We had to throw out our textbook descriptions of how monetary policy is implemented after the fall of 2008, as the Fed turned from its traditional tools to active use of large-scale asset purchases. A number of studies have now been conducted of the potential efficacy of these new policy tools. I surveyed some of the new studies last October. Today I’d like to discuss three new papers that have come out since then.
Category Archives: Federal Reserve
Changes in the yield curve
The bond market sees an improving economy.
Velocity of money
I wanted to follow up on Menzie’s recent observations about what’s been happening to the supply and demand for money.
Did QE2 work?
Having offered my assessment of the effects of the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing (QE2), I wanted to mention briefly the takes of some other observers.
Evaluating QE2
On November 3, the Federal Reserve announced some new monetary policy measures that have been popularly (if perhaps inaccurately) referred to as a second round of quantitative easing, or QE2. What effects, if any, does QE2 seem to have had so far?
The Fed’s communication problem
The start of the FOMC’s November meeting is described in the minutes released yesterday as follows:
The meeting opened with a short discussion regarding communicating with the public about monetary policy deliberations and decisions. Meeting participants supported a review of the Committee’s communication guidelines with the aim of ensuring that the public is well informed about monetary policy issues while preserving the necessary confidentiality of policy discussions until their scheduled release. Governor Yellen agreed to chair a subcommittee to conduct such a review.
Here I provide some suggestions for Governor Yellen’s subcommittee to consider.
Answering the bunnies
A cartoon has been making the rounds (e.g., Forbes, Zero Hedge, and Real Clear Politics) in which cartoon characters (bunnies maybe? or perhaps some other life form) ask questions about quantitative easing. I would have provided slightly different answers than did the didactic character in the cartoon, so I thought it might be fun to interject myself as a third character in the bunnies’ conversation.
Commodity inflation
I guess now we know that the Fed has the tools to prevent deflation.
QE2: Been there, done that
The Federal Open Market Committee announced today that:
the Committee decided today to expand its holdings of securities. The Committee will maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its securities holdings. In addition, the Committee intends to purchase a further $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by the end of the second quarter of 2011, a pace of about $75 billion per month.
Negative real interest rates
What message should we take from negative real interest rates?