Monday, March 9, 2015

Who tightened federal reserve rates in 1995?

I always hear this story, the Fed went through its 'tightening' cycle, Steve Williamson is the latest:

So, you can see that, by early 1995, the Fed had just finished a substantial tightening cycle - the fed funds rate had increased from about 3% at the beginning of 1994 to about 6% at the beginning of 1995.
Let's look at the graph, shall we?  About 90% of the time the Fed target rate, red line, is to the right and below the effective funds rate, blue line.  The effective funds rate is the market rate. I see one or two points where the market paused.
How does this reverse time thing work, you know, where the market acts before the Federal reserve mandates?  They call it expectations. But these are overnight loans and the target is set quarterly or monthly.  So, the lenders and borrowers for an overnight loan agree to higher rates because next quarter the Fed is going to raise the minimum rate.  Note that when the Fed began raising the target it did so monthly, and always during that period it was always playing catch up.  ANd,. note the Grean line, one year treasuries; they had peaked and were on the way down way before the Fed hit its maximum.

And of course, the Fed was not doing the lending this entire period, neither lending to government nor to the market. Its tightening was all reverse time magic. Expectations as used by the economist is horse manure.

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