In my prior post, “The Futility of Stimulus,” I examined whether Federal Reserve Policy has provided economic stimulus. I employed standard measures of money-supply growth to evaluate the question. I concluded that Federal Reserve policy has resulted in less expansion of the money supply than would normally be expected. The weakness of the current economic expansion testifies to that.

In this post, I employ an alternative measure of monetary stimulus. I rely on a recent lecture at the University of Nevada Reno by Professor John Taylor of Stanford University. With a series of charts, he made a convincing case that successive rounds of Quantitative Easing provided no monetary stimulus. Taylor looked at the interest-rate channel, particularly longer-term interest rates. If monetary policy stimulates the economy through real capital investment, then we must look to longer-term interest rates.

Taylor specifically examined the effects on 10-year Treasury yields of each round of Quantitative Easing by the Fed. In each case, there was an announcement effect. When the Fed announced a new round of bond purchases, interest rates on 10-year Treasuries did drop. As QE was executed, however, the 10-year rate recovered to its previous level or even moved higher. On the assumption that rates on corporate bonds price off Treasuries, there was no measurable effect on investment and economic growth. Again, the weakness of the economic expansion is consistent with Taylor’s argument.

There is policy background here. Taylor is the author of a monetary rule, which others have dubbed the Taylor Rule. It is a rule for adjusting short-term interest rates (the Fed Funds rate) to changes in inflation and real economic activity. The Taylor Rule calculates that the Fed Funds should by 1.5 percent versus the current reality of near-zero. Taylor did not advocate an immediate increase to that level, but the beginning of gradual increases.

What of the economic recovery? If Taylor is correct, then low short-term interest rates have not contributed to the economic expansion and raising them will not slow economic growth.

Have very low short-term interest rates had any effect? Janet Yellen recently hinted they might have contributed to unsustainably high equity prices. I will not argue with the Fed Chair on that point, but only suggest that other financial bubbles may also have been financed by Fed policy. To repeat a hackneyed phrase (nonetheless accurate), Wall Street has benefited but not Main Street.

To sum up, following Taylor’s analysis of the interest-rate channel, I conclude that Fed policy has not stimulated economic growth. It has had consequences, which some would consider undesirable. Taylor has provided a reasonable case for beginning to raise interest rates. I doubt that will happen soon. But the debate should continue.

[Cross-posted from Alt-M.org]

I’ve argued that the centralization of government spending in Washington over the past century has severely undermined good governance. Citizens get worse outcomes when funding and decisionmaking for education, infrastructure, and other things are made by the central government rather than state and local governments and the private sector. The problem is the same in the European Union, as a new article in Bloomberg on the funding of Polish airports illustrates:

Local authorities are spending some 205 million zloty ($58 million), including more than $44 million in EU subsidies, to build runways and a new terminal that could accommodate more than 1 million passengers a year. The Olsztyn Mazury Airport is scheduled to open next January, but traffic and revenue forecasts developed by the project’s backers are “very far from reality,” says Jacek Krawczyk, a former chairman of LOT Polish airlines who advises the EU on aviation policy through its European Economic and Social Committee.

Szymany adds to a burgeoning supply of costly new airports across Poland. Since 2007, the EU has spent more than €600 million ($666 million) to build or renovate a dozen Polish airports.

… Mostly, though, Poland’s new airports have been a financial bust. A report in December by the European Court of Auditors found that EU-subsidized airport projects in Poland, as well as others in Estonia, Greece, Italy, and Spain, had “produced poor value for money.” Traffic at most airports fell far short of projections, and there was little evidence of broader economic benefits, such as job creation, the report found.  

With respect to U.S. infrastructure, there is ongoing pressure to increase federal investment, despite decades of experience on the inefficiency of it. Politicians and lobby groups constantly complain that America does not spend enough on infrastructure. But they rarely discuss how to ensure efficiency in spending, or cite any advantages of federal spending over state, local, and private spending.

I’ve discussed the many downsides to federal aid for infrastructure and other local activities here and here. But I was alerted to an additional argument against aid from this Regulation article by William Fischel and this book by James Bennett. Federal aid encourages local governments to expropriate private property, often for dubious purposes.

The article and book discuss the expropriation of Detroit homes for the benefit of General Motors in the 1980s. The “Poletown” project would not have happened without $200 million in federal and state loans and grants to the city. So Fischel makes the point that (abusive) government uses of eminent domain—such as the Kelo case in New London, Connecticut—are encouraged by the flow of federal and state funds to cities. That is, money for “economic development” and the like.

State and local governments would make better decisions if they were responsible for their own funding of programs and projects. The annual flow of more than $600 billion in federal aid to state and local governments should be phased out over time and eliminated.

With debate about NSA spying continuing in the Senate, it’s worth looking at some of the historical and modern precedents for protecting our communications and communications data. A few highlights:

• The earliest precedent for protection of communications in the United States is the treatment of mail. The founders used postal mail to communicate their revolutionary ideas and even to plan their insurrection against the tyranny of King George, so they prioritized protecting the privacy of the mail. In the Act of Feb. 20, 1792, passed a few short years after ratification of the Constitution, the U.S. Congress enshrined protections for mail in the law, creating heavy fines for opening or delaying mail.

• The Supreme Court confirmed the existence of constitutional protection for postal communications in Ex Parte Jackson. In that 1877 case, the Court described the Fourth Amendment’s guarantees in very interesting and clear language: “Letters and sealed packages … are as fully guarded from examination and inspection, except as to their outward form and weight, as if they were retained by the parties forwarding them in their own domiciles.” Though we place mail in the hands of government agents, the Fourth Amendment protects it like it’s inside our homes.

• The year Ex Parte Jackson case was decided, both Western Union and the Bell Company began providing voice telephone service. The Supreme Court addressed constitutional protection for phone calls some decades later in 1928. The Olmstead case was wrongly decided, we now know. It found that telephone communications weren’t protected by the Constitution. So the dissents are where to look for precedential language. Justice Brandeis’s famous dissent spoke of the “right to be let alone,” but Justice Butler provided thinking and language that should have more lasting value: “The contracts between telephone companies and users contemplate the private use of the facilities employed in the service,” he wrote. “The communications belong to the parties between whom they pass.” The communications belong to the parties. That’s a fasacinating and important way to think about our communications, as property that we own.
  

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