Nipponizatie van de VS

De Amerikaanse centrale bank is wat pessimistischer geworden. In verhulde"Fed-taal"staat een boodschap verborgen :

Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance, largely reflecting developments abroad. Bank lending has continued to contract in recent months. Nonetheless, the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability, although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be moderate for a time.

Het risico op een"double dip"of nieuwe groeivertraging - en zelfs een nieuwe krimp - wordt aldus voorbereid. De Verenigde Staten zitten steeds strakker in een Japans scenario. Na een lange periode van assetinflatie, een langere periode van asset deflatie (zie grafiek).

De Amerikaanse intelligentia heeft nochtans steeds vrij schamper gedaan over de Japanse deflatie. Zij zouden zo'n scenario wel vermijden. Remember bijvoorbeeld Ben Bernanke zelf die in 2002een hele lezing gaf over het onderwerp.

Het is leerzaam om deze Bernanke speech eens terug te bekijken. Want Ben Bernanke is nu voorzitter van de Amerikaanse Centrale Bank, en hij houdt het stuur al een aantal jaren in handen. Waarom was Bernanke zo zeker dat de VS nooit in een Japans scenario zou terecht komen ? Bernanke zei in 2002:

First, as you know, Japan's economy faces some significant barriers to growth besides deflation, including massive financial problems in the banking and corporate sectors and a large overhang of government debt. Plausibly, private-sector financial problems have muted the effects of the monetary policies that have been tried in Japan, even as the heavy overhang of government debt has made Japanese policymakers more reluctant to use aggressive fiscal policies (for evidence see, for example, Posen, 1998). Fortunately, the U.S. economy does not share these problems, at least not to anything like the same degree, suggesting that anti-deflationary monetary and fiscal policies would be more potent here than they have been in Japan.

Second, and more important, I believe that, when all is said and done, the failure to end deflation in Japan does not necessarily reflect any technical infeasibility of achieving that goal. Rather, it is a byproduct of a longstanding political debate about how best to address Japan's overall economic problems. As the Japanese certainly realize, both restoring banks and corporations to solvency and implementing significant structural change are necessary for Japan's long-run economic health. But in the short run, comprehensive economic reform will likely impose large costs on many, for example, in the form of unemployment or bankruptcy. As a natural result, politicians, economists, businesspeople, and the general public in Japan have sharply disagreed about competing proposals for reform. In the resulting political deadlock, strong policy actions are discouraged, and cooperation among policymakers is difficult to achieve.

In short, Japan's deflation problem is real and serious; but, in my view, political constraints, rather than a lack of policy instruments, explain why its deflation has persisted for as long as it has.Thus, I do not view the Japanese experience as evidence against the general conclusion that U.S. policymakers have the tools they need to prevent, and, if necessary, to cure a deflationary recession in the United States.

Conclusion

Sustained deflation can be highly destructive to a modern economy and should be strongly resisted. Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, the chances of a serious deflation in the United States appear remote indeed, in large part because of our economy's underlying strengths but also because of the determination of the Federal Reserve and other U.S. policymakers to act preemptively against deflationary pressures. Moreover, as I have discussed today, a variety of policy responses are available should deflation appear to be taking hold. Because some of these alternative policy tools are relatively less familiar, they may raise practical problems of implementation and of calibration of their likely economic effects. For this reason, as I have emphasized, prevention of deflation is preferable to cure. Nevertheless, I hope to have persuaded you that the Federal Reserve and other economic policymakers would be far from helpless in the face of deflation, even should the federal funds rate hit its zero bound

Even enkele dingenresumeren:

Bernanke zag een aantal verschillen: de VS heeft geen bankenprobleem, de VS zou nooit hetzelfde politieke immobilisme vertonen, en in het ergste geval zou de VS de rente nog naar nul procent kunnen brengen. Dat was in 2002.

Wel, het zou interessant zijn om Bernanke te vragen hoe hij aankijkt tegen zijn speech van 2002 ("making sure "it " doesn't happen here"). De verschillen met Japan zijn zo goed als verdwenen. De Nipponizatie van de Amerikaanse economie is al tien jaar bezig. Alleen moeten de Amerikanen het nog goed beseffen.