Inflation to save the day

[Anonymous_Coward]

A Kind Word for Inflation
by Paul McCulley

No, I have not lost my mind. I’m fully aware that inflation is not kind to bonds, so offering a kind word for inflation is de facto offering an unkind word about my own business. Investment managers don’t tend to do that. But facts are facts. And the essential fact right now is that the American economy needs an inflation rate above the Fed’s comfort zone. Needs, you ask?

Yes. Soaring commodity prices, particularly for petroleum and food, and especially in recent months, are an unambiguous negative real terms of trade shock to America. For those not familiar with the term, a nation’s terms of trade is the ratio of what it must give up to get what it imports. The easiest way to understand the concept, at least for me, is to think of the number of hours of work necessary, at the average national hourly pay rate, to buy a barrel of oil – a real variable compared to another real variable. The chart below tells that simple story.

Misery Is as Misery Does
Americans are working more hours for the same barrel of oil. That is a negative real terms of trade shock. Put differently, we are less rich or more poor than we were before oil prices took off. There is no getting ‘round this. In turn, there is no escaping collateral adjustments of temporarily higher inflation and temporarily lower growth and employment. The question of the hour is how this pain should be apportioned. Last week, Fed Vice Chairman Don Kohn provided the right answer, presuming there is a right answer (my emphasis):

“… an appropriate monetary policy following a jump in the price of oil will allow, on a temporary basis, both some increase in unemployment and some increase in price inflation. By pursuing actions that balance the deleterious effects of oil prices on both employment and inflation over the near term, policymakers are, in essence, attempting to find their preferred point on the activity/inflation variance-tradeoff curve introduced by John Taylor 30 years ago. Such policy actions promote the efficient adjustment of relative prices: Since real wages need to fall and both prices and wages adjust slowly, the efficient adjustment of relative prices will tend to include a bit of additional price inflation and a bit of additional unemployment for a time, leading to increases in real wages that are temporarily below the trend established by productivity gains.”¹

Mr. Kohn was preaching the raw, honest truth: a surge in oil prices raises the Misery Index, temporarily lifting both inflation and the unemployment rate. In turn, those outcomes beget lower real wages and, presumably, lower real profits, too. We are less rich or more poor – period. Thus, those who holler and scream at the Fed for letting the inflation genie out of the bottle need to calm down. A negative terms of trade shock is a real shock, so it must be translated into lower real wages and profits. That simple and that painful. Logically, it also must be translated for a time into lower, even negative, real short-term interest rates, the rate of return on money.

Spiral Risk?
But, you retort, if the Fed surrenders to negative real interest rates, it will set off an inflationary spiral, as second and third round effects on prices and wages take hold: capital and labor will extrapolate what should be viewed as a transitorily higher inflation into permanently higher inflation. In a world of perfectly indexed prices and wages, this could well be the case. The 1970s resembled such a world, and nasty oil price shocks that should have been one-off adjustments in the price level via temporarily higher inflation morphed into a price-wage-price inflationary spiral.

In monetary policy terminology, inflation expectations in the 1970s were not firmly anchored at the pre-oil price shock level. This is true, I think, but more elementally, the highly unionized, closed-economy structure of the American economy price and wage setting process was inherently geared to transforming a one-off inflationary shock into an enduring inflationary shock.

We no longer live in such a world. Most importantly, wage inflation is now only loosely connected to price inflation, in the wake of a more globally competitive, less unionized labor force. As Vice Chairman Kohn hinted, the combination of somewhat higher inflation and higher unemployment is a prescription for diminished pricing power by labor, leading to lower real wages (than would be dictated by labor’s productivity growth). Thus, unlike the 1970s, there is little wage fuel to generate over-heating aggregate demand and, thus, a sustained price-wage-price inflationary spiral.

This is good news indeed. Fed officials would make this argument through the lens of well-anchored inflationary expectations, and I have no quarrel with that interpretation, though I think it is but a veil over a more global, more competitive, less oligopolistic price and wage setting structure in the United States. Indeed, I believe the more nasty is the negative terms of trade shock, the fatter is the fat tail of asset price deflation rather than the fat tail of accelerating goods and services inflation.

Avoiding a Modern Day Depression
Deflating asset prices in a highly levered economy are a much more nefarious outcome than temporary increases in inflation in goods and services. This is particularly the case from a starting point of low inflation in goods and services (excluding those involved in the negative terms of trade shock). How so? Simple: a negative terms of trade shock and asset price deflation are a prescription for not just a recession, but a nasty one. More to the point, from a starting point of low goods and services inflation, the Fed is never far from the zero lower limit on nominal short-term interest rates, commonly known as a liquidity trap.

Therefore, the more flexible are wages in the face of a negative terms of trade shock, particularly if it coincides with asset price deflation, the greater is the risk of policy makers losing control of the economy on the downside. In turn, this reality argues for the Fed to tolerate higher headline inflation in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock.

To be sure, the Fed must be aware of the dreaded second and third round effects, constantly checking to make sure that real wages and real profits are being eroded by the aberrantly high headline inflation. But, assuming the evidence supports that thesis, as the following graph displays, it would be an absolute folly for the Fed – or any central bank in similar circumstances – to hike interest rates in an attempt to make the negative terms of trade shock go away. By definition, it can’t. And if it tries, it will create an even bigger mess. In this case, the motto of a central bank should be the same as that of a physician: first, do no harm.

I think the Fed thoroughly understands these exigencies in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock. It doesn’t mean that the Fed won’t or shouldn’t rhetorically sound tough at times, in the name of preventing inflationary expectations from becoming unmoored. But the bottom line is that as long as there is a huge gulf between the negative terms of trade cup and the wage inflation lip, the Fed should talk about the cup and focus on the lip.

Bottom Line
Which means, my friends, that low, even negative real short-term interest rates are here to stay for a considerable period. Yes, I know that many believe that it is somehow sinful or immoral for the Fed to hold nominal short rates so low as to render the real return on cash to be negative. I don’t buy this proposition. Why should it be that those who only have labor to offer to the market should not be made whole for a negative terms of trade shock, while those with cash should be made whole?

In the wake of a negative terms of trade shock, all factors of production should absorb a negative hit to their real returns. If indexing to headline inflation is inappropriate for labor wages and capital’s profits, why should cash yields be indexed by the Fed?

And what if holders of cash don’t like it? Then they can step out on the risk spectrum. After all, a basic of capitalism is no risk, no reward. And temporarily higher inflation in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock is an efficient lubricant for the economy to make the necessary real adjustments.

Paul McCulley
Managing Director
June 16, 2008
mcculley@pimco.com

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¹ http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Kohn20080611a.htm

What say ye?

[anonnymous]

Well, to begin with, I am not as learned as You or the people you quoted but I can tell you that inflation is not a good thing for us common people who work for a living. The way I see it is, the government, Fed and investment bankers are the ones who created the current economic mess we are now experiencing through thier policies of packaging mortages and reselling them whilst the Fed pumps money into the economy through the banks at a much cheaper rate than the banks are lending out, if they do lend it out, which devalues our currency even more causing inflation not only with oil prices but with goods generally. Then when the people that were beguiled into mortages they most certainly should have not been approved for begin the inevitable default the Fed rushes in with even more money to bail out the bankers who practiced this idiocy at the expense of the nation is one of the most criminal acts I have seen commited against a nation. After all this has occured why would anyone in there right mind trust the very people who allowed this to happen is beyond me. To cause such economic chaos and not be prosecuted for these criminal acts not only incourages bankers to defraud the nation but sends a signal to the rest of the world that America has not only foresaken the principles that have made us the greatest of all nations but also shows them that we are not nor have we ever been serious about paying our debts and continue to squander the funds that other nations lend us at the expense of thier currencies may very well lead to our demise due to a general lack of faith in the dollar.

No sir I don’t buy that line of crap that inflation is good. Now if these bankers were worth their salt they would be incouraging people to save and showing them that intrest can be a good thing when it is used through the principal of compounding to build wealth not to sap it like a pup sucks a tit.

[fsk]

@anonnymous

No sir I don’t buy that line of crap that inflation is good. Now if these bankers were worth their salt they would be incouraging people to save and showing them that intrest can be a good thing when it is used through the principal of compounding to build wealth not to sap it like a pup sucks a tit.

“Inflation is good” is pure proaganda. Actually, it is bad advice to suggest saving in a checking account or money market account. Inflation is 20%-30%, but a savings account will only credit you with 2%. If you save in a bank, you’re guaranteed to get ripped off by inflation. A proper investment is gold or silver, which are inflation-hedged. Stocks and real estate are also a reasonable inflation hedge.

[Stolz2525]

@Anonymous Coward

We no longer live in such a world. Most importantly, wage inflation is now only loosely connected to price inflation, in the wake of a more globally competitive, less unionized labor force.

To put it another way, the common worker gets screwed both directions…

What makes no sense to me here is the author makes the statement that prices can go up while wages stay the same.

@Anonymous Coward

And what if holders of cash don’t like it? Then they can step out on the risk spectrum.

I liked this one too, since the majority of people holding “cash” assets are actually holding them in the form of a contract from their employer. They can do exactly jack squat to “step out of the risk spectrum” because no one is going to offer to pay in gold.

As a side note if any of you who read this own your business you might consider paying people in something other than dollars. Or at least offering them the choice.

[fsk]

@Stolz2525

As a side note if any of you who read this own your business you might consider paying people in something other than dollars. Or at least offering them the choice.

As a business owner, paying your employees in gold or silver isn’t practical. Taxes and regulations make such behavior infeasible.

[anonnymous]

@fsk

@anonnymous

No sir I don’t buy that line of crap that inflation is good. Now if these bankers were worth their salt they would be incouraging people to save and showing them that intrest can be a good thing when it is used through the principal of compounding to build wealth not to sap it like a pup sucks a tit.

“Inflation is good” is pure proaganda. Actually, it is bad advice to suggest saving in a checking account or money market account. Inflation is 20%-30%, but a savings account will only credit you with 2%. If you save in a bank, you’re guaranteed to get ripped off by inflation. A proper investment is gold or silver, which are inflation-hedged. Stocks and real estate are also a reasonable inflation hedge.

you are correct in that a person can not realistically save money in any appreciable way in a bank during times of high inflation but one has to start some were and once enough savings is accumulated then one can consider how best to invest in order to maximise one’s savings. Gold and silver are a solid investment during times of economic uncertainty but not as good as an investment as possible all the tim but it would be prudent to keep a portion of your savings in metals all the time .

[Stolz2525]

@fsk

As a business owner, paying your employees in gold or silver isn’t practical. Taxes and regulations make such behavior infeasible.

What about paying them the equivilant of the spot price of gold or silver? Payroll could have a multiplier that they update each week before checks go out.

Or, you could do what this guy did… http://www.liberty-watch.com/volume03/issue08/coverstory.php

[fsk]

@Stolz2525

Or, you could do what this guy did… http://www.liberty-watch.com/volume03/issue08/coverstory.php

That guy didn’t win anything.

He wasted a lot of time and money defending himself. He didn’t recover that expense after acquittal.

That jury verdict is not precedent. The IRS may pursuse someone else for doing the exact same thing.

The IRS may still pursue a civil trial to collect the taxes they claim he owes. He only got acquitted in a criminal trial; he may still face a civil trial.

[Stolz2525]

@fsk

That guy didn’t win anything.

I know, but it was still a clever way to rebel. The multiplier wouldn’t be a problem though, I could create a little database system that did it in no time.

[Juan]

Sorry about only providing an ad-hominem, but…

These guys (pimco) buy bonds ? I wonder what part of their portfolio is government bonds ? Oh, and this…

“On May 16th 2007, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was hired as a special consultant by PIMCO…”