SOME people with hypersensitive sniffers say the whiff of future inflation is in the air. What’s that, you say? Aren’t we experiencing deflation right now? The answer is yes. But, apparently, for those who are sufficiently hawkish, the recent activities of the Federal Reserve conjure up visions of inflation
The central bank is holding the Fed funds rate at nearly zero and has created a mountain of bank reserves to fight the financial crisis. Yes, these moves are unusual, but these are unusual times. Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy. Let me explain
First, the clear and present danger, both now and for the next year or two, is not inflation but deflation. Using the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index as the measure, inflation has now been negative for three consecutive months.
It’s true that falling oil prices, now behind us, were the main reason for the deflation. Core C.P.I. inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, has been solidly in the range of 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent for six consecutive months. But history teaches us that weak economies drag down inflation — and ours will be weak for some time. Core inflation near zero, or even negative, is a live possibility for 2010 or 2011.
Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, is a keen student of the 1930s, and he and his colleagues have been working overtime to dodge the deflation bullet. To this end, they cut the Fed funds rate to virtually zero last December and have since relied on a variety of extraordinary policies known as quantitative easing to restore the flow of credit.
These policies basically amount to creating new bank reserves by either buying or lending against a variety of assets. But quantitative easing is universally agreed to be weak medicine compared with cutting interest rates. So the Fed is administering a large dose — which is where all those reserves come from.
The mountain of reserves on banks’ balance sheets has, in turn, filled the inflation hawks with apprehension. But their concerns are misplaced. To understand why, start with the basic economics of banking, money and inflation.
In normal times, banks don’t want excess reserves, which yield them no profit. So they quickly lend out any idle funds they receive. Under such conditions, Fed expansions of bank reserves lead to expansions of credit and the money supply and, if there is too much of that, to higher inflation.
In abnormal times like these, however, providing frightened banks with the reserves they demand will fuel neither money nor credit growth — and is therefore not inflationary.
Rather, it’s more like a grand version of what the Fed does every Christmas season. The Fed always puts more currency into circulation during this prime shopping period because people demand it, and then withdraws the “excess” currency in January.