The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
A new and more realistic monetary paradigm would central banks more room to incorporate risks and costs
By: Michael Heise
How long will major central banks blindly rely on rigid rules to control inflation and stimulate growth? Given the clear benefits of nimble monetary policy, central bankers need to open their eyes to the possibilities that flexibility affords.
The rule of thumb for monetary policymakers has long been that if inflation is below official target ranges, short-term interest rates should be set at a level that spurs spending and investment. This approach has meant that once interest rates reach or approach zero, central banks have little choice but to activate large asset-purchase programs that are supposed to stimulate demand. When circumstances call for it, policymakers default to the predetermined scripts of neo-Keynesian economic models.
But in too many cases, those scripts have led us astray, because they assume that monetary policy has a measurable and foreseeable impact on demand and inflation. There is plenty of reason to question this assumption.
For starters, households have not responded to ultra-low interest rates by saving less and spending more. If savings no longer yield a return, people can’t afford big-ticket items or pay for retirement down the road. Likewise, companies today are faced with so much uncertainty and so many risks that ever-lower costs of capital have not enticed them to invest more.
It’s easy to see why, despite the data, predetermined formulas are attractive to monetary policymakers. The prevailing wisdom holds that in order to return the inflation rate to a preferred level, any slack in the economy must be eliminated. This requires pushing interest rates as low as possible, and when these policies have run their course (such as when rates dip toward the negative), unconventional instruments like “quantitative easing” must be deployed to revive growth and inflation. The paradigm has become so universally accepted – and the model simulations underpinning central banks’ decisions have become so complex – that few are willing to question it. For individual central banks or economists, to do so would be sacrilege.
Central banks do not completely deny the economic costs that these policies imply: exuberance in financial markets, financing gaps in funded pension systems, and deeper wealth inequality, to name just a few. But these costs are deemed an acceptable price to pay to reach the clearly defined inflation level.
Yet the policies pursued in recent years have given no room for the intangibles – unstable political environments, geopolitical tremors, or rising risks on financial markets – that can send models off course. As the 2008 financial crisis illustrated, the normal distribution of risk was useless for predictions.
Keynes never tired of arguing that monetary policy becomes ineffective if uncertainty is sufficient to destabilise the expectations of consumers and investors. Unfortunately, many central banks have forgotten this. The Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank all hone to rather rigid policy rules. If expansionary policies fail to have the desired effect of lifting inflation to the predefined level of around 2%, they do not question their models; they simply increase the policy dosage – which is just what markets expect.
