Can the Federal Reserve Shrink the Money Stock Rapidly Now that It Can Pay Interest on Reserves?

DeLong/Pimco: Can the Federal Reserve Shrink the Money Stock Rapidly Now that It Can Pay Interest on Reserves?

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Tyler Cowen asks:

Marginal Revolution: Paying interest on reserves, and why it should be easy to disarm future inflationary pressures. Do I believe it?

The correct answer is "maybe."

If inflationary pressure comes because banks and others regain their confidence and seek to move their excess reserve deposits into higher-yielding dollar denominated assets, then the Federal Reserve can fix that with a flick of its wrist by raising the interest rate on deposits.

If inflationary pressure comes because banks and others fear a large dollar depreciation and seek to move their excess reserve deposits into non-dollar denominated assets, then the Federal Reserve is helpless, and the situation is dire--unless the Federal Reserve has gotten the authority to issue bonds and has preemptively used that authority to mop up the excess liquidity.

Paul McCulley of PIMCO:

PIMCO - Global Central Bank Focus June 2009 Exit Strategy: Most rational investors accept the dual proposition that a Fed funds rate pinned against zero and near-$800 billion of excess reserves sloshing around the banking system are not enduringly sustainable. This is the case despite the fact that most – though a smaller most – applaud the Fed for engineering these outcomes, so as to cut off the fat tail risk of deflationary Armageddon. The consensus overwhelmingly holds that once that fat tail has been cut off and then killed, borrowing from Colin Powell’s famous description of America’s strategy for running Iraq out of Kuwait, it will be necessary for the Fed to exit its extraordinarily accommodative strategy, hiking the Fed funds rate and soaking up all those excess reserves. It’s hard to argue with the basic thrust of this exit thesis. Because it’s basically right!

I must admit, however, that I’m perplexed that so many pundits put so much emphasis on the importance of the Fed soaking up excess reserves, as if it is a necessary condition for hiking the Fed funds rate. It is not. To be sure, it used to be, before the Fed had the legal authority to pay interest on reserves, which Congress granted last fall. Before then, the only way the Fed could achieve a meaningfully positive Fed funds rate target was to constrain the supply of reserves relative to the banking system’s demand for reserves, essentially required reserves. If there were excessive excess reserves, then the Fed funds rate would fall below the Fed’s target, as banks with excess would be willing to lend them out in the Fed funds market below the Fed funds target, given that if they simply left them at the Fed, they would earn nothing. But now, the Fed pays interest on banks’ excess reserves (presently at an interest rate of 0.25%, the top of the Fed’s 0% – 0.25% target band for the Fed funds rate). Thus, logic says that banks with excess reserves will not lend them in the Fed funds market at a rate appreciably lower than the Fed pays, but simply leave them on deposit at the Fed. Accordingly, the rate that the Fed pays on excess reserves should now act as a proximate floor for the Fed funds rate, even if there are huge excess reserves in the system. Thus, by hiking the rate it pays on excess reserves, the Fed now has the ability to enforce a rising Fed funds rate target – even before it “unwinds” its bloated balance sheet....

The Federal Reserve’s approach to supporting credit markets is... credit easing... focuses on the mix of loans and securities that it holds and on how this composition of assets affects credit conditions.... [C]redit spreads are much wider and credit markets more dysfunctional in the United States today than was the case during the Japanese experiment with quantitative easing. To stimulate aggregate demand in the current environment, the Federal Reserve must focus its policies on reducing those spreads and improving the functioning of private credit markets more generally.... When markets are illiquid and private arbitrage is impaired by balance sheet constraints and other factors, as at present, one dollar of longer-term securities purchases is unlikely to have the same impact on financial markets and the economy as a dollar of lending to banks, which has in turn a different effect than a dollar of lending to support the commercial paper market.... [T]he stance of Fed policy in the current regime – in contrast to a QE regime – is not easily summarized by a single number....

Yes, I know that many of your eyes are probably glazing over about now, given my (and Ben’s) wonkishness. I’m sorry about that, but this is really, really important stuff to understand, given the widespread yammering about the need for the Fed to have an exit strategy to de-create all the excess reserves it has created, as if they are intrinsically the kindling for an (eventual) rip-roaring inflationary fire. They are not.... [W]e can categorically say that the near-zero Fed funds rate is not, for the moment, fueling an inflationary pace of aggregate demand growth.... And neither is the Fed’s Credit Easing.... Yes, in the fullness of time, zero Fed funds could conceptually re-ignite borrowers’ and lenders’ mojo. Indeed, that’s precisely the Fed’s objective. And if and when that objective is achieved, the Fed funds rate will need to be hiked.... But right now, the least of my worries, and I think the Fed’s, too, is the prospect for an overheated economy, putting too many idled resources, both labor and industrial capacity, back to work too quickly... it would be delightful if that were our primary worry! But it isn’t....

Chairman Bernanke and a number of his colleagues have talked about all these various tools, stressing they have plenty of potential doors in their exit strategy. And indeed they do, even though simply hiking the rate the Fed pays on excess reserves is the cleanest way to hike the Fed funds rate...