Later today the policymakers of what is effectively the world’s central bank meet up to deliberate before making their policy announcement tomorrow evening UK time. Although there is a catch in my description because the US Federal Reserve goes through sustained periods when it effectively ignores the rest of the world and becomes like the US itself can do, rather isolationist. The Financial Times puts it like this.
US coronavirus surge to dominate Federal Reserve meeting…..Central bank policymakers face delicate decision on best way to deliver more monetary support.
As it happens the coronavirus numbers look a little better today. But there are clearly domestic issues at hand which is a switch on the initial situation where on the middle of March the US Federal Reserve intervened to help the rest of the world with foreign exchange liquidity swaps. We were ahead of that game on March 16th. Anyway, that was then and now we see the US $446 billion that they rose to is now US $118 billion and falling.
The US Dollar
There has been a shift of emphasis with Aloe Blacc mulling a dip in royalties from this.
I need a dollar dollar, a dollar is what I need
Hey hey
Well I need a dollar dollar, a dollar is what I need
Hey hey
And I said I need dollar dollar, a dollar is what I need
And if I share with you my story would you share your dollar with me
This was represented back in the spring not only by a Dollar rally that especially hit the Emerging Market currencies but the Fed response I looked at above. Since then we have gone from slip-sliding away to the Fallin’ of Alicia Keys. Putting that into numbers the peak of 103.6 for September Dollar Index futures on March 19th has been replaced by 93.9 this morning.
If we look at the Euro it fell to 1.06 versus the Dollar and a warning signal flashed as the parity calls began. They had their usual impact as it is now at 1.17. Actually there were some parity calls for the UK Pound $ too so you will not be surprised to see it above US $1.28 as I type this. In terms of economic policy perhaps the most significant is the Japanese Yen at 105.50 because the Bank of Japan has made an enormous effort to weaken it and looks increasingly like King Canute.
There are economic efforts from this as I recall the words of the then Vice-Chair Stanley Fischer from 2015.
Figure 3 uses these results to gauge how a 10 percent dollar appreciation would reduce U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) through the net export channels we have just discussed. The staff’s model indicates that the direct effects on GDP through net exports are large, with GDP falling over 1-1/2 percent below baseline after three years.
We have seen the reverse of that so a rise in GDP of 1.5%. Of course such moves seem smaller right now and they need the move to be sustained but a welcome development none the less.
Whilst the US economy is less affected in terms of inflation than others due to the role of the US Dollar as the reserve currency in which commodities are prices there still is an impact.
This particular model implies that core PCE inflation dips about 0.5 percent in the two quarters following the appreciation before gradually returning to baseline, which is consistent with a four-quarter decline in core PCE inflation of about 0.3 percent in the first year following the shock.
Again this impact is the other way so inflation will rise. For those unaware PCE means Personal Consumption Expenditures and as so familiar for an official choice leads to a lower inflation reading than the more widely known CPI alternative.
Back Home
Interest-Rates
This is a troubled area for the US Federal Reserve which resembles the shambles of General Custer at Little Big Horn. We we being signposted to a “normalisation” where the new interest-rate would be of the order of 3%+ or what was called r*. I am pleased to report I called it out at the time as the reality was that the underpinnings of this particular Ivory Tower crumbled as the eye of Trump turned on it. The pandemic in this sense provided cover for the US Federal Reserve to cut to around 0.1% ( strictly 0% to 0.25%).
Back on March 16th I noted this and you know my view in official denials.
#BREAKING Fed’s Powell says negative interest rates not likely to be appropriate ( @AFP )
I also not this from Reuters yesterday,
With U.S. central bank officials resisting negative interest rates,
How are they resisting them? They could hardly have cut much quicker! This feels like a PR campaign ahead of applying them at some future date.
Yield Curve Control
This is the new way of explaining that the central bank is funding government policy. Although not on the scale some are claiming.
Foreigners have levelled off buying US Debt. Federal Reserve buying has gone parabolic. This tells us all this additional debt the govt is issuing by running HUGE budget deficits is being purchased by directly the Fed. That is what they do in “banana republics”. #monetizethedebt
That was from Ben Rickert on Twitter and is the number one tweet if you look for the US Federal Reserve. Sadly for someone who calls himself The Mentor actual purchases of US government bonds have declined substantially.
the Desk plans to continue to increase SOMA holdings of Treasury securities at that pace, which is the equivalent of approximately $80 billion per month. ( New York Fed.)
That is less in a month than it was buying some days as I recall a period when it was US £125 billion a day.
If Ben had not ramped up his rhetoric he would be on the scent because Yield Curve Control is where the central bank implicitly rather than explicitly finances the government. Regular readers will have noted my updates on the Bank of Japan doing this and there have been several variations but the sum is that the benchmark ten-year yield has been kept in a range between -0.1% and 0.1%.
There is an obvious issue with the US ten-year yield being around 0.6% and we may see tomorrow the beginning of the process of getting it lower. On the tenth of this month I pointed out that some US bond yields could go negative and if we are to see a Japanese style YCC then the Fed needs to get on with it for the reasons I will note below.
Comment
As the battleground for the US Federal Reserve now seems to be bond yields it has a problem.
INSKEEP: Senator, our time is short. I’ve got a couple of quick questions here. Is there a limit to how much the United States can borrow? Granting the emergency, its another trillion dollars here. ( NPR)
Even in these inflated times that is a lot and the Democrat opposition want treble that. With an election around the corner we are likely to see more grand spending schemes. But returning to the Fed that is a lot to fund and $80 billion a month looks rather thin in response. So somewhere on this yellow brick road I am expecting more QE.
Oh and if you look at Japan if it has done any good it is well hidden. But that seems not to bother policymakers much these days. Also another example of Turning Japanese is provided by giving QE new name. After all successes do not need one do they?
Still at least the researchers at the Kansas City Fed have kept their sense of humour.
Based on the FOMC’s past use of forward guidance, we argue that date-based forward guidance has the potential to deliver much, though not all, of the accommodation of yield curve control.