Face 2 Face : INFLATION AND MONETARY MEASURES

For

Monetary measures can be effectively used to control the liquidity to regulate the demand. While supply is the core of the problem, there is not much that can be done to in-crease supply in the short term, whereas demand can be directed easily to keep the inflation in the desired range.

An increase in the price leads to price-wage inflationary spiral. A monetary squeeze can stabilize price level and hence the wage. With the lack of a well developed bond market in India, bonds issued by the central bank squeezes money significantly. Further, rise in interest rate not only makes the borrowing costly but also encourages saving and reduces consumption. The recent increase in CRR will eventually bring down the amount available with banks for lending. Moreover, any monetary measure adopted by RBI signals the market about the intention of government and thus checks the price rise. Though restricting credit-availability impacts growth, inflation needs to be curtailed for the survival of the poor.

Therefore, managing liquidity would continue to take priority to push inflation back to around 5.5 percent this fiscal year.

- Kumar Saurav

AGAINST

Although Inflation is a monetary phenomenon and hence monetary policy is most logical tool to correct it; there are various limitations on the effective working of the quantitative measures of credit control adopted by the Central banks which weaken the monetary policy. Moderate monetary measures are relatively ineffective in controlling inflation and drastic monetary measures are not good because they turn economy into a tailspin. More-over, very often monetary policy is so mildly applied that it hardly has any impact on inflation.

In a developing economy like India, there is always an in-creasing need for credit to fuel the growth. However, there is a need to contract credit to curb inflation. Therefore, this conflict leads to dampening of growth if Central Bank resorts to credit control to check inflation.

Also in modern economies, securities, bonds etc. which are known as near money; represent tangible wealth. As they are highly liquid and are very close to being money, they increase the general liquidity of the economy. Therefore, it is not so simple to control the rate of spending merely by controlling the quantity of money.

Thus, there is no immediate; and direct relationship between money supply and the price level.

- Jaspreet Singh Arora

Courtesy - FY Newsletter

Economic Fundae - Interest Rates

It is a really a good time to start with the economic fundamentals as there is so much happening across the globe with recession and our phenomenal growth story. It becomes easy to see what we are discussing in theory in the real life. Inflation is something most of the developing nation is fighting against. At least in India, the Reserve Bank of India has done a great job in controlling the soaring price rise that happened in 2007. But what are the policy that RBI has at its disposal to control inflation? These are largely the tools and policies different from the fiscal policy.

Before answering this question we will look into one of the important macroeconomic variable which connects the present with the future – Interest Rates. The rates which our bank pay is called as the nominal interest rate and this measure the increase in the value of the money we hold. It can be seen as the amount that we get paid for forgoing the consumption at present.

The other class of interest rates is called the real interest rates which are essentially the increase in the purchasing power. Think of a capital as a corn seed. The increase in value from the seed to the corn is the real increase in value. But due to the general increase in prices of other commodities – inflation our corn will fetch us more money than the actual value. This is called the nominal value which is the real value plus the inflation.
R = I – πe
This equation gives the relationship between the real interest rate and the nominal interest rate & inflation rate.

Why is there a fluctuation in the interest rate? This is dependant on the amount of money in circulation. Now the big question is whether the RBI sets the interest rate or sets the money circulation? It sets the money supply.

It is done through a series of steps called as the open market operations. In this the central bank buys bonds – a debt instrument, in exchange for money, thus increasing the stock of money, or it sells bonds in exchange for money paid by the purchasers of the bonds, thus reducing the money stock.

Now ask yourself this question, what will happen to the exchange rate if the central bank sells $1 billion from its foreign currency reserves?

We fairly understood about the strict monetary policy. Now it is time to see what is happening in the scenario of recession. The U.S central bank has announced a interest rate cut in order to combat the recession. By cutting interest rates the FED would be boosting U.S economy by making it cheaper to borrow. But it has its implication also in the spending habit. This artificial intervention of the central bank is rarely seen unless it is absolutely necessary to do so.

The other side is the reduction in the earnings due to the interest rate cut. This will immediately give arbitrage opportunity for investors to borrow money from the U.S banks and invest in a country like India where the interest rates are higher. Sensible isn’t? But is it what our finance minister will also be happy about? We will see in the subsequent article of the critical analysis of the forth coming budget and the interdependency of the various macroeconomic variables we have learnt so far.