发帖
雷达卡
Poor Ben Bernanke! As Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Board,he has gone further than any other central banker in recent times in attemptingto stimulate the economy through monetary policy. He has cut short-terminterest rates to the bone. He has adoptedinnovative new methods of monetary easing. Again and again, he has repeatedthat, so long as inflationary pressure remains contained, his main concern isthe high level of USunemployment. Yet progressive economists chastisehim for not doing enough.
What more could they possibly want? Raise the inflation target, they say,and all will be well. Of course, this would be a radical departure for the Fed,which has worked hard to convince the public that it will keep inflation around2%. That credibility has allowed the Fed tobe aggressive: it is difficult to imagine that itcould have expanded its balance sheet to the extent that it has if the publicthought that it could not be trusted on inflation. So why do theseeconomists want the Fed to sacrifice its hard-wongains?
The answer lies in their view of the rootcause of continued high unemployment: excessivelyhigh real interest rates. Their logic is simple. Before the financialcrisis erupted in 2008, consumers buoyed USdemand by borrowing heavily against their rising house prices. Now theseheavily indebted households cannot borrow and spend any more.
An important source of aggregate demand has evaporated. As consumersstopped buying, real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates should have fallen toencourage thrifty households to spend. But real interest rates did not fall enough, because nominalinterest rates cannot go below zero. Byincreasing inflation, the Fed would turn real interest rates seriously negative,thereby coercing thrifty households into spendinginstead of saving. With rising demand, firms would hire, and all wouldbe well.
This is a different logic from the one that calls for inflation as a wayof reducing long-term debt (at the expense of investors), but it has equally serious weaknesses. First, whilelow rates might encourage spending if credit were easy,it is not at all clear that traditional savers today would go out and spend.Think of the soon-to-retire office worker. She saved because she wanted enoughmoney to retire. Given the terrible returns on savings since 2007, the prospectof continuing low interest rates might make her put even more money aside.
Alternatively, low interest rates could push her (or her pension fund) tobuy risky long-maturity bonds. Given that these bonds are already aggressivelypriced, such a move might thus set her up for a fall when interest rateseventually rise. Indeed, Americamay well be in the process of adding a pensioncrisis to the unemployment problem.
Second, household over-indebtedness inthe US,as well as the fall in demand, is localized,as my colleague Amir Sufi and his co-author, Atif Mian, have shown. Hairdressers in Las Vegas lost their jobs partly becausehouseholds there have too much debt stemming from the housing boom, and partlybecause many local construction workers and real-estate brokers were laid off.Even if we can coerce traditional debt-free savers to spend, it is unlikelythat there are enough of them in Las Vegas.
If these debt-free savers are in New York City,which did not experience as much of a boom and a bust, cutting real interestrates will encourage spending on haircuts in New York City,which already has plenty of demand, but not in Las Vegas, which has too little. Putdifferently, real interest rates are too blunta stimulus tool, even if they work.
Third, we have little idea about how thepublic forms expectations about the central bank’s future actions. Ifthe Fed announces that it will tolerate 4% inflation, could the public thinkthat the Fed is bluffing, or that, if animplicit inflation target can be broken once, it can be broken again? Wouldexpectations shift to a much higher inflation rate? How would the added riskpremium affect long-term interest rates? What kind of recession would the US have toendure to bring inflation back to comfortable levels?
The answer to all of these questions is: We really don’t know. Given the dubious benefits of still lower real interestrates, placing central-bank credibility at riskwould be irresponsible.
Finally, it is not even clear that the zerolower bound is primarily responsible for high US unemployment. TraditionalKeynesian frictions like the difficulty of reducing wages and benefits in someindustries, as well as non-traditional frictions like the difficulty of movingwhen one cannot sell (or buy) a house, may share blame.
We cannot ignore high unemployment. Clearly, improving indebtedhouseholds’ ability to refinance at low current interest rates could help toreduce their debt burden, as would writing offsome mortgage debt in cases where falling house prices have left borrowers deepunderwater (that is, the outstanding（未完成的：仍然存在的；未决定或未解决的） mortgage exceeds the house’s value).
More could be done here. The good news is that household debt is comingdown through a combination of repayments and write-offs. But it is alsoimportant to recognize that the path to a sustainable recovery does not lie inrestoring irresponsible and unaffordable pre-crisis spending, which had the collateral effect of creating unsustainable jobsin construction and finance.
Witha savings rate of barely 4% of GDP, the average US household is unlikely to beover-saving. Sensible policy lies in improving the capabilities of the workforceacross the country, so that they can get sustainable jobs with steady incomes.That takes time, but it might be the best option left.
京公网安备 11010802022788号
