As questions have been asked on ratings of securities, many investors have chosen not to roll over commercial paper that was not backed by solid assets and did not have liquidity provisions provided by banks. This freeze-up, of course, means problems for financing a variety of assets, including mortgages, student loans, and home-equity loans.

...

The alternative to securitizations and financing assets with commercial paper is financing by commercial banks. Fortunately, most banks are very well capitalized and have the ability to finance these assets. In fact, bank balance sheets did expand in both August and September, reflecting in part banks holding assets on their balance sheet that have been difficult to securitize. However, while banks have the capacity to finance many of these assets, it is likely that the cost of financing for these assets will increase if they are done by banks rather than through financial markets.

My expectation is that over time, investors will gain more confidence in their ability to evaluate the quality of ratings, and that conservatively underwritten securitizations and asset-backed commercial paper will find acceptance by investors. A reevaluation of ratings and the models used to determine ratings, and a greater onus on investors to understand the underlying assets and securities they are purchasing is likely to make these markets more resilient. However, this process of evaluation may take some time. While we have seen improvement in financial markets over the past month, we continue to observe wider spreads and reduced volumes on securitized products, which may remain until investor confidence has been restored.

``Clearly the exchange rate is a sort of asset price, and this can have important effects on the aggregate demand in an economy.''  

``What happens to the exchange rate is going to tell you about something that's going to happen to net exports.'' ...

In general, the exchange rate is ``something that you do want to pay attention to,'' though, as with other asset prices, not ``over and above'' other issues, Mishkin said.

From the Q&A session, as reported by Bloomberg News

Note:  prepared text is identical to Mishkin's September 21 speech.

Large run-ups in asset prices present serious challenges to central bankers. The analysis of the role of housing in the monetary transmission mechanism argues against a special role for house prices in the conduct of monetary policy and in favor of a policy response to them only to the extent that they have foreseeable effects on inflation and employment. Nevertheless, central banks can take measures to prepare for possible sharp reversals in the prices of homes or other assets to ensure that they will not do serious harm to the economy.   

Although this episode appears to have been triggered largely by heightened concerns about subprime mortgages, global financial losses have far exceeded even the most pessimistic projections of credit losses on those loans. In part, these wider losses likely reflect concerns that weakness in U.S. housing will restrain overall economic growth. But other factors are also at work. Investor uncertainty has increased significantly, as the difficulty of evaluating the risks of structured products that can be opaque or have complex payoffs has become more evident. Also, as in many episodes of financial stress, uncertainty about possible forced sales by leveraged participants and a higher cost of risk capital seem to have made investors hesitant to take advantage of possible buying opportunities. More generally, investors may have become less willing to assume risk. Some increase in the premiums that investors require to take risk is probably a healthy development on the whole, as these premiums have been exceptionally low for some time. However, in this episode, the shift in risk attitudes has interacted with heightened concerns about credit risks and uncertainty about how to evaluate those risks to create significant market stress.

With more risk traded in markets and more participants managing that risk through portfolio adjustments made in markets, the importance of market liquidity has increased and the potential knock-on effects from an erosion of liquidity have multiplied. We could face situations in which asset price movements are exacerbated by the actions of market participants, including dynamic hedging strategies or forced liquidations of assets to meet margin calls, and those asset price movements could feed back onto the economy.

The empirical literature supports the view that U.S. monetary policy retains its ability to influence longer-term rates and other asset prices. Indeed, research on U.S. bond yields across the whole spectrum of maturities finds that all yields respond significantly to unanticipated changes in the Fed’s short-term interest-rate target and that the size and pattern of these responses has not changed much over time. Empirical studies also find that U.S. monetary policy actions retain a powerful effect on domestic stock prices.

Recent research suggests another possibility, which is that U.S. monetary policy actions may have significant effects on foreign yields and asset prices as well as on domestic financial prices. For example, changes in U.S. short-term interest rates seem to exert a substantial influence on euro area bond yields and appear to have a strong effect on foreign equity indexes as well.  In contrast, the effects of foreign short-term rates on U.S. asset prices appear to be relatively weaker. These cross-border effects of policy, and their asymmetric nature, are somewhat puzzling. One would expect a more symmetric relationship between the United States and the euro area, for example, as the two regions are of comparable economic size. It will be interesting to see if these relationships persist.

     "At the present time, stock market valuation doesn't seem to be elevated, certainly not as it was at the end of 2000. And the latest information on manufacturing, the ISM report, was apparently quite strong.''

     ``We don't see the accumulating evidence that would justify ongoing market declines. Should that happen -- I'm not trying to predict that the stock market will go one way or another because I know that's a very dangerous thing to do -- should the market decline without any underlying supporting evidence to justify the declines, then I would say my own view would certainly be that it's a fluctuation in the market of the type that occur that are very difficult to understand or explain.''

     In ``the absence of other information there would be no particular reason for the FOMC to respond to the stock market itself.''

In comments to reporters after his speech, as reported by Bloomberg News

Finally, in today's global economy, very settled financial market conditions--narrow risk spreads and low expected market volatility--coexist with unprecedented current account imbalances among nations and interest rates that are low by historical standards.  In such a world, it would be imprudent to rule out sharp movements in asset prices and a deterioration in market liquidity that would test the resiliency of market infrastructure and financial institutions.  

A special role for asset prices in the conduct of monetary policy requires three key assumptions. First, one must assume that a central bank can identify a bubble in progress... A second assumption needed to justify a special role for asset prices is that monetary policy cannot appropriately deal with the consequences of a burst bubble, and so preemptive actions against a bubble are needed... A third assumption needed to justify a special focus on asset prices in the conduct of monetary policy is that a central bank actually knows the appropriate monetary policy to deflate a bubble Because I doubt that any of the three assumptions needed to justify a special monetary policy focus on asset prices holds up, I am in the camp of those who argue that monetary policy makers should restrict their efforts to achieving their dual mandate of stabilizing inflation and employment and should not alter policy to have preemptive effects on asset prices.

To the extent that these forces act to put downward pressure on interest rates and upward pressure on other asset prices, they would contribute to more expansionary financial conditions than would otherwise be the case. And, if all else were equal, which of course is unlikely ever to be the case, monetary policy in the affected countries would have to adjust in response; policy would have to act to offset these effects in order to achieve the same impact on the future path of demand and inflation. To do otherwise would run the risk that monetary policy would be too accommodative, pulling resources from the future in a way that would alter the trajectory for the growth of the capital stock, perhaps amplifying the imbalances, and compromising the price stability.

Macroeconomic volatility has declined over the past two decades. Some of this decline appears to have fed through to financial markets in the form of lower risk premiums and higher asset valuations. To some extent, the lack of a clear link between macroeconomic volatility and the level of asset prices in existing research and models should not be a surprise. Explaining asset prices is difficult because they are determined by many complex factors, such as risk aversion, expected future earnings, and expected earnings volatility, which are inherently difficult to measure. A more concrete finding is that the decline in macroeconomic volatility has not led to a decline in asset price volatility. News about corporate earnings appears to have become less volatile, but this factor explains only a small part of the reduction in the volatility of asset prices. Rather, existing research suggests that asset price volatility remains largely a reflection of variation in investors' discount rates rather than of changes in forecasts of fundamentals. On a micro level, financial innovations and new types of market participants appear to have led to greater market efficiency and liquidity.

Now, I would like to explore some of the research that might explain whether and, if so, how the Great Moderation affected the level of asset prices. Structural models of asset prices provide a consistent framework for understanding both equity prices and interest rates. In these models, each asset price contains a risk premium that represents the additional return demanded by risk-averse investors for bearing risk. A reduction in macroeconomic volatility that reduces uncertainty about earnings or dividends could reduce the equity risk premium and, as a result, lead to higher equity prices. Less uncertainty about future inflation could lower the risk premiums on nominal Treasury bonds, lowering the risk-free interest rate. There is, however, a potential offset as well. Lower volatility may reduce the motive for precautionary savings and thus put upward pressure on interest rates and, all else equal, downward pressure on equities.

Economists, including those at central banks, simply are not very good at understanding, much less predicting, the dynamics of asset price adjustments; and I would guess that our ignorance is especially profound when those dynamics may be in the process of shifting.

Housing prices, like other asset prices, are a relative price, and I don't see those as a direct driver of inflationary trends.