be to cut the interest rate paid to banks for extra money they keep on reserve at the Fed from 0.25 percent to zero. That would give banks slightly more incentive to lend money to customers rather than park it at the Fed … A third modest possibility would be to buy enough new mortgage securities to replace those on the Fed balance sheet that are paid off as people take advantage of low interest rates to refinance.

Me: If the Fed wants to ensure it gets a lot more scrutiny from Congress, engaging in quasi-fiscal policy will guarantee it. But please, no one consider tax cuts — the one thing that might boost the economy and get the GOP to vote for.

Larry Kudlow isn’t thrilled with the Janet Yellen Fed pick. This is the crux of his beef:

There is no evidence in Ms. Yellen’s public opinions or speeches that she might use a market-price rule — targeting commodities, gold, bond rates, or the dollar — as a forward-looking inflation (or deflation) signal. So the absence of a commodity- or dollar-price rule will continue at the Fed. Ben Bernanke doesn’t use a market-price rule, and Obama’s additional Fed appointees — whoever they are — will undoubtedly come from the same Phillips-curve camp.

Supply-siders like myself who believe that only market prices can provide accurate signals of the supply and demand for money are going to be very disappointed. If the Fed supplies more cash than markets want, the inflation rate can go up whether unemployment is high or low. We learned this painfully in the 1970s, when high unemployment was accompanied by high inflation.