Le calme du président de la Fed contre la fureur de Wall Street

Ben Bernanke est-il un pantin inconscient ou est-il un sage? Incertitude psychologique des crises financières. Le président de la Federal Reserve campe sur des positions intransigeante: pas d’initiative significative de la Federal Reserve pour venir au secours de la panique de Wall Street (en gros : pas d’initiative sur les taux de crédit). Le président de la Fed est cool tandis que les analystes de Wall Street s’abîment dans des anathèmes furieux…

Ecoutez Jim Cramer, l’un des principaux analystes de Wall Street venu de Goldman Schs et, sans doute, de Bear Stearns, lors d’une intervention sur CNBC le 3 août (voyez la séquence sur YouTube) : «Bernanke needs to open the discount window.... Bernanke has no idea how bad it is out there. He has no idea. No idea. I have talked to the heads of every one of these firms in the last 72 hours. My people have been in this game for 25 years, and they are going to lose jobs, firms are going to go out of business. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. They're nuts. They know nothing. They have no idea what it is like out there. 14 million people took mortgages out in the last 3 years. 7 million of those were based on teaser or piggy back rates. They will lose their homes. This is crazy. I worked at fixed income at Goldman Sachs. This is not the time to be complacent. We have Armageddon in the fixed income market.»

Face à cette fureur que d’aucuns qualifient d’hystérie, Bernanke oppose donc sa sérénité complète, — que d’aucuns, bien sûr, qualifient d’inconscience et de pusillanimité.

«Cool, calm and collected, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, is driving Wall Street batty. When traders scream about a recessionary “credit crunch”, the former professor acknowledges their concerns but predicts continued economic growth. When they plead for easier money, Bernanke and fellow rate-setters firmly hold the line.

»The Street may be dismayed by Bernanke's sangfroid, but it shouldn't be surprised. This is exactly the kind of policy he has spent his entire career arguing for. At Princeton University, where he taught from 1985 to 2002, he said central bankers should avoid getting caught up in the gyrations of the financial markets and focus instead on measures of the real economy, such as growth and inflation.

(…)

«The market's craziness is a perfect test case for Bernanke's circumspect approach because there's no evidence so far of a systemic crisis that would require him to abandon his theories and open the monetary floodgates. Yes, stock and junk bond prices have fallen, the sub-prime mortgage market is in dire straits, and a few Wall Street firms, including Bear Stearns, have taken a hit. But elsewhere, contagion is more of a future worry than a present-day reality.

»Bernanke's approach recognises that the Fed can't be all things to all people. If it lowered rates to rescue sub-prime borrowers and their lenders, it would raise the risk of excessive borrowing and speculation in other sectors, possibly causing higher inflation and a stock bubble.

»He is supported by many of his fellow academic economists. Among the most prominent is Allan Meltzer, a monetary economist at Carnegie Mellon University, who is writing a history of the Fed. “The people on Wall Street are making a lot of noise because they don't like to lose money,” he says. “But it would be a huge mistake to change policy to rescue a bunch of people who made stupid mistakes.” In fact, argues Meltzer, speculator losses could clean out the financial markets and make them healthier. “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin,” Meltzer says. “It doesn't work.”»

Mis en ligne le 12 août 2007 à 14H11