Saturday, September 7, 2019

TASS — Russia’s Central Bank cuts key rate to 7% for first time since 2014


Interest rates represent cost of borrowing and income from saving. Both are reduced by cutting rates. Since is this is a decrease in price, it is disinflationary, which is opposite to what central bankers assume. Savers receive less income, which would likely have been spent on goods purchases. Lower of the cost of firm investment potentially results in lower goods prices.

On the other hand, in deciding on a monetary policy using interest rate setting, central banks assume that lower interest rates are inflationary. This is an overly simplistic approach that called into question by the inflationary potential of rising rates and the disinflationary potential of falling rates.

Inversely, an increase is price occurs in bond markets, where change in securities price is the inverse of change in the interest rate. Lower interest rates imply that the market price of previously issued securities rises rise in adjustment to the change in the yield. This is a case of asset appreciation, which is considered irrelevant to goods price level that figures in inflation rate. The increase in asset price offset the decrease in income from lower yields. 

Of course, new issued securities reflect the going interest rate. Lowering interest rates means that the government issuer is injecting less funds into non-government than previously. This lowers the fiscal balance.

Specifically, the Central Bank of Russia is assuming that the lowered cost of borrowing will result in an increase in firm investment and that the lowering of interest income will not significantly affect demand, since income from saving may go disproportionately into more saving, given savers revealed preference for saving. The current central banking assumption is that savers fund borrowers, which presumes a loanable funds theory that has been shown to be incorrect. This disproof was confirmed recently by the Bank of England, but much of finance and economic is still based on the erroneous theory.

This is an MMT-based summary analysis contrasted with current central banking assumptions.

TASS

2 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Andrew Anderson said...

The Bank of Russia has reduced the key rate to 7% per annum for the first time since 2014 on the back of decelerating inflation, the regulator says on Friday.

If Russia is like the ROTW, then only depository institutions, aka "the banks", may use its fiat* while the population is limited to using bank deposits. Not only is this unjust on its face, but it also makes sovereign spending more likely to cause price inflation since the demand for fiat is artificially decreased.

The lesson for MMT advocates is that unless the banks are de-privileged, then sovereign spending for the PUBLIC welfare shall be limited by the price inflation caused by bank deposit creation for the PRIVATE welfare of the banks themselves and for the rich, the most so-called "worthy" of what is then, in essence, the public's credit but for private gain.

Shorter: MMT advocates need to stop being bank toadies if they are truly seeking the general welfare.

*except for mere physical fiat, coins and paper bills.