At Least One Reason Why People Shouldn’t Hate QE

You might not expect me to endorse an article titled “The 7 Reasons Why People Hate QE.” I won’t disappoint that expectation, but I will say that I do endorse, and appreciate, the civil spirit in which the author of the piece, Eric Parnell, offers his criticism. We here at macroblog, like our colleagues in the Federal Reserve System more generally, pride ourselves on striving for unfailing civility, and it is a pleasure to engage skeptics who share (and exhibit) the same disposition. What the world needs now is…well, maybe I’m getting carried away.

Let me instead appropriate some of Mr. Parnell’s language. It is worthwhile to explore some of the reasons that people do not like QE from someone who does not share this opposing sentiment. In particular, let me focus on the first of seven reasons offered in the Parnell post:

First, a primary objection I have with QE is that it results in a government policy making and regulatory institution in the U.S. Federal Reserve directly determining how private sector capital is being allocated… in recent years, the Fed has dramatically expanded its policy scope into areas that are normally the territory of fiscal policy. This has included specifically targeting selected areas of the economy such as the U.S. housing market including the aggressive purchase of mortgage backed securities (MBS) since the outbreak of the financial crisis.

This statement seems to presume that monetary policy does not normally have differential impacts across distinct sectors of the economy. I think this presumption is erroneous.

The Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) asset purchase programs have long been seen as operating through traditional portfolio-balance channels. As explained by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in an August 2010 speech that set up the “QE2” program:

The channels through which the Fed’s purchases affect longer-term interest rates and financial conditions more generally have been subject to debate. I see the evidence as most favorable to the view that such purchases work primarily through the so-called portfolio balance channel, which holds that once short-term interest rates have reached zero, the Federal Reserve’s purchases of longer-term securities affect financial conditions by changing the quantity and mix of financial assets held by the public. Specifically, the Fed’s strategy relies on the presumption that different financial assets are not perfect substitutes in investors’ portfolios, so that changes in the net supply of an asset available to investors affect its yield and those of broadly similar assets. Thus, our purchases of Treasury, agency debt, and agency MBS likely both reduced the yields on those securities and also pushed investors into holding other assets with similar characteristics, such as credit risk and duration. For example, some investors who sold MBS to the Fed may have replaced them in their portfolios with longer-term, high-quality corporate bonds, depressing the yields on those assets as well.

I think this is a pretty standard way of thinking about the way monetary policy works. But you need not buy the portfolio-balance story in full to conclude that even traditional monetary policy operates on “selected areas of the economy such as the U.S. housing market.” All you need to concede is that policy works by altering the path of real interest rates and that not all sectors share the same sensitivity to changes in interest rates.

Parnell goes on to discuss other problems with QE: stress put on individuals living on fixed incomes, the promotion of (presumably excessive) risk-taking, and the general distortion of market forces. All topics worthy of discussion, and if you read the minutes of almost any recent FOMC meeting you will note that they are indeed key considerations in ongoing deliberations.

These issues, however, are not about QE per se, but about monetary stimulus generally and the FOMC’s interest rate policies specifically. As the conversation turns to if, when, and how Fed policymakers will adjust the current asset purchase program, it will be important to clarify the distinction between QE and the broader stance of policy.

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