Inflation May Help Economy, Expert Says

At least one economist argues that allowing inflation to occur “naturally” could actually help the struggling U.S. economy. Mark Thoma notes the Federal Reserve is expected to implement controls if inflation approaches 2% and unemployment remains high by raising interest rates in an effort to retain “inflation credibility,” rather than keeping them low through 2014 as it had previously announced it would do. Thoma argues, however, that exerting control to hit a particular inflation target absent consideration of the other factors is unwise, and that inflation during a recession can encourage more activity in the market rather than restrain it. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View. 

If inflation begins to increase before the economy has fully recovered, the Fed shouldn't panic:

Federal Reserve Policy: Exceptions Improve the Rule: At some point during the recovery, the Fed may face an important decision. If the inflation rate begins to rise above the Fed’s 2% target and the unemployment rate is still relatively high, will the Fed be willing to leave interest rates low and tolerate a temporary increase in the inflation rate?

Probably not. Even though higher inflation can help to stimulate a depressed economy, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is not in favor of allowing higher inflation because it could undermine the Fed’s “hard-won inflation credibility.” And recent Fed communications seem to be setting the stage for the Fed to abandon its commitment to keep interest rates low through the end of 2014. This adds to the likelihood that the Fed will raise interest rates quickly if inflation begins increasing above the 2% target even if the economy has not yet fully recovered.

As I’ll explain in a moment, that’s the wrong thing to do. But first, why does the Fed put so much value on its credibility? ...[continue reading]...

 This blog post was republished with permission from Economist's View.

Krugman Criticizes Ron Paul

Economist Paul Krugman, no lightweight when it comes to fiscal knowledge, recently debated sometime Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on the issue of his Paul’s prediction of runaway inflation, and criticized the politician’s vague references to ancient history by way of response. Krugman contends that it is no accident that politician’s cite murky historical anecdotes as a way to establish credibility for positions on current affairs, despite having a century’s worth of well-documented knowledge from which to draw – if only it supported the desired conclusion. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View.

Paul Krugman comments:

Don’t Know Much About (Ancient) History: The things I do for book sales. I debated, sort of, Ron Paul on Bloomberg.Video here. I thought we might have a discussion of why the runaway inflation he and his allies keep predicting keeps not happening. But no, he insisted (if I understood him correctly) that currency debasement and price controls destroyed the Roman Empire. I responded that I am not a defender of the economic policies of the Emperor Diocletian.

Actually, though, appeals to what supposedly happened somewhere in the distant past are quite common on the goldbug side of economics. And it’s kind of telling.

I mean, history is essential to economic analysis. You really do want to know, say, about the failure of Argentina’s convertibility law, of the effects of Chancellor Brüning’s dedication to the gold standard, and many other episodes.

Somehow, though, people like Ron Paul don’t like to talk about events of the past century, for which we have reasonably good data; they like to talk about events in the dim mists of history, where we don’t really know what happened. And I think that’s no accident. Partly it’s the attempt of the autodidact to show off his esoteric knowledge; but it’s also the fact that because we don’t really know what happened — what really did go down during the Diocletian era? — you can project what you think should have happened onto the sketchy record, then claim vindication for whatever you want to believe.

It’s funny, in a way — except that this sort of thinking dominates one of our two main political parties.

This blog post was republished with permission from Economist's View.

Are Higher Tax Rates Really That Bad?

The Laffer Curve is an economic theory that pinpoints a revenue-maximizing percentage for taxation; in other words, it prescribes a certain tax percentage beyond which tax revenues actually start to decrease due to tax avoidance, evasion and nonpayment. Economists Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez believe the percentage for those in the top 1% of U.S. earners hovers somewhere between 50%-70%, meaning the government could raise their tax rate up to at least 50% before seeing a drop in revenue. The wealthy heartily disagree, but there is no way to tell other than to look at historical data, which indicates the hike would not change behavior. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View. 

Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez:

High Tax Rates Won't Slow Growth, by Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez, Commentary, WSJ: The share of pre-tax income accruing to the top 1% of earners in the U.S. has more than doubled to about 20% in 2010 from less than 10% in the 1970s. At the same time, the average federal income tax rate on top earners has declined significantly. Given the large current and projected deficits, should the top 1% be taxed more? ...

But will taxable incomes of the top 1% respond to a tax increase by declining so much that revenue rises very little or even drops? In other words, are we already near or beyond the peak of the famous Laffer Curve, the revenue-maximizing tax rate? ...

According to our analysis..., the revenue-maximizing top federal marginal income tax rate would be in or near the range of 50%-70%... Thus we conclude that raising the top tax rate is very likely to result in revenue increases at least until we reach the 50% rate that held during the first Reagan administration, and possibly until the 70% rate of the 1970s. ...

But will raising top tax rates significantly lower economic growth? In the postwar U.S., higher top tax rates tend to go with higher economic growth—not lower. ... Neither does international evidence support a case for lower growth from higher top taxes. ...

By itself, a suitable increase in the taxation of top earners will not solve our unsustainable long-term fiscal trajectory. But that is no reason not to use this tool to contribute to addressing this problem.

With the "taxes harm growth" and Laffer curve arguments undercut by research such as this, Republicans have fallen back on the argument that it's unfair to take income away from those who earn it. But that presumes that the system allocates income fairly, a claim that is hard to swallow given how much financial executives are paid relative to their contribution to the productive process (to name just one example). There's nothing unfair about using taxes to "clawback" misdirected income, and it won't harm growth to send income where it should have gone in the first place.

This article was republished with permission from Economist's View.

Election Year Spurs Small Business Giveaways

The struggling U.S. economy during an election year means many politicians are crafting policy aimed at small businesses in the hopes of scoring points with voters; however, statistics from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Tax Policy Center reveal these measures really don’t help. The estimated cost to government for the Small Business Tax Cut proposal is $46 billion, and experts say most benefits will go to those earning $1 million or more and will not help create any jobs. Economist Bruce Bartlett argues that money would be better spent on infrastructure, and politicians can spin it by saying infrastructure helps small businesses, too. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View.

Bruce Bartlett:

Do Small Businesses Create Jobs?, by Bruce Bartlett, Commentary, NY Times: ... Congress is, of course, always keen to find ways of aiding small businesses, which are akin to mom and apple pie in its eyes. Just recently, it approved the JOBS Act, which is intended to ease access to credit by “emerging growth” companies. Congressional Republicans are anxious to enact a new tax cut for small businesses, as well. The Small Business Tax Cut Act, which was reported out by the House Ways and Means Committee on April 10, would give a one-year, 20 percent tax cut to every business with 500 or fewer employees.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that it will reduce federal revenues by $46 billion. The committee report offered virtually no rationale for the legislation other than that small businesses are good and deserve a tax cut, period. The linkage between a small business’s tax burden and job creation, however, is tenuous at best. ...

The Tax Policy Center estimates that the benefits would accrue overwhelming to the wealthy, with 49 percent of the total tax cut going to those making more than $1 million.

There may be policies that would increase the number of business start-ups and aid employment this way. But an across-the-board tax cut for every small business, defined only in terms of employment, is nothing but an election-year giveaway unlikely to create any jobs whatsoever.

Instead, let's use the $46 billion this would cost (and mostly waste in terms of job creation) to build infrastructure. If it helps to sell it, make it infrastructure that would be useful to small businesses -- it can probably be argued that most infrastructure projects would help small businesses in one way or the other. This way, even apart from the better prospects for job creation from infrastructure spending, at least we'll have something to show for the money when all is said and done.

This blog post was republished with permission from Economist's View.

Examining Employment Recovery Cycles

Economist Tim Duy examines compares recent job growth and losses with historical data to explain what is happening in the U.S. economy now and what can be expected in the future. He demonstrates a parallel between post-1990 employment recovery failures and manufacturing job recovery, which prompts him to consider whether job losses are structural or cyclical based on losses in supply jobs vs. demand jobs. Duy then ties capital and currency manipulation to job growth, and wonders how much Chinese financial policy and a global demand shortfall impacted U.S. employment in the ‘90s, and whether a similar explanation could explain the current employment fluctuation. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View.

Tim Duy:

Behind the "Trend is the Cycle", by Tim Duy: Via Mark Thoma, David Andolfatto finds evidence of a permanent component to recent job losses. Reviewing a recent paper (which I enjoyed) by Nir Jaimovich (Duke University) and Henry Siu (University of British Columbia), Andolfatto notes:

The conclusion is that jobless recoveries are due entirely to jobless recoveries in routine occupations. In this group, employment never recovers beyond its trough level, nor does it come anywhere near its pre-recession peak. This is in stark contrast to earlier recessions.

He further sees a smoking gun in this chart:

And again notes:

This last figure is quite dramatic. It shows how, prior to 1990, routine employment rebounded strongly following a recession. But since 1990, it appears not to rebound at all. Indeed, the pattern appears to be one of a precipitous decline in recession, followed by a period of relative stability in the subsequent expansion.

I have to admit that I was perplexed by Andolfatto's surprise with this result - the basic patterns of this chart should be easily recognizable as simply the path of manufacturing employment in the US:

That employment in this sector has not rebounded after the past two recessions is not exactly a secret (there is likely some construction element in the first chart as well, but I am putting that aside for the moment). That said, I think there is an interesting question here - should we define these job losses as primarily structural (supply) or cyclical (demand)? To be honest, I admit that I have gone back and forth on this topic.

If I am in a mercantilist frame of mind (see here), I would say this becomes an issue in the mid-1990's when China devalues and fixes the renminbi. This act of currency manipulation to gain a competitive advantage is ignored by the Clinton Administration, and the offshoring craze goes into hyperdrive. Non-durable goods manufacturing begins to slide immediately, and durable goods employment contracts during the 2001 recession and never rebounds as firms choose to restart production in China rather than the US. I anticipated the same after the 2007-2009 recession, a prediction that has not been entirely true.

Somewhere in here is also a construction story, in which the flow of capital into the US finds its way into the housing market, which in turn boosts construction jobs which are subsequently lost. The construction jobs would fall into the routine manual worker category that appears to have suffered from permanent dislocation.

Is this a structural story, or rather just an outcome of a global savings glut/demand shortfall? If domestic demand in China had been higher, wouldn't the Chinese current account surplus have been smaller? And shouldn't the same be true of Japan and Germany? And if this was the case, would the US current account deficit also been smaller, suggesting external factors were less of a drag on demand? And if that were the case, would job losses in manufacturing have been so severe? Would the housing bubble have erupted as it did? And would other sectors have grown more quickly to compensate for job losses in manufacturing?

What I am thinking is that in a world with a global demand shortfall combined with currency manipulation, international trade can become a zero-sum game that leads to dislocations that appear to be structural but are in fact largely cyclical or more broadly demand related.

Alternatively, rather than rely on the global imbalances story, you can argue that the drop in manufacturing is entirely the result of productivity increases. I really don't think this helps, as it doesn't explain why the displaced workers have not been entirely reabsorbed elsewhere in the economy. Remember, we used to argue that all those displaced workers would simply find jobs in the rapidly growing sectors of the economy. Apparently, this has yet to happen. It is kind of hard to argue that the problem is retraining or skills. Perhaps this is true in the short-run, but we are talking about trends that are nearly two-decades or more old. Surely a greater degree of adjustment should have happened by now. It is just as easy to believe that the demand is lacking to absorb the released resources (a euphemism, by the way, for fired workers), which fits with a global savings glut/demand shortfall story as well.

Moreover, a structural story doesn't answer the problem of sticky wages. If in fact the jobless recovery was simply an artifact of job losses for employees with routine skills, why is wage growth for remaining workers so muted? Why such a high proportion of zero wage gains?

Finally, I would add that if you believed that fundamentally a global demand shortfall and related imbalance story was at play, some rebalancing, due, for example, to a mixture of higher foreign wages and a weaker dollar, would have predictable impacts in stimulating export and import competing industries. Some evidence for this can be found in the upswing in durable goods manufacturing:

This is where I was wrong; it is more of increase than I would have expected given my mood in 2010. See also recent stories about the re-shoring phenomenon. For example, from the FT:

Jeff Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, says the decision to put $1bn into the group’s domestic appliances business is “as risky an investment as we have ever made”.

He may well be right. The decision to bring back to Louisville, Kentucky, hundreds of jobs that had been outsourced to Mexico and China is emblematic of his strategy for GE. If it fails, it will be hung around his neck forever.

“Reshoring” production is a strategy being tried by many American manufacturers, as rapid wage growth in emerging economies and sluggish pay in the US erodes the labour cost advantage of offshore plants.

The US has added 429,000 factory jobs in the past two years, replacing almost a fifth of the losses during the recession.

Trend or fad? Too early to tell.

Bottom Line: I don't think the results Andolfatto cites should come as much of a surprise. If you were looking for a jobless recovery two years ago, the "routine" task sectors of construction and manufacturing were cause for concern. But I think the dynamics in those sectors can be explained in the context of a global demand shortfall rather than entirely structural phenomena.

This blog post was republished with permission from Economist's View.

So What Will Be The Next Financial Bubble To Pop?

Now that it appears the real estate bubble has just about run its course, it is time to look for that next big bubble. Some financial analysts are pointing to Europe, and even the Euro currency, as the source of pending financial doom, but one analyst from Money Morning has another idea. He is pointing at student loan debt. With the costs of education rising, and wages not even remotely keeping pace, it seems to me that he has some valid points. For more on this, continue reading the following article from Money Morning.

Don't look now but there's another giant bubble out there. It's so big it rivals subprime.

I'm talking about the student loan bubble.

Recently, the outstanding volume of student loans passed $1 trillion. What's more bothersome is that the average individual amount owed by new college graduates has passed $25,000.

With college costs zooming upwards faster than inflation, this is rapidly becoming another subprime mortgage-like sinkhole.

Just like subprime, the problem is that people of modest means are being suckered by high-pressure salesmen into taking on too much debt.

The difference is that since student loans are government guaranteed and can't be released in bankruptcy, the burdens will be paid by the unfortunate ex-students and the U.S. taxpayer.

The standard justification for soaring higher education costs is a simple one.

The United States needs to maintain an educational lead in order for its wage levels to remain above those of its competitors.

I'm talking largely about emerging markets, which have been helped enormously by modern communications, making global sourcing much easier than it was.

There are two problems with this view.

First, the more esteemed colleges take great pride in not providing vocational training, and graduate large numbers of students with degrees that don't obviously qualify them for anything.

In what way is the U.S. being made more competitive by graduating students in (insert your favorite useless college major here)?

Second, even as the demand for a college education is increasing, the efficiency of providing it is declining. Both the Ivy League and state university systems increase tuition rates far more rapidly than overall inflation.

The Student Loan Bubble Drives Up Costs

In fact, there is considerable evidence that finance availability is itself pushing up college costs.

As college funding has become more readily available to the general population, it has reduced the financial pressure on colleges, since few of their students are today paying their way from part-time jobs and parent cash flow.

Huge endowments in the Ivy League, which allow those elite colleges to provide full scholarships for students, focus the competition between colleges ever more closely on league table "prestige" rather than costs.

The ranks of college administrators have also exploded since they are effectively insulated from market forces - not unlike those in medical professions.

So have their earnings - according to The New York Times, in the decade between the 1999-2000 and 2009-10 college years, the average college president's pay at the 50 wealthiest universities increased by 75%, to $876,792, while their average professorial pay increased by only 14%, to $179,970.

Meanwhile, the cost of tuition has increased by 65% while prices generally rose by 31% during the same decade.

That's precisely the opposite of what you'd want to happen, if you were concerned about college productivity and cost.

Buried in Debt by Student Loans

There are two factors pushing the escalation in student loan volume.

One is the nationalization of most student loan programs in 2009, providing government guarantees on most student loans.

That has altogether removed the risks of student loan provision from banks, as well as encouraging low-quality degree scams by for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges are a good idea, but not when combined with government-guaranteed student loans.

The other factor pushing up student loans is the Bankruptcy Act of 2005, which allowed consumers to relieve themselves of all debts in bankruptcy except student loans.

This special privilege for the student loan market has caused great hardship.

The Washington Post reported this week that Americans 60 and older still owe $36 billion on student loans, and gave one sad example of a 58-year old woman who had borrowed $21,000 to fund a graduate degree in clinical psychology in the late 1980s (which one would think was at least moderately useful), had never been able to earn more than $25,000 per annum and was now left with student loan debt of $54,000.

If government guarantees and bankruptcy exemption remain in place, the volume of student loans will continue soaring, as unscrupulous lenders provide them to naive students.

That will cause the cost of college to continue rising in real terms as college administrators pad their sinecures.

As with the subprime mortgage industry, an eventual crash is inevitable. But unlike subprime mortgage borrowers, student loan borrowers will be unable to start afresh after bankruptcy.

The solution is to eliminate the two unwarranted subsidies to the student loan industry. Student loans must no longer be guaranteed by the government.

And in bankruptcy, they must be treated like any other debt. The banks will scream, and student loans will be much more difficult to get.

For most students, that will return them to choosing a cheaper institution and working their way through college, in the traditional way - some of them might choose more marketable degree courses, too.

For the poor but brilliant, the Ivy League can continue providing full scholarships and the government can continue providing Pell grants - with their cost fully accounted for on-budget.

College costs will drop back to 1970s levels in real terms, as overstuffed bureaucracies are eliminated.

And for college administrators and student lending banks, life will get considerably harder - which is no bad thing.

All bubbles eventually burst. This one will be no different.

This article was republished with permission from Money Morning.

Stocks Up, Consumer Sentiment Down

Rising gas prices are having a negative impact on U.S. consumer sentiment, although projections suggest the feeling is temporary according to the Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index. The Energy Department noted prices edged up another $0.04 in the past week, keeping more money in the pump and leaving consumers with less to spend elsewhere. Meanwhile, improvements in the stock market have some wondering about inflation, including Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, despite gains being propped up by a strengthening labor market. For more on this continue reading the following article from Tim Iacono.

The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index dipped from 75.3 in February to 74.3 in the first of two readings for March in a sign that rising gas prices may now be having in an impact on the mood of the consumer.

Based in large part on a recently improving labor market, the current conditions component remains firm, up from 83.0 to 84.2, however, the expectations component more than offset that gain, down from 70.3 to 68.0.

It’s a good think that equity markets don’t have a gas tank to fill every week or they too might think about pulling back but, so far, they show little sign of doing so, though that could soon change given that inflation expectations show signs of stirring to life.

Survey respondents ratcheted up their one-year outlook on consumer prices from an increase of 3.3 percent to 4.0 percent in a delayed reaction to rising pump prices that the Energy Department said gained another 4 cents over the last week, rising to a national average of $3.83 per gallon.

Five-year inflation expectations (the measure watched more closely by Fed economists) rose just one-tenth to 3.0 percent, indicating that, like Fed Chief Ben Bernanke, most Americans see rising gas prices as being temporary, a belief that, unlike Bernanke’s, could prove to be temporary itself.

This blog post was republished with permission from Tim Iacono.

Defining ‘Fiscal Stimulus’

Many people wonder why the much-touted fiscal stimulus did not do more to boost the economy, and some experts answer this question with another: what stimulus? Menzie Chinn, professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin, explains in a recent article how the stimulus package was not overly large when examined as a ratio of the GDP. Chinn breaks down the stimulus as it relates to Bush-era tax cuts, spending for the Iraq war and Obama’s health care legislation, demonstrating that in the face of such costs there was really no hope such a fractionally small stimulus package could have stimulated the economy. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View.

Menzie Chinn makes a point I've been trying to emphasize (with less than full success). When people ask why the fiscal stimulus didn't do more to elevate the economy, the right question to ask is what fiscal stimulus? When the federal efforts are combined with the contractions at the state and local level, there was very little net stimulus. That doesn't mean the federal efforts didn't do something positive and important -- if the federal government hadn't offset the state and local contractions things would have been even worse -- but it does mean that people looking for more than simply treading water as evidence that the fiscal stimulus had an impact are asking the wrong question:

Re-Examining that "Massive Stimulus", by Menzie Chinn: I keep on seeing references to "massive stimulus", so much I have this feeling of innumeracy everywhere. ...

Total nondefense spending at all levels rose from 27.2% of potential GDP in the last quarter of the Bush Administration (2008Q4) to a shocking 29.9% by 2010Q4, before declining to 28.4% in the last quarter for which data are available for.

That's not to say that the Federal government did not increase spending; merely that to a large extent it was offsetting the contraction at the state and local levels of government, as I pointed out in this March 2010 post. ...

Even if the state and local governments had not contracted expenditures, the fiscal stimulus arising from the ARRA (spending and tax provisions) would not have been particularly large, when expressed as a ratio of GDP. As I noted on February 6, 2009, as the bill was close to being signed:

I want to stress the adjectives "massive stimulus" conjoined to the noun "bill" is a matter of context. Dividing by baseline GDP shows that in a proportional (rather than dollar) sense the bill is rather modest. The fiscal impulse to GDP ratio never exceeds 2.5 ppts in any given fiscal year.

But then, it was clear that many of the critics never wanted to do the hard work of long division. (Oh, and I still want to talk to all the critics of the bill who said the spending would kick in long after the economy had recovered...).

A parting observation. The impact on the budget (tax reductions and outlays) can be placed in context by comparing to other major undertakings.

Figure 3: Impact on budget balance, in billions of FY2010$, for EGTRRA; for JGTRRA; cumulative budget authorization for operations in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom, not including incremental debt servicing costs) through FY2012; for Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; for American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, all in billions of FY2010$, deflated using CPI. Source: CBO, Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update (August. 2001), Table 1-4; CBO, Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update (August 2003), Table 1-8 (revenue implications only); and CBO, "H.R. 4872, Reconciliation Act of 2010: Estimate of direct spending and revenue effects for the amendment in the nature of a substitute released on March 18, 2010," (March 18, 2010), Nominal figures from Amy Belasco, "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11," RL33110, Congressional Research Service, March 29, 2011, Table 3. Data for FY2011 Iraq operations is for continuing resolution, for 2012 is Administration FY2012 request (see notes to Figure 2 of this post for calculations); for ARRA, CBO Budget and Economic Outlook (January 2012), Box 1-1, page 9; for CPI, historical from FREDII, and forecasts/projections from CBO (January 2012), Table 2-1 (using calendar year forecasted inflation for FY inflation). ...

Just to decode: The EGTRRA = The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, JGTRRA = The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, PPACA = The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

That is, the first two entries are the Bush Tax cuts, the third the Iraq war, the fourth is Obama's health care legislation (which actually improved the budget outlook according to the CBO), and the last is the federal stimulus package.

The sum of the first three entries -- the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war -- are approximately four times as "massive" as the stimulus package.

This blog post was republished with permission from Economist's View.

Critics Examine Buffett’s Gold Claims

Legendary investor Warren Buffett has been making the financial news rounds with his claims that gold is “valueless,” and that the metal is experiencing an exaggerated bubble that is set to burst sooner rather than later. On the Edge host Max Kaiser asked Ned Naylor Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management on his opinion of Buffett’s gold rhetoric, and Naylor responded that Buffett must have an ulterior motive for the claim considering gold’s performance as compared to Buffett’s own Berkshire Hathaway. Kaiser went further, labeling Buffett a “financial terrorist” whose meddling in banking institutions and broader impact on the financial markets tinges the investor’s comments with dishonesty. For more on this continue reading the following article from Tim Iacono.

Max Keiser talks to Ned Naylor Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management about why Warren Buffett hates gold after the “Oracle of Omaha” devoted a considerable portion of his recent shareholders letter(.pdf) to discuss why the metal is not worth owning.

Among the many other interesting things you’ll learn from Ned is that Warren Buffett’s father was the “Ron Paul of his day”, meaning that, Buffett the Younger’s views toward the yellow metal are likely something he didn’t learn at home.

This blog post was republished with permission from Tim Iacono.

Fed Finally Getting Real?

Macroeconomist Mark Thoma is wondering whether Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is finally coming to terms with the Fed’s role in the national economic crisis based on recent comments Bernanke made before the House Committee on Financial Services that did not mirror the Chairman’s typical rose-colored pronouncements. As he related in a recent CBS News commentary, Thoma has been given hope by Bernanke’s sterner disposition that the Fed will continue to support the U.S. economy during the tender stages of its recovery, rather than resort to austerity before any improvements have a chance to take root. For more on this continue reading the following article from Economist’s View.

I have been pretty critical of the Fed throughout the crisis. I still don't think policy is aggressive enough, and the Fed has been behind the developments in the economy due to its propensity to see green shoots that aren't actually there. But at least it's leaning in the right direction:
Has the Fed Learned Its Lesson?, Mark, Thoma, CBS News: COMMENTARY Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke seems to have learned an important lesson. In his appearance before House Committee on Financial Services, Chairman Bernanke said the monetary policy committee does "not anticipate further substantial declines in the unemployment rate over the course of this year. Looking beyond this year, FOMC participants expect the unemployment rate to continue to edge down only slowly toward levels consistent with the Committee's statutory mandate." In addition, "participants agreed that strains in global financial markets posed significant downside risks to the economic outlook." There were other cautionary statements as well.

That is quite a change from Bernanke's pronouncement that the Fed was seeing "green shoots" in the economy back in 2009, and similar optimistic statements about the prospects for recovery many times after that. Time and again, however, the green shoots withered and policy ended up in catch up mode rather than out in front of the economy as it ought to be. Policymakers were consistently behind.

I don't think either monetary or fiscal policymakers have been aggressive enough throughout the crisis, and I have also worried that policymakers in Congress and at the Fed would withdraw support for the economy too soon and harm the recovery. There's little chance that policy will march the aggressiveness I believe is called for, especially this late in the game, and I'm still very worried about Congress turning to budget balancing before the economy is ready to handle it. Premature austerity could damage our recovery prospects.

But I'm becoming less concerned that the Fed will withdraw support too soon. It has committed to keeping interest rates low through the end of 2014, an extension of an earlier commitment through mid 2013. However, the commitment has wiggle room, and there are voices on the Fed who are calling for interest rate increases now. But as Chairman Bernanke made clear today, the Fed as a whole remains cautious and monetary policymakers as a whole are not ready to conclude our troubles are over. I think that's exactly the right stance to take -- hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. In the past the Fed let its hopes interfere with its preparation, but this time does indeed appear to be different.

This article was republished with permission from Economist's View.