Typography

Will the Bank of Japan's negative rates work? Many people say no, among them Louis-Phillippe Rochon : Sadly, they won't. They [negative rates] are based on a faulty understanding of our banking system. The reason banks do not lend is not because they are constrained by liquidity, but because they are unwilling to lend in such uncertain times. Banks lend in the hope of getting reimbursed with interest. But banks are too pessimistic about the ability of the private sector to honour their debt, and so prefer not to lend. Having extra cash courtesy of the central bank imposing negative rates won't change the dark economic narrative. [ link ] I disagree. Even if the lending channel is closed, a negative rate policy still sets off a hot potato effect that gets the Bank of Japan a bit closer to hitting its inflation targets and stimulating nominal GDP than without that same policy. For the sake of argument I'll grant Rochon the point that negative rates might not encourage ba...

Swiss National Bank share certificates Gavyn Davies blames the Swiss National Bank's corporate structure for the floating of the Swiss franc. Paul Krugman intimates the same, as does Cullen Roche . Here is Davies: But the SNB is 45 per cent owned by private shareholders, many of whom are individuals, who receive dividends from the SNB. The rest is owned by the cantons, which have been complaining recently about insufficient cash transfers from the SNB. Davies goes on to say that the influence of shareholders, combined with the peg, means that the SNB is particularly concerned about balance sheet losses. The idea seems to be that currency pegs often result in large balance sheet fluctuations, forcing a suspension of shareholder dividends. I disagree, as a quick peek at the details shows: 1) The dividend to which Davies attributes so much importance is minuscule. In aggregate it comes out to just CHF 1.5 million per year, or US$1.7 million . Private shareholders, who own just 40.3%...

The Blackberry debacle reminds me of another crisis that has passed by the wayside—remember the eurozone's Target2 crisis? The same sorts of forces that caused the Target2 crisis, which was really an intra-Eurosystem bankrun, are also at work in the collapse of Blackberry, which can also be thought of an intra-phone run. By analogy, the same sort of actions that stopped the Target2 crisis should be capable of halting the run on Blackberry phones. Target2 is the ECB mechanism that allows unlimited amounts of euros held in, say, Greek banks to be converted at par into euros at, say, German banks, and vice versa. As the European situation worsened post credit-crisis, people began to worry about a future scenario in which Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, and/or Portugal might either leave the euro or be ejected. If exit occurred, it was expected that these new national currencies, drachmas, punts, and lira, would be worth a fraction of what the euro was then trading for. The chance that...

Like Guntram Wolff over at the Bruegel blog , I hope that the much-rumoured capital controls on Cypriot deposits don't get enacted. So far the Euro authorities seem to have done everything right, albeit in a slow and circuitous manner. Insolvent banks are being closed, uninsured depositors, unsecured creditors, and shareholders are being bailed in, and solvent banks are slated to reopen. Wolff's main concern is that capital controls threaten the very meaning of a monetary union: With capital restrictions, the value of a euro in Cyprus is no longer worth the same as a euro held by any other bank in the eurozone. A euro in Nicosia cannot be used to buy goods in Frankfurt without limits. Effectively, it means that a Cypriot euro is not a euro any more. Enact capital controls and we'd see the emergence of an entirely new currency trading pair CYP€:onshore€, with Cypriot euros trading at a discount. The discount would emerge since the ability of CYP€ to buy things outside of th...

Gavyn Davies's post Will central banks cancel government debt? dovetails nicely with the recent fundamental value of fiat money debate. [For commentary on this debate, see Nick Rowe , Paul Krugman , David Glasner , Stephen Williamson here , here , and here , David Andolfatto , Brad DeLong , and Noah Smith ] Let recap the debate first before turning to Gavyn's post. Noah Smith pointed out that since fiat money is fundamentally worth nothing (its future value = 0), then all financial assets are worth zero. Financial assets, after all, are mere promises to receive fiat money. Now back up a second. As I pointed out here , modern central bank money is not fundamentally worthless. Were it to fall to a small discount to its fundamental value, Warren Buffet would buy every bit of money up. Central bank money has a fundamental value because even if it can no longer be passed off to shopkeepers, there are assets in the central bank's kitty. Modern central bank money provides a cond...

Bob Murphy asks if central bank actions taken during the early 1930s might be considered "unprecedented". In the comments I pointed out that during that era an early form of QE was tried. I'm not referring here to the famous 1933 Roosevelt purchases of gold that market monetarists often point to. For instance, see David Glasner here , David Beckworth here , and Scott Sumner here . Scott also has a very interesting paper on the 1933 gold purchasing program ( pdf ). No, I was referring to the 1932 treasury purchasing program. I'm going to replicate the simple graphical analysis that market monetarists use in order to look at the 1932 episode. See this post by Lars Christensen, for example, who overlays important monetary events (QE1, QE2, LTRO) over the S&P500. Here is the context. Prior to 1932, the Federal Reserve system was significantly limited in its ability to embark on large purchases of government securities. This was because of strict backing laws in the ...

Gavyn Davies drew some interesting parallels between the ECB and the IMF last week. This follows on his post the " ultimate taboo ", in which he analyzed the idea of "convertibility risk", a term first used by ECB head Mario Draghi in a speech in late July. Gavyn points out that in explicitly drawing attention to its job of controlling convertibility risk - ie. ensuring that all euros are the same - the modern ECB is becoming more like the IMF. Specifically, during Bretton Woods the IMF sometimes financed the balance of payments deficits of member nations in order to ensure the system of fixed exchange rates stayed, well, fixed. When it did so, the IMF was engaging in a mind game of sorts with the market, for the market knew that the IMF knew that the market knew that rates could be modified if attacked with enough force. In admitting to the world the existence of convertibility risk, the ECB is now displaying an IMF-degree of hyper self-awareness... for the first ...