The dangers of US' strategy vacuum

Apparently, policymakers at the US Federal Reserve are having second thoughts about the wisdom of open-ended quantitative easing. They should. Not only has this untested policy experiment failed to deliver an acceptable economic recovery; it has also heightened the risk of another crisis.

The minutes of the Jan 29-30 meeting of the Fed's Federal Open Market Committee speak of a simmering discontent: "(M)any participants expressed some concerns about potential costs and risks arising from further asset purchases." The concerns range from worries about the destabilizing ramifications of an exit strategy from QE to apprehension about capital losses on the Fed's rapidly ballooning portfolio of securities (currently $3 trillion, and on way to $4 trillion by the end of this year).

As serious as these concerns may be, they overlook what could well be the greatest flaw in the Fed's unprecedented gambit: an emphasis on short-term tactics over longer-term strategy. Blindsided by the crisis of 2007-08, the Fed has compounded its original misdiagnosis of the problem by repeatedly doubling down on tactical responses, with two rounds of QE preceding the current, open-ended iteration. The FOMC, drawing a false sense of comfort from the success of QE1 - a massive liquidity injection in the depths of a horrific crisis - mistakenly came to believe that it had found the right template for subsequent policy actions.