5df4050146f86f5010d42e00_pa2502c.jpg Paul Lachine

The Federal Reserve’s Relevance Test

The best that can be said for US monetary policy over the last few years is that it prevented the direst outcomes that could have followed Lehmann Brothers’ collapse. But no one would claim that lowering short-term interest rates spurred investment.

NEW YORK – With interest rates near zero, the US Federal Reserve and other central banks are struggling to remain relevant. The last arrow in their quiver is called quantitative easing (QE), and it is likely to be almost as ineffective in reviving the US economy as anything else the Fed has tried in recent years. Worse, QE is likely to cost taxpayers a bundle, while impairing the Fed’s effectiveness for years to come.

John Maynard Keynes argued that monetary policy was ineffective during the Great Depression. Central banks are better at restraining markets’ irrational exuberance in a bubble – restricting the availability of credit or raising interest rates to rein in the economy – than at promoting investment in a recession. That is why good monetary policy aims to prevent bubbles from arising.

But the Fed, captured for more than two decades by market fundamentalists and Wall Street interests, not only failed to impose restraints, but acted as cheerleaders. And, having played a central role in creating the current mess, it is now trying to regain face. 

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