So argues Michael Barone:
I don’t claim to be an expert on monetary policy or international finance, but I’ve been astonished by the degree of disrespect expressed here and abroad to the latest economic policies of President Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The policies in question are the Obama administration’s attempts to convince other countries (especially China) to strengthen their currencies and the Fed’s renewed bout of quantitative easing (generally referred to as QE2), which involves buying $600 billion in Treasury bonds by next June.
Both are widely interpreted as attempts to lower the value of the dollar to make American exports cheaper and to reduce the huge export earnings of countries as varied as China, Germany and Brazil.
Not surprisingly, Chinese and German leaders are squawking loudly, complaining that the United States is attempting to use its strength to compensate for our own weakness. Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega minced no words when he called the Fed’s action the beginning of “currency wars.”
Obama’s efforts to get agreement at the G-20 conference were not successful. Seldom if ever has an American leader been pummeled with such criticism at an international economic conference.
During the 2008 campaign we were told that foreigners would once again respect America if voters elected Obama. That wasn’t apparent in Korea.
[…]
Similarly, many were surprised to see World Bank President Robert Zoellick write in the Financial Times Nov. 9 calling attention to the risk of inflation. “Markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today,” he wrote.
He urged economic policymakers to consider “employing gold as a reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.” Gold prices, as viewers of cable news ads know, have been rising to near-record levels, so inflation is what Zoellick is worried about.
Zoellick is no fringe character. He worked for James Baker at Treasury and State and was George W. Bush’s special trade representative and deputy secretary of state.
This week a group of predominantly Republican economists, financiers and writers wrote an open letter to Bernanke calling for ending QE2. “The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed’s objective of promoting employment.” Searing words. It’s highly unusual for such a group put out such stinging criticism of a Fed chairman’s policy.
In announcing QE2, Bernanke stressed the Fed’s statutory obligation to hold down unemployment. That was inserted into the Fed’s charge by Democrats in the 1970s but has clearly been considered of secondary importance by Chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan to the Fed’s primary duty to hold down inflation.
I suspect that Bernanke is less focused on reducing unemployment than he is on preventing deflation. His scholarly work has concentrated on the disastrous deflation that struck America and much of the world in the 1930s. As a Fed board member in 2003 he delivered a widely noticed speech warning of deflation and indicating how the Fed could fight it.
He once wrote, presumably whimsically, that if deflation was a great enough threat, the Fed chairman could go up in a helicopter and throw money down into the streets. But now it looks like a lot of people want to ground Helicopter Ben.
QE2 may have seemed a good match for the Obama administration policy of strengthening China’s currency and in the process weakening the dollar. But it seems a poor match with the incoming Congress — and with the leaders of many of the world’s other leading economic powers.
I think Barone is overstating things here, frankly. Clearly, the problem here has less to do with the Obama administration and its Fed’s playing dangerous games with hyperinflation and global economic policy, and more to do with Obama’s erstwhile inability to explain to us and the rest of the world just how right and brilliant the strategy truly is.
The peasants are scared, you see. Getting all tribal and lizard-brained. Afraid of Barack’s funny name.
Facts and science are what we need here. And more Paul Krugman. Stat.
Because all this monetary blah blah blah is really threatening to cut in to Obama’s tee times and party schedule. And that just won’t do…
this is one of those things where all you can do is hope for the best plan for the worst
Apparently even a good man gets the snub when he acts like this.
Facts and science are what we need here.
You need to say it right: “Facts and science is what we need here.” That’s the way Obama says it, so that’s got to be correct. Because Obama is so much more smarter and better-talkinger than that dunderheaded cowboy Bush.
End the dual mandate. Make a single mandate law.
Do it in the next Congress.
More debt, more problems. We’re seeing the collapse of France. We’ve already seen the collapse of Greece. Germany will be the last, but once the dominoes start falling, there’s going to be nobody to save them.
The Welfare State is a failure. No longer is this a hypothetical argued in the halls of economic professors. We’re seeing it bloom into its failure. Fractional reserve policy has produced too much debt, and there aren’t enough governments around to bail out the failure.
Can the US economy be saved? Are we in time?
This is a pretty insightful take on why, inflation concerns aside, QE2 isn’t going to work out as well as planned ( http://tiny.cc/QEFail )
Might be “Checkmate”, Ben…
Can’t the bank simply change the IOR rate to a lesser figure if they aim to see greater competition between that rate and market rates in Treasuries? I think they can.
Ben Bernanke:
End the dual mandate. Just do it.
You’re correct, they can.
Sure they can. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the wizards of smart haven’t figured out what this writer has.
Unless, of course, the systemic weakness is such that the Fed needs these reserves to shift money around continuously between banks to cover for depositors demands; since a lot of the Bank’s on demand “assets” right now may be polluted with questionable mortgage paper, which is also allowed to be counted for purposes of satisfying leverage requirements.
Drat! That should be Banks-plural, not Bank’s-possessive.
I’m a bit confused, Bob. Isn’t your concern that the QE2 will prove to be overly inflationary?
If this writer is correct, it definitely won’t be. (Which is the entire point of paying interest on reserves.)
Yes bh, out-of-control inflation is my fear, and when I cited the passage and article I cleverly slid the caveat into my preface that I was putting that aside for a moment.
I also get that paying interest on reserves helps keep money out of circulation and therefore acts as a mechanism to counteract inflationary pressure.
My inflation concerns are really more exchange-based than grand-mal-Weimaresque-excess-money-supply ones. I’m worried about the prices of oil, and other commodities increasing and having a ripple effect on all goods and services delivered in the economy.
It is, perhaps, much ado about nothing, and I don’t pretend to have the expertise, depth of understanding, or acumen that someone like yourself has. I’m basing these opinions on life experience in the mid/late 70’s and early 80’s when tough medicine was required to get interest rates and inflation under control. I’d hate for a redux of that movie just after entering my 50’s! And I don;t think that a shock like that would be good for the nation as a whole right now either.
I mean, I understand that even moderately high inflation is preferable to real deflation, every day of the week! And that’s hard to avoid right now, given all the (virtual) asset value lost by the deflation(!) of housing values in the wake of the bubble bursting.
Crimeny! On further reflection, maybe I’m handwringing!, a revoltin development if true. I just hear folks talking about how core inflation is virtually non-existent, but also know that those numbers don’t include food or fuel costs. I just hope that the same fellows that didn’t realize that real estate prices (average prices) had soared to several times their historic multiple, vis-a-vis buyers income (again, average income), will be keeping a very close eye on things.
I have similar concerns, Bob. Note the spread (.6 vs 1.2).
Heh, like I was saying to Geoff last night, few people in my line are actually macro-economists either let along good ones. And, plenty of good macro folks are disagreeing at the moment anyway.
I suppose we just have to keep our eyes on inflation and NGDP and see what develops.
let alone good ones
I was able to lock in at 4 1/8th for the next 45 days. And will be able to get better than that for a 20 or 15 year. So, there is that. Still a shit bag policy.
Heh…
Macro-economics? Why, I thought that was when my wallet was fat!; when I was big pimpin’ and spendin’ cheese…
Seriously though, is there a metric that economist use which measures the ratio of (delta NGDP)/(delta CPI-all) ? Seems to me to be a number that we would want to be large; and if not, an indicator that price increases were outstripping real economic gains.
But, then again, mabe this is meaningless since GDP numbers reported are always net inflation anyway (I’ll have to check that out to be sure)
Or maybe (delta wage increases)/(delta CPI-all) would be more illustrative of the “everyman” situation.
Perhaps all these numbers exist, as I confessed, I’m an economic dilletante; I spent more time studying formally higher mathematics, chemistry, mechanics, and physics in college.
4 1/8 is sweeeeeet JD. I’m currentkly looking into re-fi options, since my fixed is currently at 5.65; the difference right now makes the costs of refinancing a wash!, and I may also shorten the term as well.
OOPS! #18; “studying formally” s/b “formally studying”. I guess I should have studied typing as well!
Bob – I thought the rule of thumb was that if you can drop a half to 3/4 of a point, the cost of refi will pay for themselves in a 1 year span.
Or, if you lived in Indy I would give you my mortgage guy’s name, and he would do it with no closing costs.
While we’ve touched on the inherent trickiness involved in weighting the components of CPI I think something like (delta NGDP)/(delta CPI) is exactly what we’re looking for as evidence regarding quantitative easing.
Thanks for the offer JD,
And you’re corect about the cost-benefit rule-of-thumb. That’s why I’m thinking with nearly a point and one-half I may be able to shorten the term. And if not, well, the payment will go down considerably.
But, you know, NY and all…My property taxes will probably just increase(again) and take up the slack anyway! :)
We are considering going down to a 15 year, for even better rates, but with Bumblefuck in office for at least 2, and prolly 6 more years, cash is king in our house, and we would prefer the increased flexibility we can have with a 30 yr. A point and a half should make you smile.
<blockquote)While we’ve touched on the inherent trickiness involved in weighting the components of CPI I think something like (delta NGDP)/(delta CPI) is exactly what we’re looking for as evidence regarding quantitative easing.
Great! Let’s call the new metric the “bh-how bad are we being boned, ratio”. Or if you’re too modest, the “PW-how bad are we being boned, ratio”.
I mean, maybe we can make somethin’ off this suckah!
Sage words indeed.
plus if bumblefuck’s plans for hyperinflations succeed, aren’t you way way way ahead of the game with a 30-year?
17 year old US striker just scored his first international goal @ RSA.
God help us all if that happens happyfeet, but if it is so you are correct.
Yes, hf, I believe that is also true. A burst of hyperinflation right after we buy our new property would be nice. But again, I would Gladly sacrifice my selfish benefits from their horrific policies if they would just do nothing, or even do something right. As is, we are left to make do with the crap sandwich they are feeding us, and having to act like it is Foie Gras Moco Loco
you get to be like those people what bought their house in the 60s! You still hear stories here in the valley – New Other Guy’s grandparents bought their house in Burbank for $3000 blah blah blah and at the height of the bubble it was appraised at $700,000
I can’t even get my head around that idea
JD, England are losing 2-0 to France at home.
They should stick to bribing officials to try to get the 2018 Cup,SW.
Our really really young players are going to be fun.
I applaud you for your avatar JD. Who else would use a snail-s view of well-shorn Jewish junk on a cold day?
BRILLIANT!
snail’s
I think alp just called you a shriveled willy, JD.
I’ve given up trying to talk the Lovely Bride into springing for a mansion on Summit Avenue. There’s a nice 9-bedroom place up for about $900k, though I’ll bet we could talk ’em down quite a bit in this market.
I’ve tried explaining to her that a few years from now, our mortgage payment will be about the same as a loaf of bread, but she just isn’t interested. I pressed the issue, until she replied with “How on Earth are you going to fortify and defend that much square footage, Squid? Robots? Turrets? You’ve been playing way too much Fallout lately.”
I married a practical woman. Damn hard to win an argument with that one.
Time for a change in avatars, if only to annoy squid.
This is taking too long to switch over. I have the patience of a boiling teakettle.
Dammit, the print is too small. Poop.
cranky-d, gravatars as displayed are 48×48 pixels.
Use PShop/GIMP to reduce to that before using. Saves a lot of disappointment.
Regards,
Ric
I just use the gravatar cropping feature, but the preview is larger than what’s displayed. Eh, it’s not like I spent more than a few minutes making the change.
how do u change avatars? just go on gravatar and download where? here/ or wordpress?
buttons!
to change the avatars you have to go to the gravatar I think and switch them there – you can load several
Okay, that was fucking funny, alp.
Go to gravatar.com and under the “My account” menu click on “Manage my gravatars.” You can load as many as you want (apparently), and just click on the one you want to use. It will always default to the last avatar you uploaded, but that’s easy to change. I have seven up there now, but I don’t know if I’ll use many of them. The drive space they take up is pretty tiny.
Gravatar will not recognize my word press acct. It took intervention by our host to even get my word press acct working, so I am cool with no avatar.
Testing Gravatar
Oh, that’s totally workable, JD.
Just sign up for a new account at gravatar and make sure you use the same email address that you use here.
Just speaking for myself buttons, but I’d prefer you keep your avatar just the way it is if you wouldn’t mind.
Tried that, bh, no go. Maybe it is the iPad. Or maybe the online gawds hate me.
thanks for all the advice-first i gotta download a couple of pix i want so that pic will be there for awhile. my friend sent it to me and said-do u want to see a picture of the cnn tower in toronto?
so i clicked it on and got a chuckle
if u look over that girls shoulder u can see the tower
in the distance
Fascinating.
Reducing pixel count while keeping the picture recognizable used to be tough for most any rendering engine. Clearly the problem has been solved. Perhaps it involves starting with the most (errr) prominent feature(s) and working outward…
Regards,
Ric