MONEY FOR NOTHING

Optimists may believe that central banks can save the world from the painful side effects of an American recession. They may point to the world’s recovery from the 2001 recession as a reason for hope. Back then, the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed interest rates from 6.5 percent to 1 percent, the European Central Bank dropped its rate from 4 percent to 2 percent, and the Bank of Japan cut its rate down to zero. But today, the ability of central banks to use monetary tools to stimulate their economies and dampen the effect of a global slowdown is far more limited than in the past. Central banks don't have as free a hand; they are constrained by higher levels of inflation. The Fed is cutting interest rates once again, but it must worry how the disorderly fall of the dollar could cause foreign investors to pull back on their financing of massive U.S. debts. A weaker dollar is a zero-sum game in the global economy; it may benefit the United States, but it hurts the competitiveness and growth of America's trading partners.

Monetary policy will also be less effective this time around because there is an oversupply of housing, automobiles, and other consumer goods. Demand for these goods is less sensitive to changes in interest rates, because it takes years to work out such gluts. A simple tax rebate can hardly be expected to change this fact, especially when credit card debt is mounting and mortgages and auto loans are coming due.

The United States is facing a financial crisis that goes far beyond the subprime problem into areas of economic life that the Fed simply can't reach. The problems the U.S. economy faces are no longer just about not having enough cash on hand; they're about insolvency, and monetary policy is ill equipped to deal with such problems. Millions of households are on the verge of defaulting on their mortgages. Not only have more than 100 subprime lenders gone bankrupt, there are riding delinquencies on more run-of-the-mill mortgages, too. Financial distress has even spread to the kinds of loans that finance excessively risky leveraged buyouts and commercial real estate. When the economy falls further, corporate default rates will sharply rise, leading to greater losses. There is also a "shadow banking system," made up of non-bank financial institutions that borrow cash or liquid investments in the near term, but lend or invest in the long term in nonliquid forms. Take money market funds, for example, which can be withdrawn overnight, or hedge funds, some of which can be redeemed with just one month's notice. Many of these funds are invested and locked into risky, long-term securities. This shadow banking system is therefore subject to greater risk because, unlike banks, they don't have access to the Fed’s support as the lender of last resort, cutting them off from the help monetary policy can provide.

Beyond Wall Street, there is also much less room today for fiscal policy stimulus, because the United States, Europe, and Japan all have structural deficits. During the last recession, the United States underwent a nearly 6 percent change in fiscal policy, from a very large surplus of about 2.5 percent of GDP in 2000 to a large deficit of about 3.2 percent of GDP in 2004. But this time, the United States is already running a large structural deficit, and the room for fiscal stimulus is only 1 percent of GDP, as recently agreed upon in President Bush’s stimulus package. The situation is similar for Europe and Japan.

President Bush's fiscal stimulus package is too small to make a major difference today, and what the Fed is doing now is too little, too late. It will take years to resolve the problems that led to this crisis. Poor regulation of mortgages, a lack of transparency about complex financial products, misguided incentive schemes in the compensation of bankers, wrongheaded credit ratings, poor risk management by financial institutions -- the list goes on and on.

Ultimately, in today's flat world, interdependence boosts growth across countries in good times. Unfortunately, these trade and financial links also mean that an economic slowdown in one place can drag down everyone else. Not every country will follow the United States into an outright recession, but no one can claim to be immune.

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