“I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you’ve probably misunderstood what I’ve said.”  – Alan Greenspan

Imagine if Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell told the American people they must pay more for the goods and services they consume.

How long would it take for mobs with pitchforks to surround the Mariner Eccles building?  However, Jerome Powell and every other member of the Fed routinely and consistently convey pro-inflationary ideals, and there is nary a protest, which seems odd. The reason for the American public’s complacency is that the Fed is not that direct and relies on carefully crafted language and euphemisms to describe the desire for higher inflation.

To wit, the following statements from past and present Fed officials make it all but clear they want more inflation:  

• “That is why it is essential that we at the Fed use our tools to make sure that we do not permit an unhealthy downward drift in inflation expectations and inflation,” – Jerome Powell November 2019
• “In order to move rates up, I would want to see inflation that’s persistent and that’s significant,” -Jerome Powell December 2019
• “Been very challenging to get inflation back to 2% target” -Jerome Powell December 2019
• “Ms. Yellen also said that continuing low inflation, regarded as a boon by many, could be “dangerous” – FT – November 2017
• “One way to increase the scope for monetary policy is to retain the Fed’s current focus on hitting a targeted value of inflation, but to raise the target to, say, 3 or 4 percent.” –Ben Bernanke October 2017
• “Further weakness in inflation could prompt the U.S. Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, even if economic growth maintains its momentum”  -James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis  May 2019
• “Fed Evans Says Low Inflation Readings Elevating His Concerns” -Bloomberg May 2019
• “I believe an aggressive policy action such as this is required to re-anchor inflation expectations at our target.”  Neel Kashkari, President Minneapolis Fed June 2019

As an aside, it cannot be overemphasized the policies touted in the quotes above actually result in deflation, an outcome the Fed desperately fears.

The Fed, and all central banks for that matter, have a long history of using confusing economic terminology. Economics is not as complicated as the Fed makes it seem. What does make economics hard to grasp is the technical language and numerous contradictions the Fed uses to explain economics and justify unorthodox monetary policy. It is made even more difficult when the Fed’s supporting cast – the media, Wall Street and other Fed apologists – regurgitate the Fed’s gibberish.   

The Fed’s fourth installment of quantitative easing (“QE4”, also known as “Not-QE QE”) is vehemently denied as QE by the Fed and Fed apologists. These denials, specifically a recent article in the Financial Times (FT), provide us yet another opportunity to show how the Fed and its minions so blatantly deceive the public.

What is QE?

QE is a transaction in which the Fed purchases assets, mainly U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed-securities, via their network of primary dealers. In exchange for the assets, the Fed credits the participating dealers’ reserve account at the Fed, which is a fancy word for a place for dormant money. In this transaction, each dealer receives payment for the assets sold to the Fed in an account that is essentially the equivalent of a depository account with the Fed. Via QE, the Fed has created reserves that sit in accounts maintained by it.

Reserves are the amount of funds required by the Fed to be held by banks (which we are using interchangeably with “primary dealer” for the remainder of this discussion) in their Fed account or in vault cash to back up a percentage of specified deposit liabilities. While QE is not directly money printing, it enables banks to create loans at a multiple of approximately ten times the reserves available, if they so choose.

Notice that “Quantitative Easing” is the preferred terminology for the operations that create additional reserves, not something easier to understand and more direct like money/reserve printing, Fed bond buying program, or liquidity injections. Consider the two words used to describe this policy – Quantitative and Easing. Easing is an accurate descriptor of the Fed’s actions as it refers to an action that makes financial conditions easier, e.g., lower interest rates and more money/liquidity. However, what does quantitative mean? From the Oxford Dictionary, “quantitative” is “relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something rather than its quality.”   

So, QE is a measure of the amount of easing in the economy. Does that make sense to you? Would the public be so complacent if QE were called BBMPO (bond buying and money printing operations)? Of course not. The public’s acceptance of QE without much thought is a victory for the Fed marketing and public relations departments.

Is “Not-QE” QE?

The Fed and media are vehemently defending the latest round of repurchase market (“repo”) operations and T-bill purchases as “not QE.” Before the Fed even implemented these new measures, Jerome Powell was quick to qualify their actions accordingly: “My colleagues and I will soon announce measures to add to the supply of reserves over time,” “This is not QE.”

This new round of easing is QE, QE4, to be specific. We dissect a recent article from the FT to debunk the nonsense commonly used to differentiate these recent actions from QE.  

On February 5^th, 2020, Dominic White, an economist with a research firm in London, wrote an article published by the FT entitled The Fed is not doing QE. Here’s why that matters.

The article presents three factors that must be present for an action to qualify as QE, and then it rationalizes why recent Fed operations are something else. Here are the requirements, per the article:

1. “increasing the volume of reserves in the banking system”
2. “altering the mix of assets held by investors”
3. “influence investors’ expectations about monetary policy”

Simply:

1.  providing banks the ability to make more money
2.  forcing investors to take more risk and thereby push asset prices higher
3.  steer expectations about future Fed policy. 

Point 1

In the article, White argues “that the US banking system has not multiplied up the Fed’s injection of reserves.”

That is an objectively false statement. Since September 2019, when repo and Treasury bill purchase operations started, the assets on the Fed’s balance sheet have increased by approximately $397 billion. Since they didn’t pay for those assets with cash, wampum, bitcoin, or physical currency, we know that $397 billion in additional reserves have been created. We also know that excess reserves, those reserves held above the minimum and therefore not required to backstop specified deposit liabilities, have increased by only $124 billion since September 2019. That means $273 billion (397-124) in reserves were employed (“multiplied up”) by banks to support loan growth.

Regardless of whether these reserves were used to back loans to individuals, corporations, hedge funds, or the U.S. government, banks increased the amount of debt outstanding and therefore the supply of money. In the first half of 2019, the M2 money supply rose at a 4.0% to 4.5% annualized rate. Since September, M2 has grown at a 7% annualized rate.  

Point 2

White’s second argument against the recent Fed action’s qualifying as QE is that, because the Fed is buying Treasury Bills and offering short term repo for this round of operations, they are not removing riskier assets like longer term Treasury notes and mortgage-backed securities from the market. As such, they are not causing investors to replace safe investments with riskier ones.  Ergo, not QE.

This too is false. Although by purchasing T-bills and offering repo the Fed has focused on the part of the bond market with little to no price risk, the Fed has removed a vast amount of assets in a short period. Out of necessity, investors need to replace those assets with other assets. There are now fewer non-risky assets available due to the Fed’s actions, thus replacement assets in aggregate must be riskier than those they replace.

Additionally, the Fed is offering repo funding to the market.  Repo is largely used by banks, hedge funds, and other investors to deploy leverage when buying financial assets. By cheapening the cost of this funding source and making it more readily available, institutional investors are incented to expand their use of leverage. As we know, this alters the pricing of all assets, be they stocks, bonds, or commodities.

By way of example, we know that two large mortgage REITs, AGNC and NLY, have dramatically increased the leverage they utilize to acquire mortgage related assets over the last few months. They fund and lever their portfolios in part with repo.

Point 3

White’s third point states, “the Fed is not using its balance sheet to guide expectations for interest rates.”

Again, patently false. One would have to be dangerously naïve to subscribe to White’s logic. As described below, recent measures by the Fed are gargantuan relative to steps they had taken over the prior 50 years. Are we to believe that more money, more leverage, and fewer assets in the fixed income universe is anything other than a signal that the Fed wants lower interest rates? Is the Fed taking these steps for more altruistic reasons?

Bad Advice

After pulling the wool over his reader’s eyes, the author of the FT article ends with a little advice to investors: “Rather than obsessing about fluctuations in the size of the Fed’s balance sheet, then, investors might be better off focusing on those things that have changed more fundamentally in recent months.”

After a riddled and generally incoherent explanation about why QE is not QE, White has the chutzpah to follow up with advice to disregard the actions of the world’s largest central bank and the crisis-type operations they are conducting. QE 4 and repo operations were a sudden and major reversal of policy. On a relative basis using a 6-month rate of change, it was the third largest liquidity injection to the U.S. financial system, exceeded only by actions taken following the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. As shown below, using a 12-month rate of change, recent Fed actions constitute the single biggest liquidity injection in 50 years of data.

Are we to believe that the latest round of Fed policy is not worth following? In what is the biggest “tell” that White is not qualified on this topic, every investment manager knows that money moves the markets and changes in liquidity, especially those driven by the central banks, are critically important to follow.

The graph below compares prior balance sheet actions to the latest round.

Data Courtesy St. Louis Federal Reserve

This next graph is a not so subtle reminder that the current use of repo is simply unprecedented.

Data Courtesy St. Louis Federal Reserve

Summary

This is a rebuttal to the FT article and comments from the Fed, others on Wall Street and those employed by the financial media. The wrong-headed views in the FT article largely parrot those of Ben Bernanke. This past January he stated the following:

“Quantitative easing works through two principal channels: by reducing the net supply of longer-term assets, which increases their prices and lower their yields; and by signaling policymakers’ intention to keep short rates low for an extended period. Both channels helped ease financial conditions in the post-crisis era.”   -LINK

Bourbon, tequila, and beer offer drinkers’ very different flavors of alcohol, but they all have the same effect. This round of QE may be a slightly different cocktail of policy action, but it is just as potent as QE 1, 2, and 3 and will equally intoxicate the market as much, if not more.

Keep in mind that QE 1, 2, and 3 were described as emergency policy actions designed to foster recovery from an economic crisis. Might that fact be the rationale for claiming this round of liquidity is far different from prior ones? Altering words to describe clear emergency policy actions is a calculated effort to normalize those actions. Normalizing them gives the Fed greater latitude to use them at will, which appears to be the true objective. Pathetic though it may be, it is the only rationale that helps us understand their obfuscation.

“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

John Maynard Keynes – The Economic Consequences of Peace 1920

“And when we see that we’ve reached that level we’ll begin to gradually reduce our asset purchases to the level of the underlying trend growth of demand for our liabilities.” –Jerome Powell January 29, 2020.

With that one seemingly innocuous statement, Chairman Powell revealed an alarming admission about the supply of money and your wealth. The current state of monetary policy explains why so many people are falling behind and why wealth inequality is at levels last seen almost 100 years ago. 

REALity

 “Real” is a very important concept in the field of economics. Real generally refers to an amount of something adjusted for the effects of inflation. This allows economists to measure true organic growth or decline.

Real is equally important for the rest of us. The size of our paycheck or bank account balance is meaningless without an understanding of what money can buy. For instance, an annual income of $25,000 in 1920 was about eight times the national average. Today that puts a family of four below the Federal Poverty Guideline. As your grandfather used to say, a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to.

Real wealth and real wage growth are important for assessing your economic standing and that of the nation.

Here are two facts:

• Wealth is largely a function of the wages we earn
• The wages we earn are predominately a function of the growth rate of the economy

These facts establish that the prosperity and wealth of all citizens in aggregate is meaningfully tied to economic growth or the output of a nation. It makes perfect sense.

Now, let us consider inflation and the role it plays in determining our real wages and real wealth.

If the rate of inflation is less than the rate of wage growth over time, then our real wages are rising and our wealth is increasing. Conversely, if inflation rises at a pace faster than wages, wealth declines despite a larger paycheck and more money in the bank.

With that understanding of “real,” let’s discuss inflation.

What is Inflation?

Borrowing from an upcoming article, we describe inflation in the following way:

“One of the most pernicious of these issues in our “modern and sophisticated” intellectual age is that of inflation. Most people, when asked to define inflation, would say “rising prices” with no appreciation for the fact that price movements are an effect, not a cause. They are a symptom of monetary circumstances. Inflation defined is, in fact, a disequilibrium between the amount of currency entering an economic system relative to the productive output of that same system.”

The price of cars, cheeseburgers, movie tickets, and all the other goods and services we consume are chiefly based on supply and demand. Demand is a function of both our need and desire to own a good and, equally importantly, how much money we have. The amount of money we have in aggregate, known as money supply, is governed by the Federal Reserve. Therefore, the supply of money is a key component of demand and therefore a significant factor affecting prices.

With the linkage between the supply of money and inflation defined, let us revisit Powell’s recent revelation.

“And when we see that we’ve reached that level we’ll begin to gradually reduce our asset purchases to the level of the underlying trend growth of demand for our liabilities.”

In plain English, Powell states that the supply of money is based on the demand for money and not the economic growth rate.  To clarify, one of the Fed’s largest liabilities currently are bank reserves. Banks are required to hold reserves for every loan they make. Therefore, they need reserves to create money to lend. Ergo, “demand for our liabilities,” as Powell states, actually means bank demand for the seed funding to create money and make loans.

The relationship between money supply and the demand for money may, in fact, be aligned with economic growth. If so, then the supply of money should rise with the economy. This occurs when debt is predominately employed to facilitate productive investments.

The problem occurs when money is demanded for consumption or speculation. For example:

• When hedge funds demand billions to leverage their trading activity
• When Apple, which has over $200 billion in cash, borrows money to buy back their stock  
• When you borrow money to buy a car, the size of the economy increases but not permanently as you are not likely to buy another car tomorrow and the next day

Now ask, should the supply of money increase because of those instances?

The relationship between the demand for money and economic activity boils down to what percentage of the debt taken on is productive and helps the economy and the populace grow versus what percentage is for speculation and consumption.

While there is no way to quantify how debt is used, we do know that speculative and consumptive debt has risen sharply and takes up a much larger percentage of all debt than in prior eras.  The glaring evidence is the sharp rise of debt to GDP.

Data Courtesy St. Louis Federal Reserve

If most of the debt were used productively, then the level of debt would drop relative to GDP. In other words, the debt would not only produce more economic growth but would also pay for itself.  The exact opposite is occurring as growth languishes despite record levels of debt accumulation.

The speculative markets provide further evidence. Without presenting the long list of asset valuations that stand at or near record levels, consider that since the last time the S&P 500 was fairly valued in 2009, it has grown 375%. Meanwhile, total U.S. Treasury debt outstanding is up by 105% from $11 trillion to $22.5 trillion and corporate debt is up 55% from $6.5 trillion to $10.1 trillion. Over that same period, nominal GDP has only grown 46% and Average Hourly Earnings by 29%.

When the money supply is increased for consumptive and speculative purposes, the Fed creates dissonance between our wages, wealth, and the rate of inflation. In other words, they generate excessive inflation and reduce our real wealth.  

If this is the case, why is the stated rate of inflation less than economic growth and wage growth?

The Wealth Scheme

This scheme works like all schemes by keeping the majority of people blind to what is truly occurring. To perpetuate such a scheme, the public must be convinced that inflation is low and their wealth is increasing.

In 2000, a brand new Ford Taurus SE sedan had an original MSRP of $18,935. The 2019 Ford Taurus SE has a starting price of $27,800.  Over the last 19 years, the base price of the Ford Taurus has risen by 2.05% a year or a total of 47%. According to the Bureau of Labor Statics (BLS), since the year 2000, the consumer price index for new vehicles has only risen by 0.08% a year and a total of 1.68% over the same period.

For another instance of how inflation is grossly underreported, we highlighted flaws in the reporting of housing prices in MMT Sounds Great in Theory But…  To wit: 

“Since then, inflation measures have been tortured, mangled, and abused to the point where it scarcely equates to the inflation that consumers deal with in reality. For example, home prices were substituted for “homeowners equivalent rent,” which was falling at the time, and lowered inflationary pressures, despite rising house prices.

Since 1998, homeowners equivalent rent has risen 72% while house prices, as measured by the Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index has almost doubled the rate at 136%. Needless to say, house prices, which currently comprise almost 25% of CPI, have been grossly under-accounted for. In fact, since 1998 CPI has been under-reported by .40% a year on average. Considering that official CPI has run at a 2.20% annual rate since 1998, .40% is a big misrepresentation, especially for just one line item.”

Those two obscene examples highlight that the government reported inflation is not the same inflation experienced by consumers. It is important to note that we are not breaking new ground with the assertion that the government reporting of inflation is low. As we have previously discussed, numerous private assessments quantify that the real inflation rate could easily be well above the average reported 2% rate. For example, Shadow Stats quantifies that inflation is running at 10% when one uses the official BLS formula from 1980.

Despite what we may sense and a multitude of private studies confirming that inflation is running greater than 2%, there are a multitude of other government-sponsored studies that argue inflation is actually over-stated. So, the battle is in the trenches, and the devil is in the details.

As defined earlier, inflation is “a disequilibrium between the amount of currency entering an economic system relative to the productive output of that same system.”

The following graph shows that the supply of money, measured by M2, has grown far more than the rate of economic growth (GDP) over the last 20 years.

Data St. Louis Federal Reserve

Since 2000, M2 has grown 234% while GDP has grown at half of that rate, 117%. Over the same period, the CPI price index has only grown by 53%. M2 implies an annualized inflation rate over the last 20 years of 6.22% which is three times that of CPI. 

Dampening perceived inflation is only part of the cover-up. The scheme is also perpetuated with other help from the government. The government borrows to boost temporary economic growth and help citizens on the margin. This further limits people’s ability to detect a significant decline in their standard of living.

As shown below, when one strips out the change in government debt (the actual increase in U.S. Treasury debt outstanding) from the change in GDP growth, the organic economy has shrunk for the better part of the last 20 years. 

Data St. Louis Federal Reserve

It doesn’t take an economist to know that a 6.22% inflation rate (based on M2) and decade long recession would force changes to our monetary policy and send those responsible to the guillotines. If someone suffering severe headaches is diagnosed with a brain tumor, the problem does not go away because the doctor uses white-out to cover up the tumor on the x-ray film.

Despite crystal clear evidence, the mirages of economic growth and low inflation prevent us from seeing reality.

Summary

Those engaging in speculative ventures with the benefit of cheap borrowing costs are thriving. Those whose livelihood and wealth are dependent on a paycheck are falling behind. For this large percentage of the population, their paychecks may be growing in line with the stated government inflation rate but not the true inflation rate they pay at the counter. They fall further behind day by day as shown below.

While this may be hard to prove using government inflation data, it is the reality. If you think otherwise, you may want to ask why a political outsider like Donald Trump won the election four years ago and why socialism and populism are surging in popularity. We doubt that it is because everyone thinks their wealth is increasing. To quote Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

That brings us back to Jerome Powell and the Fed. The U.S. economy is driven by millions of individuals making decisions in their own best interests. Prices are best determined by those millions of people based on supply and demand – that includes the price of money or interest rates. Any governmental interference with that natural mechanism is a recipe for inefficiency and quite often failure.

If monetary policy is to be set by a small number of people in a conference room in the Eccles Building in Washington, D.C. who think they know what is best for us based on flawed data, then they should prepare themselves for even more radical social and political movements than we have already seen.