MacroScope

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was last in New York, he joked about his past research into the effect of uncertainty on investment spending. “I concluded it is not a good thing, and they gave me a PhD for that,” he said, drawing laughter from a gathering of hundreds of economists in a packed Times Square conference room.

Laughter probably wasn’t echoing through the halls of the U.S. central bank on Wednesday. Late on Tuesday, Congress struck a last-minute deal that only partially and temporarily avoids the so-called fiscal cliff. Bernanke and other Fed policymakers – frustrated that it took politicians so long to address tax and spending levels in the first place – were hoping Washington would agree to a bi-partisan, longer-term plan to narrow the country’s massive deficit with only modest near-term fiscal restraint. While no deal on taxes would have been far worse for the economy, the fact that Congress put off decisions on government spending and the debt ceiling for another two months simply prolongs the uncertainty that many feel is holding back investments by businesses and households.

“You basically continue this fiscal policy uncertainty that we have had for the past year or more,” said Roberto Perli, managing director of policy research at International Strategy and Investment Group. In a note to clients, Perli predicted that at best the fiscal cliff deal does not change the outlook for Fed policy, which for now consists of rock-bottom interest rates and $85 billion per month in asset purchases. But more likely, he wrote, it would lead to even more accommodation from the Fed since Republicans – smarting from a political defeat in the last few days – may prefer to let the “sequester” of large-scale spending cuts kick in as scheduled on March 1 rather than agreeing to a smaller reduction in U.S. debt. In that case, the Fed would respond by keeping rates lower for longer, perhaps through early 2016, or simply by ramping up the value of asset purchases under its quantitative easing program (QE3), Perli wrote.

In the end, it boils down to a lot of assumptions. And a lot of uncertainty.

In that same speech back in November, Bernanke said 2013 could be a “very good year” if politicians set a credible long-term budget plan, adding worries over negotiations were already damaging economic growth. “Such uncertainties,” he said, “will only be increased by discord and delay.”

The U.S. jobless rate, currently at 7.7 percent, remains elevated by historical standards. But it has fallen sharply from a peak of 10 percent in October 2009. However, that decline could soon grind to a halt, according to a recent paper from the San Francisco Federal Reserve.

Its authors argue that, because the slow but steady decline in the jobless rate has been in part due to slippage in the labor participation rate that is more a product of the business cycle than long-run demographic trends, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics presumes.

In January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics significantly reduced its projections for medium-term labor force participation. The revision implies that recent participation declines have largely been due to long-term trends rather than business-cycle effects. However, as the economy recovers, some discouraged workers may return to the labor force, boosting participation beyond the Bureau’s forecast. Given current job creation rates, if workers who want a job but are not actively looking join the labor force, the unemployment rate could stop falling in the short term.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and Germany’s Angela Merkel – the two most important people in the euro zone debt crisis response – take to the stage today, the former giving lengthy testimony in the European Parliament, the latter holding a news conference with foreign journalists.

With Greece sorted out for now, Spain and Italy fully funded for the year and markets simmering down, the crisis is in abeyance, in no small part thanks to these two. Draghi provided the game changer with the ECB’s bond-buying plan late in the summer but Merkel has shifted profoundly too during the course of the year – most crucially from considering a Greek euro exit might be a good thing “pour encourager les autres” to realizing it would be a disaster and acting to rule it out and also in backing Draghi’s bold move and ignoring a large measure of German disquiet.

Germany continues to go-slow on future steps, at least in part largely for domestic political reasons, but look where we are now – with an ECB prepared to act in a way that horrifies the Bundesbank, a permanent euro zone rescue fund, a banking union in progress and multiple bailouts agreed and help for Spain likely to come soon – and it’s remarkable to see how far Berlin has moved.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke to reporters for well over an hour at his quarterly press conference this week, but he was vague on the most important question of monetary policy today: what exactly would it take for the central bank to either ramp up or curtail the pace of monthly asset purchases? Since bond buys have effectively replaced interest rates as the dominant tool of Fed policy in recent years, the central bank’s new thresholds, which reference only rates, are not particularly useful.

After all, in the original threshold plan as crafted by its inventor, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, the Fed would offer a jobless rate trigger for quantitative easing itself.

Asked about this during his briefing, Bernanke said:

We are prepared to vary that as new information comes in. If the economy’s outlook gets noticeably stronger we would presumably begin to ramp-down the level of purchases. But, again, the problem with giving a specific number is that there are multiple criteria on which we make this decision. We will be looking at the outlook for the labor market, which is very important. We will also be looking at other factors that could be affecting the outlook for the economy, for example – I hope it won’t happen – if the fiscal cliff occurs, as I have said many times, I don’t think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event, and in that case, we obviously have to temper our expectations about what we can accomplish.

Credit where credit’s due, the EU has surprised on the upside over the last 24 hours or so, not only signing off on a revised Greek bailout plan to keep that show on the road and agreeing that the ECB will supervise 150 or more of the bloc’s biggest banks, but then pledging to set up a mechanism to wind down problem banks.

Now, there is many a slip twixt the cup and the lip as they say – not much more is going to be cemented until next autumn’s German elections are out of the way, the ECB only has direct oversight of 5 percent or so of euro zone banks (when we know from the financial crisis that smaller banks can be almost as lethal as the big boys) and there is no indication of how a bank resolution scheme would be funded (perhaps via a financial transaction tax although only 10 or so countries have so far committed to that). Also, direct recapitalization of banks by the ESM rescue fund, to take the burden of indebted states, is unlikely to happen before 2014.

Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be churlish. EU leaders are clearly using the window of calm created by the European Central Bank’s pledge to buy euro zone government bonds in whatever size is needed to shore up the currency area in order to press on with the permanent structures which will ensure the bloc’s future. So while Finnish Foreign Minister Alex Stubb’s assertion that the EU is in its best shape for years may be pushing it a little, his follow-up line that if you’d offered them this state of play at the start of the year they’d have snatched your hand off is hard to argue with.

Updates with Fed decision

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday took the unprecedented step of tying its low rate policy directly to unemployment, saying it will keep rates near rock bottom until the jobless rate falls to 6.5 percent. That’s as long as inflation, the other key parameter of policy, does not exceed 2.5 percent.

Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, however, said in a research note published ahead of the decision that the shift may not be very effective.

Would such a move be a good idea? We’re not so sure. Calendar guidance may be theoretically flawed, but it is working reasonably well in practice. Fed officials have managed to keep expectations for the funds rate in the next few years pinned near zero, and the market now understands that this is more of a commitment to the promotion of future economic recovery than an expectation of future economic weakness.

It’s a curious pattern being repeated around the industrialized world. Governments are trying frantically to tighten their belts even as the monetary authorities loosen their purse strings. This week in the United States is a perfect example: the Fed looks set to extend its bond purchase program even as Washington fails to reach an agreement to avoid the dreaded “fiscal cliff.”

It’s the sort of dissonant policy that is unlikely to yield very constructive results at a time when the U.S. economy is struggling to achieve a meager 2 percent growth rate.

Thomas Lam, group chief economist at OSK-DMG inSingapore:

The current one-sided policy mix of fiscal tightening and monetary easing is problematic (for example, the UK experimented with this approach –  fiscal consolidation and monetary accommodation – and it clearly failed to generate a sustained recovery).  In some cases, it’s borderline insanity –  it’s like you’re trying the same or broadly similar approach but hoping for a different outcome every single time.

The Greek bond buyback has fallen a little short, leaving Athens and its lenders to plug a 450 million euro hole. The euro zone and IMF had given Greece 10 billion euros to buy back enough debt at a sharp discount so that it could retire 20 billion euros worth of bonds and knock that amount off its debt pile. Without that, the deal to start bailout loans flowing to Athens again would fall through.

Due to the discount working out slightly more generously than expected, Greece fell slightly short but it’s impossible to believe the currency bloc will throw itself back into turmoil over a few hundred million euros. Athens will confirm the state of play this morning. One source said German “bad banks” had not tendered most of their holdings and could be tapped again. A solution will be found and probably in time for the EU leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday. IMF chief Christine Lagarde came close to saying as much last night, welcoming the bond buyback and leaving the loose ends to the Europeans.

More preparatory work for the summit gets underway today with EU finance ministers meeting to try and bridge a gap over plans to regulate euro zone banks cross-border – part one of building a banking union. The European Central Bank is set to be the overarching regulator but Germany wants its scope severely constrained, while others want it to be able to intervene in any euro zone bank, at least in theory. This does not have the power of Greece or Italy to move markets but an inability to agree on the least contentious part of a banking union would not send a good signal.

As Federal Reserve officials debate whether to use thresholds for inflation and joblessness to guide monetary policy, Friday’s jobs report may be a cautionary tale.  The idea of thresholds is to pick markers for potential policy change – an unemployment rate of 6.5 percent, for instance, as a guidepost for when the central bank might begin to raise rates – so that the market has a better idea of where Fed policy is headed. As the unemployment rate nears that level, the theory goes, investors will gradually start to price in tightening; if the unemployment rate rises again, they’ll price it out.

But some Fed officials, notably the hawkish heads of the Richmond, Philadelphia and Dallas regional Fed banks, oppose the idea. One reason: the unemployment rate alone cannot capture the state of the labor market. Friday’s report show why.

Unemployment in November fell to 7.7 percent, the lowest in nearly four years. But the decline was not a sign of labor market strength – far from it. People were giving up looking for jobs, signaling hopelessness, not hope.

U.S. exports posted their biggest drop in nearly four years in October, pushing the U.S. trade deficit higher despite a decline in imports to their lowest level in 1-1/2 years.

The data reveal that U.S. exports of goods and services have now decelerated to a year-on-year growth rate of just 1 percent compared with 2.8 percent in the third quarter of 2012 and 11.5 percent last year at this time, writes Deutsche Bank Securities chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna in a research note.

We are concerned by this export trend, not only in October, but over the past several months, because exports have contributed an outsized share to economic growth in the current cycle. If exports fade away as an economic driver in the near-to-medium term, other domestic engines will need to accelerate in order to pick up the economic slack and maintain growth near 2.0-2.5 percent. We think this is possible if fiscal cliff concerns are adequately addressed. The domestic offset will come from continued recovery in the housing sector, as well as pent-up demand from households and businesses.