Ótimo artigo do Martin Wolf sobre a política monetária no Reino Unido. Levanta questões importantes sobre a modelo de metas inflacionárias e por isto vale a leitura.
Are the targets and instruments of the UK’s monetary policy framework “fit for purpose”? For once, this ugly phrase sums up the predicament well. With the economy in the doldrums and the arrival of Mark Carney as governor of the Bank of England in July, this is the ideal time for a rigorous, comprehensive and open debate.
As Mr Carney stated in testimony before the UK parliament’s Treasury select committee, the current framework is “flexible inflation targeting”.
In written evidence, he noted that “under flexible inflation targeting, the central bank seeks to return inflation to its medium-term target while mitigating volatility in other dimensions of the economy that matter for welfare, such as employment and financial stability. For most shocks, these goals are complementary. However, for shocks that pose a trade-off between these different objectives, or that tilt the balance of risks in one direction, the central bank can vary the horizon over which inflation is returned to target.”
Mr Carney considers flexible inflation targeting the “most effective monetary policy framework implemented thus far. As a result, the bar for alteration is very high.” He agrees, then, with Sir Mervyn King, his predecessor, who argued in January that “the anchoring of inflation expectations has been the most successful aspect of the inflation targeting regime . . . It would be irresponsible to lose that.”
Yet proponents of the current regime (of which I was one) justified it not only on the proposition that it would stabilise inflation, but that it would help stabilise the economy. It failed to do so. In terms of lost output, the current slump is far worse than the inflationary 1970s and disinflationary early 1980s. Even with growth at 1.5 per cent a year from now on, output would return to its level of the first quarter of 2008 only in the first quarter of 2015: in brief, seven lost years. This is abysmal, even if a productivity collapse (with worrying longer-term implications) shielded employment.
Moreover, even if one believes that today’s fashionable nostrum – “macroprudential regulation” – would have prevented this dire outcome, what should be done today, while the economy is trapped in a post-bubble slump? In written evidence, Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford university argues that there is now “a clear conflict” between what a sensible UK monetary policy would be doing and what is actually happening. “Inflation targeting in the UK is not working, and something needs to change,” he writes. I agree.
So what is to be done? First, there needs to be a government-led assessment of the inflation-targeting regime, particularly of how well it operates while interest rates are at their lower bound. Second, the BoE has to reconsider how it develops and communicates policy during this exceptional period, including its exit from unconventional policies. Finally, as Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, argued in an important lecture this week, even greater attention needed to be paid to the “how” of monetary policy in exceptional times than to its targets. In particular, he argued, money creation was a legitimate and powerful tool, in such circumstances.
Altering the longer-term regime would rightly take time. This is most obvious if one considers a popular alternative: a shift to targeting nominal gross domestic product. Yet, as Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics and co-authors note in a recent paper, this attractive idea has drawbacks: the target is far less transparent than prices; the data are not only published quarterly, but are constantly revised; the impact on expectations might even be highly destabilising; and it would be extremely difficult to fix on a target for the growth or level of nominal GDP, given the uncertainties about potential real growth and the fact that nominal GDP is now 13 per cent below the pre-crisis trend. The difficulty of agreeing quickly on any alternatives might rule the notion out for immediate needs.
If so, the focus, particularly of the BoE, should now be on shifting expectations and making policy more effective. The least that should be done would be to make the Monetary Policy Committee’s expected path of interest rates more transparent and, as the US Federal Reserve has done, indicate the triggers for subsequent tightening. One way to reinforce credibility of commitments would be to indicate that the MPC is focusing on the rate of rise in labour earnings, as an indicator of inflationary pressure, as well as the misleading consumer price index.
Yet I agree with Lord Turner that the even more important question is how to make any policy effective. This, inevitably, raises questions about how monetary policy works in an environment of ultra-low interest rates. Lord Turner thinks the unthinkable: namely, monetary financing of the fiscal deficit. So should policy makers. They have to think afresh. If not now, when?
Fonte: FT
