Earlier this year I wrote two articles about the Fed’s ability to hike interest rates this year. (see “Fed At Risk Of Missing Window To Hike Rates” and “The Window Continues To Close.”) In both articles, I discussed the biggest worry of the Federal Reserve, and frankly every Central Banker on the planet, was deflation. The problem with deflation, as an economic pressure, is that once entrenched it becomes extremely difficult to break as conventional monetary policy tools, mainly interest rates, have little effect.
The Federal Reserve has continued to hope for the last several years that extremely “accommodative” monetary policy, near zero interest rates, would spark stronger levels of economic activity leading to a rise in inflationary pressures. Unfortunately, this has yet to be the case. This is likely due to a monetary policy phenomenon known as a “liquidity trap” which is described as follows:
“A ‘Liquidity Trap’ is a situation described in Keynesian economics in which injections of cash into the private banking system by a central bank fail to lower interest rates and hence fail to stimulate economic growth. A liquidity trap is caused when people hoard cash because they expect an adverse event such as deflation, insufficient aggregate demand, or war. Signature characteristics of a liquidity trap are short-term interest rates that are near zero and fluctuations in the monetary base that fail to translate into fluctuations in general price levels.”
The problem for the Federal Reserve is that getting caught in a liquidity trap was not an unforeseen outcome of monetary policy, but rather an inevitable conclusion. As shown in the chart below of GDP, inflation and interest rates, each time the Fed has intervennd with monetary policies it has lead to lower rates of economic growth and lower rates of inflaton and interest rates. As stated, the current low levels of inflation, interest rates, and economic growth are the result of more than 30-years of misguided monetary policies that have led to a continued misallocation of capital.
