I find that a
scary comparison. The figure below shows why. It plots the core inflation rate
(in red) and the real policy interest rate (in blue), constructed as the
federal funds rate minus core inflation over the previous 12 months. (The
results would be even more striking if I had used headline inflation, but, for
the usual reasons, we want a series that removes, at least in part, the
transitory components of inflation.)
First, the
figure shows how little action there was in either inflation or the real policy
rate relative to the 1970s episode and today. The other episodes identified by
Blinder are hardly visible. This leads me to think that the only potentially
valid comparison (with all the caveats listed below) is between the 1975–83 episode
and the current one.
Second, it
shows what happened when the Fed got seriously "behind the curve" in
1974–75. The real
rate and inflation moved in opposite directions, very much like today. Look at
the two green ellipses. In early 1975, core inflation was running at 12 percent
and the real policy rate was equal to about −6 percent, a
gap of about 17 percent. Today, core inflation is running at 6 percent and the
real policy rate is equal to −6 percent, a gap of 12 percent—smaller than
in 1975, but still strikingly large (had I used core personal consumption
expenditures [PCE] instead of core consumer price index [CPI], the two numbers
would be 14 percent and 10 percent, respectively). It then took 8 years, from
1975 to 1983, to reduce inflation to 4 percent, with an increase in the real
rate from bottom to peak of close to 1,300 basis points, and a peak increase in
the unemployment rate of 600 basis points from the early 1970s.[1]
Real interest rate -6%, 仍然負利率, 代表什麼意思呢! 錢存在銀行還得付銀行利息錢, 持有貨幣的機會成本大增, 很多人(包括有錢人) 根本不會把錢存在銀行, 會往股票, 房地產, 大宗物資去投
哪邊價格高了, 就先泡沫化
