There have been several news accounts in recent days of plans for the Federal Reserve Board to reduce the amount of assets on its balance sheets. It currently holds close to $4 trillion in assets as a result of the quantitative easing policies pursued to boost the economy in the years following the collapse of the housing bubble. It is now making plans to reduce these holdings.
One implication of this reduction in holdings would be a lower amount of money refunded to the Treasury each year. The Fed keeps some of the interest from these holdings to pay operating expenses and pay a dividend to its members, but the overwhelming majority is refunded back to the Treasury.
Last year, the Fed refunded $113 billion or 0.6 percent of GDP to the Treasury (Table 4-1). According to the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, this figure is projected to fall sharply to 0.2 percent of GDP in the next couple of years as the Fed reduces its holdings. Over the course of a decade, the difference in the amount rebated to the Treasury between a scenario where the Fed continues to hold $4 trillion in assets and one in which most of the assets are sold to the public would be on the order of $900 billion.
Deficit hawks routinely get very excited over sums that are less than one tenth of this size. For this reason it seems worth mentioning the budgetary implications of the Fed’s decision to offload its asset holdings. (For those keeping score, having the Fed keep the assets is equivalent to financing the debt in part by printing money, a position advocated by several prominent economists, including Ben Bernanke.)
There have been several news accounts in recent days of plans for the Federal Reserve Board to reduce the amount of assets on its balance sheets. It currently holds close to $4 trillion in assets as a result of the quantitative easing policies pursued to boost the economy in the years following the collapse of the housing bubble. It is now making plans to reduce these holdings.
One implication of this reduction in holdings would be a lower amount of money refunded to the Treasury each year. The Fed keeps some of the interest from these holdings to pay operating expenses and pay a dividend to its members, but the overwhelming majority is refunded back to the Treasury.
Last year, the Fed refunded $113 billion or 0.6 percent of GDP to the Treasury (Table 4-1). According to the projections from the Congressional Budget Office, this figure is projected to fall sharply to 0.2 percent of GDP in the next couple of years as the Fed reduces its holdings. Over the course of a decade, the difference in the amount rebated to the Treasury between a scenario where the Fed continues to hold $4 trillion in assets and one in which most of the assets are sold to the public would be on the order of $900 billion.
Deficit hawks routinely get very excited over sums that are less than one tenth of this size. For this reason it seems worth mentioning the budgetary implications of the Fed’s decision to offload its asset holdings. (For those keeping score, having the Fed keep the assets is equivalent to financing the debt in part by printing money, a position advocated by several prominent economists, including Ben Bernanke.)
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The New York Times had an interesting piece that reported on the ways in which Uber uses techniques learned from behaviorial economics to get drivers to work longer hours than they might want. The article concludes by saying that with changes in the economy, many workers may have no choice but to rely on Uber jobs.
In this context, it is worth mentioning the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board has raised interest rates twice in the last four months because it is concerned that the economy is creating too many jobs. It is expected to raise interest rates three more times this year.
If people consider it bad that workers have few options other than working for Uber, they should be very upset that the Fed is raising interest rates. These interest rates are helping to ensure that millions of workers have limited job opportunities.
The New York Times had an interesting piece that reported on the ways in which Uber uses techniques learned from behaviorial economics to get drivers to work longer hours than they might want. The article concludes by saying that with changes in the economy, many workers may have no choice but to rely on Uber jobs.
In this context, it is worth mentioning the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Board has raised interest rates twice in the last four months because it is concerned that the economy is creating too many jobs. It is expected to raise interest rates three more times this year.
If people consider it bad that workers have few options other than working for Uber, they should be very upset that the Fed is raising interest rates. These interest rates are helping to ensure that millions of workers have limited job opportunities.
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Most people involved in economic policy debates have derided Donald Trump’s claims that he would boost the U.S. growth rate from its recent 2.0 percent annual rate to 4.0 percent or even 3.0 percent. However the Washington Post featured a column today that insists such a pickup is imminent and derides policy types for not being prepared.
The article insists that we are about to see massive job displacement with robots and artificial intelligence radically reducing the need for human labor. If it is not immediately clear that this is a prediction that growth is about to boom, then you must be as ignorant as a Washington Post editorial page writer.
Job displacement means productivity growth. If the piece is correct then we are about to see a massive upsurge in productivity growth. The recent pace has been just 1.0 percent annually. The authors presumably envision productivity growth rising to something like the 3.0 percent annual rate we had in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973, a period of low unemployment and rapidly rising real wages.
Economic growth is the sum of productivity growth and labor force growth, so if we get productivity growth of 3.0 percent annually, then we are looking at GDP growth rates in line with Donald Trump’s targets. Of course this would mean that the Congressional Budget Office and all the other forecasters are hugely off (hardly impossible, they all missed the collapse of the housing bubble as well as the weakness of the recovery that followed) and that concerns about large budget deficits are incredibly misplaced.
For my part, I am agnostic on these predictions of a massive surge in productivity growth. Our past efforts at predicting productivity growth have been virtually worthless. Economists completely missed the slowdown in 1973, almost completely missed the pickup in 1995, and totally missed the more recent slowdown in 2005.
I think much of the story is endogenous in the sense that a weak labor market forces workers to take low pay and low productivity jobs. In other words, if we pushed the economy with more spending (e.g. larger budget deficits or smaller trade deficits) we would see more productivity growth as workers shifted to better paying, higher productivity jobs, and firms adjusted to a more expensive workforce with labor saving innovations.
But speculation aside, we should at least be able to have clear thinking on the issue. If we actually face massive job displacement due to technology, then we are looking at a period of rapid growth in which budget deficits are not at all a problem. This is not a debatable proposition, it is true in the same way that 3+2 = 5 is true. It would be great if the people involved in policy debates understood this fact.
Most people involved in economic policy debates have derided Donald Trump’s claims that he would boost the U.S. growth rate from its recent 2.0 percent annual rate to 4.0 percent or even 3.0 percent. However the Washington Post featured a column today that insists such a pickup is imminent and derides policy types for not being prepared.
The article insists that we are about to see massive job displacement with robots and artificial intelligence radically reducing the need for human labor. If it is not immediately clear that this is a prediction that growth is about to boom, then you must be as ignorant as a Washington Post editorial page writer.
Job displacement means productivity growth. If the piece is correct then we are about to see a massive upsurge in productivity growth. The recent pace has been just 1.0 percent annually. The authors presumably envision productivity growth rising to something like the 3.0 percent annual rate we had in the long Golden Age from 1947 to 1973, a period of low unemployment and rapidly rising real wages.
Economic growth is the sum of productivity growth and labor force growth, so if we get productivity growth of 3.0 percent annually, then we are looking at GDP growth rates in line with Donald Trump’s targets. Of course this would mean that the Congressional Budget Office and all the other forecasters are hugely off (hardly impossible, they all missed the collapse of the housing bubble as well as the weakness of the recovery that followed) and that concerns about large budget deficits are incredibly misplaced.
For my part, I am agnostic on these predictions of a massive surge in productivity growth. Our past efforts at predicting productivity growth have been virtually worthless. Economists completely missed the slowdown in 1973, almost completely missed the pickup in 1995, and totally missed the more recent slowdown in 2005.
I think much of the story is endogenous in the sense that a weak labor market forces workers to take low pay and low productivity jobs. In other words, if we pushed the economy with more spending (e.g. larger budget deficits or smaller trade deficits) we would see more productivity growth as workers shifted to better paying, higher productivity jobs, and firms adjusted to a more expensive workforce with labor saving innovations.
But speculation aside, we should at least be able to have clear thinking on the issue. If we actually face massive job displacement due to technology, then we are looking at a period of rapid growth in which budget deficits are not at all a problem. This is not a debatable proposition, it is true in the same way that 3+2 = 5 is true. It would be great if the people involved in policy debates understood this fact.
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Donald Trump’s bluster about imposing large tariffs and forcing companies to make things in America has led to backlash where we have people saying things to the effect that we are in a global economy and we just can’t do anything about shifting from foreign produced items to domestically produced items. Paul Krugman’s blog post on trade can be seen in this light, although it is not exactly what he said and he surely knows better.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the goods we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more expensive to produce goods in the United States.
This is of course true, but that doesn’t mean that higher import prices would not lead to a shift towards domestic production. For example, if we take the case of transport equipment he highlights, if all the parts that we imported cost 20 percent more, then over time we would expect car producers in the United States to produce with a larger share of domestically produced parts than would otherwise be the case. This doesn’t mean that imported parts go to zero, or even that they necessarily fall, but just that they would be less than would be the case if import prices were 20 percent lower. This is pretty much basic economics — at a higher price we buy less.
While arbitrary tariffs are not a good way to raise the relative price of imports, we do have an obvious tool that is designed for exactly this purpose. We can reduce the value of the dollar against the currencies of our trading partners. This is probably best done through negotiations, which would inevitably involve trade-offs (e.g. less pressure to enforce U.S. patents and copyrights and less concern about access for the U.S. financial industry). Loud threats against our trading partners are likely to prove counter-productive. (We should also remove the protectionist barriers that keep our doctors and dentists from enjoying the full benefits of international competition.)
Anyhow, we can do something about our trade deficits if we had a president who thought seriously about the issue. As it is, the current occupant of the White House seems to not know which way is up when it comes to trade.
Donald Trump’s bluster about imposing large tariffs and forcing companies to make things in America has led to backlash where we have people saying things to the effect that we are in a global economy and we just can’t do anything about shifting from foreign produced items to domestically produced items. Paul Krugman’s blog post on trade can be seen in this light, although it is not exactly what he said and he surely knows better.
The post points out that imports account for a large percentage of the cost of many of the goods we produce here. This means that if we raise the price of imports, we also make it more expensive to produce goods in the United States.
This is of course true, but that doesn’t mean that higher import prices would not lead to a shift towards domestic production. For example, if we take the case of transport equipment he highlights, if all the parts that we imported cost 20 percent more, then over time we would expect car producers in the United States to produce with a larger share of domestically produced parts than would otherwise be the case. This doesn’t mean that imported parts go to zero, or even that they necessarily fall, but just that they would be less than would be the case if import prices were 20 percent lower. This is pretty much basic economics — at a higher price we buy less.
While arbitrary tariffs are not a good way to raise the relative price of imports, we do have an obvious tool that is designed for exactly this purpose. We can reduce the value of the dollar against the currencies of our trading partners. This is probably best done through negotiations, which would inevitably involve trade-offs (e.g. less pressure to enforce U.S. patents and copyrights and less concern about access for the U.S. financial industry). Loud threats against our trading partners are likely to prove counter-productive. (We should also remove the protectionist barriers that keep our doctors and dentists from enjoying the full benefits of international competition.)
Anyhow, we can do something about our trade deficits if we had a president who thought seriously about the issue. As it is, the current occupant of the White House seems to not know which way is up when it comes to trade.
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The inflation hawks are getting restless. They are anxious to seize on any evidence of rising inflation as an opportunity to push the Fed to raise interest rates.
For this reason, many may be excited by the latest data from the Commerce Department showing that the overall PCE deflator is up 2.1 percent over the last year, with the core (excluding food and energy prices) rising by 1.8 percent. As the headline of the AP article carried by the New York Times put it, “consumer spending slows; inflation pushing higher.”
The case for a rise in the inflation rate is a bit weaker if we move out a decimal. The inflation rate in the core PCE deflator over the last year was 1.753 percent. This rounds up to 1.8 percent, but not by much.
Furthermore, this is a rent story. The rent component of the PCE has risen by 3.6 percent over the last year. If we pull this out, inflation in the core PCE would be just 1.3 percent over the last 12 months. That’s not a lot to get excited over.
The inflation hawks are getting restless. They are anxious to seize on any evidence of rising inflation as an opportunity to push the Fed to raise interest rates.
For this reason, many may be excited by the latest data from the Commerce Department showing that the overall PCE deflator is up 2.1 percent over the last year, with the core (excluding food and energy prices) rising by 1.8 percent. As the headline of the AP article carried by the New York Times put it, “consumer spending slows; inflation pushing higher.”
The case for a rise in the inflation rate is a bit weaker if we move out a decimal. The inflation rate in the core PCE deflator over the last year was 1.753 percent. This rounds up to 1.8 percent, but not by much.
Furthermore, this is a rent story. The rent component of the PCE has risen by 3.6 percent over the last year. If we pull this out, inflation in the core PCE would be just 1.3 percent over the last 12 months. That’s not a lot to get excited over.
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