再Savers' lament 1/2 , December 1st 2012 P78 (貯蓄者の嘆き)
When interest rates hit double digits in the late 1970s, house-builders sent planks of wood to the Federal Reserve in protest. With rates stuck near zero, the protests now come from the opposite direction. The retired complain of a ゛war on savings゛. The Fed cut rates to current levels at the end of 2008 and has promised to keep them there until 2015. Since 2008, personal interest income has plunged 30%, or $432 billion at an annual rate, more than 4% of disposable income. David Einhorn, a hedgefund manager, likens zero rates to an overdose of jam doughnuts：too much of a good thing. Raghuram Rajan, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, describes the Fed's policy as ゛expropriating responsible savers in favour of irresponsible banks゛, and thinks it should raise rates modestly. This challenges textbook monetary policy. Typically, lower rates stimulate growth in several ways. They reduce the costs of capital, spurring investment and encouraging households to consume today rather than tomorrow. They also boost stock prices, helping spending through the wealth effect, and reduce the exchange rate, helping exports. Finally, lower rates redistribute income from creditors to debtors, who will presumably spend the windfall. Today's critics argue that this reasoning no longer applies. Business and households can't or don't want to borrow, while the retired and corporate pension sponsors must slash spending to cope with lost interest income. Are the critics right? Start with redistributive effect. These depend on who are the creditors and who are the debtors. For a net debtor nation like America, lower rates raise national income by reducing the flow of payments to foreign bondholders. (The opposite is true for Japan, a net creditor.) Lower rates may also benefit households and companies at the expense of banks, which cannot lower deposit rates enough to offset the loss of loan income. In Britain, the Bank of England reckons that between September 2008 and April 2012 lower rates cost households ￡70 billion of foregone income, but saved them around ￡100 billion in interest expense. The difference was absorbed by banks. The actual impact of this redistribution depends crucially on the propensities to consume of debtors and creditors. If the creditors losing income have no choice but to consume less, the hit would indeed be considerable. But reality is more complicated. In mid-2012 American households held roughly $13 trillion of deposits, bonds and other interest-earning assets, while they owned mortgage and other debts of roughly the same amount. But assets and debts are not evenly distributed. Surveys by the Fed show that while owners of certificates of deposit and bonds were more likely to be older and retired, they are also more likely to be rich. Debt, by contrast, is somewhat more egalitarian：75% of all families carried some, and 47% had a mortgage. For the middle class, interest payments consumed roughly 20% of income compared with 9% for the richest tenth of families. Although lower rates transfer income from the retired to workers, that effect may be less important than that from rich creditors to middle-class debtors. All else being equal, this probably raises consumption because rich families have a buffer of savings with which to sustain their lifestyle. Middle-income families who lack those buffers must adjust their spending as cashflow changes. The rich are further insulated because lower rates have boosted equities, which are held principally by the wealthy.
