Artículo de un Premio Nobel

En el Wall Street Journal de hoy hay un artículo de R. Lucas, premio Nobel de economía del año 1995, que dice lo mismo que yo. Lo reproduzco íntegro. No creo que sea sospechoso de keynesiano, socialista, o algo así, quien "inventó" y desarrolló la teoría de las Expectativas Racionales. Yo no la comparto, al menos en sus expresiones más extremas. Sea como sea, lo pongo aquí como artículo brillante de uno de los economistas más influyentes del siglo XX; quien, junto con Friedman y otros, sentó las bases de los bancos centrales actuales y de la política monetaria moderna. Quien demostró con su teoría que intentar engañar a los agentes con expansiones innecesarias de liquidez no servían para nada, pues la gente aprendía a formarse expectativas consistentes y aprendía que el aumento de dinero se traduciría en aumento de inflación...
El párrafo en negrita es el argumento crucial y se parece al de mi artículo de hoy de LD bastante (aunque me gusta la brillantez con que lo expone Lucas). Como activo cuasi monetario, las Letras del Tesoro se convierten en objetivo codiciado por razones de seguridad y liquidez: no hay suficiente dinero porque la gente lo ha retirado de los mercados, pues todos quieren vender sus otros activos y bienes para lograr algo imposible: comprar una oferta limitada de letras del Tesoro o tener todo su patrimonio en líquido. Los precios de los activos caen e inmediatemante lo hacen los de los bienes y servicios. Lo único que cabe hacer es inyectar dinero para que poco a poco haya saldos excedentarios que vuelvan a los mercados de bienes y la gente vuelva a gastar. Si no, proceso deflacionista retroalimentado que tardará muchísimo más en detenerse; sobre todo si se tiene en cuenta la impaciencia de los menos escrupulosos que se encuentran con el poder en sus manos casi sin proponerselo (10 años para Hitler desde que empezó siendo un don nadie; idem Musolini; Idem Lenin; idem Largo Caballero, carrillo, etc.) And so on. No lo digo a la ligera: lo que más me preocupa desde el comienzo de esta crisis (y podeis mirar en mi hemeroteca) son las consecuencias políticas, caeteris paribus antidemócratas siempre.

Bernanke Is the Best Stimulus Right Now
By ROBERT E. LUCAS JR. Mr. Lucas, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1995.

The Federal Reserve's lowering of interest rates last Tuesday was welcome, but it was also received with skepticism. Once the federal-funds rate is reduced to zero, or near zero, doesn't this mean that monetary policy has gone as far as it can go? This widely held view was appealed to in the 1930s to rationalize the Fed's passive role as the U.S. economy slid into deep depression.
It was used again by the Bank of Japan to rationalize its unwillingness to counteract the deflation and recession of the 1990s. In both cases, constructive monetary policies were in fact available but remained unused. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's statement last Tuesday made it clear that he does not share this view and intends to continue to take actions to stimulate spending.
There should be no mystery about what he has in mind. Over the past four months the Fed has put more than $600 billion of new reserves into the private sector, using them to discount -- lend against -- a wide variety of securities held by a variety of financial institutions. (The addition is to be weighed against September 2007's total outstanding level of reserves of about $50 billion.)
This action has been the boldest exercise of the Fed's lender-of-last-resort function in the history of the Federal Reserve System. Mr. Bernanke said that he is prepared to continue or expand this discounting activity as long as the situation dictates.
Why do I describe this as an action to stimulate spending? Financial markets are in the grip of a "flight to quality" that is very much analogous to the "flight to currency" that crippled the economy in the 1930s. Everyone wants to get into government-issued and government-insured assets, for reasons of both liquidity and safety. Individuals have tried to do this by selling other securities, but without an increase in the supply of "quality" securities these attempts do nothing but drive down the prices of other assets. The only other action people can take as individuals is to build up their stock of cash and government-issued claims to cash by reducing spending. This reduction is a main factor in inducing or worsening the recession. Adding directly to reserves -- the ultimate liquid, safe asset -- adds to supply of "quality" and relieves the perceived need to reduce spending.
When the Fed wants to stimulate spending in normal times, it uses reserves to buy Treasury bills in the federal-funds market, reducing the funds' rate. But as the rate nears zero, Treasury bills become equivalent to cash, and such open-market operations have no more effect than trading a $20 bill for two $10s. There is no effect on the total supply of "quality" assets.
A dead end? Not at all. The Fed can satisfy the demand for quality by using reserves -- or "printing money" -- to buy securities other than Treasury bills. This is the way the $600 billion got out into the private sector.
This expansion of Fed lending has not violated the constraint that "the" interest rate cannot be less than zero, nor will it do so in the future. There are thousands of different interest rates out there and the yield differences among them have grown dramatically in recent months. The yield on short-term governments is now about the same as the yield on cash: zero. But the spreads between governments and privately-issued bonds are large at all maturities. The flight to quality means exactly that many are eager to trade private paper for non-interest bearing (or low-interest bearing) reserves and with the Fed's help they are doing so every day.
Could the $600 billion in new reserves be called a bailout? In a sense, yes: The Fed is lending on terms that private banks are not willing to offer. They are not searching for underpriced "bargains" on behalf of the public, nor is it their mission to do so. Their mission is to provide liquidity to the system by acting as lender-of-last-resort. We don't care about the quality of the assets the Fed acquires in doing this. We care about the quantity of its liabilities.
There are many ways to stimulate spending, and many of these methods are now under serious consideration. How could it be otherwise? But monetary policy as Mr. Bernanke implements it has been the most helpful counter-recession action taken to date, in my opinion, and it will continue to have many advantages in future months. It is fast and flexible. There is no other way that so much cash could have been put into the system as fast as this $600 billion was, and if necessary it can be taken out just as quickly. The cash comes in the form of loans. It entails no new government enterprises, no government equity positions in private enterprises, no price fixing or other controls on the operation of individual businesses, and no government role in the allocation of capital across different activities. These seem to me important virtues.