Have the Central Banks Lost Control?

Summary

The Bank of Japan's recent switch to an interest rate target for the 10-year government bond was presented by the bank as a minor policy adjustment. It is nothing of the kind.  It is an admission of failure. Haruhiko Kuroda the BOJ Governor promised more than two years ago that the bank would not relent until Japanese inflation reached 2 percent.  What the bank could not accomplish by buying almost half the JGB market will not be manifest by keeping the middle range of the interest rate yield curve at zero. The policy is designed to help Japanese banks improve profitability, severely damaged by the flattened yield curve, nothing more. 

The ECB has been equally unsuccessful at fostering inflation, though its mandate restrictions have prevented Mario Draghi from scooping up anywhere near the percentage of ECB sovereign debt as its Asian counterpart. Here too bank spokesman do not admit the policy failure but continue to promote the possibility of further monetary accommodation.

In the U.S. the Federal Reserve is on the verge (so it says) of its second hike in a year without having achieved stable economic growth or a healthy labor market. Employment is better judged by the lack of wage growth than by the self-serving and artificial definitions of the non-farm payrolls report.  

What will be the likely results of these policy failures in the financial and currency markets? How will they be presented to the world by their originators. How might politicians confront the lack of economic progress eight years after the financial crisis and recession?

Join us for a 'tour d'horizon' of central bank policy.