MacroScope

We’re pretty sure that Daniel Tarullo, the Federal Reserve’s point person on regulation, expects the United States will finally understand exactly what financial reforms are coming “some time next year.” But the Fed governor made doubly sure to qualify that statement lest anyone – especially any press “in the back” – take it as gospel.

At a conference in New York Wednesday morning, Tarullo was asked how long it would take for the various regulatory agencies to give final details on the raft of financial crisis-inspired reforms, everything from Basel III capital standards to the Volcker ban on proprietary trading. Here’s what he said:

“I know it’s frustrating for people not to have the proposed rules out. On the other hand, doing them simultaneously does allow us to see whether something in one of the proposed capital rules will affect something in another proposed capital rule, so that we end up, when we publish the final rules, with fewer anomalies, questions and the like, which will undermine the ability of a firm or academic or just anyone in the public to see and understand how these things are going to function. I hesitate to give a time line on exactly when we’ll get there. But I think…it seems to be reasonable to expect that some time next year the basic outlines – and I don’t just mean the ideas, I mean the details associated with the major reform elements – should be reasonably clear to people even though questions will inevitably rise in implementation. (You) don’t want to take that as a promise. But as I think about these various streams, that is my expectation… To have gotten it done this year would have meant the sheer magnitude of the task would have lead to a lot of inconsistencies or open questions, which then would have just produced another round of change. So you’ve got me on the record saying some time next year, but I tried to qualify it as much as possible – that’s for all you people in the back…”

It’s something of a dissonant communications strategy: Fed officials are willing to tell us what they think will happen three years from now, but not what they discussed three years ago.

The Federal Reserve’s public relations arm holds up the chairmanship of Ben Bernanke as a model of transparency. And it’s true. Press conferences and federal funds rate forecasts are major steps forward for a central bank that until the mid-1990s didn’t even tell the markets what it was doing with interest rates.

Still, the old habits of secrecy die hard. Monetary policy transparency aside, the Fed has remained adamantly opaque in other ways – to the point that it took a Bloomberg News lawsuit for it to name the recipients of emergency era loans.

The Fed is being more transparent. Any questions? Lots, apparently. Wall Street economists have published a flurry of research notes speculating about just how much new information the U.S. central bank will release along with its federal funds forecasts on Wednesday, and what form it will be presented in.

Even Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed economist now at Morgan Stanley, doesn’t know what to make of it:

Many market participants admit to being somewhat confused about the new disclosure policy. The exercise should be viewed as incremental in nature, limited by design flaws, and as likely to cloud as to clarify the public’s understanding of policy intent, at least at the outset. And the mission statement, if one appears, may amount to little more than a strong commitment to motherhood and apple pie among central bankers – i.e., the importance of price stability in the long run – but provide no practical guidance as to near-term policy choices.

The Fed’s decision to begin publishing policymakers’ own forecasts for the path of policy may effectively constitute a minor easing of the central bank’s already ultra-loose monetary policy at its Jan. 24-25 meeting, according to Harm Bandholz of UniCredit. That’s because in doing so, officials will likely show that they expect the benchmark federal funds rate to remain near rock bottom levels until later than mid-2013 – the Fed’s current guidance on policy.

While the minutes do not say in which direction the forward guidance should be adjusted, we assume that mid-2013 is seen by many FOMC officials as too early. In that context, the decision for Fed officials to publish their projections of the target fed funds rate could provide an opportunity for a back door policy easing in January. If e.g. most participants would not pencil in any rate hike until the end of 2014, the market would certainly take this as a strong signal.

Along the same lines, David Hensley at JP Morgan says:

All else constant, these projections would further flatten the yield curve if the FOMC signals a later start to rate hikes than currently is discounted in markets.

All four Federal Reserve policymakers who dissented on U.S. central bank policy this year will lose their votes next year. That could make the New Year full of love, but not necessary free from dissent, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher joked on Friday.

Fisher, like Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, lobbied and lost against Fed easing earlier this year; all three dissented twice. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans dissented twice from the other side of the aisle, arguing for further easing at the most recent two meetings against the majority’s decision to stand pat.

None will have votes next year. Not, of course, because they voiced their opposition to the majority, but simply because votes rotate among regional Fed presidents according to a set schedule, and it just so happened that all four regional Fed presidents with votes this year used those votes to dissent.

Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher is not one to pull his punches. He was one of three dissenters on the Fed’s most recent move to ease policy, and has argued the move will not only be ineffective but also potentially harmful to jobs. Speaking with reporters after his refreshingly frank defense of his dissent this week, Fisher – an architect of the Fed’s new communications policy aimed at more transparency – suggested there are times when he would prefer to be a bit more demure.

Asked if the Federal Open Market Committee’s gloomy economic outlook in its post-meeting statement last week matched his own, he said: “I think the FOMC does its job to honestly state how it views things. We are in an age of enhanced transparency.”

But that’s not always a good thing, he suggested, especially when the market is not used to getting an unvarnished view. Warning that he was about to make a “bad joke” – and then proceeding with it – Fisher said:

Chile, UAE, Singapore, Azerbaijan, Ireland and Norway claim top rankings on the latest transparency index, published by SWF Institute. At the bottom of the ranking is Venezuela, Oman, Nigeria, Mauritania, Kiribati, Iran, Brunei and Algeria.

The Linaburg-Maduell index is calculated with 10 principles — such as whether the fund provides up-to-date, independently audited annual reports, or whether it provides clear strategies and objectives. It also gives points on whether the fund gives ownership percentage of company hodlings, total market value, returns and management compensation.

Enhancing transparency is a key task for sovereign wealth funds, whose often opaque operations have come under heavy criticism by some Western politicians who suspect them of investing with political, rather than commercial, motives.

Australia’s Future Fund reveals that the fund’s mixed asset portfolio (excluding Telstra holding) returned 5.6 percent in the third quarter.

The fund has just over 10 percent in Australian equities, 22.8 percent in global equities. Safer instruments dominate, with debt holdings at 24 percent and cash at 31 percent.

The mixed-asset fund significantly underperforms an equity-only portfolio. For example, the MSCI world equity index has risen more than 17 percent in the Q3 alone.

Sovereign wealth funds may have turned the tables on the rest of the world.

Wrapping up their inaugural meeting in the capital of Azerbaijan, 20 leading sovereign wealth funds urged host countries to make their investment regimes more transparent and discriminatory and keep investment borders and flows as open as possible. (For the story click here).

This comes after years of host countries — the West — asking them to open their books.

Much of the two-day meeting which ended on Friday was held behind closed doors, but the organisers — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund — let media in with cameras and video recorders to film the final 5 minutes of the meeting.

It was less than two years ago that French President Nicholas Sarkozy hit out at sovereign wealth funds, saying “We’ve decided not to let ourselves be sold down the river by speculative funds, by unscrupulous attitudes which do not meet the transparency criteria one is entitled to expect in a civilised world. It’s unacceptable and we have decided not to accept it.”

Now Western politicians have got what they wanted. SWFs have formed a working group, set out best practices under the Santiago Principles, started to meet regularly, and many of them are publishing performance reports (see examples of Mubadala, Temasek, and CIC)  – all helping to enhance transparency in the often opaque industry.

But too much transparency might not be all good. As discussed here, pressure to open up and prove their performance to the general public might lead them to prefer instruments which are certain to give returns — such as fixed income securities, rather than equity stake building that may take years to yield fruit.