The ECB today followed through on it plans to tighten monetary policy, the second time it has done so since April. As I have noted before, tightening monetary policy is the worst thing the ECB could be doing right now if it truly cares about preserving the Eurozone in its current form. If the ECB does care it should be easing monetary policy to help bring about a real appreciation in the core countries and real depreciation in the periphery. Even if the ECB is indifferent there is still no justification for tightening monetary policy based on its objectives. For, as Rebecca Wilder notes, inflation expectations are down and the growth in the ECB's targeted monetary supply is tapering off. So this tightening cycle is truly bewildering. Maybe the tightening cycle is to provide cover to the ECB buying up debt from the periphery or maybe the ECB is trying to hasten what seems to many the inevitable downsizing of the Eurozone. Either way, the band Europe has the right diagnosis of what all this really means.
- Greenspan's Cult of Personality... Review topics and articles of economics: Alan Greenspan was a legend in his time and there was no shortage of praise for him back then. For example, who can forget Bob Woodow's 2000 book Maestro: Greenspan's...
- Yes Tyler, Low Interest Rates Matte... Tyler Cowen is wondering whether the Fed's low interest rates in the early-to-mid 2000s really were that important to the credit and housing boom of the early-to-mid...
- The Eurozone Crisis: Deja Vu... Review topics and articles of economics: Randal Forsyth sees similarities between the current unfolding of the Eurozone crisis and that of the U.S. financial crisis a few years back:Just as the problem on this...
- Charles Plosser and the Burden of F... The Economist's Free Exchange blog is shocked to hear this from Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser:"Since expectations play an important role...
- Arnold Kling and Expected Inflation... Review topics and articles of economics: What do we know about expected inflation? According to Arnold Kling not much if we look to financial markets:I'm also not convinced that we can read expected inflation...
- A Paper on Stabilizing Nominal Spen... Given the recent discussion on stabilizing nominal spending as a policy goal I found this article by Evan F. Koenig of the Dallas Fed to be interesting: The article...
- Why The Low Interest Rates Mattered... Review topics and articles of economics: This is the second of two posts detailing why the Fed's low interest rate policies in the early-to-mid 2000s was one of the more important contributors to the credit and...
- Why The Low Interest Rates Mattered... This is the first of a two-part follow up to my previous post, where I argued that the Fed's low interest rate policy was a key contributor to the credit and housing...
- The Stance of Monetary Policy Via t... Review topics and articles of economics: There has been some interesting conversations on the stance of monetary policy in the past few days between Arnold Kling, Scott Sumner, and Josh Hendrickson. Part of...
- Scott Sumner's New Best Friend:... Joseph Gagnon is calling for $6 trillion more in global monetary easing. This should not be too hard to implement since the Fed is a monetary superpower.Update: The...
0 comments:
Post a Comment