- – El-Erian Breaches The Final Frontier

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/12/2012 12:45 -0400

“In the last three plus years, central banks have had little choice but to do the unsustainable in order to sustain the unsustainable until others do the sustainable to restore 
sustainability!” is how PIMCO’s El-Erian introduces the game-theoretic catastrophe that is potentially occurring around us.

In a lecture to the St.Louis Fed, the moustachioed maestro of monetary munificence states “let me say right here that the analysis will suggest that central banks can no longer – indeed, should no longer – carry the bulk of the policy burden” and “it is a recognition of the declining effectiveness of central banks’ tools in countering deleveraging forces amid impediments to growth that dominate the outlook. It is also about the growing risk of collateral damage and unintended circumstances.” It appears that we have reached the legitimate point of – and the need for – much greater debate on whether the benefits of such unusual central bank activism sufficiently justify the costs and risks.
 
This is not an issue of central banks’ desire to do good in a world facing an “unusually uncertain” outlook. Rather, it relates to questions about diminishing returns and the eroding potency of the current policy stances. The question is will investors remain “numb and sedated…. by the money sloshing around the system?”

Today, I will ignore the professor’s advice in multiple ways. I will speak in a central bank and to central bankers about the role of their institutions – particularly the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank – in today’s highly complex, perplexing and historically unusual policymaking environment. I will go further and try to link actions to motivations. And, when it comes to implications, I will attempt to put forward questions and hypotheses that, I believe, are critical for the future of the U.S. and global economies but for which I, like others, have only partial answers.