100 Years of the Federal Reserve

100 Years of the Federal Reserve

There was a time when no one, outside perhaps the most esoteric economic geek circles, could name the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Those days are now long gone as the Fed has taken a much more active role in the economy and the various Fed Presidents and Chairman have evolved into media cult figures, perhaps less riveting than the latest Kardashian marriage collapse, but financially far more provocative.

 

The Fed’s current focus is clearly helping Uncle Sam reflate out of the government’s enormous mountain of debt. The chart on the next page shows the mountain of debt that has been created by impressive levels of spending from both sides of the aisle for a truly bi-partisan mess. The deficit is now almost three times what it was seven years ago, while debt service costs are at about the same level, thanks to Fed sponsored suppression of interest rates. The Fed effectively has complete control of the market for longer-dated Treasuries, with its holdings of bonds with a maturity greater than 10 years increasing by $154 billion through June of this year, (latest data available from the Fed) to a total of over $500 billion. Meanwhile the total outstanding level of such debt, privately held interest-bearing, grew a measly $9.6 billion for a total of $809 billion.


For those of you who enjoy a monetary policy geek-fest, the following summary of comments from the various speakers at the Cato Institute’s Monetary Policy Conference on November 14th, including current Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser may be of great interest. I’ll do my best to keep it lively.

 

Charles Plosser opened the conference with a discussion of how many of the both implicit and explicit limits on central banks around the world have been challenged over the past few decades and most dramatically since the financial crisis. He believes the Fed entered into the realm of fiscal policy when it began purchasing non-Treasury securities such as mortgage-backed securities and referenced Milton Friedman’s warning in 1967 that, “We are in danger of assigning to Monetary Policy a greater task than it can accomplish.” Over the past 40 years, it is clear that we have failed to heed Friedman’s warning, with the Fed doing a poor job of aligning expectations with what it is actually capable of accomplishing. Plosser warned that increasing the scope of the Fed’s mandate opens the door for highly discretionary policies, acknowledging that a rules-based approach is unattractive for the majority of policy makers as it ties their hands.,Discretion is the antithesis of commitment, something most politicians loathe. If the Fed gave itself less discretion, it would be held more accountable. He pointed out that the current climate of guess-my-mood communication on the Fed’s part leads investors to make unwise gambles, as they try to read the mysterious tea leaves of Fed speak, such as the recent market tumult over taper talk.

 

Jerry Jordan, the former President of the Cleveland Federal Reserve expanded on Plosser’s comments, pointing out that the existence of a Central Bank with discretionary power essentially guarantees the emergence of moral hazard with the resulting power to grant permission and regulate with discretion, opening the door to crony capitalism. To large banks, their PACs, (Political Action Committees) are often more impactful on their bottom line than their own management. (Shocker, businesses as well as individuals respond to incentives!) He referenced the Fed’s recent report on the impact of quantitative easing on the economy stating that if there is any relationship between economic growth and quantitative easing, it is a remarkably well kept secret, instigating a round of chuckles from the audience. He pointed out that most economists understand that monetary policy cannot correct the mistakes of the rest of government, even though the Fed is currently doing its best to defy that assessment. He argued that central bank independence is a myth, at least during a financial crisis, because once a central bank takes its first steps to support the economy, there is no way out that does not involve collateral damage. That, by definition, prompts pressure from bureaucrats. He believes that exiting the current zero interest rate regime will be exceedingly complex and it will be impossible to escape without considerable financial market volatility. He seconded Plosser’s assessment of the Fed’s move into fiscal policy, asserting that traditional views of monetary policy and its impact are no longer useful as monetary policy has become fiscal policy. This move into fiscal policy has served to increase market volatility as no one can say with certainty, which entities will receive support during a crisis and for how long. Once again, discretion comes at a price.

 

Cato President and CEO John Allison, (former CEO of BB&T Corp, a U.S bank with over $180 billion in assets) discussed the impact he saw of government actions on his former bank. He pointed out that the Patriot Act and the federal privacy policy are in conflict with each other, leading to discretionary enforcement and application by regulators, which opens the door for corruption. He observed one of the great fallacies of current conventional wisdom is that there was financial deregulation under President George W. Bush which led to the crisis. Instead, Allison stated that there was actually a net increase in regulation if you look at the quantity and complexity of the regulations before and after his term. He believes that regulators greatly exacerbated the panic that hit the markets during the financial crisis by effectively suspending the rule of law and greatly increasing their level of discretion. No one had confidence in just what were the rules of the game, nor was there any clarity on who would be bailed out, who wouldn’t, and at what cost and for how long.

 

Kevin Dowd, Professor of Finance and Economics, Durham University, reinforced John Allison’s assertions, pointing out that the original Federal Reserve Act is about 32 pages long. The Glass-Steagall Act is under 40 pages long. The Volker Rule is just under 550 pages. Dodd-Frank, so far, is nearly 850 pages with most expecting it to total around 20,000 pages or more when all the discretionary bits are worked out. Notice a trend in the timeline here? The more complex the regulations, the more costly it is to enforce them, and to comply with them, creating a bias towards ever larger financial institutions, and increasing the opportunity for corruption.

 

For those of you who’d like a bit more, aside from suggesting you look into therapy as my family reiterates every holiday, I recommend going to this site to watch clips of some of the presentations. Despite the gloomy potential, there were frequent rounds of boisterous laughter, albeit the geeky economist style which I enjoy more than I ought to admit.

Interest Rates and National Debt

Interest Rates and National Debt

Interest-Rates-and-National-DebtThe Federal Reserve has been under considerable pressure to provide details for just how it will control all the excess liquidity that it has created through quantitative easing. The Fed’s balance sheet, which can roughly be thought of as a proxy for the potential money supply, is almost 2.4 times the size it was in 2007. Last month I discussed how excess bank reserves have skyrocketed to nearly $1.7 trillion after having historically averaged near zero since the inception of the Federal Reserve. The Fed has argued that it will be able to slowly raise interest rates and carefully reign in those excess funds to prevent rampant inflation. This is something that has never in history been accomplished, so there is no clear roadmap for how to do this successfully, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume that the Fed is indeed capable. The question then becomes, “How will rising interest rates affect the economy and investing?” One of the largest impacts of rising interest rates will be on the financials of the federal government. The chart above shows the U.S. National Debt from 1950 to 2012 (left hand axis) and the annual deficit/surplus (right hand axis). The current national debt is over $16 trillion. Over the past 5 years, the annual deficit has averaged $1.4 trillion. The national debt as a percent of GDP is almost double what it was in 2007. The annual deficit is 9 times the size it was in 2007. The recent sequester cuts sent D.C. into apoplectic fits with dire warnings of impending doom, however those “cuts”, according to the Congressional Budget Office, represented a decrease in the amount of spending increase that is less than the total increase, which means there will still be an increase in net spending after the sequester, (see Congressional Budget Office “Final Sequestration Report for Fiscal Year 2013” published March 2013). Given the emotional hoopla and doomsday rhetoric, it is reasonable to assume that the current level of deficit spending is unlikely to decrease significantly anytime soon.

The current 10 year Treasury interest rate is about 1.8%. It reached its lowest level in July 2012 at 1.53% and the highest rate was 15.32% in September 1981 when Paul Volker put the kibosh on inflation. The historical average rate has been about 4.6%. The current annual interest payment on the debt is just over $220 billion. If interest rates were to rise to only the historical average of 4.6%, that would be an increase of 2.8%, which would be an increase of nearly $110 billion, if we assume for simplicity that all the new issuance is a 10 year terms. (The reality is that some would be shorter term, some would be longer, and this is just meant to give an approximation to illustrate the magnitude of the impact.) That means interest expense on the debt would increase a whopping 50% in the next year. If the deficit spending continued at about the same rate for the next 6 years, annual debt interest payments would become the government’s costliest expense by 2020. For every year that we continue to deficit spend, increasing the national debt, the magnitude of the impact of rising interest rates increases.

That puts the Federal Reserve into quite a pickle if the economy does in fact gets some legs and inflation ignites. Don’t raise rates and face punishing inflation. Raise rates and D.C. is going to be put under even more pressure to reduce spending. No wonder Chairman Ben Bernanke has been giving subtle indications that he isn’t keen on yet another term as Chairman!

GDP and Corporate Growth

GDP and Corporate Growth

GDP and Corporate Growth

None of the four major components of the business cycle, (real income, sales, production and employment) have managed to get back to their 2007 highs, even now as we enter the fifth year of the recovery. This is truly a record, if an unfortunate one.

The chart above shows the continual stop and go pattern that has been GDP growth since the financial crisis. Never before in modern history has the U.S. experienced this many post-recession quarters without having at least one back-to-back 3% plus growth in GDP.  The first quarter of 2013 was reported on Friday April 26th to have grown by 2.5%, while the second quarter of 2013 is currently forecasted to be below 2%.

Corporate Earnings

As we head into the first quarter’s earnings season, 78% of companies have issued negative earnings preannouncements, the highest percentage of companies issuing negative earnings guidance since FactSet began tracking the data in Q1 2006.

The chart above shows in red, the percent of negative preannouncements by quarter and in green the percent of positive preannouncements with the S&P in blue. This is a troublesome trend to say the least and has us watching the market movement carefully. Eventually, stock market growth must be supported by corporate earnings growth and the trend for the past 11 quarters has been fewer and fewer positive corporate earnings surprises, as this chart clearly illustrates. The quantitative easing objective of driving up stock prices in order to create a wealth effect that leads to consumers and businesses spending more is not translating into better than expected corporate earnings.