Monetary Policy: The Forward Guidance Rationale

Due to the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England employed quantitative easing (an unconventional monetary policy used to stimulate the economy) by cutting interest rates down to 0.5 % and has been keeping it until now. The Bank made the decision to keep QE and the interest rate unchanged in March. Spare capacity (the ability of a firm to produce more of a product than is now being produced) is used by the BoE to justify its use of forward guidance policy (a communicative tool for monetary policy). Low interest rates improved the economy by increasing consumption and investment, which are the components of AD. The AD curve shows the total spending on goods and services in a period of time at a given price level. In constructing on AD

Along with moral suasion, persuasion to get consumers to buy, and open market operations, the buying and selling of government securities in financial markets, the easy money policy can only help supply-side economics in it's route to ending a recession and gaining economic stability. All of these policies combined, supply-side, easy money policy, open market operation, and moral persuasion, can all have an impact on important issues. Some of these issues are employment, international trade, and inflation.

Max: Now that we have taken care of fiscal policy we must acknowledge the second half of the efforts to pull ourselves out of the recession. Monetary policy! Monetary policy is the action of the federal Bank of the United States of America to manipulate the economy using the three tools. The three tools are open market operations, discount rate, and reserve requirements. The most commonly used tool is OMO’s, the fed buys bonds from the federal government and then sell to the public. With the profit they make from the bonds sold to the public they buy more bonds. And then it continues in this cycle.

It is clear that the economic policy in general and the monetary policy in particular should be concerned with the overall economic well-being. In this paper we propose to discuss this core topic. We will provide an overall picture of the functioning mechanism. In this regard, the discussion will develop around the governmental policies and of FED, and their scope on the free market. The argumentation will refer to the notion of common good and will try to establish if the measures applied by FED have fulfilled their intended purpose given the recent international financial crises of 2007.

UK government was very swift in its response the financial crisis. Various measures were taken to address the economic anomaly that came with the crisis. These range from various monetary policies to fiscal policies. Some of these policies are discussed below:

The Federal Reserve went into action in response to the 2008 recession by rapidly reducing interest rates with the hopes of encouraging economic growth. The federal funds target rate was decreased to between zero and .25 percent. The results of the rate changes caused what is called “zero bound”, this reduced the effectiveness of monetary policy with the near non-existence of interest rates.

What about monetary policies during the great recession? The Bush administration executed The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The Fed turned to unconventional monetary policy to create financial stability in order to prevent recession. In conventional monetary policy, the Fed raises supply of bank funds to lower interest rates. During a recession, the central bank will purchase only treasuries in the open market because they are risk free. However, that does not guarantee that the economy will be restored. So they turn to unconventional monetary policy when in severe recession. In unconventional monetary policy, as mentioned above, the Fed uses quantitative easing by lending a huge amount to banks or even firms. They purchase other securities, aside from T bills, in the open market to lower interest rates. The main goal is to lower interest rates.

In order to be successful in economic growth it's important to increase money supply and lower the interest rates which is also related to Easy Monetary Policy which is defined by others as the “Accommodative Monetary Policy” followed by

In my opinion, how effective low interests rates are to encourage consumers to borrow and spend depends on the elasticity of the demand for loans. If the demand for loans is inelastic, a sharp reduction in interest rates will only increase the loans by a small amount. Please refer to Appendix G. In this case, lowering the interest rates to 0.5% is not enough to stimulate demand. As a result, quantitative easing, another monetary policy is being utilized, as bank rates could not go any lower. Although there are other underlying factors that contribute to the high unemployment rate in the UK, it is shown that reducing bank rates is not the key to solving this problem.

The Bank of England became an independent institution in 1997 and their main objectives since have been to maintain monetary stability, and engage in Asset Purchasing facility, which was started in 2009. The task of handling Monetary Stability is undertaken by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) since 1997. In 2009 the Bank of England introduced Quantitative Easing (QE) as a method to maintain their inflation targets in the form of Asset Purchasing facility. “Quantitative easing is an unconventional form of monetary policy where a Central Bank creates new money electronically to buy financial assets, like government bonds. This process aims to directly increase private sector spending in the economy and return inflation to target”.

In these sectors, the economy added an average of 54k, 44k, 27k, and 26k jobs per month over the last 12 months, respectively. Retail added ~350,000 jobs over the last 12 months, with most retail industries contributing to the increase, a key indicator of economic activity improvement.

In September 2008, thousands of financial sectors all over the world went bankrupt like dominoes after the failure of Lehman Brothers Bank, which is also known as the Financial Crisis of 2008, caused the severe recession of the economies around the world. In order to help the country out of crisis, the central banks in different countries had to take measures to stimulate the growth of economy. The goal of this essay is to introduce the measures that Bank of England have taken in 2008 of financial crisis and will discuss the macroeconomics consequences and effects. Three measures taken by Bank of England will be presented in first section and how macroeconomics outcomes influenced by policies and objectives will be discussed in the second section.

In this essay, first I will state the definition of forward guidance and what is the point using this policy. Secondly, I will discuss the advantages and a disadvantage in this policy. Thirdly, using economic models to explain how to maintain low interest rate and the relationship between unemployment rate and inflation rate. Moreover, there is some empirical evidence of forward guidance. Finally, I will sum up the point we have discussed.

Monetary policy involves manipulating the interest rate charged by the central bank for lending money to the banking system in an economy, which influences greatly a vast number of macroeconomic variables. In the UK, the government set the policy targets, but the Bank of England and the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) are given authority and freedom to set interest rates, which is formally once every month. Contractionary monetary policy may be used to reduce price inflation by increasing the interest rate. Because banks have to pay more to borrow from the central bank they will increase the interest rates they charge their own customers for loans to recover the increased cost. Banks will also raise interest rates to encourage people to save more in bank deposit accounts so they can reduce their own borrowing from the central bank. As interest rates rise, consumers may save more and borrow less to spend on goods and services. Firms may also reduce the amount of money they borrow to invest in new equipment. A