Dient QE einem Ziel, wird es Zeit, es zu beenden
Die Kritik an Quantitative Easing (QE) wird lauter. The Economist fordert konsequenterweise eine offenere Kooperation der staatlichen Institutionen Notenbank und Finanzministerium:
- “On august 26th central bankers will gather for their annual Jackson Hole jamboree with the shine having come off their record. (…) an inflation surge has made a mockery of the Federal Reserve’s forecasts; a parliamentary committee has said that the Bank of England has a ‘dangerous addiction’ to buying bonds; and everybody expects the European Central Bank (ecb) to undershoot, over a period of years, its shiny new ‘symmetric’ inflation target of 2%, unveiled in July.” – bto: Kurz gefasst haben die Notenbanken vermeintlich viel Macht und Kenntnis, beweisen diese in der Praxis jedoch nicht.
- “(…) the trickiest challenge facing central banks is when and how to reverse the past year-and-a-half of quantitative easing (qe), the buying of long-term bonds using newly created money. On current forecasts rich-world central banks’ balance-sheets will have reached a combined $28trn in size by the end of the year, about two-fifths of which is attributable to qe during the pandemic. Critics says central banks face a ‘qe ratchet’ because their bond holdings only go in one direction (…).” – bto: So ist es und so muss es bleiben. Es wird schon schlimm genug, wenn die Geschwindigkeit der Käufe zurückgeht.
- “(…) there is only weak evidence that accumulating or holding bonds helps economies much when, as now, financial markets are calm. The trouble is that investors have been encouraged to interpret decisions about qe as a signal about when central banks might raise interest rates, a policy whose effects are more tangible. The resulting sensitivity of interest-rate expectations to qe announcements makes the policy hard to unwind. (…) In the euro zone things are further complicated because qe has also had the side-effect of mutualising some of the debts of member states.” – bto: Schön, dass das The Economist so offen ausspricht. Die EZB sozialisiert die Staatsschulden zulasten der deutschen Steuerzahler. Ich denke, das Problem beginnt bereits bei einer Verlangsamung der Käufe!
- “Buying bonds is an essential tool for stabilising financial markets in a crisis like that of spring last year. But it is increasingly clear that it should fall to government spending or tax cuts to rescue the real economy when interest rates have already reached zero. Today’s economic data bear that out: one reason America has a troublesome price surge while the ecb’s inflation target looks unfeasibly high is that America has had much more fiscal stimulus—cumulative qe, as a share of gdp, has been similar.” – bto: Und wir wissen, dass die Staatsverschuldung letztlich Geld schafft und damit die Grundlage für Inflation. Das hängt zusammen. QE ändert nur die Art dieser Schulden. Bankreserven statt Anleihen.
- “One danger (…) is that bloated central-bank balance-sheets are a threat to the stability of the public finances. Purchases of long-term bonds are paid for by creating central-bank reserves—electronic cash which carries a floating rate of interest (commercial banks hold these reserves and receive any interest). Should policymakers need to raise interest rates to fight inflation, the new reserves will become costlier to service. Because central banks are owned by governments—Britain’s has explicitly underwritten qe—any such burden will ultimately fall on taxpayers.” – bto: Das ist eigentlich eine der geringsten Sorgen. Wir haben ein System, das keinen positiven Zins mehr verkraftet.
- “(…) central bankers do not want to talk down their own firepower and do not see it as their job to take account of qe’s fiscal threat. Instead the state should take an integrated view of its finances. That may involve redesigning how institutions work, by giving governments the job of weighing up the policy’s costs and benefits. At the same time, central banks might be given an advisory role on the size of government deficit that would help stabilise economies in a downturn. As it is, the justifications for qe have become murky, as have the interactions between fiscal and monetary policies. It is time for transparency and a clear division of labour.” – bto: stimmt. Die Lösung wird die nicht nur faktische, sondern immer offensichtlichere Aufgabe der Unabhängigkeit der Zentralbanken sein. Natürlich nur für die “gute Sache”.
