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With
interest rates impotent, more or less quantitative easing looks the only
policy choice open...
YOU CAN'T BLAME the financial press
for being so wrong, so often.
Every financial decision you might
make today is now a speculation on what will happen to interest rates. So
pretty much every story a financial journalist might write starts and ends
with central-bank cant, too. Because outside the inaction of each monthly
vote, central-bank policy is a mass of half-truths and bunk.
Still, journalists could at least try to pick something like the truth
out of the sound and fury. And you might at least hope the senior staffers would lead by example.
"Are
we seeing a whiff of inflation?" asked CNBC executive editor Patti Dom at the start
of February. Never mind that she was trying to squint at an odor;
copper and tin prices had that very day hit fresh all-time highs. The
"prices paid" index for US manufacturers had just leapt more than
9% year-on-year on the ISM index. Since the Federal Reserve began talking up
QEII in mid-July, global food
prices stood
more than 25% higher on the World Bank's data.
But
hey, all this "worry about inflation is much abo about nothing," reckons a colleague of Dom's at CNBC,
senior features editor Albert Bozzo. Despite the surge in US and European import prices, so clearly led by
surging wage- and input-cost inflation in the emerging world – in turn
led by the surge in food prices that's sparked civil unrest across the Middle
East – "Globalization, much like in the past two decades, is keeping a lid on
inflation," claims Bozzo.
Financial
journalists don't need a comic-opera name to play the fool,
however. "Bank lays ground for interest rate
rises," announced the Financial
Times' economics editor, Chris Giles, on Tuesday this week. "The Bank of England
said monetary policy would need to be tightened to bring medium-term
inflation back on track," the FT's
man stated after Bank of England governor Mervyn
King wrote an open letter to the government – as he's required –
on news that UK inflation hit twice the official target of 2.0% per year in
January.
Yet
come Wednesday
morning,
however, "King denies rate rise certainty," said the headline over Giles'
next piece. Because as the governor himself
stated at this morning's press conference – announcing the Bank of
England's latest Inflation Report
– "Some people are running ahead of themselves and saying that we
are pre-announcing or laying the ground for a rate rise."
You
might think "some people" would feel embarrassed – chastised
even – by the governor's remarks. But no. The Bank's latest Inflation Report, writes Giles at the
top of what might have otherwise read like a retraction, gives "a
verdict likely to reinforce expectations of a gradual rise in rates."
Oh
yeah...?
Old Lady's 2-Year "Fan" Forecast,
Feb. 2009
Actual + Old Lady's New "Fan"
Forecast, Feb. 2011
The
Bank of England claims to aim at (and have some hope of hitting) inflation
two years hence. And as you can see, back at
the start of 2009, the Bank of England's "central forecast" (in
deepest red) foresaw UK consumer price inflation slipping towards zero by the
end of 2010.
Sadly for fixed-income savers and
wage earners alike however, the nearest we got – thanks to Sterling's
one-fifth loss on the currency market, engineered by the Bank's very own
record-low interest rates – was a measly six months below the official
"symmetrical" target of 2.0%.
The target is
"symmetrical" because, in theory and central-bank cant, the Old
Lady is just as concerned about price inflation straying too far above 2.0%
per year as she is about it straying too far below. Perhaps that's where the FT's economics editor got the idea
that the Bank of England is about to raise rates. Because, if symmetrical
targeting were really the aim, as stated, then an aggressive series of rate
rises would surely be warranted by inflation running above the
upper-tolerance of 3.0% for 13 months in a row.
Hell, the mere idea of inflation slipping below
target brought interest rates crashing towards zero! Today's strong and
rising inflation – forecast by the Old Lady herself at perhaps 6% or more
by this summer – must mean the methadone drip of negative real rates
will at least be diluted, right?
"That
decision has not been taken and won't be taken until we get to the next
meeting or the following meeting," said Dr.King
on Wednesday.
"Or
it may be many quarters."
In the absence of action –
and with the Bank's central forecast now pegging inflation below its official
2.0% target by the start of 2013, which is the only time-frame that matters
remember – King's statement looks as close to central-bank action as
finance journalists are going to get. And with the UK's economic growth, real
wage levels and new job creation all pointing in the other direction to
prices, it's all pensioners and cash savers can hope
for, as well.
Knaves or fools, it doesn't
matter. The Bank of England has only just got started doing nothing. To date
the Bank has held its key lending rate at 0.5% for 24 months running –
the longest stretch since it "threw Bank Rate in the bin" for 20
years, as monetary-history professor Glyn Davis put it, after abandoning the Gold Standard in 1931. That was with
Bank Rate stuck at 2.0%, when total war took government debt to 240% of
economic output, but private household debt was very much smaller. Now public
debt-to-GDP has surged again, this time thanks to a war on recession, and
household debt stands near twice annual output.
So just as in the United States
and across Europe, central bankers aren't merely impotent down here at the
"zero bound". Like their predecessors during and after the Great
Depression, they have in truth castrated interest rates as a tool of policy.
More or less quantitative easing looks the only monthly choice left.
Adrian Ash
Head of
Research
Bullionvault.com
You can also Receive your first gram of Gold free by opening an
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City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London, Adrian Ash is
head of research at BullionVault.com – giving you direct access to investment
gold, vaulted in Zurich, on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.
Please Note: This article is
to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for
your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk.
Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events
– and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on
it.
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