Lockhart y Bullard: decisión sobre QE3 dependerá de condiciones domésticas, no externas

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

Dennis Lockhart, presidente de la Fed de Atlanta, y James Bullard, presidente de la Fed de St. Louis, dijeron en entrevistas separadas con Bloomberg durante el fin de semana que la economía doméstica y no la volatilidad en mercados emergentes será el principal factor en las decisiones de la Fed sobre cuándo reducir el ritmo de compras de activos (QE3). El anuncio e implementación de estímulo monetario por parte de la Fed y otros bancos centrales había causado fuertes entradas de capital a economías emergentes, impulsando sus monedas y mercados accionarios. Ahora, la expectativa del mercado (y nuestra) de inminente moderación de QE3 está revirtiendo estos flujos. Ryan Advent en Free Exchange (The Economist) había explicado estos efectos el pasado 20 de agosto. Ya mencionamos la entrada; ahora citamos algunos pasajes:

When a central bank buys certain kinds of assets they leave the banks or funds who sold them the assets short of the particular kind of asset the central bank bought. So a fund that intends to keep a certain share of its portfolio in safe-ish long-term debt will sell Treasuries to the Fed in exchange for newly printed cash, but will then find itself in need of portfolio rebalancing to get back to its preferred distribution of risk, maturity, and so on. The fund then takes its cash and buys something similar to the assets it sold: highly rated mortgage-backed securities or corporates, for instance, or the safe debt of foreign governments. But the funds selling those assets will also need to rebalance, and they may adjust their portfolios by purchasing safer emerging-market debt or equities. As the money works its way through the system it raises asset prices around the economy. And because some of the rebalancing involves purchases of foreign assets, they weaken the domestic currency and can reduce borrowing costs and raise equity prices abroad.

[…] Now fast-forward a couple of years. Financial markets had been moving money around based on expectations that central banks would end up buying a very large chunk of assets. But beginning in the spring Federal Reserve officials made statements hinting that they would in fact end up buying a somewhat smaller chunk of assets. As financial markets began to react to the change in outlook, the previous stimulative effects of QE started to unwind. As funds realised they would not need to replace as many Treasuries as they thought, Treasury prices fell (and yields rose) and so did prices for Treasury substitutes. That knock-on effect made its way around the world. Prices of emerging-market assets also sank, as did emerging-market currencies.

This is creating headaches for some of those emerging economies, and especially those that had been running big current-account gaps. Borrowing costs are rising; firms and households needing to roll over short-term debt will have to do so on less advantageous terms than they received a year or two ago. (Any firms unwise enough to have borrowed in a foreign currency will be in big trouble.) Import prices will rise. Exporters could benefit, though important inputs (fuel especially) could grow damagingly expensive.

[…] Now, however, tapering plans are triggering effective monetary tightening despite the fact that advanced economies remain short of demand (most of them anyway; America certainly). In addition to easing off on the job of domestic reinflation, tapering is effectively communicating to the world, via markets, the message that America is prepared to shift more of its demand abroad. Weakening emerging-market currencies and a squeeze on current-account deficits are the flip side of that message: the price signal that leads emerging markets to sell more to Americans and buy less from them.