Krugman takes a stab
If QE really is working through stocks and the dollar, are there further implications? I’m not sure — in a highly indebted society, you might hesitate at policies that would increase private debt further, but if stocks are driving the story, the consumers now spending more aren’t the same people who are in debt trouble — so that’s actually OK. And as for the weaker dollar, if the Chinese and the Brazilians don’t like it, they are free to let their currencies appreciate.
Anyway, that’s my casual take on what has happened. I would say that if it’s right, it’s far from clear that the recovery will prove self-sustaining.
We want to think about both what we would have predicted before and the evidence that we have seen.
When I was pushing for greater Fed stimulus I had two primary mechanisms in mind.
- The decline of the dollar
- A decline in corporate cash holdings
As Krugman notes we see that the dollar has declined and that net exports have been a major contributor to the recovery – as one would predict. Indeed, in the days after QE was floated at Jackson Hole we saw the dollar declining and at here at Modeled Behavior cheered that on as a sign of recovery on the way.
I should note that this is not because I wanted the US to grow at the expense of foreign nations. It was because I was convinced that the majority of the industrialized world was not going to give up on its contractionary monetary policy and so this would be the channel. We would like to see surging growth everywhere, but the ECB and Bank of Japan had already pre-committed to gouging there economies to the greatest extent possible.
Now what about corporate cash. The data from the flow of funds report isn’t fresh enough to tell. The last report in October of 2010 had corporate cash still rising
What about other proxies for the release of corporate cash. Below is year over year change in new orders for Capital Expenditures Excluding Aircraft.
Nothing that we could call a QE2 surge. Indeed a bit of a drop off.
How about wage and salary disbursements
A rise but again nothing we could call a QE2 surge.
Lastly we might want to look at nonfinancial commercial paper outstanding. Perhaps, cash heavy companies are lending more heavily to cash poor ones. That in and of itself should be supportive of growth.
Here we see a bit of a burst since the onset of QE2 but nothing like what I would have expected.
At this point it looks like the corporate cash channel is not moving.
On the other hand US asset prices do seem to be rising. As Krugman mentions this is a plausible channel. Indeed, I think Scott Sumner focused a lot on this channel. Its not, however, a channel that I had previously considered important.
I am also not sure it is consistent with my view of the macro-economy. Yes, consumer spending should rise if asset prices rise, however, those should both be a response to higher expected future profits. So what’s causing higher expected future profits? It can’t simply be higher spending because that’s circular.
It could be that be that a cheaper dollar implies both more sales and higher value sales of US exports which in turn implies higher profits which in turn juices consumer spending. In that way that asset effect is like a multiplier.
Perhaps, but off the cuff the rise in consumer spending seems to large to make sense through that channel.
On balance I would say that the evidence suggests that much of the boost in consumer spending is not through channels consistent with my theory of monetary policy and quantitative easing.
While I would like to claim victory in the intellectual battle over QE, at most the export story is my favor. The rest is not.
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Monday ~ April 4th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
IVV
For a long time I’ve felt that for QE to have the proper stimulatory effect, money has to arrive into the hands of the public. Certainly, it’s the populist position, so I’ve been trying to look for more evidence of this than simple anecdote. If the stimulatory effect of QE is being stopped at the corporate cash level, and economic activity still causes flows to tend toward corporate cash, then it would indicate that the best solution would be to “release the cash furthest from the corporate cash balances and let it flow from there.”
This suggests that giving cash directly to the consumers and letting them use it to consume and repair household balance sheets would stimulate the economy, at least temporarily, and also drive the cash back to the corporate balances anyway where it might stick again. Certainly, if the public hoards the cash, there is no net effect anyway. However, the recent graphs depicting the impact of food and energy commodity prices to different quintiles is further data indicating that the marginal propensity to consume of the lower and middle classes is higher than the marginal propensity to consume of the upper classes. As long as this marginal propensity to consume/invest is greater than that of companies, then it makes sense to increase those balance sheets first.
Monday ~ April 4th, 2011 at 3:56 pm
David Beckworth
Karl:
Given the inherent flaws in QE2–it is ad-hoc, not tied to an explicit rule that would create more long-term certainty, it is not that large–and the hindrances it faces from the U.S. Treasury Department–U.S. Treasury is increasing the average maturity of public debt–it is doing remarkably well in my view.
There are different ways to think about how QE2 works, here is my take on it: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-qe2-worked.html
Monday ~ April 4th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Mark A. Sadowski
Given Krugman’s faith in the concept of the liquidity trap QE2′s success is remarkable in the face of what devotees of fiscal stimulus were predicting starting 2010Q4:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/bernanke-does-a-bad-bad-thing/
With ARRA in full retreat, and even tighter fiscal policy probably on the way courtesy of the Republican controlled House, we should be spiraling downward into a double dip recession just right now. And yet reality is totally confounding their vector autoregressive driven predictions. Curious that the foes of QE2 on the left have conveniently forgotten this “fact” little over a year later.