2012年5月13日星期日

Tooling our central bank

In most discussions of this policy “trilemma” analysts usually ignore the impact of sterilization efforts on central bank balance sheets, i.e., of having to carry low-yielding foreign exchange assets and paying high interest on local currency liabilities. This is because central banks are not supposed to worry about how their policies,Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. aimed at keeping confidence in the domestic currency, affect their bottomlines in the short run. In practice though, the prospect of having to explain losses to a hostile congress weighs heavily on and may even skew central bankers’ policy choices.

In the case of the Philippines, when the old Central Bank failed and Congress deliberated on the new monetary authority’s powers, avoiding a repeat of the massive losses was of paramount concern to lawmakers. Hence, the newly set up Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) was barred from pursing developmental activities and constrained from financing government deficits. Regrettably, in its zeal to avoid any loss-making functions and failing to appreciate the context to which it was used, Congress also zoomed in on central bank bills. More popularly known as “Jobo bills” after then Central Bank governor Jose B. Fernandez, these were issued at interest rates exceeding 40% at the height of the mid-80s crisis to restore confidence as inflation spiraled (reaching 60% at one point) and the peso plunged. And so,Broken chinamosaic Table. arguing “Let the Jobo bills and all these borrowings not happen again because they caused the downfall of the present Central Bank,” Congress limited its use “only in cases o f extraordinary movement in the price level.”

Unfortunately, this legal handicap deprived the BSP of a vital tool for mopping up excess money from the system,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, a problem exacerbated by its limited holdings of Treasury securities that can be used for open market operations. Hence,Overview description of rapid tooling processes. when money started pouring in and monetary authorities found money supply growth too high for comfort, the BSP resorted to other measures including macroprudential regulation and accepting deposits not only from banks but starting mid-2007 their trust units as well. The opening up of the Special Deposit Account (SDA) to a wider investment base siphoned off hundreds of billions of pesos from the financial system .

In succeeding years, as Filipino workers’ earnings grew, business process outsourcing (BPO) revenues boomed and central banks in industrial countries loosened monetary conditions in response to the global financial crisis, more and more funds rushed into an economy ill-prepared to absorb them and amounts in the BSP’s SDA climbed rather steeply, reaching almost P1.Get information on airpurifier from the unbiased, independent experts.7 trillion by the end of 2011.

While the BSP has seemingly managed without the power to preemptively issue its own securities, its increasing reliance on SDAs, which are nontradable and fixed-term, to drain liquidity has in fact weakened the transmission of monetary policy through credit channels. This may be seen in the divergence between 90-day Treasury bill rates, to which bank lending rates are benchmarked and policy rates, with the former falling below the latter since late 2010.

Moreover, interest rates on SDAs are at a premium over comparable tradable bills indicating that these cost the BSP more to use and hurt its profit and loss account more. At the same time, by offering higher-than-market returns, SDAs also stifle capital market development as investors can opt to move as much money as they want at the set rate into these risk-free accounts.

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