A long spell of low interest rates has created a windfall worth billions to banks, mortgage borrowers and others it was designed to benefit. But for many people who were counting on their nest eggs, those same low rates can spell trouble. "Americans who have done everything right, have worked hard, saved their money and stayed out of debt are the ones being punished by low interest rates," says... [more]
A long spell of low interest rates has created a windfall worth billions to banks, mortgage borrowers and others it was designed to benefit. But for many people who were counting on their nest eggs, those same low rates can spell trouble.
"Americans who have done everything right, have worked hard, saved their money and stayed out of debt are the ones being punished by low interest rates," says Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a voting member of the Fed's policy-making open market committee. "That state of affairs is not sustainable for a long period of time."
In 2009, according to the most recent data available from the Labor Department, average annual investment income for the 24.6 million American households headed by people 65 and older amounted to $2,564. That figure is down 34% from 2007, and is the lowest since 2003.
As of January, the average interest rate paid on relatively safe vehicles such as short-term savings accounts, time deposits and money-market funds stood at only 0.24%. That's one-tenth the level of late 2007 and the lowest on records dating back to 1959. Such depressed rates don't come close to compensating for inflation, which was running at an annualized rate of 5.6% in the three months ended February.
The pain inflicted on savers could have political repercussions. Retirees are among the country's most active voters, with the power to influence a wide range of issues, such as who will bear the burden of fixing the federal government's finances and whether politicians should rein in the Fed.
Over the past few years, seniors have taken a conservative turn: In the 2010 elections, Republican congressional candidates attracted 59% of the over-65 vote, compared to 48% in 2008, according to exit polls—a larger shift than that seen among the general populace.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703410604576216830941163492.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop[less]
Response by Riversider
almost 15 years ago
Posts: 13572
Member since: Apr 2009
Similarly, Bernanke's belief in the Phillips Curve is equally devoid of factual substance, despite its broad acceptance and simplistic appeal. The chart below shows the historical record, since 1947, plotting the U.S. unemployment rate against the subsequent rate of CPI inflation over the following 2-year period. The correlation is essentially zero.
As it happens, economists have been well aware of this lack of correlation for decades, but because of the simple intellectual appeal of an inflation-unemployment tradeoff, they have gone to great lengths to try to make the relationship work. The most prominent version of this is the "expectations augmented" Phillips Curve, which looks at the graph above as a whole set of "nested" Phillips Curves (like indifference curves in consumer theory), where each curve is set at a different level based on the level of expected inflation. In this view, unexpected inflation moves you along a given Phillips Curve, while expected inflation shifts you to a different curve. While this version of the theory is popular among economists because it gives them a modeling "environment" in which to teach the importance of expectations and so forth, the fact remains even the expectations-augmented version has only a weak relationship to actual economic data.
In effect, the most basic intellectual underpinning of the Fed's "dual mandate" is Grade-A horse manure.
The true Phillips Curve, then, is a relationship between unemployment and real wages. When workers are scarce, wages tend to rise faster than the general price level. When workers are plentiful, wages tend to rise slower than the general price level. If we look at U.S. data in this way, we find precisely what A.W. Phillips found in British data. The following chart plots the U.S. unemployment rate versus the annual inflation in real wages (average hourly earnings deflated by the GDP price deflator) over the subsequent 2-year period.
That said, however, the belief that the Federal Reserve can offset this by encouraging higher inflation is a dangerous and misguided dogma, which simply adds insult to injury to people at lower income levels who spend a large proportion of their income on food and energy. What the nation needs urgently is for the Fed to abandon its endless policy of distorting asset prices. This policy has the effect of reducing prospective future investment returns, damaging the incentive to save, and misallocating resources, all while increasing systemic risk and moral hazard - defending excessive risk-taking against losses over the short-run while leaving the nation vulnerable to the damaging consequences of that risk-taking over the long run.
Market veteran Ned Davis puts it nicely "I think the Fed has punished savers and has put us between a rock and a hard place with QE2. It has kept the banking system liquid and helped goose stocks. But in that it has also provided juice for a commodity explosion that has hurt the world's poor, it has offset much, if not all, the good it did. In that real money (ex inflation) matters, the situation is not nearly as favorable as most Fed watchers believe."
Similarly, Vitaliy Katsenelson related a recent speech by the Fed's Thomas Hoenig at the Colorado CFA Society - "He said these policies encourage speculation and don't allow for price discovery, and consequently they lead to imbalances, unintended consequences, and misallocation of resources. He said it is important to judge QE2's success over the right time frame, one long enough to encompass not just its stimulative benefits but also its consequences." Hoenig argued that the Fed's intervention will have unintended consequences, and offered as an example the Fed's actions of 2003, the resulting asset bubble, and the subsequent financial crisis that resulted. Vitaliy observed "I too believe that the Fed's actions in 2003 played a very large role in the subsequent real estate bubble, financial crisis, and today's high unemployment, but this was the first time I've heard such an admission come directly from a Fed governor."
Another strong argument against Social Security privatization [/elimination] ... the bottomless pit of "prudent" self-directed investment by Golden Agers, and just one of many ways to screw them over for huge profits.
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Response by Riversider
almost 15 years ago
Posts: 13572
Member since: Apr 2009
Great! A harmful gov't policy being used as the argument for another one.
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Response by alanhart
almost 15 years ago
Posts: 12397
Member since: Feb 2007
No, just cause for barring corporate lobbying and any other influence of government policy.
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Response by alanhart
almost 15 years ago
Posts: 12397
Member since: Feb 2007
It is, of course, exactly the same industry that lobbied for the corporate welfare about which you pasted here that wants to seize the bazillions of dollars of assets now managed by Social Security, and divert jillions in fees and diverse shenanigans and schemes, then the predictable corporate bailout/welfare with an even stronger argument for "too big to fail".
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Response by fieldschester
over 12 years ago
Posts: 3525
Member since: Jul 2013
alan, River, did you guys resolve your differences?
Similarly, Bernanke's belief in the Phillips Curve is equally devoid of factual substance, despite its broad acceptance and simplistic appeal. The chart below shows the historical record, since 1947, plotting the U.S. unemployment rate against the subsequent rate of CPI inflation over the following 2-year period. The correlation is essentially zero.
As it happens, economists have been well aware of this lack of correlation for decades, but because of the simple intellectual appeal of an inflation-unemployment tradeoff, they have gone to great lengths to try to make the relationship work. The most prominent version of this is the "expectations augmented" Phillips Curve, which looks at the graph above as a whole set of "nested" Phillips Curves (like indifference curves in consumer theory), where each curve is set at a different level based on the level of expected inflation. In this view, unexpected inflation moves you along a given Phillips Curve, while expected inflation shifts you to a different curve. While this version of the theory is popular among economists because it gives them a modeling "environment" in which to teach the importance of expectations and so forth, the fact remains even the expectations-augmented version has only a weak relationship to actual economic data.
In effect, the most basic intellectual underpinning of the Fed's "dual mandate" is Grade-A horse manure.
The true Phillips Curve, then, is a relationship between unemployment and real wages. When workers are scarce, wages tend to rise faster than the general price level. When workers are plentiful, wages tend to rise slower than the general price level. If we look at U.S. data in this way, we find precisely what A.W. Phillips found in British data. The following chart plots the U.S. unemployment rate versus the annual inflation in real wages (average hourly earnings deflated by the GDP price deflator) over the subsequent 2-year period.
That said, however, the belief that the Federal Reserve can offset this by encouraging higher inflation is a dangerous and misguided dogma, which simply adds insult to injury to people at lower income levels who spend a large proportion of their income on food and energy. What the nation needs urgently is for the Fed to abandon its endless policy of distorting asset prices. This policy has the effect of reducing prospective future investment returns, damaging the incentive to save, and misallocating resources, all while increasing systemic risk and moral hazard - defending excessive risk-taking against losses over the short-run while leaving the nation vulnerable to the damaging consequences of that risk-taking over the long run.
Market veteran Ned Davis puts it nicely "I think the Fed has punished savers and has put us between a rock and a hard place with QE2. It has kept the banking system liquid and helped goose stocks. But in that it has also provided juice for a commodity explosion that has hurt the world's poor, it has offset much, if not all, the good it did. In that real money (ex inflation) matters, the situation is not nearly as favorable as most Fed watchers believe."
Similarly, Vitaliy Katsenelson related a recent speech by the Fed's Thomas Hoenig at the Colorado CFA Society - "He said these policies encourage speculation and don't allow for price discovery, and consequently they lead to imbalances, unintended consequences, and misallocation of resources. He said it is important to judge QE2's success over the right time frame, one long enough to encompass not just its stimulative benefits but also its consequences." Hoenig argued that the Fed's intervention will have unintended consequences, and offered as an example the Fed's actions of 2003, the resulting asset bubble, and the subsequent financial crisis that resulted. Vitaliy observed "I too believe that the Fed's actions in 2003 played a very large role in the subsequent real estate bubble, financial crisis, and today's high unemployment, but this was the first time I've heard such an admission come directly from a Fed governor."
http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc110404.htm
Another strong argument against Social Security privatization [/elimination] ... the bottomless pit of "prudent" self-directed investment by Golden Agers, and just one of many ways to screw them over for huge profits.
Great! A harmful gov't policy being used as the argument for another one.
No, just cause for barring corporate lobbying and any other influence of government policy.
It is, of course, exactly the same industry that lobbied for the corporate welfare about which you pasted here that wants to seize the bazillions of dollars of assets now managed by Social Security, and divert jillions in fees and diverse shenanigans and schemes, then the predictable corporate bailout/welfare with an even stronger argument for "too big to fail".
alan, River, did you guys resolve your differences?