Larry Summers

09/15/2015

In recent writings, I have laid out the strategic case against the Federal Reserve tightening this week. There is a compelling tactical case as well.

Monetary policy should seek to avoid major surprises.  Right now the fed funds futures market is assigning only a 28 percent chance to a September tightening. In the last 20 years, the Fed has never tightened without guiding the futures market to at least a 70 percent chance of a tightening.  So a move now, given how expectations have been managed, would be an extraordinary shock at a highly uncertain time.

To find a relevant precedent, one has to go back to 1994, when the Fed raised rates by 25 bps despite the market assigning only about a 30 percent chance (around what is expected now) of a tightening.  What followed was dubbed by Fortune Magazine as the “Bond Market Massacre.”  Over the ensuing nine months, the interest rate on the 10-year bond rose by 2.2 percentage points — nearly twice as big an increase as any subsequently — with mortgage rates rising in tandem.   Volatility spiked dramatically across the world, and Orange County had the then-largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.  Mexico and Argentina moved towards financial crisis.

There is a point here quite separate from the issue of what monetary policy should be.  Communication is a key part of the art of monetary policy.  The Fed for a generation has caused its tightening moves to be anticipated because it learned from the 1994 experience.   The same approach should be taken going forward.  Even if it were otherwise a good idea to tighten, no adequate predicate has been laid for a rate increase this week.