ExRussian

Prof. Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser (thanks Mark Thoma for the link) addresses one of the Fed’s standard methods of draining liquidity from the banking system: reverse repurchase agreements. Basically, the Fed will transfer some of its assets to the banking system via short-term loans taken out with its Primary Dealers, presumably offering standard (Treasuries) and less standard (MBS or agency bonds) assets as collateral.

Reverse repurchase agreements simply slosh around the assets (MBS, agencies, and Treasuries) between the Fed and the Primary Dealers, rather than removing the assets from the Fed’s balance sheet permanently. Eventually, though, the Fed must sell the securities outright onto the open market – we are far, far from that!

This is all hot air for now. How can the Fed soak up the expansionary liquidity, let alone unwind $1 trillion in assets, when the banking system is still shedding pounds?

The Fed is considering another route, too: conducting the same repurchase agreements with the money-market mutual fund industry in tandem. An excerpt from the FT:

The Federal Reserve is looking to team up with the money-market mutual fund industry as part of its strategy to ensure that its unconventional policies to stimulate the economy do not produce a bout of post-crisis inflation.

The central bank envisages eventually draining liquidity from the financial system by engaging in trades called “reverse repos” with the deep-pocketed money-market funds. In these, the Fed would pledge mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries acquired during the crisis as collateral for short-term loans from the funds.

The obvious counterparties for reverse repo deals are the Wall Street primary dealers. However, the Fed thinks they would only have balance sheet capacity to refinance about $100bn of assets. By contrast, the money-market funds have $2,500bn in assets, which means they could plausibly refinance as much as $500bn in Fed assets. Officials think there would be appetite on the part of the funds, which are under pressure from regulators and investors to stick to low-risk liquid investments.

The Fed is solely attempting to assuage inflation angst at this time; it’s still very premature to talk about an exit of expansionary policies when credit markets still crimp the stimulus that the Fed so desperately wants to get into the open market (much of the base, roughly $855 billion on September 23, 2009 and up from $2 billion in August 2008, remains on balance with the Fed in the form of “excess reserves). Just look at the crunch in the consumer credit space (chart to left).

As Prof. Hamilton suggests, the mechanisms of the reverse repos should successfully sterilize the base before it starts to become inflationary (with either the Primary Dealers and/or the Mutual Funds industry). However, one of the programs through which the Fed utilized previously to sterilize its liquidity, and to which Prof. Hamilton refers, – the Supplementary Financing Program – is unlikely to be an avenue for removing liquidity.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The Treasury already announced its imminent plan to liquidate the bulk of its $200 billion account with the Fed. There’s another $200 billion in excess reserves with which the Fed must contend (see my previous post here).

It’s easy to get the liquidity into the financial system. But getting it out without collapsing the economy or allowing inflation pressures to build? Well, that’s a different story.

Rebecca Wilder

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is a critical day in the saga of the public option. Democrats Charles Schumer (New York) and Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) are introducing an amendment to include the public option in the bill to be reported out by the Senate Finance Committee — the committee anointed by the White House as its favored vehicle for getting health care reform.

Before you read another word, call and email the Senate offices of Democrats Max Baucus (Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), John Kerry (MA), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Ron Wyden (Oregon), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Maria Cantwell (Washington), and Bill Nelson (Florida) — telling them you want them to vote in favor of the public option amendment. And get everyone you know in these states to do the same. Hell, you might as well phone and email Republican Olympia Snowe (Maine) and make the same pitch.

Background: Every dollar squeezed out of Big Pharma and Big Insurance is a dollar less that you’ll have to pay either in healthcare costs or in taxes to cover healthcare costs. The two most direct ways to squeeze future profits are allowing Medicare to use its huge bargaining leverage to negotiate lower drug prices, and creating a public insurance option to compete with private insurers and also use its bargaining clout to get lower prices and thereby push private insurers to offer lower rates.

But last January, the White House made a Faustian bargain with Big Pharma and Big Insurance, essentially scuttling both of these profit-squeezing mechanisms in return for these industries’ agreement not to oppose healthcare legislation with platoons of lobbyists and millions of dollars of TV ads, and Pharma’s willingness to cut drug prices by some $80 billion over the next ten years. The White House promised these industries they’d come out way ahead — getting tens of millions of new customers who’d be buying private health insurance policies and thereby paying for an almost endless supply of new drugs. Healthcare reform would be, in short, a bonanza.

Big Pharma and Big Insurance have so far delivered on their side of the deal. In fact, Big Pharma has shelled out $120 million in advertisements in favor of reform. Now the White House is delivering on its side.

Last Thursday, for example, the Senate Finance Committee rejected Ben Nelson’s amendment to require Big Pharma to give some $160 billion in discounts to Medicare — thereby reducing the bonanza Pharma would reap from the healthcare bill. Not surprisingly, all Republicans voted against the amendment. But it was defeated only because Dems Baucus, Carper, and Menendez voted with the Republicans.

Carper later explained to the New York Times why he voted with the Republicans. The amendment, he said, would “undermine our ability to pass” health care reform, because the White House had made a deal with Big Pharma by which the industry wouldn’t oppose healthcare reform — and White House officials had told him “a deal is a deal.” The Times described the vote as a “big victory” for the White House.

Schumer voted for the amendment. He said he was “not at the table” when the White House and Big Pharma made their deal so didn’t feel bound by it. But even if he had been at the table, he wouldn’t be bound. No member of the Senate is bound to a deal made between industry and the White House. Congress is a separate branch of government.

Big Pharma and big insurance hate the public insurance option even more than they hate big Medicare discounts. And although the President has sounded as if he would welcome it, political operatives in the White House have quietly reassured the industries that it won’t be included in the final bill. At most, the bill would allow the formation of non-profit “cooperatives” that wouldn’t have the scale or authority to squeeze the profits of private industry, or a “trigger” that would allow states to form public insurance options eventually if certain goals for cost savings and coverage weren’t met.

But the public option lives on, nonetheless. It’s still in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension bill. It still headlines the House bills, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’s still committed to it. The latest Times/CBS poll shows 65 percent of the public in favor of it.

Now, Schumer and Rockefeller are introducing a public option amendment in the Senate Finance Committee. Carper, Menendez, Baucus, and other Dems on the Committee should vote for it, or be forced to pay a price if they don’t.

Every morning I give my economic spiel to the bond group – this morning, the Department of Labor reported that the number of weekly initial claimants fell 21k to 530k, dragging the 4-wk moving average down 11k to 553.5k. Also in the release, the insured unemployment rate (number of employees claiming unemployment insurance divided by the stock of employees that qualify for unemployment insurance under the regular 26-week (generally) state programs), which is seen as a leading indicator of the unemployment rate, dipped 0.1% to 4.6% in the week ending September 12. A downward trend here normally leads the national unemployment rate.

But in times like these, when the actual number of insured rests around 9 million and exceeds the 6.1 million in the regular state programs, does the insured unemployment rate still indicate trends in the national unemployment rate? (The chart to the left illustrates the total unemployed claiming insurance benefits under the regular state programs (the calculation of the aforementioned unemployment insurance rate) + claimants under the emergency programs, EUC 2008 and Extended Benefits (see the release here).)

It looks like the relationship remains rather strong. The chart below illustrates the estimated relationship between the monthly average of the insured unemployment rate and the national unemployment rate (currently 9.7%) since 1981.

The simple equation has an R2 = 0.858, which is respectable. And the most recent data points, July and August in green and red, respectively, rest very close to the fitted line – August is right on the fitted line. If the insured unemployment rate continues to decline, the relationship suggests that so, too, will the unemployment rate.

However, the initial claims numbers will be dropping as well, and initial claims are the most current information out there (besides the daily Treasury receipts). Initial claims remain well above any level that would suggest a decline in the unemployment rate (around 350k-400k).

I don’t believe that the economy will see a jobless recovery – i.e., the job loss that occurred for almost two years following the end of the 2001 recession (November 2001).

The 4-wk average to date is starting to look that way, but there is just so much spare capacity – August 2009 capacity utilization rate was just 69.6% compared to 73.5% in November 2001. I just don’t see why a firm would opt to buy new capital before it uses its excess capacity – that means hiring workers.

Rebecca Wilder

This is the article that I wrote on Angry Bear today.

Neal Soss and Henry Mo at Credit Suisse published a very interesting article, “Where is full employment in a more volatile macroeconomy?”, where they argue that the natural (long run) rate of unemployment may be shifting (they do this by showing that the Beveridge curve, which plots the the job vacancy rate against the unemployment rate, is shifting upward). I cannot provide a link, but here are their conclusions pertaining to monetary policy:

In the case of rising NAIRU [RW: this is the rate of unemployment that does not grow inflation, often called the long-run rate] and higher economic volatility, the monetary policy implication is complicated.

On the one hand, a higher NAIRU suggests that it would require a strong and prolonged recovery for the unemployment rate to return to the level attained in the past two decades. This scenario argues for a long period of low interest rates, because the economy’s structure will make it harder to get unemployment back to the low levels of recent business expansions.

On the other hand, a higher NAIRU suggests higher inflation pressure, as the output gap is smaller than otherwise would be the case. In other words, the Fed would have to normalize its policy stance sooner than would have been the case warranted by a stable NAIRU.

The burden of this is likely to be several years of quite low short-term interest rates by any modern standard other than the zero-ish levels of today. Even if the NAIRU is deteriorating, it is likely to be several years before the economy generates enough of a drop in unemployment to get to the new NAIRU, presumably above the levels of the last 20 years but surely below the current 9.7% unemployment rate. Between now and then, high unemployment is likely to remain the focus of policy attention. Labor market policies, such as job retraining for the unemployed, to improve the inflation unemployment trade-off, would make the central bank’s job a lot easier as that longer-run unfolds.

Basically, if the long-run level of unemployment, which the Fed targets implicitly under their dual mandate (maximum sustainable employment and stable prices), is changing then the Fed’s job becomes that much more difficult. Policy is only as good as the model’s calibration: they need to confidently estimate and target a level of employment that may be very much in flux. A simple Taylor Rule estimation illustrates this point.

Note: The Taylor Rule is a policy rule that relates the federal funds target to inflation and the output gap: roughly speaking, as inflation rises relative to the output gap, the Fed should tighten (raise its target); and as the output gap rises relative to inflation, then Fed should ease (lower its target). I estimate the relationship, and you can view my data here, and Wells Fargo’s forecast here.

On one hand, the CBO projects that NAIRU is 4.8%. In this case, the Taylor Rule policy drops the fed funds target to -4.6% by the end of the year. Put it this way: the output gap is so big that policy is very, very aggressive but bound by zero.

On the other hand, if NAIRU has shifted to something more like 6% – this is roughly its level in the 1980’s – then the policy prescription is less aggressive. The output gap remains wide, but the implied target rises to -3% rather than almost -5% – still negative, but suggestive of a more benign policy strategy. Inflation pressures would start to build earlier than under the 4.8% case.

This complexity has been documented by the Fed in the minutes of their August 2009 meeting:

Though recent data indicated that the pace at which employment was declining had slowed appreciably, job losses remained sizable. Moreover, long-term unemployment and permanent separations continued to rise, suggesting possible problems of skill loss and a need for labor reallocation that could slow recovery in employment as the economy begins to expand.

Note: this not the same thing as a jobless recovery – the unemployment rate may very well fall with economic growth (no jobless recovery), but then settle at a structurally higher level.

Rebecca Wilder

P.S. I will not be able to respond to comments until tomorrow.

The core inflation rate has dropped to 1.4%, while the unemployment rate surged to 9.7%….to date. And barring some unforeseen and positive economic surprise, like renewed confidence driving consumer spending more quickly than anticipated, these variables that define the Fed’s dual mandate are likely to remain outside the Fed’s comfort zone into next year. Therefore, policy is likely to be quite expansionary in the foreseeable future (which in forecasting terms, that is 2010). But how far into the future; and what will be its exit strategy?

I just wanted to chime in on this issue of Fed exit strategy, specifically with rate hikes (or, as some of you will properly identify, target rate hikes). The Fed has a ton of policy to unwind, over a $trillion in direct asset purchase: >$800 in billion MBS, soon to be $300 billion in Treasuries, and soon to be $200 billion in agency debt. Furthermore, the Fed dropped its target rate (the federal funds rate, ff rate) to practically 0%. Therefore, there are several permutations of exit strategy to consider. Here are the main ones:

1. The Fed unwinds the assets first, and then raises its target rate
2. The Fed unwinds its assets after raising its target rate
3. The Fed mixes exits: unwinding assets while contemporaneously raising its target rate

Timing is key here, and NOBODY expects the Fed to raise tomorrow. The Fed will monitor financial markets and the economy, and decide which action is appropriate. But given the obvious interdependence between financial markets and the economy, my bet’s on a contemporaneous rate hike and asset sell-off. But let’s be real, even the Fed hasn’t mapped out its exit strategy in full.

The MBS market is tricky. Unless the housing market is plugging away, it will be difficult for the Fed to inundate the MBS market with its very huge supply of MBS (11% of the market as of June 2009, and counting). Therefore, it is likely that the Fed exits in a more weighted way: more quickly selling off assets, but also raising its target rate.

According to Morgan Stanley and the overnight indexed swap curve, the Fed’s target rate is expected to be just 52.9 bps higher than it is today (see cum in the chart below) in June 2010, or about 0.75%.

Given that consensus expects the unemployment rate to be in the 9%-10% range by then, I’d say that 75 bps is more of an upper bound. Unless inflation gets a push forward – at the core level, this is very unlikely given the long lags in price fluctuations – the economy will be just too weak. The decline in all measures of prices (including wages) will keep inflation very much in check, with some upside risk on the back of emerging market growth and energy price gains.

So there you have it. Is the market correct? 75 bps next year? That’s still a lot of stimulus left in the system.

ExRussian

So how can the Dow Jones Industrial Average be flirting with 10,000 when consumers, who make up 70 percent of the economy, have had to cut way back on buying because they have no money? Jobs continue to disappear. One out of six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed. Homes can no longer function as piggy banks because they’re worth almost a third less than they were two years ago. And for the first time in more than a decade, Americans are now having to pay down their debts and start to save.

Even more curious, how can the Dow be so far up when every business and Wall Street executive I come across tells me government is crushing the economy with its huge deficits, and its supposed “takeover” of health care, autos, housing, energy, and finance? Their anguished cries of “socialism” are almost drowning out all their cheering over the surging Dow.

The explanation is simple. The great consumer retreat from the market is being offset by government’s advance into the market. Consumer debt is way down from its peak in 2006; government debt is way up. Consumer spending is down, government spending is up. Why have new housing starts begun? Because the Fed is buying up Fannie and Freddie’s paper, and government-owned Fannie and Freddie are now just about the only mortgage games remaining in play.

Why are health care stocks booming? Because the government is about to expand coverage to tens of millions more Americans, and the White House has assured Big Pharma and health insurers that their profits will soar. Why are auto sales up? Because the cash-for-clunkers program has been subsidizing new car sales. Why is the financial sector surging? Because the Fed is keeping interest rates near zero, and the rest of the government is still guaranteeing any bank too big to fail will be bailed out. Why are federal contractors doing so well? Because the stimulus has kicked in.

In other words, the Dow is up despite the biggest consumer retreat from the market since the Great Depression because of the very thing so many executives are complaining about, which is government’s expansion. And regardless of what you call it – Keynesianism, socialism, or just pragmatism – it’s doing wonders for business, especially big business and Wall Street. Consumer spending is falling back to 60 to 65 percent of the economy, as government spending expands to fill the gap.

The problem is, our newly expanded government isn’t doing much for average working Americans who continue to lose their jobs and whose belts continue to tighten, and who are getting almost nothing out of the rising Dow because they own few if any shares of stock. Despite the happy Dow and notwithstanding the upbeat corporate earnings, most corporations are still shedding workers and slashing payrolls. And the big banks still aren’t lending to Main Street.

Trickle-down economics didn’t work when the supply-siders were in charge. And it’s not working now, at a time when — despite all their cries of “socialism” — big business and Wall Street are more politically potent than ever.

I wrote this article over at Angry Bear and know that some of you all might be interested in the read: Policy and housing: someone’s gotta give.

Also, please visit David Beckworth’s blog, Macro and Other Market Musings. He writes a really nice article on the equation of exchange – I plan to comment on this, but you all should read it as a heads up!

Finally, did you know that “UFO sightings have reached record levels in 2009″? The Telegraph ties this to the surging unemployment rate.

Rebecca Wilder

… according to Time Magazine:

The Fed’s effort to sterilize its expansionary policies is going bye bye. According to the Treasury:

“Treasury currently anticipates that the balance in the Treasury’s Supplementary Financing Account will decrease in the coming weeks to $15 billion, as outstanding Supplementary Financing Program bills mature and are not rolled over. This action is being taken to preserve flexibility in the conduct of debt management policy.”

On balance September 9, the Fed holds $199,932 million in liabilities to the Treasury under the Supplementary Financing Account, of which $199,932 – $15,000 = $184,932 million will be paid to the Treasury. How much do you wanna bet that the liquidation of the Treasury’s account ends up in excess reserves, increasing the balance from $823,201 million on September 9 to $1,008,133 million (yup, that’s $trillions).

Rebecca Wilder

I always get excited when the Federal Reserve releases its quarterly Flow of Funds Tables. I will keep this short, as it is 9:30pm and my husband is about to scream.

First things first: household net worth is stable. A very good representation of the “wealth effect” is seen in the ratio of household net worth to personal disposable income (income net of taxes). This ratio is negatively correlated with the saving rate: as consumer wealth rises relative to income, the incentive to save (spend more now) falls.

As the chart illustrates, the ratio of net worth to disposable income rested quietly between 4 and a little over 5 spanning much of the measured series (1951, not shown, to about 1996); it now sits inside that band, 4.87 in Q2 2009. According to this relationship, spending and saving should stabilize, with households paying down debt and increasing consumption accordingly with income generation.

The point of income generation is not the topic here. But since wage growth is down to record lows (see Mark Thoma’s post here), it seems that there is no way to go but up once the labor market turns around.

Households are taking a beating in credit markets, finding return only in the riskier equity markets.

And finally, the federal government owned nearly 15% of all securities in the GSE-backed MBS market. The Fed accumulated 11% of that!

It’s going to take a much healthier economy than this one to withstand an unwinding of the Fed’s balance sheet. Like I said, not surprising but interesting nevertheless.

Rebecca Wilder