Fed Policy – Page 5 – The Aleph Blog

Estimating Future Stock Returns

Posted on 9 April 201610 April 2016 by David Merkel

Idea Credit: Philosophical Economics Blog — Idea Credit: Philosophical Economics, but I?estimated and designed the?graphs

There are many alternative models for attempting to estimate how undervalued or overvalued the stock market is. ?Among them are:

Price/Book
P/Retained Earnings
Q-ratio (Market Capitalization of the entire market /?replacement cost)
Market Capitalization of the entire market / GDP
Shiller?s CAPE10 (and all modified versions)

Typically these explain 60-70% of?the variation in stock returns. ?Today I can tell you there is a better model, which is not mine, I found it at the blog?Philosophical Economics.? The basic idea of the model is this: look at the proportion of US wealth held by private investors in stocks using the?Fed?s Z.1 report. The higher the proportion, the lower future returns will be.

There are two aspects of the intuition here, as I see it: the simple one is that when ordinary people are scared and have run from stocks, future returns tend to be higher (buy panic). ?When ordinary people are buying stocks with both hands, it is time to sell stocks to them, or even do IPOs to feed them catchy new overpriced stocks (sell greed).

The second intuitive way to view it is that it is analogous to Modiglani and Miller’s capital structure theory, where assets return the same regardless of how they are financed with equity and debt. ?When equity is a small component as?a percentage of market value, equities will return better than when it is a big component.

What it Means Now

Now, if you look at the graph at the top of my blog, which was estimated back in mid-March off of year-end data, you can notice a few?things:

The formula explains more than 90% of the variation in return over a ten-year period.
Back in March of 2009, it estimated returns of 16%/year over the next ten years.
Back in March of 1999, it estimated returns of -2%/year over the next ten years.
At present, it forecasts returns of 6%/year, bouncing back from an estimate of around 4.7% one year ago.

I have two more graphs to show on this. ?The first one below is showing the curve as I tried to fit it to the level of the S&P 500. ?You will note that it fits better at the end. ?The reason for that it is?not a total return index and so the difference going backward in time are the accumulated dividends. ?That said, I can make the statement that the S&P 500 should be near 3000 at the end of 2025, give or take several hundred points. ?You might say, “Wait, the graph looks higher than that.” ?You’re right, but I had to take out the anticipated dividends.

The next graph shows the fit using a homemade total return index. ?Note the close fit.

Implications

If total returns from stocks are only likely to be 6.1%/year (w/ dividends @ 2.2%) for the next 10 years, what does that do to:

Pension funding / Retirement
Variable annuities
Convertible bonds
Employee Stock Options
Anything that relies on the returns from stocks?

Defined benefit pension funds are expecting a lot higher returns out of stocks than 6%. ?Expect funding gaps to widen further unless contributions increase. ?Defined contributions face the same problem, at the time that the tail end of the Baby Boom needs returns. ?(Sorry, they *don’t* come when you need them.)

Variable annuities and high-load mutual funds take a big bite out of scant future returns — people will be disappointed with the returns. ?With convertible bonds, many will not go “into the money.” ?They will remain bonds, and not stock substitutes. ?Many employee stock options and stock ownership plan will deliver meager value unless the company is hot stuff.

The entire capital structure is consistent with low-ish?corporate bond yields, and low-ish volatility. ?It’s a low-yielding environment for capital almost everywhere. ?This is partially due to the machinations of the world’s central banks, which have tried to stimulate the economy by lowering rates, rather than letting recessions clear away low-yielding projects that are unworthy of the capital that they employ.

Reset Your Expectations and Save More

If you want more at retirement, you will have to set more aside. ?You could take a chance, and wait to see if the market will sell off, but valuations today are near the 70th percentile. ?That’s high, but not nosebleed high. ?If this measure got to levels 3%/year returns, I would hedge my positions, but that would imply the S&P 500 at around?2500. ?As for now, I continue my ordinary investing posture. ?If you want, you can do the same.

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PS — for those that like to hear about little things going on around the Aleph Blog, I would point you to this fine website that has started to publish some of my articles in Chinese. ?This article?is particularly amusing to me with my cartoon character illustrating points. ?This is the English article that was translated. ?Fun!

Fly Away From Helicopter Money

Posted on 23 March 2016 by David Merkel

Photo Credit: Shiny Things || Apologies, this was the best I could find at Flickr with a Creative Commons License

Once I wrote a piece advocating helicopter money, and I called it?2300 Smackers. ?For those who were not reading me back during the bailout, you should know that I vociferously opposed it, and wrote a lot to encourage everyone to oppose it.

The?2300 Smackers?piece was meant to advocate giving the bailout to the American people, and not the banks. ?The piece would have been better if I had advocated limiting the money to debt reduction, but anyway…

Now we are in a situation where helicopter money is once again being advocated — surprising to me, in this Wall Street Journal article, which probably should be an editorial, by Greg Ip, someone I usually respect. ?This is what he advocates:

Helicopter money merges QE and fiscal policy while, in theory, getting around limitations on both. The government issues bonds to the central bank, which pays for them with newly created money. The government uses that money to invest, hire,?send people checks or cut taxes, virtually guaranteeing that total spending will go up. Because the Fed, not the public, is buying the bonds, private investment isn?t crowded out.

Unlike with QE, the Fed promises never to sell the bonds or withdraw from circulation the money it created. It returns the interest earned on the bonds to the government. That means households won?t expect their taxes to go up to repay the bonds. It also means they should expect prices eventually to rise. As spending and prices rise, nominal GDP goes up, so the debt-to-GDP ratio can remain stable.

If this sounds too good to be true, it?s because usually it is. Throughout history, governments that couldn?t or wouldn?t collect enough taxes to finance their spending resorted to the printing press, from the U.S. Confederacy in the 1860s to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. It?s why so many central banks, including the ECB, are prohibited from financing government deficits.

But just because monetizing the debt can cause hyperinflation doesn?t mean it must. In ordinary times, the Fed is continuously monetizing debt to create enough currency to lubricate the wheels of commerce. Between 1997 and 2007, before QE began, its holdings of government debt rose by $355 billion, and currency in circulation rose by a similar amount. In effect, the government borrowed and spent $355 billion and never has to repay it.

In that instance, the Fed only created as much currency as the public wanted. What if it created more, to finance government spending? Even that isn?t necessarily catastrophic. In his book ?Between Debt and the Devil,? which advocates helicopter money, the British economist Adair Turner cites Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, the U.S. Union government in the 1860s and Japan in the early 1930s as examples of governments that used monetary finance without triggering hyperinflation.

An even better example is World War II. The federal government had to borrow heavily to finance the war effort and the Fed helped by buying bonds to keep their yields from rising above 2.5%. Between 1940 and 1945, the Fed?s holdings of debt rose from $2.5 billion to $22 billion, an increase roughly equal to 9% of annual GDP. Though this only financed a fraction of the war, it was still debt monetization: most of those purchases proved to be permanent.

The war effort massively boosted nominal GDP. Initially, only part of that showed up as higher prices, thanks to wage and price controls. Most of it came through a stunning rise in real output, made possible by the economy?s depressed prewar state, a flood of women into the labor force and business innovation to meet the demands of war and the civilian economy. As wage and price controls ended, prices shot up 34% between 1945 and 1948. But then, inflation reverted to low single digits.

I would encourage Greg Ip, Adair Turner and anyone else who is interested to read the book?Monetary Regimes and Inflation?by Peter Bernholz. ?Even if there have been some times where monetizing debt has not led to inflation, the odds are really low that that happens historically. ?Why?

Well, when a government gets a new policy tool, they tend to use it until it stops working or blows something up. ?Seeming success leads to more use (think of trying to trade lower employment for higher inflation in the ’60s), and lack of success leads policymakers their economist lackeys to try more because they say it will work when you do enough of it (think of QE, spit, spit).

It’s kind of like knowing that you have a difficult time with self-control issues, and wondering if you should try a drug offered to you at a party (even alcohol). ?You shouldn’t want to take the risk. ?Upside is low, downside could be very high, and probabilities are tilted the wrong way also.

Now to his credit, Greg Ip ends his piece like this:

Another obstacle?is the institutional separation between monetary and fiscal policy. That separation exists for a good reason: Central banks were granted independence so that they would not become the printing press for feckless politicians. The Fed was uncomfortable?doing the Treasury?s bidding during World War II and dates its de facto independence to the end of the arrangement in 1951. In 2013, Treasury was advised to sell the Fed a platinum coin to get around the statutory debt ceiling. Treasury dismissed the idea as a dangerous violation of Fed independence.

Tampering with this long-standing separation should not be done lightly. For the U.S., which is at close to full employment and in no imminent danger of deflation, the tradeoff hardly seems worthwhile. But there may be times, and countries, when it is. Monetary finance isn?t riskless, Mr. Turner?says, but the alternatives may be worse: stagnation and deflation, or perpetually low interest rates that fuel dangerous bubbles: ?The money finance option should not be excluded as taboo.?

No, money finance?should be taboo. ?Monetary history is replete with examples of where it ended very badly, and with few examples of success.

You know my opinion here. ?It would be far better as a society to get the government out of the macroeconomic policy business, except to regulate banks tightly as they are the source of systemic risk, and let the economy endure booms and busts. ?We won’t have perpetually low interest rates unless the government interferes, as they have done recently and during the Great Depression. ?If anything, government policy has amplified our booms and busts, and makes the present situation worse.

That said, we are going to take some pain from the present economic difficulties, it is just a question of what pain we will get because of too much debt. ?It could be inflation or more debt deflation. ?There could be defaults on government debt or considerably higher taxes. ?I can’t tell what the government will try to do, but whatever it will be, it will be painful.

Thus, diversify and prepare. ?You could do worse than the permanent portfolio idea. ?Consider it.

A Look Inside the Minds of the FOMC

Posted on 17 March 2016 by David Merkel

Doing nothing never did more. 😉 ?Time for the quarterly examination of the composite views of the Federal Open Markets Committee, along with some choice comments on its chief partner-in-crime, the ECB. ? Ready? ?Let’s go!

Now, I promised a look inside the?minds of the FOMC, and hypothetically, that what this will be. ?To begin that, you have to recognize the four regularities of FOMC forecasts, as they might think about it:

We overestimate GDP growth
We underestimate labor unemployment
We overestimate PCE inflation
We overestimate the Fed funds rate

You might ask why they think that way, and if you administered the truth serum, they might say: “We believe the neoclassical view of macroeconomic theory. ?We know?that Fed policy will work, and so we act like we are in control, when we are something in-between being Sorcerer?s apprentices and clinically insane.? We keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.”

Okay, some of that last bit wasn’t fair, at least not fully. ?There *are* some processes where until you do a critical amount of effort, the expected result doesn’t happen. ?But textbook monetary policy isn’t supposed to be that way.

So, take a look at the above GDP predictions graph. ?The “slope of hope” points downhill as the economy does not grow as quickly as they thought it would, given all of their efforts.

The unemployment was similar, except here, they weren’t optimistic enough. ?As it is, they expect unemployment to remain low for a long time, at about the levels that it is now. ?Now, how likely is it for unemployment rates to remain stable for three years? ?Not that likely.

You can almost hear them thinking, “Inflation will come back to 2%. ?After all we’ve been so loose for so long. ?There’s no way it should remain so low when we are creating credit left, right, up, down, forwards and backwards.” ?But then, it doesn’t come — it always stays low. ?Their long run view stays stubbornly at 2%, unlike other views where they let it drift, and that’s because 2% inflation is the religion of the Fed! ?It is the Holy Received Goal, that proper monetary policy will create.

But sometimes they wonder, when it’s dark at night and quiet, “What would it take to create inflation? ?What?”

Finally, they all know that the Fed funds rate will rise. ?It can’t stay low forever, can it?

Behind it all is the nagging worry: “Why doesn’t economic activity pick up?! ?We’re doing everything we can short of doing a helicopter drop of money! ?That has to be enough! ?We don’t want to go to buying investment grade corporates or negative interest rates like that basket-case, the ECB, at least not yet. ?C’mon grow! Grow!”

Note that for each quarter the FOMC has given its projections recently, they have thrown a quarter-percent tightening out the window. ?That’s how overly optimistic they are in setting estimates of future policy.

Leave aside the fact that various risk assets in fixed income land are now flying. ?High-yield isn’t doing badly, but emerging markets debt is taking off — note $EMB which has recently broken its 200-day moving average.

Conclusion

Bad theories beget bad policy tools, which in tern begets bad results. ?The FOMC needs an overhaul of its theories, so that it stops creating speculative bubbles, and learns to be happy with an economy that just muddles along. ?And who knows? ?Give savers a fair rate of return, and maybe the economy will grow faster.

Redacted Version of the March 2016 FOMC Statement

Posted on 16 March 2016 by David Merkel

Comments

Policy continues to stall, as the economy muddles along.
But policy should be tighter. Savers deserve returns, and that would be good for the economy.
The changes for the FOMC?s view is that GDP, inflation, and labor indicators are stronger, and business fixed investment weaker.
Equities rise and bonds rise. Commodity prices rise and the dollar falls.
The FOMC says that any future change to policy is contingent on almost everything.
The key variables on Fed Policy are capacity utilization, labor market indicators, inflation trends, and inflation expectations. As a result, the FOMC ain?t moving rates up much, absent much higher inflation, or a US Dollar crisis.

Trying to Cure the Wrong Disease

Posted on 5 March 2016 by David Merkel

Caption from the WSJ: Regulators don?t think it is the place of Congress to second guess how they size up securities. Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said recently that legislation would ?interfere with our supervisory judgments.? PHOTO: BAO DANDAN/ZUMA PRESS

Catch the caption from the WSJ for the above picture:

Regulators don?t think it is the place of Congress to second guess how they size up securities. Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said recently that legislation would ?interfere with our supervisory judgments.?

Regulators are not required by the Constitution, but Congress, perverse as it is, is the body closest to the people, getting put up for election regularly. ? Of course Congress should oversee financial regulation and monetary policy from?an unelected Federal Reserve. ?That’s their job.

I’m not saying that the Congressmen themselves understand these things well enough to do anything — but that’s true of most laws, etc. ?If the Federal Reserve says they are experts on these matters, past bad results notwithstanding, Congress can get people who are experts as well to aid them in their decisions on laws and regulations.

The above is not my main point, though. ?I have a specific example to draw on: municipal bonds. ?As the Wall Street Journal headline says, are they “Safe or Hard to Sell?” ?For financial regulation, that’s the wrong question, because this should be an asset-liability management problem. ?Banks should be buying assets and making loans that fit the structure of their liabilities. ?How long are the CDs? ?How sticky are the deposits and the savings accounts?

If the maturities of the munis match the liabilities of the bank, they will pay out at the time that the bank needs liquidity to pay those who place money with them. ?This is the same as it would be for any bond or loan.

If a bank, insurance company, or any financial institution relies on secondary market liquidity in order to protect its solvency, it has a flawed strategy. ?That means any market panic can ruin them. ?They need table stability, not bicycle stability. ?A table will stand, while a bicycle has to keep moving to stay upright.

What’s that you say? ?We need banks to do maturity transformation so that long dated projects can be cheaply funded by short-term savers. ?Sorry, that’s what leads to financial crises, and creates the run on liquidity when the value of long dated assets falls, and savers want their money back. ?Let long dated assets that want debt financing be financed by REITs, pension plans, endowments, long-tail casualty insurers, and life insurers. ?Banks should invest short, and use the swap market t aid their asset liability needs.

Thus, there is no need for the Fed to be worrying about muni market liquidity. ?The problem is one of asset-liability matching. ?Once that is settled, banks can make intelligent decisions about what credit risk to take versus their liabilities.

In many ways, our regulators learned the wrong lessons in the recent crisis, and as such, they meddle where they don’t need to, while neglecting the real problems.

But given the strength of the banking lobby, is that any surprise?

Cheapness versus Economic Cyclicality

Posted on 30 January 201631 January 2016 by David Merkel

Photo Credit: Paul Saad || What’s more cyclical than a mine in South Africa?

This is the first of a series of related posts. ?I took a one month break from blogging because of business challenges. ?As this series progresses, I will divulge a little more about that.

When I look at stocks at present, I don’t find a lot that is cheap outside of the stocks of companies that will do well if the global economy starts growing more quickly?in nominal terms. ?As it is, those companies have been taken through the shredder, and trade near their 52-week lows, if not their decade lows.

Unless an industry can be done away with in entire, some of the stocks an economically sensitive industry will survive and even soar on the other side of the economic cycle. ?At least, that was my experience in 2003, but you have to own the companies with balance sheets that are strong enough to survive the through of the cycle. ?(In some cases, you might need to own the debt, and not the common equity.)

The hard question is when the cycle will turn. ?My guess is that government policy will have little to do with the turn, because the various developed countries are doing nothing to clear away the abundance of debt, which lowers the marginal productivity of capital. ?Monetary policy seems to be pursuing a closed loop where little?incremental lending gets to lower quality borrowers, and a lot goes to governments.

But economies are greater than the governments that try to milk them. ?There is a growing middle class around the world, and along with that, a growing need for food, energy, and basic consumer goods. ?That is the long run, absent war, plague, resurgent socialism, etc.

To give an example of how markets can decouple from government policy, consider the corporate bond market, and lending options for consumers. ?The Fed can keep the Fed funds rate low, but aside from the strongest?borrowers, the yields that lesser borrowers?borrow at are high, and reflect the intrinsic risk of loss, not the temporary provision of cheap capital to banks and other strong borrowers.

It’s more difficult to sort through when accumulated organic demand will eventually well up and drive industries that are more economically sensitive. ?Over-indebted governments can not and will not be the driver here. ?(Maybe monetary policy like the 1970s could do it… what a thought.)

So, what to do when the economic outlook for a wide number of industries that look seemingly cheap are poor? ?My answer is buy one of the strongest names in each industry, and then focus the rest of the portfolio on industries with better current prospects that are relatively cheap.

Anyway, this is the first of a few articles on this topic. ?My next one should be on industry valuation and price momentum. ?Fasten your seatbelts and don your peril-sensitive sunglasses. ?It will be an ugly trip.

Redacted Version of the January 2016 FOMC Statement

Posted on 27 January 2016 by David Merkel

Comments

Policy stalls, as their view of the economy catches up with reality.
The changes for the FOMC is that labor indicators are stronger, and GDP weaker.
Equities fall and bonds rise. Commodity prices rise and the dollar falls.? Maybe some expected a bigger move.
The FOMC says that any future change to policy is contingent on almost everything.
The key variables on Fed Policy are capacity utilization, labor market indicators, inflation trends, and inflation expectations. As a result, the FOMC ain?t moving rates up much, absent much higher inflation, or a US Dollar crisis.

Direction Matters More Than Position with Monetary Policy

Posted on 19 December 201520 December 2015 by David Merkel

Photo Credit: International Monetary Fund

As I was reading today, I ran across a quotation from Stanley Fischer, Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve. ?It was from an interview on CNBC in April 2015. ?I went to get the original source, and here it is:

Still, Fischer emphasized that a tightening would be slight.

“We have to ask what will go wrong,” he said. “I say that if we get this in proportion, we’re going to be changing monetary policy from the most extremely expansionary we’ve been able to do in all of history, to an extremely expansionary monetary policy.”

Fischer added that the expected increase of a quarter of a percent would be the lowest rates had ever been if not for the recent move to zero.

This is the same mistake that Ben Bernanke made when he talked about the “taper” back in 2013, and the same error that Janet Yellen is making now. At any given point in time, there is a schedule of interest rates going out into the future that reflects the future path of rates that the Fed controls.??This isn’t perfect because?almost none of us can borrow at those rates, but if credit spreads don’t vary much, movements in the schedule of rates, driven by expectations of monetary policy, affect business actions.

This implies two things:

Direction matters more than position in monetary policy. ?If expectations have moved from “zero for a long time” to “over 1% by the end of next year,” that is a large shift in expectations, and should slow business down as a result.
As a result, you can look at the Treasury curve as a proxy for the effectiveness of monetary policy.

On that second point, I have collected the Treasury yield curves since the middle of 2015 on the days after monetary policy announcements. ?Here they are, so far:

Maturity	1MO	3MO	6MO	1	2	3	5	7	10	20	30
6/18/2015	0.00	0.01	0.08	0.26	0.66	1.03	1.65	2.08	2.35	2.86	3.14
7/30/2015	0.05	0.07	0.15	0.36	0.72	1.07	1.62	2.02	2.28	2.66	2.96
9/18/2015	0.00	0.00	0.10	0.35	0.69	0.97	1.45	1.83	2.13	2.58	2.93
10/29/2015	0.02	0.07	0.21	0.33	0.75	1.05	1.53	1.90	2.19	2.60	2.96
12/17/2015	0.18	0.23	0.48	0.69	1.00	1.33	1.73	2.05	2.24	2.57	2.94

You can see the impact of the FOMC tightening out to five years, maybe seven. ?After that, there is no effect, so far, except to say that the yield curve is already flattening, and that the Fed my end up stopping much sooner than many expect — including the FOMC and their “dot plot” which expects a 2%+ Fed funds rate in 2017, and 3%+ in 2018. ?Unless the long end of the yield curve reprices up in yield, there is no way those higher Fed funds rates?will happen.

Which brings me back to Stanley Fischer. ?He’s a smart guy, perhaps the smartest on the Fed Board. ?Maybe he meant there was no way rates could rise much for a long time. ?If that’s the case, he may be way ahead of the curve. ?Only time will tell.

The Graphs Go Southeast

Posted on 18 December 2015 by David Merkel

If you always overestimate, and don't change, what does that imply? — If you always overestimate, and don’t change, what does that imply?

Since the FOMC started providing their estimates on economic aggregates four years ago, I’ve been simplifying them, and posted a weighted average to cut through the clutter of their releases. ?From the above graph, you can see one thing that is consistent: ?They overestimate GDP. ?Far from seeing GDP over 3%, GDP has come in squarely in the 2% range.

It may even be that this is slowly wearing on the participants, who have progressively lowered their initial estimates of future GDP over time. ?You can see that in the initial estimates of GDP 2014-2018, and also the decline in long-term GDP moving from 2.5% to 2.0% in four short years.

The FOMC is no different than the rest of us — they are subject to groupthink and playing catch-up.

You can give them a little more credit on unemployment. ?At least things are going the way they would like. ?That said, improvement in the unemployment rate has exceeded their estimates, while GDP has fallen under their estimates.

They live in a bubble, so please don’t tell them that labor measures don’t correlate so tightly with the economy as a whole. ?I mean, in the long run, the correlation is high and significant, but as far as short-term policy goes, the relationship has a lot of noise, particularly amid globalization and improvements in technology.

Same applies to the PCE inflation rate… they think they can get inflation going (whether truly desirable or not). ?So where is it? ?Federal Reserve, you say you have the vaunted powers to create and destroy inflation. ?If you can do something, do it.

My guess is that the Fed?won’t do it. ?As with most central banks, they have engaged in a game where they increase some aspects of internal credit, and in a way where precious little if any leaks out to the unfavored wretches with no access.

On the short-term bright side, they absorb government debt, which makes it easier for the US Government to keep our taxes low. ?On the dim side, central banks buying lots of government debt has tended to backfire in the past.

Finally, the FOMC participants have overestimated for the last four years the need and willingness to tighten monetary policy.

Can we agree that QE really didn’t do that much, and that the unemployment rate pretty much solved itself, aside from losing a lot workers permanently? ?These graphs behave the way a bunch of “true believers” would think their great power should ?work, and them slowly give in to reality annually, but not permanently.

Anyway, consider these articles post-Fed tightening:

Fed Ends Zero-Rate Era; Signals 4 Quarter-Point Increases in 2016 Bloomberg)

This article is too excited, the math of the FOMC indicates more like 3 quarter-point moves. ?Also note that the FOMC is not very permanent about their views, plans, or whatever.

The Fed and Wall Street Differ on How High Rates Will Go (Bloomberg)

Wall Street, correctly looking at the past says that the Fed has moved slower than they said they would. ?Why should it be any different now?

Fed Raised Rates Without a Hitch, and It Only Took $105 Billion (Bloomberg)

Too triumphalist about the first tightening. ?Wait for the cost of funds to catch up at the banks.

Fed Hikes, but Some Rates Veer Lower (WSJ) Subtitle:?Yields on Treasurys drop after central-bank move

That’s part of what I would tell you to watch — if the yield curve flattens quickly, the FOMC will not do so much, most likely. ?They will still keep going till something blows up.

One final note, and one that I don’t have a link for… Moody’s suggested in a macroeconomic note that yield spreads on junk debt are too high for the FOMC to tighten much. ?Nice thought, though we are in an unusual situation for both Fed funds and junk debt. ?That rule may?not apply.

Redacted Version of the December 2015 FOMC Statement

Posted on 16 December 2015 by David Merkel

Photo Credit: Day Donaldson

October 2015	December 2015	Comments
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace.	Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in October suggests that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace.	No change.
Household spending and business fixed investment have been increasing at solid rates in recent months, and the housing sector has improved further; however, net exports have been soft.	Household spending and business fixed investment have been increasing at solid rates in recent months, and the housing sector has improved further; however, net exports have been soft.	No change.
The pace of job gains slowed and the unemployment rate held steady. Nonetheless, labor market indicators, on balance, show that underutilization of labor resources has diminished since early this year.	A range of recent labor market indicators, including ongoing job gains and declining unemployment, shows further improvement and confirms that underutilization of labor resources has diminished appreciably since early this year.	Shades labor employment up.
Inflation has continued to run below the Committee’s longer-run objective, partly reflecting declines in energy prices and in prices of non-energy imports.	Inflation has continued to run below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run objective, partly reflecting declines in energy prices and in prices of non-energy imports.	No real change.
Market-based measures of inflation compensation moved slightly lower; survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.	Market-based measures of inflation compensation remain low; some survey-based measures of longer-term inflation expectations have edged down.	Little change and mixed.? TIPS are showing lower inflation expectations since the last meeting. 5y forward 5y inflation implied from TIPS is near 1.71%, down 0.08% from September.
Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability.	Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment and price stability.	No change. Any time they mention the ?statutory mandate,? it is to excuse bad policy.
The Committee expects that, with appropriate policy accommodation, economic activity will expand at a moderate pace, with labor market indicators continuing to move toward levels the Committee judges consistent with its dual mandate.	The Committee currently expects that, with gradual adjustments in the stance of monetary policy, economic activity will continue to expand at a moderate pace and labor market indicators will continue to strengthen.	Shifts language to reflect moving from easing to tightening.
The Committee continues to see the risks to the outlook for economic activity and the labor market as nearly balanced but is monitoring global economic and financial developments.	Overall, taking into account domestic and international developments, the Committee sees the risks to the outlook for both economic activity and the labor market as balanced.	Flips the sentence around with little change in meaning.
Inflation is anticipated to remain near its recent low level in the near term but the Committee expects inflation to rise gradually toward 2 percent over the medium term as the labor market improves further and the transitory effects of declines in energy and import prices dissipate. The Committee continues to monitor inflation developments closely.	Inflation is expected to rise to 2 percent over the medium term as the transitory effects of declines in energy and import prices dissipate and the labor market strengthens further. The Committee continues to monitor inflation developments closely.	CPI is at +0.4% now, yoy.? Not much change in the meaning.
The Committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate when it has seen some further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.	The Committee judges that there has been considerable improvement in labor market conditions this year, and it is reasonably confident that inflation will rise, over the medium term, to its 2 percent objective.	Sentence moved from below.? I reordered the last FOMC Statement to reflect the change. Language changes to reflect the move to tightening.
To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate.	Given the economic outlook, and recognizing the time it takes for policy actions to affect future economic outcomes, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent.	Language changes to reflect the move to tightening.
In determining whether it will be appropriate to raise the target range at its next meeting, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.	The stance of monetary policy remains accommodative after this increase, thereby supporting further improvement in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation.	Language changes to reflect the move to tightening.
	In determining the timing and size of future adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess realized and expected economic conditions relative to its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation.	New sentence.? Gives expected measures for analysis of policy.
This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments.	This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments.	No change.? Gives the FOMC flexibility in decision-making, because they really don?t know what matters, and whether they can truly do anything with monetary policy.
	In light of the current shortfall of inflation from 2 percent, the Committee will carefully monitor actual and expected progress toward its inflation goal. The Committee expects that economic conditions will evolve in a manner that will warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate; the federal funds rate is likely to remain, for some time, below levels that are expected to prevail in the longer run. However, the actual path of the federal funds rate will depend on the economic outlook as informed by incoming data.	New sentence.? Says that they will go slowly, and react to new data.? Big surprises, those.
The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. This policy, by keeping the Committee’s holdings of longer-term securities at sizable levels, should help maintain accommodative financial conditions.	The Committee is maintaining its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities in agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction, and it anticipates doing so until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate is well under way. This policy, by keeping the Committee’s holdings of longer-term securities at sizable levels, should help maintain accommodative financial conditions.	Says it will keep reinvesting maturing proceeds of agency debt and MBS, which blunts any tightening.
When the Committee decides to begin to remove policy accommodation, it will take a balanced approach consistent with its longer-run goals of maximum employment and inflation of 2 percent. The Committee currently anticipates that, even after employment and inflation are near mandate-consistent levels, economic conditions may, for some time, warrant keeping the target federal funds rate below levels the Committee views as normal in the longer run.		Sentence no longer needed.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Janet L. Yellen, Chair; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Lael Brainard; Charles L. Evans; Stanley Fischer; Dennis P. Lockhart; Jerome H. Powell; Daniel K. Tarullo; and John C. Williams.	Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Janet L. Yellen, Chair; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Lael Brainard; Charles L. Evans; Stanley Fischer; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart; Jerome H. Powell; Daniel K. Tarullo; and John C. Williams.	All agree on tightening, but do they agree on why?
Voting against the action was Jeffrey M. Lacker, who preferred to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points at this meeting.		Lacker got what he wanted.

Comments

They finally tightened. The next two questions are how much and how quickly.? The last question is what they do when something blows up.
The only data change for the FOMC is that labor indicators are stronger. I still don?t see it, aside from the unemployment rate.? Too many people dropped out of the labor force.
Equities steady and bonds rise. Commodity prices rise and the dollar falls.? Maybe some expected a bigger move.
The FOMC says that any future change to policy is contingent on almost everything.
Don?t know they keep an optimistic view of GDP growth, especially amid falling monetary velocity.
The key variables on Fed Policy are capacity utilization, labor market indicators, inflation trends, and inflation expectations. As a result, the FOMC ain?t moving rates up, absent improvement in labor market indicators, much higher inflation, or a US Dollar crisis.