Morgan Stanley team members Steven Jen and Eric Chaney (joined by Takehiro Sato and David Miles) debate today the interesting question of whether the eurozone economies have entered a liquidity trap (LT). Those who have no idea what one of these would look like could do worse than read Paul Krugman’s classic article on the topic: It’s baaack! Japan’s Slump and the Return of the Liquidity Trap (pdf).
So what is all the fuss about?
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Well Sweden has just put the cat among the pigeons. Taking advantage of its ability to apply an independent monetary policy, the Riksbank has decided to cut its base lending rate from 2.0% to 1.5%. The reason why is not hard to discern, apart from the reduced growth forecast for this year, the inflation rate is falling dangerously low, at just 0.2% year on year in May, dropping from a 0.4% y-oy in April and 0.5% y-o-y in March. Obviously Sweden is on deflation alert, and in fact a greater reduction (say 1%) might have been justified.
This is bound to spark all sorts of additional debate about the euro, and its advisability. Finland would be the best point of comparison here. The Finnish inflation rate was 0.6% y-o-y in May, but it has been hovering precariously near the zero level for the last month, anything which gave a sudden push to the disinflation process, like a sudden bust in commodity prices, would certainly clearly knock Finland over the line.
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There is a very interesting article in todays Financial Times. For the first time an executive board member of the ECB – Lucas Papademos – has spoken openly about the difficulties presented by having a single monetary policy for such a diverse set of economies. In fact these comments take on more significance in the light of the fact that Papademos is vice President of the ECB, and widely tipped to replace Otmar Issing as Chief Economist when Issing retires.
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A right royal row is brewing at the ECB. Basically the old guard theorists of the ‘one size fits all’ monetary policy are being challenged by more pragmatic observers of day to day realities. For the moments it is the politicians who are making the running (but there are plenty of competent economists in Germany and Italy who are ready to back them up), and yesterday the OECD joined the fray.
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The ECB met earlier today to conduct the monthly review of interest rate policy. It came as a surprise to noone that the outcome was to leave everything just as it is. Surprisingly though the decision this month is surrounded by a little more controversy than has been the case of late since Italy’s Berlusconi and economic opinion in Germany have been suggesting that some reduction of rates might be no bad thing, whilst Spain’s economy minister (and former EU commisioner) Pedro Solbes is reported to have been pushing for an increase. Why the difference?
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