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发表于 2011-10-25 11:39 AM
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在QE3的舆论甚嚣尘上的今天，贴一不合时宜的分析评论短文。
"Put differently, when dealing with major financial busts monetary policy addresses the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the slow recovery. It alleviates the pain, but masks the illness. It gains time, but makes it easier for policymakers to waste it."
全文：
THE Bank for International Settlements, often called the central banker's central bank, is a bastion of conservatism and policy orthodoxy. Unsurprisingly, the BIS is not particularly comfortable with the central bank policy interventions that have been adopted as a response to demand-side weakness at the zero lower bound. And unsurprisingly, the BIS (which demanded in June that "growth must slow") is laying out an intellectual framework to help justify inaction. Here is Claudio Borio:
There is considerable cross-country evidence that banking crises tend to be preceded by unusually strong credit and asset price booms (see below), that those crises go hand-in-hand with permanent output losses (BCBS (2010)), and that subsequent recoveries tend to be slow and protracted (eg Reinhart and Rogoff (2009), Reinhart and Reinhart (2010)). In all probability this reflects a mixture of an overestimation of potential output and growth during the boom, the corresponding misallocation of resources, notably capital, the headwinds of the subsequent debt and real capital stock overhangs, and disruptions to financial intermediation. Fiscal expansions in the wake of the crises can add to these problems, by piling government debt on top of private debt and sometimes threatening a sovereign crisis.
All this reduces the effectiveness of monetary policy in dealing with the bust and exacerbates its unwelcome side-effects. These become apparent once the easing is taken too far after averting the implosion of the financial system. The economy needs balance-sheet repair, but very low interest rates together with ample central bank funding and asset purchases delay the recognition of losses and the repayment of debt. Too much capital has been accumulated in the wrong sectors, but the easing tends to favour investment in the very longlived assets in excess supply (eg construction). The bloated financial sector needs to shrink, but the easing numbs the incentives to do so and may even encourage punting. The financial sector needs to generate healthy earnings, but as short-term interest rates approach zero and the yield curve flattens, they compress banks’ interest margins unless banks take on more interest-rate and, possibly, sovereign risk; and as long-term rates decline, they can generate strains in the insurance and pension fund sectors. Thus, as the easing continues, it raises the risk of perpetuating the very conditions that make eventual exit harder. A vicious circle can develop.
Put differently, when dealing with major financial busts monetary policy addresses the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the slow recovery. It alleviates the pain, but masks the illness. It gains time, but makes it easier for policymakers to waste it. |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2011-10-25 11:57 AM
