Lawrence H. Summers: Can Central Banking https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1164490326549118976 as we know it be the primary tool of macroeconomic stabilization in the industrial world over the next decade?... This is in doubt. There is little room for interest rate cuts. In every US recession since the 1970s, the fed funds rate was cut >500bps. In most, the real rate fell >400bps below the neutral rate. Now, the max. feasible cut is 200-300bps, bringing the real rate only 150-250bps below neutral. This limited space for interest rate cuts is true of the US, which has the highest interest rates in the industrialized world. It is even more true of Europe and Japan. QE and forward guidance have been tried on a substantial scale. We are living in a post QE and forward guidance world. It is hard to believe that changing adverbs here and there or altering the timing of press conferences or the mode of presenting projections is consequential. We usually agree w/ Janet Yellen, but believed at the time of her 2016 Jackson Hole speech -and believe even more in today’s world of 150bp 10yr rates-that her optimism about the existing monetary policy toolkit is misplaced http://federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20160826a.html.... Black hole monetary economics-interest rates stuck at zero with no real prospect of escape - is now the confident market expectation in Europe & Japan, with essentially zero or negative yields over a generation. The United States is only one recession away from joining them. Everywhere in the industrial world, the risks of a sharp upturn in unemployment appear greater than the risks of a sharp upturn in inflation (even though market expectations of inflation are clearly below 2 percent targets). The one thing that was taught as axiomatic to economics students around the world was that monetary authorities could over the long term create as much inflation as they wanted through monetary policy. This proposition is now very much in doubt. Many believe that events proved Alvin Hansen wrong about secular stagnation. On the contrary, the fact that it took WW2 to lift the world out of depression proves his point. Absent the military buildup, a liquidity trap deflation scenario would likely have persisted.... We have come to agree w/ the point long stressed by Post-Keynesian economists & recently emphasized by Palley that the role of specific frictions in economic fluctuations should be de-emphasized relative to a more fundamental lack of aggregate demand.... It minimizes our predicament to see it–as is current consensus–simply in terms of a falling neutral rate, low inflation, and the effective lower bound on nominal rates. Secular stagnation is a more profound issue...
#noted #2019-12-31
