For years the omnipotent, all-powerful central bank has been a dominant influence on markets.
Can investors blind believe in central banking last forever? Does the power of monetary policy know no bounds?
I have my doubts.
Our Draghi, who art in Frankfurt, hallowed be thy name.
Mario Draghi’s €1.1tn of shock and awe — €60bn a month of bond buying until September 2016 — might yet turn out to be insufficient to kickstart a moribund eurozone, but it is possible that it has achieved something more important for the animal spirits of markets: a revival in the cult of central banks.
For the last six years many on Wall Street have knelt at the altar of central banks, singing the praises of bulk asset purchases and taking for granted the omnipotence of the men and women who run them.
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As Ben Hunt, chief risk officer at asset manager Salient Partners, puts it: “We pray for extraordinary monetary policy accommodation as a sign of our central bankers’ love, not because we think the policy will do much of anything to solve our real-world economic problems, but because their favour gives us confidence to stay in the market.” Sometimes ‘cult’ is too soft a word.
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Crises of faith are rarely pleasant experiences and the unwinding of the central bank cult — when it comes — looks set to be no different.
Markets’ misplaced faith in central banks
