The Federal Reserve in Pop Culture and Mainstream Politics?

photo by wallyg	via PhotoRee

It is really quite interesting how the Federal Reserve ended up so squarely in the limelight in recent years. Sure, US Presidents, candidates, and other politicians have argued for and against national banks since the days of Andrew Jackson and Alexander Hamilton, but monetary policy has not been so close to the mainstream of political discourse in recent years as it is today.

Central Bank Intervention Risk: ECB Outright Monetary Transactions and Federal Reserve Quantitative Easing

It looks like all sorts of risk markets have taken off for the sky with all such markets looking at brand new multi-year highs or at least looking to reach there. Even today's underwhelming Nonfarm payroll jobs number could not dent the continued enthusiasm for central bank action past, present, and future. How long this will last is the question. In regards to the ECB, it is no longer hope but a known quantity, the newly announced and oftentimes leaked Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) for "unlimited" bond buying on the short end of Euro sovereign debt. The bond buying program is said to be sterilized. Despite that claim, gold prices have shot up dramatically these past few weeks and continue to outperform risk markets. Next on tap is the FOMC decision. Some anticipate QE3 sooner than later, especially since Bernanke has mostly focused on the employment part of the Fed mandate as of late.

Central Bankers at Jackson Hole

Well, the much anticipated Jackson Hole Bernanke speech has come and gone. Everyone from bloggers to the big fund managers have taken drastically different interpretations of the speech. Some argue that the speech was even more bullish than announcing a definite QE3 right then and there. Others interpret this as definitely indicating that there will be no QE3 soon and definitely not before the election. On Twitter, PIMCO's Bill Gross claims

"#Bernanke to go out with his guns blazing. #QE3 a near certainty. It will be open-ended but increasingly impotent."

Most of the I-bank analysts interpret the speech as calling for more easing and on fairly quick order.

Airport Reading

When I am stuck in the airport I often visit the bookstores there. Airports are apparently one of the last bastions where bookstores still exist whereas they have completely disappeared in some towns. Most of the time, airport bookstores do not carry anything of interest to me except the latest Barron's and a few finance magazines. Consequently, I was surprised pleasantly to see at least two of Michael Lewis' books at one airport bookstore, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (about the roots of financial crises in Greece, Ireland, Germany, and the US) and Moneyball (about the business and economics of baseball), both being NY Times bestsellers. Lewis the the author of Liar's Poker, a sardonic expose on the unreal bigger-than-life world of Wall Street in the 1980s.

US Debt Service

The economic times have really changed. The scope of household deleveraging is quite astounding. The Federal Reserve releases a figure called the Financial Service Ratio which measures amount of consumer and mortgage debt servicing including automobile lease payments, rental payments on tenant-occupied property, homeowners' insurance, and property tax payments to disposable personal income. For renters, the ratio peaked around 2001 at 31.05. For homeowners, it peak a lot later around 2007 at 17.55. Both have been sliding ever since. This data refers to the country as a whole. The picture for the individual regions may look different.