The combination of tax repatriation, tax cuts, and large-scale deficit spending (fiscal expansion) late in the economic cycle (recessions typically happen every 8 years or so, and the current expansion has been going on for ~10 yrs now) while the Federal reserve is raising interest rates (monetary 'contraction') is more or less unprecedented (we've never seen it happen in modern times in the US or any other large developed economy).<p>The risk is that fiscal policy is pouring more fuel on the fire at the precise time when the economy typically starts slowing, further inflating asset bubbles and making the Fed's job (to avoid inflation and keep employment high) much potentially harder and making it more likely a misstep will happen.<p>Popping bubbles or slowing their formation is inherently a tricky proposition (just look at the run-up in stocks from early 2017 until now); move too aggressively and you risk sparking a liquidity crisis and plunging your economy directly into recession; move too slowly and you end up with an even larger bubble later on to deal with.<p>This is tricky in normal times, but doing so while the other wing of government is actively stimulating the economy makes it <i>much</i> harder to gauge the impact of monetary policy and withdraw Fed support in a prudent and measured way.
<i>“The economy is already at full employment.”</i><p>I'm not sure that's <i>actually</i> true. Yes, the govt. reported "official" unemployment number is 3.8% or whatever. BUT... that comes with a couple of big, big caveats:<p>1. Those numbers by definition don't include job-seekers who have left the market and quit being job-seekers. IOW, people who became so despondent that they gave up. But, there's nothing specific that stops these people (or some portion of them) from re-entering the job market to fill demand.<p>2. These numbers don't reflect <i>underemployment</i> where someone has "a job" but the job doesn't require the skills the individual actually possesses and pays significantly less than they would expect to earn in a "normal" position.<p>3. Wage growth is still very low, which suggests that the economy is not being hamstrung (yet) by lack of available workers. At some point, if demand exceeds supply by enough, you're inevitably going to see wage growth. A significant jump in wages would, IMO, be the best sign that there's an actual gap between labor supply and labor demand.<p>Note that I'm not saying that Bernanke's theory is wrong, but this one little point jumped out to be as something that's at least somewhat questionable.
2020: policies put in place under this administration will come home to roost during the next administration, which will get the blame.<p>This lag between economic policy and outcomes is a big reason the US has such a disingenuous public debate. Getting what you can in the short term, while being deceptive about long term effects, has become a good strategy. [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/opinion/republicans-tax-cuts-rich.html" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/opinion/republicans-ta...</a>
“The essence of this strategy is to take tax policy out of the hands of experts and entrust it to activists. These campaigns do not usually have much credibility with card-carrying economists. ”
Ben Bernanke’s point in his recent memoir is that central banks can only do so much.<p>At the end of the day, monetary policy is not social change, moral evolution, or political coalition building. These things happen outside the Central Banking system and are just as important for a functioning economy.<p>I know this sounds controversial, but at this point quite frankly the deficit does not matter. There is so much debt in the world, we are likely heading towards a global debt write-off.<p>It doesn’t help that China has essentially been spewing entirely fictitious accounting numbers for the last 20 years. It’s not even about padding an extra 10-15% anymore. There are journal articles out there claiming that Alibaba, a company as big as Oracle, is making up <i>whole cloth</i> 95% of it’s accounting statements. Ridiculous...
I have a question about the federal funds rate that I haven't ever had a good explanation for. It is: To what extent is the fed funds rate set to match market demand, and to what extent is it controlled completely independently of market demands? If anyone has a good answer, I would appreciate it a lot.<p>To flesh out my question a little further, let's say that the fed decides one day to change the fed funds rate from 1.75% to 2%. They put the bonds up for auction and find out that they were only able to auction off the allotment of bonds at an effective rate of 1.8%. Is this typical? Or is it usually the case that the bond buyers will quickly hoover up whatever rate they are given?<p>Maybe a more formal way to put it- is the elasticity of demand for these bonds low enough for the fed to have complete control over the fed funds rate such that they can set any interest rate they desire?
My inner skeptic asks: What is Bernanke's record on predictions that he has made in the past?<p>He said that subprime was "contained" in 2008, IIRC.<p>The Mises Institute (an avowed hater of the Fed) has this, for example: <a href="https://mises.org/library/ben-bernanke-was-incredibly-uncannily-wrong" rel="nofollow">https://mises.org/library/ben-bernanke-was-incredibly-uncann...</a>
It’s quite an old trick in the book for any administration, whichever color it has, to try to push the can down the road until it gets re-elected. After that, it’s buyer beware.<p>Something to consider is that in times like these money are flowing in the wrong direction, instead of going from developed countries (US, EU, JP) to developing countries with better return rates (Emerging markets) it is the other way around, going into developed countries estates, bonds and stocks even with low returns which look already overvalued. That would normally read that there is way more liquidity than actual growth and the valuations are not accurate.
The Fed has been used as a stop gap to fix incompetent/malicious policies driven by political actors. The reality is that central banks can only do so much, and Congress and others are leading the nation off a cliff to pursue short term political goals.<p>Beating the other team in the short term is seen as more important than the long term health of the nation. You can see this play out in the tax cut, deficit spending and many other examples.<p>> Who cares if the world explodes in 6 years? I need to be reelected in 2.
This is just another reminder to always have emergency funds in your bank account, not tied into the markets. Allows you to weather the storm, until things correct themselves.
When I read articles like this I wish I had a better grounding in economics, I guess specifically macroeconomics? Is there a well-known, digestible textbook?
For those interested in the full context in which the comment was made, a video of the event is available here:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnXLEaAJqno" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnXLEaAJqno</a><p>I was in attendance and it is worth noting that Bernanke did not take any questions from the audience (apparently unexpected by some of the staffers) and that he did not remain for any of the (illuminating in my opinion) panel discussion that followed.<p>Suggest that people pay attention to the remarks of Mr. Warsh, who in my opinion actually should have gotten the nod to be Fed Chair -- though I understand completely why that would have been untenable for many.<p>Last thing I'll add: some of what is said openly during Congressional testimonies, these fora, and the like is knowingly contradicted in private conversations.
It’s a fascinating time in the markets. You’ve got all these different forces pulling in different directions. Quantitative tightening, fear of trade war, tax cuts, continuing buybacks, lots of accumulated debt, the rise of high-frequency traders and their tendency to remove liquidity at the hint of any change in fundamentals, strong earnings, low employment, high asset prices. It doesn’t surprise me that ^SPX is swinging between 2600 and 2800 with all of these conflicting signals.
The language here is interesting. "Wile E Coyote moment" in the abstract looks and feels like a bubble, but he doesn't use the term bubble.<p>So a sharp correction? But isn't that what a bubble does? Why not just say we're in bubble fueled by artificial growth caused by numerous government subsidies.
This is one area where I think the US system shows the power of separation of concerns.<p>Trump would love lower interest rates but the Fed, tends to run itself without much political influence. These people are all "adults" and very accomplished and knowledgeable.<p>They set the FED rate and everyone else falls along. They have been actively raising rates, with more rate hikes expected in this year to cool inflation, and the economy by extension.<p>At the very least the US will have some wiggle room to lower rates when the economy slows down again.