Fed rate hikes don't affect the US dollar the way we think
qz.com
qz.com
Fed rate effects are difficult to measure for the same reason that the thermometer/thermostat problem exists. You cannot disambiguate cause from effect when monetary policy is used as a control system.
/s
E.g. a September rate hike is expected with a 99.8% probability by the market. For December the probability is 79.8%.
What the FED has done is print a whole lot of money, but that money has largely stayed within the big banks and wall street.
Not as much has moved to the real economy because money velocity is low. Though inflation has picked up in the last few years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V
The intuition is that if you hand me a bunch of cash, and I stash it in my mattress, there is no inflation until I begin to spend it.
In the same fashion, the printing of money has no effect if no one ever sees it. The more people who deal with it, the larger an effect it will have
This ties into the infamous parable of the Greek hotelier, where you can see that it is the movement of money that has the greatest impact on the economy:
It is a slow day in a little Greek village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the taverna. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.
No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.
Money velocity is a post-hoc fudge factor to make the Fisher equation work. It's has little empirical value. Other than that, I'm with you.
"Money" is broad; the Fed may have printed a ton of it, but a ton more was destroyed in 2007.
Why do you want a special term for e.g. the dollar falling by 8% at the same time that the british pound also falls by 8% (in which case the value of one currency relative to the other doesn't change)?
http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/foreign-exchange/theories...
There's not really a term for deliberate attempts to increase the value of the currency (as this is a policy goal not really pursued by modern central banks, as deflation is considered to be bad). Demurrage is a related concept, but rarely used in this sense.
Increasing rates is attempt to control price inflation, not to control exchange rates. There is a link but, it's not straight nor is it the most important factor.
You should look at the balance on current account, and export and import price indexes, net investment flows etc.
Jude Wanniski's wrote similar statements in his newsletters and book: "how do you expect to make something more valuable by making it more expensive" (the interest rate being the price of money).
Looking at actual rates, not targets, the overnight target is a blunt instrument that doesn't always follow the target very well. And even when it does, the exchange rate relationship seems to take long vacations.
Art Laffer had similar views IIRC from a paper he did looking at the trade-weak dollar connection.
I also think the current state of economics is a complete unknown to everyone who tries to influence it.
Fortunes can be made and lost over things like bitcoin where chaos seems to be the main driver of value.
Interesting times to say the least.