Essay about Quantitative Easing

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

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.

Quantitative easing is an unusual form of policy used when interest rates are near 0%. Banks rouse the nationwide financial system when usual monetary policies have become ineffective. In recent decades the government Central bank has argued they are the government’s most important financial agency.

Our economy is a machine that is ran by humans. A machine can only be as good as the person who makes it. This makes our economy susceptible to human error. A couple years ago the United States faced one of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, which was the Great Recession. The Great Recession was a severe economic downturn that occurred in 2008 following the burst of the housing market. The government tried passing bills to see if anything would help it from becoming another Great Depression. Trying to aid the government was the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve went through a couple strategies in order to help the economy recover. The Federal Reserve provided three major strategies to start moving the economy in a better direction. The first strategy was primarily focused on the central bank’s role of the lender of last resort. The second strategy was meant to provide provision of liquidity directly to borrowers and investors in key credit markets. The last strategy was for the Federal Reserve to expand its open market operations to support the credit markets still working, as well as trying to push long term interest rates down. Since time has passed on since the Great Recession it has been a long road. In this essay we will take a time to reflect on these strategies to see how they helped.

In the late 2007, early 2008 the United States and the world was hit with the most serious economic downturn since The Great Depression in 1929. During this time the Federal Reserve played a huge role in assuring that it would not turn into the second Great Depression. In this paper, we will be discussing what the Federal Reserve did during this time, including a discussion of our nation’s three main economic goals which are GDP, employment, and inflation. My goal is to describe the historic monetary and fiscal policy efforts undertaken by the U.S. Government and Federal Reserve, including both the traditional and non-traditional measures to ease credit markets and stimulate the economy.

During the Federal Reserve meeting in April 2016, the range was left unchanged for federal funds at 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent (TRADING ECONOMICS, 2016). Labor markets experience growth confirmed by policy makers, yet economic activity was monitored as being slow (TRADING ECONOMICS, 2016). The risks associated with the financial developments of the country have ceased (TRADING ECONOMICS, 2016). The average percentage of interest rate in the U.S. averaged at 5.8. March of 1980 a record high was recorded at 20% (TRADING ECONOMICS, 2016). The lowest interest rates were recorded in the month of December 2008 at 0.25% (TRADING ECONOMICS, 2016).

As the onslaught of the sub-prime mortgage crisis began in late 2007, the housing market plummeted sending the economy into what is now known as the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve, as well as the private and government sectors, quickly took notice. In November of 2008 the Federal Reserve undertook its first trimester of quantitative easing; which means the Fed began purchasing treasury securities to increase the money supply in the system, with the hopes that the increase in assets would encourage lending and investment, leading to a resurgence of the economy in terms of unemployment rates and GDP. As time progressed the Fed continued to implement quantitative easing into its third trimester due to a lack of sufficient results.

It seems that the United States is approaching a crucial moment both for the real economy and for the financial crisis that caused this severe recession. Of course, this is good news that comes after many months of bad news, but we must continue to take into account how extremely difficult it is to forecast the behavior of the economy and financial markets during the crisis. The general predictions have been wrong again and again, and unexpected and even unprecedented events have followed one another closely. A cautious optimism should be the order of the day. We fear that the recent reactions of financial markets and some analysts reflect too much optimism without paying sufficient attention to uncertainty. Public policies should continue

To stabilize the economy bonds are used which release money into the market. The responsibility of the Central Bank is to maintain the health of the banking system and regulating the purchase and sale of bonds. The interest rates are controlled to balance the markets. According to the Monetary Policy Report to Congress, “The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained a target range of 0 to ¼ percent for the federal funds rate throughout the second half of 2009 and early 2010” while representing forecasted economic decisions to rationalize low levels for longer times on the federal funds rate (Federal Reserve, 2010). Purchases were still being made by the Fed’s to result in improvements to the economy through focusing on mortgages, the real estate market, and the credit market. Predictions by the Federal Open Market Committee depicted low levels on the federal funds rates in early 2010 which would continue for some time while over time the economy would see growth, a rise in inflation, and a decline in unemployment. Feds were in agreement though they expected the recovery process to be slower. Purchases by the Federal reserve were slowed, “$300 billion of Treasury securities were completed by October” and “the purchases of $1.25 trillion of MBS and about $175 billion of agency debt” were suppose to be finished the first quarter of 2010 (Federal Reserve, 2010).

When the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) wants to increase the money supply, they buy up government bonds from the public on the bonds markets (Mankiw, 2009). The result of buying bonds puts money in the pockets of the public, if the Fed wants to decrease the money supply, they sell off bonds. It is generally thought that when the public has more money available to them, they will consume more. This increased consumption should lead to an overall increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and expansion of the economy.

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.

As interest rates bottomed out quickly after the onset of the recession, the Federal Reserve could no longer stimulate the economy with traditional and time-tested techniques. The controversial and unconventional method chosen by the Federal Reserve, and other central banks around the world, is known as “quantitative easing” (QE). QE functions by injecting large amounts of reserve capital into commercial banks with the hope that those banks will then be willing to lend the money at affordable interest rates. Ideally, the addition to economic activity affected by the influx of capital to banks should keep the value of the dollar relatively low, avoiding deflation and encouraging foreign investment by those wishing to take advantage of an affordable dollar. The cheaper dollar should also make American exports look more attractive to potential consumers in other countries. If interest rates stay low, and banks begin lending again, consumer and investor confidence should hopefully rise, leading to more spending and thus, economic growth.

This involves buying or selling financial instruments like bonds in exchange of money to be deposited with the central bank. By selling the financial instruments, the central bank mops up the cash in circulation. On the other hand, selling injects money thus increasing the supply of money (Bernanke 2006).

Later that month, the U. S. House of Representatives passed legislation establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Congress then passed, and President Bush signed, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which established the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (Investopedia). In November 2008, the Federal Reserve instituted quantitative easing programs following the 2007-2008 financial crisis; or QE as it has become known. Quantitative easing is the act in which central banks buy government bonds in order to promote economic growth. In November 2010, the Federal Reserve announced a second round of quantitative easing, referring to it as “QE2.” A third round again was later announced on September 13, 2013; which is now being referred to not as QE3; but “QE-Infinity.” Quantitative easing can only be carried out if the central bank controls the currency used in the country. Japan, the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and the Eurozone quickly followed, since enacting quantitative easing programs of their own (Randow). A central bank, reserve bank or monetary authority are all institutions that manages a state’s currency, money supply and interest rates. A central bank also has the authority to print the national currency. Central banks within countries in the Eurozone cannot unilaterally expand their money supply and therefore cannot directly employ quantitative easing. These countries must instead, rely

Quantitative Easing is defined as the expansion of Central Bank Balance sheet (Bernanke and Reinhart 2004) in order to stimulate the economy via the purchase assets financed by the creation of central bank reserves, such as government bonds, T-bills and mortgage and exchanging for reserves, since the bank rate has been reduced below the effective level, for instance, Bank of England has cut its bank rate in a sequence of steps from 5% in October 2008 to 0.5% in March 2009 and further to 0.25% recently. The Central Bank usually proceed the asset purchase via increasing the reserves of commercial banks held in the account of Central bank, leading to an increase in deposit in the balance sheet of commercial banks. However, on the liabilities side, nothing has changes and in order to match up, the commercial banks will purchase more long-term assets both because the current asset side has mainly composited of short-term assets and because the large purchase has increased the price of government bonds (Bank of England prefers to implement QE via large purchase in government bonds), leading to relative lower price for other assets; as a result, commercial banks will buy other long-term assets, lowering the yields of those assets. As long as, thus, money is not a perfect substitute for assets sold, banks or sellers, more general, may tend to purchase other asset that are better substitutes in order to balance their portfolios, known as the portfolio substitute channel. In addition,