Wednesday, October 31, 2012

How Will the Fed React to Sandy?

There’s already talk on Wall Street about the possibility of the Federal Reserve providing further monetary accommodation in response to the damage wrought by Sandy.
With the Fed Funds target rate at zero, this could mean larger quantitative easing asset purchases or a focus on buying different financial assets by the Fed.
One trader even described what he thinks the Fed will do as “QE Sandy.”
If history and economic theory are guides to Fed policy, however, those counting on further accommodation may be in for a shock. It’s very possible—even likely—that Sandy will mean Fed policy might be tighter than it might have otherwise been. And that’s because Sandy’s side-effects might well accomplish the very things that Ben Bernanke has been hoping that his quantitative easing policy would.
The reason why some of the guys in expensive shoes who are telecommuting this week into Wall Street investment banks might expect further easing is obvious. The economy has experienced a real shock, losses will be in the as-yet-untold scores of billions. Federal and local governments will accelerate spending to provide relief and reconstruction. Economic activity in the Northeast has been severely disrupted. The economy obviously needs an injection of money. 
Only that may not be the way the Fed sees it.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, there were widespread expectations that the Fed would drop its interest rate targets. Economists, who had expected a tightening of policy before the hurricane struck, flipped to predicting easing. The Fed funds rate began dropping in anticipation of a falling target rate.
And then the Fed raised the target rate on September 20, 2004.
An economics paper published three years after this episode of contrarian Fed action explained not only why the Fed took this action—but why “the monetary authority should raise its nominal interest rate target following a disaster.” 


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