(Daily Reckoning)—The Federal Reserve is irrelevant unless it’s doing damage to the economy. Since the Fed is often doing damage to the economy, it does require our attention.
Claiming the Fed is irrelevant seems outlandish.
The Fed dominates the headlines. An upcoming meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC, the Fed’s interest rate policy group) on September 16-17 is already receiving outsized attention because of the likelihood that the Fed will cut interest rates for the first time since December 2004. Trump’s efforts to mold the Fed board of governors to his liking with appointments and firings is another focal point for market attention.
At times, the Fed seems to be at the center of the financial universe. It’s not.
It is true that the Fed is the central bank of the United States and that it has the power to print (really, digitally create) the U.S. dollar, the currency in which 60% of global reserves are denominated. It’s also the lead regulator of U.S. bank holding companies and almost all-important banks are members of the Federal Reserve System. There is a lot of power in those roles.
But the power narrative crumbles quickly when we look at what the Fed actually does and how they do it. That’s a task the Fed does not want you to do because they prefer to hide behind a curtain of monetary omnipotence. Let’s pull back the curtain and see what’s really going on.
Creating Money Out of Thin Air
How is money created? The Fed does print money (called M0) by buying U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities from a select list of banks called the primary dealers. I was chief counsel and chief credit officer of a top primary dealer for ten years and we spoke to the Fed daily. So, I’ve had a front row seat of this process. When the Fed buys securities from a dealer, they pay with dollars pulled out of thin air.
But since 2008, those dollars are then put on deposit with the Fed by the banks in the form of excess reserves. Those dollars don’t go anywhere. The Fed is simply expanding its balance sheet with securities on the asset side and deposits on the liability side. The Fed pays interest on those excess reserves, so the banks are fine with the arrangement. The actual dollars are not lent, spent or invested. They’re sterilized on the Fed balance sheet. It’s all a mirage.
Money creation that is useful for the economy doesn’t happen at the Fed. It happens at commercial banks. They also create money out of thin air (called M1) by making a loan and crediting the borrower’s account. That’s the money that can be used by business for investment, new jobs, working capital or other productive purposes. M1 is also created for consumers in the form of mortgages, credit cards, lines of credit and other extensions of credit. If you want to know where money comes from, don’t look at the Fed. Look at the banks.
Unfortunately, bank lending is starting to dry up. Consumer credit losses are piling up. Some consumers are cutting back on their credit cards as a precautionary measure. Mortgage creation is slowing because homeowners don’t want to sell since they’d have to refinance their current low-rate mortgages (from 2021-2024) at higher rates. Businesses don’t want to borrow because investment opportunities are scarce, and new hiring has hit the wall. When borrowers don’t want to borrow and banks don’t want to lend, you have the makings of a recession. So-called “fed stimulus” won’t change that.
The FOMC target rate for fed funds (called the policy rate) is also irrelevant. It is likely to be cut by 0.25% at the September 17 meeting. But the fed funds market to which that rate applies has not functioned since the 2008 financial panic. In other words, the Fed is targeting a rate for a market that doesn’t exist.
Meanwhile, two markets that do exist – the market for four-week Treasury bills and the secured overnight financing rate market (SOFR, basically the repo rate) – both have rates that are materially below the fed funds target rate. The Fed is not leading the market to lower rates; they’re following the market.
Fed Models – A Bunch of Nonsense
Trump is banging the table demanding lower rates from the Fed. He should be careful what he wishes for. Trump will get lower rates not from the Fed but from the market itself. But those lower rates are not stimulus; they’re a sign of recession or even depression. A healthy, growing economy has rates closer to the 4% to 5% range. Trump will get the 2% rates he’s looking for by next year. But by then, unemployment will have risen, and the stock market will have fallen out of bed. That’s not exactly the outcome he was hoping for.
Why is the Fed so bad at its job? Why can’t the Fed actually stimulate the economy and avoid recessions? The reasons for this have to do with the Fed’s belief in economic models that do not accord with reality.
The Fed follows a model called the Phillips Curve. This model claims that unemployment and inflation have an inverse correlation. If unemployment is low, inflation will be on the rise. If unemployment rises, inflation will be low. The Fed has a “dual mandate” to keep unemployment low and keep inflation low at the same time. If the Phillips Curve is true, it should be easy to pick the target and not worry about the other factor because it takes care of itself due to the inverse correlation.
But the Phillips Curve is a joke. The late 1970s were a time of 10% unemployment and 15% interest rates. Both parts of the dual mandate were out of control. There was no inverse correlation. The 2010s were a time of low inflation and low unemployment. Again, there was no inverse correlation.
You can always draw a Phillips Curve on a graph, but it has no predictive analytic power and offers no policy guidance. Still, the Fed believes in it, which is why they have not cut rates for almost a year. The Fed is worried about inflation even as unemployment is on the rise. This high-rate policy will just make the unemployment situation worse.
The Fed also believes that medium-to-long-term rates on Treasury securities are a function of a hypothetical strip of short-term rates rolled over for the full term of the long-dated security. Since the Fed can influence short-term rates, they believe they can also affect rates on five- and ten-year Treasury notes through a combination of policy changes and forward guidance. To the extent that market rates on, say, a five-year Treasury note vary from the implied five-year rate using the Fed’s model, they dismiss this as a “term premium” imposed by the market for some unknown reason (presumably expectations that vary from forward guidance).
That theory is another batch of nonsense. Medium-to-long-term rates are set by the market for intrinsic reasons having to do with liquidity, hedging and portfolio allocations. Long-term rates have nothing to do with the present value of a hypothetical strip of short-term bills. There is no empirical evidence to support the idea of a term premium – it’s a pure invention with no analytical value. Again, the Fed is creating models that do not accord with reality for the sole purpose of enhancing their own importance.
Drama At The Fed
Finally, we come to the topic du jour, which is Fed “independence.” Trump’s calls for Fed Chair Jay Powell’s resignation and Trump’s firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook are both viewed as threats to the Fed’s independence. The plot thickens when one considers Trump’s nomination of Stephen Miran to fill a vacant seat on the Fed’s board of governors following the resignation of Governor Adriana Kugler. Miran is currently Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. And has suggested he will keep his White House position while serving on the Fed board of governors, another threat to Fed independence.
Fed independence is a red herring. It has never really existed. When the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913, the Secretary of the Treasury was a member of the Fed board. Fed meetings were actually held in the Treasury building. This arrangement prevailed until FDR reorganized the Fed in 1934.
The Federal Reserve exercised no independence at all from 1942 to 1951 during which time the Fed agreed at the request of the U.S. Treasury to maintain a low interest rate of 0.375% (3/8ths of one percent) on Treasury bills and 2.5% on long-term Treasury bonds. Granted this agreement ran during the course of World War II and most of the Korean War, but it does demonstrate that the Fed will align with Treasury preferences as circumstances require.
In 1965, during the Johnson administration, LBJ invited Fed Chair William McChesney Martin to his ranch and physically assaulted him after Martin pushed through an interest rate hike two days before. In 1972, President Richard Nixon pressured Fed Chair Arthur Burns to maintain an expansionary monetary policy to help his election chances in the presidential election that year. Burns followed orders and that is considered to have contributed to the Great Inflation that resulted in the late 1970s.
You can debate the wisdom of these moves but there’s no debate that the Fed has frequently bent to political pressure over the decades. To single out Trump as a unique threat to Fed independence is untrue and historically wrong.
This brings us to Trump’s firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook. She was clearly an affirmative action or DEI appointee. She was touted as the “first black woman” on the Fed board (as if that mattered) while no one could point to a distinguished scholarly record or any contributions to monetary theory. Accusations of plagiarism in her articles have arisen. Those facts by themselves are not a reason to fire her. She’s not alone as a DEI appointee.
But it now appears that she lied on several mortgage applications. She claimed certain homes as her “primary residence” when there can only be one. She also said another home was a residence when it was for investment purposes. Such claims can result in lower interest rates and higher loan-to-value ratios for the borrower. These matters are now under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. Trump fired Cook “for cause” (as authorized by statute) based on these allegations. That seems to be justified considering that the Fed is the principal regulator of banks that are mortgage lenders.
Cook is suing to prevent her firing. The matter is now in the courts and may be resolved soon, but any decision is likely to be appealed. Meanwhile, the uncertainty about whether Cook is or is not on the board casts another shadow over whatever the Fed does on September 17.
Trump has also started a horse race to replace Jay Powell as Chair. Powell’s term expires in May 2026. Trump’s three candidates are Kevin Warsh (a former board member), Christopher Waller (a current board member who could be promoted from member to Chair) and Kevin Hasset (currently the White House Director of the National Economic Council).
Two current members of the Fed board, Michelle Bowman and Waller, were appointed by Trump in his first term. Stephan Miran and another appointee to replace Lisa Cook would give Trump four appointees out of the seven-person board. If Waller replaces Powell as Chair, Trump will have another appointee to fill the Waller board seat next May. Trump is well on his way to controlling the Fed board and its Chair through the appointments process.
That’s important, but in the end it won’t matter. Interest rates are coming down for reasons that are bigger than the Fed and that the Fed can’t control. Low rates are not the stimulus that Trump imagines. Rates are coming down fast because the U.S. economy is heading for recession. Trump may claim he controls the Fed, but he will end up owning the economic debacle to come.
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