Janet Yellen

Janet Yellen is not going to takeaway the punchbowl any time soon

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Central banks are primarily in the business of sending out messages to the financial markets. In a statement released on January 28, 2015, the Federal Reserve of the United States had said: “Based on its current assessment, the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.”
In simple English what this means is that the Fed would be patient when it comes to increasing the federal funds rate, which in the aftermath of the financial crisis which started in September 2008, has been in the range of 0-0.25%. The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which one bank lends funds maintained at the Federal Reserve to another bank on an overnight basis. It acts as a sort of a benchmark for the interest rates that banks charge on their short and medium term loans. This is the longest period for which the rate has remained at such low levels, in over fifty years.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world had cut interest rates to very low levels in the hope of encouraging people to borrow and spend more, to get their moribund economies going again.
While people did borrow and spend to some extent, a lot of money was borrowed at low interest rates in the United States and other developed countries where central banks had cut rates, and it found its way into stock markets and other financial markets all over the world. This led to a massive rallies in prices of financial assets. In an era of close to zero interest rates the stock market in the United States has seen the longest bull market after the Second World War.
Given this, the stock markets in the United States and in other parts of the world have been doing well primarily because of this low interest rate scenario that prevails. With the return available from fixed income investments(like bonds and bank deposits) down to very low levels, money has found its way into the stock market.
The January 28 statement was released after a meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee(FOMC) which is mandated to decide on the federal funds rate. These meetings of the FOMC are followed very closely all over the world simply because if the Federal Reserve does decide to start raising the federal funds rate or even give a hint of it, stock markets all over the world will fall.
After the January meeting, the FOMC met again on March 17-18, 2015. In a statement that the Federal Reserve released yesterday (i.e. March 18) after the FOMC meeting, it had dropped the word “patient”. So does this mean that the Federal Reserve will start to be “impatient” when it comes to the federal funds rate?
The Federal Reserve chairperson Janet Yellen held a press conference yesterday after the two day meeting of the FOMC, in which she clarified that: “Modification of our guidance should not be interpreted to mean that we have decided on the timing of that increase. In other words, just because we removed the word “patient” from the statement doesn’t mean we are going to be impatient.”
So what Yellen was essentially saying is that even though the Fed had removed the word “patient” from its statement released yesterday, it was not going to be “impatient,” when it comes to increasing the federal funds rate in particular and interest rates in general. Welcome to the world of central bank speak.
In fact, Yellen also clarified that the FOMC won’t increase the federal funds rate when it meets next towards the end of April, next month. At the same time she said there was a chance that the FOMC might raise the federal funds rate in the meetings after April.
This statement of Yellen has led to the conclusion in certain sections of the media that the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates June onwards, when it meets next after the April meeting. Only if things were as simple as that. Chances of the FOMC raising interest rates this year are remote. There are multiple reasons for the same.
First and foremost is the fact that inflation in the United States is well below the Federal Reserve’s preferred target of 2%. In fact, for the month of January 2015, this number was at 1.3% much below the Fed’s target of 2%. The Fed’s forecast for inflation for 2015 is between 0.6% to 0.8%. At such low inflation levels, the interest rates cannot be raised.
Inflation is down primarily because of low oil prices as well as the fact that the dollar has rallied (i.e. appreciated) against other major currencies of the world, in the process making imports cheaper for the people of United States. Lower import prices have a significant impact on inflation. The dollar has gone up in value against the yen and the euro primarily because of the money being printed by the Bank of Japan and the European Central bank. This money printing is not going to stop any time soon. As more money is printed and pumped into the financial system, interest rates are likely to remain low. At low interest rates the hope is that people will borrow and spend more and this will benefit businesses and the overall economy.
Getting back to the dollar, an appreciating currency has the same impact on the economy as higher interest rates. Higher interest rates are supposed to slowdown demand and in the process economic growth. Along similar lines when a currency appreciates, the exports of the country become expensive and this leads to a fall in exports. This slows down economic growth. Hence, in a way an appreciating dollar has already done a part of what the Fed would have done by raising interest rates.
With a lot of money printing happening in other parts of the world, chances are the dollar will continue to appreciate. Also, oil prices are likely to remain low during the course of this year, meaning low inflation in the US.
Further in December 2014, the Fed had forecast that economic growth in the US in 2015 will range between 2.6% to 3%. This has been slashed to 2.3% to 2.7%. In this scenario , it doesn’t seem likely that the Federal Reserve will raise the federal funds rate any time soon (may be not during the course of 2015).
William McChesney Martin, the longest serving Federal Reserve Chairman, once said that the job of the Fed is “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” Yellen as of now doesn’t want to spoil the party. What this means is that the stock market rallies in large parts of the world are likely to continue in the days to come.
The only thing one can say at this point of time is—Stay tuned!

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on Mar 19,2015

A 400 year old economic theory that the world has forgotten about

yellen_janet_040512_8x10Vivek Kaul

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which decides on the monetary policy of the United States, had its last meeting for this year scheduled on December 16-17th, 2014. After this meeting, Janet Yellen, the Chairperson of the Federal Reserve spoke to the media.
Everything Yellen spoke about during the course of the press conference was closely analysed by the financial media all over the world. The gist of what Yellen said at the press conference was that she expects that the Federal Reserve will start raising the federal funds rate sometime next year.
The federal funds rate or the interest rate at which one bank lends funds maintained at the Federal Reserve to another bank, on an overnight basis, acts as a benchmark for the short-term interest rates in the United States. The last time the Federal Reserve increased the federal funds rate was in 2006.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve decided to print money and pump it into the financial system by buying government bonds and mortgage backed securities. The Federal Reserve referred to this as the asset purchase programme. The economists called it quantitative easing. And for those who did not want to bother with jargons, this was plain and simple money printing.
This was done to ensure that there was enough money going around in the financial system and interest rates remained low. At low interest rates the hope was that people would buy homes, cars and consumer durables. This would drive business growth, which in turn would drive economic growth, which would create both jobs and some inflation.
While this has happened to some extent, what has also happened is that a lot of money has been borrowed by financial institutions at very low interest rates and has found its way into stock markets and other financial markets all over the world. This has led to bubbles.
The economic theory explaining this phenomenon was put forward by Richard Cantillon, an Irish-French economist who lived during the early eighteenth century. He basically stated that money wasn’t really neutral and that it mattered where it was injected into the economy.
Cantillon made this observation on the basis of all the gold and silver coming into Spain from what was then called the New World (now South America). When money supply increased in the form of gold and silver, it would first benefit the people associated with the mining industry, that is, the owners of the mines, the adventurers who went looking for gold and silver, the smelters, the refiners and the workers at the gold and silver mines. These individuals would end up with a greater amount of gold and silver, that is, money. They would spend this money and thus, drive up the prices of meat, wine, wool, wheat, etc.
This rise in prices would impact even people not associated with the mining industry, even though they hadn’t seen a rise in their incomes, like the people associated with the mining industry had. This was referred to as the Cantillon effect.
Interestingly, Cantillon was also an associate of John Law. In 1705, John Law published a text titled Money and Trade Considered, with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money. Law was of the opinion that money was only a means of exchange and that a nation could achieve prosperity by increasing the amount of money in circulation.
The problem of course was that when it came to gold and silver coins, only so much currency could be produced. But this disadvantage was not there with paper money. Law firmly believed that by circulating a greater amount of paper currency in the economy, commerce and wealth of a nation could be increased.
His theory was in place. But, like a physicist or a chemist, it could not be tested in a laboratory. Law needed a nation that was willing to let him test his theory. And France proved to be that nation. In 1715, France was the richest and the most powerful country in the world. But at the same time it was also almost bankrupt.
This was primarily because the country did not have a central bank of its own like the Dutch and the British had. Law’s idea was to create a central bank which would have the right to issue paper money which would be a legal tender. He also wanted to create a company which would have a monopoly of trade. This would create a monopoly of both finance as well as trade for France and the profits thus generated would help pay off the French debt.
Law went around establishing a bank called the Banque Royale and formed a company called the Mississippi Company, which was given a 25-year-long lease to develop the French territory along the Mississippi River and its tributaries in the United States. The Banque Royale was allowed to issue paper notes guaranteed by the French Crown.
Cantillon was an associate of John Law and observed the entire thing very closely. As Bill Bonner writes in Hormegeddon—How Too Much of a Good Thing Leads to Disaster: “Cantillon noticed that Law’s new paper money backed by the shares of the Mississippi Company—didn’t reach everyone at the same rate. The insiders—the rich and the well connected—got the paper first. They competed for goods and services with it as though it were as good as the old money. But by the time it reached the labouring classes, this new money had been greatly discounted—to the point, eventually, where it was worthless.”
This was the Cantillon effect. As analyst Dylan Grice told me during the course of an interview: “Cantillon, writing before the days of Adam Smith, was the first to articulate it. I find it very puzzling that this insight has been ignored by the economics profession. Economists generally assume that money is neutral. And Milton Friedman’s allegory about the helicopter drop of money raising the general price level completely ignores the question of who is standing under the helicopter.”
The money printed by the Federal Reserve in the aftermath of the financial crisis has been unable to meet its goal of trying to create consumer-price inflation and getting consumer spending up and running again. But it has benefited those who are closest to the money creation. This basically means the financial sector and anyone who has access to cheap credit. They were the ones standing under the helicopter when the money was printed and dropped.
Institutional investors have been able to raise money at close to zero percent interest rates and invest it in financial assets all over the world, driving up the prices of those assets and made money in the process.
It has also left these investors wondering what will happen once the Federal Reserve decides to end the era of “easy money” and start raising interest rates. In October 2014, the Federal Reserve brought its asset purchase programme to an end. This did not lead to a panic in the financial markets simply because the Fed made it clear that even though it would stop printing money, it would not start immediately withdrawing the money it had already printed and pumped into the financial system over the years.
But that is going to happen one day. Yellen is trying to get the financial markets ready for interest rate hikes starting next year. At least, that is the impression I got yesterday after watching her press conference.
Once the Fed decides to start withdrawing the money that it has printed and pumped into the financial system, and which in turn has found its way into financial markets all over the world, interest rates will start to go up. That will happen sooner rather than later. Maybe 2015. Maybe 2016. Who knows.
And once interest rates start to rise, the arbitrage of borrowing at low interest rates and investing money in financial markets all over the world, won’t be viable any more. It is difficult to predict precisely how exactly the situation will play out.
Nevertheless, Bonner summarizes the situation well when he says: “What exactly will happen, and when it will happen, we will have wait and find out. But it will be bad, that much is certain. We will hit rock bottom.”
All I can say to conclude is—Watch this space.

The column originally appeared on www.equitymaster.com as a part of The Daily Reckoning, on December 19, 2014

References:
M. Thornton, “Cantillon on the Cause of the Business Cycle,” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 9, 3(Fall 2006): 45–60 

J.E. Sandrock, “John Law’s Banque Royale and the Mississippi Bubble.” Avail­able online at http://www.thecurrencycollector.com/pdfs/John_Laws_Banque_Royale.pdf

C. Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Project Gutenberg, 1841). Available online under Project Gutenberg.

What are the financial markets making out of Janet Yellen’s mumbo jumbo

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Vivek Kaul

People who head central banks are not the kind who talk in a language that is easily understood. As Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, the American central bank, from 1988 to 2006, once said “I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.”
Nevertheless, things have changed in the aftermath of the financial crisis which broke out in September 2008. Central banks and individuals who head them now tend to communicate a little more clearly than they used to in the past.
Take the case of the Federal Reserve which has been saying for a while now that it will maintain low short term interest rates of between zero to ¼ percent “for a considerable time”. The financial markets around the world have taken this phrase as good news. It has allowed them to borrow money at low interest rates and invest them in financial markets all over the world.
There is an entire army of people who make a living out of analysing what the Federal Reserve is saying. After the Federal Reserve chose to stop printing money in October 2014, there has been considerable debate among these army of analysts who track the Fed, about what does the phrase “for a considerable time” really mean. They have also asked if the Federal Reserve would remove the phrase when it met in December. And if it did that what would that mean?
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the latest monetary policy statement released yesterday said: “Based on its current assessment, the Committee judges that it can be patient in beginning to normalize the stance of monetary policy.” It seemed that the Fed had dropped the phrase “for a considerable time,” which had kept the Fed watchers interested for a considerable period of time.
Interestingly, the statement then went to clarify that the new words did not mean anything different from the earlier phrase. “The Committee sees this guidance as consistent with its previous statement that it likely will be appropriate to maintain the 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate for a considerable time following the end of its asset purchase program,” the latest statement said.
Federal funds rate is the interest rate at which one bank lends funds maintained at the Federal Reserve to another bank, on an overnight basis. Until October 2014, the Federal Reserve had been printing money and pumping money into the financial system by buying government bonds and mortgaged backed securities. This it referred to as the asset purchase program.
So, the Federal Reserve seems to have removed the phrase “for a considerable time” and reintroduced it as well. As the economist Tim Duy put it: “If you thought they would drop “considerable time,” they did. If you thought they would retain “considerable time,” they did. Everyone’s a winner with this statement.” Nevertheless, this briefly sent Fed watchers into a tizzy after the statement was released. What did the Fed really mean?
Janet Yellen, the Chairperson of the Federal Reserve, clarified this in the press conference that followed the Federal Reserve’s two day meeting. “The statement that the committee can be patient should be interpreted that it is unlikely to begin the normalization process for at least the next couple of meetings,” Yellen said.
What this possibly means is that the Federal Reserve won’t raise the federal funds rate, which acts as a benchmark for short term interest rates at least till April. The Federal Reserve’s first two monetary policy meetings are scheduled in January and March next year.
Interestingly, later on in the press conference Yellen in a way took back this earlier statement when she said: “The Fed will feel free to make news at meetings even when there isn’t a scheduled press conference.” She also said that “no meeting is completely off the table” for raising interest rates.
All FOMC meetings do not have a press conference scheduled after the meeting ends. The Federal Reserve doesn’t have another press conference scheduled until March 2015. So, at the end of the day Yellen wasn’t really clear in communicating about when the Federal Reserve is likely to start raising the federal funds rate.
In the FOMC statement it was said that the Federal Reserve would be “patient” when it came to raising the federal funds rate. In the press conference Yellen said that the Fed wasn’t likely to raise the federal funds rate in the first two meetings scheduled next year. Then she also said that no meeting is completely off the table when it comes to the question of raising the federal funds rate.
Also, in the meeting Yellen dismissed all the reasons against not increasing the federal funds rate.
So where does all this leave us? Confused? Bloomberg View has a possible answer: “The Fed doesn’t know when it will start to raise interest rates, nor should it have to know, nor should it indulge analysts’ misconceived determination to find out. Interest-rate changes are not, and should not be, on a schedule. They depend entirely on what happens in the economy, and the Fed — like every last one of those analysts — doesn’t know what will happen.”
So why did the Federal Reserve and Janet Yellen indulge in all the mumbo jumbo? As Bernard Baumohl, The Economic Outlook Group, told The Wall Street Journal: “For a Fed that seeks to introduce more clarity and transparency of its views, they have in fact done the opposite. The tortuous, semantic-conscious language of the statement is really an exercise in obfuscation, one that harkens back to the days of Alan Greenspan.” So “Janet Yellen” managed to do an “Alan Greenspan” yesterday.
Further, like the analysts who track the Federal Reserve, the Fed Chairperson is also not in a position to say: “I don’t know”. Even though Yellen clarified time and again that everything was “data dependent”.
The statement issued by the Fed was vague enough. But in the press conference Yellen said that the Fed would not raise the federal funds rate for the first couple of meetings next year, and then she had to quickly go into damage control mode, to try and make things vague enough again. My theory is that Yellen is trying to get the markets used to the idea of higher interest rates in the days to come, without saying so loud and clear, so that she does end up spooking the markets.
The all important question is how is the market taking it? The financial markets all over the world were worried that the Federal Reserve might increase the federal reserve rate for the first time in eight years since 2006. Now that has not happened. Also, it is likely that the Federal Reserve might not raise rates before April (that was one of the things that Yellen said after all).
Further, the consumer price inflation in the United States for the month of November 2014 came in at 1.3%. The number had stood at 1.7% in October 2014. This is the largest month on month decline in inflation since December 2008. This fall in inflation has largely been due to a massive decline in oil prices over the last six months.
The point here being that a rate of inflation of 1.3% is well below Fed’s inflation target of 2%. As the Federal Reserve’s statement yesterday pointed out: “the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation”. If the inflation number continues to be well below 2%, then there is not much chance of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates immediately.
This is the message that the financial markets seem to have taken from the Federal Reserve. The S&P 500, one of the premier stock market indices in the United States, rallied by 2% to close at 2012.89 points yesterday. The Nikkei 225 in Japan is up 2.3% to 17,232 points today. Stocks in Australia were up 1%. The BSE Sensex is currently up around 1% and is quoting at levels of around 27,000 points.
Long story short: The financial markets seem to remain convinced that the easy money will continue at least in the short-term. Yellen, on the other hand is trying to get the markets ready for an interest rate hike next year.

The article appeared originally on www.FirstBiz.com on Dec 18, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

Why the US Fed will not be sucking out all the printed money any time soon

 

Vivek Kaul

The Federal Open Market Committee(FOMC) is scheduled to meet on October 28-29. This is one of the eight regularly scheduled meetings during the year. It is widely expected that the Janet Yellen led Federal Reserve will more or less bring quantitative easing to an end.
Economists like to refer to the good old money printing as “quantitative easing”. The Federal Reserve till date has printed around $4 trillion and pumped it into the financial system. It currently prints around $15 billion per month and pumps this money into the financial system by buying government bonds and mortgage backed securities.
The writer John Lanchester perhaps describes quantitative easing(QE) in the simplest possible way and what it really stands for by cutting out all the jargon in his new book How to Speak Money. As he writes “QE involves a government buying its own BONDS using money which doesn’t actually exist. It’s like borrowing money from somebody and then paying them back with a piece of paper on which you’ve written the word ‘Money’ – and then, magically, it turns out that the piece of paper with ‘Money’ [written] on it is actually real money.”
Lanchester describes QE in another way as well. He compares it to a situation where an individual while looking at his “bank balance online” also has “the additional ability to add to it just by typing numbers on [his] keyboard.” “Ordinary punters can’t do this, obviously, but governments can; then they use this newly created magic money to buy back their own debt. That’s what quantitative easing is,” writes Lanchester.
This has been done in the hope that with all the newly money created being pumped into the financial system, there would be enough money going around and interest rates would continue to remain low. At lower interest rates the hope was people would borrow and spend more, and this in turn would lead to economic growth.
This did not turn out to be the case. What happened instead was that financial institutions borrowed money at very low interest rates and invested that money in financial markets all over the world. This explains to a large extent why stock markets have rallied all over the world in the recent past.
Lanchester believes that instead of going through the QE route the Western governments should have simply handed over this money directly to the people. He makes this comment in the context of the United Kingdom. As he writes “In the UK, the government has spent magic money on QE to the tune of £ 375 billion, an amount equal to 23.8% of…GDP…If they’d just had given the money direct to the public, perhaps in the form of time-limited. UK-only spending vouchers, it would have amounted to just under £ 6,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. Can anyone doubt that the stimulus effect that would have been much bigger?”
A similar argument can be made for the American economy as well. Nevertheless, this is just a counterfactual and something that did not happen.
Now the US Federal Reserve is likely to stop printing money after its meeting over two days. Does that mean there will be trouble ahead? As Lanchester writes “Nobody quite knows what’s going to happen once QE stops. In fact, the ‘unwinding’ of the QE is on many people’s list as the possible trigger for the next global meltdown.”
Once the US Fed stops printing money, new money will stop coming into the market every month. Hence, perpetually increasing liquidity will come to an end, at least in the American context.
So, does that mean interest rates will start to go up? The answer is no. As Mohammed A. El-Erian wrote in a recent column for Bloomberg “They will reiterate their willingness to keep interest rates low, should economic conditions warrant it. In doing all this, Fed officials will again try to buy time — both for the economy to heal and for politicians to step up to their responsibilities — hoping for better times ahead.”
What this means in simple English is that the Federal Reserve will not start sucking out all the money it has printed and pumped into the financial any time soon. And this means that the era of “easy money” will continue for the time being.
The reason for this is fairly straightforward. Even though the American economy is doing much better than it was in the past, the recovery at best has been fragile. The US economy grew by 4.6% during the period between July and September 2014, after having contracted by 2.1% during April to June, earlier this year.
The rate of unemployment in the US has been coming down for quite a while now. In September 2014, it stood at 5.9% against 6.1% in August. This rate of unemployment is around the average rate of unemployment of 5.83% between 1948 and 2014. It is also below the 6.5% rate of unemployment that the Federal Reserve is comfortable with.
Nevertheless, even with these reasons, the Federal Reserve is unlikely to start sucking out money and raising interest rates any time soon. This is because the US has become what Lanchester calls a “two-speed economy”. Lanchester defines this as “an economy in which different sectors are performing differently at the same time”. In the American context, it is a matter of Texas and the rest of the country.
The state of Texas has been creating more jobs than any other state in the United States. As Sam Rhines an economist at Chilton Capital Management points out in a recent article in The National Interest “From its peak in January 2008 through today, the United States has created only 750,000 jobs. Texas created over a million jobs during that same period—meaning that the rest of the country (RotC) is still short 300,000 jobs. During the recovery, job creation has been all Texas or—at the very least—disproportionately Texas.”
This has meant that the contribution that Texas has been making to the US economy has increased over the last few years, from 7.7% in 2006, it now stands at 9%. So, if one takes Texas out of the equation, the United States still hasn’t recovered all the jobs it lost since the start of the financial crisis in September 2008. Further, if one takes out the Texas growth out of the equation, the GDP growth also falls considerably. As Rhines writes “From 2007 through the end of 2013, the U.S. economy grew by $702 billion, and Texas grew by $220.5 billion.”
Other than this the broad unemployment numbers hide the fact that the labour force participation rate has been falling over the years. Labour force participation rate is essentially the proportion of population older than 15 years that is economically active. The number for September 2014 stood at 62.7%. This is the lowest number since 1978. The number had stood at more than 65% before the start of the financial crisis. Hence, more and more people are now not looking for jobs and they are no longer counted as unemployed.
Further, a lot of jobs being created are part-time jobs. Also, with jobs being difficult to come by many people looking for full-time jobs have had to take on part time jobs. In August 2014, nearly 7.3 million Americans were involuntarily working part time, compared to 4.6 million in December 2007, before the financial crisis had started. In September 2014, this number dropped to 7.1 million. Even after this fall, the number remains disproportionately high. This underemployment is not reflected in the rate of unemployment number.
Janet Yellen obviously understands this. As she had said in a press conference in September 2014 “There are still too many people who want jobs but cannot find them, too many who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work.”
Taking all these factors into account the Federal Reserve is unlikely to start sucking out all the money it has printed and pumped into the financial system any time soon. Nevertheless, whenever it gets around to doing that there will be trouble ahead.
Lanchester perhaps summarises the situation well when he says: “If a medicine is guaranteed to make you very sick when you stop taking it, and you know that one day you’ll have to stop taking it, then maybe you shouldn’t start taking it in the first place.”
But that at best is a benefit of hindsight. The horse, as they say, has already bolted by now.

The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on Oct 29, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

Fed may be reducing easy money, but here’s why Sensex will keep soaring

yellen_janet_040512_8x10Vivek Kaul

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

– Yogi Berra

A question I am often asked is why are the stock markets around the world still rallying despite the Federal Reserve of United States going slow on printing money. In a statement released yesterday the Fed decided to cut down further on money printing.
It will now print $15 billion per month instead of the earlier $25 billion. This was the seventh consecutive cut of $10 billion. Since December 2012, the Federal Reserve had been printing $85 billion per month. This money was pumped into the financial system by buying mortgage backed securities and government bonds. The idea was that by increasing the amount of money in the financial system, long term interest rates could be driven lower. The hope was that at lower interest rates, people would borrow and spend more.
From January 2014, the Federal Reserve decided to buy bonds worth $75 billion a month, instead of the earlier $85 billion. This meant that the Fed would be printing $75 billion a month instead of the earlier $85 billion. This cut in money printing came to be referred to as “tapering”, which means getting progressively smaller. Since then the amount of money being printed by the Federal Reserve has been tapered to $15 billion per month. At this pace the Federal Reserve should be done at dusted with its money printing by next month i.e. October 2014.
A lot of this printed money instead of being lent out to consumers has found its way around into stock markets and other financial markets around the world. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, America’s premier stock market index, has rallied more than 30% since October, 2012. This when the American economy hasn’t been in the best of shape.
The FTSE 100, the premier stock market index in the United Kindgom, has given a return of 15% during the same period. The Nikkei 225, the premier stock market index of Japan has rallied by 53% during the same period. Closer to home, the BSE Sensex has rallied by around 43% during the same period.
Stock markets around the world have given fabulous returns, despite the global economy being down in the dumps. The era of easy money unleashed by the Federal Reserve has obviously helped.
Nevertheless, the question is with the Fed clearly signalling that the easy money era is now coming to an end, why are stock markets still holding strong? One reason is the fact that even though the Fed might be winding down its money market operations, other central banks are still continuing with it.
The Bank of Japan, the Japanese central bank is printing around ¥5-trillion per month and is expected to do so till March 2015. The European Central Bank is also preparing to print €500-billion to €1-trillion over the next few years. What this means is that interest rates in large parts of the Western world will continue to remain low. Hence, big institutional investors can borrow from these financial markets and invest the money in stock markets around the world.
The second and more important reason is that the Federal Reserve does not plan to shrink its balance sheet any time soon. Before the financial crisis started in September 2008, the size of the Federal Reserve balance sheet stood at $925.7 billion. Since then it has ballooned and as on August 27, 2014, it stood at $4.42 trillion.
The size of the Fed balance sheet has exploded by close to 378% over the last six years. This has happened primarily because the Fed has printed money and pumped it into the financial system by buying bonds, in the hope of keeping interest rates low and getting people to borrow and spend.
Janet Yellen, the current Chairperson of the Federal Reserve made it very clear yesterday that the Fed was in no hurry to withdraw this money from the financial system. It could take to the “end of the decade” to shrink the Fed’s huge balance sheet “to the lowest levels consistent with the efficient and effective implementation of policy.”
What this essentially means is that the money that the Fed has printed and pumped into the financial system by buying bonds, will not be suddenly withdrawn from the financial system. When a bond matures, the institution which has issued the bond, repays the money invested to the institution that has invested in it.
If the investor happens to be the Federal Reserve, the maturing proceeds are paid to it. This leads to the amount of money in the financial system going down, and could lead to interest rates going up, as money becomes dearer.
This is something that the Fed does not want, in order to ensure that individuals continue borrow and spend money, and this, in turn, leads to economic growth. Hence, the Fed will use the money that comes back to on maturity, to buy more bonds and in that way ensure that total amount of money floating in the financial system does not go down.
This means that long term interest rates will continue to remain low. Hence, investors can continue to borrow money at low interest rates and invest that money in different parts of the world.
Yellen also clarified that short-term interest rates are also not going to go up any time soon. As she said “economic conditions may for some time warrant keeping the target federal funds rate below levels the committee views as normal in the longer run.”The federal funds rate is the interest rate that banks charge each other to borrow funds overnight, in order to maintain their reserve requirement at the Federal Reserve. This interest rate acts as a benchmark for short-term loans.
Given these reasons, the stock markets around the world will continue to rally, at least in the near term, as the era of easy money will continue. These rallies will happen, despite global growth being down in the dumps and the fact that the global economy is still to recover from the financial crisis that started just about six years and three days back, when the investment bank Lehman Brothers went bust on September 15, 2008.
To conclude, Ben Hunt who writes the Epsilon Theory newsletter put it best in a recent newsletter dated September 8, 2014, and titled The Ministry of Markets: “No one doubts the omnipotence of central banks. No one doubts that market outcomes are fully determined by central bank policy. No one doubts that central banks are large and in charge. No one doubts that central banks can and will inflate financial asset prices. And everyone hates it.”
The article appeared originally on www.FirstBiz.com on Sep 18, 2014

 (Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)