je pense que le régime de gestion monétaire est en train de changer. Non seulement il y a une tentative de normalisation de la politique monétaire dans un  sens moins stimulant , mais il y a un essai de modifier la façon dont on conçoit la politique monétaire.

On tente de s’orienter vers quelque chose de moins arbitraire, moins personnalisé et vers un infllationnisme moins systématique.

Les marchés subissent donc deux chocs:

-le choc de la normalisation

-le choc du changement de régime et de cadre de gestion

Derrière c’est une tentative également de changement de philosophie qui se profile; on réfléchit sur la dérive, on veut nettoyer, on veut réduire la croissance des dettes.

C’est un courant de pensée anti keynésien bien sur, avec l’accent mis sur l’offre façon Stanford.

Trump est entre les deux: politiquement, il aime le keynésianisme quand il augmente sa popularité et les cours de Bourse, mais en tant que riche, il aime la rigueur de la politique de l’offre qui le favorise .

Divers ouvrages témoignent de ce glissement des idées.

Voici ce qu’écrit Taylor, le père de la régle du même nom:

The most practical way forward is for one or more central banks to “just do it,” to start to move in a rules-based direction.

It appears that the Fed has begun to normalize in this way. This can be seen in the past year and a half in actions, appointments, publications, and speeches.

Actions include the transparent well-telegraphed move to normalize the policy interest rate and reduce the size of the balance sheet.

Appointments at the FOMC include more people who have thought of policy in terms of rules, including Randy Quarles and Rich Clarida as vice chairs, and the move from San Francisco to New York by John Williams.

Publications include the quantum shift in the semiannual Monetary Policy Report which now has whole sections on policy rules and how the Fed uses them.

Speeches include Janet Yellen’s January 2017 speeches describing the Fed’s strategy for the policy instruments (“When the economy is weak…we encourage spending and investing by pushing short-term interest rates lower….when the economy is threatening to push inflation too high down the road, we increase interest rates…”), comparing Fed strategy with the Taylor rule and other rules, and explaining the differences.

Also in February of last year, Stanley Fischer gave a talk with a similar message, comparing actual policy with monetary rules and explaining how rules-based analyses feed into FOMC discussions to arrive at policy decisions.

In February of this year, Jay Powell, in his first testimony as Fed Chair, talked about making monetary policy with policy rules, saying that “In evaluating the stance of monetary policy, the FOMC routinely consults monetary policy rules that connect prescriptions for the policy rate with variables associated with our mandated objectives. Personally, I find these rule prescriptions helpful. Careful judgments are required about the measurement of the variables used, as well as about the implications of the many issues these rules do not take into account.”

This emphasis on rules and strategy did not go unnoticed by those who follow policy: As Larry Kudlow put it before he moved to the White House: “I’ve never seen that in any testimony before….and I think that’s progress.”

More recently, President Donald Trump said: “We’re normalizing money, and that’s good,” though he added that “I think we don’t have to go as fast.”

Other central banks need to follow in a global normalization.

It will not be easy, so it is important to be predictable and gradual.

We are beginning to see such changes at the ECB, and the BOJ may be next, with small open economies, many represented at these meetings, moving when they can.

There are risks, of course, but an international policy framework will help if it is based on those three attributes: Rules-based monetary policy at each central bank, flexible exchange rates between countries or blocs, and open capital markets.

Those are the keys to a sustaining a more open and stable global financial order.

 

Les textes de la Fed s’orientent aussi dans cette direction, de façon prudente bien sur: 

Three key principles of good monetary policy

Monetary Policy Report
Over the past decades, policymakers and academic economists have formulated several key principles for the conduct of monetary policy; these principles are based on historical experience with a range of monetary policy frameworks.¹

One principle is that monetary policy should be well understood and systematic. The objectives of monetary policy should be stated clearly and communicated to the public.

The Congress has directed the Federal Reserve to use monetary policy to promote both maximum employment and price stability; those are the objectives of U.S. monetary policy. Fed policymakers’ understanding of that statutory mandate is summarized in Monetary Policy: What Are Its Goals? How Does It Work?

To be systematic, policymakers should respond consistently and predictably to changes in economic conditions and the economic outlook; policymakers also should clearly explain their policy strategy and actions to the public, and they should follow through on past policy announcements and communications unless circumstances change in ways that warrant adjusting past plans.

Following this principle helps households and firms make economic decisions and plan for the future; it also promotes economic stability by avoiding policy surprises.

A second principle is that the central bank should provide monetary policy stimulus when economic activity is below the level associated with full resource utilization and inflation is below its stated goal.

Conversely, the central bank should implement restrictive monetary policy when the economy is overheated and inflation is above its stated goal.

In some circumstances, the central bank should follow this principle in a preemptive manner. For example, economic developments such as a large, unanticipated change in financial conditions might not immediately alter inflation and employment but would do so in the future and thus might call for a prompt, forward-looking policy response.

Conveying how monetary policy would respond to irregular future events is not easy, but the overarching principle remains the same: Policymakers should strive to communicate how these events may affect the future evolution of inflation and employment and set monetary policy accordingly.

A third principle is that the central bank should raise the policy interest rate, over time, by more than one-for-one in response to a persistent increase in inflation and lower the policy rate more than one-for-one in response to a persistent decrease in inflation.

For example, if the inflation rate rises from 2 percent to 3 percent and the increase is not caused by temporary factors, the central bank should raise the policy rate by more than one percentage point.

Such an adjustment to the policy rate translates into an increase in the real policy rate–that is, the level of the policy rate adjusted for inflation–when inflation rises and a decrease in the real policy rate when inflation slows.

As the real policy rate rises, it feeds through to other real interest rates that determine how expensive it is for households and businesses to borrow money to finance consumption or investment spending, adjusted for inflation.

Raising real interest rates tends to reduce growth of economic activity, and firms tend to increase prices less rapidly when they see slower growth in their sales. As a result, inflation is kept in check.

A symmetric logic applies to the central bank’s response to persistent decreases in inflation.

In the academic research literature, a standard way to codify these principles is to assume that policymakers set the policy rate according to an equation or policy rule that relates the policy rate to a small set of economic variables.

One such rule is the Taylor rule.