Money. Banking, and the Financial System – Page 5 – HubbardOBrienEconomics.com Blog

Is the U.S. Economy Heading “Back to the ‘60s”?

A recent publication by economists Regis Barnichon, Luiz E. Oliveira, and Adam H. Shapiro at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco asks that provocative question. “The ‘60s” is a reference to the events that led to the U.S. economy experiencing more than 10 years of high inflation rates. Below is a graph similar to Chapter 15, Figure 15.1 in Macroeconomics (Economics, Chapter 25, Figure 25.1) that shows the inflation rate in the United States as measured by the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for each year since 1952. Economists call the years from 1968 though 1982 the “Great Inflation” because inflation was greater during that period than during any other period in the history of the United States.

As we discuss in Macroeconomics, Chapter 17, Section 17.2 (Economics, Chapter 27, Section 27.2), many economists believe that the Great Inflation began as a result of the Federal Reserve attempting to keep the unemployment rate below the natural rate of unemployment for a period of several years. As predicted by the Phillips Curve, the inflation rate increased and, as Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps had argued would likely happen, the expected inflation rate eventually increased. The inflation was made worse during the 1970s by two supply shocks resulting from sharp increases in oil prices.

Is the United States on the edge of repeating the experience of the Great Inflation? Earlier this year, Olivier Blanchard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote a paper arguing that the U.S. economy was at significant risk of experiencing a significant acceleration in inflation. His paper included a figure similar to the one below showing the combinations of inflation and unemployment during each year of the 1960s. The figure shows a substantial acceleration in inflation over the course of the decade.

Blanchard notes that:

“The history of the Phillips curve is one of shifts, largely due to the adjustment of expectations of inflation to actual inflation. True, expectations have [currently] been extremely sticky for a long time, apparently not reacting to movements in actual inflation. But, with such overheating, expectations might well deanchor. If they do, the increase in inflation could be much stronger.”

….

“If inflation were to take off, there would be two scenarios: one in which the Fed would let inflation increase, perhaps substantially, and another—more likely—in which the Fed would tighten monetary policy, perhaps again substantially. Neither of these two scenarios is ideal. In the first, inflation expectations would likely become deanchored, cancelling one of the major accomplishments of monetary policy in the last 20 years and making monetary policy more difficult to use in the future. In the second, the increase in interest rates might have to be very large, leading to problems in financial markets.”

The authors of the San Francisco Fed publication are more optimistic. They begin their discussion by observing that because of the pandemic, the state of the labor market is more difficult to assess than in most years. They note that the unemployment rate of 4.8 percent in September 2021 was only slightly below the average unemployment rate over the past 30 years and well above the low unemployment rates of 2019 and early 2021. So, on the basis of the unemployment rate, policymakers at the Fed and in Congress might conclude that the inflation the U.S. economy is experiencing is not the result of overly tight labor markets such as those of the late 1960s. But the job openings rate(sometimes called the vacancy rate) is telling a different story. Job openings are positions that are both available to be filled within the next 30 days and for which firms are actively recruiting applicants from outside the firm. (According to the BLS: “The job openings rate is computed by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings and multiplying that quotient by 100.”)

The authors of the San Francisco Fed study note that “the vacancy rate is well above its 30-year average … and has surpassed its historic highs from the late 1960s … indicating that employers are having a difficult time filling positions. Confirming this high vacancy rate, the fraction of small businesses reporting that job openings are hard to fill is at historic highs ….” The figures below show the vacancy rate and the unemployment rate since January 2016.

The authors combine the unemployment rate and the vacancy rate into a statistic—the vacancy-to-unemployment ratio—that they demonstrate has historically done a better job of explaining movements in inflation than has the unemployment rate. They expect that expansionary fiscal policy will result in an increase in vacancy-to-unemployment ratio and, therefore, an increase in the inflation rate. But they share the view of Blanchard and many other economists that a key issue is “the stability of longer-run inflation expectations.”

We know that in the 1960s, several years of rising inflation made long-run inflation expectations unstable—in terms of the discussion in Chapter 17, the short-run Phillips curve shifted up. We don’t yet know what will happen to inflation expectations in late 2021 and in 2022, so we can’t yet tell how persistent current rates of inflation will be.

Sources: Regis Barnichon, Luiz E. Oliveira, and Adam H. Shapiro, “Is the American Rescue Plan Taking Us Back to the ’60s?,” FRBSF Economic Letter, No. 2021-27, October 18, 2021; Olivier Blanchard, “In Defense of Concerns over the $1.9 Trillion relief Plan,” piie.com, February 18, 2021; and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

WeWork Gets SPAC’d

In 2021, SPACs were the hottest trend on the stock market and had become the leading way for companies to go public. A public company is one with shares that trade on the stock market. Private firms make up more than 95 percent of all firms in the United States. Most will never become public firms because they will never grow large enough for investors to have sufficient information on the firms’ financial health to be willing to buy the firms’ stocks and bonds.

But some firms, particularly technology firms, grow rapidly enough that they are able to become public firms. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Uber, Facebook, Snap, and other firms have followed this path. When these firms went public, they did so using an initial public offering (IPO). (We briefly discuss IPOs in Economics and Microeconomics, Chapter 8, Section 8.2 and in Macroeconomics, Chapter 6, Section 6.2.) With an IPO, a firm uses one or more investment banks to underwrite the firm’s sales of new stocks or bonds to the public. In underwriting,investment banks typically guarantee a price for stocks or bonds to the issuing firm, sell the stocks or bonds in financial markets or directly to investors at a higher price, and keep the difference, known as the spread.

Beginning in 2020 and continuing through 2021, an increasing number of firms have used a different means of going public—merging with a SPAC. SPAC stands for special-purpose acquisition company and is a firm that holds only cash—it doesn’t sell a good or service—and only has the purpose of merging with another firm that wants to go public. Once a merger takes place, the acquired firm takes the place of the SPAC in the stock market. For instance, a SPAC named Diamond Eagle Acquisition merged with online sports betting site DraftKings in April 2020. Once the merger had been completed, DraftKings took Diamond Eagle’s place on the stock market, trading under the stock symbol DKNG. By 2021, the value of SPAC mergers had risen to being three times as much as the value of IPOs.

Some firms intending to go public prefer SPACs to traditional IPOs because they can bargain directly with the managers of the SPAC in determining the value of the firm. In addition, IPOs are closely regulated by the federal government’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In particular, the SEC monitors whether an investment bank is accurately stating the financial prospects of a firm whose IPO the bank is underwriting. The claims that SPACs make when attracting investors are less closely monitored. SPAC mergers can also be finalized more quickly than can traditional IPOs.

The experience of WeWork illustrates how some firms that have struggled to go public through an IPO have been able to do so by merging with a SPAC. Adam Neumann and Miguel McLevey founded WeWork in 2010 as a firm that would rent office space in cities, renovate the space, and then sub-lease it to other firms. In 2019, the firm prepared for an IPO that would have given the firm a total value of more than $40 billion. But doubts about the firm’s business model led to an indefinite postponement of the IPO and Neumann was forced out as CEO.

WeWork was reorganized under new CEO Sandeep Mathrani and went public in October 2021 by merging with BowX Acquisition Corporation, a SPAC. Although WeWork’s stock began trading (under stock symbol WE) at a price that put the firm’s value at about $9 billion—far below the value it expected at the time of its postponed IPO two years before—investors seemed optimistic about the firm’s future because its stock price rose sharply during the first two days it traded on the stock market.

Some policymakers are concerned that individual investors may not have sufficient information on firms that go public through a merger with a SPAC. Under one proposal being considered by Congress, financial advisers would only be allowed to recommend investing in SPACs to wealthy investors. The SEC is also considering whether new regulations governing SPACS were needed. Testifying before Congress, SEC Chair Gary Gensler sated: “There’s real questions about who’s benefiting [from firms going public using SPACs] and [about] investor protection.”

It remains to be seen whether SPACs will retain their current position as being the leading way for firms to go public.

Sources: Dave Sebastian, “WeWork Shares Rise on First Day of Trading, Two Years After Failed IPO,” wsj.com, October 21, 2021; Peter Santilli and Amrith Ramkumar, “SPACs Are the Stock Market’s Hottest Trend. Here’s How They Work,” wsj.com, March 29, 2021; Benjamin Bain, “SPAC Marketing Heavily Curtailed in House Democrats’ Draft Bill,” bloomberg.com, October 4, 2021; and Dave Michaels, “SEC Weighs New Investor Protections for SPACs,” wsj.com, May 26, 2021.

Is Bitcoin the New Gold?

As we discuss in the chapter, initially, bitcoin was thought of as a way to buy and sell goods and services. Some stores accepted bitcoin and allowed customers to make payment by scanning a bar code with a phone. Some websites offered merchants a way to process purchases made with bitcoins in a manner similar to the way merchants process credit card payments.

In practice, though, swings in the value of bitcoin have been much too large to make it a good substitute for cash, checks, or credit cards in everyday transactions. For instance, at the beginning of 2015, one bitcoin was worth about $300. Over the following five years, the price of bitcoin rose as high at $17,000 before falling to about $8,000 at the beginning of 2020. During 2021, the volatility of bitcoin prices increased, rising as high as $62,000 in April and falling as low as $30,000 in July before rising back above $60,000 in October. (The following chart shows movements in the price of bitcoin from early July to mid-October 2021; the vertical axis shows the price as dollars per bitcoin.)

Some economists have suggested that rather being a medium of exchange, like dollar bills, bitcoin has become a speculative asset, like gold. Bitcoin shares with gold the characteristic that ultimately its total supplied is limited. The supply of Bitcoin can’t increase beyond 21 million, a limit that is expected to be reached in 2030. The gold stock slowly increases as mines produce more gold, although the output of mines is small compared with the existing stock of gold. Some investors and speculators are reassured that, in contrast to the assets in M1 and M2 that can increase as much as the Fed chooses, gold and bitcoin have limits on how much they can increase.

Will Bitcoin Be a Good Hedge Against Inflation? Can It Be Useful in Diversifying a Portfolio?

Some investors and speculators believe that the limited quantities of gold and bitcoin available make them good hedges against inflation—that is, they believe that the prices of gold and bitcoin will reliably increase during periods of inflation. In fact, though, gold has proven to be a poor hedge against inflation because in the long run the price of gold has not reliably increased faster than the inflation rate. There is no good economic reason to expect that over the long run bitcoin would be a good inflation hedge either.

From a broader perspective than as just an inflation hedge, some economists argue that gold has a role to play in an investor’s portfolio—which is the collection of assets, such as stocks and bonds, that an investor owns. Investors can reduce the financial risk they face through diversification, or spreading their wealth among different assets. For instance, an investor who only holds Apple stock in her portfolio is subject to more risk than an investor with the same dollar amount invested in a portfolio that holds the stocks of multiple firms as well as non-stock investments. An investor obtains the benefits of diversification best by adding assets to her portfolio that are not well correlated with the assets she already owns—that is the prices of the assets she adds to her portfolio don’t typically move in the same direction as the prices of the assets she already owns.

For instance, during a typical recession sales of consumer staples, like baby diapers and laundry detergent, hold up well, while sales of consumers durables, like automobiles, usually decline significantly. So adding shares of stock in Proctor & Gamble to a portfolio that already has many shares of General Motors achieves diversification and reduces financial risk because movements in the price of shares of Proctor & Gamble are likely not to be highly correlated with movements in the price of shares of General Motors.

Studies have shown that during some periods movements in gold prices are not correlated with movements in prices of stocks or bonds. In other words, gold prices may rise during a period when stock prices are declining. As a result, an investor may want to add gold to her portfolio to diversify it. To this point, bitcoin hasn’t been around long enough to draw firm conclusions about whether adding bitcoin to a portfolio provides significant diversification, although some investors believes that it does.

Finance professionals are divided in their opinions on whether bitcoin is a good substitute for gold in a financial portfolio. In an interview, billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s hedge fund, noted that while he believes that bitcoin may serve as a hedge against inflation, but if he could only hold gold or bitcoin, “I would choose gold.” His preference for gold is due in part to his belief that the federal government may increase regulation of bitcoin and that regulators might eventually even decide to ban it. A businessinsider.com survey of 10 financial experts found them divided with five preferring gold as an investment and five preferring bitcoin.

Sources: Jade Scipioni, “Bitcoin vs. Gold: Here’s What Billionaire Ray Dalio Thinks,” cnbc.com, August 4, 2021; and Isabelle Lee and Will Daniel, “Bitcoin vs. Gold: 10 Experts Told Us Which Asset They’d Rather Hold for the Next 10 Years, and Why,” businessinsider.com, February 20, 2021.

New 10/17/21 Podcast – Authors Glenn Hubbard & Tony O’Brien discuss economic impact of infrastructure spending & the supply-chain challenges.

Authors Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien discuss the economic impact of the recent infrastructure bill and what role fiscal policy plays in determining shovel-ready projects. Also, they explore the vast impact of the economy-wide supply-chain issues and the challenges companies face. Until the pandemic, we had a very efficient supply chain but now we’re seeing companies employ the “just-in-case” inventory method vs. “just-in-time”!

Some links referenced in the podcast:

Here’s Alan Cole’s blog: https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-i-reluctantly-became-an-inflation-crank/

Neil Irwin wrote a column referencing Cole here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/10/upshot/shadow-inflation-analysis.html

Here’s a Times article on the inefficiency of subway construction in NYC: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html

A recent article on the state of CA’s bullet train: https://www.kcra.com/article/california-bullet-trains-latest-woe-high-speed/37954851

A WSJ column on goods v. services: https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-times-like-these-inflation-isnt-all-bad-11634290202

Coming Attractions: Hubbard and O’Brien Principles of Economics Updated

It’s customary for textbook authors to note that “much has happened in the economy” since the last edition of their book appeared. To say that much has happened since we prepared our last edition in 2019 would be a major understatement. Never in the lifetimes of today’s students and instructors have events like those of 2020 and 2021 occurred. The U.S. and world economies had experienced nothing like the Covid-19 pandemic since the influenza pandemic of 1918. In the spring of 2020, the U.S. economy suffered an unprecedented decline in the supply of goods and services as a majority of businesses in the country shut down to reduce spread of the virus. Many businesses remained closed or operated at greatly reduced capacity well into 2021. Most schools, including most colleges, switched to remote learning, which disrupted the lives of many students and their parents.

During the worst of the pandemic, total spending in the economy declined as the unemployment rate soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Reduced spending and closed businesses resulted in by far the largest decline in total production in such a short period in the history of the U.S. economy. Congress, the Trump and Biden administrations, and the Federal Reserve responded with fiscal and monetary policies that were also unprecedented.

Our updated Eighth Edition covers all of these developments as well as the policy debates they initiated. As with previous editions, we rely on extensive digital resources, including: author-created application videos and audio recordings of the chapter openers and Apply the Concept features; figure animation videos; interactive real-time data graphs animations; and Solved Problem whiteboard videos.

Glenn and Tony discuss the updated edition in this video:

Sample chapters will be available by October 15.

The full Macroeconomics text will available in early to mid December.

The full Microeconomics text will be available in mid to late December.

If you would like to view the sample chapters or are considering adopting the updated Eighth Edition for the spring semester, please contact your local Pearson representative. You can use this LINK to find and contact your representative.

New 09/03/21 Podcast – Authors Glenn Hubbard & Tony O’Brien discuss the recent jobs report, Fed comments, and financial stability!

Authors Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien discuss the recent jobs report falling short of expectations. They also discuss the comments of Fed Chairman Powell’s comments at the Federal Reserve’s recent Jackson Hole conference. They also get to some of the recommendations of a Brookings Task Force, co-chaired by Glenn Hubbard, on ways to address financial stability. Use the links below to see more information about these timely topics:
Powell’s Jackson Hole speech:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/powell20210827a.pdf

The report of Glenn’s task force:

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/financial-stability_report.pdf

The most recent economic forecasts of the FOMC:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcprojtabl20210616.pdf

WELCOME BACK! New 08/20/21 Podcast – Authors Glenn Hubbard & Tony O’Brien return to discuss delta variant & inflation!

Join authors Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien as they return for a new academic year! The issues have evolved but the importance of these issues has not waned. We discuss the impact of closures related to the delta variant has on the economy. The discussion extends to the active fiscal and monetary policy that has reintroduced inflation as a topic facing our economy. Many students have little or no experience with inflation so it is a learning opportunity. Check back regularly where Glenn & Tony will continue to wrestle with these important economic concepts and relate them to the classroom!

What’s Going on with Inflation?

The U.S. inflation rate has accelerated. As the following figure shows, in mid-2021, inflation, measured as the percentage change in the CPI from the same month in the previous year (the blue line), rose above 5 percent for the first time since the summer of 2008.

As we discuss in an Apply the Concept in Chapter 25, Section 25.5 (Chapter 15, Section 15.5 of Macroeconomics), the Fed prefers to measure inflation using the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. The PCE price index is a measure of the price level similar to the GDP deflator, except it includes only the prices of goods and services from the consumption category of GDP. Because the PCE price index includes more goods and services than the CPI, it is a broader measure of inflation. As the red line in the figure shows, inflation as measured by the PCE price index is generally lower than inflation measured by the CPI. The difference is particularly large during periods in which CPI inflation is especially high, as it was during 2008, 2011, and 2021.

Prices of food and energy are particularly volatile, so the measure of inflation the Fed focuses on most closely is the PCE price index, excluding food and energy prices (the green line in figure). The figure shows that this measure of inflation is more stable than either of the other two measures. For instance, during June 2021, measured by the CPI, inflation was 5.3 percent, but was 3.5 percent when measured by the PCE, excluding food and energy.

In the summer of 2021, even inflation measured by the PCE, excluding food and energy, is running well above the Fed’s long-run target rate of 2 percent. Why is inflation increasing? Most economists and policymakers believe that two sets of factors are responsible:

Increases in aggregate demand. Consumption spending (see the first figure below) has increased as the economy has reopened and people have returned to eating in restaurants, going to the movies, working out in gyms, and spending at other businesses that were closed or operating at reduced capacity. Households have been able to sharply increase their spending because household saving (see the second figure below) soared during the pandemic in response to payments from the federal government, including supplemental unemployment insurance payments and checks sent directly to most households. The increase in federal government expenditures that helped fuel the increase in aggregate demand is shown in the third figure below.

Fed policy has also been strongly expansionary, with the target for the federal funds kept near zero and the Fed continuing its substantial purchases of Treasury notes and mortgage-backed securities. The continuing expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet through the summer of 2021 is shown in the last of the figures below. The Fed’s asset purchases have help keep interest rates low and provided banks with ample funds to loan to households and firms.

2. Reductions in aggregate supply. The pandemic disrupted global supply chains, reducing the goods available to consumers. In the summer of 2021, not all of these supply chain issues had been resolved. In particular, a shortage of computer chips had reduced output of motor vehicles. New cars, trucks, SUVs, and minivans were often selling above their sticker prices. High prices for new vehicles led many consumers to increase their demand for used vehicles, driving up their prices. Between July 2020 and July 2021, prices of new vehicles rose 6.4 percent and prices for used vehicles rose an extraordinary 41.7 percent.

Supply issues also exist in some service industries, such as restaurants and hotels, that have had difficulty hiring enough workers to fully reopen.

Economists and policymakers differ as to whether high inflation rates are transitory or whether the U.S. economy might be entering a prolonged period of higher inflation. Most Federal Reserve policymakers argue that the higher inflation rates in mid-2021 are transitory. For instance, in a statement following its July 28, 2021 meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee noted that: “Inflation has risen, largely reflecting transitory factors.” Although the statement also noted that inflation is “on track to moderately exceed 2 percent for some time.”

In a speech at the end of July, Fed Governor Lael Brainard expanded on the Fed’s reasoning:

“Recent high inflation readings reflect supply–demand mismatches in a handful of sectors that are likely to prove transitory…. I am attentive to the risk that inflation pressures could broaden or prove persistent, perhaps as a result of wage pressures, persistent increases in rent, or businesses passing on a larger fraction of cost increases rather than reducing markups, as in recent recoveries. I am particularly attentive to any signs that currently high inflation readings are pushing longer-term inflation expectations above our 2 percent objective.”

“Currently, I do not see such signs. Most measures of survey- and market-based expectations suggest that the current high inflation pressures are transitory, and underlying trend inflation remains near its pre-COVID trend…. Many of the forces currently leading to outsized gains in prices are likely to dissipate by this time next year. Current tailwinds from fiscal support and pent-up consumption are likely to shift to headwinds, and some of the outsized price increases associated with acute supply bottlenecks may ease or partially reverse as those bottlenecks are resolved.”

Brainard’s remarks highlight a point that we make in Chapter 27, Section 27.1 (Chapter 17, Section 17.1 of Macroeconomics): The expectations of households and firms of future inflation play an important part in determining current inflation. Inflation can rise above and fall below the expected inflation rate in response to changes in the labor market—which affect the wages firms pay and, therefore, the firms’ costs—as well as in response to fluctuations in aggregate supply resulting from positive or negative supply shocks—such as the pandemic’s negative effects on aggregate supply. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has argued that with households and firms’ expectations still well-anchored at around 2 percent, inflation was unlikely to remain above that level in the long run.

Some economists are less convinced that households and firms will continue to expect 2 percent inflation if they experience higher inflation rates through the end of 2021. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board summed up this view: “One risk for the Fed is that more months of these price increases will become what consumers and businesses come to expect. To use the Fed jargon, prices would no longer be ‘well-anchored.’ That may be happening.”

As we discuss in Chapter 27, Sections 27.2 and 27.3 (Macroeconomics, Chapter 17, Sections 17.2 and 17.3), during the late 1960s and early 1970s, higher rates of inflation eventually increased households and firms’ expectations of the inflation rate, leading to an acceleration of inflation that was difficult for the Fed to reverse.

Earlier this year, Olivier Blanchard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, formerly a professor of economics at MIT and director of research at the International Monetary Fund, raised the possibility that overly expansionary monetary and fiscal policies might result in the Fed facing conditions similar to those in the 1970s. The Fed would then be forced to choose between two undesirable policies:

In a recent interview, Lawrence Summers of Harvard University, who served as secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration, made similar points:

“We have inflation that since the beginning of the year has been running at a 5 percent annual rate. …. Starting at high inflation, we’ve got an economy that’s going to grow at extremely high rates for the next quarter or two. … I think we’re going to find ourselves with a new normal of inflation above 3 percent. Then the Fed is either going to have to be inconsistent with all the promises and commitments it’s made [to maintain a target inflation rate of 2 percent] or it’s going to have to attempt the task of slowing down the economy, which is rarely a controlled process.”

Clearly the pandemic and the resulting policy responses have left the Fed in a challenging situation.

Sources: Federal Reserve Open Market Committee, “Federal Reserve Press Release,” federalreserve.gov, July 28, 2021; Lael Brainard, “Assessing Progress as the Economy Moves from Reopening to Recovery,” speech at “Rebuilding the Post-Pandemic Economy” 2021 Annual Meeting of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, Aspen, Colorado, federalreserve.gov, July 30, 2021; Wall Street Journal editorial board, “Powell Gets His Inflation,” Wall Street Journal, July 13, 2021; Olivier Blanchard, “In Defense of Concerns over the $1.9 Trillion Relief Plan,” piie.com, February 21, 2012; “Former Treasury Secretary on Consumer Prices, U.S. Role in Global Pandemic, Efforts,” wbur.org, August 22, 2021; and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org.

Glenn and Donald Kohn on the Report of the Task Force on Financial Stability

Glenn co-chairs the Task Force on Financial Stability with Donald Kohn, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution and formerly vice-chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. The Task Force on Financial Stability was formed by the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution to make recommendations intended to increase the stability of the U.S. financial system.

On June 29, 2021, the Task Force issued a report, which can be found HERE. Glenn and Donald Kohn discuss the reports findings in an opinion column published on bloomberg. com.

The Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C.

Our Financial Early Warning System Is Broken

The U.S. financial system emerged from the reforms that followed the 2008 global crisis stronger than it had been going in. But the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 demonstrated how much was left undone: Although banks weathered the storm well, financial disruptions elsewhere — in money market funds, in the Treasury market — necessitated extraordinary measures to prevent an even greater economic disaster.

A group that we co-chair, the Task Force on Financial Stability, has just released a report on how to make the system more resilient. Among other things, we see the need for a structural change: Overhaul the agencies tasked with identifying and addressing threats outside traditional banks.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform of 2010 created two new entities focused on systemic risk. The Financial Stability Oversight Council, which included the Treasury Secretary and the heads of all the major financial regulatory agencies, was supposed to foster collaboration in finding and fixing dangerous buildups, wherever they might arise. And the Office of Financial Research, formed within Treasury and equipped with subpoena power, was supposed to provide the FSOC with the data and analysis needed to do the job well.

This financial early warning system didn’t operate as intended. The FSOC’s efforts to impose special scrutiny on certain systemically important non-bank institutions, such as insurance companies, ran into legal and political headwinds. Its member agencies often proved reluctant to encroach on one another’s turf, and the FSOC lacked the power to compel action. The OFR never subpoenaed anything, for fear of making enemies. Ultimately, the Trump administration deemphasized and defunded the whole apparatus.

As a result, the U.S. was much less prepared for the shock of the pandemic than it could have been. A rush to cash triggered runs on certain money-market mutual funds, threatened the flow of credit to everyone from homebuyers to municipalities, and — in a troubling departure from the usual “flight to quality” — caused the prices of Treasury securities to fall sharply. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve had to go to extreme lengths and pledge trillions of dollars to restore stability.

Regulators’ objective should not be merely to put out fires once they see smoke, but to prevent the dangerous accumulation of combustible material. New threats will emerge in unexpected ways; solutions will prompt unanticipated responses. So regulation must be dynamic, requiring an ongoing assessment process, not just periodic changes. To meet that challenge, we urge a restructuring of the FSOC and the OFR.

Congress should give each FSOC member agency an explicit financial stability mandate, and require each to establish a similarly focused office to inform its rule making. This would force agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to consider systemic-risk issues that they can otherwise too often neglect.
Only the Treasury Secretary should issue the FSOC’s annual report, avoiding the consensus-building process among member agencies that can weaken identification of risks and accountability for dealing with them. While each agency would write a separate appendix, the Secretary would bear ultimate responsibility. The report should include a look back at what risks were missed, why, and how they will be addressed. To ensure the subject gets adequate attention, a new under-secretary for financial stability should act as the secretary’s point person.
The OFR should receive a clear new mandate to gather the data that policymakers need (and, today, often lack). To underscore its importance, it should be renamed the Comptroller for Data and Resilience — echoing the stature of the Comptroller of the Currency — and its head should have a voting seat at the FSOC, a level of authority that would help the government recruit talent and experience to the post.

As the pandemic begins to recede, concern over financial stability should not. We don’t know what major shock will next hit the economy and financial system. But a process to scan for risks and adapt to them should be front and center.

Glenn’s Take on the Proposal at the G7 Meeting to Impose a Minimum Tax on Corporate Profits

The G7 (or Group of 7) is an organization of seven large economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Only democratic countries are included, so China is not a member. At a recent meeting attended by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the group agreed to adopt a uniform corporate tax rate of at least 15 percent.

Glenn discusses this decision in the following opinion column published in the Financial Times.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for Economy, at a recent meeting of the G7.

Governments Should Tax Cash Flow, Not Global Corporate Income

From the Biden administration’s inception, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has championed a global minimum tax for corporations. While the US walked back from a request for a 21 per cent rate (which was linked to an objective of raising the current US corporate tax of 21 per cent to between 25 and 28 per cent), it did lock in with G7 finance ministers a rate of at least 15 per cent. Secretary Yellen praised the move: “That global minimum tax would end the race to the bottom in corporate taxation, and ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the US and around the world.”

It is tough to argue that corporate income shouldn’t pay its “fair share”. But the global minimum tax raises both political and economic questions.

Politics first. Approval in the US is likely to be tough. The minimum tax is estimated by the OECD to raise as much as $50bn-$80bn per year, much of it from successful American firms. Revenue to the US Treasury would be part of this amount, but small relative to the substantial expansion in spending proposed by the Biden administration. Will other governments engage their own political costs to achieve a deal that may be ephemeral if it fails to get US legislative approval? Even if the deal succeeds, might it hand a competitive victory to China? As a non-party to G7 or OECD proposals, could it not use both tax rates and subsidies to draw more investment to China?

But it is on economics that the global minimum tax draws more sensitive questions in two areas. The first is the design of the tax base. The second addresses the foundational question of the problem policymakers are trying to solve and whether the new minimum tax is the best way to do so.

A 15 per cent rate is not particularly useful without an agreement on what the tax base is. Particularly for the US, home to many very profitable technology companies, the concern should arise that countries will use special taxes and subsidies that effectively target certain industries. The US has had a version of a minimum tax of foreign earnings since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 enshrined GILTI (Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income) provision into law. The Biden administration wants to use the new global minimum tax to raise the GILTI rate and expand the tax base by eliminating a GILTI deduction for overseas plant and equipment investments.

For a 15 per cent minimum rate to make sense, countries would need a uniform tax base. Presumably, the goal of the new minimum tax is to limit the benefits to companies of shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions, not to distort where those firms invest. The combination of a global minimum tax with the broad base advocated by the Biden administration could reduce cross-border investments and reduce the profitability of large multinational firms.

A still deeper economic issue is that of who bears the tax burden. I noted above that projected revenue increases are small compared to G7 government spending levels. It is not corporations who would pay more, but capital owners generally and workers, according to contemporary economic views of who bears the burden of the tax.

There is a better way to achieve what Yellen and her finance minister colleagues are trying to accomplish. To begin with, countries could allow full expensing of investment. That approach would move the tax system away from a corporate income tax toward a cash flow tax, long favoured by economists. In this revision, the minimum tax would not distort new investment decisions. It would also push the tax burden on to economic rents—profits in excess of the normal return to capital—better satisfying the apparent G7 goal of garnering more revenue from the most profitable large companies. And such a system would be simpler to administer, as multinationals would not need to set up different ways to track deductible investment costs over time in different countries.

In the debate leading up to the 2017 US tax law changes, Congress considered a version of this idea in a destination-based cash flow tax. Like a value added tax, this would tax corporate profits based on cash flows in a given country. The reform, which foundered on the political desirability of border adjustments, limits tax biases against investment and boosts tax fairness.

Returning to the numbers: countries with large levels of public spending relative to gross domestic product, as the Biden administration proposes, fund it mainly with value added taxes, not traditional corporate income taxes. A better global tax system is possible, but it starts with a verdict of “not GILTI.”