The problem with procyclical inflation - InvestingChannel

The problem with procyclical inflation

Here’s Charles Evans in the WSJ:

“We’ve averaged well under that 2% mark for the past six-and-a-half years,” Mr. Evans said. “With a symmetric inflation target, one could imagine moderately above-target inflation for a limited time as simply the flip side of our recent inflation experience–and hardly an event that would impose great costs on the economy.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that a policy of letting inflation run a bit above target during the next boom will not cause great hardship during the next boom

But a policy of running inflation below target when unemployment is high and above target when it is low makes the business cycle much worse, and does impose great hardship.  Some conclusions:

1.  A procyclical inflation policy violates the dual mandate.

2.  NGDP targeting would lead to countercyclical inflation (a good thing).  As Nick Rowe likes to say, you want to make it so that the public’s stupid belief that inflation is bad . . . is true.  Good supply-side policies would become anti-inflation policies.

3.  Discussions of “what should the Fed do now?” are meaningless and incoherent, unless embedded in a clearly specified long run policy regime, as are discussions of whether QE “increases inequality.”

Charles Evans is actually one of the best people at the Fed.  Then there is the other Charles:

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said Friday that inflation levels that have fallen persistently short of where the central bank wants them to be are not a significant issue to him right now.

It’s true that inflation levels are “a little bit low” relative to the Fed’s desire to have price pressures hit 2%, Mr. Plosser said at an appearance in New York. But, “for the most part, I’m not too concerned about that,” he said.

What he doesn’t say is that the reason the Fed has failed is partly due to the fact that he’s consistently been pressuring them to be more contractionary, even as they were already far too contractionary to hit their dual mandate. So Plosser’s telling us that the Fed is not doing its job, partly due to his consistently bad advice, but he doesn’t much care.

Fortunately, market monetarist ideas are gradually seeping into the media.  A few days ago we saw this at the Financial Times, now it’s Bloomberg’s turn:

Based on the gap between yields of government notes and TIPS, traders have scaled back estimates for average inflation through 2019 by a half-percentage point since June to 1.52 percent, Fed data compiled by Bloomberg show.

.  .  .

With the Fed’s preferred measure averaging 0.34 percentage point less than CPI in that span, traders are signaling prices based on that gauge may rise as little as 1.18 percent. Through August, the personal consumption expenditures deflator has fallen short of the Fed’s 2 percent goal for 28 straight months.

Fed officials “need to be paying attention to that because there’s a collective wisdom element to the TIPS market,” Mitchell Stapley, the chief investment officer for Cincinnati-based ClearArc Capital, which manages $7 billion, said in an Oct. 8 telephone interview.

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