Six years ago, I wrote a post that reflected my view of the proper relationship between the Fed and the markets:

That’s not Bullard’s job.  He hasn’t been hired to outguess the markets.  If he wants to do that he should go run a hedge fund.  His job is to be led around by the markets like a stupid ox with a steel nose ring being dragged along by a farmer.

Here’s a Bloomberg headline, reacting to today’s Fed decision:

Congratulations, Market. The Fed Is Officially at Your Mercy.

So am I ready to declare victory for market monetarism?  Not quite.  We still need a NGDP market.  TIPS spreads and stock market indices are better than nothing, but there’s no substitute for a NGDP futures market.

But we are making real progress.  The Fed is not using macro “models” to set interest rates.

I recently did a post over at Econlog, discussing how Jerome Powell has adopted some ideas that sound vaguely market monetarist.  Marcus Nunes sent me another example, this time from St. Louis Fed President James Bullard:

In his talk, Bullard laid out a possible strategy for extending the U.S. economic expansion—one that relies on placing more weight on financial market signals, such as the slope of the yield curve and market-based inflation expectations, than has been customary in past U.S. monetary policy strategy. He explained that the empirical relationship between inflation and unemployment has largely broken down over the last two decades and that many current approaches to monetary policy strategy continue to overemphasize the now-defunct empirics of the Phillips curve.

“U.S. monetary policymakers should put more weight than usual on financial market signals in the current macroeconomic environment due to the breakdown of the empirical Phillips curve,” he said. “Handled properly, current financial market information can provide the basis for a better forward-looking monetary policy strategy.”

Market monetarists have long argued that financial market indicators are superior to the Phillips Curve as a forecasting tool for inflation.

On another topic, Karl Rhodes directed me to some Richmond Fed research on the zero bound.  Here’s the abstract of the paper, written by Thomas A. Lubik, Christian Matthes and David A. Price:

The likelihood of returning to near-zero interest rates is relevant to policymakers in considering the path of future interest rates. At the zero lower bound, the Fed can no longer lower rates and thus can respond to a contraction only through alternative policy measures, such as quantitative easing. Recent research at the Richmond Fed has used repeated simulations of the U.S. economy to estimate the probability of such an occurrence over the next ten years. The estimated probability of returning to the zero lower bound one or more times during this period is approximately one chance in four.

I certainly don’t have any reason to contest their finding, but I do have doubts about the method they used:

Lubik and Matthes began by estimating the TVP-VAR model over the full sample from 1961 to 2018 for quarterly data on real GDP, inflation (personal consumption expenditures inflation), and the federal funds rate. They then used the model’s estimated coefficients to produce forecasts over a ten-year horizon. The researchers generated multiple simulations of the shocks hitting the economy over the ten-year period and recorded their effects on macroeconomic variables for each quarter. The result of this process was a distribution of likely outcomes for each quarter.

In my view, the US is extremely likely to hit the zero bound in the next recession.  Thus for me, the chance of hitting the zero bound over the next 10 years is almost identical to the chance that there will be a recession during the next ten years.

If they agreed with my intuition, and used a VAR model to predict the chance of recession during the next 10 years, they might have come up with a figure higher than 25%. So does that mean that the risk of hitting the zero bound is greater than 25%?  I’m actually not sure, because I’m also skeptical of whether past performance is the best way to predict the timing of the next recession.  Yes this is true:

1. The US has never gone more than 10 years without a recession.

But these claims are also true:

2.  The US business cycle has recently been “stretching out”, getting longer.

3.  Other similar economies such as the UK and Australia have recently experienced extremely long expansions—about 15 years for the UK, and 27 years (so far) for Australia.

Is fact #1 more relevant for forecasting the risk of recession in the US over the next 10 years?  Or facts #2 and #3?

Forecasting is more an art than a science.

A few weeks ago I gave a 90-minute talk to some high school and college students in a summer internship program at UC Irvine.  Most (but not all) had taken basic intro to economics.  I need to boil everything down to 90 minutes, including money, prices, business cycles, interest rates, the Great Recession, how the Fed screwed up in 2008, and why the Fed screwed up in 2008.  Not sure if that’s possible, but here’s the outline I prepared:

1.  The value of money (15 minutes)

2.  Money and prices  (20 minutes)

3.  Money and business cycles (25 minutes)

4.  Money and interest rates (15 minutes)

5.  Q&A (15 minutes)

Intro

Inflation is currently running at about 2%.  It’s averaged 2% since 1990.  That’s not a coincidence, the Fed targets inflation at 2%.  But it’s also not normal.  Inflation was much higher in the 1980s, and still higher in the 1970s.  In the 1800s, inflation averaged zero and there were years like 1921 and 1930-32 where it was more like negative 10%!

We need to figure out how the Fed has succeeded in targeting inflation at 2%, then why this was the wrong target, and finally how this mistake (as well as a couple freshman-level errors) led to the Great Recession.

1. Value of Money  

Like any other product, the real value of money changes over time.

But . . . the nominal price of money stays constant, a dollar always costs $1

Value of money = 1/P (where P is price level (CPI, etc.))

Thus if price level doubles, value of a dollar falls in half.

Analogy:

Year      Height    Unit of measure   Real height

1980      1 yard           1.0                1 yard

2018      6 feet            1/3               2 yards

Switching from yards to feet makes the average size of things look three times larger.  This is “size inflation”.  But this boy’s measured height increased 6-fold, which means he even grew (2 times) taller in real terms.

Year      Income    Price level  Value of money   Real Income

1980     $30,000        1.0               1.0               $30,000

2018    $180,000       3.0               1/3               $60,000

The dollar lost 2/3rds of its purchasing power between 1980 and 2018, as the average thing costs three times as much.  This is “price inflation”.  But some nominal values increase by more than three times, such as this person’s income, which means the income doubled in real terms, or in purchasing power.

Punch line:  Don’t try to explain inflation by picking out items that increased in price especially fast, say rents or gas prices, rather think of inflation as a change in the value of money.  Focus on what determines the value of money . . .

2.  Money and the Price Level

. . . which, in a competitive market is supply and demand:

Demand for Money: How much cash people prefer to hold.

Who determines how much money you carry in your wallet?  You?  Are you sure?  Is that true for everyone?

Who determines the average cash holding of everyone in the economy?  The Fed.

How can we reconcile these two perceptions?  They are both correct, in a sense.

Helicopter drop example:  Double money supply from $200 to $400/capita

==> Excess cash balances

==>attempts to get rid of cash => spending rises => AD rises => P rises

==>eventually prices double.  Back in equilibrium.

Now it takes $400 to buy what $200 used to buy.  You determine real cash holdings (the purchasing power in your wallet), while the Fed determines average nominal cash holdings (number of dollars).

Punch line:  Fed can control the price level (value of money), by controlling the money supply.

What if money demand changes?  No problem, adjust money supply to offset the change.

Fed has used this power to keep inflation close to 2% since 1991.  Before they tried, inflation was all over the map.  After they tried, they succeeded in keeping the average rate close to 2%.  That success would have been impossible if Fed did not control price level.

But, inflation targeting is not optimal:

3.  Money and business cycles

Suppose I do a study and find that on average, 40 people go to the movies when prices are $8, and 120 people attend on average when prices are $12.  Is this consistent with the laws of supply and demand?  Yes, completely consistent. But many students have trouble seeing this.

Explanation:  When the demand for movies rises, theaters respond with higher prices.  The two data points lie along a single upward-sloping supply curve.

Implication:  Never reason from a price change.  A rise in prices doesn’t tell us what’s happening in a market.  It could be more demand or less supply.  The same is true of the overall price level.  Higher inflation might indicate an overheating economy (too much AD), or a negative supply shock:

In mid-2008, the Fed saw inflation rise sharply and worried the economy was overheating.  It was reasoning from a price change. In fact, prices rose rapidly because aggregate supply was declining.  It should have focused on total spending, aka “aggregate demand”, for evidence of overheating:

M*V = P*Y = AD = NGDP

This represents total spending on goods and services.  Unstable NGDP causes business cycles.

Example: mid-2008 to mid-2009, when NGDP fell 3%:

Here we assume that nominal GDP was $20 trillion in 2008, and then fell in 2009, causing a deep recession and high unemployment.

Musical chairs model:  NGDP is the total revenue available to businesses to pay wages and salaries.  Because wages are “sticky”, or slow to adjust, a fall in NGDP leads to fewer jobs, at least until wages can adjust.  This is a recession.

It’s like the game of musical chairs.  If you take away a couple chairs, then when the music stops several contestants will end up sitting on the floor.

The Fed needs to keep NGDP growing about 4%/year, by adjusting M to offset any changes in V (velocity of circulation).

Punch line:  Don’t focus in inflation, NGDP growth is the key to the business cycle

Why did the Fed mess up in 2008? Two episodes of reasoning from a price change:

1.  The 2008 supply shock inflation was wrongly viewed as an overheating economy.

2.  Low interest rates were wrongly viewed as easy money.

4.  Money and Interest Rates

Below is the short and long run effects of an increase in the money supply, and then a decrease in the money supply.  Notice that easy money causes rates to initially fall, then rise much higher.  Vice versa for a tight money policy.

When the money supply increases, rates initially decline due to the liquidity effect. The opposite occurs when the money supply is reduced.

However, in the long run, interest rates go the opposite way due to the income and Fisher effects:

Income effect: Expansionary monetary policy leads to higher growth in the economy, more demand for credit, and higher interest rates.

Fisher effect:  Expansionary monetary policy leads to higher inflation, which causes lenders to demand higher interest rates.

In 2008, the Fed thought lower rates represented the liquidity effect from an easy money policy.

Actually, during 2008 we were seeing the income and Fisher effects from a previous tight money policy.

Don’t assume that short run means “right now” and long run means “later”.  What’s happening right now is usually the long run effect of monetary policies adopted earlier.

Punchline:  Don’t assume low rates are easy money and vice versa.  Focus on NGDP growth to determine stance of monetary policy.  That’s what matters.

(I actually ended up covering about 90% of what I intended to cover, skipping the yardstick metaphor.)

Lars Christensen has a new newsletter called the Global Monetary Conditions Monitor, which I highly recommend for people interested in international monetary policy.  It is by subscription at this link, but Lars is allowing me to quote from the newsletter.  (There is a discount for academic users and think tanks.)

Lars has constructed a monetary conditions index for a wide range of currencies. This basically measures whether the current stance of monetary policy is too easy or too tight to hit the target.  (A value of zero means right on target.)

On pages 8 and 9 of the May issue there is a discussion of policy credibility:

The approach here is to evaluate a central bank’s credibility based on our monetary conditions indicators.

We consider a central bank to be credible if it succeeds over time in keeping the monetary indicator close to zero. This can be measured by how long each central bank keeps the indicator within a range between -0.25 and 0.25 over a rolling five year period. This also means a central bank’s credibility can and will change over time.

By this criterion, the central bank of New Zealand has the highest credibility:

This can be illustrated by looking at developments in New Zealand over the past five years.

If monetary policy is (highly) credible, we would expect monetary conditions to be ‘mean-reverting’ – meaning that if the monetary conditions indicator is above (below) zero, we should expect it to decline (increase) in the subsequent period.

This is precisely the case for New Zealand. The graph below shows monetary conditions in New Zealand six months ago and how they changed over the following six months.

The line should go through zero, with most of the points being in the upper left and lower right quadrants.  To give you a sense of what a lack of credibility looks like—consider Turkey, one of the least credible central banks:

Maybe Lars will eventually incorporate the Hypermind NGDP forecast into his analysis.

One of the founding members of market monetarism (and the guy who provided the name) has a new website, called Markets and Money Advisory.

Each MM has their own special area of expertise, and I see Lars as the leading figure on the implications for MM for various European countries.  He had a career at a top Danish investment bank and is very knowledgeable about what’s going on across the Atlantic.

He’s also our most stylish presenter:

Lars also informed me:

We are also launching a new – for pay – publication: Global Monetary Conditions Monitor (12 months for 2,000 euros).