2023年6月1日木曜日

2023/06/01 Weber OMFIF Live - OMFIF

OMFIF Live - OMFIF

2023/06/01 Weber OMFIF Live - OMFIF

https://love-and-theft-2014.blogspot.com/2023/06/20230601-weber-omfif-live-omfif.html @

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2133355681582705445/464774288948961631

Cf :

https://twitter.com/omfif/status/1664007807866159107?s=46&t=QAfSDzAh-_cN0WvSTaQ0RA

OMFIF Live - OMFIF

https://www.omfif.org/live/

Day 1 The future direction of financial stability, economic environment ...

2023/06/01

https://youtu.be/GS2tUlVcPJA?t=2h2m33s

2:02:33~

Isabella M. Weber

⁦‪@IsabellaMWeber‬⁩

The future of financial stability and monetary policy are big questions of our day. Just had a great discussion on the inflation fighting toolkit at the Philadelphia Fed with Chris Neely Vice President ⁦‪@stlouisfed‬⁩ & James Sweeney ⁦‪@BlackRock‬⁩ facilitated by ⁦‪@EllieRGroves‬⁩ ⁦‪@OMFIF‬⁩. pic.twitter.com/Q7yoE8Rg5S

2023/06/01 7:08

https://twitter.com/isabellamweber/status/1664031154947719168?s=46&t=QAfSDzAh-_cN0WvSTaQ0RA

Cf :

https://twitter.com/omfif/status/1664007807866159107?s=46&t=QAfSDzAh-_cN0WvSTaQ0RA

OMFIF Live - OMFIF

https://www.omfif.org/live/

Day 1 The future direction of financial stability, economic environment ...

2023/06/01

https://youtu.be/GS2tUlVcPJA?t=2h2m33s

2:02:33~

Day 1 The future direction of financial stability, economic environment ...

2023/06/01

https://www.youtube.com/live/GS2tUlVcPJA

2：02：00〜

https://www.omfif.org/live/

Day 1 The future direction of financial stability, economic environment ...

2023/06/01

https://www.youtube.com/live/GS2tUlVcPJA?t=2h2m33s

https://www.omfif.org/live/

OMFIF Live

Fri 26 May 2023

The future of financial stability and monetary policy

Live: Thursday 1 June 09:30 (EDT)

Amid a macroeconomic backdrop of high inflation, interest rate hikes and weak growth across developed and emerging markets, the monetary policy outlook for the US Federal Reserve and global central banks remains uncertain.

In this new paradigm, what does the future hold for the Fed's move to accelerate quantitative tightening and reduce the size of its balance sheet? Is it time for major economies to revisit their 2% inflation targets? Should global central banks adopt the Fed's dual mandate? What role is the digital dollar set to play in the US payments system?

Held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, OMFIF is convening a series of expert panels with key policy-makers, regulators and public and private sector investors to discuss these questions and chart the course of US and global monetary policy.

Kartik Athreya
Executive Vice President
Director of Research
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

Emmanuel Dooseman
Partner
Head of Global Banking
Mazars

Nitin Gaur
Global Head
Digital Asset & Technology Design
State Street

JoeGruber_BioPic_S0retL7.2e16d0ba.fill-400x400

Joseph Gruber
Executive Vice President
Director of Research
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Patrick Harker
President and Chief Executive Officer
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Antoine Martin
Senior Vice President and Financial Research Adviser
Financial Stability Policy Research
Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Fabio Natalucci
Deputy Director
International Monetary Fund

Christopher Neely
Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis

Andrea Pfenning
Managing Director & Chief Operating Officer
Clearance & Colateral
BNY Mellon

Jens Reich
Head of Representative Office
New York
Deutsche Bundesbank

Chiara Scotti
Senior Vice President
Director of Research
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

James Sweeney
Head of Economics
Fundamental Fixed Income
BlackRock

Angel Ubide
Managing Director
Head of Economic Research
Global Fixed Income
Citadel

Isabella Weber
Assistant Professor of Economics
University of Massachusetts

Brian Whitehurst
Head of Regulatory Affairs
Lukka

Timings:
14:30-17:30 (London)
09:30-12:30 (New York)
21:30-00:30 (Singapore)

Please find the agenda here.

This event is part of the OMFIF Institute for Economic and Monetary Policy, OMFIF's core stream of activities covering economic and monetary policy and the political economy. OMFIF is an independent think tank for central banking, economic policy and public investment, providing a neutral platform for best practice in worldwide public-private sector exchanges worldwide. For membership enquiries please contact Jamie.bulgin@omfif.org, or for further information please see the OMFIF website.

Rewatch other past meetings at OMFIF On Demand:

Follow OMFIF on social media

https://vimeo.com/832219681/3bd101f878

Thank you everyone. Oh, uh, please do take your seats. We will have a panel where we will be focusing a little bit more on the, the central Banking monetary Policy toolkit, looking at inflation targets and having a discussion. Some of you will have noticed that you have been moved around, I apologize. Uh, but we thought, actually it's nicer to bring everybody in. We've kind of made in more of a circle, um, so, uh, and filled in the spaces for those who are coming tomorrow. We're running a little bit late, so thanks so much, um, for that understanding. So anyway, I am Ellie Gross. I'm the managing director for the Economic and Monetary Policy Institute at Onfi. And once again, so grateful for you all to be joining us. Uh, also, uh, those who are listening online, very pleased that you can be taking part in this discussion. Everything will be recorded as, uh, we said at the start. So we're very pleased to have everybody here. I am a big believer in audience interaction, so once my panelists have answered the questions that I have, I will be, uh, asking you all to, to kind of pop your, pop your name cards on the side and, uh, and also ask your questions too. So do be thinking about those throughout as well. We have Christopher Neely here, who's vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I'm very pleased to be able to ask you around the Fed dual mandate, looking at how we are combating how you, and also the Fed and the wider central banking communities, combating inflation. And then also we'll dive into a little bit about, you've written a bit about the, the unconventional monetary policy that we've seen over the last few years. So we'll be a little bit also in how that plays into what we are now seeing with qt. Uh, James Sweeney, head of economics at, uh, BlackRock. Excellent to have you here too. Thank you so much. I'll ask about the market views of the Fed's toolkit. And actually a question that came up in the last session, I'm gonna ask around, do we have the right models? Are we on the right track? Are we, are we looking at the right things? And then that brings me excellently onto Isabella Veba, who is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. I'm really pleased that you'll be able to give a little wider, I think you said earlier that you were sort of out of the box, and I like that we can, uh, shake things up a little bit that's looking around the overlapping emergencies that we are currently seeing. So that is, uh, enough of my voice and I will go to you, Chris, please. Could you give a little bit of a flavor on the interpretation of the Jewel mandate for the Fed its implications? We were talking around the, the, the title of this is revising the Monetary Policy Toolkit. Do we need to be doing that? What is your kind of thoughts around how central banks are tackling the current, current issues? Okay. So, uh, the disclaimer as everyone who works at the Fed here knows, uh, definitely applies to me. Um, so what about the, the dual mandate, I guess I should say first that, you know, the dual mandate is one step above what any decision that anyone at the Fed makes. So the Fed is a creature of Congress. Uh, Congress decides on the dual mandate or whatever mandate they're gonna give us, and then we try to, uh, fulfill the mandate as best we can, uh, with respect to the dual mandate. So, since, you know, since I can't, uh, since I can't comment directly on the dual mandate, what I could do though is talk a little bit from an academic point of view about mandates in similar countries and what we might learn about mandates from those. So I knew that, uh, Ellie was gonna ask me about mandates and frameworks. I, I don't want to, I don't wanna mislead you into thinking that I, uh, did this, uh, that I know this stuff off the top of my head. I did a little bit of research into the G 10 mandates, and I, I looked them all up. And first I found that there are only seven G 10 mandates, as some of you have already figured out, uh, because there, several countries are under the E ecb. So the G 10 mandates all include a, uh, mention of price stability or something very similar. And, uh, many of them, most of them include something about, uh, that sort of qualifies the, the, uh, mandate to obtain price stability and qualifies it in terms of, uh, being careful about the economic context in which price stability is achieved. And that's usually interpreted as, uh, perhaps a weak version of the maximum employment mandate. So an exception to that, however, is the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada's mandate, at least so far as I could see, doesn't say anything about real activity or a qualifier to that effect. Now, I could be mistaken, this was pretty cursory research, but I also found out that the Bank of Canada and the Canadian government did a review of their framework in 2021, and they looked at four options for the Bank of Canada's mandate. And one of the options was essentially a dual mandate along the lines of the Fed. And that was rejected, uh, in comparison to keeping their, their current mandate, which just, uh, just means price stability. But I will say that although the rest of the G 10 doesn't have a dual mandate in the same way that the Fed does, I do notice that central Banks, uh, all the economists and usually o often the governors at Central Banks, they go to the same schools, they read the same papers, they get the same ideas, to a large extent, they're hit by similar international shocks. And not surprisingly, central banks internationally behave similarly. And although I can't prove this and I haven't done any research on it, my guess is it would be very difficult to distinguish the behavior of banks without a dual mandate or with some kind of weaker version of the dual mandate from the behavior of banks with no dual mandate at all, like the Bank of Canada or banks with a dual mandate like the Federal Reserve. Thank you very much. And I guess that actually brings us very nicely onto James. So looking from the perspective from the market, do you think that the, the Fed's dual mandate is the, the correct structure and also a little bit on the do, do we have the right models as well within the toolkit to be addressing those that mandate effectively? Thank you. Um, dual mandate is fine, I think from a big picture perspective, right? To me, it makes sense, um, to, to target inflation and to have a labor market component. Um, I, I, I think it's all in the implementation details and, uh, you know, what will the Fed do? We're in a moment right now where there's considerable uncertainty in the market about what the Fed will do. Um, there's not considerable uncertainty about the mandate. It's about how to achieve the mandate. Um, you know, we, we heard earlier, um, that not much has changed since before the pandemic. Um, to me, a lot has changed. Um, in, in monetary policy, one thing that's changed is, um, we don't hear a lot of central bankers say that deflation is a bigger risk than inflation anymore, which was very often said before 2020 for many years. Um, the reason for that was, I think fear of the z the zero bound, um, and, and just discomfort and use of of balance sheet policies. Um, and it was often said, a belief that we know how to conquer inflation when it breaks out, it's, it's somewhat obvious. Um, you can raise interest rates and slow the economy. Um, but to me, it, it was always somewhat obvious that history suggests accomplishing that presents political economy challenges that are harder than they look always. Um, and so inflation is more frequent than deflation historically, and even cross-sectionally at almost every moment in time. So, so here we are, and the Fed are not targeting two, they're targeting around two we we heard today. Um, so, so things are pretty interesting. Um, and on those models, there's a lot of uncertainty. Um, I, I'm not sure a version of the models that says it's all about labor market, slack and core services inflation X housing, um, is a model that we trust in, in terms of, um, getting inflation back to target and, and, and following the employment mandate. Um, you know, there was just a paper by Bernanke and, and Blanchard last week suggesting that, um, that maybe labor market Slack has not had that big a role in the inflation problem so far during the pandemic, but it's likely to have an increasing role going forward. Like this is actually a controversial idea that the slack has been central because we had low slack in 2019 and, and not much inflation. So again, some things have changed. Um, I think the institutions in, in financial markets have changed. There are many businesses who believed the kind of really low R star deflation is a bigger risk than inflation story told by many economists in central banks before 2020, and have built their business models around that view, and now they're getting in trouble. And that's what's happened to some banks in the us. And if interest rates remain here or higher, it's likely that it will happen to more banks and to more institutions going forward. And, and, you know, whether the Fed can be patient with those problems and their ability to help inflation back to 2% or else they need to do a little more is a pretty major uncertainty that no model is gonna resolve, um, at this point. So just to kind of close my opening remarks, I I, I think a lot has changed. Um, I think models are good for giving someone a general sense of how monetary policy works, but not so good for answering important questions about what is next from, from the moment right now. And, and I think the big thing that's changed is the fear of deflation is less, and the institutions are a little different, and some balance sheets are a little more fragile than they seemed not that long ago. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna use my, uh, discretion as chair to actually ask you immediately a follow up question. Um, and this is one that has come when I was having conversations yesterday, uh, through New York with David Marsh as well. Um, should we be, and is there any scope, so as President Hawker mentioned earlier that they're looking for kind of the range of 2% inflation, even if that's slightly above. And one of the questions that kinda came out of that is, do we accept and what are the implications of us accepting that actually 3% might be the correct inflationary, um, level. Do you buy into that and what is your thinking around if actually there is a, okay, we need to take stock, we need to work out actually, is 2% the correct, um, target for inflation in our, in our current demographics and our current structures in the current world that we are living in? Yeah, well, I, I think there's a big difference between outcome and target. And I, I think changing the target from two to three or something like that would, would have significant implications in private sector expectations. Um, and I, I think that would probably have some negative consequences. Um, I think it may well be that you end up with 3% inflation for several more years, at least from here in, in certain states of the world. Uh, but meanwhile, there's a growing conversation in the market about, you know, the potential disinflationary impacts of new technologies like chat G P T. So, um, so I, I, I think, um, messing with the target is just gonna create uncertainty. Um, and, and I, I, I think it would, um, erode some of the confidence in the Fed, um, if, if that happened. Um, but I, but I think, you know, you can have a theme of patient return to 2%, which is not quite the same as, as changing your goalpost. Thank you. And this brings us nicely onto Isabella. It'd be interesting to hear your perspectives around actually, uh, the, the, uh, the times we're living in is overlapping emergencies and our central banks set up, and also should they be, uh, alone in managing these challenges, and how do we build out this conversation to perhaps also looking at beyond central banks as well?

15:00

Yeah, thank you. Um, so the way that I'm thinking about this current moment is indeed, in terms of overlapping emergencies, we have had the pandemic, we have the war in Ukraine that kind of overlapped with the pandemic. And of course, we have climate change where many climate scientists have been warning of, um, tipping points happening much earlier than we might have thought. And these things have consequences, and they have consequences that tend to be very sectoral. So if we look at climate change and we look at things like the Mississippi River drying up, then this has a very immediate sectoral impact. Or if you look at Germany where rivers have been drying up, um, and coal couldn't be shipped, and that, um, at least at the margin exacerbated, um, the energy crisis. So if this is a situation where these kind of shocks have become more likely, we of course never know whether they are gonna hit and when they're gonna hit and how they're gonna hit. But it seems like they have become somewhat more likely than they used to used to be in the era of the great moderation. And if I look at, um, papers like the Bernakie Blan shot paper that has already been mentioned, that suggests among other things that price shocks were actually the most important, one of the most important drivers, um, of inflation, then I think this backs the question of what kind of price shocks have the potential to become systemically important, or in other words, what kind of prices are systemically significant for inflation overall? And this is a question that we have been trying to address in recent research using input output modeling, where we basically shock every sector at a time and try to see what are the impacts on the general price level. Um, looking at these indirect effects that come from our, um, pri input output model, as well as of course, the direct effect that come simply from the weight of the C P I.

ええ、ありがとうございます。パンデミック、ウクライナ戦争、そしてパンデミックと重なるような形で起きたウクライナ戦争。そしてもちろん、気候変動もあります。多くの気候科学者が、私たちが考えているよりもずっと早く、転換点が訪れると警告しています。そして、このような事態は結果を招きますが、その結果は非常に分野別である傾向があります。気候変動に注目し、ミシシッピ川が干上がるようなことがあれば、これは非常に直接的な分野への影響となります。ドイツでは川が干上がり、石炭が輸送できなくなり、エネルギー危機を悪化させました。ですから、このようなショックが起こりやすくなっているのだとしたら、もちろん、それがいつ、どのような形で襲ってくるかはわかりません。しかし、かつての「大いなる節制」の時代よりも、やや可能性が高まっているように思えます。そして、すでに述べたバーナキー・ブランショットの論文のように、物価ショックがインフレの最も重要な要因の一つであることを示唆する論文を見ると、どのような物価ショックがシステム的に重要になる可能性があるか、言い換えれば、どのような物価がインフレ全体にとってシステム的に重要か、という疑問を裏付けることになると思います。この問題は、最近の研究で、インプット・アウトプット・モデリングを用いて解決しようとしているもので、基本的にすべてのセクターに一度にショックを与え、一般的な物価水準にどのような影響があるかを確認しようとするものです。もちろん、C P I の重みに由来する直接的な効果もありますが、私たちのプリ・インプット・アウトプット・モデルから生じる間接的な効果も見ています。

And we see that a small handful of sectors end up being considerably more important than all other sectors, in particular, energy, energy intensive sectors such as, um, chemicals, but also the bare necessities that, um, president Har Harker was, um, sorry, president Carter was, um, talking about earlier, um, today that is housing, food and so on. So if this is the case, if there are specific sectors that have the potential to unleash overall monetary stability, then maybe we have to think about complementary tools where we can, um, absorb shocks in these sectors more locally. And I think that the mobilization of the strategic petroleum reserve in 2022 is an, is a successful example of that. And if we had a mindset of doing this more systematically than maybe the strategic petroleum reserve would've been mobilized in a way where oil would've been bought up when prices were negative, would then have been released when oil prices started to climb. Um, and thereby also sending strong signals to the market. So basically a form of open market operation, um, for the oil sector as something that can be complimentary to monetary policy, and that can halt these kind of energy shocks, um, before they rip it through the whole economy.

特に、エネルギー、化学製品などのエネルギー集約型部門はもちろん、ハーカー大統領が、いや、カーター大統領が、以前、いや、今日、住宅や食料などの生活必需品について話していたように、ほんの一握りの部門が他のすべての部門よりもかなり重要であることがわかっています。もしそうだとしたら、金融の安定を脅かす可能性のある特定のセクターがあるのなら、そのセクターのショックをより局所的に吸収するための補完的な手段を考えなければならないかもしれません。

2022年の戦略的石油備蓄の動員は、その成功例と言えるでしょう。もし、これをもっと体系的に行う考え方があれば、石油価格がマイナスのときに石油を買い上げ、石油価格が上昇し始めたときに放出するという方法で、戦略石油備蓄を動員していたかもしれません。

そうすることで、市場に強いシグナルを送ることができるのです。つまり、基本的には、石油部門に対する公開市場操作の一形態で、金融政策を補完することができ、エネルギーショックが経済全体に波及する前に食い止めることができるのです。

18:00

Thank you very much, James. I'm gonna bring it back, um, back to you and actually ask you around the, the effect has forward guidance. And do we think that kind of building on that model's question, and we'll go back to some of this, especially as we are in a, in a time of a lot of volatility, as Isabella has mentioned, we we're coming into a climate crisis as well, and there are huge amounts that the, the policymakers have to consider, and also this high inflationary environment that comes from various different, uh, spaces and geopolitics plays into this as well. Kind of my question is, is actually if we're looking at Central Bank saying we're looking at the data, we're gonna be really data focused every time we, we, we go into these meetings and look at our rate hikes rather than forward guidance, we're looking at the data and we'll, we'll come to those conclusions each time. Do we have the correct data? It goes back to a little bit, do we have the correct models, but also do we have the correct data? Are we comfortable that this is, this is, uh, an area that we can keep on living in and how, how do we, how do we go forward? Well, I, I would just start by saying, I, I don't think, um, forward guidance is an alternative to looking at the data. Um, you know, I I, and I, I don't, I know that's not what you were suggesting, but I, I think, um, forward's guidance has, its, has its uses, right? And, um, communicating to the market a likely path of policy is, is a way to guide the yield curve, which is useful for a policy perspective, whether you have great data or not, right? If, if the market believes it. So it's all about the credibility. Um, you know, I, I think, um, I mean, we have a lot of data, right? I, I, I think the, the US labor market is extraordinarily well covered by, uh, by the data sets that exist. Um, it's just hard to predict what's gonna happen next. It's not that hard to tell what's happening in a moment in time. And notwithstanding, what was it, the quarterly, um, labor market survey that came out a week or two ago that suggested that we had a contraction in jobs last year for, for a bunch of months. But, um, but I, I think, um, yeah, I, to me these are, these are two separate questions. I, you know, I, I think forward guidance is useful as long as they're credible. I, I think we have plenty of data. Um, the problem is the models and, and the natural uncertainty that exists given, given that data. Um, I don't think either of these things resolve the challenges that the Fed has in, in, in, in front of them. Um, I, I think it's on top of all, it's really important to look at the institutions of the financial system and, and how it's, how it's shifting. I, I think the balance sheet right now is something that's getting not enough attention, um, in, in regards to monetary policy. Um, we've had some, uh, you know, statements about when, when is QT gonna change, you know, the, the, I think the Fed has a clear desire, um, to, for interest rates to be the main tool, um, not the balance sheet. Um, and yet it would be pretty strange if, if they continue to do QT and started to cut, um, when, when you have conversations about when could QT end, they do some weird things about looking at, you know, reserves or reserves plus R R P as a share of nominal GDP relative to, you know, certain events in in money markets in in recent years, which, um, which may not be especially relevant going going forward. So, so to me, there are just many sources of uncertainties about how the institutions are changing, about how to interpret current data and, and the underlying parameterization in the economy and, and the correct models. Um, and, and the Fed has to, you know, continue to kind of pursue it's, it's, it's mandate given all this un uncertainty. And, and that is a great task. It's, it's best pursued with, with honesty about these uncertainties and not kind of, you know, simplifying some of the relationships. Thank you, Christopher. Moving a little bit on to actually where we've come from. So a few years ago, uh, St. Louis very kindly hosted a conference that on put together looking at qe. It was something that was still being discussed. The consequences of QE was still unknown. We were in the middle of it. Um, and now we've shifted to qt, um, and, uh, all, all the other acronyms that go along with that. And I think that what we are still living in the consequences of, of QE and having, um, so much flow into, into central bank's balance sheets. So it'd be interesting to have a little bit of that conversation around, uh, the implications following years of uncon unconventional monetary policy, uh, and a little bit in, uh, in which, which assets have, have been potentially, uh, um, been made, um, uh, unreflective of unreflective or difference or of, of created a difference within them. So I'm not, I'm not sure that I know of any assets that the, whose prices would no longer be reflective of their underlying value cuz of, uh, cuz of, uh, QE or, or qt. Um, presumably if the Fed went in and, and bought up enough of some particular class of assets, then that could create a condition in which it simply wasn't sufficiently traded to be, to be functionally liquid in the market anymore. But I, I don't know that of any type time that that's happened. Yeah. Do you, uh, do you think that that the, the, the knowledge like that we know the consequence of QE currently, as in do we have, do, do we know, are we still living in, are we still living in a world where we are seeing the effects of QE play out? So the, there's been a, a huge amount of research on QE and the, uh, accompanying, uh, policy tools, uh, for guidance and, and tools that the United States hasn't used by the other central banks have, such as negative interest rates. And, uh, there's been quite a lot of research on these tools. And I think that the short and simple story is that in the aftermath of the, of the great financial crisis, these tools did work fairly effectively to provide substantial monetary stimulus. Um, but we should also know that, um, we should keep in mind that when we talk about monetary policy tools or economic policy tools in general, usually it's not a matter of they work or they don't work. It's a matter of, in this particular situation, in this circumstance, the way they were used, the way they were communicated, they did what they were supposed to do or not. So for example, in the case of forward guidance, there's forward guidance can be, uh, you know, one of several kinds, right? It can be, can be delphic, which means that, uh, the Fed is essentially making a prediction about the future can be ossian, which means that the Fed is, or any central bank is committing itself to some course of action. Um, and then there are various kinds of Ford guidance too. So, you know, I think Ford guidance did work effectively to coordinate expectations on lower interest rates in the aftermath of the great financial crisis, but really only sometimes it depended how it was done. Thank you. That's a very good color there, Isabella, going back to you and looking at again, how central banks have taken on this, um, this, this huge, how central banks have taken on the, the overlapping emergencies that we were talking about. And, um, you mentioned earlier, so this might be a little bit of a, a, um, a side question looking at the energy crisis. So you've been looking at the energy crisis as well, and so if you could give some color on where you think the next risk will come from and will it come from us coming through the energy crisis?

26:30

Yeah. Um, maybe on the energy crisis, I actually was serving, um, the German government in the fall working on gas price stabilization there, where there was a situation where there was a hope that the general market economic environment, monetary policy and so on would be enough to contain that energy, price shock. And then this was of course, the most extreme of the extreme situations, but came September, um, we were in a situation where it was simply no longer feasible, um, for the economy to absorb the kind of gas price shock that we were, that we were facing. So Germany being, of course, an import dependent country, um, unlike the us um, in, in the fossil fuel sector, the only tour that we had at hand really was a non-linear pricing scheme that has been financed, um, fiscally where, um, you have one share of consumption for households and firms that is price stabilized, and then you have another share at the margin of 20%, um, for households, 30%, um, for firms where it's not price stabilized so that you maintain the price signal where it can operate at the margin, but you do not shock households and firms in the part of consumption, whether it simply cannot adjust, um, by having kind of a fiscal buffer to that, um, kind of price shock. Now, this was of course, a total extreme emergency that Germany was in, but I think these kind of policies can be helpful in these really extreme kind of emergencies. Now, looking forward, I think that, um, I mean if I take the ia um, warning about, um, uh, uh, gas prices seriously, I think that the, there is a chance that ga gas prices will be, um, unstable again.

そうですね。エネルギー危機についてですが、私は秋にドイツ政府に仕え、ガス価格の安定化に取り組んでいました。そこでは、一般市場の経済環境や金融政策などが、エネルギー価格ショックを抑えるのに十分であるという希望があったのです。そして、これはもちろん極端な話ですが、9月になると、私たちが直面しているようなガス価格のショックを経済が吸収することは、もはや不可能な状況になっていました。ドイツはもちろん輸入依存国ですが、米国とは異なり、化石燃料の分野では、手元にあった唯一の手段は、財政的に賄われた非線形の価格設定方式でした、そうすることで、価格シグナルを維持しつつ、家計と企業の消費に衝撃を与えないようにするのです。つまり、価格ショックに対して財政的なバッファを持つことで、単に調整できないだけなのです。もちろん、これはドイツが経験した極端な非常事態でしたが、このような政策は、本当に極端な非常事態の際に役立つと思います。さて、今後ですが、もし私が、ガス価格についての警告を真に受けたら、ガス価格が再び不安定になる可能性があると思います。

So I think especially in the energy sector, we are, um, of course in a much better place, but I don't think we are out of the thick of it if we are serious about a green transition. It's also the case that, um, there will be volatility in that transition. I think, um, when, um, there are, there is a peak demand and you suddenly need fossil fuels, um, or fossil fuel supply has, um, been starkly reduced, then that could also result in, uh, in price spikes. I also think looking at, um, global grain markets, um, looking at what is happening with grain in Ukraine, um, we see that the, um, planting of grain has quite drastically, um, been reduced. Um, I've been talking to people in, in the grain trading business who are saying we are basically one extreme weather event away from another grain price shock. Now, um, grain price shocks are of course, very problematic for food inflation. And food inflation is something that we have already been grappling with. And if in the US and countries, um, like, um, those in the European Union are really struggling with food price inflation than, um, countries in the global south, uh, um, in, in real trouble, right? Um, so I think that for the whole question of grain markets, which again is one that is heavily interacting with climate change, um, new forms of global stabilization are important. I'm not saying I have the solution. I think it's very complicated to come up with, uh, measures of stabilization because they have to take the realities of these markets into account. Of course, what we would be doing for grain would be different than what we would be doing for oil or for gas. Um, but I think we have to start thinking about expanding the toolbox for these most essential goods, um, to take out some of the volatility that, um, we might be faced with.

ですから、特にエネルギー分野では、私たちはもちろんずっと良い状態にあると思いますが、グリーンな移行を真剣に考えるのであれば、その渦中から抜け出せるとは思っていません。また、その移行には不安定さがつきものです。需要がピークに達し、突然化石燃料が必要になったり、化石燃料の供給が極端に減ったりした場合、価格が高騰する可能性もありますね。また、世界の穀物市場を見ると、ウクライナの穀物に何が起きているかというと、穀物の作付けがかなり激減していることがわかります。穀物取引の関係者と話していると、基本的に異常気象が1回起きれば、また穀物価格のショックが起きるという話です。さて、穀物価格のショックは、もちろん、食品インフレにとって非常に問題です。食料インフレは、私たちがすでに取り組んでいることです。

米国や欧州連合（EU）の国々が食料価格のインフレに苦しんでいるとすれば、南の国々では、本当に困ったことになりますね？ですから、穀物市場という問題は、気候変動と大きく関係しており、世界的な安定化の新しい形が重要だと思います。私は解決策を持っているとは言いません。

安定化策を考えるのは非常に複雑で、市場の現実を考慮に入れなければならないからです。もちろん、穀物に対して行うことは、石油やガスに対して行うこととは異なるでしょう。

しかし、私たちは、最も必要な商品のためのツールボックスを拡大し、私たちが直面するかもしれないボラティリティを取り除くことを考え始めなければならないと思うのです。

30:00

Thank you very much. I want to move on to anyone around the table. I did say that I would be coming to you. So does anybody have a question or want to pick up on any of the discussion points or even a perspective themselves? I think that we are all here and we all have a lot to contribute for these discussions around where we think the, the manage policy toolkit should sit and, and where we, what we are looking at inflation. So also please do use this opportunity to kind of bring the perspective that you have as well. Um, I'm keen on that. Uh, so George, Yeah, I, I'm George Oga from Chesham Investments in Boston. Uh, following the global financial crisis, there was some discussion as to whether the Fed should add a financial stability target to its mandate. And since that time, of course, we've had, uh, S V B and some other prominent bank failures. Uh, so I guess my question for the panelists is what do you think of that notion, bearing in mind that the lean versus clean debate is one of the perennial, uh, debates in in central banking. How should we think about, uh, asset prices and financial stability in the context of a central bank mandate? James, you wanna Sure. Well, I mean, supervision is part of the fed's role, and I mean, sometimes it's not good enough in, in certain circumstances, but, um, but I, you know, that's not part of the mandate, but that's part of the role of, of the, of the Fed. Um, I'm not sure the mandate needs to be redefined to include that. Um, I I will say one thing that a lot of people, a lot of investors are, are talking about now is, is our star star. It was bad enough that we had to talk about our star. Now we're talking about our star version two that gives us financial stability. Um, and that's different. Um, I mean, I think that's pretty painful that that discussion and, um, if, you know, if, if financial stability or instability gets sufficiently severe, surely that's gonna impact inflation. Um, you know, the, the financial system itself is, is always evolving and changing, uh, in response to regulation and technology and natural growth. And, and I, I think, I think everything, um, that happens in, in the is is in, in the economy is, is in some ways touched by how the financial system is functioning and how it's functioning is different every 15 or or or 20 years. Um, to me, the, the Fed and and other official institutions simply need to keep some focus on those changes, understand those risks and, and fulfill their, their supervisory mandate as well as their ordinary monetary policy rule. Chris, do you have anything to add? Yeah, so, you know, as, as you know, the classic debate in this, these circles is do you use macro prudential tools, which may not be powerful enough to get into every crack and crevice of the financial system, and which may not quite do the job if you've got an emerging vulnerability, or do you use monetary policy, which is sort of a blunt, broad sword, and which also, you know, if you're using monetary policy for financial stability, you're giving something up with respect to GDP and inflation. That's the, that's the classic debate, right? And, uh, you know, it seems to me the, the, the, the usual answer back before the great financial crisis was no monetary policy sticks to monetary policy goals and financial stability does as best it can with regulations and macro prudential tools. It seems to me that the, the probably if monetary policy can have an effect on financial stability and it probably can, then the optimal response probably isn't zero. Uh, you know, you'd have to think about what it is, but probably zero isn't the right answer. Isabelle, do you have any thoughts on central banking role between monetary policy and financial stability?

34:30

Yeah, um, I mean, I guess the trade off that has just been pointed to is a real one that we have been in Samsung sense experiencing against in the last, um, months in terms of, um, the anxiety around disability of the banking sector, which I think, again, kind of backs the question if it is true that shocks have become more likely in the most systemic or significant areas, um, and you have such shocks and such shocks unleashed inflation, you're in an environment where you have already pretty high interest rates and where you might have already a destabilized banking sector because you have been going through the kind of anxieties that we have been going through recently, then how do you respond to such shocks and doesn't, wouldn't it be a case where these trade-offs are becoming, um, even more, um, challenging than they might have been starting from a very, very low level of interest rates.

34:30

今指摘されたトレードオフは、ここ数カ月、銀行セクターの破綻をめぐる不安という点で、サムスン的な意味で実際に経験したことだと思います、

これはまた、最もシステマティックで重要な分野でショックが起こりやすくなったというのが本当なのか、そしてそのようなショックがインフレを引き起こしたのか、という疑問を裏づけるものだと思います、

すでにかなりの高金利で、銀行部門が不安定化しているような環境です。

というのも、最近、私たちが経験したような不安を経験することになるからです、

このようなショックにどのように対応するのか、そして、このようなトレードオフが、非常に低い金利水準から出発したときよりも、さらに困難になっているケースはないのでしょうか。

35:15

Thank you, David. Yes, I had a couple of questions. Uh, one on this question, uh, James, where you said, um, one shouldn't change the target. I I agree with you. It seems to be this sufficient flexibility already, uh, or you might say sufficient mud in the way that one defines various things in the central bank set of equations. So why bring in another precise variation, um, to try to take account of the new set of circumstances? And, and I just wondered whether the panel believes that, say the inflation targeting regime, which was brought in in August, uh, three years ago. There's a question for you, Chris, and brought this up briefly with you before the session started, whether that actually encompasses the new situation. Cause it was never made quite clear when that averaging was starting and you could start the, if you started the averaging in about 2013, uh, you could easily encompass a period of above average inflation in the next two or three years. So I just wondered whether the panelists could comment on that. And then the second question regards, qe and I was wondering whether in the United States, there's some feeling that people have departed from the labor force, uh, people, particularly elderly people who are maybe sitting on assets which have gone upgrade in value. People who have been in the labor force might then feel encouraged to leave the labor force because they feel they can rest now on a cushion of higher savings. Thanks. A higher equity prices or indeed, uh, houses that have gone up in value, he seems to see some indication of that in the United Kingdom. Um, elderly people leaving the labor force partly cause of qe. And I wondered whether you could see anything like that in America. Thank you. Christian. One, two, take one, or both, or, Sure. How about I if I do the first question? So just to restate David's question, David pointed out that from say 2012 to 2020, the Fed was consistently below its, uh, p c e inflation target. It averaged about 1.4%, if I remember correctly. And then in 2020, it adopted the flexible average inflation targeting framework, which said essentially if inflation is below the target, then we will allow inflation to run above the target for some time to make up for that. So I understand your point, they didn't put any, they didn't put any numbers on that. Um, I'm not sure that when they adopted the framework that they meant that they were referring to past inflation. But even if they were, my guess is that this is well above what they were thinking about. I, I think, I suspect they're probably thinking about inflation in the neighborhood of 3% rather than, you know, getting up to 7%. Thank you, James. Yeah. Um, well, I, I, I think, you know, the, one of the problems with, with average inflation targeting is it's sort of one of these policies that was constructed as if history started around 19 93, 19 94. Because if, if you go further back, you look at major wars and major shocks, you know, there is such thing as, as like a war, a big shock that gives a price level shock where you have temporary inflation, you'd never go back to your old kind of price level trend, but you do get back to, to normal inflation. And the pandemic in many ways looks a lot like kind of World War I, world War ii, the, those shocks where you had to jump in the, a temporary jump in the price level and then a and then a path of, of, of normalization. Um, you know, we haven't normalized back to 2% inflation yet. Um, but you know, if, if you jump to a 3% inflation target, you know, if if that's coming from two, you get the benefit of a short term boom in nominal growth. If you're already above 3% inflation, going to 3% inflation target doesn't give you that transition benefit to the higher target. All it does is usher in a higher interest rate structure. Um, so I I, that's, that's one of the reasons I don't like it. Just, just on the, on the second question on, on the labor, I was just looking at this, I'll, um, if you look at, um, labor force participation, um, by kind of five year age bucket in, in the US it's now really over 70 where you've had, um, where where you have a problem and, and participation every, all the other cohorts are kind of reasonably close to pre pandemic, uh, participation rates. But, but the issue is the share of the over 50 fives who are over 70 is rising really sharply. And the participant participation rates of all old people were rising very sharply before the pandemic, and now they're sort of sideways rather than rising sharply. So it, it is, it is a worsening of the labor supply situation relative to what your expectations would've been before 2019, but there are some nuances to it, which are, which are really interesting. Thank you. Isabelle, do you have any perception on that labor force participation as well, but also it'd be interesting kind of looking wider than that, and also do you see any demographic changes as well?

40:30

Well, I mean, I would just add that obviously we, as far as I can see, we don't have a very good picture yet. What the effects of long covid are and what part of the labor market issues that we are facing are also related that to the fact that we have been living through a global pandemic. And when we talk about the stimulus, where some part of the stimulus also basically enabled people to maybe not go to work at a time when it was very dangerous to catch covid, um, in an unvaccinated, um, situation, then I think we kind of also have to discount for that effect that might have been a positive, um, on the labor market by not adding more labor market tightening than we could have had if people have had to, um, go to work because they could not stay at home because they were supported, um, during the worst period of the pandemic. So what I'm arguing is that I think on the labor market front, um, there is a nuance to be added to the question of the size of the stimulus.

まあ、つまり、私が見る限り、明らかに私たちは、まだあまり良いイメージを持っていないということを付け加えておきます。長引く感染症の影響や、私たちが直面している労働市場の問題の一部は、世界的な大流行という事実とも関連しています。

そして、景気刺激策について話すと、景気刺激策の一部は、ワクチン未接種の状態でコビドにかかると非常に危険な時期に、人々が仕事に行かないようにすることを可能にしました、

そうなると、労働市場にプラスに働いたかもしれない効果を、労働市場の引き締めを増やさないことで、もし人々がサポートを受けて家にいられなかったために働きに出なければならなかった場合よりも割り引く必要があると思います、

パンデミック（世界的大流行）の最悪の時期につまり、私が主張したいのは、労働市場の面では、刺激策の規模という問題にニュアンスを加える必要があるということです。

Thank you. I also think it was interesting that President Harker brought up twice the childcare inflation as well, and uh, and actually that being a part of the labor force participation as well is definitely a piece of the puzzle, which is an interesting exploration there as well. Yeah, and actually, I mean, we have seen that if you plot the, um, childcare expense, um, inflation, that this has been above trend for a long time, right? So this means that there has been a structural trend of childcare expenses going up and therefore, therefore really, um, exerting, um, pressure on the labor market. I think this is something that, again, is not an issue for monetary, um, policy, but something that could be tested with non monetary policy and would actually be anti inflationary. And just to keep on kind of within that as well, looking at actually, do you think that that will have a larger demographic shift that that actually underlines the, the inflationary pressures, so makes inflation less transitory not actually separate from supply and demand, or how we, how we are used to looking at inflationary frameworks, actually if there is a demo, if there is a demographic pressure and with an older population especially. And, and how do you think that that will look for, for the future? I mean, there is of course a demographic pressure, but I think the question is how will it play out? I mean, it interacts with all these other things that we have already been talking about, right? It interacts with migration, it interacts with ai, it inter interacts also, I think with, um, how the global production network will be looking like, if we talk about onshoring and reshoring and French shoring and so on, then this could be interacting with demographic pre pressure in, uh, a quite extraordinary kind of way. So I think we have to see the demographic changes in relationship to all these other trends, and rather than seeing them, uh, separately as one given structure variable, that will inevitably lead to inflation. What I'm hearing quite a lot today is that AI seems to be the silver bullet. So good job we're talking about that tomorrow and looking at technology because it seems to be that that's, uh, that's gonna, that's gonna solve the inflationary problem. Um, so looking forward to that discussion. Uh, before we get there though, um, angle, do you have a question? Yeah. Um, so following up on what, um, Chris was saying that average cor PC was 1.4% since the period when the 2% was uh, established, right? And I guess the reason is because 2% was in ailing and not as a mid defacto, if not the urine, right? And the reason I'm saying that is that all the projections of the F omc at the end of the day have inflation converging from below to two, which is the way it's supposed to be if your tablet is two. But what it does is that then it becomes a ceiling and not a midpoint. So how can we do 2% better if we don't want to increase the target? Right? And one suggestion I've made in the past is that you run inflation close, but above 2% during good times under the assumption that in recession it would be probably falling below too. But you know, that or any other suggestion that, uh, how, how should monetize, I mean, what is the lesson from that period, right? And obviously the lesson was distorted by the fact that we just got a massive price shock in the middle of it, but hoping that one day we'll go back to, uh, a more normal steady state, you know, how should we do it in a, in a better way? So flexible average inflation targeting, I think was motivated by some, uh, may well be familiar, everybody may well be familiar with it, but motivated by some theoretical work, uh, that was done in say 2016 to 2018, where people essentially showed in a series of papers that if you've got an effective lower bound constraining the interest rate that, uh, in, you know, reasonable models, you get a bias toward, uh, and, and the central bank tries to hit 2% every period. What happens is when the, uh, when the interest rate is constrained by the effect of lower bound, they don't hit 2%, they go lower than 2%. And so on average, you're gonna undershoot 2% in these models, right? And the way to get out of it in these models is for the central bank to tell, uh, the rest of the economy, uh, look, when we hit the effect of lower bound, yes, we're gonna undershoot, uh, we're gonna undershoot 2%, but later we're gonna let inflation go up above 2% and we're gonna keep it there a while. And if you do that, then not only that, in fact, uh, keeps you from hitting the effective lower bound as often. It basically, it's, it's, uh, it's a self licking ice cream cone. I mean, it's just, it's, it's just a, a wonderful tool that not only improves your performance when you hit the effect of lower bound, but keeps you away from the effect of lower bound. And so, you know, it's really if when you, if you take these economic models seriously, it's really hard to argue with the flexible average inflation targeting. I'm sorry, did that answer the question? Or, or I mean No, it, it does, but then how do you do it in practice? Oh, I was gonna say your, your, your, your rule, um, the u BK rule maybe, uh, sounds to me like flexible average inflation targeted because you run, you run inflation a little higher than 2% in good times, which is comes After bad times. And then, But then my projection say, imagine I were to design the s a p under my rule. Yeah. Inflation two years out would stay at 2.2 or 2.3 or 2.4, where it would not have to convert down to two. Right? Okay. So that's a little different. Jane James, do you have a com a thought on the flexible, uh, Well, I, I think one way to frame it is, is for the, the Fed to say what they will fight, right? So at, at 1.7, um, around where we were a lot in COR before 19, um, they would, I mean, you'd have an industrial production slowdown with a perfectly fine labor market and they're fighting deflation with, with rounds of qe. Um, that was odd to me, but there was a certain kind of worldview that got you there, um, at 2.7% core inflation 12 months from now, will they be fighting it? I don't know, but I, I think how they, I, I think defining it not in terms of average inflation target, which is a kind of time period over which you calculate an average, which changes you to a certain behavior or even defining it to a 2% point estimate. Um, what about defining it in terms of this is the kind of world where we're gonna be adding restriction or we're gonna be adding, um, ease. Thank you very much. Do we have any other questions here or any kind of wrap up points that the panelists want to want to kind of put across? Any questions? If not, I think that we've got, oh, sorry. Yeah, Michael, So I was just wondering whether it might be worth, uh, distinguishing between, you know, good and bad forms of excess inflation. I mean, if we really do transition from commodity and supply chain problems, driving inflation to, you know, uh, labor market tightness that drives, uh, you know, inequality towards, uh, you know, historic lows and compresses, you know, some of the spreads there. Do you think your views on, you know, what, uh, an acceptable inflation rate is? I mean, the fed sticks with a 2% target might shift over time, James Jane? Oh, well, um, I mean, ultimately prices are supposed to be neutral in, in the long run. So you get, you can have a transitory period of, um, of good inflation. Um, but it really just comes down to your estimate of the potential growth rate of the economy and, and whether you're running above it and whether therefore the inflation is something that's gonna cost you later. Um, so, um, and, and I mean there are major uncertainties about the potential growth rate of the economy, like at, at all, at all times. So, um, so I unfortunately, I, I don't think there's an easy way to answer your question, and I think this is central to the challenge of, of conducting monetary policy. Okay. Taking on the challenge of conducting monetary policy, So demand side inflation. So for instance, the, the, the classic story is that, uh, when the economy gets too, and I'm speaking very crudely here, when the economy gets too hot, then the fed takes the punch ball away, right? The reason that that story works or the conditions under which it does work is that the Fed provided the punch too much punch in the first place. So, you know, demand side inflation is a little bit like, um, doing an all-nighter binging caffeine to get your work done right? You're really not doing yourself any good in the long run. It may feel good for a while, but you're not doing yourself any good supply side inflation is, is necessarily temporary and self-limited doesn't mean we shouldn't react to it at all. If my boss here, president Bullard were here, he'd be swatting me on the head and reminding me that doesn't mean that we don't react to it at all, but, um, but it is different than demand side inflation, which is the classic take the punch bowl away before the party gets started. Thank you. In three to form we have now two more questions. Yeah, I had a, sorry. Yeah, we have one question over here and then, uh, yeah, I'm okay if we're tight on time was a question for Isabella. I'm really curious about your work as your complimentary policy options, um, especially kind of historically speaking to what degree, um, there has been any impact in the real economy, if any at all. Um, but if we're tight on time, I'm also happy to just take it off on, Uh, no, we can answer that quickly and then, um, as quickly as we're able to, and then we can pick up the conversation. We've still got a little bit more time, so that's okay.

52:20

Yeah. Thank you. Great question. Um, kind of related to what James said earlier on, um, inflation targeting and that maybe the inflation that we have seen is most similar to the inflation that happened after World War I and World War ii. I think that actually these transitions from war to post war are important, um, points of historical reference. Um, because if we think about the transition from a shutdown to a post shutdown economy, I think we are basically moving from one regulatory regime for the economy as a whole to another one where in one situation the state literally decided who can go to work and who cannot, and which factory can stay open, which cannot, and states around the world have been doing this in an asynchronous kind of fashion. So you did have pretty intense structural shifts. Now, what happened after World War I is that basically they had pretty intense price controls during the World War, right? And then they just pulled all these price, price pr price controls at once and they got pretty sharp inflation. So inflationary boom that then, um, made a shop turnaround and turn into a deflationary bust. Um, after World War ii, American economists, including very conservative economists like Irving Fisher, including the most important textbook economist, um, Paul Samuelson, including, uh, the mentor of, uh, Mitton Friedman, Frank Knight and so on, were arguing that in this trans transitory moment, um, targeted price controls would be something that could be useful in facilitating this transition because you have a situation where you have bottlenecks, prices shooting up, um, without, um, a, uh, supply response because the supply cannot respond because there's a bottleneck. So the price signal basically cannot be operational in, in, in that kind of situation. Um, now of course at the time you had price controls and the question was, are you gonna lift our price controls or not? Um, so in that sense, you were in a very different word from the word that we are living in today, right? Where obviously we do not have price controls for most things. And the question would be, are you imposing price controls? I think that price controls generally, um, can only ever by time.

うん。ありがとうございます。素晴らしい質問です。先ほどジェームスが言った、インフレ・ターゲットの話と関連しているのですが、私たちが見ているインフレは、第一次世界大戦後と第二次世界大戦後に起こったインフレに最も似ているのではないかということです。戦争から戦後への移行は、歴史的な参照点として重要だと考えています。というのも、シャットダウン経済からシャットダウン後の経済への移行について考えてみると、基本的には、経済全体に対するある規制体制から、ある状況において、国家が文字通り誰が仕事に行けて誰が行けないか、どの工場が営業できてどの工場が出来ないかを決める別の体制に移行していると思いますし、世界中の国家がこれを非同期にやっているのです。つまり、かなり激しい構造転換があったわけです。第一次世界大戦後に起こったことは、基本的に、世界大戦中はかなり激しい価格統制が行われていましたね。そして、これらの価格統制を一度に解除し、急激なインフレを引き起こしました。インフレの好景気は、その後、一転してデフレの不景気になったわけです。第二次世界大戦後、アメリカの経済学者たちは、アーヴィング・フィッシャーのような非常に保守的な経済学者、最も重要な教科書的経済学者であるポール・サミュエルソン、ミトン・フリードマンやフランク・ナイトなどの師匠も含めて、この過渡期において、的を絞った価格統制が必要だと主張していました、ボトルネックがあり、価格が高騰しているのに、供給が反応しない、つまり、ボトルネックがあるために供給が反応しない、という状況があるからです。つまり、このような状況では、価格シグナルは基本的に機能しないのです。もちろん、当時は価格統制が行われていて、価格統制を解除するのかしないのかが問題でした。その意味では、今の時代とはまったく異なる状況にあったわけですね。明らかに、私たちはほとんどのものに対して価格統制をしていません。では、価格統制をするのかというと、そうではありません。私は、価格統制は一般的に、時間によってのみ可能だと思います。

So if you're in an extreme situation of an extreme supply shock where prices inevitably are gonna explode in ways where you do not get a supply response and you are talking about something very important, you're not talking about the price shock in canoes in western Massachusetts where I was living, but you're talking about the price shock in gas oil, or you are talking about the block port of LA that became the bottleneck of the bottleneck for an import dependent economy like the us right? Then I think we can think about whether temporary constraints to the, to the degree at which prices can increase, so not a fixed price ceiling, but the degree by which prices can increase, um, can be useful, which is basically what the price gouging laws are already doing at the state level for natural emergencies. Um, and um, I'm, I mean, I'm not saying this is like the magic weapon that you should pull at every moment, but in these situations of extreme shocks, some of extreme supply constraints, I think they can play some role, but they will of course only be as good as the time that you have bought, um, will be used. If you are kind of buying time and then you're doing nothing about the, um, about correcting the supply shock that you have, then when you lift the, uh, price, um, uh, uh, constrained, uh, you will be in the same situation as before and then prices will just shoot up a little bit later, right? Um, but I think this is one of the lessons that we can take from the debates that the most important economists in the US had at this moment of transition. I think that if we look at China and we look at how China has, for example, been handling the grain price shock, then they have a gigantic resu reserve system, right? Which is probably larger than any rich country would want to maintain. Um, I'm not saying that all of Europe and the US should be running these gigantic resources. Um, I think that would be absurd and would probably add to the grain price pressures. But thinking about, um, possibilities where buffer stock could interact with markets in the sense of sending signals to markets using market signaling wire, um, these kind of, uh, market participatory tools, I think is something that one can think about. I'm not saying it will immediately work, it's definitely very complicated. We also have many cases where these kind of policy tools did not work well, but I think it's something that we should be studying as we are trying to think about ways to, um, buffer, um, the, the, the, the kind of, um, shocks that I think are unfortunately likely to reoccur.

もし、極端な供給ショックで、必然的に価格が爆発し、供給反応が得られないような極端な状況になった場合、何かとても重要なことを話しているのなら、私が住んでいたマサチューセッツ州西部のカヌーの価格ショックの話ではなく、ガス油の価格ショックの話、あるいは、アメリカのような輸入依存経済のボトルネックとなったロスのブロック港の話ですよね？そうすると、価格が上昇する度合いに対する一時的な制約、つまり、固定的な価格上限ではなく、価格が上昇する度合いに対する一時的な制約が有用であるかどうかを考えることができると思うのです。しかし、極端なショックや極端な供給制約がある状況では、何らかの役割を果たすことができると思います。もし、時間を買っておいて、供給ショックの是正を何もしないのであれば、価格制約を解除したときに、以前と同じ状況になり、その後、価格が少し上がるだけでしょう？しかし、この転換期において、アメリカの最も重要な経済学者たちが行った議論から、私たちが得られる教訓のひとつはこれだと思います。中国を見て、例えば中国が穀物価格ショックにどう対処したかを見てみると、中国には巨大な外貨準備制度がありますよね？おそらく、どんな豊かな国でも維持したいと思うような規模ではないでしょうか。私は、ヨーロッパとアメリカのすべてが、この巨大な資源を運用すべきだと言っているのではありません。そんなことは馬鹿げているし、穀物価格の上昇圧力に拍車をかけることになるでしょう。しかし、バッファーストックが市場と相互作用する可能性について考えることは、マーケットシグナリングワイヤーを使って市場にシグナルを送るという意味で、この種の、市場参加型のツールについて考えることができると思います。すぐにうまくいくとは言いませんし、非常に複雑なものであることは間違いありません。しかし、不幸にも再発する可能性が高いと思われる、この種のショックを緩和する方法を考える上で、研究すべきものであると思います。