In a move that some are calling QE3, the Federal Reserve announced yesterday that it will engage in a policy called “the twist” — selling short-term bonds and buying long-term bonds in hopes of artificially reducing long-term interest rates. If successful, this policy (we are told) will incentivize more borrowing and stimulate growth.

I’ve freely admitted before that it is difficult to identify the right monetary policy, but it certainly seems like this policy is — at best — an ineffective gesture. This is why the Fed’s various efforts to goose the economy with easy money have been described as “pushing on a string.”

Here are two related questions that need to be answered.

1. Is the economy’s performance being undermined by high long-term rates?

Considering that interest rates are at very low levels already, it seems rather odd to claim that the economy will suddenly rebound if they get pushed down a bit further. Japan has had very low interest rates (both short-run and long-run) for a couple of decades, yet the economy has remained stagnant.

Perhaps the problem is bad policy in other areas. After all, who wants to borrow money, expand business, create jobs, and boost output if Washington is pursuing a toxic combination of excessive spending and regulation, augmented by the threat of higher taxes.

2. Is the economy hampered by lack of credit?

Low interest rates, some argue, may not help the economy if banks don’t have any money to lend. Yet I’ve already pointed out that banks have more than $1 trillion of excess reserves deposited at the Fed.

Perhaps the problem is that banks don’t want to lend money because they don’t see profitable opportunities. After all, it’s better to sit on money than to lend it to people who won’t pay it back because of an economy weakened by too much government.

The Wall Street Journal makes all the relevant points in its editorial.

The Fed announced that through June 2012 it will buy $400 billion in Treasury bonds at the long end of the market—with six- to 30-year maturities—and sell an equal amount of securities of three years’ duration or less. The point, said the FOMC statement, is to put further “downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help make broader financial conditions more accommodative.” It’s hard to see how this will make much difference to economic growth. Long rates are already at historic lows, and even a move of 10 or 20 basis points isn’t likely to affect many investment decisions at the margin. The Fed isn’t acting in a vacuum, and any move in bond prices could well be swamped by other economic news. Europe’s woes are accelerating, and every CEO in America these days is worried more about what the National Labor Relations Board is doing to Boeing than he is about the 30-year bond rate. The Fed will also reinvest the principal payments it receives on its asset holdings into mortgage-backed securities, rather than in U.S. Treasurys. The goal here is to further reduce mortgage costs and thus help the housing market. But home borrowing costs are also at historic lows, and the housing market suffers far more from the foreclosure overhang and uncertainty encouraged by government policy than it does from the price of money. The Fed’s announcement thus had the feel of an attempt to show it is doing something to help the economy, even if it can’t do much. …the economy’s problems aren’t rooted in the supply and price of money. They result from the damage done to business confidence and investment by fiscal and regulatory policy, and that’s where the solutions must come. Investors on Wall Street and politicians in Washington want to believe that the Fed can make up for years of policy mistakes. The sooner they realize it can’t, the sooner they’ll have no choice but to correct the mistakes.

Let’s also take this issue to the next level. Some people are explicitly arguing in favor of more “quantitative easing” because they want some inflation. They argue that “moderate” inflation will help the economy by indirectly wiping out some existing debt.

This is a very dangerous gambit. Letting the inflation genie out of the bottle could trigger 1970s-style stagflation. Paul Volcker fires a warning shot against this risky approach in a New York Times column. Here are the key passages.

…we are beginning to hear murmurings about the possible invigorating effects of “just a little inflation.” Perhaps 4 or 5 percent a year would be just the thing to deal with the overhang of debt and encourage the “animal spirits” of business, or so the argument goes. The siren song is both alluring and predictable. …After all, if 1 or 2 percent inflation is O.K. and has not raised inflationary expectations — as the Fed and most central banks believe — why not 3 or 4 or even more? …all of our economic history says it won’t work that way. I thought we learned that lesson in the 1970s. That’s when the word stagflation was invented to describe a truly ugly combination of rising inflation and stunted growth. …What we know, or should know, from the past is that once inflation becomes anticipated and ingrained — as it eventually would — then the stimulating effects are lost. Once an independent central bank does not simply tolerate a low level of inflation as consistent with “stability,” but invokes inflation as a policy, it becomes very difficult to eliminate. …At a time when foreign countries own trillions of our dollars, when we are dependent on borrowing still more abroad, and when the whole world counts on the dollar’s maintaining its purchasing power, taking on the risks of deliberately promoting inflation would be simply irresponsible.

Last but not least, here is my video on the origin of central banking, which starts with an explanation of how currency evolved in the private sector, then describes how governments then seized that role by creating monopoly central banks, and closes with a list of options to promote good monetary policy.

And I can’t resist including a link to the famous “Ben Bernank” QE2 video that was a viral smash.

The Federal Reserve, the ‘Twist,’ Inflation, QE3, and Pushing on a String is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Who knows more about inflation, Richard Galanti or Ben Bernanke? I maintain that, when it comes to the facts, Mr. Galanti knows more than the Fed chairman. Galanti is the CFO of Costco Wholesale Corp.

The Wall Street Journal reported last Thursday (May 26th) on a conference call with Mr. Galanti. He said “we saw quite a bit of inflationary pricing” in the 3rd quarter.

Price increases occurred in a broad range of products” dry dog food (3.5%). Detergents (10%+), plastic products (8-9%). Costco will “hold prices as long as we can.” When it can no longer, the consumer will face rising prices.

Costco is a good leading indicator of inflation at the retail level. It turns over inventory quickly, and is leading other retailers in restocking at higher prices. Costco offers a forward-looking view of consumer price inflation.

Meanwhile the Fed and its chairman, Ben Bernanke, rely on backward looking measures of inflation, like the CPI. That index, and the “core” component that excludes food and energy prices, overweight the depressed housing sector. And they are yesterday’s news.

For years, American consumers have benefitted from cheap imports from China and India. When those countries liberalized and opened up to global commerce, Americans got the benefit of the hard work and low wages of 2 ½ billion workers. The era of cheap labor is coming to an end, and with it the flood of imports that held down prices in the U.S. Especially in China, wage rates are rising rapidly.

Heretofore, the flood of dollars has chiefly affected asset prices and inflation in other countries. The flow through to U.S. consumer prices will now be quicker. You’ll experience it when you go to Costco to restock.

Inflation Expert is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Wall Street Journal has pointed out that in his recent press conference Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke used the words “inflation expectations” (or some variation) 21 times. His argument is that we need not worry about inflation because we will see it coming, and then the Fed will do something about it. Such an argument relies heavily on the ability of inflation expectations to predict inflation. Which of course raises the question, just how predictive are inflation expectations?

The graph below compares inflation, as measured by CPI, and inflation expectations, as measured by the University of Michigan consumer survey, the longest times series we have on inflation expectations.

Clearly the two move together. For instance, the correlation between current inflation and expectations is almost 1 (its 0.93), while the correlation between inflation and actual inflation a year later is slightly less at 0.81. The relationship declines as we move further into the future. So yes, consumer expectations appear a reasonable predictor of the direction of inflation. However, they don’t appear to be a great predictor of the magnitude or the frequency of changes. For instance, the standard deviation of actual inflation is about twice that of expected inflation. As one can easily see from the chart, expectations are quite sticky and rarely pick up the extremes. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, expectations did move up, but then never reached the heights actually experienced, nor did consumers ever actually expect deflation during the recent financial crisis (if we are going to base policy on expectations, we should at least be consistent about it).

For about the last decade we also have market based measures of inflation, based upon inflation-indexed bonds. The TIPS measure tends to be less correlated with actual inflation, but does a better job of capturing the extremes. Although interesting enough, TIPS was already predicting that deflation would be short-lived before we even experienced any deflation.

The point is that while expectations are useful for qualitatively purposes, they do not have a strong record of recording the extremes. Given that most of us expect some positive level of inflation, the real debate is over how much. In this regard, either survey or market-based expectations are likely to be both a lagging indicator and an under-estimate of actual inflation.

Can We Rely on Inflation Expectations? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• New research suggests that there has been more monetary and macroeconomic instability since the Federal Reserve’s inception than in the decades preceding it.
• New thinking about the usefulness of government programs will help us from restore fiscal balance and economic well-being in America.
• New geopolitical circumstances should make us wonder: why are we still a part of NATO?
• New Deal-era jurisprudence may soon be overturned as challenges to the Affordable Care Act reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
• New means of funding public roads will increase efficiency by confronting drivers with the costs of using them, and reducing congestion:

• Reminder: If you’re in the DC area, please join us this Friday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern for a special sneak preview of Free or Equal and Q&A with Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg.

Wednesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

April 27th begins a new chapter in Federal Reserve history: the Fed joins other major central banks in having a press conference after its monetary policy meetings (the Federal Open Market Committee).  Apparently the record lows in public support for the Fed, along with rising gas and food prices, have driven Bernanke to attempt to change the narrative.  After all, his appearance on “60 Minutes” did wonders for the Fed’s reputation.  I’m excited to hear even more about his childhood in Dillon, South Carolina or his time working at South of the Border.  Maybe an enterprising reporter could ask how much menu prices at South of the Border have increased since Bernanke took over the Fed.

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t have high expectations for his press conference.  It is probably fair to say that no Federal Reserve Chair has had as much public exposure as Bernanke.  Yet with all those public appearances, he has consistently managed to avoid any real discussion about the costs and benefits of the Fed’s actions.  Are we likely to hear concern about food and gas prices, and how such are being driven by loose money?  Probably not…just more on how increasing world demand is to blame.  Just like it was the “global savings glut” that drove  interest rates earlier this decade, it is always somebody else’s fault — never the Fed’s.  They are capable of only good.

Hopefully Bernanke will at least avoid the Obama line that it is those “speculators” that are behind the increase in energy prices.  After all, if we believe the governments of Europe, those evil speculators brought down Greece too.

As per usual, I truly hope I’m wrong here.  Bernanke has a real opportunity to be honest and straightforward with the American public.  We don’t need another lecture.  We need to hear that the Fed isn’t a slave to some imaginary Phillips Curve or that we can’t have inflation with slack in the economy (where was Bernanke in the 1970s?).   The real risk is that Bernanke uses the press conference to drown out the many voices of concern and dissent on the FOMC.  Which, of course, would be a real irony given all of Bernanke’s talk about “democratizing” the Fed when he first became chair.

The Ben Bernanke Variety Hour is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg, author of In Defense of Global Capitalism and Financial Fiasco, has the cover story in this week’s issue of The Spectator, the eminent 182-year-old British weekly. Titled “The great debt bubble of 2011,” it warns that governments are repeating their mistakes of the past decade:

There is a broad consensus that the financial crisis of 2007 was at least in part a result of record-low interest rates, huge deficits and large-scale credit-financed consumption. Today, governments across the world are trying to solve the crisis — by means of record-low interest rates, huge deficits and large-scale credit-financed consumption. This time, they are also using more novel means of creating easy money: bank bailouts, stimulus packages and quantitative easing.

After discussing the soaring debt burdens of European countries, Norberg writes:

At this point, it is traditional to say: thank God for those roaring economics in East Asia, India and Brazil. But how real is their remarkable growth? Look closely, and even this may be in part a result of artificial stimulus. India’s and Brazil’s growth is financed by short-term capital from abroad: money that could disappear overnight. Easy money always ends up somewhere. The last time it was in property, this time it is in emerging markets (and often in the property markets of emerging markets)….

Aside from the foreign capital inflows, China had its own stimulus package, as big as America’s. Beijing has printed yuan and pushed banks and local governments to spend like drunken Keynesians. Absurdly, China’s money supply is now larger than America’s, even though its economy is a third of the size. We can see the results of this stimulus in stock market prices and in new roads, bridges and housing complexes all over the country.

Happy New Year! And watch for more on incipient bubbles in the January-February issue of Cato Policy Report.

Johan Norberg on Bubbles Yet to Come is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Much of what drives the policy choices of Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve is a belief in the ability to trade higher inflation for lower unemployment, known within the economics profession as the “Phillips curve.”   But does this trade-off actually exist? 

While its true that many have found a negative correlation between inflation and unemployment prior to 1960, looking at U.S. data, this relationship appears to have broken down in the mid-1960s, just about the time policy-makers thought they could exploit it (Lucas critique anyone?).

It is hard, looking at the graph, which displays the annual change in consumer prices over the previous year and unemployment, to see much of a relationship.  In fact, since 1960, the correlation between changes in CPI and unemployment has been positive.  We have generally seen rising unemployment along with rising inflation.  Of course, one might be concerned that the stagflation of the 1970s is driving this result. But looking at the data since 1980, there still remains a positive correlation between inflation and unemployment.  While I am not arguing that inflation causes unemployment (after all, correlation is not causation), it should be clear from the data that there is not some exploitable trade-off that policymakers get to choose.

The Richmond Fed also has a great history of the Phillips curve that is well worth the read.  Perhaps Fed President Jeff Lacker should bring copies to the next FOMC meeting.

Is There an Inflation-Unemployment Trade-off? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

While it’s been obvious for years, Bernanke showed his rationale for more easing in today’s Washington Post.  He believes we are in danger of too little inflation.  While common sense might imply that price stability means neither inflation nor deflation, in Bernanke’s book, anything below the Fed’s target of 2 percent is bad.

First of all, there really needs to be a public debate over the Fed’s 2% target.  After all, a 2% rate of inflation over, say, 30 years erodes almost half of one’s wealth.  How that can seriously be viewed as “price stability” is beyond me.  While a 2% rate of inflation is not going to bring the economy to a halt, it is still a massive theft of wealth over the long haul.

Bernanke has also expressed the fear that “low and falling” inflation could lead to deflation, which would raise the real value of debt, which could lead to additional defaults.  But what Bernanke doesn’t seem to get is that inflation isn’t falling. Let’s go to the data.

The graph below is simply the consumer price index (CPI) over the last year.  Does it appear to be falling?  Of course not.  In fact, the trend is one that is rising.

Now CPI includes lots of things, some of which are temporary trends.  The Fed has a nasty habit of excluding those items it doesn’t like.  But let’s take a look at something that matter to the typical family:  food.

In the next chart, we can see that the trend in food costs over the last year has been upward, not down.  Contrary to Mr. Bernanke’s worries, most families worry about putting food on the table, which has been getting more expensive, not less.

Another trend worth examining is the cost to producers, best measured via the producer price index (PPI).  As one can see from the next chart, that has been heading up as well.

The point to all of this is that we aren’t seeing this deflation that Bernanke constantly worries about and we aren’t headed in that direction either.  And the worse part is that we’ve been here before.  In the earlier part of the decade, then–Fed Governor Bernanke urged Greenspan to fight any chance of deflation by cutting rates to what were then all-time lows.  The result was a housing bubble.  Thanks again Ben. 

Now this might all be worth the cost if it reduced unemployment.  But it won’t.  The traditional way Fed policy brings down unemployment is by increasing bank lending, but banks are already sitting on a trillion in reserves.  Inflation, in and of itself, does not create jobs.

Bernanke’s Twist on Price Stability is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Every August, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City sponsors a conference on monetary policy. It is the most valued invitation of the year for central bankers and Fed watchers. The Fed Chairman typically presents his views on monetary policy and the economy, and his talk inevitably makes headlines. (A select few reporters are invited.)

This year, Ben Bernanke promised the Fed will do whatever it takes to aid the faltering U.S. recovery, and most of all to prevent deflation. The problem for the Fed Chairman is that the central bank is plainly running out of options, as some had the cheek to observe. He suggested the Fed could do more of the same (purchase long-term securities), or try something new and untested (tweak the interest rate it pays on bank reserves).

Bernanke also suggested a third option, plus offered some professorial speculation on another. Taken together, these suggest the Fed may be prepared to chart a dangerous course.

In its policy statement, the Federal Open Market Committee has promised to keep interest rates low “for an extended period.” Bernanke suggested (as the third option) that the FOMC might make it clear that rates will remain low for an even longer period than markets are currently expecting. Within the Committee, there have been calls for caution and to remove the “extended period” language from the statement. These have been led by Thomas Hoenig, president of the KC Fed and host of the conference. By suggesting the only option was lengthening the period of low interest rates, Bernanke delivered the back of his hand to his host and the other inflation hawks on the FOMC.

Bernanke then mused about suggestions by some economists that perhaps the Fed should set an inflation target — that is, promise to deliver higher inflation rates to stimulate the economy. Fed chairmen do not engage in abstract speculation about policy, and to raise the inflationary option gave it place above all other possibilities. Bernanke hastened to add that there was at present no support for such a policy within the FOMC, and it “is inappropriate for the United States in current circumstances.”

In other words, the Fed chairman is thinking about an inflationary policy and, if circumstances change and he can build support within the FOMC, he is willing to implement it. When central bankers speculate in public about the possibility of an inflationary monetary policy, the currency is in jeopardy and the country in peril.

Bernanke on Monetary Policy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech in Dallas yesterday where he inadvertently discredited claims that ObamaCare would reduce health care costs and the federal deficit.  According to The Washington Post:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Wednesday that Americans may have to accept higher taxes or changes in cherished entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security if the nation is to avoid staggering budget deficits that threaten to choke off economic growth…

While the immediate audience for the speech was the Dallas Regional Chamber, his message was intended for Congress and the Obama administration…

Bernanke has urged Congress to address long-term fiscal imbalances in congressional testimony before, but usually only when he is asked about them by lawmakers. His speech Wednesday aimed to reach a broader audience, steering away from technical economic speak and using plain, sometimes wry, language — a rare thing for a Fed chairman.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects the annual federal deficit will be at least $700 billion in each of the next 10 years.  Deficit spending is a form of taxation without representation, because it increases the tax burden of generations who cannot yet vote (often because they are as yet unborn).  Bernanke wants us to end deficit spending.  Kudos to him.

But consider the timing of his speech.  Why wait until April 7, 2010, to deliver that message directly to the public?  Why not give that speech in January? Or February? Or any time before March 21?

The reason is obvious: Bernanke held back to appease his political masters.

Until three weeks ago, the nation was locked in a debate over whether Congress should enact ObamaCare, the most sweeping piece of social legislation in American history.  That law includes two new health care entitlements — the very type of government spending driving the federal budget further into the red.  Democrats rigged the bill so that the CBO was obliged to score it as deficit-reducing, but 87 percent of the public weren’t buying it.

If Bernanke really wanted to warn the American public about the dangers of rising budget deficits, then a congressional debate over creating two new entitlement programs would be the most important time to deliver that message.  Democrats would have responded that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit.  But since voters believe ObamaCare to be a budget-buster, Bernanke’s warning would have dealt ObamaCare a serious blow.

Had Bernanke delivered his populist warning before January 28, it could have jeopardized his confirmation by the Senate to a second term as Fed chairman.  Had he done so between January 28 and March 21, he would have suffered a storm of criticism from Democrats (and possible retribution when his term came up for renewal in 2013) because his sensible, responsible warning would have made moderate House Democrats more skeptical about ObamaCare’s new entitlements.

So Bernanke pulled his punches.  As Dick Morris would put it, anyone who doesn’t think that political concerns affected Bernanke’s timing is too naive for politics.

Bernanke’s behavior thus reveals why ObamaCare’s cost would exceed projections and would increase the deficit.

Knowledgeable leftists, notably Tom Daschle and Uwe Reinhardt, recognize that Congress is no good at eliminating wasteful health care spending because politics gets in the way.  (Every dollar of wasteful health care spending is a dollar of income to somebody, and that somebody has a lobbyist.)

The Left’s central planners believe they can contain health care costs by creating an independent government bureaucracy that sets prices and otherwise rations care without interference from (read: without being accountable to) Congress.  ObamaCare’s new Independent Payment Advisory Board is a precursor to what Daschle calls a “Health Fed,” so named to convey that this new bureaucracy would have the same vaunted reputation for independence as the Federal Reserve.

Yet Fed scholar Allan Meltzer reports, and Bernanke’s behavior confirms, that not even the hallowed Federal Reserve can escape politics:

In reading the minutes of the Fed and watching what they do, the Fed has always been very much afraid of Congress…The idea of having a really independent agency in Washington, that’s just not going to happen…[The Fed] is very much concerned — always — about what the Congress is doing, and doesn’t want to deviate very far from that.

Politics affects Bernanke’s behavior and the Fed’s behavior.  Politics will defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and many of  ObamaCare’s other purported cost-cutting measures.  ObamaCare’s cost will outpace projections. The deficit will rise.

Repeal the bill.

By Pulling His Punches, Bernanke Shatters ObamaCare’s Credibility is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Cato experts will live-blog Obama’s State of the Union Address tonight. Join in, submit questions, and watch the speech right here on Cato@Liberty at 9:00 PM EST.

• A quick, ten-point libertarian State of the Union Address.

• One “Great Canard”: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke argues that the Fed’s monetary policy was not responsible for the U.S. housing bubble.

• About that non-discretionary spending…

• Podcast: “Obama’s Fiscal Right Fake” featuring Chris Edwards.

Wednesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

David Leonhardt’s column today in the New York Times, in reaction to Ben Bernanke’s recent speech at the American Economic Association meetings, asks an important question:

If the Federal Reserve failed to detect the housing bubble when it occurred, why should we entrust it with that role in the future?

But he doesn’t follow the logic of his question far enough and instead embraces a financial equivalent of the National Transportation Safety Board, as if technical solutions exist and could be implemented if politics got out of the way.

In our recent Policy Analysis, Jagadeesh Gokhale and I examine a more complete list of technical and political problems that stand in the way of asset bubble management. Can bubbles be detected using scientific techniques (econometric models) with little controversy? We argue no.

Would stopping bubbles involve the simple implementation of a technical solution such as raising interest rates, or would they instead involve trade-offs with other policy goals? We argue the latter.

Even if bubbles could be detected easily with no controversy and policy solutions involved no tradeoffs, could the Fed maintain political support by stopping booms if the benefits of such a policy (preventing busts after financial bubbles burst) were never observed? We argue no.

And finally, even if all the previous problems were solved, how would raising interest rates reduce the supply of capital to housing markets given that a rate increase would increase the supply of capital to the United States and interest rates for both long-term and short-term housing loans have become decoupled from federal funds rates?

Our reasoning, like Bernanke’s, suggests that the events of 2008 were not the result of “bad” monetary policy. However, we believe that granting additional regulatory authority to the Fed will not prevent similar episodes because of the technical and political difficulties we describe in our paper.

Popping Bubbles is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, at the annual meetings of the American Economic Association, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke offered a continued defense of the Fed’s monetary policies earlier this decade. Essentially he believes that monetary policy did not contribute to the housing bubble.  He also makes clear that he believes that the excessively loose policy stance of the Fed after the dot-com bubble burst was appropriate given the level of unemployment at that time.   Given that today’s unemployment level is even worse, Bernanke has offered us a clear indication that monetary policy will remain excessively loose for the foreseeable future, regardless of the Fed’s inability to actually create jobs.

Bernanke’s remarks also illustrate the contradictions in his own thinking.  At one point he comments that it would have been inappropriate for the Fed to response to increases in energy prices, because such prices were viewed as temporary; yet elsewhere he indicates that most market participants viewed house price increases as permanent, yet the Fed felt it was appropriate to ignore those, for what reason we do not know.  No where in his remarks does he address the impact of ignoring the single largest item behind consumer spending:  housing.

Perhaps the weakest link in Bernanke’s arguments is presenting the false choice of either monetary policy or mortgage underwriting standards.  How about accepting that both played a role.  Sadly when discussing underwriting standards, Bernanke continues to miss the most essential element: downpayment requirements.  Nowhere in his discussion of mortgage defaults does he seem to recognize the role of equity.

Bernanke Still Doesn’t Get It is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• A few questions for Ben Bernanke: “Perhaps the most important question Bernanke should answer is: how will he re-build and maintain an independent Fed?”

• Before considering Bernanke’s role in containing the financial crisis, Congress should investigate the role of Fed policy in allowing the housing bubble to grow.

• Prepare to pay more: Today, an average insurance policy can cost about $2,985 for an individual or $6,328 for a family.  Under the Senate bill, those premiums will increase to $5,800 for an individual worker and $15,200 for a family plan by 2016.

• Why the White House “jobs summit” is unnecessary.

• Made on Earth: How global economic integration renders trade policy obsolete.

• Podcast: “ObamaCare the Budget Buster.” More, here.

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Wall Street Journal reported that Congress likes Fed Chairman Bernanke, but not the institution that he heads. There is growing consensus that the Fed needs to be reformed and restructured.  Most notably, there are calls to strip the Fed of its supervisory authority.  In practice, the new sentiment reflects the failure of the Fed to rein in risk taking by the largest banks.

The Fed is pushing back.  One reserve bank president said that removing the Fed’s supervisory authority “would affect our ability to conduct monetary authority effectively.” He went on to say that without the supervisory authority, the Fed wouldn’t know enough about risks brewing in the economy.  This argument is shop worn. The Fed had the authority. It fueled the housing boom with its monetary policy and failed to head off the banking crisis with its supervisory powers. And let us not forget the regional banking crises of the 1990s; the fallout of the Latin American debt crisis for Citibank; and others (e.g., the failure of Continental Illinois National Bank).  All on the Fed’s watch.

Around the world, some central banks have supervisory authority over banks and some do not.  There is no clear pattern for either monetary policy or bank regulation with respect to how the powers are structured and distributed.  Other factors seem to matter much more. It would be useful to identify what they are.

Congress is moving a few deck chairs around as the ship sinks. No fundamental rethinking of bank regulation is occurring. The Fed is probably being made a scapegoat for Congress’s own failings.  But that is how Washington works.

Congress Grows Fed Up is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Scheduled for consideration before the House Financial Services Committee this week is a draft bill creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. 

While there is a lot wrong with the bill — after all it is based on the premise that somehow consumers were tricked into not making a downpayment or re-financing thousands out of their homes, and then walking away — perhaps the most important provision, and the least discussed, is funding the agency by a transfer of cash from the Federal Reserve.  Section 119 of the bill requires the Federal Reserve to transfer an amount equal to 10 percent of its expenses to the new agency’s Director. 

This I believe is the first time in history that Congress is using the Federal Reserve to simply fund another agency.  Why stop there, how about have the Fed just prints trillions of dollars to pay for the rest of the government?  If Congress believes this agency will benefit the public, then the agency should be funded by the public, by a direct appropriations raised by taxes. 

Of course after watching Ben Bernanke turn the Fed’s balance sheet into a slush fund for Wall Street, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone in Congress decided to use that slush fund for their own purposes.  So much for transparency in government.

Federal Reserve as Cash Cow is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This past week witnessed continued debate in congressional committees over changes to our financial regulatory system.  Perhaps catching the most attention was Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s appearance before House Financial Services. 

Sadly missing from all the noise this week was any discussion over reforming those entities at the center of the housing bubble and mortgage meltdown:  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While many, including Bernanke, have identified the “global savings glut” as a prime force behind the historically low interest rates that drove the housing bubble, often missed in this analysis is the critical role played by Fannie and Freddie as channels of that savings glut.  After all, the Chinese Central Bank was not plowing its reserves into Countrywide stock; it was putting hundreds of billions of its dollar reserves into Fannie and Freddie debt.  Fannie and Freddie were the vehicle that carried excess world savings into the United States.

Had this massive flow of global capital been invested in productive activities, or even just prime mortgages, it is unlikely tha we would have seen such a large housing bubble.  Instead, what did Fannie and Freddie do with its Chinese funds?  It invested those funds in the subprime mortgage market.  At the height of the bubble, Fannie and Freddie purchased over 40 percent of private-label subprime mortgage-backed securities.  Fannie and Freddie also used those funds to lower the underwriting standards of the “prime” whole mortgages it purchased, turning much of the Alt-A and subprime market into what looked to the world like prime mortgages.

Given the massive leverage (at one point Freddie was leveraged 200 to 1) and shoddy credit quality of mortgages on their books, why were the Chinese and other investors so willing to trust their money to Fannie and Freddie?  Because they were continually told by U.S. officials that their losses would be covered.  At the end of the day, Fannie and Freddie were not bailed out in order to save our housing market; they were bailed out in order to protect the Chinese Central Bank from taking any losses on its Fannie/Freddie investments.  Adding insult to injury is the fact that the Chinese accumulated these large dollar holdings in order to suppress the value of their currency, enabling Chinese products to be more competitive with American-made products.

While foreign investors have been willing to put considerable money into Wall Street, without the implied guarantees of Fannie and Freddie, trillions of dollars of global capital flows would not have been funneled into the U.S. subprime mortgage market.  As Washington seems intent on continuing to mortgage America’s future to the Chinese, that at minimum it seems that fixing Fannie and Freddie might help insure that something more productive is done with that borrowing.

Fixing Fannie Is Essential is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Nat Hentoff has a few tough questions for doctors who aided CIA torture.

• Is public option a private insurer killer? Larry McNeely and Michael Cannon debate.

• “Cap-and-Trade Is Dead. Long Live Cap-and-Trade!”

• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the recession is probably over. But was he the man who saved the economy?

• Podcast: Should the government have the power to punish you for speaking your mind? Many Americans think it should…so long as it’s people with whom they don’t agree.

Weekend Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today President Obama took his financial reform plan to the airwaves.  While there is no doubt our financial system is in need of financial reform, the President’s plan would make bailouts a permanent feature of the regulatory landscape.  Rather than ending “too big to fail” — the President wants us to believe that with additional discretion and power, the same Federal Reserve that missed the boat last time will save us next time.

The truth is that the President’s plan will result in a small number of companies being viewed by debtholders as “too big to fail”.  These companies would see their funding costs decline, allowing them to gain market-share at the expense of their rivals, making these firms even larger.  Greater concentration in our financial services industry is the last thing we need, yet the Obama plan all but guarantees it.

Obama also chooses myth’s over facts.  The President claims that de-regulation and competition among regulators caused the crisis.  The facts could not be more different.  Those institutions at the center of the crisis — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Lehman –could not choose their regulator.

The President’s plan chooses convenient targets and protects entrenched interests, rather than address the true underlying causes of the crisis.  At no time have we heard the President discuss the expansionary monetary policies that helped fuel the bubble.  Nor has the President talked about the global imbalances — the global savings glut that poured surplus savings from the rest of the world into the US.  But then the President appears to hope that loose monetary policy and continued American consumption funded by China will get him out of his own political problems with the economy.  It is especially striking that the President makes little mention of the housing bubble, as if it was only the bust that was the problem.

The President continues to say he inherited this crisis.  While true, he did not inherit the same individuals — Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke — who were at the center of creating the crisis.  All Obama needs to do is find a position for Hank Paulson and he will have completely re-assembled the Bush financial team.

Without real reform — fixing Fannie and Freddie, scaling back the massive subsidies for leverage in our tax code, loose monetary policy – it will only be a matter of time before the next crisis hits.  If we implement the President’s plan, we will, however, guarantee that the next crisis will be even larger and severe than the current one.

Reform Needed, but Obama Plan Would Result in More Financial Crises, not Less is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Here is the message members of Congress should send to Ben Bernanke during the Fed chief’s annual Capitol Hill testimony this week: He is fighting for his job. With his term up in January of next year, Bernanke needs to be called to account for the Fed’s many questionable actions during the financial turmoil of the past year.

Even while correctly identifying the “global savings glut,” Bernanke sat by and did nothing about the unsustainable build-up of leverage in the housing market—the “bubble” which famously burst in late 2008. Bernanke also used Fed financing to bail out Bear Stearns and AIG—hotly political moves which should rightfully have been left to Congress—and oversaw the massive expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet from about $900 billion to over $2 trillion. Under Bernanke, the Fed has transcended monetary policy and bank supervision into the world of fiscal policy.

While thus politicizing the Fed on one hand, Bernanke has sought to insulate the bank from congressional pressures by appeasing majority Democrats with various new credit regulations. Both the recently proposed credit card and mortgage rules unnecessarily restrict credit and increase the litigation risk facing banks, while doing nothing to roll back some of the irresponsible lending policies that exacerbated the housing bubble.

Bernanke’s pandering to the Left on misguided “consumer protections,” and the absence of any debate over the Fed’s role in the housing bubble, raise serious questions as to whether Bernanke understands the causes of the current financial crisis. We cannot hope to avoid the next financial crisis without a Fed chairman who understands the current one.

Don’t Bail Out Bernanke is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog