Category Archives: markets

EPA’s Orwellian Transparency

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Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX), Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is unhappy with the EPA’s decision to be unresponsive to Committee requests for information regarding the EPA-caused disaster in and downriver from a Colorado mine.

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the EPA failed to meet the House Science Committee’s reasonable deadline in turning over documents pertaining to the Gold King Mine spill. These documents are essential to the Committee’s ongoing investigation and our upcoming hearing on Sept 9. But more importantly, this information matters to the many Americans directly affected in western states, who are still waiting for answers from the EPA.

But that’s just transparency in the manner of this administration.

Panicky Central Planners

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…and maybe pundits, too.

For the Federal Reserve, the aftershocks threaten to set back its path to interest-rate normality yet again….

That’s how Alex Frangos and Justin Lahart opened their Wall Street Journal piece Monday, writing of the People’s Republic of China’s (second in a month) “market” meltdown last week and with it the demonstration by the PRC’s economic central planners and their panicky twitchings with interest rates, bank reserve requirements, market interventions, and the like that, once again, central planning cannot seriously impact economies for longer than the moment.

Never mind that the PRC has little impact on the global economy—as Frangos and Lahart themselves note, PRC imports from the US run to 1% of our GDP and all of 2% of the S&P500 companies’ revenue are PRC-related. The situation is little different for Europe: most of those nations’ economic interactions with the PRC represent roughly 1% of their GDPs as well.

They added this to their fandango:

September is still on the table for the Fed, but markets will need to calm before then.

No, they don’t. The markets aren’t the underlying economy. The markets are tied to the economy by a stout rope, but that rope has large and nearly randomly variable slack. The underlying economy, slow as the Obama recovery has been, nevertheless is in solid territory, and as Frangos and Lahart themselves concede, “a US recession led by China doesn’t look to be in the cards.”

The Fed needs to move on the longer-term state of the economy, not on the short-term, animal spirit vagaries of the markets. The Fed needs to stick to a plan—any plan—and move interest rates up on schedule, which means in September. Or better, loosen and then release controls, letting interest rates float in those same markets—which for all their animal spirits influence still are better at “managing” a free market economy than any central planners, including those at the Fed—determine the appropriate interest rate levels.

And this:

[T]he Fed’s problem with China is what it will do to a pace of US inflation that already isn’t anywhere close to its 2% target.

No, again. The Fed’s problem has nothing to do with the PRC. The Fed’s problem is that US inflation isn’t anywhere close to its 2% target, and it’s not going to get there anytime soon. Interest rates are intrinsically inflationary; the only way to move our present inflation rate to 2% is to raise/let rise interest rates to levels consistent with 2% inflation rather than continuing to suppress the one (and so the other) to artificially low levels.

There’s a Hint Here

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Boeing Co is scrambling to renegotiate an about $85 million satellite contract that became the first big casualty of the US Export-Import Bank’s loss of its operating charter due to congressional opposition.

Asia Broadcast Satellite last month terminated its order for a Boeing 702SP satellite, although the two say they are continuing to discuss the deal.

On the other hand,

SpaceX played down the threat, and said only two of the 50 launches in its current manifest were due to be backed by the bank.

And

Orbital ATK has recently relied on the bank for about one satellite deal a year, though doesn’t currently have any Ex-Im backed space business.

Hmm….

The Fed’s Error

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Many observers have called for the FOMC to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates in the near term. But such a course would create profound economic risks for the US economy. Why would a near-term tightening of monetary policy be so problematic? Because given the prevailing economic conditions, higher interest rates would push the economy away from the FOMC’s economic goals, not toward them.

On the contrary. If the Fed’s target inflation rate for satisfying its statutorily imposed mandate of price stability is 2%, inflation rate is and has been since the Panic of 2008 substantially lower, and Fed-suppressed interest rates are artificially low—in the zero-to-not-much-more range—and have been over substantially the same time frame and longer, then the thing to do is to raise interest rates allow interest rates to float to levels historically consistent with an inflation rate of 2%.

After all, rising interest rates is intrinsically inflationary, and the Fed has (quite properly IMNSHO) said 2% inflation is the stable price inflation, not substantially less than 2%.

Continued interference in the free market, whether by the elected government or by the Federal Reserve Bank, is not just ineffective, it’s actively counterproductive.