BIS proposes sadomonetarism to promote recovery

ECB

Greece may be melting down under relentless tight-money policies of the European Central Bank (ECB), but no worries.

“Rather than promoting sustainable and balanced global growth, the system risks undermining it,” Mr. Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department said. “It has spread exceptionally easy monetary and financial conditions to countries that did not need them, exacerbating vulnerabilities there.”

That must explain the global double-digit inflation we see emerging. So much easy money!

Seriously, the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank says inflation expectations are below 2% for the next 10 years—this is “easy money”? Greece is scant mentioned in the BIS annual report, except to be damned for pushing the ECB to an “easier” stance.  I wish I was making this up.

Democracy And Central Banks

The old saw is that democracy is a lousy way to run a country, until you try any other way. One can certainly rue the economic structural impediments that become permanent fixtures in democracies, what with voting blocs and accommodating office holders.

But the incredible arrogance, ineptitude and theo-monetaristic certitude of central bankers certainly tops any stupidity foisted by voters upon themselves. Voters can and have voted in tax and regulatory platforms that slow down economic growth—but the tight-money lunatics at BIS and the ECB have devised schemes that obtain actual, sustained contractions of economies.

Western central bankers, unmoored from reality or any connection to actual economies—they get their salaries no matter what is the real economic growth rate—have become economic ISIS-men, genuflecting to and implementing an ascetic ideology even as it wreaks destruction.

Remembering Milton Friedman

It is difficult to believe that less than 23 years ago, in Oct. 1992, Milton Friedman bashed the U.S. Federal Reserve in The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages for being too tight—and that, when the Fed had just cut the federal funds rate from 10% to 3%, and CPI-inflation was 3.2%! In 1992 Q4 real growth clocked in north of 4.0%.

Friedman rebuked those who erroneously connected low rates to “easy money”—just the opposite is true, he pointed out. Years of “easy money” do not result in ZLB and deflation. Except perhaps, to demented BIS gnomes.

The slavish zeal for microscopic inflation rates or even deflation at any cost is a new and dangerous affectation among the money-obsessed, especially central bankers. And tight money has not worked! Look at Japan, Europe, or the U.S. in 2008.

Indeed, when did monetary suffocation end up in the nirvana of rapid real growth and but zero inflation?

Never and nowhere.

Bad News

I see no optimistic economic outlook for Europe.

The annual report from the BIS suggests a depth of monetary-policy depravity to rival the Mariana Trench. Europe has an un-democratic central bank that will suffocate parts of Europe for decades, and pompously pettifog the whole time.

The Federal Reserve may be a bit better. One can at least hope the GOP will win in 2016, and like President Nixon, or the Reaganauts, the installed GOP go after the Fed to print more money. Remember, hounded by Reagan’s minions, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker in 1981 declared victory on rising prices—when inflation was at 4%. Today 4% inflation would be presented economic bubonic plague. Funny thing, America prospered in the 1980s with moderate rates of inflation, and then again in the 1990s.

The Bank of Japan and the People’s Bank of China may be the best of the central banking lot today.

Invest accordingly.

About the Author

Marcus Nunes
João Marcus Marinho Nunes is a partner of Phynance Estratégias Quantitativas e Investimentos and a professor of Economics at Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo, Brazil. He also blogs here: http://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/

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