Shocked, shocked, do you hear me!
Not to snark at this poster, but in general, if we learn anything from experience in markets, we learn:
People want higher returns without higher risks, and other people can profit from convincing buyers that the returns are higher, or the risks are lower.
Also, money is more nimble than legislation. While Congress is trying to outlaw the most recently exposed scam or malfeasance, people are inventing the next several workarounds to existing or upcoming law.
That does happen, but what may be even more common (and more important is a slightly different form:
People want high returns, and are willing to accept risks, but are required by law to invest in safe securities, and are happy to pay high fees for people who can find a way around this.
A huge driver of this isn't scams or outright fraud, but "regulatory arbitrage". Not saying it's fine, but if your mental model is "how can we protect unsophisticated mom and pop investors from these predators selling exotic asset backed securities", well, they're not the ones buying them. The bigger question is, how can we (or should we?) stop pension funds from knowingly seeking higher risk/higher return investments as part of their ongoing effort to try and reduce their massive unfunded liabilities.
Not only this, but Better, Cheaper, Faster.
I'm in Healthcare and it doesn't work like this.
My gut response is that, yes, if you’re buying risk-free treasuries, why should you get a return above inflation at all? Rewards and risks should be commensurate.
Adam Davidson: All right. Here's one of his speeches that really drove that army of investment managers crazy.
Alan Greenspan: The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.
Adam Davidson: You might not believe me, but that little statement, that is central banker's speak for, hey, global pool of money, screw you.
Alex Blumberg: Come on, that's not what he said.
Adam Davidson: It is. I speak central banker. Believe me, that's what he said. What he is technically saying is he's going to keep the fed funds rate-- that's when you hear, the fed interest rate-- at the absurdly low level of 1%.
And that sends a message to every investor in the world, you are not going to make any money at all on US Treasury bonds for a very long time. Go somewhere else. We can't help you.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/355/transcript
To the question: why should you get a return above inflation at all?
I guess one way of looking at it is: do you want to treat low-risk returns for conservative investors as a sort of public utility guaranteed by the government? Or do you want to put it in the hands of private industry?
If for whatever reason (and having a moderately stable currency is the answer there) there is more demand for bonds than supply, then the price will fall. This has nothing to do with economic reality and everything to do with market pricing mechanisms. Whether it´s good in the long term for the government to increase its lending this way, is a completely separate question.
Secondarily, many prospective borrowers of these projects are already in debt, and have cash flows which are not growing fast enough to borrow more.
why should a gov't project need to have any real returns? Social returns is enough. If the city is nicer to live in, if the businesses thrive because of increaed foot traffic, lower car accident rates, cleaner air etc.
We're running our governments like businesses and you're not going to find any nimble or disruptive startups in the mix.
Which isn't to say that I think the government should do what it do out of spite. Is there any chance of... I dunno, cutting off the public handout and then regulating the private vacuum-fillers sufficiently? Or does the implied drug analogy here reach its logical conclusion (on the black market)?
... is the system working as intended, because the policy rationale behind issuing lots of government bonds is precisely to make investors seek higher risks.
When downturns (like 2008) happen, this is investors fleeing to safe, money-like assets and and so wonks recommend that governments flood the markets with bonds, printed money, whatever to make that unprofitable.
The problem is with trying to fix the economy with policy levers. You can force people towards riskier investments (especially if they can be disguised as safe ones). But investment that is actually productive on average requires conditions where people on the ground can actually build useful stuff at a profit.
But that's an anathema to macro-economists (who want to advise on how use those levers) and also to politicians (who want to be seen to be "doing something").
Every state, city, country has a lot of favored sectors and grant opportunities, it's then up to investors to come up with projects that actually turn a profit.
VC/startup investors do this by simply doing a semi-blind search, funding everything they think is at least minimally sound.
If investors are still unable to turn a profit they are not taking on enough risk. (They are not thinking big enough.) And that might be okay. There's no moral imperative to keep every investment fund alive, every investor happy. And the only difference between business as usual periods and now is that the numbers are now scary (negative yields!).
But the fundamentals haven't changed.
Negative yields just mean that too many investors are risk averse, too many people (pension funds, passive funds, low-risk funds, inflation tracking funds, basic savings accounts) just want to park money. And that's okay. Eventually one of the following will happen: the fund managers will take on more risk, the people behind the funds will use the money for something else (eg spend it), or the people behind the funds will pester Congress to spend more and finance it all from debt.
Even if the investor plans to hold the bond to maturity, then the investor is agreeing to lock up that money until maturity. This carries the risk that the investor won't be able to take advantage of an investment opportunity before then. Or, if he decides to sell at that moment, he must accept interest rate risk.
The investor should be compensated for these risks, however small they might be, and that - in my opinion - is why treasuries should yield more than inflation.
Pensions were funded (or not) based on assumptions about yields. If actual yields are not hitting those assumptions (and they're not), it's not the rich that'll be eating cat food in their retirement.
(Of course, fixing the funding shortfall by making risky bets on exotic high-yield investments is uh...what's the word? Oh yeah, terrible! But let's not pretend this is strictly a problem for the 1%.)
I don't think that's the only source of time value of money.
For example, I'm fairly certain I can buy a car for the same price a year from now, but I am willing to pay a huge premium to have the car now so I don't have to ride the bus for two hours a day while I save up the cash to pay for it.
That is a preference for present consumption over future consumption that has nothing to do with inflation.
The whole thing seems to me like central bankers confusing cause and effect and trying to squeeze a complex system in to linear regressions. Lots and lots of unpredicted consequences to artificially low interest rates, including effects that do the precise opposite of what was predicted.
So it is very possible that the central bank is not doing enough.
My completely unsecured credit card only charges 10%, and that’s before inflation.
Eg a pension fund has to put money somewhere, but it has to be low-risk. Hence the seemingly absurd demand for negative yields.
Obviously no one is buying negative yielding bonds for the yields except pension funds, etc who are required to by law or not paying attention.
> My gut response is that, yes, if you’re buying risk-free treasuries, why should you get a return above inflation at all? Rewards and risks should be commensurate.
The parent has some sort of ad hoc economic theory ("gut response"), and I am asking them to expand on what the theory entails. "Supposed to happen" means it would be predicted by this theory of theirs.
We have a couple of levers to increase the interest rate. We could reduce inequality to reduce the supply of loan-able funds, we could allow large amounts of immigration to drive up the demand for loan-able funds, or we could keep interest rates high enough that we have a permanently high unemployment.
However I do have a strong worry that natural interest rates are too low for our current inflation. This gives the fed very little room to deal with the next crises. They should probably be targeting an inflation rate closer to 3-4% so we don't run into zero lower bound problems.
The government could spend the money. Or it could give the money to the people (universal basic income) and they could spend it.
This also fixes the inflation problem. Just don't overshoot.
Confiscate $3 trillion from the "rich", and give everyone in the US $10k dollars. What percent would end up back in the banking system after 1 year?
With online banking, etc perhaps once a day.
EDIT:
Actually, if the funds are transferred electronically it would take as long as an ACH transfer takes to get to the new account. The funds are tied up during that but then immediately available to the banking system again.
Banking system is where money lives.
Value lives outside, but the money represented by the value lives on accounts, in databases.
Even cash is just something tracked by central banks as liability (negative account value - because when someone deposits cash they increase one account, and if the bank then deposits that electronic money at the central bank the total money supply must not change, hence cash is tracked separately).
And if you want to take out a loan, it'll still be a risk, since you'll need to make the principle payments, but you'd get a tailwind on the interest paid to you.
I'd be happy to learn where I'm wrong if you have any insight.
Btw the definition of the natural interest rate is "The natural rate of interest, sometimes called the neutral rate of interest[1], is the interest rate that supports the economy at full employment/maximum output while keeping inflation constant"
There Is No Alternative!
Negative rates don’t force junky investment decisions. Inflation does.
Inflation is low. Investors choosing junk yielding 4% are not being forced to do so by negative yields (or, in America, low yields). They’re choosing to reach for yield.
Yeah but Central Banks that set the interest rates say that too, so this is the worst kept secret known to man
All the comments here and your observation should just be “hey its working”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
Also, the ratio of theoretical to empirical content on that page is ridiculous given the topic is supposedly an empirical phenomenon requiring explanation. What is there is extremely weak as well. Is there better evidence this phenomenon exists?
Say what you will but I think that's really significant.
There is no way for the government to push rates, especially on exotic collateralized products like you describe. The Fed can play around at the low end and set an overnight rate, but not much else. Historically, the Fed has tried and failed over and over to affect the long end. And it certainly doesn't have the stock to dump long bonds to drive yields up.
Right now, the yield curve is inverted showing how little they actually effect rates. Long run rates are set in the global market.
It doesn't mean that it's a good thing to do as it has all kinds of other effects, but in general the governments have the ability to do this should they choose to, it's just that they keep pinky-swearing that they won't do it, making legislation that makes it tricky to do without consensus (but they can repeal that if both parties agree that it's the way to go) etc.
They can target the overnight rate and buy and sell short term funds because they are the majority player there, but even then the actual Fed Funds rate doesn't always equal the target they are trying to set (and not by a few points either).
On the long end they are more constrained. They can print a ton of money to cause inflation, but going the other way just isn't as easy. They aren't the major player there either. Long term treasuries compete with every other debt instrument out there government and private. Those rates are global for the most part
Just look at the late 90s when the Fed tried to push long term rates up and failed horribly. All they did is invert the curve. It is a repeating scenario.
This same conversation comes up about once a decade it seems.
There is a ton of interesting monetary theory about how the Fed can do this and issues they run into.
In a real dollar sense, the fed has zero ways to affect long term rates.
And there is no way they would be to keep that rate. They can say whatever they want, but that doesn't mean the overnight rate has to oblige them either. They only set a target, the actual rate is still determined in the bank to bank market and historically it does diverge, sometimes strongly.
No, to drive up rates would mean to restrict the buyers from buying (either via restricting the money supply - that means a combination of raising the overnight repo rate [FFR - Federal Funds Rate], raising reserve requirements, decreasing interest payment on reserves).
But such a move means slowing down regular lending, VISA/MasterCard and the banks would have to increase consumer facing prices of credit, etc. It would slow down wage growth.
And we are not seeing wage growth, we're not seeing inflation.
To stimulate spending/consumption all the Fed can do is absorb more and more risk (buy bonds/assets - quantitative easing, keepr rates low, encourage lending, encourage the starting of new projects).
Why people are not starting new projects?
Well, for example look at NIMBYs, look at how Congress doesn't want to force mandate better EPA regulations, look at how municipal fiber plans were stopped thanks to Comcast lobbying, etc.
Basically a lot of money goes into "rent" instead of innovation. (Asset bubbles.)
In other words, the Treasury dept is the one that has more power here.
The fed causes the inversions every time by pushing up the short term rates until they are near or above long term... It is ridiculously obvious if you just look at a plot of this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21863295
Paul Mason, from 2013.
Whenever I hear successful entrepreneurs bash cryptocurrencies, I wonder how they can simultaneously hold the following 3 thoughts inside their heads:
- My company became successful in the last 10 years because it added value to the economy.
- Cryptocurrencies became successful in the last 10 years in spite of subtracting value from the economy; they are the exception to an otherwise efficient market.
- Capitalism works.
If cryptocurrencies were an exception to an otherwise highly efficient and meritocratic economy, could we say the same about bonds which have negative yields?
Maybe the following thoughts are more logically consistent:
- My company became successful in the last 10 years because I exploited a vulnerability in the economy.
- Cryptocurrencies became successful in the last 10 years because they exploited a vulnerability in the economy.
- Capitalism doesn't work because it's vulnerable to hacks.
Also, to explain the current bonds situation:
- Bonds can have positive value in spite of negative yields because some investors believe that the vulnerabilities in the economy can be patched (e.g. it's possible to increase interest rates) and that bonds will eventually return to positive yields.