PIMCO's Common Sense

I never thought that PIMCO would vote for an inflationary Fed policy and monetizing long-term Treasury Debt. But Paul McCulley, in his "Global Central Bank Focus," has just done so, in a very perceptive and balanced speech to the Money Marketeers Club. McCulley points out the policy paradox we find ourselves in, with a need to greatly expand the nation's balance sheet through borrowing while the private economy is deleveraging with a vengeance. This has the Republicans and traditional conservatives predictably frothing at the mouth. The policy prescription also calls for vastly expanded temporary federal spending to fill the demand gap, again causing the GOP leadership to pull out what's left of their hair. As McCulley puts it, the Fed has placed itself at the service of fiscal policy, normally the province of the Congress.

He also deftly points out the difficulty of the Euro Zone, where the ECB has the power to conduct a unified monetary policy, but no unified political authority exists to exercise fiscal policy. As he puts it,

To be sure, the ECB (European Central Bank) has difficulty with the concept of QE [quantitative easing], in part because Euroland represents monetary union without political union and, thus, fiscal policy union. Put differently, if the ECB wants to be accommodative of more Keynesian fiscal policy stimulus, de facto monetizing it, what fiscal authority does the ECB call to cut the deal?

I thought this was great stuff. I have been a recent convert to reading Bill Gross, but I think I will start following Paul McCulley as well. We're all Keynesians now!

Moderates Unite (cont'd)

I was searching madly earlier for support for the view with which I agree that are no backups for the propeller-heads, particularly the Props-in-Chief, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. Well, Deborah Solomon in the WSJ has it nailed. While lack of staff is a problem throughout the Administration, it is especially tough on Treasury, which is bearing the brunt of the bailouts.

And Solomon's piece lays the blame on the difficulty vetting prospective candidates in light of the post-Daschle standards.

Moderates Unite

Again, I find that this morning David Brooks speaks to my sense of unease with the new administration's early moves. About all I can say for our President is that he is within the first 45 days. As I emailed to my friend Prince Charles of Birmingham yesterday, What choice do we have?

I am struck by Brooks' observation that, "The only thing more scary than Obama's experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it." So we are kind of stuck, and the quandary Brooks and I (and no doubt many others) find themselves is that we have no home.

As I said to Birmingham Charlie yesterday, I am a lifelong Republican, but of the Rockefeller variety. Somewhere along the way, my party got hijacked by a bunch of ideological "whack-jobs" with whom I find I share no values whatsoever. I long for a return to a Hamiltonian view of government, with a Constitutional mission to "promote the general welfare," in such a way that all the people benefit.

I do agree that the need to save the economy should not necessarily sweep aside the addressing of important goals, such as health care and education reform. But fiscal discipline has always been part of the Hamiltonian credo.

My faith in our new President has not entirely dissipated. But I would like to see some backup to the propeller-heads that Obama has assembled. Geithner needs an Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, for Debt Management, for Economic Policy, and I am sure other key posts. Neel Kashkari, a Paulson holdover, is still running TARP. How long does it take to sort out the Plum Book? Probably too many casualties to the no-lobbyist, no "tax cheats" Puritanism of the new guys. As the Washington Post reported many in Washington (and in Bedminster) feel that the problems of the markets and the economy are too complex to be left to Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

So what's my course? I am tempted to fall back on the mantra of Julian of Norwich -- "All will be well; all will be well; and all manner of thinge will be well." But she was a Anchorite and lived in a box! What did she know about credit default swaps and CMOs?