“I DO NOT DOUBT THE ABILITY AND UNDERSTANDING OF CHAIRMAN BERNANKE ..”
..but the future of central banking, and of the world economy, is foggy, says PAUL VOLCKER. He wants the Federal Reserve to return to “a more orthodox” approach. Studying history an absolute must. Abstract economic modeling “of little help.” Praise for behavioral economics, still “in its infancy.”
“I have been struck by parallels between the challenges facing the Federal Reserve today and those when I first entered the Federal Reserve System as a neophyte economist in 1949.
Most striking then, as now, was the commitment of the Federal Reserve, which was and is a formally independent body, to maintaining a pattern of very low interest rates, ranging from near zero to 2.5 percent or less for Treasury bonds. If you feel a bit impatient about the prevailing rates, quite understandably so, recall that the earlier episode lasted fifteen years.”
He continues to draw strong parallels between the past and the present, and it is precisely a need for this “reading of history” that Volcker believes is critically at issue.
I do not doubt the ability and understanding of Chairman Bernanke and his colleagues. They have a considerable range of instruments available to them to manage the transition, including the novel approach of paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, potentially sterilizing their monetary impact. What is at issue—what is always at issue—is a matter of good judgment, leadership, and institutional backbone. A willingness to act with conviction in the face of predictable political opposition and substantive debate is, as always, a requisite part of a central bank’sDNA.
Those are not qualities that can be learned from textbooks. Abstract economic modeling and the endless regression analyses of econometricians will be of little help. The new approach of “behavioral” economics itself is recognition of the limitations of mathematical approaches, but that new “science” is in its infancy.
A reading of history may be more relevant. Here and elsewhere, the temptation has been strong to wait and see before acting to remove stimulus and then moving toward restraint. Too often, the result is to be too late, to fail to appreciate growing imbalances and inflationary pressures before they are well ingrained.
It is a thought provoking article and well worth a read.