Novac i krediti pt.3 – Švedski slučaj
The bank’s rate policy has been criticized by Sweden’s export industry and even by members of its own executive board. Deputy Governor Lars E.O. Svensson, who advocated for a half point cut today, said last month the bank’s record on inflation targeting was “poor” as price growth lags well behind its 2 percent goal. Headline inflation reached zero in March, after prices fell an annual 0.2 percent in February.
Governor Stefan Ingves, who is also chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, has warned that keeping rates too low too long will fuel private debt growth, already at a record high. The central bank estimates household debt will reach more than 174 percent of disposable incomes this year.“There is a genuine worry rate cuts could raise household debt even higher,” Robert Bergqvist, chief economist at SEB AB in Stockholm who used to work at the Riksbank, said before the decision. “The outlook for the Swedish economy hasn’t really changed much since the last rate meeting so there is no strong reason to cut.”
I have examined this issue and find that a higher policy rate leads to a higher debt ratio, not a lower one (Svensson 2013). This result may be surprising to some. The result is actually quite easy to understand once one carefully considers how debt, GDP and inflation are affected by a higher policy rate.
- A higher policy rate during a year leads to temporarily lower inflation, real GDP, and real housing prices for a few years.
- After 3-5 years, inflation, real GDP, and real housing prices have returned to the level they would have been at without the temporary policy-rate increase.
The temporarily lower inflation leads to a permanently lower price level and permanently lower nominal GDP and nominal housing prices relative to the baseline. Lower nominal housing prices mean that new mortgages will be lower. But a year’s new mortgages are only a small share, say 6-7%, of the total nominal (mortgage) debt. Since the turnover of the mortgage stock is so small, the total nominal debt will fall very slowly. The price level and nominal GDP will fall much faster to their new lower permanent level. This is shown in Figure 2, which shows the deviation from the baseline of the price level, nominal GDP, nominal housing prices, and total nominal debt.
The conclusion is that a higher policy rate increases the household real debt and the debt-to-income ratio.
- The higher policy rate indeed reduces nominal housing prices and new mortgages, but since the new mortgages are such a small share of total mortgages, the total nominal debt falls very slowly.
- At the same time, nominal GDP and nominal disposable income fall much faster, so the debt-to-GDP and the debt-to-income ratios rise.
This is contrary to what the Riksbank has stated in a number of monetary-policy reports and updates. The Riksbank justification of its policy is simply not valid.
Marcus Nunes isto ima post
Macroprudential regulation, što i zašto ipak ne
President Draghi identified two areas of regulation as contributing to “financial fragmentation” in his speech at the Global Investment Conference on 26 July, 2012: liquidity regulation; and national supervisory regimes.Liquidity regulation: “The interbank market is not functioning, because for any bank in the world the current liquidity regulations make – to lend to other banks or borrow from other banks – a money losing proposition. So the first reason [for financial fragmentation] is that regulation has to be recalibrated completely.”National supervisory regimes: “national supervisors, looking at the crisis, have asked their banks, the banks under their supervision, to withdraw their activities within national boundaries. And they ring fenced liquidity positions so liquidity can’t flow, even across the same holding group because the financial sector supervisors are saying “no”. So even though each one of them may be right, collectively they have been wrong. And this situation will have to be overcome of course.”
This is not traditional regulation—stable, predictable rules that financial institutions live by to reduce the chance and severity of financial crises. It is active, discretionary micromanagement of the whole financial system. A firm’s managers may follow all the rules but still be told how to conduct their business, whenever the Fed thinks the firm’s customers are contributing to booms or busts the Fed disapproves of.
Macroprudential policy explicitly mixes the Fed’s macroeconomic and financial stability roles. Interest-rate policy will be used to manipulate a broad array of asset prices, and financial regulation will be used to stimulate or cool the economy.
“The monitoring of systemic risks by macroprudential policy should be comprehensive,” the IMF paper explains. “It should cover all potential sources of such risk no matter where they reside.” Chillingly, policy “should be able to encompass all important providers of credit, liquidity, and maturity transformation regardless of their legal form, as well as individual systemically important institutions and financial market infrastructures.”
What could possibly go wrong?
It’s easy enough to point out that central banks don’t have a great track record of diagnosing what they later considered “bubbles” and “systemic” risks. The Fed didn’t act on the tech bubble of the 1990s or the real-estate bubble of the last decade. European bank regulators didn’t notice that sovereign debts might pose a problem. Also, during the housing boom, regulators pressured banks to lend in depressed areas and to less creditworthy customers. That didn’t pan out so well.
First lesson: Humility. Fine-tuning a poorly understood system goes quickly awry. The science of “bubble” management is, so far, imaginary.
neki izvori, (ne da mi se prepisivat)
BIS (2011) “The future of central banking under post-crisis mandates”
Ninth BIS Annual Conference 24–25 June 2010, BIS Papers No 55
Caruana (2011): “The Role of Central Banks After The Crisis” , BIS
Dijkman, M. (2010): “A Framework for Assesing Systemic Risk”, World Bank
ECB: The Role of Central Banks in Prudential Supervision
FSB, IMF, BIS (2011): Macroprudential policy tools and frameworks – Update to G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors
Haubrich, J. : “Combining Bank Supervision and Monetary Policy” ,FRB (Izvor: http://
www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/1996/1196.htm)
IMF (2011): Global Financial Stability Report – April
Jordan, T.J. (2010): “A Changing Role for Central Banks”, SNB
Jordan, T.J. (2010): “Systemic Risk and Regulation – Managing the Challenges”, SFI
Soramaki, K (2009) : “Network Teory and Systemic Importance” Keynote – IMF Conference on Operationalizing Systemic Risk Measurement
Summer, M (2002): “Bank Regulation and Systemic Risk” ,ONB
Japan i zamka likvidnosti? Nope
Japan’s stocks are the best performers among major developed markets this year, boosting Nomura’s brokerage commissions and fees from managing share sales for companies including Suntory Beverage & Food Ltd. (2587) Net revenue from retail operations doubled last quarter to the highest in 11 years as Japanese anticipating an end to deflation shifted savings into riskier investments.“It makes sense for Japanese corporates to raise funds and spend them on equipment today rather than tomorrow if the economy is moving toward inflation,” said Shiro Yoshioka, an analyst at Japaninvest Group Plc (3827) who rates Nomura a buy. “And it’s reasonable for retail investors to opt for equities rather than keep their money in deposits with fixed interest rates.”
Japanese, who hoarded cash during 15 years of deflation, are beginning to shift to riskier assets. Households boosted their holdings of stocks and other equities by 17 percent in the quarter ended March from a year earlier to 124 trillion yen, the highest since December 2007,Bank of Japan data show. Consumer prices (JNCPIXFF) rose 0.4 percent in June from a year earlier, the most since 2008, government figures showed yesterday.
Interestingly enough this what Nomura Economist Richard Koo Said never would happen… He was clearly wrong
Dodatak
Čitam osvrt Arnolda Klinga na neke starije Sumnerove postove (2009. ili nešto tako) gdje on implicira da Sumner nema pravo kada priča o moći očekivanja na koje bi utjecala monetarna politika jer ljudi zapravo nisu forward looking. Ovo je jako zamršeno pitanje modeliranja agenta u ekonomiji (koji je u stanradnom modelu jaako racionalan). Mislim da ponašanje Japanaca opisano u ovom članku ipak daje naznaku da Kling nije baš u pravu. Zašto ne mislim da nije potpuno u krivu – iz jednostavnog razloga što će ljudi iako su forward looking, koristiti i iskustva iz prošlosti. Koliko su ljudi forward i backward looking možda vidimo danas u Hrvatskoj gdje je većina štednje u stranoj valuti jer su ljudi u prošloj državi bili naviknuti na onstantnu devalvaciju-inflaciju koja je uništavala kupovnu moć. Danas kada HNB već godinama inflaciju drži niskom, a zadnjih godina i preniskom ipak vidimo da je i lagani trend štednje u kunama brzo preokrenut početkom krize tako da današnje ishode djelomično i determiniraju prošla iskustva. No mislim da veliki dio toga leži u komunikaciji središnje banke te da bi ona mogla značajno utjecati na očekivanja. Kao što sam napisao, stvar je komplicirana i zapravo jako zanimljiva i već vidimo naznake promjena u novim generacijama modela.
Osvrt na raspravu na banka.hr
Drugo, činjenica da ljudi moraju platiti porez može determinirati potražnju za domaćom valutom točno u onoj mjeri koliko građanima te valute treba. Ljudi namještaju svoje realno držanje novca kako bi imali određenu likvidnu kupovnu moć. U slučaju da je porez jedini faktor koji nameće njima držanje jedne valute, oni će svoje osobne bilance prilagoditi na odgovarajući način te će potražnja za domaćom valutom reflektirati potražnju determiniranu porezima. Za ostalo će koristiti drugu valutu ili što god već žele koristiti kao sredstvo razmjene/mjeru vrijednosti. Zapravo je potražnja na temelju poreza u Sikicevu modelu samo pomoc koja utjece na potraznju za drzavnim novcem. U tom smislu, ako je primarna emisija na temelju drzavnih obveznica, koja je izvor drzavne potrosnje u modelu (znam da Sikic eksplicitno ne spominje takvu emisiju, no iz svega prilozenog jasno je da ce drzavne vrijednosnice biti na imovinskoj strani bilance), u kontekstu potraznje za novcem kako je opisuje Friedman, potraznja za porezima je zapravo samo jedna od varijabli koje cine funkciju potraznje za novcem – i to ona koja ovisi o prinosima na drzavne papire. Naravno da pričamo o potražnji za novcem po Friedmanu, ne bi imali ovakve probleme.
Mislim da je Hrvatska primjer koji je blizu opisivanja cinjenice da potrosaci korisnosti koje nudi novac imaju izbor. Čak se i čini da je strah od inflacije determinirao potražnju za stranom valutom, zbog čega su Hrvati efektivno izabrali ECB/BuBa-u za svoje središnje banke bez da su Njemačkoj plaćali porez. No, čak i u “metalno” doba, kako bi se platio porez , ljudi su mogli donijeti svoje poluge u privatne kovaonice i pretvoriti ih u kovani novac koji je bio opce-prihvacen i nije bio “dug” a platio bi i porez. Zanimljivo je da je u gornjem slučaju s Hrvatskom upravo strana valuta i postala onda i osnova za kreditnu emisiju dok je HNB nastavila upravljanjem monetarnom bazom u kunama (a opet glavni kanal emisije – kupnja strane valute, a ne državni vrijednosni papiri). Znam da će se sada reći da je Hrvatska ovakva ili onakva, ali hej, zamišljamo institucionalni setting kakvi nam odgovara.
“Osim toga, država porezima regulira kupovnu moć ili, kako kažu ekonomisti, ukupnu potražnju. Kada je ona prevelika, država će je smanjiti povećavanjem poreza, kako bi izbjegla preveliku inflaciju. Kada je ona premala, država će je povećati smanjivanjem poreza, kako bi izbjegla preveliku nezaposlenost.”
Vidimo da je mjera HICPa koja ne pokazuje promjene u porezima (plava linija) niža od službenog HICP-a (narančasta linija)
Britmouse pokazuje da kad pogledamo takvu mjeru, Spanjolska, Grcka i Cipar pate od deflacije.
Pitanje monetarnog offseta i utjecaja administrativnih mjera i poreza na inflaciju je toliko prodiskutirano da mi je nekako bezveze pricati o porezima kao stabilizaciji potraznje. Mislim, ako je drzava jedna komponenta potrosnje onda ce ona povecati svoj prihod/kapacitet potrosnje povecanim porezom, a smanjit privatnu – znaci kolicina novca i kolanje su bitni. U biti koja je veza u Sikicevom modelu, ako je porezni prihod nebitan jer drzava moze printat koliko i sta hoce? Zapravo Sikicev model drzave koja kontrolira printanje novca pa time i nominalnu potraznju je nekakva vjecna verzija Friedmanovog helicopter drop-a.
U realnom svijetu monetarna politika dominira fiskalnom.
1. „Prava količina državne potrošnje“ je političko-ekonomska odluka, koja mora prethoditi financijskim razmatranjima.”
2. “Monetarni sustav je sredstvo za postizanje političko-ekonomskih ciljeva, a ne izvor informacija o tome kakvi bi ti ciljevi trebali biti.”
3. “Jednako je besmisleno smanjivati državnu potrošnju zato što imamo deficit, kao i povećavati je zato što imamo suficit.”
** moram se prisiliti napisati nesto sto mi se dulje vrijeme vrzma po glavi, a vezano je za mogucu kompatibilnost plucking modela i austrijske teorije
UPDATE dodan link na Britmousea i slika HICP-a u EZ
Znamo što je Trichet radio u ljeto 2008.
O kreditima i novcu
BIS reflects views of its former head economist W.White who holds this austrian view and who advocates “leaning against the wind” monetary policy; and his disciple, C.Borio who does a nice job explaining liquidity shortages and resulting negative spirals in his works, usually claiming that modern crisis start with an abrupt evaporation of market liquidity (hence “damaged” balance sheets idea as with Koo), but believes this happens because of changed risk perceptions, missing the main point of tight money. As always question remains, why did Fed (intervention trough QE with direct purchases) have better results than ECB which “missed” market liquidity question and focused on banks’ funding liquidity while NGDP (AD) keeps falling further 5 years since the beginning of the crisis?
Zapravo je cudno da su zagovaratelji ovakvih aktivnosti obicno bliski austrijancima (White cesto citira Misesa). Covjek bi ocekivao da ce bar oni postovati rezultate trzisne alokacije i razumjeti da npr Fed ne vodi trzista, vec da stanje na trzistima JE monetarna politika, tj najbolji agregator informacija o ishodima pojedinih poteza monetarne politike. Glorificirati tržište a onda tvrditi da su tržišta glupa i da ih Fed vuče za nos s “jeftinim” novcem, tj stavljati sebe kao autoritet ispred milijuna investitora nakon pogledanog youtube videa je u najmanju ruku kontradiktorno. Iako EMH i racionalna ocekivanja zvuce, posebno austrijancima, ali i laicima, previše “tehnicki” tj kao apstraktan feature velikog broja ekonomskih modela, ove dvije “tehnikalije” su daleko vise od matematicke formulacije. Prepoznavanje ishoda koji uvjetuje takvo “ponasanje” ekonomskog sustava omogucava bolji policy making u stvarnosti.
Zapravo ako pričamo o brzini rasta kredita, sljedeći grafikon pokazuje da kretanje (raspon od najbržeg rasta u boomu do pada u bustu) ne pokazuje/predviđa baš dubinu recesije što malo baca sjenu na teorije neodrživog booma i busta koji slijedi.
Stav BIS-a je međutim drugačiji. M. Drehman pokušava pokazati da kretanje kredita (konstruira indikator prema prethodnom radu) može biti indikator kriza. Zanimljivo je što koristi novu seriju BIS-a koja obuhvaća i “kreditiranje” izvan banaka. Pokazuje da kada gap dosegne oko 10%, obično slijedi recesija (graf ispod). No prema gornjem grafu vidimo da to nije uvijek tako. Npr u recesiji ranih 80-ih krediti čak ubrzano rastu. Slične rezultate daje i Drehmanov “signal” sustav tj kontrola istoga, tj pokazatelj ne predviđa recesiju uvijek (gledaju rok 3 godine nakon što se signal “upali”). Sam Drehman to pokazuje u grafu u nastavku na razlici Njemačke i UK-a kao i na tablicama u radu.
Krediti nisu dobra varijabla za ciljanje po pitanju monetarne politike – to je više manje jasno svima, no postavlja se pitanje koliko su i dobar indikator, tj ulazna informacija za provođenje monetarne politike. Još mi nitko nije dokazao da jesu. Ipak mislim da bi monetarna politika trebala pratiti NGDP gap i inflaciju Slažem se sa Svenssonom da je monetarna politika (pogotovo kamatna stopa) tup alat za djelovanje na financijsku stabilnost (i pitanje zaduženosti) te bi se time trebali baviti regulatori. Volio bih da se izbaci financije i kredite iz monetarne ekonomije politike, ona se ipak s razlogom zove monetarna, a ne bankovna ili financijska.One koji misle da izbacujem i transmisijski mehanizam neka pogledaju FAQ u najmanju ruku.
UPDATE: I Y.Wang sa Sythenomicsa ima zasnimljiv osvrt na ulogu capital ratia i odnosa s monetarnom politikom
In my view, to the extent that interest rates get in all the cracks, they do so by reducing the financial edifice into rubble. But if I am wrong and if monetary policy is indeed precise enough to stamp out bubbles without collateral damage, then aren’t capital requirements even more surgical? Indeed, while monetary policy can affect the entire economy’s consumption and investment behavior, the Mogdiliani-Miller theorem suggests that changes in the capital structure would barely have an effect on those macroeconomic aggregates. The greatest irony is that the financial types who support tighter monetary policy to control financial risks are often the same ones who are against stricter capital requirements. But these views are inconsistent. Capital requirements are tailored for financial regulation, and to the extent one supports the blunt use of monetary policy, one should support the strengthening of capital requirements even more.
UPDATE 2: Evan Soltas objašnjava par detalja oko priče o Fedu i financijskoj (ne)stabilnosti u zadnjem bloomberg članku
A real threat to financial stability requires widespread overleveraged borrowers, exposed lenders or loose lending standards. None of those are concerns right now. If they were, raising interest rates wouldn’t be the best way to fix them.
Držanje keša unatoč gubicima i monetarna politika
UPDATE: Potvrda stiže na primjeru Njemačke, bacite oko na ovaj članak ako razumijete njemački
“State of macro” par godina kasnije
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.
Eventually, however, the anti-Keynesian counterrevolution went far beyond Friedman’s position, which came to seem relatively moderate compared with what his successors were saying.
This co-op, whose problems were recounted in a 1977 article in The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, was an association of about 150 young couples who agreed to help one another by baby-sitting for one another’s children when parents wanted a night out. To ensure that every couple did its fair share of baby-sitting, the co-op introduced a form of scrip: coupons made out of heavy pieces of paper, each entitling the bearer to one half-hour of sitting time. Initially, members received 20 coupons on joining and were required to return the same amount on departing the group.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the co-op’s members, on average, wanted to hold a reserve of more than 20 coupons, perhaps, in case they should want to go out several times in a row. As a result, relatively few people wanted to spend their scrip and go out, while many wanted to baby-sit so they could add to their hoard. But since baby-sitting opportunities arise only when someone goes out for the night, this meant that baby-sitting jobs were hard to find, which made members of the co-op even more reluctant to go out, making baby-sitting jobs even scarcer. . . .
In short, the co-op fell into a recession.
Finally, I think we’re looking for conditional predictions — what happens given events that are themselves not part of the model — not absolute predictions. It was, for example, very hard in the fall of 2011 to know how the ECB would respond to the escalating financial crisis in Europe; failing to predict that Mario Draghi would find a way to funnel vast sums to debtor nations through discounting would have lost you a lot of money, but wasn’t really a failure of the economic model.
**Lars Christensen ima noviji post o Krugmanovim politički uvjetovanim zaključcima
***i Scott Sumner koji najavljuje klanje:
The old-style monetarists and the austerians have been dead in the water for several years. I go after the only group still standing in the way of global market monetarist dominance—the Keynesians.
****i Marcus Nunes
Fed i niske kamatne stope
This understanding, however, runs up against three inconvenient facts. First, the Fed has not been dominating the Treasury market. At the end of 2012, the Fed held only 15 percent of all marketable Treasury securities, roughly the same share it has held over the past decade. This means that the largest-ever run-up of public debt was financed mostly by individual investors, their financial intermediaries, and foreigners. Second, the Fed’s forward guidance on interest rates is itself shaped by the Fed’s forecast of the economy. The Fed, then, is not independently shaping the future path of interest rates, but is responding to what it thinks will happen to the economy in the future. Finally, long-term interest rates on safe government debt across the world have fallen: Very similar sustained declines in government-bond yields have occurred over the past four years in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, as the graph below shows. It is far easier to explain these declines as a function of a weak global economy than to attribute them to an overactive, all-powerful Fed.
Empirical studies, however, suggest that the effect of these purchases is nowhere near powerful enough to explain the persistent decline of long-term interest rates. The ten-year Treasury, for example, has gone from about 5.25 percent in 2007 to just over 2 percent today. If these purchases were truly adding a large monetary stimulus, we would expect to see long-term interest rates rise, not fall, from the resulting higher expected inflation and, to the extent the stimulus works, an improved economic outlook.




















