Fiscal Dominance

One day the BoJ may well get a call from the finance ministry saying please think about us – it is a life or death question - and keep rates at zero for a bit longer. [...]

The risk of fiscal dominance, leading eventually to high inflation, is definitely present. I would not be surprised if this were to happen sometime in the next five to ten years.

Those Darned Retirees And Hedge Funds

To our surprise, Japanese retirees have been willing to hold government debt at zero rates, but the marginal investor will soon not be a Japanese retiree, [...]

If and when US hedge funds become the marginal [buyer of[ Japanese debt, they are going to ask for a substantial spread,

Concluding Remarks

Olivier Blanchard (ex-Chief Economist of the IMF) has been quoted arguing that the Japanese face serious macro risks; in reality, probably the biggest economic risk Japan faces is listening to New Keynesian economists. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, of the Telegraph, summarised Blanchard's comments at a meeting at Lake Como as " Olivier Blanchard eyes ugly 'end game' for Japan on debt spiral. " Although the article only provides a few quotes, the logic is quite weak. Since we do not have a long form paper to analyse, we have to keep in mind the possibility that Evans-Pritchard has misquoted Blanchard. Therefore, I believe it would be a mistake to get to exercised about these comments. That said, it seems that common sense is still not breaking out amongst Western economists.Evans-Pritchard quotes Blanchard as follows:If we take the notion of "revealed preference" seriously, we have to conclude that Japanese policymakers want to achieve a target of. As the chart above shows, if that is the case, t. The price level (as measured by a non-standard CPI index, but which has a longer history than the headline CPI) has been in a band 5% since the early 1990s. This probably represents finer control of the price level than was achieved during the Gold Standard era by most countries (although the long-term average price level was stable in the Gold Standard, there was considerable variation around the average),New Keynesians (such as Blanchard) pushed the notion that a stable, low level of inflation (e.g., 2%) as being an optimal state of affairs. Considering that the era in which that objective was achieved in the U.S. (and other countries) also happens coincide with "Secular Stagnation," that theory looks to have been worthless.Price level stability is extremely attractive from the point of view of. There have been any number of dubious economic theories and policy frameworks advanced which are designed to tame the scourge of inflation. This has proved to be fairly costly, as shown by the experience during the Great Depression (the Gold Standard) and the euro area periphery (the "Euro Standard"). Therefore, if you avoid inflation, it undercuts the drive to impose such a policy straitjacket.One could say that the Japanese economy has been hardly dynamic in recent decades. However, it seems highly implausible that an export-driven nation with a declining working age population is going to post spectacular growth numbers in an environment where China is flooding practically every goods market with overcapacity.Therefore, Blanchard's remarks are a bit silly. Japan has achieved price level stability,If the Japanese do start to experience positive inflation, the implication would be that nominal GDP would grow. This will create a natural fiscal tightening (due to automatic stabilisers working on nominal income), the debt/GDP ratio will drop due to the growth of the denominator. This growth effect was seen in the United States, as shown below (and discussed in " Higher Bond Yields Means ... Lower Bond Yields? ").We cannot generate as useful a chart for Japan, since there was no issuance of long-dated bonds until after the high inflation period of the 1970s. The article " Higher Debt-To-GDP Ratios And Lower Bond Yields: Japanese Experience " discusses the more limited Japanese data set.Furthermore, raising interest rates to respond to higher inflation rates is right out of the New Keynesian playbook. When bond yields in the United States did not rise during the 2000s in response to Fed rate hikes, it caused widespread hand-wringing amongst New Keynsians ("the Conundrum"). (As I discuss in my upcoming report, this should not have been a surprise.) In other words, rising bond yields is exactly what is expected to happen during a tightening cycle, so why make a big deal about it?Returning to what Blanchard said.Anyone who thinks thathave the balance sheet capacity to "fund" a G7 nation does not understand how financial markets are organised. There has been a parade of hedge funds shorting the JGB market (directly or indirectly) for decades, and the negative yields on JGB's tells you how well those trades worked out. To what extent hedge funds matter in developed country fixed income, they determine pricing for relative value trades. (Until their lack of balance sheet capacity causes them to blow up, as we saw in practically every fixed income market in 2008.)Why havebeen buying Japanese bonds? Simply, they are. Asking when "retirees" will stop buying government bonds makesas much sense as asking when "rich people" will stop buying government bonds. Given that the European Left has been complaining about theclass and their bond-buying for(Thomas Piketty being the latest high profile example), this state of affairs is unlikely to change any time soon.Talking about "marginal buyers" is just an attempt to fool people with economic jargon. The buyers that determine the level of bond yields are Japanese banks and Japanese institutional investors, Those investors are always balancing the attractiveness of JGB's versus yen risk assets and foreign currency assets. Since those institutional investors have yen-denominated liabilities, there is no chance that they will abandon the yen interest rate market.Finally, given the huge overhang of Japanese holdings of foreign currency debt (including Japanese official reserves), it will be a long time before non-Japanese investors will dominate the valuation of the yen.The most interesting part of this subject is the following -- what is it about Japan that compels western economists to make up scare stories? How many decades will it take before people can figure out that a debt-to-GDP ratio over 100% is perfectly sustainable in a floating currency regime?(c) Brian Romanchuk 2015