Steve Roth — The Fed Faces the End Game — And Blinks?

The Pentagon's strategic staff does contingency planning around various potential end games. Ryan Avent applies the technique to economics with respect to end games involving the Fed and monetary policy. Steve Roth draws some conclusions about end game scenarios.

Voilá: MMT World, where Treasury is simply spending newly-created money into existence, at the behest of the legislative and executive branches, by depositing it in recipients’ bank accounts. Bond/debt issuance is immaterial, because the Fed has no choice but to buy all the new bonds for “cash.” (Yes, the Fed is actually “printing” the money, but effectively the Treasury is doing so.) There is no Fed “independence.”

This is the scenario that would result if the Republicans were foolish and feckless enough to take their chicken game to the limit and let the head-on collision actually occur, with a default on U.S. debt. It’s the expected (inevitable) result if they “take it to court” — at least if they leave it that way for any period. (Has anybody mentioned the irony of the Republicans’ claim to be creating “confidence”? And, do you think they’d like the MMT World that they’re unwittingly trying to create? 

Read it at Asymptosis
The Fed Faces the End Game — And Blinks?

by Steve Roth

Good read.