Greenspan put, Draghi call? (guest post by Vaidas Urba)

(This is a monetary economics guest post by Vaidas Urba, a market monetarist from Lithuania. He has previously appeared at The Insecurity Analyst blog and TheMoneyIllusion. You can follow him on Twitter here)

Greenspan put, Bernanke put – everybody uses these expressions half-jokingly to describe monetary policy and asset prices. Ricardo Caballero and Emmanuel Farhi have proposed a very serious classification of policy tools, distinguishing between monetary puts and calls. According to Caballero and Farhi, policy puts support the economy in bad states of the world, while policy calls support the economy in good states of world. There is much to disagree with in their “Safety Traps and Economic Policy” paper, but their definition of policy puts and calls is very useful.

QE1 and ARRA stimulus in 2009 are examples of policy puts. On the other hand, QE3 and Evans rule are primarily policy calls. Evans rule supported expectations of low interest rates in good states of the world, while QE3 compressed the term premium by reducing the risk of bond market volatility during the recovery. Policy calls are riskier than policy puts. Evan’s rule increased the risk of suboptimally low interest rates during late stages of recovery, while QE3 increased the risk of losses in Fed’s portfolio. Indeed, on March 1, 2013 Bernanke indicated that the estimated treasury term premium is negative. The Fed has walked back from policy calls. Tapering has restored the bond term premium to more normal levels, and the Fed has replaced the Evans rule with a more vague guidance. Bernanke call was replaced by Yellen put.

The Fed has used both monetary puts and calls, but the ECB has never used policy calls, and is not planning to use them. The policy of the ECB was a succession of impressive policy puts. Temporary liquidity injection in August 2007 has addressed the liquidity panic. Full allotment in October 2008 has placed a floor on the functioning of euro and dollar money markets. Three year LTROs in 2011 have prevented Greece’s default from becoming Lehman II. OMTs are out-of the money policy puts – they were never activated. Forward guidance is a policy put too, the ECB describes it as being all about “subdued outlook for inflation and broad-based weakness of the economy”, and low rates are signalled in bad states of the world without affecting interest rate expectations in good states of the world.

On further weakness the ECB is likely to start QE. Executive Board member Benoit Coeure has recently given us a glimpse of likely modalities of QE in his “Asset purchases as an instrument of monetary policy” speech. Coeure has stressed the continuity of ECB’s approach, he also said that “asset purchases in the euro area would not be about quantity, but about price”, and the ECB will use the yardstick of “the observable effect of our operations on term premia”. Presumably, the intent of QE will be to reduce term premia that are unduly high (policy put), and not to recreate boom conditions in financial markets by driving term premia to excessively low levels (policy call).

The Eurozone economy is very far away from any sensible macro equilibrium, and monetary call would be a very sensible step to take. Unfortunately, a blocking minority exists for any explicit decision. However, Draghi could communicate an implicit policy call by signalling the existence of majority coalition which would block a premature interest rate increase. The rate hike of 2011 was unanimous, so the bar is high for any such communication. Draghi’s talk of “plenty of slack” is a step to the right direction, but stronger and clearer words are needed to persuade the markets that ECB’s reaction function has changed unrecognizably since 2011.