Tuesday, November 04, 2014

QE and inflation

The Effect of QE on UST Yields by Mark Dow

Via Matthew Klein
Mark Dow has persuasively argued that it boils down to learning: a lot of people used to think bond-buying was equivalent to the policies that led to the Weimar hyperinflation and those people either changed their mind or were forced to leave the market because their trades kept blowing up. 
(Peter Thiel comes to mind.) 
Another possibility is that QE3 did affect inflation expectations but in a way that is invisible to the naked eye because we can’t know what would have happened in the absence of additional bond-buying. While intriguing, this unfalsifiable hypothesis leaves us feeling empty inside.
Did Dow anticipate Robert Waldmann?


No comments: