442 PA R T V Central Banking and the Conduct of Monetary Policy Dollar goes up Increase in target for the overnight interest rate Decrease in demand Prices $ Costs Ra t Interest rates go up F I G U R E 17- e of In fla tio n How the Bank of Canada Keeps the Rate of Inflation from Moving Above the Target Range Source: Bank of Canada website: www.bankofcanada.ca Reprinted with permission This transmission mechanism works well even when the short-term nominal interest rate is at or close to zero With a nominal interest rate of zero, a commitment by the central bank to expansionary monetary policy raises the expected inflation rate, ir * i + pe, reduces the real interest rate, pe, and leads to a rise in aggregate output Thus, expansionary monetary policy could stimulate spending even when the short-term nominal interest rate is at zero In fact, this mechanism is the key element in monetarist discussions of why an expansionary monetary policy could have prevented the sharp decline in output in the United States during the Great Depression, why it would have helped the Japanese economy when nominal interest rates fell to near zero in the late 1990s, and why it could help cope with the recent financial crisis and the global economic meltdown However, the collapse of stable relationships in financial markets may be causing the term structure of interest rate relationships on which the Keynesian transmission mechanism depends to loosen For example, the U.S Federal Reserve raised the target federal funds rate in seventeen consecutive meetings from June 2004 to July 2006, from 1% to 5.25%, but long-term interest rates in the United States and around the world declined for most of this period It has been argued that the reason long-term interest rates did not respond over this period of monetary tightening was the adoption of an inflation-targeting approach to monetary policy by many countries and increased competition from China and India in labour and product markets that contributed to price stability and put downward pressure on long-term interest rates by reducing inflationary expectations Similarly, the recent decline in the federal funds rate to its current range of 0% to 0.25% from 5.25% in August of 2007 has not led to the desired decline in long-