Tag Archives: Unconventional monetary policy

QE3 and the FED: State-contingency and commitment emphasized

Today the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published its decision to start a new round of quantitative easing and a revised announcement concerning the Federal Funds rate. Both legs of this decision have some interesting new aspects that show a central bank continually trying to expand the toolbox of monetary policy, and to be honest about its limitations when acting in an uncertain world. More specifically, the Fed re-introduces purchases of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) at a rate of $40 billion per month. No end date for the purchases is specified—at the contrary, it is emphasized that it will be extended if the economy does not pick up. … Continue reading

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At the Fed: What did come next?

September 22 the Federal Reserve initiated “Operation Twist” where they announced that they would start restructuring its debt by buying up long bonds with the proceedings from short bond sales, with the aim of lowering the long-term yields. As I mentioned in my post on that occasion, the Fed and Ben Bernanke had then exhausted the three main ways of conducting unconventional monetary policy as defined by Bernanke himself in a paper from 2004: I. Shaping Interest-Rate Expectations; II. Altering the Composition of the Central Bank’s Balance Sheet;  III. Expanding the Size of the Central Bank’s Balance Sheet. In case nothing new would happen to the American economy, the obvious … Continue reading

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