Why departing conventional monetary policy

Abstract

The Fed, being followed by Bank of England and European Central Bank, attempted to overcome contemporary financial crisis by diminishing radically interest rates first, and while they came down close to zero soon the non-conventional measures like quantitative easing and qualitative easing were undertaken. Such monetary policy techniques were practiced by Bank of Japan a couple of years earlier. After five years the effectiveness of the intervention is doubtful as it seemed to be in Japan before. The paper refers to a non-conventional diagnosis by Richard Koo which sheds new light on the question and concludes with information that might indicate on the sector's interest. According to his analysis of banks' behavior in Japan between 1990 and 2007, and despite a popular opinion on credit crunch, there was not that much a matter of banks' extreme prudence resulting from crisis of confidence. The reasons are rather to be seen in the behavior of another party that is in constraining demand on credit by the non-financial companies which saw their balances shattered in result of diving assets prices. This is the real source of Japanese deflation. If mounting private savings do not have a reverse in increasing public indebtness as they do not in Europe and the United States recently it is small chance that increased liquidity in banking sector would transform into credit that stimulates aggregate demand, prices and output.(original abstract)