货币政策是艺术还是科学？
Many central bankers and analysts prefer to emphasize the latter. If central bankers can measure the degree of slack or tightness in the economy, they can set interest rates at the right level to promote growth without igniting inflation. Investors, it follows, can feel confident about the outlook for interest rates — and the appropriate level of asset prices — if the central bank’s reaction to incoming data is predictable.
然而，今天，艺术家们在新椅子下的美联储银行，珍妮特·韦伦下演。这一事实将使艺术管理资金，即使是向前发展的挑战。
On one level, the stance of the Yellen Fed is steady as she goes. The policymaking Federal Open Market Committee is almost universally expected to reduce its monthly bond purchases by another $10 billion, to $45 billion, when it meets today and tomorrow, April 29 and 30. That would mimic the decisions made at the three previous meetings, in March, January and December, and put the Fed on track to end its bond purchases late this year and prepare for rate hikes in 2015.
然而，与此同时，Yellen已经改变了美联储的前瞻性政策指导，这可能使分析师和投资者更难确定何时会何时举行徒步旅行率，并且他们对市场的影响有什么影响。当FOMC放弃其承诺时，从定量品种的转变为所谓的定性指导，以使其保证金率为0〜0.25％，因为长期失业率保持在6.5％以上。与之失业率already approaching that threshold, at 6.7 percent, the Fed said the outlook for rates would now depend on its assessment of progress “toward its objectives of maximum of employment and 2 percent inflation.”
不要指望Yellen澄清一下即将发生的意思。Her only public misstep so far came at her first press conference, after the March meeting, when she ignored Fed protocol and actually gave a concrete answer to one question, saying that the Fed’s first rate hike might come about six months after it terminates its bond buying. Markets immediately sensed a more hawkish bias and推高国债收益率, prompting Yellen and her colleagues to row back on the comment and insist that nothing had changed. When Harvard economist Martin Feldstein tried to pin her down at an appearance before the Economic Club of New York on April 16, Yellen responded with appropriately vague Fedspeak, insisting that the central bank wouldn’t take risks on inflation even as it sought to promote growth.
So far, markets have been content to live with the increased ambiguity. The pace of the U.S. recovery flagged enough in the first quarter to convince most analysts and investors that the Fed would keep rates low for a prolonged period but not enough to raise serious doubts about the economy. Other factors, ranging from the crisis in Ukraine to new global liquidity rules for banks, may also be stimulating demand for Treasuries. As Vincent Reinhart, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley and a former Fed staffer, wrote in a weekend note to clients, “The Yellen-led Fed has not yet been tested.”
Such a test may come sooner than many investors believe. Most economists expect the economic expansion to rebound to rate of 3 percent or better in the second quarter, accelerating the pace of job growth. At the same time, the window between now and the second half of 2015, the consensus period when economists expect the Fed to begin raising rates, is slowly but steadily narrowing. According to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the market is currently pricing in the first Fed rate increase for September 2015 and 110 basis points of rate hikes in the first year of tightening. On both points, the market consensus is slightly more dovish than the central projections of the Fed itself.
In short,美国债券市场is priced for fair weather, not foul. The lack of volatility in recent months suggests as much. Yields on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note have traded in a narrow range of 20 basis points for the past three months; it closed at 2.70 percent on April 28, down from 3 percent at the start of the year. That’s not exactly the kind of price action that indicates concern about higher rates.
Joseph Lavorgna（Deutsche Asset＆Healy Management）首席美国经济学家Joseph Lavergna表示，十年收益率自1967年以来，每个日历年度的交易范围都在1967年以来的每个日历年增长了155个基点。鉴于很难看到大幅下降，禁止衰退，历史记录意味着大量上行潜力 - 投资者的潜在痛苦。
“If the market responds, it could be violent,” says LaVorgna. The Fed’s stated policy aims are to generate stronger growth and employment and to boost today’s very low inflation rate back up toward its 2 percent target. Success on those fronts inevitably means higher rates. The Fed can try to jawbone markets to contain any upside move in yields, but qualitative guidance delivers a “much messier message” than its previous communications, contends LaVorgna. “The Fed’s really going to lose control over their ability to talk the market back from the ledge,” he adds.
In May 2013 investors got a taste of what an unexpected hint of a Fed policy change could do to global markets, and it wasn’t pleasant. They had better be prepared the next time a shift in stance looms.