Lower interest rates are not typically synonymous with rising inflation, but Bernanke foolishly thinks he can get that magic pair with the power of persuasion in conjunction with Quantitative Easing.
Federal Reserve policy makers may want Americans to expect inflation to accelerate in the future so they spend more of their money now.
Central bankers, seeking ways to boost flagging growth after lowering interest rates almost to zero and buying $1.7 trillion of securities, are weighing strategies for raising inflation expectations as well as expanding the balance sheet by purchasing Treasuries, according to minutes of the Fed’s Sept. 21 meeting released yesterday.
Some Fed officials are concerned that expectations of lower inflation will become self-fulfilling, damping demand by increasing borrowing costs in real terms, the minutes said. By encouraging Americans to believe prices will start rising at a faster pace, the Fed would reduce inflation-adjusted interest rates and stimulate the economy. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in 2003 that Japan could beat deflation by using a “publicly announced, gradually rising price-level target.”
“The Fed is on the verge of actively targeting a higher inflation rate,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York. U.S. stocks advanced, sending benchmark indexes to five-month highs, the dollar fell and gold declined for the first time in three days after the minutes were released.
Trying to raise inflation expectations is untested in the U.S. The policy may backfire if actual inflation drifts higher than the Fed would like, potentially eroding gains won in the early 1980s by former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who raised interest rates as high as 20 percent to subdue prices.
Jim O’Sullivan, global chief economist at MF Global Ltd. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview that the biggest risk is “boosting long-term inflation expectations more than they lower real interest rates.”
The FOMC could adopt a combination of inflation targeting and price-level targeting to get inflation expectations up, said Mark Gertler, a New York University economist and research co-author with Bernanke.
The Fed could restate its commitment to keep inflation rising annually at around 1.7 percent to 2 percent. At the same time, the FOMC could announce some
Can ultra-low rates combined with the hedge funds’ Need for Speed create a food price bubble?
Damn right they can and they probably will. They did it with commodities like wheat in early 2008 even as the consumption-to-stock ratio actually warranted a decrease in prices. This is now happening again as cotton hits a 15 year high, exploding corn prices drive the price of beef up to 25 year highs and the rest of the agricultural commodity complex takes off into the stratosphere.
When you link a financial derivatives market, which is technically infinite, to a market of actual hard goods (finite in supply), a price bubble becomes highly possible, even probable. When you drop rates to nothing, leave them there and then add the sex appeal of a long-term uptrend for global food consumption, you are tying a goat to a post in the T Rex cage, virtually beckoning the beast to come and gorge himself.
Marshall Auerback quotes an email exchange with commodities trader and portfolio manager Mike Masters over at Naked Capitalism:
Speculation in commodities can be exemplified from the following illustration. Money can be “created” by fiat. Because there is already much more capital available in the world than hard commodities, and also because money can effectively be created in a nearly infinite way; speculators, without limits, and with determination, can increase the price of consumable commodities, like food stuffs or energy, much higher than traditional consumers and producers (hedgers) can react. When derivative markets are linked to real commodity markets, this nearly unlimited capital from the financial sector can cause financially driven excessive price volatility. This is because in the derivative markets, a nearly infinite amount of new commodity derivative contracts can be created to satisfy the demand of financial sector speculators armed with fresh capital. However, because there is only a FINITE amount of bona fide actual hedgers (producers and consumers of the actual commodity), any speculative demand that exceeds the real amount of commodities that can be hedged at that time must be sourced from other speculators. However, these speculators will only supply new contracts via price- i.e. a new speculative demand that exceeds hedger supply must be sourced from new speculative supply at ever higher prices.
What happens when an extra half trillion dollars that has been shoe-horned into bond funds decides it’s getting a horrific return, sees the 10% rally in dividend-paying equities and decides to switch asset classes? What happens when this mass asset class transfer happens not in an orderly manner, but in a rush – between say October and the holiday season? Specifically, what happens to the stock market?
Katrina happens, Esse. People hanging in tree branches, pickup trucks lying sideways on the rooftops of buildings, Indonesian tsunami stuff.
A biblical flood-tide of misallocated cash leaves the 1.5%-yielding short-term bond market and comes sloshing back over the transom into the equity market. You may have already gotten a whiff of this hurricane-tide in the first two weeks of October. Bears are mistakenly referring to it as "just another Risk On moment". It is becoming much more than a moment.
The plunge into bond funds over the last two years has been epic; $350 billion in inflows in 2009, 2010 is on pace to see another $300 billion. This ocean of money predominantly came into these funds at the short-end of the yield curve and is currently earning a sclerotic rate of return that is dwarfed by "real" inflation (you know, like food prices, energy and stuff that matters in real life).
According to Morningstar, the pace of the out-of-stocks/into-bonds trade that has been so dominant all year is slowing.
Overall, long-term (bond) mutual funds saw inflows of $14.28 billion during September, lower than August’s $16.81 billion
I would not be surprised to see this trend continue and then reverse itself entirely as investors look at the paltry yields they’ve signed on for and begin reallocating back toward their forsaken stock funds again. And because we’re Americans, despite our much-mythologized "rugged individualism", we tend to stampede like a delirious herd. Because this is the case, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see this move happen en masse.
Just a heads up – the more agile among us may want to start paddling their surfboards in front of the right wave now.
Thank heavens for the Federal Reserve. Were it not for them our deficit would have been 6% higher in the just ended fiscal 2010. The hard working folks at the Fed have contributed a net of $76 billion to the general revenue. They are now earning at a rate equal to 1/3 of all corporate tax revenues. Think of that, just a handful of people are making one third of what our largest corporations contribute. Talk about doing some heavy lifting!
I, and a few thousand others, have been bashing the Fed on a nearly daily basis. But actually we should be dishing out some praise for a job well done. $76b still goes a pretty long way these days. The even better news is that in 2011 the Fed will make us even more money than last. Way to Go Ben B! Here’s how they made the long green:
A graph of the Fed balance sheet as of 9/30. The total balance sheet comes to a modest $2.2 trillion. The net income generated from all these holdings is the $76b estimated by the CBO:
The net income number comes to an interest spread on the portfolio of 3.45%. There are some folks in the portfolio management business who would die for that result. The Fed did it the easy way. They borrowed money at no cost thanks to ZIRP.
We know the Fed is going to be buying in more paper during 2011. Jon Hilsenrath at the WSJ tells us that just about every day. If you don’t believe him just read the Fed minutes. QE-2 is baked in the cake. The leaks and guesses suggest that we are looking at another Trillion of POMO buys over the next year. The thinking is that the Fed will acquire a portfolio with an average maturity of around seven years. The yield on that maturity today is about 1.8%. Based on that a pro-forma look at the Fed BS a year out:
The stock market and commodities are rallying once again over the upcoming QE announcement. Every bit of news, no matter how trivial, supportive of what everyone already knows (that QE is coming), gets market participants get more excited every time.
Will the actual announcement of what we all know result in the biggest sell-the-news event since the Fed’s interest rate cut in January of 2001?
The minutes of the Sept. 21 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee indicated that several officials “consider it appropriate to take action soon,” given persistently high unemployment and uncomfortably low inflation.
Now, with unemployment near 10 percent and with inflation well below the Fed’s unofficial goal of nearly 2 percent, the Fed is considering renewed intervention: creating money to buy long-term Treasury debt. That would put additional downward pressure on long-term rates, making credit even cheaper.
Former Fed officials interviewed on Tuesday appeared to be just as divided as the current ones.
“If you lead the horse to water and it won’t drink, just keep adding water and maybe even spike it,” said Robert D. McTeer, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1991 to 2005 and is a well-known inflation “dove,” particularly attuned to the harm of joblessness. “You definitely don’t want to take the water away.”
H. Robert Heller, a Fed governor from 1986 to 1989, had the opposite view, urging the Fed to show restraint.
“I would do nothing,” he said, expressing concern that the Fed might appear to be “monetizing the debt,” or printing money to make it easier for the government to borrow and spend.
“If they start to monetize the federal debt, they will dig themselves a much deeper hole later on,” he said. “That’s what we learned from the 1970s, when the Fed undertook a very expansionary monetary policy. It took a double recession in the early 1980s to wring inflation out of the economy. We don’t want to repeat that.”
William C. Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, recently raised the possibility that inflation could be allowed to run above the implicit target for some time in the future, to make up for inflation today being lower than desired. That could
Nobel Prize winner http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com explains why the global imbalances will continue to cause problems in the global economy and why the Fed’s policy of dollar devaluation will have unintended consequences. Ultimately, he sees the Fed making matters worse:
Stiglitz’s thoughts on a possible trade war:
“I think there is this concern. The interesting thing is the United States was one of the first countries to say that of the sources of our recovery would be exports. The problem is that the unintended consequences of economic turmoil, bad economic policies, is what we’re seeing.”
“When the U.S. lowers interest rates, when the U.S. floods the world with liquidity, the effect of it is to try to lower the dollar and cause other countries currencies to appreciate.”
On whether Stiglitz would blame the U.S. for causing other countries’ currencies to appreciate:
“I don’t know if I want to blame [the U.S.] It’s the unintended consequence. But it is the consequence of our policies. What is happening now is this curious thing is that Fed policy was supposed to re-ignite the American economy, but it’s not doing that. And so the flood of liquidity is going abroad and causing problems all over the world.”
Stiglitz on his previous comments that Germany should abandon the euro and that the euro should be devalued:
“There’s a lot of currency misalignments. There are large surpluses on the part of Germany, for instance, and those have to be corrected. There are two problems going on. One of them is a problem of a flood of liquidity that’s causing bubbles, causing turmoil in many of the more successful emerging markets. And then there’s the other problem of the global imbalances. They’re related. But they are really two distinct problems.”
“The worry is that the flood of liquidity is going to cause what is sometimes being referred to an emerging market bubble. Money is going in. The worry is that it will cause a real estate bubble, in one developing country or another.”
“The problem is very easy to understand. There’s a flood of money into the financial sector. It’s asking, Where is the best place in the world to go? In a world of globalization, the answer is not in the United States. So U.S. Fed policy is causing an excess inflow into…
In the most surprising move since Rosanne replaced Becky with a different actress and just acted like we should all shut up and watch and not freak out or anything, the FOMC announced today that the Fed Funds target rate would remain at zero.
I know, I’ll give you a moment for the shock to wear off.
Here’s the statement:
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in August indicates that the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months. Household spending is increasing gradually, but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software is rising, though less rapidly than earlier in the year, while investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak. Employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. Housing starts are at a depressed level. Bank lending has continued to contract, but at a reduced rate in recent months. The Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be modest in the near term.
Measures of underlying inflation are currently at levels somewhat below those the Committee judges most consistent, over the longer run, with its mandate to promote maximum employment and price stability. With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to remain subdued for some time before rising to levels the Committee considers consistent with its mandate.
The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period. The Committee also will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings.
I don’t have much else to add here. I’m too busy counting up all those interest rate dollars piling up in my money market account.
In forecasting the consequences of current economic policy, many pundits are downplaying the risks associated with the surging national debt and the rapid expansion of marketable Treasury securities. Their comfort stems from the belief that a staggering debt burden will be manageable as long as interest rates remain extremely low; and, as they believe the Fed is in complete control of setting rates across the yield curve, they see no danger of rates ever rising past the point of comfort. Those who subscribe to this fairy tale forget that, in real life, there are many more hands on the interest rate steering wheel.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2010 deficit will exceed $1.3 trillion and total US debt now stands at $13.4 trillion (92% of GDP). That’s a lot of debt that needs floating. Yet, the 10-year note is yielding 2.8%-- which is 4.5 points below its 40-year average of 7.3%! Experience teaches that even moderately long-term investors should be expecting rising rates. Regardless of the extreme and obvious misalignment of fundamentals and bond prices, the mantra from the dollar shills remains firm: “The US dollar will always be the world’s reserve currency, and the US bond market will always be regarded as the safe-haven depository for global savings.”
With interest rates having been so low for so long, it’s understandable that many people have forgotten that central banks are not ultimately in control of interest rates. It is true that the Fed can be highly influential across the yield curve and can be especially effective in controlling the short end. But, in the end, the free market has the last word on the cost of money.
Although the Fed has certainly created enough new dollars to send prices higher, recessionary forces are, for now, disguising the evidence of runaway inflation. But when inflation finally erupts into the daylight, it will be impossible for borrowing costs to stay low. No one can realistically be expected to loan money below the rate of inflation. To attract buyers, the Treasury will have to offer a real rate of return.
Since our publicly traded debt level is increasing while our personal saving rate is not, we must inevitably…
Most wanted to know how that article changed my view regarding deflation. It didn’t.
Several others went so far as to tell me that Hussman was calling for hyperinflation. They were point blank wrong.
Here is the pertinent section from Hussman’s September 6, 2010 post The Recognition Window.
A note on quantitative easing
One of the things I’m increasingly dismayed to learn is that no matter how much detail, data, and qualification I might include in these commentaries, my conclusions will often be summed up by writers or bloggers in a single sentence that often bears no relation to my point. For instance, my view that quantitative easing will trigger a "jump depreciation" in the dollar has evidently placed me among analysts warning of hyperinflation and Treasury default (a club whose card is nowhere in my wallet).
To clarify once again – I emphatically do not anticipate inflationary pressures until the second half of this decade. As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, the primary driver of inflation – historically and across countries – has been growth in government spending for purposes that do not expand the productive capacity of the economy.
Quantitative easing does not pressure the dollar by fueling inflation. It has a much more subtle effect (but one that can be expected to be amplified if fiscal policy is long-run inflationary as it is at present). Normally, equilibrium in capital flows between countries is achieved through changes in interest rates. As a result, countries with greater capital needs or higher long-run inflation tendencies also have higher interest rates. If interest rates can adjust, exchange rates don’t have to. But notice what quantitative easing does: by sitting on long-term bond yields (and creating a negative real interest rate differential versus other countries), quantitative easing prevents bond prices from acting as an adjustment factor, and forces the burden of adjustment on the exchange rate.
While some observers have noted that the value of the Japanese yen did not deteriorate dramatically over the full course of quantitative easing by the Bank of Japan – from its beginning until it was finally wound down
The bond bubble theorists aren’t going to be happy about this report from RAB Capital. Their analysts believe there is room for a “massive decline” in government bond yields in the coming years as central bankers attempt to fend off deflation. Bloomberg elaborated on the report:
“Interest rates cannot go up meaningfully for a very long time” in either country, the report said. U.S. Treasury yields have yet to fall far enough relative to the Fed’s target rate for loans between banks to reflect this prospect, he wrote. The same holds true for yields on U.K. gilts by comparison with the Bank of England’s base rate, in his view.
The 20-year Treasury yield ended last week at 3.49 percent after declining 1.2 percentage points from this year’s high, set on April 5. Twenty-year gilts yielded 3.91 percent after falling 0.83 point from a Feb. 19 peak. The gaps between the yields and benchmark rates — 3.24 points and 3.41 points, respectively — were still close to 40-year highs, according to the report.
“Further purchases of bonds by central banks can only accelerate this inevitable adjustment” in yields, Joshi wrote, adding that the bull market in fixed-income securities “is far from over.”
The Fed may have to buy more debt to head off deflation, according to Joshi, who described this so-called quantitative easing as “the greatest pawn-broking scheme” ever implemented. Fed policy makers decided last month to keep the central bank’s securities holdings at $2.05 trillion by reinvesting proceeds from maturing mortgage-backed bonds into Treasuries.
It’s an interesting chart and analysis, however, the one thing I would point out is that rates tend to converge (1:1) when the Fed is fighting off an inflation threat. The periods shown on the above chart shows when the Fed raised rates substantially and inverted the yield curve. In other words, the bond market was less concerned with inflation than the Fed was. Perhaps more importantly, however, the economy was smoking hot when rates converged. While I don’t disagree that rates are likely to remain low for some time, the implication that rates could converge appears a bit misleading. 10 year rates in Japan are sub 1% after 20 year of malaise while the overnight rate remains near zero. Are we headed there? I am not that…
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(