“Policy makers steering the global economy have pumped the financial system with so much liquidity that any exit risks popping potential asset bubbles or stunting a recovery, Danish central bank Governor Lars Rohde said.
“The risk is we stay in this climate too long and that the carpet bombing of liquidity spurs inflation,” Rohde, 59, said in an April 5 interview from his office in Copenhagen. Though there are no current signs of consumer price inflation “there is inflation, perhaps a bubble, in some asset classes,” he said. “Equities (MXWO) are trading close to all-time highs. Segments of property markets across the globe, for example London, also display symptoms of this. How do we exit this without killing whatever nascent recovery there might be at that time?”
The warning from the head of Denmark’s central bank, which has kept its deposit rate below zero since July, comes as policy makers in Japan, the euro area and the U.S. deliver unprecedented monetary stimulus to drag the global economy out of the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Easy money has fueled equity prices, helping send the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to an all-time high on April 2. The yield on Japan’s benchmark 10-year bond hit its lowest on record last week.
“We’re in a landscape where we’ve never been before, with regard to extreme monetary accommodation over a very, very long period of time,” said Rohde, who took over as the head of Denmark’s central bank in February. “What does that end up doing to a society? It’s been a necessary policy, but I have my concerns about what the long-term risks are.”
