Die Notenbanker schaffen die Realität, auf die sie dann reagieren
Heute geht es mal wieder um die Geldpolitik. Die FINANCIAL TIMES (FT) diskutiert ein Paper von Ökonomen der Bank für Internationalen Zahlungsausgleich (BIZ), das sich sehr kritisch mit den Notenbanken auseinandersetzt:
- “Drug companies have patent portfolios, great power navies have aircraft carriers and central banks have their “canonical” econometric models. Burnished and tweaked over the decades, the canonical models (all rather similar to one another) are proof, not least to the central bankers themselves, that their decisions are based on a coherent philosophy.” – bto: Ich musste es nachsehen. Es geht um “kanonisch”, laut Wikipedia: “Der Ausdruck kanonisches Recht leitet sich von lateinisch canon ‚Maßstab‘, ‚festgesetzte Ordnung‘, ‚Regel‘, dieses von griechisch κανών kanón, deutsch ‚Rohr[stab]‘, ‚Stange‘, ‚Messstab‘, ‚Richtschnur‘ ab.” Also der Maßstab für eigenes Handeln, in diesem Fall der Notenbanken.
- “Two decades ago there was a general belief that in the event of a financial crash or economic emergency, central banks would act in an apolitical and disinterested manner to keep the system functioning.” – bto: Wir wissen, das hat zu erheblichen Verwerfungen geführt.
- “In the post-bailout world, worsening social inequalities, a scandal over trading by top Federal Reserve officials, and the politicisation of high-level appointments have all weakened the public consensus. Now, there is a lot more cynicism. There is also a deep suspicion that all the post-crash bailouts and “unconventional measures” have done is make the rich richer. Central banks have acquired a lot of financial assets, but are losing the public’s trust.” – bto: und das absolut zu Recht!
- “The professed goal of the models is to indicate what short-term interest rates, asset purchase programmes, or ‘guidance’ through public statements are necessary for the economy to reach the elusive ‘R-star’ interest rate. R-star is the real short-term interest rate consistent with full employment and a stable inflation rate in the long run. In policy terms, that is the central banker’s nirvana.” – bto: Genau das hören wir seit Jahren.
- “Not that R-star is supposed to be fixed or stable over long periods of time. The stable interest rate should rise if technological developments or education levels improve quickly enough so that the economy’s potential growth rate increases. Or, if productivity falls due to a plague or ageing population, R-star will be lowered.” – bto: das alles klingt doch sehr vernünftig.
- “The central bankers’ task would be much simpler if the R-star at any moment were readily observable, say on a page on a Bloomberg screen. Those rates could just be plucked and entered into input fields for the canonical models. Presto: policy.” – bto: Würde das umgesetzt, würde man sich noch mehr fragen, wieso man diese so hoch bezahlt …
- “R-star, the key rate, the lodestone for central bank policy, is unobservable, and can only be estimated by the economists making an informed guess on what it should be, in the absence of direct empirical information. The guesses have become rather depressing over the decades. R-star has fallen by more than 5 percentage points in advanced economies since the 1980s. And since the financial crisis of 2008, R-stars throughout the developed world have converged to a very low level, as if waiting for an economic recovery that never comes.” – bto: Wir haben aber ein Signal, das auf Dauer-Depression und damit Dauer-Flutung der Märkte steht – und zwar konstant.
Und jetzt wird es interessant:
- “Are the central banks signalling to the private sector that little growth is possible, and is that depressing and misleading conviction reflected back to the central bankers themselves? Yes, according to Phurichai Rungcharoenkitkul, a staff economist at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. In a paper he co-authored with Fabian Winkler of the Federal Reserve Board, the two find central banks and the private sector “end up misperceiving the macroeconomic effects of their own actions as genuine information. They are staring into a hall of mirrors.” – bto: Weil die Notenbanken kein Wachstum erwarten, erwartet auch der Privatsektor keine Inflation. Wie cool ist das denn?
- “Rungcharoenkitkul and Winkler tweak the standard policy model to prove that, in recent years, ‘with the hall-of-mirrors effect operating, an aggressive policy strategy may be less effective in reviving spending, and worse could even exacerbate the very problem policymakers are trying to solve’.” – bto: Das könnte so sein, wenn man annimmt, dass die Notenbanken das wirklich wollen und nicht in Wahrheit ganz andere Ziele verfolgen.
- “In other words, by staring at the reflections of their own policies of the recent past, the central banks have kept official rates too low for too long, and their communication of their expectations has depressed long-term saving and investment in the private sector.” – bto: Das passt zu der Logik der immer tieferen Zinsen, die sinken müssen, weil sie schon tief sind.
- “Unproductive activity was unintentionally encouraged. Setting low rates for too long led to overpriced housing, too little class or labour mobility and the growth of leveraged speculation.” – bto: Damit haben sie die Grundlage für massive soziale Konflikte gelegt.
- “We have been asking central banks to take on too much of the responsibility for economic recoveries. And we have mistakenly expected them to be all-knowing, even as they look to the private sector to provide essential cues.” – bto: definitiv, wobei sich die Notenbanker in diese Rolle gedrängt haben.
- “Consequently, central banks’ ‘signals’ and ‘communications’ arguably have caused confusion and excessive long-term economic pessimism. And as the BIS reports says, ‘these consequences are more severe the more the private sector and the central bank overestimate each other’s knowledge of the economy‘.” – bto: Das ist doch super!
→ ft.com (Anmeldung erforderlich): „Central banks are stuck in a ‘hall of mirrors’”, 20. November 2021
