By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
MEXICO CITY, Aug 14 (Reuters) - As the U.S. Federal Reserve ponders a way out of its unprecedented financial rescue efforts, Latin America's experience with hyperinflation in the 1980s may hold some potential lessons.
The most important may be this: just because the economy is not running at full mast does not mean inflation pressures cannot take hold.
"If there is anything that should be learned from the Latin American experience it's that the idea that inflation won't increase if the economy is in a recession is simply wrong," said Carlos Vegh, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland.
Federal Reserve officials often cite a widening "output gap" -- the difference between an economy's full productive capacity and its actual pace of activity -- as a reason for their sanguine view on inflation.
But some analysts say such economic slack is only a useful buffer in a stable currency environment. A continued decline in the U.S. dollar, which has been sliding steadily since March, could make the Fed's inflationary brakes a little less sturdy.
"If the value of the dollar remains under pressure, the output gap argument doesn't hold a lot of water, and you get a situation very similar to what you had in Latin America," said Enrique Alvarez, head of emerging market strategy at IDEAglobal in New York.
After a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials edged a step closer to an exit strategy from their massive lending programs by signaling they would allow an initiative to make direct purchases of Treasury bonds to expire.
But this only comes after a significant upswing in inflation fears among many investors, who worry all the new money sloshing around the system is sure to fan higher prices.
BLOATED BALANCE SHEET
With the Fed's credit to the banking system, also referred to as its balance sheet, still hovering near $2 trillion -- well above the $850 billion or so seen before the crisis and with a much riskier composition of assets -- such worries have some basis.
Indeed, the financial crisis and myriad subsequent bank bailouts sponsored by the U.S. central bank have tarnished its otherwise robust inflation-fighting credentials.
And the Fed's Treasury debt purchase program, which has committed the central bank to buying $300 billion in government bonds, have created the impression it is "monetizing" the debt -- printing money to help the Treasury fund a record $1.84 trillion budget deficit.
This, in hindsight, was a key misstep in countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico in the 1980s, leading to currency crises and sky-high inflation rates that proved incredibly hard to tame. In Brazil, consumer inflation peaked at a hard-to-fathom 1,000 percent per year in the early 1990s.
Ben Bernanke is well aware of this slippery slope, which may be why he has chosen to cap the Fed's bond-buying spree. In 2005, the Fed Chairman, then a member of the central bank's Board of Governors, gave a speech praising Latin America for its successes in taming the inflation beast.
Curiously, his description of past leaders' errors of judgment showed an uncanny resemblance to the policies he has undertaken as U.S. monetary chief.
"Governments often introduced aggressive new spending programs that could not be financed through taxes or borrowing," Bernanke said. "The programs were consequently financed -- with the willing or unwilling cooperation of central banks -- by printing new money."
Yet that is exactly what Bernanke is doing, according to Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors in Huntington Beach, California. He points to a continuous fall in the dollar, which is down about 12 percent since March against a basket of major currencies.
"Our efforts to ignite the reflation of the housing market have been placed on the back of a depreciating currency," said Pento.
STREET CRED
Not so, say monetary doves, who defend Bernanke for bringing the economy back from the brink and saving the financial system from what appeared like imminent collapse late last year.
Inflation, meanwhile, has been tame. U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in July from a month earlier. Prices excluding volatile food and energy rose just 0.1 percent, and were up just 1.5 percent compared to a year earlier, the smallest rise in more than five years.
Analysts also note the United States' more diverse economy means it can more easily absorb shocks than Latin America.
"We had basic structural problems in Latin America like overdependence on tax revenues from a single export -- in the case of Mexico, oil," said economist Alejandro Villagomez at the CIDE think tank in Mexico City. "That's why our debt was unsustainable."
Bernanke's Fed has another attribute working in its favor that its Latin American counterparts sorely lacked: credibility.
Earned largely during former Fed chief Paul Volcker's brutally effective tenure of sky-high interest rates, the belief policy-makers will tighten the reins when the time is right can itself have a dampening effect on inflation.
Whether that trust can endure the Fed's increasing largess remains to be seen. (Editing by Andrea Ricci)