There have been many concerns expressed on the internet about the eventual necessity of reversing the Fed’s cheap-money policies, which include “quantitative easing,” as well as a near-zero federal funds rate.

One idea some have is that there are “too many bonds” in the Fed’s portfolio, and that problems will occur with insufficient demand whenever the Fed attempts to reduce its holdings. This doomsday scenario often seems to vex public discussion but is unlikely to materialize, given that the Fed can always make use of its ability to “make a market” for Treasury securities.

An alternative way of looking at the same situation is that there is a huge amount of money and money-equivalents on bank balance sheets and in nonfinancial corporate coffers, and that the tendency of the modern economy toward financial fragility will eventually lead to risky loans and investments using these funds. (Jeremy Siegel adopts this view in the FT, with, however, an unfortunate emphasis on the possibility of a takeoff of inflation. Inflation remains below the Fed’s 2-percent approximate objective, and the greater risk by far is still recession. An Alphaville comment on his column makes the point that the threat of fragility remains regardless of whether banks have excess reserves on hand.) Concerns have already emerged about “junk” bonds, so-called leveraged loans, and other effervescent areas of finance. Of course, the problem then becomes for the authorities to implement an appropriate restraint on financial excesses. One conventional method would be to increase interest rates using open-market operations, which would of course probably entail the sale of securities. This scenario unfortunately might lead to some serious threats to financial stability, including problems that short-term and/or variable-rate borrowers might have meeting payment commitments on their debts, if the Fed were to raise interest rates sharply.

One big historical example of this kind of fragility is the rise in short-term interest rates that occurred in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the behest of the Fed. The resulting delta-R effect helped to bankrupt Mexico, among other disastrous impacts. Many years before that, the Fed was more inclined to use direct controls on credit, restricting the amount of money banks could lend out.

Key to the situation today, efforts are ongoing in Washington to formulate and implement appropriate rules to insure that various kinds of bank lending do not get out of hand in the first place. Efforts of this type would be unlikely to completely prevent future crises, but, if effective, would act to reduce fragility. Among other benefits, this approach might also permit the recovery in housing investment—currently only in a fledgling phase—to continue. Given the problems that sharp interest-rate increases can bring, it would also be helpful to keep the effects of moderate inflation in perspective, and to cope with inflation in non-destabilizing ways.