STATE BANK OF VIETNAM BANKING ACADEMY Foreign Language Faculty ---------- GRADUATION THESIS QUANTITATIVE EASING AND ITS IMPACTS ON THE US ECONOMY Lecturer : Pham Thi Hoang Anh (Ph.D) Student : Le ThiThanhHoa Class : K14-ATCB Student Code : 14A7510074 20th May 2015 Banking Academy Graduation Thesis ACKNOWLEGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks toMrs. Pham ThiHoang Anh, Ph.D for her enthusiastic guidance and precious advice. I could hardly complete my graduation thesis on “Quantitative Easing and its impacts on the US economy” without her closely and dedicated supervision. Secondly, I would like to show my appreciation to all the lecturers in Banking Academy, especially lecturers in Foreign Language Department, who provided me with useful background knowledge during the last four years.
Last but not least, I am grateful to my beloved parents for their blessings, my classmates for their help in finding data and statistics as well as their best wishes for the success of my graduation thesis. Although I have made great effort to complete this thesis, it would certainly not be free from defect because of the time constraints and limited capacity of mine. I hope that lectures and readers could sympathize and contribute to complete the thesis. Sincerely Hanoi, June 2015 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I hereby would like to declare in lieu of oath that this thesis submission with the title ‘Quantitative Easing and its impacts on the US economy’ is my own work and to the best of my knowledge without any inadmissible help and without the use of any sources other than those listed in the list of reference.
Any contribution made to the research by other people is explicitly acknowledged in this thesis. I would like to further declare that all that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project’s design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged. Le ThiThanhHoa Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis ABSTRACT After the Great Depression of the 1930s, the American economy experienced robust growth, with periodic lesser recessions, for the rest of the 20th century. However, in the end of the first decade of 21st century, the recurrence of Great Recession which threatened the total collapse of large financial institutions once again opened a long dark period for the US economy.
The bursting of the US housing bubble, which reached its peak in 2006, was considered o be the root cause of the Great Recession. US housing bubble resulted in the plummet of securities tied to US real estate pricing, damaging the global financial system. The financial crisis was triggered by a complex interplay of policies that providing easier access to loans for borrowers with the purpose of encouraging home ownership, over-valuating the bundled subprime mortgages mainly based on the theory that housing prices would continue to escalate. Due to the financial crisis, global economic growth saw significant slowdowns.
Federal Reserve and central banks around the world took steps to mitigate and avoid the risks of a deflation spiral, in which lower wages and higher unemployment led to self-reinforcing decline in global consumption. In US, a series of instruments was implemented by Fed; however, the leading economy was still obsessed with the bleakeconomic outlook. In late 2008, Fed decided to carry out QE as the final measure with the aim of creating strong motivation for the economy to recover. This thesis would deeply analyze QE and how it was implemented to rescue the US economy trapped in the recession.
Whether or not it left behind any risks for the US economy would also be included in this thesis. Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis TABLE OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEGEMENTS. 1 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY. 3 TABLE OF CONTENT.
4 LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES. Background Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis. Scope and Limitations. 2 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
4 CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis. An overview of Quantitative Easing. Definition of Quantitative Easing. General impacts of Quantitative Easing on the economy.
Effectiveness of Quantitative Easing. Risks of Quantitative Easing. 8 CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND RESULTS. Background of US economy in 2008 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis.
Timeline of Quantitative Easing in US and its impacts on the US economy. QE1 and its impacts on US economy. Timeline of QE1. Impacts of QE1 on the US economy.
Timeline of QE2 and its impacts on the US economy. Timeline of QE2. Impacts of QE2 on the US economy. 24 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis 4.
Operation Twist and its impacts on the US economy. Timeline of Operation Twist. Impacts of Operation Twist on the US economy. Timeline of QE3 and its impacts on the US economy.
Timeline of QE3. Impacts of QE3 on the US economy. 42 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis APPENDICES. 43 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES Figure 3.1: Bank of Japan’s QE Figure 3.2: Japanese Inflation Rate (Annual Change on Consumer Price Index) Figure 3.3: Japan GDP Growth Rate (Percent change in Gross Domestic Product) Figure 4.1: US house price changes Figure 4.2: US subprime lending expanded significantly 2004-2006 Figure 4.3: USD/EUR in 2008 Figure 4.4: US Treasury Yield and QE1 Figure 4.5: US inflation rate Figure 4.6: 30-year fixed rate mortgage Figure 4.7: S&P 500 and QE1 Figure 4.8:Real Quarterly US GDP Growth Rate Figure 4.9: S&P 500 and QE1 and QE2 Figure 4.10: US inflation rate Figure 4.11: Real Quarterly US GDP Growth Rate Figure 4.12: US Treasury yield and QE2 Figure 4.13:US Treasury Yield and Operation Twist Figure 4.14:Operation Twist and the yield curves Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis Figure 4.15:S&P 500 and Operation Twist Figure 4.16:Quarter-to-Quarter Growth in US Real GDP Figure 4.17: S&P 500 and QE3 Figure 4.18: QE3 and US Growth Rate Figure 4.19: Impacts of QE3 (left) and QE3 tapper (right) on 30-year fixed-rate mortgage Figure 4.20: Long-term Yield and USD/EUR Exchange rate responses in QE3 Figure 4.21: US Inflation Rate during the performance of QE3 Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis LIST OFABBREVIATION US United States MBS Mortgage-backed securities QE Quantitative Easing FED Federal Reserve BOJ Bank of Japan JGB Japanese Government Bonds GDP Gross Domestic Product CDO Collateralized debt obligations GSEs Government sponsored enterprises USD United States Dollar FOMC Federal Open Market Committee S&P 500 Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index JGB Japanese Government Bond CPI Consumer Price Index GDP Gross Domestic Product Le ThiThanhHoa K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Background The global financial crisis of 2007 has cast its long shadow on the economic fortunes of many countries, resulting in what has often been called the ‘Great Recession’. It is believed that the global financial crisis resulted from US subprime mortgage and credit crisis. Overall, 2009 was the first year since World War II that the world was in recession, a calamitous turn around on the boom years of 2002-2007. It is undeniable that US experienced such a difficult period lasted over 4 years from late 2007 to early 2012, which left behind severe sequences for the US economy and global one as well.
With the aim of recovering the global economy, governments of developed countries decided to lower the interest rate, credit easing and simultaneously increase the money supply to the economy. For US, after 8 times FED lowering the interest rate, it was justified from 5% to 0. In this case, US interbank interest rate had tendency to approach zero; consequently, this policy no longer effective to be implemented. In December 2008, the FED pushed its policy rate to zero, but inflation was still too low and the economic recovery was weak.
Obviously, standard monetary policy turned out not to be effective any more. At that time, QE become the last solution for US economy to survive in the dark period of recession. Analyzing QE and how it really worked to help US recover from recession would be the main content of this thesis. Research Objectives The thesis deeply focuses on investigating the US QE policy with the aim of finding out to what extent it can help US to recover from the Great Recession.
Le ThiThanhHoa 1 K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis 1. Methodology In this thesis, with the purpose of making it more reliable, I use a wide range of methods. Literature survey with secondary data has been used in order to provide precise information. Besides, the thesis also includes data collecting and sampling method as well as data analysis method.
Data source The analysis is mainly bases on reliable information collected from various sources, namely Federal Reports, IMF Reports, New York Times, other reputable publishers and database of reliable market data providers such as university researches 1. Research question The thesis aspires to reveal the answer for the following questions: What is QE? How is QE implemented in US? What are the impacts of QE on the US economy? 1. Scope and Limitations The thesis concentrates on studying the economy background of US and the impacts of QE to the US economy in the gap from late 2007 to nearly the end of 2014. Thesis structure The thesis consists of 5 main chapters: I) Introduction II) Literature review Le ThiThanhHoa 2 K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis III) Theoretical framework IV) Analysis and Results V) Conclusion Le ThiThanhHoa 3 K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW The very first evidence of QE cited in literature is the money response of US when FED carried out to purchase $1 billion Government Treasury in 1932 and continued to 1936.
Before the boom of financial crisis in 2007 in US, this issue received little concerns and it was infrequently researched as a consequence. Therefore, unlike conventional monetary literature, that of QE is rather rare and difficult to gather. Existing literature at that time mainly focus on the QE implementation of Japan in 2000s. Shirakawa (2002) argues that the act of approaching to QE of Japan during 2000 is essentially similar to that in the early 1930s of US.
As Japanese official bank rate effectively reached zero in February 1999, the Bank of Japan initiates QE as a supplement to zero-rate policy in March 2001 to provide further stimulus to the economy and to avoid deflationary trend. According to a study conducted by Schenkelberg and Watzka (2011), other than creating inflation, the implementation of QE in Japan led to short run increases in industrial activity. They also added that the QE in Japan was on a “small” scale compared to Japanese GDP. Indeed, this monetary policy program was only 6% of Japan’s GDP, and it took about five years to complete.
Thereafter, in 2007, US fell into recession and when the interbank interest rate reached zero, QE once again showed it effectiveness. With purpose of supporting the implementation of QE in US, Bernanke (2004) studies Japanese QE to draw a lesson for US. He also gives a theoretical framework about how QE could help monetary authority to interfere money supply under a zero-bound interest regime, in which two method are suggested. He states in his study that the first way is managing central bank’s balance sheet components by reorganizing the types of assets.
The other way is to restate central bank’s commitment to keep the interest rate low for a predetermined period. Two recent studies investigating the impacts of QE announcements on financial markets are Gagnon, Raskin, Remache, and Sack(2011), and Krishnamurthy and Vissing-Jorgensen (2011).The former study looks Le ThiThanhHoa 4 K14ATCB Banking Academy Graduation Thesis at 23 QE announcements. The first is on 25 November 2008 and the twenty third is on 17 February 2010.