Fed, Raise the Inflation Target

Friday's report of the personal consumption expenditure price index, which the Fed prefers, shows that year-to-year price index grew by 0.9% in February. This means that the inflation rate has been below the Fed's target of 2 percent inflation rate for 21 consecutive months.

While this low inflation rate has been allowing the Fed to pursue its quantitative easing program and low interest rate policy , the Fed policy makers also know that higher inflation rate around their target of 2 percent would make their job easier, simply lowering the real interest rate. But it seems like the Fed has been short of achieving its "target" for 21 months. A question we should ask from ourselves is that: is the Fed unable to hit its target? or is the Fed actually targeting lower than their so-called "target". In my Monday's post, I made a case for the second question getting an answer "yes!". If the Fed is indeed targeting inflation rate lower than its 2 percent "target", the points following are useless since the Fed policymakers want low inflation anyways.

Now if we are in the world where the Fed has actually been unable to hit its inflation "target" given that it wants to hit it so badly, my policy prescription for the Fed is to increase its inflation target from 2 percent to 3 percent or somewhere around that for the duration of the recovery. Note that, I am not suggesting to raise inflation target to 4 percent or other for the long-run as Laurence Ball and Olivier Blanchard suggested, but to raise it until the economy recovers.

The Fed could target this higher inflation rate by declaring in its meeting statements that the Fed will be comfortable with inflation rate considerably higher than 2 percent when deciding when to raise the fed funds rate. Let's look at the Fed's latest statement:

"To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress--both realized and expected--toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments. 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."

The Fed, in my policy prescription, should change "run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal" to "run below 3 percent" (or some rate around that). That change should have positive effect on inflation expectation. If the Fed believes the inflation expectation hasn't been responsive to its inflation rate target, that is great for the Fed since it could further state higher inflation target such as 4 percent to raise the expectation more while not actually raising the inflation higher.

But again, raising inflation target makes sense to me if the Fed does want to raise the inflation expectation. But considering its tapering QE even though their desired 2 percent inflation isn't seen to be reached for some time, I am puzzled by what inflation rate the Fed wants. Or are the Fed policymakers actually buying Stephen Williamson's paper?

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).

The Fed Ties Interest Rate Raise (*remotely) to the Tapering Instead of Unemployment Rate

Following today's Fed's meeting, the meeting statement has been scrutinized by every word to word. Of course, the biggest headline news was the Fed's move to drop the unemployment rate of 6.5% as a threshold rate for raising interest rate from its meeting statement. Not only are Fed watchers reading the statement literally word to word, but also some of the policymakers at the Fed worried that some paragraphs of the statement might stir the market to a wrong way. To be more precise, Minnesota Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota was the only voting member who voted against the Fed's decision to remove the key number of 6.5% from the statement. He says that the a paragraph in the statement may signal the Fed's weakness when it comes to reaching the long-term inflation rate of 2%. The paragraph he was referring to is following:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress--both realized and expected--toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments. 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 [emphasis added].

It seems like the last sentence could have caused Mr. Kocherlakota to vote against the action because of it's  possible inference of a lasting low inflationary period. As low inflation has continued since 2012, inflation expectation, also, hasn't been reaching the goal of 2%. The expected inflation in 10 years is still lower than 2%. The following graph provided by the Cleveland Fed shows the market's expectation of inflation in certain time horizons :

Considering the low expected inflation in next few years, Mr. Kocherlakota's worry of weakening the credibility of the Fed's commitment to the 2% inflation is indeed valid. The Fed's main goal thorough its forward guidance is to lower the expected interest rate for certain duration, but it's another goal from which the FED is quite away from reaching it is to raise the inflation expectation, which in turn lowers the real interest  rate and boost investment.

Now let me interpret the Fed's statement in my way. The WSJ posts an interesting post on how the latest Fed's statement changed from last month's. The following passage shows the change made in the statement from last month:

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
well past the time that the unemployment rate declines below 6-1/2 percentfor 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
. When the Committee decides to begin to remove policy accommodation, it will take a balanced approach consistent with its longer-run goals of maximum employment and inflation of 2 percent, and provided that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored.

As we see from the change made in the statement, the Fed untied the possible date of raising interest rate from the unemployment rate and related it more to the Fed's tapering process and its ending. Now, the Fed watchers should be giving more weights to the tapering process than before since it is now more related to the raise in interest rate.

This change could be progress forward for the Fed because as the tapering continues for at least throughout 2014, the market will have stronger signal of the Fed's raising interest rate in near future. Even though then higher expected interest rate might seem worse for the economy, raised expected interest rate could actually induce more investment today, which is opposite to what one might assume. Because, the market will be surely knowing the coming of the raise in the interest rate in few months, firms should take advantage of the low interest rate today by borrowing and investing rather than postponing the investment project. This idea of surely known interest rate increase could create more investment is explained in my one of the previous posts.

*UPDATE: After posting this, I watched Mrs. Yellen's press conference following the FOMC meeting. When one of journalists asked exactly how much time the Fed will take to raise the interest rate after it completely stops its large-scale asset purchase aka QA, she answers (from the press conference transcript):

 So, the language that we use in this statement is considerable, period. So, I -- I, you know, this is the kind of term it's hard to define, but, you know, it probably means something on the order of around six months or that type of thing. But, you know, it depends -- what the statement is saying is it depends what conditions are like.

I don't want to make a big deal out of that "around six months" as some are doing. But it gives "considerable" idea of how long is that "considerable" 

Factors That Affect Effectiveness of Forward Guidance

The "forwards guidance" has been he FED's one of the novel tools to boost the economy after the recession at the zero lower bound. Forward guidance is the FED's public statement on how it will change or unchange the federal funds rate. We can see the latest forward guidance statement from the FED's January statement:

Committee today reaffirmed its view that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends and the economic recovery strengthens. The Committee also reaffirmed its expectation that the current exceptionally low target range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent will be appropriate at least as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6-1/2 percent, inflation between one and two years ahead is projected to be no more than a half percentage point above the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal, and longer-term inflation expectations continue to be well anchored.

Essentially, what the FED tries to achieve by such statements is to guide the market expectation of the interest rate. The FED has been using forward guidance to lower the market expectation of interest rate during the period it stated.

I should explain two types of forward guidance as introduced by Campbell et al. (2012). Odyssean type of forward guidance is when the FED commits to low interest rate policy even after the economic condition raises the natural interest rate above zero, and Delphic forward guidance is when the FED publicly forecasts its monetary policy's shape regarding the future shocks in the economy. We can see that the FED has been pursuing the Odyssean forward guidance since September 2012 because it publicly stated then that the the low interest rate policy would stay even after the economy strengthens:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee expects that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy will remain appropriate for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens. In particular, the Committee also decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate are likely to be warranted at least through mid-2015.

Having talked the basics of the forward guidance, we should study further what factors play a role in effective forward guidance program. First, the FED's credibility decides whether the forward guidance will achieve its goal of lowering the market expectation of interest rate.If the market doesn't believe in the FED's plan for the future interest rate, the forward guidance cannot stimulate the economy as the FED hopes. After all, what the forward guidance's mechanism bases on is the FED's policymakers' hope that the market will take the FED's statement on the future of the monetary policy as granted. Reports are coming in saying that the FED has lost its credibility since the FED is no way raising the federal funds rate even though the unemployment rate is very likely to reach 6.5% very soon. I can understand why this might distort the FED's credibility. If we look at the FED's October meeting's press statement, following statement follows the same statement in the January statement above. October's statement reads:

 ...In determining how long to maintain a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy, the Committee will also consider other information, including additional measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments.

But in December, the FED added one more statement following the above statement. The added statement follows:

...The Committee now anticipates, based on its assessment of these factors, that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the current target range for the federal funds rate well past the time that the unemployment rate declines below 6-1/2 percent, especially if projected inflation continues to run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run goal.

From this change in the forward guidance, one can say that the FED didn't follow what it forward guided previously. But to me, I don't see any credibility problem for the FED. Didn't the FED literally say in the above statement that it will more likely to extend the low interest rate even past the time unemployment rate drops below 6.5%? Didn't the FED have to modify its stand on its future interest rate policy according to the economics condition? Therefore, seeing the FED as not committing to its forward guided policy is like saying the FED has one chance to state what the interest rate will be in the next few years, and if it doesn't follow that, we cannot believe in the FED.

Rather, I think the FED faces credibility problem when it suddenly increases the interest rate when the unemployment rate lowers to 6.5% because current forward guidance tells us that the FED will very likely be pursuing near zero interest rate even after the unemployment rate hits the threshold.

Second factor that determines the effectiveness of the forward guidance is the public's forecast of the recovery. If the public believes that the economy will soon recover, then the public naturally expects a higher interest rate in the future. In that case, when the FED successfully forward guides its low interest rate policy, the consumption and investment will increase because the FED has just lowered the public's interest rate expectation. Hence, the firms and households are more likely to consume and invest more. On the other hand, if the public expects the economy to be still recovering from the recession in the future, it expects the interest rate to be lower as it is now. In that case, even the FED forward guides the economy by promising the persistence of low interest rate, the public's decision on consumption and investment isn't affected that much since its interest rate expectation isn't changed.

The working paper by Gavin et al.(December 2013) concludes following:

The stronger the expected recovery, the more households believe the future nominal interest rate will rise and the larger the stimulative effect of forward guidance on current consumption. We find that news of a −50 basis point shock to the nominal interest rate next period leads to an increase in current consumption of about 0.20 percent.

In summing up the discussion, I believe the FED's current forward guidance policy's stimulative effect is still ambiguous considering the FED's mixed signals on the economic outlook through its bond buying program tapering, which gives the market positive sign, and its reluctance to increase the interest rate even though the unemployment rate is almost at the threshold, which might worry the market. Interesting news to follow in next few months will be the FED's next change in its forward guidance program.

PS. Should the FED and Mrs. Yellen not-forward guide the public as the Chicago Bulls and Derrick Rose do?

Thought on Forward Guidance: Proposal for the Fed

The FED has been pursuing its so called "forward guidance" program hoping it could stimulate economy by convincing the persistence of low interest rate policy. It stated that it sees the current low interest rate appropriate as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5% and the expected inflation in one to two years is below 2.5%. According to the statement, it will consider the broader labor indicators and inflation expectations to decide how long it will continue the near zero interest rate policy once the unemployment rate drops to 6.5%. Therefore, it is very up in the air when the FED is increasing the federal funds rate.

We know that the latest report shows the unemployment rate is 6.6%.  This rate indicates that even though the monthly net number of jobs added hasn't been up to the projections for last two months, the FED will soon be deciding its future policy and writing up its well-into-future forward guidance once the unemployment rate hits 6.5%.

After all, the FED's low interest rate policy has been directed toward increasing investment. But there could be different type of "forward guidance" that could potentially create more investment as the FED wishes. My proposal to the FED is that:

a) It should forward guide the market by putting hard deadline on when it is increasing the federal funds rate and therefore the market interest rates. How this clear deadline for increase in federal funds rate works is following: If the FED successfully (!) convince the market that it will indeed push up the federal funds rate, the investors will have clear expectation of when the overall market interest rates are rising. Therefore, realizing the higher investment cost in the specific future, firms will have incentive to borrow and invest today before the FED raises the interest rate. Hence, the investment could increase as the FED has been wishing. This argument is analogical to the people's consumption when there is very high inflation expectation. If the expected inflation is very high, people would try to buy goods as soon as possible. But the one difference between these two analogies is we don't know what interest rate is very high to be analogy to the high inflation rate.

One might say that then if there is higher demand for loanable funds because of this policy, the interest rate will rise in the loanable funds market. But we have to remember, the FED has control over overall interest rate in the economy (or I believe so), it will pursue its current near zero interest rate policy until the date it forward guided comes.

b) Again, to succeed in increasing investment, the FED must be able convince the market that it is indeed increasing the federal funds rate at that certain date, To convince the market, the FED should set the date to be in near future and interest rate minimally higher in first few periods and commit to what it said.

According to latest report, the expectation of the FED's federal funds rate in June 2015 has lowered in a recent month. This might be showing that the FED's forward guidance indeed successfully convinced the market that the FED will be pursuing near zero interest rate policy. If current forward guidance is indeed somewhat successful, I believe the proposed forward guidance could be also successful.

Remember, at the time when the FED sets the specific date to increase the interest rate, the interest rate will be still zero percent, therefore there will be no negative shock to the total investment.

The problem to implement this forward guidance is that the FED cannot surely know how bad or good the economy will be performing at the time of its forward guided date. The FED could announce its first date to increase the interest rate once the unemployment rate reaches 6.5%. If the FED chooses 3 months to increase the federal funds rate after the unemployment reaches 6.5%, it can study how the investment behaved during this 3 months when the market believes the increase in the interest rate is coming. If the sign turns out to be good, the FED can further implement this "hard deadline for minimal increase in federal funds rate" forward guidance.