BOJ finally end negative interest rates

Japan’s central bank (BOJ) has ended what could be considered one of the most aggressive expansionary monetary policy programmes. The BOJ raised its short-term policy rate from -0.1% to between 0-0.1% on deposits held with the bank. This brings to an end negative rates, charging banks for money held at the BOJ, which have been in operation since 2016 – see image from Trading Economics.

The BOJ see the wage increases of 5.28% hopefully inducing more consumer spending and ultimately higher prices ending a long period of deflationary pressure. See mind map on Monetary Policy.

However even though interest rates are into positive territory monetary policy still remains very loose (expansionary) and borrowing and mortgage costs are not likely to rise by a large amount. The very loose monetary policy has been a key factor the decline of the Yen v US dollar which had helped exporters but made imports more expensive therefore putting pressure on households. This is a very good example of macro policy that could be included in A Level essays. Below is a news item from ABC Australia explaining the rise.

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Japan’s monetary and fiscal policy are at odds with each other

The Bank of Japan (Japan’s central bank) and the Japanese government seem to be moving in opposite directions with regard to monetary and fiscal policy. On the one hand you have the Bank of Japan exiting its long-running experiment with ultra-loose monetary policy (low interest rates) with a depreciating currency (yen) rising bond yields and persistent inflation. Therefore the economy is preparing for positive interest rates which is normal for monetary policy. On the other hand you have the government implementing an expansionary fiscal policy.

Japan has a headline inflation rate above 2% for many months but there could be a delay in tightening as a lot of the pressure on prices is imported with local wages still not rising to match the inflation target over the long term. Also whilst inflation can be tackled with higher interest rates Japan has little chance to cut rates if prices undershoot. Consequently it makes sense to have a tighter monetary policy with the chance of higher inflation.

Adapted from CIE A Level Revision Book – Susan Grant

What is perplexing is the government’s expansionary fiscal policy which is estimated to be 3% of GDP. It consists of large tax cuts and rebates for households which appears to be more political than economic as an unpopular government is trying to please an unhappy electorate. Over the last 30 years Japan has required huge fiscal stimulus to achieve positive economic growth and avoid the risk of deflation. A positive inflation rate means that the business cycle could be managed by using interest rates and therefore less pressure on the government budget deficit to keep the economy going – injecting money in the circular flow of the economy.

Adapted from CIE A Level Revision Book – Susan Grant

Although it remains important for the central bank to avoid tightening monetary policy too early it seems irrational that the government should implement an expansionary fiscal policy. This makes the Bank of Japan’s job even harder and also uses up fiscal ammunition in the event of a global downturn.

Source: Japan’s fiscal and monetary policies are moving in opposite directions – FT November 10th 2023

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A falling currency and its impact.

With the falling value of the UK Pound here is a mindmap on the impact of a weaker currency. What seems to have caused this is the UK government’s decision to make tax cuts, which are to be paid for by higher government borrowing. On hearing this news investors appear to have dumped UK pounds fearing further instability in the UK economy.

The weak pound is a chance to stimulate exports although it has meant more expensive imports of oil and food – UK imports 50% of its food. This will put further pressure on inflation which in turn may also force the Bank of England to increase interest rates.

Source: CIE A Level Revision – Susan Grant

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BoJ still buying bonds as other central banks reverse asset purchases.

Within the OECD are annual inflation has been rising at an average of 9.6% – its ranges from 2.5% in Japan to 73.5% in Turkey. The US and the UK has inflation of 9.1%, Australia 6.3% and NZ 7.3%. Most of the bigger economies target a 2% inflation rate and in response to these higher rates the US Fed increased its interest rates by 75 basis points to 1.5-1.75% with a potential 50 or 75 basis point rise in July. The Reserve Bank of Australia also lifted its interest rate by 50 basis points to 1.35% in July.
In order to tackle this inflationary pressure it is normal for central banks to sell bonds / assets back into the market which is turn reduces the money supply and raises interest rates. This should depress aggregate demand as there is now less money in the circular flow and the cost of borrowing goes up. However, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) is out of kilter with accelerating interest rates as it has committed to its policy of yield curve control intended to keep yields on 10-year bonds below 0.25% by buying as much public debt as is required – see graph below:

FT – Investors crank up bets on BoJ surrendering yield curve controls

How to Bond Yields work?
Say market interest rates are 10% and the government issue a bond and agree to pay 10% on a $1000 bond = annual return of $100.
100/1000 = 10%
If the central bank increase interest rates to 12% the previous bond is bad value for money as it pays $100 as compared to $120 with the a new bond. The value of the new bond is effectively reduced to $833 as in order to give it annual payment of $100 a year the price would have to be $833 to it a market based return.
100/833 = 12%

Yield curve control
Yield curve control (YCC) involves the BOJ targeting a longer-term interest rate by buying as many bonds as necessary to hit that rate target. It has been buying Japanese Government Bonds (JGB) at a monthly rate of ¥20trn which is double its previous peak of bond buying in 2016. Although there is no theoretical limit on its buying ability it has impacted the currency which has fallen to a 24 year low against the US dollar. This will push up the price of imports and inflation although the BOJ is confident that the price rises in its economy are transitory. If inflation does start to consistently hit levels above the BOJ’s target of 2% will they reverse their bond purchasing policy and shift to a higher yield cap?

Shorting JGB’s
A lot of investment banks are looking to short JGB’s. In this situation the trader suspects that bond prices will fall, and wishes to take advantage of that bearish sentiment—for instance, if interest rates are expected to rise. This will likely happen if the Japanese relax their YCC with interest rates rising and bond prices falling – see image below for a simple explanation of shorting.

Source: Online Trading Academy

Sources:

• The Economist: – BoJ v the markets. June 25th 2022.
• Financial Times: Investors crank up bets on BoJ surrendering yield curve controls. June 23rd 2022

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Yen depreciation is good for Japan and its trading partners.

A weaker currency will make exports cheaper and imports more expensive – see mindmap below. As for Japan’s falling yen it is positive for its economy as a whole as it tries to get closer to its 2% inflation target.

The weak yen is also a chance to stimulate exports, even if Japan is no longer the currency-sensitive export machine it once was. Although it has meant more expensive oil and food imports, wages have hardly risen in response to higher prices. It used to be the case that the world was concerned with cheap Japanese exports but this means that it is exporting deflation which is what most developed countries want. The FT article on this topic is very good

Source: CIE A Level Revision – Susan Grant

For more on exchange rates view the key notes (accompanied by fully coloured diagrams/models) on elearneconomics that will assist students to understand concepts and terms for external examinations, assignments or topic tests.

Why does Japanese public debt have little impact on bond yield levels?

Japan is top of the table in accumulating government debt and with a record stimulus to cushion the impact of COVID-19 it is approaching debt levels of 250% of GDP. So how does Japan manage to keep its government bond yields so low (see graph below) and investor confidence high that it can avoid default?

Source: FT

To finance this debt, the Japanese government issues bonds known as JGBs. These are snapped up in enormous volumes by the Bank of Japan (BoJ), the country’s central bank that is officially independent but in practice closely co-ordinates economic policy with the government.

Bond Prices vs Yield

Like any investment the buyer of the bond wants to get the greatest return. Bond prices and interest rates (yield) move in opposite directions and an easy way to consider this is zero-coupon bonds. Here the interest is derived by the difference between the purchase price of the bond and the value of the bond on maturity.
Bond price $920 – Maturity value $1000. The bond’s rate of return = (1000-80 ÷ 920) x 100 = 8.7% return. However a lot depends on what else is happening in the bond market. If interest were to increase and newly issued bonds were giving a return of 10% the 8.7% return is no longer attractive. To match the 10% the original bond price would have to decrease to $909. The bond’s rate of return = (1000-909 ÷ 909) x 100 = 10% return

Reasons for low rates on JGB’s

Japanese Government Bond (JGB) is a bond issued by the government of Japan. The government pays interest on the bond until the maturity date. At the maturity date, the full price of the bond is returned to the bondholder. Japanese government bonds play a key role in the financial securities market in Japan.

The BoJ has recently been buying up billions dollars of Japanese government bonds keeping interest rates around 0% in the hope of increasing the inflation rate to its 2% target. Therefore any rise in bond yields triggers a buy action from the BoJ. As of 2019, the central bank owns over 40% of Japanese government bonds. The BOJ’s government bond holdings rose 3.4% from a year ago to 486 trillion yen ($4.5 trillion) as of March 2020, roughly 90% the size of the country’s economy, according to the central bank’s earnings report for the previous fiscal year.

Post coronavirus policy with new normals: low interest rates and liquidity trap

I blogged yesterday regarding the shape of recovery after the coronavirus pandemic and have been reading Paul Krugman who suggests that conventional monetary policy can’t offset an economic shock like coronavirus.. Since the GFC in 2008 it is evident that low interest rates are the new normal and according to Larry Summers (former Treasury Secretary) we are in an era of secular stagnation. This refers to the fact that on average the ‘natural interest rate’ – the rate consistent with full employment – is very low. There can be periods of full employment but even with 0% interest rates private demand is insufficient to eliminate the output gap. The US was in a liquidity trap (see graph below) for 8 of the past 12 years; Europe and Japan are still there, and the market now appears to believe that something like this is another the new normal.

• 

Krugman suggests that there are real doubts about unconventional monetary policy and that the stimulus for an economy should take the form of permanent public investment spending on both physical and human capital – infrastructure and health of the population. This spending would take the form of deficit-financed public investment. There has been the suggestion that deficit-financed public investment might lead to ‘crowding out’ private investment and also how is the debt repaid? Krugman came up with three offsetting factors

• First, when the economy is in a liquidity trap, which now seems likely to be a large fraction of the time, the extra public investment will have a multiplier effect, raising GDP relative to what it would otherwise be. Based on the experience of the past decade, the multiplier would probably be around 1.5, meaning 3% higher GDP in bad times — and considerable additional revenue from that higher level of GDP. Permanent fiscal stimulus wouldn’t pay for itself, but it would pay for part of itself.
• Second, if the investment is productive, it will expand the economy’s productive capacity in the long run. This is obviously true for physical infrastructure and R&D, but there is also strong evidence that safety-net programmes for children make them healthier, more productive adults, which also helps offset their direct fiscal cost.
• Thirdly, there’s fairly strong evidence of hysteresis — temporary downturns permanently or semi-permanently depress future output (Fatás and Summers 2015). Again, by avoiding these effects a sustained fiscal stimulus would partially pay for itself. Put these things together and they probably outweigh any fiscal effect due to stimulus raising interest rates.

Can the Japanese experience tell us anything?

The policies proposed are similar to those by Japan in the 1990’s but the environment there was unique from what most other developed economies are experiencing. Krugman makes two points:

1. Japan allowed itself to slide into deflation, and has yet to convincingly exit.
2. Japan’s potential growth is low due to extraordinarily unfavourable demography, with the working-age population rapidly declining.

As a result, Japan’s nominal GDP has barely increased over time, with an annual growth rate of only 0.4% since 1995. Meanwhile, interest rates have been constrained on the downside by the zero lower bound. Even with this Japan still faces no hint of debt crisis.
Therefore according to Krugman, with negative shocks to economies becoming more prevalent it maybe better to implement a productive stimulus plan instead of trying to come up with some short-term measures every time there are shocks to our economy.

Source: “The Case for a permanent stimulus”. Paul Krugman cited in “Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes” Edited by Richard Baldwin and Beatrice Weder di Mauro

Japanification – how to cope with low interest rates.

Economists use the term Japanification as shorthand for the situation where economic growth remains stagnant even with significant monetary easing – lower interest rates and increased government spending. With interest rates already at record low levels it seems that a lot of economies are going the same way as Japan. However as discussed in the video below from the FT, Japan is a nice place to live and has a very high life expectancy. The concern for central banks is what other policy instruments do they have after really low interest rates – they are running out of ammunition. To boost growth in the USA is a lot different than in Japan according to Ben Friedman. He states that Japan does not have the problems of widening inequality and the stagnation of the middle income groups.

The question is why Japanese society seems to cope with an economy that doesn’t respond to very low interest rates and increase government spending? The FT look to Robert Pringle’s book ‘The Power of Money’ and suggest three reasons:

• Long established business – 5500-odd companies that are 200+ years old, more than 3,000 are Japanese. They are much more resilient to change and have less of a focus on short-term profits but too service, patience and a disdain for pecuniary motives.
• Immaterialism – unlike a lot of western countries (US in particular) money in Japan is less significant in showing success. Therefore there is less social conflict.
• Japanese version of capitalism – US = individualism and democracy. Japan = individual is part of a group and discourage competition = a stable society.

Source: How Japan has coped with Japanification

Japan and Argentina – bewilder macroeconomics

There is an old saying among economists: “throughout history there have been only four kinds of economies in the world: advanced, developing, Japan, and Argentina”.

The set of once-poor countries that are now rich include Japan, where the transition began more than 100 years ago, and some other East Asian countries such as Korea and Taiwan, whose transition started only 50 years ago and is now almost complete. But going the other way there is only one notable case of a country that started life relatively rich and ended up comparatively poor: this is the great puzzle or paradox of Argentina. In the late nineteenth century, it was among the top five countries in income per capita, richer than all European countries except Britain and on a par with other rich settler societies such as the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Japan and Argentina continue to confound macroeconomics. Below is a table comparing the Argentina and Japan at the moment. How different they are. It doesn’t look as if they will play each other in the Rugby World Cup as they are in different Pools. However if their macroeconomic conditions are anything to go by they should end up in the final

Source:

The Economist – Argentina v Japan – March 30th March 2019

Tight labour market in Japan but wages stagnant.

As is mentioned in simple economic theory, when you have a good or service that becomes more scarce there is an increase in the value of that good or service. The labour market in Japan is becoming very tight in that the supply of labour is starting to decrease with the demand increasing – see graph. This should ultimately lead to higher wage demands by workers as they are becoming more and more scarce relative to the demand. Recent figures out of Japan show this situation:

* Working age population – 15-64 years in Japan – fallen by 3.8m since December 2012 = decrease in supply of labour = upward pressure on wages
* People actually working has increased by 2.2m = increase in demand for labour = upward pressure on wages
* Unemployment in Japan = 2.8% the lowest rate since 1994 = upward pressure on wages

Why has there been no increase in Japanese wages?

Japanese labour unions have not been very aggressive in wage bargaining and there was a wage increase of only 0.2% in 2016 but already in negative territory this year – see chart. Wages have remained stagnant as strong demand has resulted in an increase in supply of labour rather than the price of labour – wages.

Supply of labour increase:
* Japan now has 1 million foreign workers as compared to 680,000 in 2012
* Numbers of elderly men and women in the workforce has increased by over 2 million
* There is a rising share of part-time work

Job security at the expenses of wage increases.
It seems that market forces don’t really affect those employed in large firms. The pay in these firms has been largely unresponsive to the pressure of supply and demand as employees of life-time employment do not worry about being made redundant but don’t expect significant pay rises during the good times. However in times of inflation they do request higher pay to offset the increased cost of living.

So if general workers pay does increase there is the possibility of the general level of prices will also go up which would in turn increases the wage demands of those in large firms. However as stated by The Economist

“Japan’s workers are hugely in demand but strangely undemanding.”

Options for taking on Trump – the Japanese Model.

A colleague alerted me to a Terrie Lloyd a New Zealand businessman in Japan who writes a weekly newsletter. With the election of Donald Trump his recent writing looked at bullies and ways in which you deal with them. Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, has been proactive in getting to know Trump and his team and how the two countries can work together.

Research on bullies

Lloyd suggests that there are generally three ways to deal with a bully.

Run – UK seem to be taking this option
Fight – Chinese will do this
Suffer and appease – Japan, having a bullying culture already, will go for appeasement

Abe will be meeting with Trump on 10th February for a second time in as many months and will want to convince him that Japan is one of the good guys and if he has to pick on someone in the area he should pick on China. For this to work Abe also needs to feed Trump’s ego publicly

Lloyd looks at the work of Dacher Keltner who has written about appeasement and related
human emotion and social practice. He looks at two general classes of appeasement.

1) reactive – the person provides appropriate responses after incidents and these responses are usually public displays of embarrassment and shame.
2) anticipatory appeasement where a person is proactive and engages in certain strategies to avoid conflict. Polite modesty and shyness are also considered anticipatory appeasement.

Japanese Model for dealing with bullies

With Japan taking the latter option, Keltner is suggesting that Abe must appease Trump with gifts of value and that they are seen publicly to assist Trumps power and reputation. Last month the Japanese gave access to US car manufacturers but will that be enough to keep Trump happy? At the meeting on 10th February Abe will propose a package that could generate 700,000 U.S. jobs and help create a $450-billion market. It includes the building of infrastructure projects such as high-speed trains in the northeastern United States, and the states of Texas and California, and renovating subway and train cars. It also includes cooperation in global infrastructure investment, joint development of robots and artificial intelligence, and cooperation in cybersecurity and space exploration, among others.

Toyota the car manufacturer has also been taking the appeasement option after the Trump administration criticised their building of a second car assembly plant in Mexico and also threatened to impose a 20% tariff on Japanese automobile and auto parts makers with plants in Mexico. Toyota quickly announced it would invest $10 billion in its U.S. operations over the next five years.

Abe has definitely been massaging the ego of Trump not only being the first international leader to visit Washington after his election but also telling Trump that he “hopes the United States will become a greater country through (your) leadership,” adding Japan wants to “fulfill our role as your ally.” It will be interesting to see what happens after their meeting on Friday 10th February.

Sources: Terrie Lloyd,  The Japan Times

Bank of Japan sits on its hands

Been teaching a lot on the problems that economies have in trying to stimulate more growth to get out of the deflationary threat that is prevalent in many countries. Central Banks around the world running are out of ammunition (cutting interest rates – see rates below) and one wonders what is the next step that economies can take?

Back in February the Bank of Japan (BOJ) pushed interest rates into negative territory with the uncollateralised overnight rate being -0.10%. After saying that it would do everything in its power to get inflation to reach 2% (its target rate) and with inflation expectations moving down from 0.8% to 0.5%, markets were very surprised that it didn’t ease rates further. Two of Japan’s measures of inflation are moving away from the the target rate of 2% – see graph below.

With this decision the Yen strengthened and it is becoming exceedingly difficult to tell if a central bank has run out of ammunition especially when it doesn’t fire a shot. So why have the BOJ held off on easing?

1. When rates are cut – especially if they go negative – it takes six to twelve months to judge its impact on the economy. This is something referred to as the ‘Pipeline Effect’.
2. Governor Haruhiko Kuroka may be concerned with the strengthening of the Yen after the last cut in February. This makes exports more expensive and imports cheaper.
3. The Governor is waiting for the government fiscal stimulus to kick in with the impending cancellation of an increase in value-added-tax.

There is plenty of room to push interest rates further into negative territory and with the next scheduled BOJ meeting in June they will be watching what the US Fed reserve do. An increase in the US Fed rate will mean a stronger US dollar which might achieve more for Japan than further negative interest rates.

Credit Rating Agencies – how countries stack up.

Here is a list of the latest ratings by the three main rating agencies. Notice that Australia and the three Scandinavian countries have top ratings. The UK lost its top rating from Moody’s but maintained the top rating from the other two. New Zealand comes in further down with a top rating from Moody’s but has lost its top grade from the other two. When you get to B status your are talking high risk or junk status and this is quite evident with the PIGS counties.

If you have watched the movie documnetary ‘Inside Job’ you will remember that these 3 credit rating agencies also rated high risk investments – sub-prime mortgages – as AAA, up to a week before they failed. The same could be said about their rating of investment company Bear Stearns.

Ultimately they could have ‘stopped the party’ but delayed ratings reports and made junk status investments AAA rated. But as they testified in front of congress their advice to clients are opinions ‘just opinions’ – I wonder do they share the opinions of those that lost huge amounts of money, including sovereign investments. Recently they downgraded Greece and Spain in the knowledge that the servicing of the debt would now become more costly for those countries and stifle any sort of recovery in the near future.

Japan’s three arrows of economic policy

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently addressed parliament stating that he plans to reverse the trend of issuing bonds to raise money but raise more in taxes. Japan cannot beat deflation and a strong currency (yen) if it adheres to the same policy of the past decade.

However his speech comes after the announcement of a $226.5bn stimulus package earlier in the year and this when Japan already has some serious debt issues – public debt that is almost three times the size of the Japanese economy.. He also wants the Bank of Japan to maintain an open-ended policy of quantitative easing (QE) and a doubling of the inflation target – 2%. Hopefully the fiscal stimulus package accompanied by more QE will drive down the price of the yen which will make Japanese exports more competitive. He stated his three arrows of economic policy:

1. Aggressive Monetary Easing
2. Flexible fiscal spending
3. A growth strategy that would induce private investment

Who knows if it will work but Shinzo Abe stated that it is worth the gamble.

China Inequality – new figures released

Here is a recent chart from The Economist. This is the first data on inequality to come out of China for 12 years – remember 0=perfect equality and 1=perfect inequality (all the income is earned by one person). It seems that poorer countries like South Africa, Nigeria and Brazil have benefitted from growth over the last few years but it hasn’t trickled down to lower income groups. As well as being better off Japan and Sweden seems to be more equal societies as opposed to India and China where most people are equally poor.

Japan pours more fuel on the ‘dull’ embers

The New York Times recently reported that the Japanese authorities are once again trying to stimulate a rather moribund economy with injecting more money into the circular flow.

* A ¥11 trillion is to be added to an asset buying programme
* The Bank of Japan will supply banks with cheap long-term funds in the hope of stimulating borrowing.
* Base interest rate to stay at 0-0.1% – see graph below
* These measures will stay in place until inflation has reached at least 1% – Bank of Japan forecast of this figure is March 2014.

There has been some return to growth with the reconstruction after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. However global demand has declines and the issue of territory with China hasn’t helped – Japanese goods are not being favoured by Chinese consumers. Japan’s deflationary decade hasn’t been helped with a contracting population and monetary policy needs to be accompanied by government fiscal policy as private sector companies don’t have the confidence to invest in major expansions. To this end the government have thrown money at the economy to the tune of ¥422.6 billion (in the form of government spending) but this is already twice the size of the Japanese economy. A strengthening yen hasn’t helped matters as exporters find their products uncompetitive.

Europe at risk of a Japanese style lost decade

Since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008 and with the exception of Germany, none of Europe’s biggest economies have returned to the level of economic output they had in the pre GFC days. In Japan in the 1990’s there was the need for the central bank to aggressively fight deflation, and let banks take credit losses quickly, suggesting that expansionary fiscal policy did not offer a way out of low economic growth.

According to the New York Times – economic growth not realised represents investments in education that were never made, research was never financed, businesses that failed and careers that ended too early or never got off the ground.

Economists warn that the euro zone is on the same path as Japan was in the 1990’s, when failure to deal with weak banks led to a decade of stagnation. The Japanese never fixed their banks and as banks in Europe have limited cash reserves they are reluctant to take the risk of lending money. Although the ECB has supplied banks with significant amounts of cash they cannot force them to lend the money out to investors which ultimately creates growth and jobs. Below are some statistics which allude to this.

Demand for housing loans in Q1 2012

Portugal 70%↓
Italy 44%↓
Holland 42%↓
Italy – business loans 38%↓

Recessions can be beneficial as they can improve efficiency and reduce risky lending. However for the eurozone this is no normal recession in that its duration will be significantly longer than the norm. See the interview below with investor George Soros.

Deflation for New Zealand Economy?

The recent CPI figures published by the Dept of Statistics in Wellington show that there was a 1% in the CPI from the June 2011 quarter to the June 2012 – the lowest annual rise since 1999. This is at the bottom of the Policy Target Agreement which stipulates that the CPI should be kept between 1-3%. The question now is whether annual headline CPI inflation can avoid dipping below the bottom of the 1.0% and whether the threat of deflation is a serious concern?

Deflation – why is it a concern?

In the short-term a period of deflation can help the economy. Falling prices mean that consumers can buy more with their income and rising purchasing power would provide a boost to confidence and could assist the economy by increased growth.

However a longer period of deflation can be very damaging to an economy for two reasons:

1. Expecting prices to be lower in the future consumers put off purchasing goods and services in the expectation that they will get lower. This leads to a contraction of demand and ultimately lower growth. Japan in the 1990’s is a good example of this – see graph below.

2. A more dangerous scenario is debt deflation. As prices fall the real value (nominal – CPI) of debt increases – just as it decreases if prices are rising.

The increase in debt that people have taken on over the last 5 years makes this latter point very worrying. However, commentators have suggested that deflation shouldn’t become a problem in NZ.

Professor Bernanke v Chairman Bernanke

In a recent edition of The New York Times magazine Paul Krugman wrote an article discussing the role of Ben Bernanke as an academic versus that of being the Fed Chairman.

When the financial crisis happened in 2008 it seemed that there could be no better person to be Fed Chairman. Having studied the Great Depression and written various academic papers on this and the crisis in Japan in 1990’s economists felt that Bernanke was the man for the job. Although the Fed has done a lot to rescue the financial system there is still major concerns about the labour market and the rising long-term rate of unemployment. Remember that the Fed has a dual mandate of Price Stability and Maximum Employment. In order to stimulate growth in the economy, especially when inflation is low, central banks lower interest rates but when the Fed Funds Rate reached 0 – 0.25% on the 16th December 2008 they basically ran out of ammunition as rates couldn’t go any lower. Here you tend to get stuck in what we call a “liquidity trap” in that monetary policy is no longer effective. When Japan was going through very slow growth in the 1990‘s, in which it experienced deflation, Professor Bernanke stated that Japanese policy makers should be a lot more active in trying to stimulate growth and inflation. With interest rates already at 0% he suggested that monetary authorities were not proactive enough to experiment with other policies even though they might have been radical. This all harks back to the days of FDR (Franklin D Roosevelt) in which he created work schemes, infrastructure projects etc, in order to boost employment. I have summarised Paul Krugman’s article below in a table format which shows Bernanke policies for the US economy as a Professor v Chairman.

So why hasn’t he taken on the role of the Academic Bernanke? Krugman suggests that:

this is the effect of bullies and the Fed Borg*, a combination of political intimidation and the desire to make life easy for the Fed as an institution. Whatever the mix of these motives the result is clear: faced with an economy still in desperate need of help, the Fed is unwilling to provide that help. And that, unfortunately, make the Fed part of the broader problem.

*Krugman is a keen “Star Trek” fan and compares the Federal Reserve to a Borg — a race of beings that act based on the wishes of a hive mind, and present major threats to the Starfleet and the Federation.

Central Banks give cheap loans to help global markets

Central Banks worldwide have agreed to provide cheap loans in US$’s to banks in Europe and other parts of the global economy. There is obviously serious concerns about the economic climate in Europe but will it calm the markets? The truth of the matter is that more liquidity alone is not going to solve the economic problmes of the eurozone countries. The graphic below does show some positive signs with bond yields on the way down which suggests that there is less risk associated with their purchase. However there is still a long way to go for stability to return. See graphic below from the WSJ.

Central banks have offered cheaper credit before:
March 2011 – interevened to reduce the value of the Yen following the earthquake and tsunami.
October 2008 – central banks cut rates to reduce the shock on financial markets when Lehman Brothers went under.

“The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity.” combined statement form the 6 central banks. These include:
-US Federal Reserve,
-Bank of Canada, the Bank of England,
-Bank of Japan,
-European Central Bank and
-Swiss National Bank.