Larry Summer contra Ben Bernanke en sus blogs. Stagnación o estancamiento secular.
Is Secular Stagnation all about the Zero Lower Bound on Nominal Interest Rates?
The essence of secular stagnation is a chronic excess of saving over investment. The natural question for an economist to ask is how can such a chronic excess exist in flexible markets? In particular, shouldn’t interest rates adjust to equate saving and investment at full employment? The most obvious answer is that short term interest rates can’t fall below zero (or some bound close to zero) and this inhibits full adjustment. Ben is skeptical of the importance of this factor, noting that with a 2 percent inflation target real interest rates can fall to -2 percent. True enough. But, it is at least an open question whether central banks can always be credible in claiming they will hit their inflation targets. Market measures of expected inflation suggest that throughout the industrial world inflation may well fall short of 2 percent for a decade or more.
Separately, it is worth noting that there may be other reasons why interest rate adjustment to equate saving and investment at full employment does not operate smoothly. In situations where target saving is important, reductions in rates may increase rather than decrease saving, exacerbating imbalances. Further, there are reasons for concern that protracted very low rates precipitate financial instability by increasing capitalization ratios, raising the duration of assets, encouraging risk taking to chase yield and reducing the financial discipline associated with loan coupon payments.
Do Real Rates below Zero Make Economic Sense?
Ben suggests not-- citing my uncle Paul Samuelson’s famous observation that at a permanently zero or subzero real interest rate it would make sense to invest any amount to level a hill for the resulting saving in transportation costs. Ben grudgingly acknowledges that there are many theoretical mechanisms that could give rise to zero rates. To name a few: credit markets do not work perfectly, property rights are not secure over infinite horizons, property taxes that are explicit or implicit, liquidity service yields on debt, and investors with finite horizons.
To use a phrase Ben has popularized in a different context, negative real rates are phenomenon that we observe in practice if not always in theory. The paper by Hamilton, Harris, Hatzius, and West that he cites demonstrates that during the twentieth century, rates in America have been negative at least 30 percent of the time. In Germany right now, the 10-year nominal rate is 18 basis points suggesting a negative real rate, and the rate is around 60 basis points for 30 years! In Britain, yields on 50-year indexed bonds have been negative for long periods of time.
Were Bubbles an important Contributor to Previous Recoveries?
In support of the idea that the economy suffered from a chronic excess of saving, I have argued that the 2003-2007 recovery and quite possibly the late stages of the 1990s recovery were powered in significant part unsustainable financial conditions. Ben is skeptical, relying on the work of Hamilton et. al (2015) to note that the positive effects of the housing bubble during the previous expansion were offset by an increase in the US trade deficit, and that bubbles were only modestly relevant in the late 1990s. This issue requires much more study. I think that it will be hard to escape the conclusion that household debt grew at an unsustainable pace in the decade before the great financial crisis and that this was an important spur to growth. And I am fairly confident that wealth effects associated with a booming stock market were important in the late 1990s. As I discuss below, I agree with Ben that the open economy aspects are very important and that excess saving in substantial part has emanated from abroad. I have always listed reserve accumulation and foreign demand for safe assets among the major factors acting to depress real interest rates.
How good a solution is expansionary fiscal policy?
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/ben-bernanke/posts/2015/04/01-larry-summers-response
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Ben Bernancke ha abierto su propio blog y Larry Summer comparte sus dudas con él.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers.
La fortaleza del dólar exprime a las multinacionales de EE UU
Las vacaciones a Europa le van a salir a los estadounidenses un 25% más baratas que hace un año gracias a la fuerte apreciación del dólar. Lejos quedan los 0,72 euros que les daban al cambio en julio por cada billete de George Washington. Ahora se acerca a la paridad con la divisa europea. Los agentes inmobiliarios a este lado del Atlántico ofrecen, incluso, villas de lujo en Francia e Italia que parecen a precio de ganga, por si quieren aprovechar para comprar un lugar de retiro.
El rey dólar, sin embargo, se está convirtiendo en el enemigo de los principales ejecutivos de las grandes multinacionales de Estados Unidos. Al menos, ese es el argumento al que recurren estos días para justificar que sus resultados podrían ser mejor. Se vio ya en el cuatro trimestre de 2014 y se hace aún más evidente en el arranque de 2015. Las más castigadas son compañías metidas en el negocio del consumo, como Procter & Gamble o Kimberly Clark.
P&G genera dos tercios de los ingresos en el exterior. Cuando las divisas extranjeras con las que opera pierden valor frente al dólar, la cifra de negocio baja y el beneficio de sus operaciones fuera de EE UU se reduce. Sus ventas cayeron un 8% en el primer trimestre, en gran parte por el cambio desfavorable, hasta los 18.100 millones. El lastre, por tanto, es significativo.
Por su parte, Kimberly-Clark señala en sus resultados que el efecto del tipo de cambio le redujo un 9% la facturación global, que fueron de 4.700 millones en el trimestre. Y no es una situación que, dicen sus directivos, vaya a resolverse pronto. Algo similar pasa con Coca-Cola y PepsiCo, que calculan que el cambio se comerá un 10% de su beneficio y un 5% de los ingresos este ejercicio.
Un saludo