Two months ago, as we were carefully reading the latest Goldman explanation of how the firm had completely missed something Zero Hedge predicted back in January, namely the record warm winter's impact on skewing seasonal adjustments for payroll data (which has since validated our day 1 of 2012 predication that 2012 will be a carbon-copy replica of 2011, and which has made the comedy value of another Goldman masterpiece, that of Jim O'Neill's idiotic "2012: Not a Repeat of 2010 or 2011" soar through the roof) we stumbled upon something we knew was about to get much, much more airplay: Goldman's quiet and out of place admission that what matters for a country's central bank is the flow of its purchases, not the stock (another massive economic misconception we have been trying to debunk since the beginning). Recall these words: "...we have found some evidence that at the very long end of the yield curve, where Operation Twist is concentrated, it may be not just the stock of securities held by the Fed but also the ongoing flow of purchases that matters for yields..." This is how we summarized this observation two months ago (pardon the all caps): "UNLESS THE FED IS ACTIVELY ENGAGING IN MONETIZATION AT EVERY GIVEN MOMENT, THE IMPACT FROM EASING DIMINISHES PROGRESSIVELY, ULTIMATELY APPROACHING ZERO AND SUBSEQUENTLY BECOMING NEGATIVE!"
All caps aside, what this means is simple: if it is indeed flow that matters (and it is), then Fed intervention can never stop, period. If the stock of a central banks' assets is irrelevant, the Fed can have $1 on the left side of the balance sheet or $1 quadrillion: it does not matter - if the market expects the Fed to stop buying assets tomorrow, then the crash is as good as here. That has precisely been the biggest flaw with the Fed-accepted stock model, per which Bernanke can buy up a few trillion in MBS and the stock market will be flat as a frozen lake. Alas, this is increasingly becoming obvious is not the case. Hence flow.
Which is why today, two months later, and a week before Bernanke will almost certainly announce the NEW QE, we were not surprised at all to see that Goldman has actually made the case for flow in the form a of a white paper titled "Flow Effects at the Ultra-Long end of the Curve."
For monetary theory purists this is equivalent to Martin Luther walking up to the front door of the Marriner Eccles building and nailing his 95 theses: we have now entered the era of the monetary reformation, which incidentally as more and more classical economists follow suit, will throw all of Keynesian and neo-classical economics into a tailspin where virtually every core assumption will have to be reevaluated.
Congratulations economists: in their pursuit of another record year of bonuses at any cost, Goldman just sacrificed your precious voodoo. Because where Goldman goes, everyone else promptly follows.
From Goldman Sachs:
Flow Effects at the Ultra-Long End of the Curve (Shan/Stehn)
- With the scheduled end of the Fed's twist approaching, market participants are debating the extent to which the end of the Fed's purchases will affect the yield curve. The "stock view" – which Fed officials and we have generally subscribed to – suggests that markets tend to price in the Fed's purchases at announcement and then show little responsiveness to the subsequent flow (and end) of purchases. The "flow view," however, would suggest that yields increase when the twist concludes.
- Using a simple model of the Treasury yield curve, we revisit this issue in today's daily. Our estimates suggest that the flow effect is negligible for short and intermediate maturities (of less than 20 years) but statistically significant at the ultra-long end of the curve (with maturities of 20+ years). Although the uncertainty is significant, these estimates suggest that – all else equal – the end of the twist will have negligible effects on the short and intermediate part of the curve, but might push up yields at the ultra-long end of the curve by around 5 basis points.
Although the "stock view" appears to be a good description of the effects of Fed purchases at the short and intermediate maturities, flows might be more important at the ultra-long end of the Treasury curve. Intuitively, this would fit with the observation of investment habitat – how purchases of 20-30 year bonds are mostly conducted by more heterogeneous investors that are less sensitive to changes in demand and supply in the Treasury market.
More at the link.
