There were quite a few articles in the newspapers this morning concerning inflation and how governments should set their policy targets with respect to inflation. This discussion was set off by a paper written by Oliver Blanchard, the top economist at the International Monetary Fund, and examined in this post on February 12, “Doesn’t Anyone Understand Inflation,” http://seekingalpha.com/article/188351-doesn-t-anyone-understand-inflation. The proposal of Mr. Blanchard’s that caught everyone’s eye was the proposal that central banks set their target rate of inflation at 4% rather than 2%.
This morning we see an opinion piece by Wolfgang Münchau in the Financial Times, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9776aeb0-1ef2-11df-9584-00144feab49a.html; an article by Sewell Chan in The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/22imf.html?ref=business; and another article by Jon Hilsenrath in the Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704511304575075902205876696.html#mod=todays_us_page_one. All discuss changing ideas about inflation and how government policy, particularly monetary policy, might be adjusted to reflect what has been “learned” from the recent financial crisis.
The underlying concern in these discussions is what changes need to be made to macroeconomic models that will allow us to be better prepared for the next financial disruption. Münchau concludes that in a globalised world with large financial markets, “Unless and until macroeconomists find a way to integrate concepts such as default and bubbles into their frameworks, it is hard to see them making a useful contribution to the policy debate.”
In other words, unless the models include situations that account for rising debt levels and credit inflation (inflations that can lead to excessively rising prices in subsectors of the economy, like in housing markets) we cannot expect economic policy advice that is of much value in combating the problems of the global economy. Sounds like we need to go back to Irving Fisher rather than Maynard Keynes.
The point is that in the United States, the purchasing power of a dollar bill has declined more than 80% since early 1961. In some sub-sectors we saw greater amounts of inflation up until 2007. During this time, global markets developed to a degree never seen before and inflation could be more easily passed from one country to another so that “sectoral” inflations could take place in different nations throughout the world. Living in an inflationary environment changes things!
It is interesting to see in some of these articles that the control of international capital flows is a rising issue. The concern is with the possibility that a debtor nation could export inflation to other countries. In particular, this exporting of credit inflation is being discussed in the Euro-zone in the talks surrounding the ‘bail out’ of Greece. Capital controls are seen as a possible solution to the problem of free-flowing capital.
The ironic thing is that the last period of world-wide discussion of capital flows began at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and ended up as a part of the Bretton Woods agreement that followed World War II. The restraint on capital flows following this period lasted until there was a final breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in August 1971 as President Nixon took the United States off the gold-exchange standard.
Maynard Keynes was very much in favor of restricted international capital flows because this allowed countries to operate economic policies independently of other countries and thereby promote “full employment” strategies. Free international capital flows, of course, eventually exert pressure on governments to operate their budgets on a more disciplined basis.
The real problem of inflation, as Münchau argues, “is that macroeconomists treat inflation as a variable, while most of us do not.” He continues: “Price stability is a critical component of the social contract we call money. We accept money as a means of payment, as a unit of account and, most importantly in this context, as a store of value. We trust that the central bank does not debase it. The problem here is not that a particular rate of inflation would be breached; it is the simple fact that inflation is considered a variable to be messed with in the first place.”
The reason that inflation becomes a variable in macroeconomic models is that unemployment becomes a fixed target. That is, in the late 1910s and early 1920s, economists, like Maynard Keynes, became so fearful of a Bolshevik revolution, that they built their models to focus on achieving high levels of employment. In the United States this got built into law: first in the Full Employment Act of 1946, and then in the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978. Of course, the definition of “full employment” is a man-made policy objective.
The problem is that once the “social contract” is violated by political consent, inflation becomes a variable that can be sacrificed at the altar of “full employment.” Even “inflation targeting” on the part of central banks’ assumes that there is a tradeoff between higher levels of employment and inflation.
Once the environment incorporates inflationary expectations, debt becomes the currency of record and more and more the expansion of credit comes to rule the economy. Once credit inflation takes over, manufacturing firms focus less on production and more on financial engineering, higher and higher levels of leverage are accepted, and financial innovation becomes crucial to survival.
Three things then happen: first, financial markets become more efficient in that more and more firms, financial and non-financial, can buy or sell ALL the funds they want at the going market rate. Second, this means that there is no limit on the size that firms, financial and non-financial, can become. Third, the financial sector becomes a larger proportion of the economy and hire relatively more people than before.
The conclusion from this is that debt and debt creation is a major part of economic activity. If this fact is not considered in macroeconomic models, then the models will be blatantly deficient. The decline in the purchasing power of the dollar has resulted from putting almost all the emphasis of economic policy on the level of unemployment. The focus on “full employment” has resulted in almost 50 years of credit inflation, financial innovation, and a decline in financial discipline.
I am not saying that high levels of employment are not important. However, one thing I have seen over the past 50 years is a government full employment policy that “forces” people back into jobs they had lost in the economic downturn and that are declining in importance or menial in nature. As a consequence, underemployment has been increasing over the last 50 years or so. But, education and re-training and such are more important over the longer run than putting people back into all of the jobs they lost.
The one thing that is becoming more and more obvious, however, is that once a person, a family, a business, or a nation, loses their financial discipline that all of the resulting policy options are undesirable. As an alcoholic finds out, the early stages of drinking can be very enjoyable and returned to regularly in pleasure and companionship. However, as the discipline of the alcoholic deteriorates, the drinking becomes less and less enjoyable, becomes more and more solitary, and ends up with no happy choices. As many people, businesses, and governments are finding out, having issued large amounts of debt in the past leave very little room to maneuver when the times get tough.
This is something that must be remembered in the future. But, accepting higher levels of inflation is not the answer. Businesses are criticized for focusing too much on the short run: governments should be as well.
Showing posts with label Oliver Blanchard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oliver Blanchard. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Inflation is Just Not Understood!
Funny time to be talking about inflation, but the top economist at the International Monetary Fund brought it up.
Oliver Blanchard, now serving at the IMF while on leave from MIT, has co-authored a new paper and has publically presented the results which have been reported in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704337004575059542325748142.html#mod=todays_us_page_one. Mr. Blanchard is now saying that central banks that were shooting for a 2% rate of inflation in their deliberations concerning monetary policy should shoot for something more in the neighborhood of 4% “in normal times.”
Economists of Mr. Blanchard’s philosophical bent just don’t seem to understand!
Inflation IS NOT the solution!!!
But, Inflation could very well be the problem!!!
As I keep saying, the post-World War II policy favoring an inflationary economic policy gained power on January 20, 1961. The basic format for such a program was followed, almost religiously, by Republicans as well as Democrats, into the 2000s. As a consequence, a United States dollar that could purchase one dollar worth of goods on January 20, 1961 could only purchase about seventeen cents world of goods in the summer of 2008.
Furthermore, inflation could not keep unemployment, or even more important, underemployment, down, as was originally believed and it could not keep industry working near capacity throughout the last 47 years or so. In fact, if anything, inflation forced manufacturing to focus on rising prices rather than productivity and this contributed to rising underemployment and declining capacity utilization. For more on this see my post, “The US Economy: Not Back to Business as Usual,” of January 8, 2010: http://seekingalpha.com/article/181621-the-u-s-economy-not-back-to-business-as-usual.
Inflation did create a “boom-time” for finance. Finance loves inflation because inflation that runs ahead of inflationary expectations reduces the burden of any debt outstanding. And what did we see between 1961 and 2008? We saw the greatest blooming of financial innovation in the history of the world and a rapid expansion of the finance industry relative to the rest of the economy that was even condemned by the people most responsible for the creation of the inflationary environment.
I have labeled this type of environment one of credit inflation (as opposed to debt deflation). It is referred to as credit inflation because it can incorporate price inflation, as in the case of the consumer price index) and asset inflation, as in the case of housing prices, dot.com boom, stock market boom, and so forth. Credit inflation relates to any time credit in the economy or in subsectors of the economy increases at a faster rate than the normal growth rate of that particular economy or that part of the economy.
And, this was a perfect time for financial innovation. I have just reviewed the new book titled “The Quants” by Scott Patterson, and he mentions many times in the book that the period from the 1960s into the 2000s, the period of the Quant-boom, as a period of “money ease”. In essence, monetary ease “lubricated” the Quant revolution helping to underwrite the massive growth in the financial industry and the development of the “shadow banking system.”
Of course, as Patterson describes, there were some consequences to pay for this expansion. But, I will let you read his book, or, at least, my review of his book, to gather his “take” on the subsequent financial collapse.
This gets me to the main point of this post. Blanchard, and other economists who think along similar lines, work with macroeconomic models that do not really include debt or the changing burden of debt in their models. Thus, the inflation in their models cannot provide an incentive for economic units to increase their use of debt and the subsequent buildup of debt can have no negative implications for the future performance of the economy. Inflation that causes an increased use of leverage and additional risk-taking cannot be explained in their models.
Thus, inflation remains the best solution to this brand of economist for the achievement of economic growth and lower rates of employment. The earlier debates about the Phillips curve seem to be irrelevant to them, let alone earlier discussions about debt deflation.
We are currently in a very precarious situation. Even with unemployment remaining so high and the economy staying so sluggish, more and more people are expressing concern about credit bubbles in the economy. China, who has recovered from the world economic collapse as fast as anyone, is showing tremendous concern about the possibility that bubbles may be forming in its economy and has taken measures with respect to its banking system to prevent such bubbles from occurring.
Still, our banking system contains $1.1 trillion in excess reserves and the Federal Reserve is faced with the problem of “undoing” this injection of reserves into the financial system. See my “Tightening at the Fed”: http://seekingalpha.com/article/187292-tightening-at-the-fed-get-ready-for-the-undoing.
Some economists still believe that re-flation is the only real solution to the current situation of a stagnant economy and massive federal deficits.
To me, Oliver Blanchard and these other economists that think like him just don’t get it! Yet they stick with the models that they have used over and over again and claim, if anything, that the reason why their solutions to the problem have not worked is because they either have not been tried or that they have not been implemented in a large enough size.
To my mind, their models and the solutions they have presented, have been tried and they have been found wanting. To me, to come up with a call for accepting higher rates of inflation in the future is, at a minimum, absurd. In fact, it scares me!
Oliver Blanchard, now serving at the IMF while on leave from MIT, has co-authored a new paper and has publically presented the results which have been reported in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704337004575059542325748142.html#mod=todays_us_page_one. Mr. Blanchard is now saying that central banks that were shooting for a 2% rate of inflation in their deliberations concerning monetary policy should shoot for something more in the neighborhood of 4% “in normal times.”
Economists of Mr. Blanchard’s philosophical bent just don’t seem to understand!
Inflation IS NOT the solution!!!
But, Inflation could very well be the problem!!!
As I keep saying, the post-World War II policy favoring an inflationary economic policy gained power on January 20, 1961. The basic format for such a program was followed, almost religiously, by Republicans as well as Democrats, into the 2000s. As a consequence, a United States dollar that could purchase one dollar worth of goods on January 20, 1961 could only purchase about seventeen cents world of goods in the summer of 2008.
Furthermore, inflation could not keep unemployment, or even more important, underemployment, down, as was originally believed and it could not keep industry working near capacity throughout the last 47 years or so. In fact, if anything, inflation forced manufacturing to focus on rising prices rather than productivity and this contributed to rising underemployment and declining capacity utilization. For more on this see my post, “The US Economy: Not Back to Business as Usual,” of January 8, 2010: http://seekingalpha.com/article/181621-the-u-s-economy-not-back-to-business-as-usual.
Inflation did create a “boom-time” for finance. Finance loves inflation because inflation that runs ahead of inflationary expectations reduces the burden of any debt outstanding. And what did we see between 1961 and 2008? We saw the greatest blooming of financial innovation in the history of the world and a rapid expansion of the finance industry relative to the rest of the economy that was even condemned by the people most responsible for the creation of the inflationary environment.
I have labeled this type of environment one of credit inflation (as opposed to debt deflation). It is referred to as credit inflation because it can incorporate price inflation, as in the case of the consumer price index) and asset inflation, as in the case of housing prices, dot.com boom, stock market boom, and so forth. Credit inflation relates to any time credit in the economy or in subsectors of the economy increases at a faster rate than the normal growth rate of that particular economy or that part of the economy.
And, this was a perfect time for financial innovation. I have just reviewed the new book titled “The Quants” by Scott Patterson, and he mentions many times in the book that the period from the 1960s into the 2000s, the period of the Quant-boom, as a period of “money ease”. In essence, monetary ease “lubricated” the Quant revolution helping to underwrite the massive growth in the financial industry and the development of the “shadow banking system.”
Of course, as Patterson describes, there were some consequences to pay for this expansion. But, I will let you read his book, or, at least, my review of his book, to gather his “take” on the subsequent financial collapse.
This gets me to the main point of this post. Blanchard, and other economists who think along similar lines, work with macroeconomic models that do not really include debt or the changing burden of debt in their models. Thus, the inflation in their models cannot provide an incentive for economic units to increase their use of debt and the subsequent buildup of debt can have no negative implications for the future performance of the economy. Inflation that causes an increased use of leverage and additional risk-taking cannot be explained in their models.
Thus, inflation remains the best solution to this brand of economist for the achievement of economic growth and lower rates of employment. The earlier debates about the Phillips curve seem to be irrelevant to them, let alone earlier discussions about debt deflation.
We are currently in a very precarious situation. Even with unemployment remaining so high and the economy staying so sluggish, more and more people are expressing concern about credit bubbles in the economy. China, who has recovered from the world economic collapse as fast as anyone, is showing tremendous concern about the possibility that bubbles may be forming in its economy and has taken measures with respect to its banking system to prevent such bubbles from occurring.
Still, our banking system contains $1.1 trillion in excess reserves and the Federal Reserve is faced with the problem of “undoing” this injection of reserves into the financial system. See my “Tightening at the Fed”: http://seekingalpha.com/article/187292-tightening-at-the-fed-get-ready-for-the-undoing.
Some economists still believe that re-flation is the only real solution to the current situation of a stagnant economy and massive federal deficits.
To me, Oliver Blanchard and these other economists that think like him just don’t get it! Yet they stick with the models that they have used over and over again and claim, if anything, that the reason why their solutions to the problem have not worked is because they either have not been tried or that they have not been implemented in a large enough size.
To my mind, their models and the solutions they have presented, have been tried and they have been found wanting. To me, to come up with a call for accepting higher rates of inflation in the future is, at a minimum, absurd. In fact, it scares me!
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