Sometimes it pays to wait. Better to be sure than premature. In January 2014, the journal Central Banking handed out its inaugural awards. Among the recipients was Paul Volcker who was bestowed a lifetime achievement prize. The initial Governor of the Year honorific, something like a central banker MVP, went to Mario Draghi of the ECB. He graciously accepted in [...]
By experience of different kinds and settings of balance sheet expansion in the United States, Europe, and Japan, we can only conclude that monetary policy with these intentions has no effect, direct or otherwise, on inflation in each of these jurisdictions. The varied forms and exact nature of central bank execution allows us a broad and nearly comprehensive examination of [...]
Offering the longest track record of balance sheet policy, the Bank of Japan should have been a cautionary tale for the central banks that have since followed. Unfortunately, ideology at the center of monetary policy in all jurisdictions leaves no room for objective interpretation such as this. Economists and policymakers (redundant) believe QE works, full stop. When it doesn’t, such [...]
The ECB’s experimentation with balance sheet expansion, both as a matter of bank “reserves” and overall balance sheet size, encompasses at least two distinct episodes. The first began in earnest in May 2010 with the initial concerns being limited to Greece and eventually PIIGS nations, finally exploding in later 2011 as a full-blown crisis (and far more than euros, it [...]
Yesterday’s publication of PCE and Personal Income also included the monthly update for the PCE Deflator, the Federal Reserve’s stated preference for measuring inflation in the economy. The June 2016 figures for the deflator were also negative in terms of both short and longer term perspectives. The year-over-year change in the index was just 0.88%, down slightly from 0.94% in [...]
I understand the conceptions very well, as the dominant economic theory is something like “no pain, no gain.” In the words of many central bankers, almost in unison of not just intention but tone and even exact phrasing, there are costs to getting the economy moving forward. In Bernanke’s version, savers are to sacrifice in favor of financial redistribution that [...]
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