Monday, March 24, 2014

Sorry Krugman, It Is Not Happening (or seems to be)

In his blog post on last Friday, Paul Krugman argues that the Fed should be targeting 4 percent inflation rate, which is, according to him, the inflation rate that is needed when the economy is at the zero lower bound, instead of current inflation target of 2 percent. He argues that by targeting inflation rate which is lower than a rate needed by the economy to get boost, the Fed does nothing to raise the inflation rate, which is currently below 2 percent, because even if the market believes in the Fed's target of 2 percent inflation rate at the beginning, its inflation expectation will decrease as time goes and actual inflation will be back at the low level. But, according to him, if the Fed explicitly targets 4 percent inflation rate, assuming 4 percent inflation is the right amount to boost the economy, this will give boost to the economy and hence drives the inflation up. However, the Fed is not even considering to target above 2 percent inflation rate as opposed to Krugman's inflation target of somewhere around 4 percent. We can see an evidence for the Fed being dovish.
In the Fed's recent statement, it dropped infamous 6.5 percent unemployment threshold for raising short-term interest rate. Known as the Evans rule, the Fed's former quantitative forward guidance statement was giving timeline for raising interest rate closely tied to the unemployment rate. As we know, once the unemployment rate unexpectedly (for the Fed) dropped to 6.6 percent in last month, it had to change its forward guidance program because if it had continued mentioning 6.5 percent threshold, and once the unemployment rate had reached the threshold, the Fed could have then made market expectation of increasing short-term interest rate when the economy needed the opposite. To avoid this unexpected mistake, they dropped the quantitative threshold for raising the interest rate.
The Fed undoubtedly has learned its lesson: Never underestimate the economy or should I say power of some number like 6.5? Having experienced the problem of changing the forward guidance appropriately, the Fed must have now issued their statement with great care of not choosing any random numerical threshold. But guess what? The Fed's statement still includes the inflation target of 2 percent. The Fed's latest statement reads:
The Committee continues to anticipate, based on its assessment of these factors, that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal, and provided that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored.
Let's now imagine that somehow the inflation rate reaches around 1.9 percent in one of the coming months and assume the economy will not have gotten out of the recession slack (which is very likely), the Fed now faces the same problem it faced two months ago when the unemployment rate almost hit 6.5 percent threshold, but, in this case, only the inflation rate almost hits the target of 2 percent. Should then the Fed increase the federal funds rate according to its statement inferred if the inflation rate reaches 2 percent target? or should the Fed change its forward guidance again and drop the inflation rate target as it did unemployment rate threshold? Interestingly, the Fed will do neither of them because:
First, they learned its lesson of changing the guidance prematurely. Second, and more importantly, they KNOW that they will never face the inflation rate close to 2 percent during the recovery; hence, they won't have to do either of above.
In other words, from the Fed's current statement and its current mistake, we can almost be sure that it will never target the inflation rate above 2 percent as long as the economy is still recovering. Two percent inflation target is then an upper bound for the inflation rate the Fed targets.
Some people has argued even that the upper limit of 2 percent for the inflation target is indeed what the Fed has been pursuing for these years.
Therefore, it seems unlikely that Krugman will see whether 4 percent inflation target could get the economy back to work. Sorry Krugman, it is not happening (or seems to be).




1 comment:

  1. I think that issue is that the fed says its doing forward guidance but it isn't. It says it is trying to increase asset prices but the moment they rise it will take away the ammo. This is why I think they sit on excess reserves and don't lend. There is free food out there but no one want to eat it unless the others do. But the fed will take away the platter once they start eating. If they set clear that at least the 2% will be forever permanent and possibly on the upper side of 2% then may be there will be permanent success in the asset purchases.

    ReplyDelete