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Threats to Central Bank Independence: High-Frequency Identification with Twitter (Bianchi, Kung, Kind) Academic paper finds that Trump tweets demanding the Fed cut rates does impact market pricing. Cumulatively, his tweets have lowered market expectations of Fed policy rate by 10bps.
Consumers Price Beliefs, Central Bank Communication, and Inflation Dynamics (Bank of Japan) Argues that prolonged periods of low inflation make the central bank’s inflation target less relevant for consumers. Instead, targeting price level (rather than the change in prices – inflation) would have more impact.
Credit Easing Versus Quantitative Easing: Evidence from Corporate and Government Bond Purchase Programs (Bank of England) BoE finds that buying corporate bonds was more effective than QE in reducing credit spreads, especially for higher-rated bonds.
Zero Lower Bound Risk according to Option Prices (San Fran Fed) Fed uses option prices and finds market has 24% probability that Fed policy rates will hit lower bound by end-2021.
New Weapons for the ECB (Project Syndicate) Former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, argues that the ECB’s current toolkit will only lead to further right-wing populism as economic stagnation continues. Instead, he argues for the creation of “ECB conversion bonds” which effectively converts up to 60% of a country’s debt to low yielding bonds at ECB rates. This would allow for fiscal stimulus. Instead, he argues for the creation of “ECB conversion bonds” which effectively converts up to 60% of a country’s debt to low yielding bonds at ECB rates. This would allow for fiscal stimulus.