Gavyn Davies: Fed falló en su orientación a futuro
Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret
En su blog de FT, Gavyn Davies argumentó que la Fed no fue clara en su comunicación sobre QE3, lo cual le costará credibilidad y dificultará su orientación a futuro sobre la trayectoria futura de las tasas de corto plazo. Estamos de acuerdo: si la Fed quiere incidir en la curva de rendimientos, debe ser comprendido por el mercado.
The well-known difficulty with forward guidance is that, when the time comes, the central bank may not want to deliver on its promise to hold interest rates down as inflation rises. It then has an incentive to renege on its promise, claiming that “circumstances have changed”. But the fact is that investors can see in advance that this incentive exists, so they will not necessarily believe the commitment in the first place. The whole strategy suffers from what economists call “time inconsistency”.
One way round this is for the central bank to build up a reputation for always doing what it says it is going to do. As a rule, the Fed has been very good at this. Its word has been both respected and feared in the markets. Lately, however, the Fed has become determined to be almost painfully transparent in its communications with the public, and this has led to problems.
Consider the latest episode on the tapering of QE. The groundwork for tapering was very carefully laid, starting in March when Mr Bernanke made a surprising speech, saying that the term premium in the bond market was too low. This was an early warning that some upward adjustment in yields was acceptable to the Fed, even though they were still buying $85 billion of long bonds each month. It was followed by increasingly explicit language in the summer, including start and end dates for tapering, and a suggestion that the unemployment rate was expected to fall below 7 per cent before QE would end completely.
On Wednesday morning, Mr Bernanke seemed to have the financial markets exactly where he wanted them, but then came the bombshell. If the Fed can appear so cavalier after spending so much time and credibility guiding expectations on this decision, why should we believe them next time?