Christine Lagarde’s “Whatever it Takes… But” Might be a Wet Bullet Against Speculation

Note: this is a rough translation of a piece published on the Italian neswpaper Domani, with a few edits and additions.

On July 21st, the ECB definitively closed the emergency phase that began with Mario Draghi’s whatever it takes in 2012. The Frankfurt institution announced two important decisions. First, it raised interest rates for the first time in eight years, ending the anomaly of negative rates. The increase was more significant than the ECB had previously announced (half a point instead of a quarter). While it is true that a normalisation process had to begin, this acceleration is somewhat puzzling. Christine Lagarde and her colleagues have rushed to explain it by the need to signal to the markets that they are determined to return to 2% inflation in the medium term. However, since the ECB itself recognises that inflation is mainly imported and linked to energy and food prices, the tightening mainly sends a signal that the ECB is prepared to push the eurozone economy into recession in order not to appear weak in its fight against inflation.

Markets are not efficient

The second measure, the real novelty, is the anti-spread shield, on which the ECB has been working for the past few months. The TPI (Transmission Protection Instrument) should keep spreads under control and thus allow the ECB to fight inflation without generating instability on markets: if in the future speculation or markets’ panic movements were to lead to changes in sovereign interest rates that are not linked to the actual public finances’ state of health, the ECB will intervene and with its purchases will ensure that spreads are realigned with the so-called ‘fundamentals’. The anti-spread shield (anti-segmentation, in ECB terminology) should shelter eurozone countries from the speculation that, for example, we observed in the spring of 2012 and which led to Mario Draghi’s famous whatever it takes.
The introduction of the TPI is certainly a positive sign. With it, the ECB officially recognises what all non-ideologised economists have known for a long time: markets are often (too often!) unable to correctly assess the health of public finances. Between 1999 and 2010, for example, in the EMU the risk associated with the behaviour of some governments was not adequately taken into account and markets financed these countries at excessively low interest rates. Then, between 2010 and 2015, they went all the way to the opposite excess, demanding excessive yields that were in no way justified. In short, the introduction of TPI merely certifies the fact that markets cannot be relied upon to discipline eurozone countries’ fiscal policies.

The anti-spread shield is a wet cartridge

However, for the way the instrument is designed, the risk that it ends up being a wet cartridge is quite significant. The shield should mainly function as a mechanism to signal to markets that the central bank is ready to do whatever it takes to prevent speculation from pushing a State whose public finances are fundamentally sustainable into default. Just think of 2012, when Mario Draghi’s whatever it takes speech was enough to immediately calm speculation; those who had been trying to gain by pushing Italy and Spain into default understood that they would not succeed because the ECB was ready to intervene with unlimited purchases, allowing the two countries to continue to finance themselves; a sort of insurance, in short, whose announcement alone rendered speculation vain and quickly brought Spain’s and Italy’s spreads back to acceptable levels.

With the TPI the ECB would like to put in place a similar insurance mechanism, that nevertheless risks not being as effective. Let us see why. The ECB has announced that it will only intervene if the country’s debt is fundamentally sustainable, according to the criteria developed by the IMF and the World Bank in recent years. It could be argued that in certain situations it would also be desirable to intervene to rescue insolvent countries, to secure the system and allow for bankruptcy or debt restructuring under stable conditions. But putting this consideration aside, it is not illogical that the ECB does not want to serve as a backstop for fiscally irresponsible behaviour. However, for reasons probably related to the power struggle between hawks and doves in the bank’s Governing Council, the list of conditionalities is much broader. For instance, the country must comply with European fiscal rules and not be in excessive deficit procedure; or, again, be in compliance with the conditionalities related to the Next Generation EU National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRRP). It is not clear what is the rationale for these conditions. Why, for example, should a country’s delay in passing a reform scheduled in its NRRP make its debt less sustainable and thus preclude it from accessing the TPI? Or, again, why should excessive private debt deprive the country of the shield, when it is precisely in the case of financial fragility of the country that a speculative attack on its sovereign bonds would be more likely? In short, these conditions seem to invoke the generic notion of a country’s trustworthiness which, in accordance with what Paul Krugman would call zombie ideas, is linked only to fiscal discipline and not to the general conformity of public policies with the objective of balanced and sustainable growth.
The TPI is thus a conditional shield, a sort of ‘whatever it takes… but‘ that might not work to stop speculation, since markets could always decide to test the ECB’s resolve not to intervene to protect a country. A lender of last resort (because this is what we are talking about) is only such if market participants never doubt its intervention. If it only does so under certain (tortuous) conditions, it risks being ineffective as a deterrent to speculation. But there is more: what would happen if a country not fulfilling the conditions were under attack and financial stability were at risk? Of course, the ECB would intervene, thus undermining its own credibility.

A European Debt Agency to control spreads

The TPI wet cartridge is further proof that one cannot continue to rely on the ECB to ensure at the same time the traditional tasks of monetary policy and the financial stability of a sovereign debt market that is segmented by its very nature (remember that as long as there is no real federal budget, fiscal policies will remain the almost exclusive competence of the member states). I have several times discussed the creation of a European Debt Agency that could protect member states from the mood of the markets while keeping them responsible for their fiscal policy choices. A debt agency (or a similar institution) would achieve the goals the ECB set itself with the TPI more efficiently, freeing the central bank itself from having to deal with spreads on top of everything else.

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We Should Stop asking the ECB to carry the Eurozone on its Shoulders. It is time to Introduce New Tools for Debt Management

In the past couple of years I have had a hard time to feed this blog with original content. I have therefore decided that I will post the English translation of pieces that I write for other outlets; sometimes (always??) the translation will be rough I will start, today, with an article published in the Italian daily Domani on the ECB own impossible trinity (growth, supply-side inflation, spreads).

The last few weeks have shown beyond any doubt how complicated the task of central banks has become. In normal times, inflationary pressures go hand-in-hand with an overheating of the economy caused by increases in spending (public or private, it matters little); therefore, restrictive policy simultaneously achieves the result of keeping price increases in check and cooling demand. But we do not live in normal times. In a world of increasing geopolitical risks and supply-side shocks (the pandemics, the disruption of supply chains, structural change related to the ecological and digital transition), the two objectives of growth and inflation become contradictory: central banks are forced into complicated balancing acts to try to reduce an inflation they have few tools to control, without causing a collapse in consumption and investment that would send the economy into recession.
Even in the United States, where at least some of inflation is due to the overheating of the economy, it is difficult to understand the logic of the recent acceleration in tightening: the risk that the Fed’s moves will cause a recession in the coming quarters is real. In the Eurozone the demand push is less pronounced; in addition, the ECB’s task is further complicated by the coexistence of a single monetary policy with the nineteen fiscal policies of member countries, and the resulting risk of financial instability and segmentation of sovereign debt markets. Thus, not only must the ECB decide how far it is willing to take the risk of sending the economy into recession to try to keep inflation in check; it must also be prepared to manage the consequences its actions have on spreads.

Certainly, the turmoil of the past few weeks is due to less than flawless communication, which has given markets the feeling of an ECB uncertain about what to do. Moreover, it is frankly astounding to discover, when markets are already in panic mood, that the ECB is thinking about an anti-spread shield; the shield should have been ready months ago, to be deployed as soon as the announcement of a turn toward a restrictive stance had created tensions in the markets, which were widely predictable. However, mistakes and delays cannot hide the fundamental problem: the ECB is now asked to perform its classical tasks of closing the inflation and the output gap while ensuring the stability of financial markets, in the face of a fiscal policy that always does too little and too late. Even with firmer leadership and greater cohesion within the governing council, the ECB could not carry the entire weight of the Eurozone on its shoulders; especially in turbulent times such as we are currently experiencing. The erratic communication, the feeling that the ECB is perpetually behind the curve, then, cannot be attributed to the clumsiness of Christine Lagarde or to conflicts between hawks and doves; the ECB is probably being asked to do the impossible.

How do we get out of this? First, in the fight against inflation, monetary policy needs to be assisted by industrial policies that remove bottlenecks and release some of the supply constraints Second, the risk of segmentation of sovereign debt markets needs to be reduced. For this, the EMU should move forward decisively with the creation of a central fiscal capacity. Replacing part of the member states’ debt with common borrowing would not only stabilize financial markets with a safe asset, but also mechanically reduce the segmentation of sovereign bond markets.
However, the complete normalization of monetary policy could only take place with a solution that unburdens the ECB of the goal of keeping spreads under control. While the stated intention of creating an anti-spread tool is commendable, it will probably keep interfering with the classical tasks of central banks. One (only seemingly radical) way out is to establish a European Debt Agency (EDA). This agency would form a diaphragm between the member countries, to which it would offer perpetual loans, and the markets, from which it seek financing issuing Eurobonds. The EDA would protect member countries from the irrationality of markets while ensuring, through appropriate modulation of interest installments on loans over time, that national governments remain fully accountable for their fiscal behaviour: less virtuous countries (e.g., that fail to comply with fiscal rules) would be called upon to pay higher interest. The debt mutualization so feared by the so-called frugal countries would therefore be avoided. This is only a seemingly radical solution because in the recent past it has become customary for European institutions (the ESM, SURE, even Next Generation EU) to borrow at preferential rates and then transfer those rates to member states, effectively acting as guarantors and intermediaries. The European Debt Agency would take this mechanism to its extreme consequences.
The establishment of the European Debt Agency would create a single European sovereign debt market, mimicking the operation of a federal system. This on the one hand would provide the markets with a safe asset and, as in the United States, reduce the risk of speculative attacks to virtually zero. On the other hand, it would free monetary policy from the task of having to keep spreads down. The ECB would be free to set interest rates and decide of the size of its balance sheets with in mind only a central bank’s own goals of keeping inflation low and supporting growth. This seems the only structural way out of the present difficulties.

Zombie Arguments Against Fiscal Stimulus

Busy days. I just want to drop a quick note on a piece just published on the Financial Times that is puzzling on many levels. Ruchir Sharma pleads against Joe Biden’s stimulus on the ground that it risks “exacerbating inequality and low productivity growth”. The bulk of the argument is in this paragraph:

Mr Biden captured this elite view perfectly when he said, in announcing his spending plan: “With interest rates at historic lows, we cannot afford inaction.”

This view overlooks the corrosive effects that ever higher deficits and debt have already had on the global economy. These effects, unlike roaring inflation or the dollar’s demise, are not speculative warnings of a future crisis. There is increasing evidence, from the Bank for International Settlements, the OECD and Wall Street that four straight decades of growing government intervention in the economy have led to slowing productivity growth — shrinking the overall pie — and rising wealth inequality.

If one reads the two papers cited by Sharma, they say, in a nutshell, (a) that expansionary monetary policies have deepened income inequality via an increase in asset prices (while for low interest rates and bond prices there is no clear link); (b) that the increasing share of zombie firms drags down the performance of more productive firms thus slowing down overall productivity growth.

So far so good. So where is the problem? Linking these results to excessive debt and deficit, to the “constant stimulus”, is stretched (and I am being kind). A clear case of Zombie Economics.

Let’s start with monetary policy and its impact on inequality (side note: the effect is not so clear-cut). One may see expansionary monetary policies as the consequence of fiscal dominance, excessive deficit and debt that force central banks to finance the government. But, they can also be seen as the consequence of stagnant aggregate demand that is not properly addressed by excessively restrictive fiscal policies, forcing central banks to step in. Many have argued in the past decade that especially in the Eurozone one of the causes of central bank activism was the inertia of fiscal policies. Don’t take my word. Read former ECB President Mario Draghi’s Farewell speech, in October 2019:

Today, we are in a situation where low interest rates are not delivering the same degree of stimulus as in the past, because the rate of return on investment in the economy has fallen. Monetary policy can still achieve its objective, but it can do so faster and with fewer side effects if fiscal policies are aligned with it. This is why, since 2014, the ECB has gradually placed more emphasis on the macroeconomic policy mix in the euro area.

A more active fiscal policy in the euro area would make it possible to adjust our policies more quickly and lead to higher interest rates.

This is as straightforward as a central banker can be: in order to go back to standard monetary policy making, fiscal policy needs to step up its game. Notice that Draghi also hints to another source of problems: the causality does not go from expansionary policies to low interest rates, but the other way round. We have been living in a a long period of secular stagnation, excess savings, low interest rates and chronic demand deficiency which monetary policy expansion can accommodate by keeping its rates close to “the natural” rate, but not address. Once again, fiscal policy should do the job.

Regarding zombie firms, it is unclear, barring the current and very special situation created by the pandemics, why this would prove that stimulus is unwarranted. The paper describes a secular trend whose roots are in insufficient business investment and a drop in potential growth rate (that in turn the authors link to a drop in multi-factor productivity). The debate on the role of fiscal policy in these matters is as old as macroeconomics. In the past ten years, nevertheless, the cursor has moved against the Sharma’s priors and an increasing body of literature points to crowding-in effects: especially when the stock of public capital is too low (as is the case in most advanced countries), an increase of public investment — “constant stimulus”– has a positive impact on private investment and potential growth (see for reference the most recent IMF fiscal monitor and the chapter by EIB economists of the European Public Investment Outlook). Lack of public investment is also widely believed to be one of the factors keeping our economies stuck in secular stagnation.

Fifteen years ago one could have read Sharma’s case against fiscal policy on many (more or less prestigious) outlets. Even then, it would have been easy to argue that it was flawed and fundamentally built on an ideological prior. Today, it seems simply written by somebody living in another galaxy.

The ECB Umbrella is here to stay

On December 10th the European Central Bank Governing Council will likely announce new measures to support governments that have to reach to their wallet again to try to cope with the economic effects of the pandemic second wave. It would not be surprising that the ongoing asset purchase programmes will be extended in size and duration (currently, the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program, PEPP, is scheduled to run until June 2021). There have been rumors in recent days that the ECB could use this increase in its firepower to put pressure on countries that do not wish to make use of loans from the Recovery Fund and the ESM. ECB board member Yves Mersch yesterday also suggested that the ECB walk that path.

For those who are not into the European debate, it should be recalled that using the loans from European programmes (the ESM covid line, the SURE, and the quota of the Recovery Fund that is not grants) yields savings in interests: the EU will borrow on the markets at more favourable costs than many Member States and redistribute the amounts. If market rates are low, the gain in interest from European loans is reduced and may not be sufficient to offset the fact that these loans come with terms and conditions (and further problems in the case of the ESM). By reducing its purchases of reluctant countries’ assets, the argument goes, the ECB would raise market rates and thus make it convenient, if not inevitable, for them to use financing from European programmes.
I believe that it is very unlikely, if not impossible, that the ECB would engage in such nudging. Its umbrella will remain open for all eurozone countries for a long time to come. Instead of worrying about the presumed unsustainability of the debt that all European countries are accumulating, we should focus on how to spend the money quickly and well. Sustainability depends more on this than on unlikely ECB pressures or unlikely sudden reversals of market confidence.

There are three reasons to doubt that the ECB will use its purchasing programmes to interfere in the financing choices of European Governments. The first reason is technical. Since the Quantitative Easing program started in 2015, purchases of each country’s securities have been proportional to the so-called capital key, the shares of EMU countries in the capital of the ECB, which in turn are linked to population and GDP. This self-imposed proportionality was the price to be paid to avoid that the purchases were concentrated on peripheral countries’ securities, allowing them to pass on their debt to the supposed frugals through the ECB. When last March the new emergency purchase programme was introduced, the ECB relaxed the capital key so that purchases could initially focus on the debt of countries subject to market pressure and (contrary to what Lagarde has suggested just days before) keep spreads under control. However, even in this case, the ECB did not embrace complete discretion, as flexibility was only temporary: at a later stage purchases will have to be rebalanced in order to respect the self imposed proportionality at the end of the programme. Deciding now to move away from the capital key to put pressure on countries that do not want European loans would most likely meet the opposition of the core countries, that feel protected by them. It is interesting that Mersch himself, a few days before suggesting proportionality were scrapped to nudge Member States into EU loans, argued in an interview that “We are bound not by self-imposed limits but by red lines which are of a constitutional nature and which are in the treaty. The self-imposed limits only serve to respect those constitutional limits, which are not at our disposal.”

The second reason why ECB nudging is unlikely has to do with the current macroeconomic situation. One might in fact argue that, pretty much as in the current PEPP, flexibility and nudging could happen in the short run to eventually restore the capital key. But contrary to what many believe, today the ECB necessary to keep rates low. The crisis has generated an enormous mass of savings which, given the economic uncertainty, has mostly been channeled into demand for public debt of all countries. In October’s auctions alone Italy, one of the most problematic EMU countries when it comes to public finances’ sustainability, placed debt at different maturities (with rates close to zero) for around 33 billion euros against a market demand of more than 55 billion euros . Of course, it would be foolish to neglect the role of monetary policy: the ECB’s umbrella has contributed to making public debt safe and therefore attractive. But it is certainly not the only factor; the abundance of savings is increasingly a feature (and a problem) of our economies.
Last, but not least, political reasons, that encompass all th others, reduce the risk of ECB interference in countries’ financing choices. Since 2012, while it has struggled to convince markets of its credibility in sustaining growth and keeping inflation close to its target, the ECB has been very effective in curbing speculation. Ever since Mario Draghi’s 2012 whatever it takes speech, all it took to stop market pressure on peripheral countries, was the certainty that the ECB was ready to do everything (whatever it takes) to prevent speculative attacks to keep markets at bay, make public debt attractive and reduce spreads. A sort of (imperfect) lender of last resort, in sum. Even the PEPP programme, after some massive initial purchases, has settled on limited flows and proportionality is already almost restored. It is frankly quite implausible that the ECB will deliberately risk to increase uncertainty and let spreads widen again, squandering an hard-earned credibility capital just to push hesitant countries to apply for loans from European programmes.

Long story short, the ECB’s umbrella is set to remain open for a long time to come and will contribute, along with the mass of savings in search of placement, to keep the cost of debt low. We should resist getting entangled in the debate on how to finance (and repay) public debt, and focus on the use of the resources available. European countries need to efficiently invest in tangible and intangible infrastructures that will enable us to set out on a path of sustainable and sustained growth. After all, a healthy economy is the best guarantee of sustainable public debt.

On the Political Nature of Monetary Policy

I was intrigued by Munchau’s editorial on central bank independence, that appeared on today’s FT. Munchau argues that central banks’ choices are increasingly political in nature, especially if their mandate is broad, as is the case for example of the Fed. His argument is that a broad mandate implies tradeoffs, and as such it does not go well with central bank independence.

I must say I am unconvinced to say the least, on at least two levels.

First, I do not see how a strict mandate would make central bank choices less political in nature. It makes them more opaque, but by no means less political. I wrote about this in a paper on ECB action during the crisis, and more succinctly in an op-ed for Social Europe co-written with Yan Islam back in 2015.  Let me quote a few excerpts from that piece:

A dual mandate requiring the central bank to pursue two, sometimes conflicting, objectives forces the institution to make inherently political choices. Far from being a shortcoming, this allows for a more flexible and unbiased monetary policy. A central bank following a dual mandate will always be able to take an aggressive stance on inflation, if it deems this necessary. Appropriate choice of the weights given to employment and inflation would allow incorporation of any combination of the two objectives. […]

Inflation-targeting central banks, such as the ECB, de facto also target growth but timidly and without explicitly saying so. This leads to low reactivity and opaque communication, hampering in turn the capacity of central banks to manage expectations and effectively steer the economy. A good case in point is the ECB that – compared to the Fed – did “too little and too late” from 2009, amid a constant debate on whether the inflation-targeting mandate was being violated. […]

ECB opacity is intrinsically linked to the confusion between its mandate and its activities in the real world, and as such it cannot lead to any meaningful discussion but only to legalistic disputes on the definition of price stability, of how medium is the medium term and the like.

The main merit of a dual mandate is in fact that it lets the political nature of monetary policy emerge without ambiguities. It is indeed true that monetary policy with a dual mandate requires hard choices, just like those debated these days, and hence is political by its very nature. The point is, so is monetary policy with a simple inflation-targeting objective. The level of inflation targeted, and the choice of the instruments to attain it, is anything but neutral in terms of its consequences on the economy. Thus, an inflation-targeting central bank is as political in its actions as a bank following a dual mandate, the only difference being that In the former case the political nature of monetary policy is concealed behind a technocratic curtain.

In a sentence, we argued that monetary policy choices are always political, and as such they should be incorporated in the policy mix, without hiding behind what Yan and I called a technocratic illusion.

Munchau’s link between the broadness of the mandate and its political nature, is simplistic and in my opinion strongly misleading. In fact, we concluded back in 2015 that it is linked to a specific intellectual framework

The profound justification of an exclusive focus on price stability can only lie in the acceptance of a neoclassical view in which virtually powerless governments need to make little or no choices. Once we dismiss that platonic view, monetary policy acquires a political role, regardless of the mandate it is given.

The second reason why Munchau’s argument is unconvincing is the conclusion, somewhat implicit in his piece, that a central bank making political choices needs to be a “government agency”. Why is it so, exactly? I fail to see it. What matters is not that the central bank is controlled by the finance ministry, but that it is accountable, like any other actor doing policy, in a system of well functioning checks and balances.

Once we recognize that a central bank has a political role, we need to make sure first, that its mandate is not falsely perceived as technocratic; and second, that its actions are properly embedded in a balanced policy mix, in which there is coordination with, not subordination to, the other branches of government. It seems to me that the US institutional system comes pretty close to this. The same cannot be said for the eurozone.

Monetary Policy: Credibility 2.0

Life and work keep having the nasty habit of intruding into this blog, but it feels nice to resume writing, even if just with a short comment.

We learned  a few weeks ago that the Bank of Japan has walked one extra step in its attempt to escape lowflation, and that it has committed to overshoot its 2% inflation target.  A “credible promise to be irresponsible”,  as the FT says quoting Paul Krugman.

This may be a long overdue first step towards a revision of the inflation target, as invoked long ago by Olivier Blanchard, and more recently by Larry Ball. This is all too reasonable: if the equilibrium interest rates are negative, if monetary policy is bound by the zero-or-only-slightly-negative-lower-bound, higher inflation targets would make sense, and 4% is an arbitrary target as legitimate as the current also arbitrary 2% level. Things may be moving, as the subject was evoked, if not discussed, at the recent Central Bankers gathering in Jackson Hole. We’ll see if anything comes out of this.

But the FT also adds an interesting comment to the BoJ move, namely that the more serious risk is a blow to credibility. If it failed to lift the inflation to the 2% target, how can it be credibly believed to overshoot it?

This is a different sort of credibility issue, much more reasonable indeed, than the one we have been used to in the past three decades, linked to the concept of dynamic inconsistency. In plain English the idea that an actor has no incentive to keep prior commitments that go against its own interest, and hence deviates from the initial plan. Credibility was therefore associated to changing incentives over time (typically for policy makers), and invoked to recommend rules over discretion.

Today, eight years into the zero lower bound, we go back to a more intuitive definition of credibility: announcing an objective and not being able to attain it.

The difference between the two definitions of credibility is not anodyne. In the first case, the unwillingness of central banks to behave appropriately can be corrected through the adoption of constraining rules. In the latter, the central bank cannot attain the objective regardless of incentives and constraints, and other strategies need to be put in place.

The other strategy, the reader will not be surprised to learn, is fiscal policy. Monetary dominance is in fact a second tenet of the Consensus from the 1990s that the crisis has wiped out. We used to live in a world in which structural reforms would take care of increasing potential growth, monetary policy would be used to take care of (minor) demand-driven fluctuations, and fiscal policy was in a closet.

This is gone (luckily). Even the large policy making institutions now call for a comprehensive and multi-instrument policy making. The policy mix, a central element of macroeconomics in the pre-rational expectations era, is now back.  Even the granitic dichotomy between short (demand driven) and long (supply driven) term, is somewhat rediscussed.

The excessively simplified consensus that dominated macroeconomics for the past thirty years seems to be seriously in trouble; complexity, tradeoffs, coordination, are now the issues discussed in academia and in policy circles. This is good news.

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On the Importance of Fiscal Policy

Last week’s data on EMU growth have triggered quite a bit of comments. I was intrigued by Paul Krugman‘s piece arguing (a) that in per capita terms the EMU performance is not as bad (he uses working age population, I used total population); and (b) that the path of the EMU was similar to that of the US in the first phase of the crisis; and (c) that divergence started only in 2011, due to differences in monetary policy (an impeccable disaster here, much more reactive in the US). Fiscal policy, Krugman argues, was equally contractionary across the ocean.
I pretty much agree that the early policy response to the crisis was similar, and that divergence started only when the global crisis went European, after the Greek elections of October 2009. But I am puzzled (and it does not happen very often) by Krugman’s dismissal of austerity as a factor explaining different performances. True, at first sight, fiscal consolidation kicked in at the same moment in the US and in Europe. I computed the fiscal impulse, using changes in the cyclically adjusted primary deficit. In other words, by taking away the cyclical component, and interest payment, we can obtain the closest possible measure to the discretionary fiscal stance of a government. And here is what it gives:

Krugman is certainly right that austerity was widespread in 2011 and in 2012 (actually more in the US). So what is the problem?
The problem is that fiscal consolidation needs not to be assessed in isolation, but in relation to the environment in which it takes place. First, it started one year earlier in the EMU (look at the bars for 2010). Second, expansion had been more robust in the US in 2008 and in 2009, thus avoiding that the economy slid too much: having been bolder and more effective in 2008-2010, continued fiscal expansion was less necessary in 2011-12.
I remember Krugman arguing at the time that the recovery would have been stronger and faster if the fiscal stance in the US had remained expansionary. I agreed then and I agree now: government support to the economy was withdrawn when the private sector was only partially in condition to take the witness. But to me it is just a question of degree and of timing in reversing a fiscal policy stance that overall had been effective.
I had made the same point back in 2013. Here is, updated from that post, the correlation between public and private expenditure:

Correlation Between Public and Private Expenditure
	2008-2009	2010-2012	2013-2015
EMU	-0.96	0.73	0.99
USA	-0.82	-0.96	-0.04

Remember, a positive correlation means that fiscal policy moves together with private expenditure, and fails to act countercyclically. The table tells us that public expenditure in the US was withdrawn only when private expenditure could take the witness, and never was procylclical (it turned neutral in the past 2 years). Europe is a whole different story. Fiscal contraction began when the private sector was not ready to take the witness; the withdrawal of public demand therefore led to a plunge in economic activity and to the double dip recession that the US did not experience. Here is the figure from the same post, also updated:

To sum up: the fiscal stance in the US was appropriate, even if it changed a bit too hastily in 2011. In Europe, it was harmful since 2010.

And monetary policy in all this? It did not help in Europe. I join Krugman in believing that once the economy was comfortably installed in the liquidity trap Mario Draghi’s activism while necessary was (and is)  far from sufficient. Being more timely, the Fed played an important role with its aggressive monetary policy, that started precisely in 2012. It supported the expansion of private demand, and minimized the risk of a reversal when the withdrawal of fiscal policy begun. But in both cases I am unsure that monetary policy could have made a difference without fiscal policy. Let’s not forget that a first round of aggressive monetary easing in 2007-2008 had been successful in keeping the financial sector afloat, but not in avoiding the recession. This is why in 2009 most economies launched robust fiscal stimulus plans. I see no reason to believe that, in 2010-2012, more appropriate and timely ECB action would have made a big difference. The problem is fiscal, fiscal, fiscal.

The Sin of Central Bankers

I read, a bit late, a very interesting piece by Simon Wren-Lewis, who blames central bankers for three major mistakes: (1) They did not see the crisis coming, while they were the only one in the position to see the build-up of leverage; (2) They did not warn governments that at the Zero Lower Bound central banks would lose traction and could not protect the economy from the disasters of austerity. (3) They may be rushing in declaring that we are back to normal, thus attributing all the current slack to a deterioration of the supply side of the economy.

What surprises me is (2), for which I quote Wren-Lewis in full:

Of course the main culprit for the slow recovery from the Great Recession was austerity, by which I mean premature fiscal consolidation. But the slow recovery also reflects a failure of monetary policy. In my view the biggest failure occurred very early on in the recession. Monetary policy makers should have said very clearly, both to politicians and to the public, that with interest rates at their lower bound they could no longer do their job effectively, and that fiscal stimulus would have helped them do that job. Central banks might have had the power to prevent austerity happening, but they failed to use it.

The way Wren-Lewis writes it, central banks were not involved in the push towards fiscal consolidation, and their “only” sin was of not being vocal enough. I think he is too nice. At least in the Eurozone, the ECB was a key actor in pushing austerity. It was directly involved in the Trojka designing the rescue packages that sunk Greece (and the EMU with it). But more importantly, the ECB contributed to design and impose the Berlin View narrative that fiscal profligacy was at the roots of the crisis, so that rebalancing would have to be on the shoulders of fiscal sinners alone. We should not forget that “impeccable disaster” Jean-Claude Trichet was  one of the main supporters of the confidence fairy: credible austerity would magically lift expectations, pushing private expenditure and triggering the recovery. He was the President of the ECB when central banks made the second mistake. And I really have a hard time picturing him warning against the risks of austerity at the zero lower bound.

And things are not drastically different now. True, Mario Draghi often calls for fiscal support to the ECB quantitative easing program. But as I argued at length, calling for fiscal policy within the existing rules’ framework has no real impact.

So I disagree with Wren-Lewis on this one. Central banks, or at least the ECB, did not simply fail to contrast the problem of wrongheaded austerity. They were, and may  still be, part of the problem.

The problem is one of economic doctrine. And as long as this does not change, I am unsure that removing central bank independence would have made a difference. Would a Bank of England controlled by Chancellor  Osborne have been more vocal against austerity? Would an ECB controlled by the Ecofin? Nothing is less sure…

 

Whatever it Takes Cannot be in Frankfurt

Yesterday I was asked by the Italian weekly pagina99 to write a comment on the latest ECB announcement. Here is a slightly expanded English version.
Mario Draghi had no choice. The increasingly precarious macroeconomic situation, deflation that stubbornly persists, and financial markets that happily cruise from one nervous breakdown to another, had cornered the ECB. It could not, it simply could not, risk to fall short of expectations as it had happened last December. And markets have not been disappointed. The ECB stored the bazooka and pulled out of the atomic bomb. At the press conference Mario Draghi announced 6 sets of measures (I copy and paste):

1. The interest rate on the main refinancing operations of the Eurosystem will be decreased by 5 basis points to 0.00%, starting from the operation to be settled on 16 March 2016.
2. The interest rate on the marginal lending facility will be decreased by 5 basis points to 0.25%, with effect from 16 March 2016.
3. The interest rate on the deposit facility will be decreased by 10 basis points to -0.40%, with effect from 16 March 2016.
4. The monthly purchases under the asset purchase programme will be expanded to €80 billion starting in April.
5. Investment grade euro-denominated bonds issued by non-bank corporations established in the euro area will be included in the list of assets that are eligible for regular purchases.
6. A new series of four targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II), each with a maturity of four years, will be launched, starting in June 2016. Borrowing conditions in these operations can be as low as the interest rate on the deposit facility.

Items 1-3 depict a further decrease of interest rates. Answering a question Mario Draghi hinted that rates will be lower for a long period, but also that this may be the lower bound (sending markets in an immediate tailspin; talk of rational, well thought decisions). The “tax” the ECB imposes on excess reserves, the liquidity that financial institutions keep idle, is now at -0,4%. Not insignificant.

But the real game changer are the subsequent items, that really represent an innovation. Items 4-5 announce an acceleration of the bond buying program, and more importantly its extension to non-financial corporations, which changes its very nature. In fact, the purchase of non-financial corporations’ securities  makes the ECB a direct provider of funding  for the real sector. With these quasi-fiscal operations the ECB has therefore taken a step towards what economists call “helicopter money”, i.e. the direct financing of the economy cutting the middlemen of the financial and banking sector.

Finally, item 6, a new series of long-term loan programs, with the important innovation that financial institutions which lend the money to the real sector will obtain negative rates, i.e. a subsidy. This measure is intended to lift the burden for banks of the negative rates on reserves, at the same time forcing them to grant credit: The banks will be “paid” to borrow, and then will make a profit as long as they place the money in government bonds or lend to the private sector, even at zero interest rates.

To summarize, it is impossible for the ECB to do more to push financial institutions to increase the supply of credit. Unfortunately, however, this does not mean that credit will increase and the economy rebound. There is debate among economists about why quantitative easing has not worked so far. I am among those who think that the anemic eurozone credit market can be explained both by insufficient demand and supply. If credit supply increases, but it is not followed by demand, then today’s atomic bomb will evolve into a water gun. With the added complication that financial institutions that fail to lend, will be forced to pay a fee on excess reserves.

But maybe, this “swim or sink” situation is the most positive aspect of yesterday’s announcement. If the new measures will prove to be ineffective like the ones that preceded them, it will be clear, once and for all, that monetary policy can not get us out of the doldrums, thus depriving governments (and the European institutions) of their alibi. It will be clear that only a large and coordinated fiscal stimulus can revive the European economy. Only time will tell whether the ECB has the atomic bomb or the water gun (I am afraid I know where I would place my bet). In the meantime, the malicious reader could have fun calculating: (a) How many months of QE would be needed to cover the euro 350 billion Juncker Plan, that painfully saw the light after eight years of crisis, and that, predictably, is even more painfully being implemented. (b) How many hours of QE would be needed to cover the 700 million euros that the EU, also very painfully, agreed to give Greece, to deal with the refugee influx.

The Magic Trick of Inflation Targeting

FT Alphaville‘s Matthew Klein goes back to the issue of financial stability and monetary policy. A recent speech of Bank of Canada’s Timothy Lane is the occasion for Klein to reassess monetary policy before the crisis, when policy makers (in particular he refers to Ben Bernanke, but the Fed chair was in good company) dismissed fears of asset price bubbles, thus failing recognize, and to counter, the buildup of the crisis.

What I find interesting in Lane’s speech is the acknowledgement that monetary policy alone is vastly insufficient to attain the many interrelated objectives of today’s policy makers. This in turn calls for reassessing the drift of academic economists (in the 1990s and 2000s) towards  a vision of the world in which all policy objectives could be attained by “Maestros“, almighty technocrats skillfully using monetary levers to reach multiple objectives at once.

With a few colleagues we recently challenged the “conventional wisdom” that inflation targeting central banks can effectively attain financial stability as well, simply by “leaning against the wind”. We highlighted that this violation of Timbergen’s principle (“one instrument per policy objective”) is allowed by an analytical trick, a “divine coincidence”, buried within the hypotheses of the standard model. Asessing policy analysis in a framework in which low and stable inflation goes hand in hand with low unemployment and stable asset prices, will lead to conclude that (what a surprise!!) targeting inflation helps attaining all these objectives at once. Our work (among others) shows that price and financial stability exhibit no stable correlation; similarly, the debate on the “return of the Phillips Curve” (if ever it left) shows that a tradeoff usually exists between inflation and unemployment objectives. Thus, in the end, inflation targeting is mostly effective in, well… targeting inflation.  There is no magics here. The Consensus buried Timbergen way too soon.

The debate on the effective use of instruments to attain sometimes conflicting objectives is particularly interesting in general and, I argue, relevant for the EMU. As the readers of this blog know, I have been obsessed by the excessive focus of (mainly) European economists and policy makers on monetary policy. Especially in the current situation of liquidity trap, the stubborn refusal to fully deploy fiscal policy can only be explained by ideological anti-Keynesianism.

But as Timothy Lane’s speech suggests, the problem extends beyond the current exceptional circumstances. As normal times will (eventually) resume, we should go back to Timbergen and acknowledge that monetary policy alone cannot cure all ills. Fiscal policy and effective regulation need to be used as aggressively as interest rates and monetary instruments to manage business cycle fluctuation. A trivial and yet often forgotten lesson from the old times.