Financial markets expect the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to raise its federal funds target rate on Wednesday for the fourth time this year, by 25 basis points (i.e. between 2.25% and 2.50%). Looking ahead, the FOMC will likely revise its “dots” lower for 2019, while the Fed will emphasise data dependence as relevant for its policy stance, rather than guidance by FOMC ‘dots’.
Investors and observers have hailed the Fed’s decision to trim its balance sheet from October onwards as a turning point in the drive to normalise monetary policy. But a decline of $10 billion per month in the hefty portfolio the Fed has accumulated in recent years will hardly have any visible effect on the bond market.
SAO PAULO | By Marcus Nunes | As soon as you mention “market monetarist”, NGDP comes to mind. While for most the all-encompassing variable is inflation, to MMs the “target” variable is NGDP being kept at a steadily rising trend level.
By Benjamin Cole via Historinhas | In one of the more inexplicable political dementias of our time, the modern-day Republican Party has become fixated on inflation, and peevishly infatuated with tight-money policies—when not blubbering about gold.
Intermoney | The progress made in the economic recovery has prompted the Bank of Canada to reduce net purchases of Canadian government debt by 1,000 thousand. CAD 1,000 billion to CAD 3,000 billion as of next week. A move that was supported by a very positive forecast for the world economy, projecting global GDP growth of 6.8% in 2021, 4.1% in 2022 and 3.3% in 2023.
The trend in inflation is confusing those in charge of monetary policy. After a significant uptick in the last part of 2017, it has really stagnated, in stark contrast with the growing dynamism of the economy.
Benjamin Cole | While taxes and trade get the headlines, a major issue in the US is ubiquitous restrictive property zoning, and the false signals zoning sends to the Fed. Indeed, the “housing bubble” that led to Fed over-tightening in 2007 barely surfaced in Houston, but was highly prominent in San Francisco. Obviously, the “housing bubble” was not Fed-induced.
J. L. M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | Stable inflation centred around levels of 2.0%…A scenario dominated by rising inflation is as complicated as one where deflation and potential low economic growth can create a vicious circle difficult to exit. Especially in a context of high indebtedness.
There is recurrent talk about Helicopter Money, a concept conceived by Friedman to revive the economy. This kind of monetary policy is very often referered to as special, beyond the frontiers of accounting, as if a central bank could actually get into a helicopter every day and drop bills from the sky “ex nihilo,” out of nothing. But as Cullen Roche explains, HM is not special.