Nie wieder Finanzkrise?

Von André Tomfort, Wiener Zeitung, 21/07/2017

• Gastkommentar: Warum sich die Chefin der US-Notenbank fatal geirrt haben könnte.

Vor kurzem machte die Chefin der US-Notenbank, Janet Yellen, eine bemerkenswerte Aussage: Auf einer Pressekonferenz in London sagte sie, dass sie nicht mehr damit rechne, in ihrem Leben nochmals eine schwere Finanzkrise wie im Jahr 2008 zu erleben. Sie begründete ihren Optimismus mit den Reformen des Finanzsystems und damit, dass die Banken jetzt krisenfest seien.

Können wir der Fed-Chefin wirklich glauben? Der Sturm der vergangenen Finanzkrise ist abgeebbt, und die Aktien- und Immobilienmärkte bewegen sich in einem langfristigen Aufwärtstrend. Dies ist nicht zuletzt der expansiven Geldpolitik von Yellen und ihren Kollegen in der Eurozone und in Asien zu verdanken. Knapp ein Jahrzehnt lang rekordtiefe Zinsen verfehlen ihre Wirkung an den Finanzmärkten nicht, und auch die globale Konjunktur hat seit einiger Zeit wieder an Fahrt aufgenommen. Trotzdem ist die Nervosität überall zu spüren, und viele Anleger fragen sich: „Wo stehen wir heute? Und wie sicher sind unsere Anlagen?“

Die Immobilienkrise 2008 und 2009 war kein Einzelfall

The New Abnormal in Monetary Policy

Nouriel Roubini

Nouriel Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

JUL 10, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW YORK – Financial markets are starting to get rattled by the winding down of unconventional monetary policies in many advanced economies. Soon enough, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will be the only central banks still maintaining unconventional monetary policies for the long term.

The US Federal Reserve started phasing out its asset-purchase program (quantitative easing, or QE) in 2014, and began normalizing interest rates in late 2015. And the European Central Bank is now pondering just how fast to taper its own QE policy in 2018, and when to start phasing out negative interest rates, too.

Similarly, the Bank of England (BoE) has finished its latest round of QE – which it launched after the Brexit referendum last June – and is considering hiking interest rates. And the Bank of Canada (BOC) and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) have both signaled that interest-rate hikes will be forthcoming.

Still, all of these central banks will have to reintroduce unconventional monetary policies if another recession or financial crisis occurs. Consider the Fed, which is in a stronger position than any other central bank to depart from unconventional monetary policies. Even if its normalization policy is successful in bringing interest rates back to an equilibrium level, that level will be no higher than 3%.

The Inflation Target Trap

Daniel Gros

Daniel Gros is Director of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, and served as an economic adviser to the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the French prime minister and finance minister. He is the editor of Economie Internationale and International Finance.

JUL 6, 2017 Project Syndicate

BRUSSELS – Central banks have a problem: growth in much of the world is accelerating, but inflation has failed to take off. Of course, for most people, growth without inflation is the ideal combination. But central banks have set the goal of achieving an inflation rate of “below, but close to 2%,” as the European Central Bank puts it. And, at this point, it is hard to see how that can be achieved.

Central banks never pretended that they could steer inflation directly. But they thought that by providing rock-bottom interest rates and generous liquidity conditions in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, they could push investment and consumption upward. In 2009, when financial markets were in turmoil and the economy was in free-fall, the US Federal Reserve took matters a step further, initiating large-scale asset purchases, or quantitative easing (QE). The ECB followed suit in 2014-2015, when deflation appeared (wrongly, in hindsight) to threaten the eurozone.

European Central Banks Face Added Political Constraints

Date: 03-07-2017

Source: The Wall Street Journal By Simon Nixon

The banks’ own rules, along with wider political trends and mixed economic signals complicate any move to tighten policy

Central bankers around the world are grappling with a common problem: when and how to normalize monetary policy at a time of normal levels of economic growth, normal levels of unemployment but abnormal levels of wage growth that is keeping inflation lower than their economic models predict.

Policy makers at the European Central Bank and Bank of England are facing political challenges that are making their task even harder.

At the ECB, the political constraint is its own self-imposed rules setting limits on the size and scale of its quantitative easing program.

Draghi Says ECB Policy Has Helped Reduce Inequality

Date: 27-06-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

ECB chief indicates it would be counterproductive to withdraw stimulus too soon
Mario Draghi speaks to university students in Lisbon on Monday.

Mario Draghi speaks to university students in Lisbon on Monday.

LISBON—European Central Bank President Mario Draghi defended the impact
of the bank’s stimulus policies on Europe’s youth Monday, arguing that keeping interest rates low had helped create jobs and reduce inequality.

The rare question-and-answer session with Mr. Draghi, at a university in Lisbon, comes at a sensitive time for the ECB, which is preparing to discuss how to start withdrawing policies such as negative interest rates and a €2.3 trillion ($2.6 trillion) bond-buying program.

Pressure is mounting in Northern Europe for a policy change from Frankfurt, but Southern European countries face a different economic reality, with youth unemployment rates reaching up to 45%.

Understanding Today’s Stagnation

Robert J. Shiller

Robert J. Shiller, a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at Yale University and the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Index of US house prices. He is the author of Irrational Exuberance, the third edition of which was published in January 2015, and, most recently, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, co-authored with George Akerlof.

MAY 23, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW HAVEN – Ever since the “Great Recession” of 2007-2009, the world’s major central banks have kept short-term interest rates at near-zero levels. In the United States, even after the Federal Reserve’s recent increases, short-term rates remain below 1%, and long-term interest rates on major government bonds are similarly low. Moreover, major central banks have supported markets at a record level by buying up huge amounts of debt and holding it.

Why is all this economic life support necessary, and why for so long?

It would be an oversimplification to say that the Great Recession caused this. Long-term real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates did not really reach low levels during the 2007-2009 period. If one looks at a plot of the US ten-year Treasury yield over the last 35 years, one sees a fairly steady downward trend, with nothing particularly unusual about the Great Recession. The yield rate was 3.5% in 2009, at the end of the recession. Now it is just over 2%.

Bundesbank Head Says ECB Needs to Be Ready to Rein In Stimulus

Date: 23-05-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

But Jens Weidmann says easy-money policies are currently appropriate

President of the German Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann

The European Central Bank shouldn’t wait too long before withdrawing its large
monetary stimulus, German central-bank president Jens Weidmann warned on Monday, wading into a debate over how quickly the ECB should signal a policy shift.

Pressure has been building in Northern Europe for a policy change from Frankfurt as the region’s economy picks up. Eurozone inflation recently jumped to 1.9%, within the ECB’s target range, after languishing close to zero for years.

But top ECB officials have yet to signal they are ready to change course and start winding down their €60 billion-a-month bond-purchase program, known as quantitative easing or QE. ECB President Mario Draghi says the topic hasn’t even been discussed by the bank’s 25-member governing council.

The $9 Trillion Question: What Happens When Central Banks Stop Buying Bonds?

Date: 10-05-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Central banks have been the world’s biggest buyers of government bonds and may soon turn into sellers

Recent data showed that the European Central Bank holds total assets of $4.5 trillion, more than any other central bank ever. Above, the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt.

Central banks have been the world’s biggest buyers of government bonds and may soon turn into sellers—a tidal shift for global markets. Yet investors can’t agree on what that shift will mean.

Part of the problem is that there is little agreement about how the massive stimulus policies, known as quantitative easing or QE, affected bonds in the first place. That makes it especially hard to assess what happens when the tide changes.

How to preserve the benefits of central-bank autonomy

Date: 27-04-2017
Source: The Economist

Twenty years after the Bank of England was given independence, the powers of central banks are in the spotlight

ON MAY 6th 1997 Gordon Brown, freshly installed as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced that he was giving the Bank of England the responsibility for setting interest rates. The bank would be charged with meeting an inflation target set by the government.

The move was hailed as a political masterstroke. It gave substance to the new Labour government’s claims to economic competence. Long-term borrowing costs fell sharply. The pound soared. The bank’s governor, Eddie George, was delighted. But joy was not unconfined. Within weeks Mr Brown, wary of an over-mighty central bank, stripped it of its responsibilities for bank regulation and public-debt management.

A World Turned Inside Out

 

Stephen S. Roach

Stephen S. Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm’s chief economist, is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale’s School of Management. He is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.

APR 26, 2017 Project Syndicate

NEW HAVEN – Slowly but surely, a bruised and battered global economy now appears to be shaking off its deep post-crisis malaise. If the International Monetary Fund’s latest forecasts are borne out – an iffy proposition, to be sure – the nearly 3.6% average annual growth in world GDP expected over the 2017-2018 period would represent a modest uptick from the 3.2% pace of the past two years. Fully a decade after the Great Financial Crisis, global growth is finally returning to its 3.5% post-1980 trend.

But this round trip hardly signals that the world is back to normal. On the contrary, the overhyped idea of a “new normal” for the world economy overlooks an extraordinary transformation in the global growth dynamic over the past nine years.