On July 6, 2011, the Task Force on Tri-Party Repo Infrastructure—an industry group sponsored by the New York Fed—released a Progress Report in which it reaffirmed the goal of eliminating the wholesale “unwind” of repos (and the requisite extension of more than a trillion dollars of intraday credit by repo clearing banks), but acknowledged unspecified delays in achieving that goal. The “unwind” is the settlement of repos that currently takes place each morning and replaces credit from investors with credit from the clearing banks. As I explain in this post, by postponing settlement until the afternoon and thereby linking the settlement of new and maturing repos, the proposed new settlement approach could help stabilize the tri-party repo market by eliminating the incentive for investors to withdraw funds from a dealer simply because they believe other investors will do the same. In effect, eliminating the unwind can reduce the risk of the equivalent of bank runs in the repo market, or “repo runs.”
Which Firms Have Flexible Prices?
Since the 1930s, the conventional wisdom among economists has held that producer prices are more rigid than consumer prices. The roots of this view lie in the 1930s-era “administered price” thesis, which states that large firms set their prices more rigidly than do small firms. In this post, we report that this old “fact” is not true. We instead find that the prices set by large firms are much more flexible than those set by small firms. A key implication of this finding is that policymakers concerned about inflation or deflation should pay particular attention to changes in large firms’ prices.
Just Released: July’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey Shows Ongoing Weakness in New York Manufacturing
The July Empire State Manufacturing Survey, published today, indicates that manufacturing conditions continued to weaken in New York State. The survey’s headline index was -3.8, the second negative reading in a row, and suggested that, overall, manufacturing activity declined slightly in New York. Because the survey is a diffusion index, readings below zero indicate that more respondents reported worsening conditions than improving conditions. Lower (or higher) values of the index indicate more widespread decline (or improvement). The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is the first available indicator of manufacturing activity for the month. While it is entirely possible that what we are seeing is idiosyncratic to New York State, July’s report raises questions about whether the manufacturing sector is experiencing a temporary bump in the road, or is headed toward a more sustained slowdown. In this post, we review some of the highlights of today’s report.
Would a Stronger Renminbi Narrow the U.S.‑China Trade Imbalance?
The United States buys much more from China than it sells to China—an imbalance that accounts for almost half of our overall merchandise trade deficit. China’s policy of keeping its exchange rate low is often cited as a key driver of that country’s large overall trade surplus and of its bilateral surplus with the United States. The argument is that a stronger renminbi (the official currency of China) would help reduce that country’s trade imbalance with the United States by lowering the prices of U.S. goods relative to those made in China. In this post, we examine the thinking behind this view. We find that a stronger renminbi would have a relatively small near-term impact on the U.S. bilateral trade deficit with China and an even more modest impact on the overall U.S. deficit.
Global Banks and Their Internal Capital Markets during the Crisis
As financial markets have become increasingly globalized, banks have developed growing networks of branches and subsidiaries in foreign countries. This expansion of banking across borders is changing the way banks manage their balance sheets, and the ways home markets and foreign markets respond to disturbances to financial markets. Based on our recent research, this post shows how global banks used their foreign affiliates for accessing scarce dollars during the financial crisis—a liquidity strategy that helped transmit shocks internationally while reducing some of the consequences in the stressed locations.
Historical Echoes: One Giant Step for Banking
“Lamar Pioneers in Space, the New Frontier” is the headline of an advertisement that appeared in the April 1985 issue of Texas Monthly magazine. The ad indicates that Texas-chartered savings and loan “Lamar Savings now is making plans for a full service branch on the moon.”
Discretionary Services Expenditures in This Business Cycle
The pronounced weakness in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) for services has been an unusual feature of the 2007-09 recession and the slow recovery from it. Even in 2010:Q4, when real PCE increased at a relatively robust 4.1 percent annual rate, real PCE on services rose at only a 1.4 percent rate. This weakness has been especially evident in “discretionary” services (to be defined below), which fell more in the recent recession than in previous recessions and since have rebounded more sluggishly. In this post, I suggest that the continued sluggishness in these expenditures lends a note of caution regarding the sustainability of recent PCE strength. Because consumption accounts for about 70 percent of output, this in turn raises some concern about the future strength of the recovery.
Just Released: Marking the End of LSAP 2
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve concluded its second Large-Scale Asset Purchase (LSAP) program. Liberty Street Economics is marking the end of the program—through which the Fed purchased $600 billion in Treasury securities—by providing a variety of resources (research, directives, and other information) on LSAP 2.
Did Trade Finance Contribute to the Global Trade Collapse?
The financial crisis of 2008-09 brought about one of the largest collapses in world trade since the end of World War II. Between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the value of real global GDP fell 4.6 percent while exports plummeted 17 percent, as can be seen in the chart below. The dramatic decline in world trade—a loss of $761 billion in nominal exports—came through two channels: decreased demand for imports and supply effects, most likely arising from financial constraints. In this post, we look at evidence that supply effects, including curtailed funding for export-related activities, played a key role in the trade collapse—and thus in the transmission of the financial crisis from Wall Street to “Main Street,” here and abroad.
How Easy Is It to Forecast Commodity Prices?
Over the last decade, unprecedented spikes and drops in commodity prices have been a recurrent source of concern to both policymakers and the general public. Given all the recent attention, have economists and analysts made any progress in their ability to predict movements in commodity prices? In this post, we find there is no easy answer. We consider different strategies to forecast near-term commodity price inflation, but find that no particular approach is systematically more accurate and robust. Additionally, the results warn against interpreting current forecasts of commodity prices upswings as reliable and dependable signals of future inflationary pressure.
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