Monday, December 28, 2020

The curve shifts right as the balance sheet grows

Central bank complaints

Error 1 was ceasing to run balanced budgets. Error 2 was appointing Alan Greenspan as Fed Chairman. The second error was the bigger one. (Dishonorable mention goes to the Greenspan commission on Social Security, which made our future problems there worse.) Greenspan did not let recessions do their work, eliminating malinvestment. He cut recessions short, and as malinvestment increased, GDP grew slower than it otherwise would have. The resultant trajectory of interest rates went down creating the problem that as they got lower monetary policy got closer to the zero bound, where changing interest rate became less and less effective.

Each cycle the Fed takes longer to get back to neutral as the sheet grows.    We see that in the velocity slowing. Eventually, like today, velocity goes to one and the Fed is blind as a bat, is targets are always noisier and noisier as velocity slows.

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