How The Great Moderation Destroyed the Fed’s Credibility

Much ado is made of the Fed’s “credibility,” which is dog-whistle-speak for its ability, willingness, and decided inclination to jump all over any (expected or imagined) whiff of that horrifying threat — inflation! — especially the most terrifying bogeyman, “wage inflation.”

You won’t, on the other hand, find “credibility” discussed when people speak of the Fed’s inevitably weak-kneed inclination to raise inflation (expectations).

So after thirty years of diligently establishing its reputation for credibility, the Fed has no credibility. They announce on December 12 that they’ll allow inflation to go as high as 2.5% (shock! awe!). And what happens to inflation expectations?

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Yes, it was a limp-wristed “promise”: they would only allow that irresponsibly dangerous hyperinflationary jump to 2.5% if unemployment remained above 6.5%. (Pick a mandate, any mandate. You know which one they’ll choose.)

So after three decades of diligently protecting responsible creditors from the manifest evils of inflation, and imposing responsibility on feckless, impatient entrepreneurial, risk-taking borrowers, nobody believes for an internet minute that the Fed can or will address the unemployment side of their mandate — that it has the wherewithal to do so, or the inclination if it did.

Got credibility?

Cross-posted at Asymptosis.