Tag Archives: monetary policy

European Union, Switzerland

How the ECB forced Switzerland’s hand

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SNB

Almost as soon as it happened last Thursday, nearly every economist in the world started asking — just why, after three years of maintaining a currency floor for the Swiss franc, did the Swiss National Bank suddenly declare that it would no longer intervene in currency markets to keep the franc‘s value artificially low?
swiss

The truth is that we won’t fully know until Thursday, when the European Central Bank is expected to announce a bond-buying scheme that ECB president Mario Draghi has been pushing for months — according to reports, a €550 billion program that amounts to Europe’s first major attempt at introducing quantitative easing into its monetary policy as the threat of deflation creeps across the eurozone. But it’s becoming clearer that the two events are related.

Draghi’s announcement that Europe will join the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan by dipping its toes into the waters of quantitative easing almost certainly forced the SNB’s hand last week. The looming ECB decision set into motion a set of domino actions throughout the world, starting with the SNB’s decision last week, which in turn caused a mini-crisis in Poland, where nearly half of the country’s mortgages are denominated in francs. It’s essentially the first major political challenge for Poland’s new prime minister Ewa Kopacz, who succeeded Donald Tusk last year when he became the president of the European Council.  Kopacz faces a tough election hurdle in elections that must be held this year before October.

Meanwhile, Denmark is now under pressure, too, with its central bank forced to lower interest rates in the face of speculation that, like Switzerland, it might be forced to abandon its permanent policy of pegging the Danish krone to the euro, under which the krone trades within a 2.25% band of a rate of 7.46 krone to the euro.

Suffice it to say we’ll know a lot more in 24 hours. For now, we’ve had almost a week to piece together our best understanding of the Swiss bombshell. Continue reading How the ECB forced Switzerland’s hand →

Scotland, United Kingdom

Why would an independent Scotland even want to keep the pound?

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Who cares about the pound anyway? scotlandUnited Kingdom Flag Icon

In the campaign for Scottish independence, key ‘Yes’ camp leaders consistently argue that a sovereign Scotland could retain the British pound as currency, and they’ve decried statements from British officials that Scotland wouldn’t be permitted to use the pound in the event that Scottish voters opt for independence in the September 18 referendum.

But putting aside whether, as a technical matter, Scotland would be able to adopt the pound, the greater issue is why it would actually want to do so — either in a formal currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom or by informally adopting the pound sterling as Scotland’s currency (‘Sterlingisation’).

Even though polls show the ‘Yes’ campaign narrowing the gap with the ‘No’ side, (the latest YouGov survey, taken between September 2 and 5, gave the ‘Yes’ camp its first lead of 47% to 45%, with 7% undecided), almost every poll in the last year shows more Scottish voters  opposed to independence than in favor of it.

If the ‘Yes’ side falls short, one of the key questions will be whether the decision to embrace the pound as an independent Scotland’s currency was wise as a strategic matter. But if the ‘Yes’ side carries the referendum, Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond will have to confront what kind of independence he’s actually won for a new country yoked on Day One to monetary policy dictated by the Bank of England.

It’s odd that the campaign’s fight over the pound has become such a central debate, but it’s possibly even odder that Salmond would cling to the pound (and other indicia of the union, such as the British monarchy) in his campaign for independence.

George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, has attempted to maintain a united front among his own Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and Labour that Scotland would not be able to avail itself of the pound if it becomes an independent country. But there’s plenty of skepticism that the remaining United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland would actually be able to stop Scotland from doing so. Continue reading Why would an independent Scotland even want to keep the pound? →

Israel, United States

Why Stanley Fischer is such an inspired choice as US Fed vice chair

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stanleyfischer

It’s really quite incredible that there’s been more ink spilled over the decision of the American Studies Association, a US-based academic group, to boycott Israel than the potential nomination of Stanley Fischer, the former governor of the Bank of Israel, to become the next vice chair of the US Federal Reserve.ISrel Flag IconUSflag

It’s somewhat ironic that at a time when many critics are attacking the ASA’s decision (is it morally right to boycott the exchange of ideas, academic debate and discussion?), Fischer’s transition from Israeli central banker to US central banker would be a spectacular opportunity — for Fischer, for the Fed, for Israel, for the United States and, if the initial reaction holds, world markets, too.  Reuters reported late last week that Fischer was offered the spot, though there’s not been an official announcement.

Janet Yellen, the current Fed vice chair, is US president Barack Obama’s nominee to chair the Fed after Ben Bernanke completes his second term on January 31, 2014, and she is expected to be confirmed as the new Fed chair by the US Senate in a vote later this week.

Fischer, as the number-two official at the Fed, would bring with him eight years of experience setting monetary policy for Israel and the rock-star status of one of the world’s most accomplished economists.  As a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he not only served as thesis supervisor to Bernanke, the current Fed chair, but also Mario Draghi, the chair of the European Central Bank.

As The Financial Times reported last week, Fischer has a ‘dream resumé’ for the position, topped off by an eight-year stint as Israel’s central bank governor that is universally acclaimed:

Some clues to how Mr Fischer thinks about monetary policy come from his tenure as governor of the Bank of Israel. He was one of the country’s most respected public figures; when he announced he would be stepping down earlier this year, one commentator said the country was losing its last ”responsible adult”.

His eight years as governor coincided with fast economic growth, low unemployment – currently 6 per cent – and low inflation. Israel survived the financial crisis in 2008-9 without seeing a single bank collapse.  Unlike his predecessor Jacob Frenkel, who had a tight focus on fighting inflation, Mr Fischer is credited with broadening the Bank of Israel’s remit to influence growth and employment. His decisions were marked by pragmatism: he slashed interest rates in the wake of the financial crisis, then abandoned economic dogma to try to hold down Israel’s currency, before raising rates as the economy recovered.

Fischer was so successful in stabilizing Israel’s economy that the Bank of Israel was already raising interest rates by September 2009 — if it hadn’t been for his age (he’s 70 today), he would have been a strong candidate to succeed Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the International Monetary Fund in 2011.

Born in what is today Zambia, Fischer spent his childhood there and in what is today Zimbabwe (and what was then the colonial apartheid state of southern Rhodesia).  Fischer first came to the United States in 1966 for his Ph.D in economics at MIT, and he remained there as a professor through 1988, when he took a position as the World Bank’s chief economist for two years.  From 1994 to 2001, he served as the first deputy managing director of the IMF during the Asian currency crisis of the late 1990s and other financial crises from Mexico to Argentina to Russia.  After a brief stint in the private sector with Citigroup, he was appointed governor of the Bank of Israel in 2005 by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon — and recommended by the finance minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu.  He holds dual Israeli and US citizenship, and he would have been as credible a candidate to lead the Fed as either Yellen or former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers.

As Dylan Matthews wrote earlier this year for The Washington Post, Netanyahu and Sharon took a big chance on Fischer, who wasn’t an Israeli citizen at the time of his nomination:

No matter — Fischer’s results were more than enough to assuage any doubts. No Western country weathered the 2008-09 financial crisis better. For only one quarter — the second of 2009 — did the Israeli economy shrink, by a puny annual rate of 0.2 percent. That same period, the U.S. economy shrank by an annual rate of 4.6 percent. Many countries, including Britain and Germany, fared even worse.

So what would his appointment mean for the Fed?  Continue reading Why Stanley Fischer is such an inspired choice as US Fed vice chair →

European Union, Iceland

Iceland ends its short-lived quest to join the European Union

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gunnar

It should have come as no surprise to observers of Iceland, but its new center-right government has firmly closed the door to membership in the European Union anytime soon, with an announcement from Icelandic foreign minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson (pictured above, left) last week.Iceland Flag IconEuropean_Union

It was virtually certain that Iceland would take a step back from EU membership, given that both governing parties — the Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progressive Party) and the Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (Independence Party) — campaigned against EU membership in Iceland’s April parliamentary elections.

Former social democratic prime minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir launched membership talks with the European Union in July 2009, when Iceland was still reeling from the effects of a financial crisis that bankrupted its three major banks and left Iceland in economic meltdown.  In the immediate aftermath of the September 2008 crisis, some Icelanders even seriously considered joining the euro after the Icelandic krónur tanked in value.  As Iceland’s economy has recovered to some degree, despite difficult loan burdens and continued currency controls, and as the eurozone has come to appear more like a monetary straitjacket than an economic life raft, Icelandic voters have increasingly soured on the benefits of EU membership.

Though prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson’s Progressive Party was seen as originally more open to continuing the talks, Gunnlaugsson seems to have taken aboard the more hardline views of the Independence Party — no one quite expected the government to end negotiations with such resolute finality in only its first month in office.

So while Iceland will continue to be a part of Europe, it will do so, like Norway and Switzerland, outside of a formal membership of the European Union.

As I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the election, however, the line between membership and Iceland’s current status is not as bright as you might expect: Continue reading Iceland ends its short-lived quest to join the European Union →

European Union, Iceland

Iceland’s election spells the end for its EU accession hopes

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(110) Tides pushes out at Vik

With capital controls still in place, a massively devalued krónur and galloping inflation, Iceland’s economy is not back to normal.European_Union Iceland Flag Icon

But it’s enough back to normal so that the window for Iceland’s accession to the European Union — or even, as was assumed during the worst days of its 2008 banking crisis, accession to the eurozone — is now very unlikely to happen.

Regardless of whether Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson and the Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progressive Party) or Bjarni Benediktsson and the Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (Independence Party) come out on top in Saturday’s election, they are likely to form a center-right coalition that will look to reverse many of the initiatives of the social democratic / leftist government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir over the past four years.

Above all, none of the Sigurðardóttir government’s priorities is more endangered than the project of Iceland’s EU accession.  Most news stories note that both a Progressive-led or Independence-led government would slow accession talks, but it seems likelier that Iceland’s next government would essentially end the talks indefinitely — they might not formally withdraw Iceland’s EU application, but they certainly won’t take any action to further discussions.

While Gunnlaugsson has called for a referendum on the eventual result of talks, his party  virtually alone among Iceland’s parties argues that the country should not reimburse the British, Dutch and other governments who reimbursed non-Icelandic depositors who put their savings in Icesave prior to its collapse in 2008.  Benediktsson is hardly any more pro-Europe — he’s argued that Iceland should break off talks altogether and focus on deeper global ties, such as Iceland’s recent free trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China — the first such free trade pact between a Chinese and a European country, likely due to Chinese eagerness to enhance its role in the Arctic north.

If for some reason a Progressive/Independence government does complete the accession talks, the result would be put to a referendum of Icelandic voters who remain highly skeptical of Brussels’s pernicious influence.

Sigurðardóttir’s government formally applied for membership in July 2009 and negotiations began a year later, but with her party likely to return to opposition, the window for Iceland’s EU membership seems likely to end with her government, as Alda Sigmundsdóttir writes today in The Guardian:

So, what makes the Progressive party so popular?

They are vehemently opposed to joining the European Union…. Indeed, many of the Progressives’ policies and declarations lean precipitously towards a new nationalism, with mildly xenophobic stances on issues such as immigration and asylum seekers, and party symbols that are vaguely reminiscent of fascism. The Progressive party was also the party that was most fiercely opposed to Iceland repaying the UK and Holland for the failure of the Icesave online bank.

If [Gunnlaugsson] wins, it will be because Icelanders fear abuse and exploitation by outside forces more than they do a return to the corrupt days of old.

Those are some fairly strong accusations, but I have to wonder if Icelandic voters aren’t simply being rational with respect to EU accession — they already have the benefits of free movement of goods and free borders with Europe, as well as much of the legal harmonization that typically comes with membership and a robust economic relationship with Europe that developed without Icelandic membership.  Why formalize the deal when they already have so many of the benefits of membership without any potential for considerable drawbacks that could harm Iceland’s cherished (and highly protected) fishing industry or the fierce national pride of a uniquely compelling nation that won its own independence from Denmark in 1944? Continue reading Iceland’s election spells the end for its EU accession hopes →

Iceland

Center-right parties poised to return to power in Iceland

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gunnlaugsson

Kim Jong-un, at age 30, is the world’s youngest leader, and there are only a handful of thirtysomething world leaders.Iceland Flag Icon

But if polls are correct, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson (pictured above) may lead Iceland’s Framsóknarflokkurinn (Progressive Party) to victory in April 27’s parliamentary elections, giving the Progressives their best victory since 1931 and, perhaps, in its history.  That would make Gunnlaugsson, at age 37, the country’s youngest prime minister since its 1944 independence.

Icelandic voters go to the polls Saturday after a fairly tumultuous time over the past five years following the 2008 collapse of its banking sector, a massive depreciation and the introduction of capital controls on Iceland’s currency, the krónur, despite a return to tepid GDP growth after a 6.5% contraction in 2009 and an unemployment rate that’s now below 5%.

I’ll sideswipe the long debate among American economists over whether Iceland’s economic policy was smarter than that in Ireland or the Baltic states.  If you want an in-depth take from an Icelandic observer, read this instead.  I’ll add that Iceland’s ability to set its own monetary policy certainly helped it bounce back in terms of GDP growth, but it also glided the path for a massive krónur depreciation and inflation that’s eroded those gains that Iceland has made in the past five years.  Much of Iceland’s household debt, before 2008, was denominated in non-krónur currencies, and debt today is otherwise linked to currency or inflation indices.  That has made debt repayment, especially for home mortgages, a grueling nightmare in post-boom Iceland.

So the economic situation is Iceland is complicated, and though there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Iceland’s economy might even be worse if it were part of the eurozone, that doesn’t mean that the everyday Icelandic voter feels like things are quite back to normal.

But politics, however, do seem set to return to the pre-boom ‘normal,’ given that the Progressives were a longtime ally of the dominant party in Iceland’s history since independence, the Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (Independence Party), which was formed precisely — as you may have guessed — to enact Icelandic independence from Denmark.

The two parties are now fighting for first place in the April 27 parliamentary elections, and it’s virtually certain that they’ll form the coalition that constitutes Iceland’s next government.  No party in Iceland’s post-independence history has even won an absolute majority in the 63-member Alþingi, Iceland’s parliament.

Polls have shown the Progressive Party with a growing lead throughout 2013, stemming largely from their insistence that Iceland should not reimburse the U.K. and other governments for the Icesave debacle — non-Icelandic savers who had deposited their money in Icesave were wiped out in late 2008, and though their own government have largely made them whole, they have turned to Iceland for repayment with interest.  Although most Icelandic parties agree that Iceland should make the payment, the matter’s been tangled up in both domestic and international litigation, and the repayments are very, very unpopular among the Icelandic electorate.

But the Independence Party seems to be catching up once again, and the two parties are now essentially tied for the lead, meaning that either party could win the greatest number of seats in the Alþingi.  If the Independence Party does edge out the Progressives, Iceland’s new prime minister could be the Independence Party leader, Bjarni Benediktsson (pictured below), who only narrowly survived a leadership challenge a couple of weeks ago, when the party’s polling numbers were more depressed.

bjarni Continue reading Center-right parties poised to return to power in Iceland →

Japan

Twelve considerations upon the DPJ wipeout in Japan’s legislative elections

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Japan

Well, that was quite a blowout.  Just a little more than three years after winning power for the first time in Japan, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, or 民主党, Minshutō) was reduced to just 57 seats in a stunning rebuke in Sunday’s Japanese parliamentary elections.

Japan

Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三), former prime minister from 2006 to 2007, will return as prime minister of Japan, and the  Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP, or 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō), which controlled the House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s parliament, the Diet, for 54 years until the DPJ’s win in 2009, has seen its best election result since the early 1990s, with 294 seats.  Among the 300 seats determined in direct local constituency votes, the LDP won fully 237 to just 27 for the DPJ.  An additional 180 seats were determined by a proportional representation block-voting system, and the LDP won that vote as well:

japanproportional

In contrast, the DPJ has fallen from 230 seats to 57 seats — by the far the worst result since it was created nearly two decades ago.  Its previous worst result was after the 2005 elections, when the popular reformist LDP prime minister Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎) won an overwhelming victory in his quest for a mandate to reorganize and privatize the bloated Japanese post office (a large public-sector behemoth that served as Japan’s largest employer and largest savings bank).

Outgoing prime minister Yoshihiko Noda (野田 佳彦) has already resigned as the DPJ leader, and a new leader is expected to be selected before the new government appears set to take office on December 26.

The result leaves Abe with the largest LDP majority in over two decades — together with its ally, the Buddhist, conservative New Kōmeitō (公明党, Shin Kōmeitō), led by Natsuo Yamaguchi (山口 那津男), which increased its number of seats by 10 to 31, Abe will command over two-thirds of the House of Representatives, thereby allowing him to push through legislation, notwithstanding the veto of the Diet’s upper chamber, the House of Councillors.

It’s a sea change for Japan’s government, and we’ll all be watching the consequences of Sunday’s election for weeks, months and probably years to come.  Just a full working day after the election, events in Japan’s politics are moving at breakneck speed.

For now, however, here are 12 of the top takeaway points from Sunday’s election: Continue reading Twelve considerations upon the DPJ wipeout in Japan’s legislative elections →

Japan

Can Shinzō Abe boost Japan’s economy?

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Over at Slate, Matthew Yglesias made the argument last week that the likely victory of former prime minister Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三) and the return of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP, or 自由民主党, Jiyū-Minshutō) to government after a three-year hiatus means that Japan might finally embark on a path of more expansionary monetary policy — namely, more quantitative easing and a higher inflation target. Japan

With Japan apparently headed back into a recession — its fifth in 15 years — that strategy could be the surest way to boost the Japanese economy, but it’s a little naive to believe Abe can command enough political support, even with a landslide victory in Sunday’s election, to dictate monetary policy to the Bank of Japan.

Earlier in the campaign, Abe pledged to force the Bank of Japan to purchase construction bonds directly from the Japanese government (although, as Yglesias notes, Abe has already backed down from that pledge during the campaign).  Abe needs the BOJ to buy those bonds in order to finance additional infrastructure spending, with the LDP calling for up to ¥200 trillion ($2.4 trillion) in public works over the next decade.  Public spending is an old LDP favorite, but that staggering amount of spending could well pull Japan’s economy out of recession and deflation.

Abe has also pledged to appoint a new bank governor — the term of the current Bank of Japan governor Masaaki Shirakawa (白川 方明) ends in April 2013 after five years heading the BOJ — who agrees to set an annual inflation target of 2% or even 3%.

Abe’s push for expansionary fiscal and monetary policy comes as a bit of a 180-degree turn, given that the third and final government of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, or 民主党, Minshutō) under prime minister Yoshihiko Noda (野田 佳彦) recently expended its last gasp of governing willpower to double Japan’s consumption tax from 5% to 10%, which is scheduled to begin in 2014.

It seems much likelier that Abe could implement a new round of fiscal expansion than strong-arm the Bank of Japan, which has an extraordinary amount of central bank independence — derived in part from the memory of hyperinflation that resulted after World War II when politicians controlled monetary policy decisions.

Noda (pictured above, right, with Abe) has attacked Abe’s platform as a dangerous intrusion on central bank independence and he has attacked the LDP plan for additional debt-financed spending as the same old LDP  ‘baramaki’ (pork barrel) politics, especially given Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is already, by far, the world’s largest, at around 230%.  Greece, by the way, has only a 160% ratio.

Japan has traditionally been able to carry such a high ratio because much of that debt is held by its citizens, who collective have one of the top savings rates in the industrialized world, but with $13.64 trillion in debt already on its public books, it’s not clear whether Japan could sustain public spending that would boost its debt-to-GDP ratio to nearly 300%.

As Yglesias notes, the Bank of Japan has been criticized for nearly two decades for its policy to keep Japan’s inflation target at zero:

Back in 1999, Ben Bernanke condemned the self-induced paralysis of Japanese monetary policy made by flailing officials who claimed it was beyond their power to fix this. He called for “Rooseveltian resolve” on the part of Japan’s leaders to shake the bank out of its torpor.  Paul Krugman, too, spent the late ’90s urging Japan to aim for more inflation, arguing that mucking around with the banking system was inadequate and weird delusions of respectability were holding policymakers back.

As Yglesias also notes, Europeans and Americans promptly forgot that advice when the 2008 financial crisis exploded budget deficits:

Suddenly, criticizing the Bank of Japan went out of style. America became Japan and simultaneously forgot what America used to think about Japan.

But perhaps the lesson that Yglesias is forgetting — and the lesson that the 2008 crisis taught Europeans and Americans — is that politics matters, and that politics can intrude on what might otherwise be a clear policy path, whether it’s ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations in the United States or the ‘kick-the-can’ politics of eurozone bailouts.

Yglesias is also forgetting that Japan has politics, too. Continue reading Can Shinzō Abe boost Japan’s economy? →