Try this thought experiment. Instead of leaving borrowing costs on hold at 0.25 percent when it met Thursday, suppose the Federal Reserve had instead raised its key interest rate to 3.25 percent. That, after all, was the average from 2004 to 2008, back when the economy was deemed to be normal. So if monetary policy normalization is the goal, maybe the U.S. central bank should get it over with in a single move and see what happens.
The argument can be summed up as "zero rates equals zero growth and zero inflation." On this analysis, what John Maynard Keynes called "animal spirits" become depressed when borrowing costs stagnate at almost nothing. By leaving rates close to zero since the end of 2008, the Fed is basically telling companies and consumers to stay afraid of the economic outlook.
On Thursday, prior to the Fed decision, I asked Andreas Utermann, who helps oversee about $471 billion as global chief investment officer at Allianz Global Investors, what the effect on growth might be if the Fed jumped to normality in one leap instead of baby steps of quarter-point increases. "It wouldn't be unambiguously bad," Utermann told me. In particular, while short-term borrowing costs would leap to match the Fed's move, Utermann said the cost of longer-dated money probably wouldn't accelerate; the borrowing climate for business investment wouldn't worsen until normal monetary policy produced inflation. He also said that the economic backdrop has changed, and that the world needs to get used to a new normal that might mean zero inflation persists for a long time.
I've had a bunch of e-mails in recent weeks on this topic from readers who disagreed with my articles that said the Fed should stay on hold because there's still a non-negligible risk of deflation. Neil Grossman, who's a director of Florida-based bank C1 Financial and was formerly the chief investment officer at TKNG Capital Partners, is a particularly eloquent correspondent on the topic.
