11/19/2016 - The Roundtable Insight: Danielle DiMartino Booth on The Overlords Of Finance
FRA is joined by Danielle DiMartino Booth in discussing Fed policy and the results on future economic states worldwide.
Danielle DiMartino Booth makes bold forecasts based on meticulous research and her years of experience in central banking and on Wall Street. Known for sounding an early warning about the housing bubble in the 2000s, Danielle offers a unique perspective to audiences seeking expertise in the financial markets, the economy, and the intersection of central banking and politics.
In the aftermath of Trump’s election, there’s been a lot of cheering about pushing back some of the Obamacare regulations. Zero interest rates led to a very untenable situation in housing. It’s currently more expensive to rent and buy than in any other time. Had we not been in a period of too low for too long, then we wouldn’t have had home builders only build luxury homes, because that’s the only thing they can make work in a 0 interest rate environment. These are unintended side effects of Fed policy, but you have to start wondering if they’re blind or cruel.
If you look at transcripts in December 2008 when the Fed lowered interest rates to the zero bound, they didn’t bother taking into account the terrible impact on the retirees who can no longer be prudent in their investments.
If interest rates were to rise, that would cause devastation in the bond market. If interest rates on the 10-Year were to rise to 7-8% and stay there for several years, the entire US federal budget would need to be paid by money printing. If that were to be sustained it’d be a global recession. If interest rates were closer to the 4% level, we would have seen the deficit double or more what’s been reported.
One of the major sources of social unrest in the future is the pension system. In Great Britain, the rate of return assumption is capped at 3.5%. It’s exactly the opposite here. In this era of low interest rates, not only has it forced liabilities themselves to bloom, but created a risk and liquidity vacuum that’s going to haunt retirees in the end. You will end up with social unrest if you cut police and firefighters as a direct result of Fed policy.
INTERNATIONAL POLICY
One of the things people anticipated the least when it comes to traditional triggers for inflation, is China and the effect a massive economy coming online would have in terms of driving deflationary sources that more than offset central bank actions. As long as debt continues to grow worldwide, we’ll keep a lid on inflation because people don’t have money to spend on other things as long as they keep servicing that debt. Chinese foreign reserves have started to decline, and they’re at the lowest level in three years.
About a trillion of their reserves is reserved to build a road to Europe. Another trillion is very illiquid, which leaves them with a trillion dollars in a black box of debt, an insolvent banking system, and a massive housing bubble. If we start to see fiscal spending in the United States that continues to drive up metals, then the combination of foreign buyers stepping away, the deflationary interest from overseas and globalization ebbing, and inflation at home, it won’t be pretty.
There’s always a danger when you go from one extreme to another. Japan implemented negative interest rates and failed, which meant the onus moved from the powerful central bankers back to governments in the form of fiscal stimulus.
TRUMP ELECTION
The Fed is a political institution, and not too happy with Trump. They might hike interest rates in December to spite him and try and induce a recession to flip the election, which results in Democrats leading Congress again. Then the question is what the yield curve looks like as inflation continues to rise. There’s no cut and dry answer to what bond yields do, because of the state of the current economic cycle and the bull market in the stock market.
From what we’ve seen, Trump is backing off most of the crazy things he said during his campaign. He’s going to be highly aware of his legacy and try his best to avoid the recession that will occur.
Infrastructure spending is the way to go. Australia has come up with some great programs for helping their students to pay off student loans. The programs we have now in the US encourage students to take on more debt than they can afford, because at the end of the road there’s an option they can take for forgiveness.
THOUGHTS ON FUTURE PROGRESS
We should also look to job retraining programs in the event of recession, instead of encouraging people to stay out of the workforce, which is what cheap money has encouraged. We should work to rebuild the competitiveness of the US. All of these things make a difference over the long term.
The message from the USA elections has a large part to do with regulations and regulatory captures in the economy in terms of companies trying to protect their own industry. Had the default been able to play out before QE2 came to the rescue, we would’ve had a more competitive environment. Way too many companies populate way too many industries, and we’re paying the price for that now. We’ve stifled entrepreneurship in the most innovative country in the world. The big companies completely control their interest and stifle innovation at the same time.
We can only hope to shift away from Keynesian thinking. It will require the revolution that we’re seeing in election results continue all the way to economic thinking
Abstract by: Annie Zhou <a2zhou@ryerson.ca>
