Draghi se gargarise ce jour devant la Commission des Affaires Economiques, il s’attribue le mérite d’une croissance que l’on prévoit à 1,6%.

Il oublie :

-les prix du pétrole

-l’arrêt de l’austérité

-l’arrêt des réformes

-l’impact keynésien des dépenses allemandes pour les migrants

Bref il oublie qu’il s’agit d’un simple retour à la normale avec un phénomène de rattrapage et bien sûr personne ne lui fait remarquer!

Les modéles indiquent que sur la bases des variables économiques et en ne tenant pas compte des variables monétaires, la croissance serait exactement la même, à quelques décimales près , c’est pourtant le seul moyen de juger de l’efficacité d’une politique, supprimer les variables de cette politique dans les modèles et voir ce qu’ils donnent.

C’est le B.A-BA de la logique, la cause c’est:  ce qui, supprimé cesse de produire effet et ici si on supprime la cause monétaire, le résultat ne bouge pas, ce qui signifie que l’impact monétaire est nul.

Et pourtant le « prix » est colossal comme on en juge par les évolutions exponentielles du « cout » de cette politique d’inflation du bilan de la Banque Centrale etde l’Eurosytème.

Il y a des économistes qui prétendent qu’il n’y a pas de « free lunch » et que le monétaire est à ce stade est inefficace, nous faisons remarquer que nous ne sommes pas du tout dans le « free lunch », nous sommes dans le gaspillage,  tout cela coûte cher et coûtera encore plus, beaucoup plus quand on essaiera de faire  ce que tente sans succès de faire Yellen: normaliser! Comment reprendre, retirer ce que l’on a donné, comment permettre aux marchés de retrouver leur fonction de découverte des prix et des taux ? La gueule de bois sera terrible. 

---

L’excès de liquidités est à de nouveaux records

 

 

EN PRIME :

 Rudolf von Havenstein  (nous avons hésité à pousser l’insolence jusqu’à écrire Draghi von Havenstein.)

Every now and then it helps to dig through the past to think about what’s going on in the present.

So let’s rewind back to 1920s Germany.

Back then the country was stuck in a less-than-ideal economic situation after the suspension of the gold standard and Kaiser Wilhelm II’s failure to pass an income tax to help pay for World War I.

To deal with the huge debts left over after the Great War, the president of the country’s central bank, Rudolf von Havenstein, printed up a ton of money.

But that idea backfired. It led to skyrocketing hyperinflation, economic breakdown, weaker institutions, and a destabilization of German politics.

Wikimedia

The key thing to remember here is that basically everyone at the time believed that the rate of inflation and money supply had nothing to do with each other. Even professionals like Havenstein believed that to be the case.

(Today even first-year macroeconomics students know that is not true.)

But, anyway, what does any of this have to do with the present?

In a recent note to clients, CitiFX’s Gregory Marks invoked this little history lesson about Havenstein to dispute policymakers’ implementation of negative interest rates.

He argues that just as a smart, professional policymaker like Havenstein was operating under a false assumption, so too might the current policymakers as they continue to experiment with negative rates.

« In other words, the lesson here is that, unfortunately, people believed in the efficacy of a completely irrational policy because it was put in place by a qualified and experienced policymaker instead of questioning the common sense merit of its possible outcome, » he wrote in the note.

« If ever there was a time to invoke the Havenstein experience, it is now, » he continued. « The fact that there are qualified, experienced people at the helm directing policy does not mean that they are exempt from occasionally being utterly misguided in their perceptions of positives versus negatives when it comes to economic theory and policy. This is especially true as the policy remains unconventional, experimental and theoretical. »

The proportion of global gross domestic product governed by a central bank with negative rates is on the rise. DoubleLine Funds

Multiple countries, includingSwitzerland and Japan, are experimenting with negative rates while trying to stimulate growth.

And while the US isn’t quite there yet, rates are at historically low levels and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen hasn’t ruled anything out.

But since there’s virtually no precedent for negative rates – no one really knows what will happen.

Here’s Marks again (emphasis added):

There are laws that prevent the medical industry from adopting experimental procedures before they become, well, less experimental. To not have those laws in place would be dangerous. Experimental procedures can produce unintended consequences and their efficacy must be rigorously tested before wide release and adoption. So as a society, we do not let doctors perform experimental procedures on everyone who walks through the hospital doors.

Yet for some reason, there are a lot of PhD holders from a different industry who are doing just that to entire nations and economic zones. This isn’t a theoretical petri dish. It’s the global economy.