Bloated Central Bank Balance Sheets Are the Real Risk
What would you pay for fixed-income assets now if you knew that the biggest holders will become forced sellers later?
Jerome Powell may not be done rocking markets.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
What a difference 25 years makes. Worried that inflation was about to turn higher, the Federal Reserve in February 1994 began raising interest rates, taking the federal funds rate from 3% to 6% a year later. As it turned out, those worries were unfounded: The U.S. consumer price index barely budged, finishing the year at 2.7%, right where it had started.
Although inflation in many developed-world countries is now well above those levels — 7% in the U.S. alone — of the major central banks only the Bank of England has started to raise short-term rates. They are now, um, 0.25%. Across the developed world, short rates are still either barely above zero or negative. What’s more astonishing is that even though they have cut their purchases, the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank continue to buy about $140 billion of longer-maturity bonds every month, suppressing long-term yields even as inflation rages.