This sort of addresses the why the Fed allowed a financial crisis to happen. The error there seems to be confusing not allowing an institution to fail with not allowing its owners to loose all their investment.
But my question was more about 2009 - 2020. Why didn't the Fed buy "as much as it takes" at least to achieve its target inflation rate and the firms expectation thereof? It seems to me that if TIPS does not wander symmetrically close to target the Fed is doing something wrong and should know it.
My cynical colleague might have said that once the banks were saved, the Fed had no more motive to intervene. A more charitable view is that they paid attention to non-market forecasts, which were more optimistic. Recall that the CBO said that without the Obama stimulus, unemployment would hit 8 percent, but with the stimulus (which was enacted) results would be better. The result? 10 percent unemployment
"declining output and falling prices (which increased real debt burdens) led to widespread financial distress among borrowers, lessening their capacity to pledge collateral or to otherwise retain significant equity interests in their proposed investments."
Admittedly, you do get back to this at the end of the essay- but I would say the "declining output and falling prices" revealed the unsound debts, even those to the most credit-worthy debtors.
" If the credit channel amplifies a downturn, is there a reason to be concerned about too much credit expansion during a boom? You can easily find non-academic cranks who point to ratios of both private and public debt to GDP and warn that a crash is coming."
You mean cranks like Peter Shiff or Michael Burry?
This sort of addresses the why the Fed allowed a financial crisis to happen. The error there seems to be confusing not allowing an institution to fail with not allowing its owners to loose all their investment.
But my question was more about 2009 - 2020. Why didn't the Fed buy "as much as it takes" at least to achieve its target inflation rate and the firms expectation thereof? It seems to me that if TIPS does not wander symmetrically close to target the Fed is doing something wrong and should know it.
My cynical colleague might have said that once the banks were saved, the Fed had no more motive to intervene. A more charitable view is that they paid attention to non-market forecasts, which were more optimistic. Recall that the CBO said that without the Obama stimulus, unemployment would hit 8 percent, but with the stimulus (which was enacted) results would be better. The result? 10 percent unemployment
The second makes sense in any given day or month, but TIPs was below target for most of the 12 years? That's a lot of market to ignore.
"declining output and falling prices (which increased real debt burdens) led to widespread financial distress among borrowers, lessening their capacity to pledge collateral or to otherwise retain significant equity interests in their proposed investments."
Admittedly, you do get back to this at the end of the essay- but I would say the "declining output and falling prices" revealed the unsound debts, even those to the most credit-worthy debtors.
" If the credit channel amplifies a downturn, is there a reason to be concerned about too much credit expansion during a boom? You can easily find non-academic cranks who point to ratios of both private and public debt to GDP and warn that a crash is coming."
You mean cranks like Peter Shiff or Michael Burry?
This is going to be hilarious. Again.