No se si se ha comentado, pero parece que definitivamente la Fed ha renunciado a emitir bonos de la Fed. Parece que el Congreso no estaba por la labor de aprobarlo. Y parece que la solución será usar el hecho que desde 2007 la Fed paga intereses en el dinero que los bancos tienen depositado en la Fed.
Esta "tecnicalidad" me parece muy importante y mi teoría es esta:
- Esta claro que una de las razones por la que las base monetaria ha aumentado tanto pero no se ha filtrado al sistema productivo es que desde 2007 Ben Bernanke puede pagar intereses a los depositos que los bancos tienen en la Fed (vemos que son previsores y en 2007 ya se preparaban). Lo que hace esto es que los bancos prefieran dejar el dinero en la Fed cobrando un interés seguro, y no lo presten (que tiene riesgo de impago). Esto ya lo habíamos comentado.
- Esta medida no evita la inflación, solo la retrasa al precio de aumentarla un poco más (los intereses se pagan con dinero creado de la nada).
- La Fed quiere salir de esta por inflación y no por deflación, para así cargarse la deuda del gobierno y de los bancos.
Ben Bernanke & co. saben que la subida de precios tiene un factor psicológico y que si se desmadra es muy dificil de parar. Durante todos los años 70 los tipos de interés subieron (llegaron hasta un 9% si no recuerdo mal) y los preciemos (Y vamoos siguieron subiendo. No fue hasta que Volcker llegó y subió los tipos por encima del 20% y provocó la recesión deflacionaria que no se acabó con la estanflación y la economía volvió a funcionar.
Por lo tanto creo que la Fed usará los intereses que les paga a los bancos sobre sus depositos para poder regular la cantidad de dinero que va a la economía productiva a través de los bancos. Si cree que se van a desmadrar los precios puede subir los intereses que les paga y los bancos prestaran menos, lo que equivale a cerrar el grifo. Y viceversa. Además, así consiguen mantener los tipos con los que prestan a los bancos y al gobierno bajos.
Y que quede claro que creo que esta es su intención, lo cual no quiere decir que lo consigan.
La situación es mucho más "cachonda" de lo que parece porque estarán regulando la cantidad de crédito que va a la economía productiva, mientras se lo dan abundantemente a gobierno y bancos. Vamos, que los usanos van camino de una nueva década de estanflación gracias a sus amigos de la Fed, para limpiar las deudas del gobierno y de los bancos. Que gusto esto de tener un banco central...
*Como siempre, la única alternativa posible que veo es que se les descontrole o que hagan un cambio monetario.
Ahí va la confirmación por parte de la Reserva Federal de que los tiros van por aquí:
Fed Weighs Interest on Reserves as New Benchmark Rate (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
Fed Weighs Interest on Reserves as New Benchmark Rate (Update1)
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve policy makers are considering adopting a new benchmark interest rate to replace the one they’ve used for the last two decades.
The central bank has been unable to control the federal funds rate since the September 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., when it began flooding financial markets with $1 trillion to prevent the economy from collapsing. Officials, who start a two-day meeting today, have said they may replace or supplement the fed funds rate with interest paid on excess bank reserves.
“One option you might want to consider is that our policy rate is the interest rate on excess reserves and we let the fed funds rate trade with some spread to that,” Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker told reporters on Jan. 8 in Linthicum, Maryland.
The central bank needs to have an effective policy rate in place when it starts to raise interest rates from record lows to keep inflation in check, said Marvin Goodfriend, a former Fed economist. Policy makers are concerned that the Fed funds rate, at which banks borrow from each other in the overnight market, may fail to meet the new target, damaging their credibility and their ability to control inflation as the economy recovers.
‘Extended Period’
The choice of a benchmark is the “front line of defense against inflation, and also it’s at the heart of the central bank being able to precisely and flexibly guide interest-rate policy in the recovery,” said Goodfriend, now a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
The Federal Open Market Committee is likely to maintain its pledge to keep interest rates “exceptionally low” for an “extended period” in a statement at about 2:15 p.m. tomorrow, economists said. The Fed probably won’t raise interest rates from record lows until the November meeting, according to the median of 51 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists this month.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, in July Congressional testimony, called interest on reserves “perhaps the most important” tool for tightening credit.
Inflation Concerns
Banks’ excess reserves, or deposits held with the Fed above required amounts, totaled $1 trillion in the two weeks ended Jan. 13, compared with $2.2 billion at the start of 2007. The Fed created the reserves through emergency loans and a $1.7 trillion purchase program of mortgage-backed securities, federal agency and Treasury debt.
By raising the deposit rate, now at 0.25 percent, officials reckon banks will keep money at the Fed and not stoke inflation by lending out too much as the economy recovers.
The new policy may be similar to what the Bank of England does now, said Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Securities in London. The U.K. central bank’s benchmark interest rate, now at 0.5 percent, is the rate it pays on the reserves it holds for commercial banks. It may drain excess liquidity from the system by selling back the gilts it has purchased through its so-called quantitative easing program, Shaw said.
Communications Strategy
Policy makers will need to adopt a communications strategy to explain the new benchmark because “people might have had a hard time getting their mind around the idea that the official rate had become the interest on reserves rate,” said Kenneth Kuttner, a former Fed economist who has co-written research with Bernanke and now teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Without a federal funds target, banks might have to find a new way to set the prime borrowing rate, the figure most familiar to consumers that that is now pegged at three percentage points above the fed funds target.
In the past, the Fed had controlled the rate by buying or selling Treasury securities, adding or withdrawing cash from the system. That mechanism broke down when the Fed started flooding the system with cash after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers to prevent a financial meltdown.
The deposit rate would help set a floor under the fed funds rate because the Fed would lock up funds by offering a fixed rate of interest for a defined period and prohibiting early withdrawals.
‘Risk Free’
“In general, banks will not lend funds in the money market at an interest rate lower than the rate they can earn risk-free at the Federal Reserve,” Bernanke said in an October speech in Washington.
The New York Fed has been testing another tool, reverse repurchase agreements, as a way of pulling cash out of the financial system. In that case, the Fed would sell securities and buy them back at an agreed-upon later date.
There could be complications to using the deposit rate. Banks may be able to generate more revenue by lending at prime rate rather than by earning interest at the Fed, said William Ford, a former Atlanta Fed president at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.
Also, the Fed’s direct control over a policy rate --instead of targeting a market rate -- could skew trading and financing toward short-term borrowing once investors know the rate won’t change between Fed meetings, said Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed monetary-affairs director.
The new reliance on reserve interest could also increase the policy clout of Fed governors in Washington at the expense of the 12 regional Fed bank presidents, Reinhart said.
Congress gave only the Fed governors the authority to set the deposit rate. The presidents have historically favored higher rates and voiced more concern about inflation.
“The Federal Reserve Act puts a very high weight on comity,” said Reinhart, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. Using interest on reserves for setting policy “can change the tenor of the discussions, and I don’t know how they get around it.”
