Fed funds datapoint of the day

The Taylor Rule ran smack into the zero bound back in October — and kept on falling. Now, according to the Fed’s Glenn Rudebusch, “in order to deliver a degree of future monetary stimulus that is consistent with its past behavior, the FOMC would have to reduce the funds rate to -5% by the end of this year”:

Rudebusch says that when a central bank can’t loosen monetary policy by implementing negative nominal interest rates, then that only serves to lengthen the amount of time that it is forced to keep interest rates at zero:

According to the historical policy rule and FOMC economic forecasts, the funds rate should be near its zero lower bound not just for the next six or nine months, but for several years. The policy shortfall persists even though the economy is expected to start to grow later this year. Given the severe depth of the current recession, it will require several years of strong economic growth before most of the slack in the economy is eliminated and the recommended funds rate turns positive.

But what about all that quantitative easing? Doesn’t that have the same effect as lower nominal interest rates? Not really: it “has likely only partially offset the funds rate shortfall”, says Rudebusch, and in any case the Fed’s balance sheet is going to have to shrink as the crisis abates — which will serve to act as an effective rise in interest rates. And which will only force the Fed funds rate to stay at zero for that much longer. Maybe it’s time for Bernanke to just set rates at zero and head to the beach for the summer — monetary policy seems to be pretty clear for the foreseeable future.