MacroScope

By Rahul Karunakar

The spread between 2- and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields will shrink to 180 basis points in a year according to the latest Reuters bonds poll – the narrowest margin since August 2008, the month before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Historically, that spread has been a key indication of what investors and traders are thinking about the economy’s prospects: the narrower it gets, certainly with short-term rates already at rock bottom, the darker the outlook.

It wasn’t looking particularly good in August 2008, and of course we all know what happened the following month: the start of an epic financial and economic crisis the world is still struggling to shake off.

A narrowing spread, driven by long-dated yields falling, might be welcomed by central banks who are aiming to bring them down to stimulate growth. But it’s also a dark sign for what people broadly feel is going to happen in the economy.

Said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo:

“I don’t think it is good news. It just tells you that the overall expectation for growth in the U.S. is weaker over time.”

So much for policy coordination. Just days after the Treasury published a note touting its progress in lengthening the average maturity of its outstanding bonds, the Fed decided to extend Operation Twist – a policy aimed at doing the exact opposite. By selling an additional $267 billion in short-dated bonds to buy long-term ones, the Fed is trying to take Treasuries with longer maturities out of the market, to lower yields and entice investors to take on more risk.

In a narrow sense, the Treasury’s approach is perfectly reasonable: U.S. interest rates are at historic lows, so it stands to reason that the government should lock in that low cost of borrowing for the longest period possible. However, in the context of an economy that remains exceedingly weak – and where the only source of stimulus appears to be a reluctant central bank – the move could be viewed as somewhat incongruous.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself addressed the issue when he was asked during the post-meeting press conference whether it would make sense for the U.S. government to issue more longer-term bonds given the current low-rate environment.

Ben Bernanke appears to be reluctantly gearing up for a third round of large-scale Federal Reserve bond buying, so-called QE3. Millan Mulraine of TD Securities captures just how likely further monetary easing is becoming following the Fed’s decision on Wednesday to expand Operation Twist.

The burden of proof may now be on the incoming data to prove that a third round of large-scale asset purchases may not be necessary.

Just under two months before the central bank’s yearly gathering at Jackson Hole – where Bernanke announced QE2 – the Chairman emphasized the path of the job market will be a key driver of any decision to further expand the central bank’s $2.8 trillion balance sheet. He told reporters at a press conference:

Additional reporting by Ann Saphir. Updated with New York Fed and other details.

For a central bank that prides itself on transparency, the Federal Reserve remains cautious about adopting new ways of communicating its message. The Fed’s Washington-based board was a latecomer to Twitter. Its first tweet was dated March 14, well after its regional Fed counterparts.

Perhaps more tellingly, the @FederalReserve account follows most – but not all – regional Fed accounts. Of the 12 district banks, only the two most hawkish (and therefore likely to oppose the Fed’s unconventional monetary policy) are missing: Richmond and Kansas City. The third is New York, whose heavy influence on financial markets sometimes puts it at odds with the board. In fairness, the board does follow the Dallas and Philadelphia Feds. Its presidents, Richard Fisher and Charles Plosser, have also criticized Fed purchases of government and mortgage bonds, known as quantitative easing or QE.

Are politicians playing chicken with central bankers? More to the point, if the U.S. Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank step up, yet again, to protect their economies from the global slowdown, will it take U.S., German, Spanish, Italian, Greek and other governments off the hook?

Such questions are swirling as Europe’s financial crisis boils and starts to bubble over into Asia and the Americas. Expectations are growing that the Fed will take more monetary policy action when it meets June 19-20. The messy possibility that Greece could exit the euro zone was not enough to prompt the ECB to cut interest rates last week – and that was before a deal over the weekend to bail out Spanish banks was dismissed by markets as just another kick of the can. Underlining the standoff between monetary and fiscal policymakers, ECB President Mario Draghi told European Parliament this on May 31:

Can the ECB fill the vacuum of lack of action by national governments on fiscal growth? The answer is no.

Seemingly lost in the talk about whether or not the Federal Reserve should ease again is the idea that financial conditions have tightened and the U.S. central bank may have to offer additional stimulus if only to offset that tightening. Writes Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius:

Alongside the slowdown in the real economy, financial conditions have tightened. Our revamped GS Financial Conditions Index has climbed by nearly 50 basis points since March, as credit spreads have widened, equity prices have fallen, and the U.S. dollar has appreciated.

Goldman’s new GS Financial Conditions Index is based on the firm’s simulations with a modified version of the Fed’s FRB/US Model. It includes credit spreads and housing prices and has a closer relationship with subsequent GDP growth than the previous version of the index, the firm says. A 100-basis-point shock to the GSFCI shaves 1-1/5 percent from real GDP growth over the following year. Still, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds:

Chris Reese contributed to this post.

A barrage of rotten economic news around the world has suddenly and vigorously reawakened the prospect of additional monetary easing by the Federal Reserve – most notably a report on Friday showing job growth slowed sharply in recent months.

William Larkin, portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Mass., said:

The chance of another recession is on the table, no question about it. It might force the Fed to develop another growth strategy like a QE3.

Moving from one house or apartment to another is mainly onerous, but one of its few pleasures is coming across papers you have not seen for years: the adventure stories your grown son wrote when he was eight years old or the book report he wrote on William Shakespeare’s Richard III when he was 10.

Another potential source of amusement is finding an older newspaper or magazine article or column, preserved on purpose or inadvertently. One reads these pieces with the benefit of time: You, dear reader, have seen the future at which the columnist, either hapless or prescient, could only make a guess, educated or otherwise.

So herewith are excerpts from two side-by-side columns published in the Summer 2005 edition of TIAA-CREF’s “advance,” two years before the financial crisis sent the global economy into its worst downturn since the Great Depression.

Another reason the Federal Reserve may have additional room for monetary easing: Inflation expectations fell sharply in May, according to the latest Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment. Inflation expectations five years out dropped to 2.7 percent in May, the lowest since January. Fed officials often say expectations are a key leading indicator of actual price increases.

Daniel Silver, economist at JP Morgan:

This level of longer-term inflation expectations is towards the bottom of the range that has been reported in recent years – 2.7% has been hit on several occasions (most recently between October 2011 and January 2012) and 2.6% was only reached back in December 2008 and March 2009, early on in the crisis period. Most other inflation measures that the Fed watches (including core PCE inflation and the 5yr-5yr breakeven inflation rate) have signaled that inflation expectations are still anchored and underlying inflation pressure is modest.

The downshift comes in the wake of inflation figures for April that also pointed to a tame price environment. This is why Eric Green at TD Securities argues “U.S. inflation favors the doves.”:

On again, off again. That’s been the story with prospects for another round of monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve. Expectations for a third installment of quantitative easing, the much-debated QE3, had ebbed with improving economic data in the first quarter – but are now flowing anew.

Following a weak employment report for last month, the latest hint that more bond buys could be in the offing came from minutes of the central bank’s April meeting, which saw the Fed leave rates near zero and repeat that it would likely hold them there until at least late 2014. Policymakers appeared to be taking an increasingly dim view of economic prospects given an array of looming threats to growth, even if none are particularly new.

According to the minutes:

Participants identified several downside risks to the projected pace of economic expansion, including the fiscal and financial strains in the euro area and the possibility of an abrupt fiscal consolidation in the United States.