Yves Smith: Currency Tensions Rising

[Winehole23]

Currency Tensions Rising

The fact that an IMF meeting ended with the participants unable to feign a narrowing of differences on the currency front is further evidence that positions are hardening. And let us put none too fine a point on this: the currency row is simply an acceptable way to fight over imbalanced trade patterns.



As we pointed out in a 2007 post, “The Dangers of Overselling, and Overdoing, Global Trade“:

Dani Rodrik…makes the point that globalization fans may be their own worst enemy by taking the simpleminded point of view that if globalization is good, more globalization is of course better. Rodrik reminds us that globalization needs to be balanced against national interests, and some of the nations touted as big beneficiaries of more open trade markets, such as India and China, in fact did not open their markets to imports until their growth rates were increasing handily.


His most important observation is “If there is one lesson from the collapse of the 19th century version of globalisation, it is that we cannot leave national governments powerless to respond to their citizens.” Yet some of the proponents believe in the sovereignty of markets, that any attempt to intervene in markets will only yield bad outcomes, and will in any event be futile because the forbidden activity take place despite the barriers we try to erect (hmm, if we really believed that, we wouldn’t be using economic sanctions against Iran, now would we?).


It’s similar to an argument made by William Greider in a New York Times article, “The Truth Deficit,” in which he makes the case that the system we operate under isn’t free trade, it’s managed trade, and most other countries play the game in a way to produce better national outcomes (fewer lost jobs and trade surpluses). We seem to be running our trade policy not to optimize our national interest, but that of large international corporations, which is far from the same thing.

Yves here. The threat to a system with a high level of international trade is the existence of large players who run persistent surpluses. That requires that someone, perhaps lots of someones, are in the position of running large trade deficits, which also entail rising domestic debt levels. When the debtor nation gets tired of playing this role (which can come about for a host of reasons), its new found religion forces adjustments on its trade partners.


For the US, reducing our trade deficit really means reducing imports of manufactured goods. That ultimately also means increasing exports, but that will take a longer time to put into effect, assuming the US multinational vogue for offshoring can be partially reversed. Before readers start haring on how cheap labor is in Bangladesh, recall that factory labor is only 10% of the final sales cost of most manufactured goods, and sending work overseas involves some offsets (transit time, which reduces flexibility, higher managerial/coordination costs, need to finance a longer production cycle). So in many industries, more flexible, just in time manufacturing could have been compe ive in quite a few sectors. The real reason for the loss of jobs isn’t so much worker cost as lack of management imagination and resourcefulness (how fashionable is it in the US these days to be in a manufacturing business? “Talent” wants to be on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley).



Bloomberg presented the battle lines:

Exchange rates dominated the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington on concern that officials are relying on cheaper currencies to aid growth, risking retaliatory devaluations and trade barriers. China was accused of undervaluing the yuan, while low interest rates in the U.S. and other rich nations were blamed for flooding emerging markets with capital…..


At the same time, officials from emerging economies including China complained that low interest rates in the U.S. and its developed-world counterparts mean investors are pouring capital into their markets, threatening growth by forcing up currencies and inflating asset bubbles.

The Financial Times gives an even uglier assessment:

Global economic co-operation was in disarray and further battles in the currency war looked likely after the weekend’s international meetings of finance ministers and central bankers broke up with no resolution.


The world’s largest economies remained as far apart as ever on currencies. China accused the US of destabilising emerging economies by allowing ultra-loose monetary policy to flood the emerging world with money, while the US insisted the International Monetary Fund should intensify its focus on exchange rates and the reserve ac ulation of China.
The lack of any substantive agreements and brinkmanship on proposed reforms to the IMF is likely to exacerbate currency volatility in the month running up to the Seoul Group of 20 summit.

Some Fed defenders may contend that its super lax strategy is simply because the central bank is trying to forestall deflation with the only tool it has at hand. By contrast, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that the Fed’s QE2 strategy is aimed at countries that are suppressing the value of their currencies:

Asian investment in plant has run ahead of Western ability to consume. The debt-strapped households of Middle America, or Britain and Spain, can no longer hold up the dysfunctional edifice. Asians must take over, or it will come down on their own heads.


The countries actively intervening in exchange markets to suppress their currencies – China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, even Switzerland, to name a few – are all too often the same ones that have the biggest trade surpluses with the US.


They are taking active steps to prevent America extricating itself from the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, now 17.1pc on the latest U6 index and rising again.


Each country is doing so for understandable reasons: Japan to avoid a deflationary crisis, China to hold together a political order that is more fragile than it looks. In both these cases they are trapped because they clung too long to a mercantilist export strategy, failing to wean themselves off American demand when the going was good.


Yet this is an intolerable situation for the US. It should be no surprise that Washington has begun to retaliate in earnest, and not just by passing the Reform for Fair Trade Act in the House (not yet the Senate), clearing the way for punitive tariffs against currency manipulators.


The atomic bomb, of course, is quan ative easing by the Federal Reserve. America has in effect issued an ultimatum to China and G20: either you stop this predatory behaviour and agree to some formula for global rebalancing, or we will deploy QE2 `a l’outrance’ to flood your economies with excess liquidity. We will cause you to overheat and drive up your wage costs. We will impose a de facto currency revaluation by more brutal and disruptive means, and there is little you can do to stop it. Pick your poison….


Devaluation was not the mistake of the 1930s: it was the cure, albeit a bad one. The Gold Standard broke down during the inter-war years because the US and France had structurally undervalued exchange rates (like China/Asia today) and ceased recycling their trade surpluses (like China/Asia today). This caused a deflationary downward spiral for everybody.


Escaping from such a deformed system was a path to recovery.



The parallel with modern globalization – though not exact – is obvious. So is the 1930s lesson that currency and trade clashes are asymmetric: they are calamitous for surplus countries, but not always for deficit countries. Britain enjoyed a five-year mini-boom after retreating into an Empire trade bloc in 1932.

As much as China backers are loath to hear it, big creditor nations (the ones in the position of China) suffer worse in the wake of financial crises than debtor countries. That hasn’t happened so far because China has dumped a ton of liquidity in its economy to drive domestic investment to unheard-of levels, nearly 50% of GDP. In addition, it has kept the renminbi pegged to the falling dollar, enabling it to maintain its trade surplus at the expense of other exporters, notably Japan. It’s been able to delay a day of reckoning, but the end game is approaching.



Update 8:00 AM: This Tim Duy post is an important addition, please be sure to read it in its entirety. The summary:

Bottom Line: The time may finally be at hand when the imbalances created by Bretton Woods 2 now tear the system asunder. The collapse is coming via an unexpected channel; rather than originating from abroad, the shock that sets it in motion comes from the inside, a blast of stimulus from the US Federal Reserve. And at the moment, the collapse looks likely to turn disorderly quickly. If the Federal Reserve is committed to quan ative easing, there is no way for the rest of the world to stop to flow of dollars that is already emanating from the US. Yet much of the world does not want to accept the inevitable, and there appears to be no agreement on what comes next. Call me pessimistic, but right now I don’t see how this situation gets anything but more ugly

[CosmicCowboy]

good read, thanks.

[Winehole23]

yw, CC.

Most intriguing to me was the suggestion, seldom seen anywhere these days, that deflation was the cure for economic imbalances in the 1930's and not the disease itself.

[Wild Cobra]

Now I don't know the full effect it would have, but it seems to me the fix is that we simply print more money instead of borrowing. I think the inflationary value that would occur more on imports than local goods would help balance the situation. As our currency becomes less valuable on the world market, overseas goods become more expensive to us, and our exports become cheaper to other nations.

Don't take this as an alternative to believing we need to change out tax base to consumption from production. I think both would be healthy for us overall.

[Winehole23]

WC, inflation dove.

[Winehole23]

The Ride of the Keynesian Cowboys

The Fed is basically down to one bullet in its policy gun. It cannot lower rates beyond zero, although it can pull down longer-term rates if it so chooses. But lower rates so far haven’t been the answer to creating jobs and inflation. All less-subtle instruments of monetary policy have been tried. The final option is massive quan ative easing, the monetization of US government debt. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail. And after the last FOMC meeting, the markets have openly embraced quan ative easing. And for good reason: That’s the talk coming from the leadership of the Fed.

Since my friend Greg Weldon has so thoughtfully collected some of the more salient parts of some recent Fed speeches, let's turn the next few paragraphs over to him.

We note the following quotes, starting with the would-be-hero, maybe-headed-for-monetary- , Fed Chairman, Ben Boom-Boom Bernanke himself ...

... “I do think that additional purchases, although we do not have precise numbers for how big the effects are, I do think they have the ability to ease financial conditions.”

Next we note commentary that sparked Monday's extension lower in US Treasury Note yields, from New York Fed President William Dudley:

“Fed action is likely to be warranted unless the economic outlook evolves in a way that makes me more confident that we will see better outcomes for both employment and inflation before too long.”

Indeed, the Fed will keep pumping, until it sees the proverbial whites-of-their-eyes, as it relates to inflation, and job growth.

More from Dudley ...

... “The outlook for US job growth and inflation is unacceptable. We have tools that can provide additional stimulus at costs that do not appear to be prohibitive.”

Indeed, when we first used the word “deflation” in the Money Monitor, back in the nineties, and into the first part of the last decade, people scoffed, as this was a word equated to “monetary blasphemy”... and I might have been “charged” as a “heretic” for suggesting that, someday, the Fed would PURSUE INFLATION as a POLICY GOAL.

Now, the New York Fed President openly states that subdued inflation is ...

... “UNACCEPTABLE”!

Welcome to the new world order, where deflation is openly discussed, and inflation is, in fact, pursued by the Federal Reserve, as a policy goal.

Greg goes on to quote Chicago Fed president Charles Evans as favoring easing, and you can bet vice chair Janet Yellen is on board.

But there are voices that question the need for QE2. From the Bill King Report:

Hoenig Opposes Further Fed Easing, Warns About Prices

Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoenig said the central bank shouldn't expand its balance sheet by purchasing more Treasury securities in an effort to spur economic growth... The Kansas City Fed official repeated his view that the Fed should raise its short-term target rate to 1%, then pause to assess the economy's recovery. He also rejected the idea of raising the Fed's informal inflation target above 2% because of concern over the possibility of falling prices.

“I have to tell you it horrifies me,” Hoenig said, responding to an audience question. "It assumes you can fine-tune things like interest rates."

“I have never agreed to” an informal inflation target, he said. “Two percent inflation over a generation is a big impact.”

And then we have a speech from Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher that he gave yesterday at the Minneapolis Economics Club. I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read it in its entirety. It’s well-written and thoughtful. We need more people like him on the Fed.

Let me give you a few paragraphs (all emphasis mine):

... In my darkest moments I have begun to wonder if the monetary accommodation we have already engineered might even be working in the wrong places. Far too many of the large corporations I survey that are committing to fixed investment report that the most effective way to deploy cheap money raised in the current bond or in the form of loans from banks, beyond buying in stock or expanding dividends, is to invest it abroad where taxes are lower and governments are more eager to please. This would not be of concern if foreign direct investment in the US were offsetting this impulse. This year, however, net direct investment in the US has been running at a pace that would exceed minus $200 billion, meaning outflows of foreign direct investment are exceeding inflows by a healthy margin. We will have to watch the data as it unfolds to see if this is momentary fillip or evidence of a broader trend. But I wonder: If others cotton to the view that the Fed is eager to "open the spigots," might this not add to the uncertainty already created by the fiscal incontinence of Congress and the regulatory and rule-making “excesses” about which businesses now complain?

... In performing a cost/benefit analysis of a possible QE2, we will need to bear in mind that one cost that has already been incurred in the process of running an easy money policy has been to drive down the returns earned by savers, especially those who do not have the means or sophistication or the demographic profile to place their money at risk further out in the yield curve or who are wary of the inherent risk of stocks. A great many baby boomers or older cohorts who played by the rules, saved their money and have migrated over time, as prudent investment counselors advise, to short- to intermediate-dated, fixed-income instruments, are earning extremely low nominal and real returns on their savings. Further reductions in rates earned on savings will hardly endear the Fed to this portion of the population. Moreover, driving down bond yields might force increased pension contributions from corporations and state and local governments, decreasing the deployment of monies toward job maintenance in the public sector.

My reaction to reading that article [what Fisher called that eye-popping headline in yesterday's Wall Street Journal: "Central Banks Open Spigot"] was that it raises the specter of compe ive quan ative easing. Such a race would be something of a one-off from compe ive devaluation of currencies, a beggar-thy-neighbor phenomenon that always ends in tears. It implies that central banks should carry the load for stymied fiscal authorities -- or worse, give in to them -- rather than stick within their traditional monetary mandates and let legislative authorities deal with the fiscal mess they have created. It infers that lurking out in the future is a slippery slope of quan ative easing reaching beyond just buying government bonds (and in our case, mortgage-backed securities). It is one thing to stabilize the commercial paper market in a systematic way. Going beyond investment-grade paper, however, opens the door to pressure on a central bank to back financial instruments benefiting specific economic sectors. This inevitably leads to irritation or lobbying for similar treatment from economic sectors not blessed by similar monetary largess.

In his recent book led Fault Lines, Raghuram Rajan reminds us that, “More always seems better to the impatient politician [policymaker]. But any instrument of government policy has its limitations, and what works in small doses can become a nightmare when scaled up, especially when scaled up quickly.... Furthermore, the private sector's objectives are not the government's objectives, and all too often, policies are set without taking this disparity into account. Serious unintended consequences can result.”

http://www.minyanville.com/businessm...d/30477?page=2

[Wild Cobra]

WC, inflation dove.

Not exactly. Like I said, I don't know the full effects. Just floating the idea.

When will people stop jumping to conclusions when there is room to consider things?

[Winehole23]

Can Fisher and Hoenig stand athwart the Keynesian tide at the Fed and get it to stop? Or for that matter, can the growing chorus of noted economists and analysts who openly question the need or wisdom of a QE2?

I doubt it. The Keynesian cowboys are saddling their QE horses and they intend to ride. They have no idea what the end result will be. This is all a guess based on pure theory and models (like the broken money multiplier). And I really question whether the result they hope for is worth the risk of the unintended consequences (more later). As I wrote a few weeks ago:

If it’s because they don't have enough capital, then adding liquidity to the system won’t help that. If it’s because they don't feel they have creditworthy customers, do we really want banks to lower their standards? Isn't that what got us into trouble last time? If it’s because businesses don't want to borrow all that much because of the uncertain times, will easy money make that any better? As someone said, “I don't need more credit, I just need more customers.”

How much of an impact would $2 trillion in QE give us? Not much, according to former Fed governor Larry Meyer, who, according to Morgan Stanley:

... maintains a large-scale macro-econometric model of the US economy that is widely used in the private sector and in public policy-making circles. These types of models are good for running “what if?” simulations. Meyer estimates that a $2 trillion asset purchase program would: 1) lower Treasury yields by 50bp; 2) increase GDP growth by 0.3pp in 2011 and 0.4pp in 2012; and 3) lower the unemployment rate by 0.3pp by the end of 2011 and 0.5pp by the end of 2012. However, Meyer admits that these may be “high-end estimates.”

Some probability of a resumption of asset purchases is already priced in, and thus a full 50bp response in Treasuries is unlikely. Moreover, a model such as Meyer's is based on normal historical relationships and therefore assumes that the typical transmission mechanisms are working. For example, a drop in Treasury yields would lower borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, helping to stimulate consumption, business investment and housing. But there is good reason to believe that the transmission mechanism is at least partially broken at present, and thus the pass-through benefit to the economy associated with a small decline in Treasury yields(relative to current levels) would likely be infinitesimal.

It’s clear, at least from the speeches I read, that if the economy continues to sputter and looks like it may fall into recession, that the need to DO SOMETHING will overwhelm all caution. Not trying the last tool in the box if the economy is rolling over is just not something that will be considered by those of the Keynesian persuasion. Never mind that Congress is getting ready to raise taxes (and has already done so in the case of ObamaCare, to the tune of almost 1% of GDP!); in the face of a slowing economy, the Fed is going to step in and try to do something.

Let me be clear. We do NOT have a monetary problem. And whatever solutions we need aren’t monetary. This is on Congress and the administration. The Fed needs to step aside.

Let Us Count the Unintended Consequences

Is there a chance that it could work? The short answer is, "Yes, but I doubt it." The whole purpose of QE2 is to try and get consumers and businesses spending. For a Keynesian, it’s all about stimulating final consumer demand. That’s tough in a world coming out of a credit crisis, where consumers are wanting to deleverage.

But what if they push a few trillion into the economy and it shows up in the stock market? Or the market just feels good that "Daddy" is doing something and runs up on its own? Can that change consumer sentiment? Will we feel like spending more? Could that be the catalyst? Maybe, but I doubt it. But you can bet your last trillion they’re going to try.

It’s doubtful that any QE2 that’s enough to really do something in the way of reflating assets will be good for the dollar. Now, cynics might say that’s the point, as a falling dollar is supposed to help our exports (and for my international readers, I get it that this is at the expense of other countries). Do we really want to open the first salvo in a race to the currency bottom? If the Fed does it, it gets legitimized everywhere.

(By the way, as I noted a few weeks ago, my call for parity for the euro and the pound is temporarily on hold. Stay tuned. We’ll get back to it.)

But QE2 also drives up commodity costs. Rising oil prices have the same effect on spending as a tax increase. As do rising food costs, etc.

How does one control inflation by printing money on the order of 10% or more of GDP? Is 3% okay? Do you really want to get to 4% and then have to start taking off the stimulus to get inflation under control, and push us back into recession?

You don't get inflation without a rise in interest rates. What about the increased costs of financing an ever-rising government debt? And aren't higher rates what the Fed is fighting? Talk about confusing the market.

Does the Fed really want us to get our animal spirits back up and go back in and borrow more money? Isn't too much leverage what got us into this problem to begin with? Does the Fed really want to persuade us to go out and buy mispriced assets? Should we buy stocks now in hopes that QE2 somehow finds a transmission mechanism and keeps us from recession? If it doesn't work, then all those buyers will get their heads handed to them, making matters even worse.

What if, as I think likely, the QE money simply makes a round trip back to the Fed balance sheet? Do we go for QE3? At the Barefoot Economic Summit I just attended, one very well-connected economist said he would start getting interested about QE when it approached $6 trillion. That’s the number he thinks would be needed to actually have an effect. It raised a few eyebrows when he told that to David Faber on CNBC.

If the money makes a round trip back to the Fed, the markets will get spooked. All kinds of markets.

The only way I think they don’t pursue QE is if the economic data in the next few months suggests the economy is beginning to heal itself. That will make the next few months worth of data more critical than usual. The stock market seems convinced that QE2 will be good for the economy and the markets, and thus bad news will be perversely considered good.

be us in our collective derrieres. I’m not sanguine about 2011. I dearly, truly hope I’m wrong. For your sake, gentle reader, and for the sake of my seven kids.

Ibid.

[Winehole23]

Not exactly. Like I said, I don't know the full effects. Just floating the idea.

Fair enough. I would refer you to the Minyanville article pointing out more liquidity could backfire.

[Winehole23]

The oracles at Goldman say that $750 billion of QE2 is priced in to the market, and possibly $1 trillion -- a frightful prospect that was hardly diminished by today’s lost jobs report. On top of that, there's $300 billion to $400 billion in annual GSE run-off that needs replenishment under QE1.5. So Brian Sack, the monetary apothecary who operates the New York Fed’s drive-thru window, is going to be giving Wall Street a lot of POMO. Call it $100 billion per month of Permanent Open Market Operations, and be done.

Not coincidentally, it appears that there's also baked into the cake about $100 billion per month of new Treasury paper. According to CBO’s August update, the two-year, ulative red ink under current law (FY 2011-2012) will total $1.7 trillion. But that doesn't count the upcoming lame duck session’s predictable one-more-stimulus bacchanalia.

Juiced up by their election rout, the tax-side Keynesians in the GOP are certain to ram through a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for one and all. In return, the hapless White House will insist this one-half trillion dollar gift to the “still haves” be matched with several hundred billion more in presently unscheduled funding for emergency unemployment benefits and other safety net programs for the “no-longer-haves.” In combination, these measures -- along with more realistic economic assumptions -- mean that the FY2011-2012 deficit will be $700 billion higher than current projections, pushing the two-year total to at least $2.5 trillion.

These considerations make one thing virtually certain: After the new Congress sinks into rancorous partisan stalemate and does absolutely nothing about this fiscal hemorrhage, the Treasury will be selling at least the $100 billion per month of new government paper for so long as the New York Fed is open to buy. Stated differently, national policy now amounts to monetizing 100% of the federal deficit.

In the olden times -- say three years ago -- the idea of 100% debt monetization would have been roundly denounced as banana republic finance. No more. Earlier this week, William Dudley, who occupies the Goldman Sachs permanent seat on the Fed’s Open Market Committee, helpfully clarified that the new-age Fed should be judged by what’s in its heart, not what’s on its balance sheet. He said:

I am mindful of concerns… that [the Fed’s actions] could be interpreted as a policy of monetizing the federal debt. However, I regard this view to be fundamentally mistaken. It misses the point of what would be motivating the Federal Reserve.

It's doubtless true that the New York Fed Chairman, hereafter referred to as B-Dud in keeping with his brand of monetary doctrine, has run the Fed model and determined that each $100 billion of QE2 will result in a 9.895564 basis point reduction in the 10-year swaps rate. Still, B-Dud and his gang of merry money-printers on the Open Market Committee should be under no illusion that they have ascended to a new rung on the ladder of central banking sophistry.

They may devoutly believe in their hearts (if hopefully not in their minds) that it's economic milk and honey that they're bringing to America, but in fact what they're dispensing is digital greenbacks. In fact, nearly 150 years ago, Samuel P. Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury and father of the original greenback, proved exactly how.

When the then-diminutive federal budget spewed massive red ink with the onset of the Civil War, Secretary Chase went the direct route and printed up some $400 million in fresh currency -- with his picture on it. It wasn’t Chase’s stern gaze, however, that caused his greenbacks to soon trade at a considerable discount to par, and thereby threaten a runaway inflation. Instead, speculators of the day had no problem effectively shorting (against gold) irredeemable paper money which threatened to be issued in limitless supply.

Chase was a lawyer and former senator from Ohio who nevertheless knew a thing or two about money. So seeing that direct money printing wasn't getting the job done, he came up with an artful backdoor route to monetization. Under the national banking system, which he designed, the Treasury got out of the money-printing business and thereafter issued fixed-term bonds (20- and 40-year maturities) bearing an honest monetary wage, that is, a coupon of about 6%. In turn, newly chartered national banks were given the right to print their own currency (national banknotes) -- so long as it was 100% backed by federal bonds and adequately reserved by gold and other legal tender.

In short, without a central bank research department or thousand equation macro-models, Chase came up with a debt monetization scheme that sufficed to finance the balance of the Civil War. In addition to help from the considerable salesmanship of a one-firm bond dealer community -- otherwise known as the union-wide boiler room operation of Jay Cooke and Co -- Chase was able to place more than a billion of financing without inciting new financial turmoil for an obvious reason. Unlike under the initial non-interest bearing, perpetual “greenbacks,” the national banking act scheme involved the issue of bona fide government debt that bore a 6% coupon and was subject to a plausible redemption date after the war emergency had ended.

The irony, then, is that the current financial environment, the apparent national policy of monetizing all of the debt all of the time amounts to a relapse to Secretary Chase’s original non-starter. At the moment, the five-year note yields barely 1.0%, and the maturities below that quickly descend toward zero -- with the 2-year at 35 bps and 90-day bills at 12 bps. Those maturities account for in excess of 90% of the $9 trillion in Treasury debt presently held by the public. So, in the world of ZIRP, the public debt is now essentially non-interest bearing.

Moreover, with a stroke of the “repo” key it can also be turned into cash -- that is, legal tender -- in a millisecond. Thus, the defining characteristic of Chase’s greenbacks is that they were non-interest-bearing government debt that served as legal tender. Those characteristics precisely define the digital greenbacks being emitted today by Uncle Sam and his central banking branch.

Chase might be forgiven for his failed greenback experiment because his government faced the gravest emergency in the nation’s history. But what emergency motivates today’s greenback experiment? It would appear to be two self-evidently foolish objectives. The first is the claim by the Fed’s money printer’s caucus that QE2 in the magnitude being contemplated might lower the 10-year benchmark rate by 50 basis points. Stunning! We have a nation drowning in 19 million empty housing units owing to the Fed-engineered housing bubble, households still buried in $13 trillion of debt from the same cause, and idle business capacity on a scale not seen since the 1930s -- and we're supposed to believe that taking down the current all-time low interest rate by another 50 bps will make a difference?

Worse still, one salutary effect of this dubious proposition, according to chief apothecary Brian Sack, is that risk asset values are likely to be elevated to levels “higher than they would otherwise” reach -- thereby encouraging consumers to go back to their former spend-thrift ways owing to the illusion of higher net worth, as conjured by the Fed.

These are pretty pathetic reasons for issuing massive quan ies of digital greenbacks. Like all other experiments in printing press finance, its main impact will be to give a destructively erroneous signal to fiscal policymakers on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue: Namely, that chronic, trillion-dollar deficits don’t matter because the Fed is financing them for free.

http://www.minyanville.com/businessm.../2010/id/30473