Janet Yellen said this yesterday and now @RussoEcon is also making this point, but tbh I don't get it.
How does the Fed accepting its client, the Treasury, to deposit a coin in its account constitute a loss of its independence nationalreview.com/2021/10/the-th…
@RussoEcon Fed independence has typically meant that the FOMC can set rate policy to fight inflation, and choose if it wants to lean against expansionary fiscal policies.
Whether that independence is good or bad, in what sense does accepting a deposit of the coin compromise that?
@RussoEcon A more recent meaning of Fed independence is that it can move very fast on its own (as we saw last March) even as fiscal authorities dither.
That's kind of a different thing. But again, even there, how does the coin compromise that ability?
HOW MINTING A TRILLION DOLLAR COIN FITS IN WITH THE 'TRUE SPIRIT' OF THE LAW
New post up on the Odd Lots blog, based on our conversation with @rohangrey on how the platinum coin option arguably fits in very nicely with the laws intent.
@rohangrey Basically, if you understand that the law was created in order to create more revenue opportunities for the Mint, so it could remit more profits for the Treasury, so that the Treasury would have less need for borrowing, then this debt ceiling law is exactly how it was intended.
But after speaking with Rohan I went from thinking "This is kind of a fluke legal technicality" to thinking "This is unambiguously sound, legal, not even a close call, and not even a significant stretching of the law's intent"
I don't even know what people really mean by "Lehman Moment" anymore, but IMO, the greatest sources of market panic/pure fear come when it appears that the mechanics of the government/politics are incapable of doing bailouts/stimulus. (EG the TARP vote.
I don't think China will ever have this exact problem. They may have painful losses, and other calamities. But due to the nature of their system, there probably won't be a period where people wonder if Beijing is capable of bailing out the financial system.
Same with Europe. There were moments in 2011-2013, when it seemed genuinely possible that the nature of the euro area/ECB structure was not mechanically up to the task of stopping an uncontrolled financial panic.
The dots probably served a purpose post-GFC, in hammering home the seriousness with which the Fed meant what it said about staying at ZIRP for a long time.
But in framework where destination is supposed to trump path, they inevitably draw FOMC members back into a path discussion