William Dudley habla de la estrategia de salida de la Fed

Genevieve Signoret & Patrick Signoret

En su discurso del martes 21 de mayo, el presidente de la Fed de Nueva York William Dudley arguyó que el comité de política monetaria de la Fed (FOMC) deberá actualizar la estrategia para normalizar la política monetaria de la Fed. Piensa que la cronología para dejar de reinvertir ingresos ya no debe estar ligada al alza de tasas de corto plazo (la cual ahora está ligada a umbrales de desempleo e inflación) y que el Comité no debería comprometerse de antemano a vender sus títulos hipotecarios respaldados por agencias del gobierno (agency MBS). Le preocupa que los participantes del mercado sobrerreaccionen al comienzo de la normalización.

We are also learning about how best to prepare for the eventual normalization of monetary policy. For example, we may need to update our thinking with respect to the so-called exit principles that we published in June 2011 in order to bring them up to date with developments since then, and ensure they do not unnecessarily constrain our ability to conduct policy in the most effective way today.

Those exit principles stated that we would first stop reinvesting, then raise short-term interest rates, and finally sell agency mortgage backed securities over a three-to-five year period. This seems stale in several respects. In particular, how does one time the end of reinvestment given that we now have economic thresholds that govern the timing of liftoff? Also, the thresholds are thresholds, not triggers. Thus it is hard to link the timing of the end of reinvestment to the unknown liftoff date for short-term rates.

More broadly, it may be desirable to update our thinking around the path and composition of the balance sheet over time, in light of our capacity to shape this path in a way that mitigates potential costs and risks. For example, the agency MBS portfolio is substantially larger today than it was when the original exit principles were devised. To the extent that the Committee wants to reduce the risk of disrupting market functioning during normalization, it could decide to indicate that it will avoid selling the MBS portfolio during the early stages of the normalization process. Moreover, to the extent that the Committee wants to mitigate the risk of a sharp increase in long-term rates, it could judge that it would prefer not to commit to agency MBS sales. Expectations about future MBS sales or actual sales have the potential to generate or amplify such an upward spike in long-term rates. If the Committee believes that it could be costly in terms of credibility to incur a period of no remittances to Treasury—a notion I am personally somewhat skeptical about—avoiding MBS sales would also reduce this risk. Indeed, the Committee might conclude that it was better on all three counts to allow the agency MBS securities to run off passively over time.

An important challenge for us will be to think carefully about what combination of actions and communications will best ensure that when we do eventually judge that it is appropriate to begin normalizing policy, the initial tightening of financial market conditions is commensurate to what we desire. There is a risk is that market participants could overreact to any move in the process of normalization. Indeed, there is some risk that market participants could overreact even before normalization begins, when the pace of purchases is adjusted but the level of accommodation is still increasing month by month. Not only could such responses threaten financial stability, but also they might make it harder to calibrate monetary policy appropriately to the economic situation. We will need to think long and hard about how best to develop policy in a way that enables us to respond flexibly to a changing economic outlook, but in a way that is not disruptive to the economy.

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