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Reuters blog archive
from MacroScope:
Abe’s European spring break: Japan stimulus sends euro zone yields to record lows
It wasn't just the Nikkei. Euro zone government bonds rallied following Japan's announcement of a massive new monetary stimulus. That sent yields on the debt of several euro zone countries to record lows on bets that Japanese investors might be switching out of Japanese government bonds into euro zone paper, or might soon do so.
The Bank of Japan on Thursday announced extraordinary stimulus steps to revive the world's third-largest economy, vowing to inject about $1.4 trillion into the financial system in less than two years in a dose of shock therapy to end two decades of deflation.
Austrian, Dutch, French and Belgian borrowing costs over ten years fell to record lows as investors piled into euro zone debt offering a pick-up over Germany. The bond rally was led by 10- and 30-year maturities after the BOJ said it would double its holdings of long-term government bonds.
According to one trader:
There is no question that Asian demand for semi-core is quite strong and I think, in light of yesterday's BOJ move, the expectation is that that's going to continue.
from MacroScope:
Another euro zone week to reckon with
Despite Mario Draghi's game changer, or potential game changer, the coming week’s events still have the power to shape the path of the euro zone debt crisis in a quite decisive way, regardless of the European Central Bank's offer to buy as many government bonds as needed to buy politicians time to do their work.
The nuclear event would be the German constitutional court ruling on Wednesday that the bloc’s new ESM rescue fund should not come into being, which would leave the ECB’s plans in tatters since its intervention requires a country to seek help from the rescue funds first and the ESM’s predecessor, the EFSF, looks distinctly threadbare. That is unlikely to happen given the court’s previous history but it could well add conditions demanding greater German parliamentary scrutiny and even a future referendum on deeper European integration. For the time being though, the markets are likely to take a binary view. ‘Yes’ to the ESM good, ‘No’ very bad.
from MacroScope:
Austerity light? Maybe a shade lighter
There is a groundswell building in the euro zone that austerity drives should be tempered.
France’s Francois Hollande, favourite to take the presidency next month, said last night that leaders across Europe were awaiting his election to back away from German-led austerity, and even ECB President Mario Draghi called yesterday for a growth pact.
from MacroScope:
ECB to the rescue? Hold your horses
ECB policymakers from Mario Draghi down will come at us from all angles today. Expect a united front on the main theme of the moment; calls for it to consider yet more liquidity operations essentially creating money and/or resuming its government bond-buying programme. That call was first heard at the IMF spring meeting over the weekend and the ECB president’s response could hardly have been clearer, saying: “None of the advice of the IMF has been discussed by the Governing Council, in recent times at least".
Since then a number of his colleagues have followed up. The message: they are looking more to inflation now and banks and governments have to put their own houses in order after the ECB gave them time with its colossal three-year money-creating exercise.
The ECB's man in Spain, Gonzalez-Paramo, is already out this morning saying Spain will not struggle to meet its debt issuance target this year despite its rising yields.
from Global Investing:
Research Radar: Beyond Hollande and Holland…
Markets have been dominated this week so far by the fallout from Sunday's French presidential election, where Socialist Francois Hollande now looks set to beat incumbent conservative Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 6 runoff , and the collapse of the ruling Dutch coalition on Monday. Public anxiety about budgetary austerity in Europe was further reinforced by news on Monday of a deepening of the euro zone private sector contraction in April. That said, euro equity, bond and currency prices have stabilised relatively quickly even if implied volatility has increased as investors brace for another month or so of political heat in the single currency bloc. The French runoff is now on the same day as the Greek elections and May 31 sees Ireland going to the polls to vote on the EU's new fiscal compact. Wall St's volatility gauge, the ViX, is back up toward 20% -- better reflecting longer term averages -- and relatively risky assets such as emerging market equities remain on the back foot. The euro political heat and slightly slower Q2 world growth pulse will likely keep markets subdued and jittery until mid year at least. At that point, another cyclical upswing in world manufacturing together with the passing of the EBA's euro bank recapitalisation deadline as well as the introduction of the new European Stability Mechanism may well encourage investors to return at better levels.
Following are some interesting tips from Tuesday's bank and investment fund research notes:
from MacroScope:
Euro zone goes Dutch
So the euro zone debt crisis morphs again and there is a hint of schadenfreude about the Dutch, who lectured and hectored the Greeks, now falling into the same mire.
The Dutch premier, Mark Rutte, will probably try to cobble together an unholy alliance in parliament in order to meet an April 30 EU deadline for it to present budget plans for the next year. But with elections not until late June at the earliest, there will be an unnerving period of vacuum for the markets and no guarantee that opposition parties will play ball and allow a budget to be put together.
from MacroScope:
Netherlands at core of the crisis
The Netherlands has become the latest country to come into the firing line of the euro zone crisis.
The cost of insuring five-year Dutch debt against default jumped to its highest since January as the government's failure to agree on budget cuts spiraled into a political crisis and cast doubt over its support for future euro zone measures.
from Global Investing:
Three snapshots for Monday
The euro zone's business slump deepened at a far faster pace than expected in April, suggesting the economy will stay in recession at least until the second half of the year. The euro zone's manufacturing PMI came in below all forecasts from a Reuters poll of economists, plumbing 46.0 in April - its lowest reading since June 2009. Weak PMI numbers are a bad sign for economic growth (see chart) but also for earnings:
Reuters reports that the Dutch government will resign on Monday in a crisis over budget cuts, spelling the end of a coalition which has strongly backed a European Union fiscal treaty and lectured Greece on getting its finances in order. As this overview shows the Dutch economy looks in better shape than many in the euro zone but is still finding austerity measures difficult to pass.
from MacroScope:
A curate’s egg — good in parts
An action-packed weekend with both good and bad news for the euro zone, which may -- net -- leave its prospects little clearer.
Item 1: The IMF came up with $430 billion in new firepower to contain the euro zone-led world economic crisis, although some of the money will only be delivered by the BRICS once they have more sway at the Fund. Nonetheless, the figure at least matches expectations and could give markets pause for thought. The official line is that it is for non-euro countries caught up in the maelstrom but no one really believes that. If a Spain is teetering, IMF funds will be there. Together with the 500 billion euros rescue fund set up by the euro zone, there is still barely enough to ringfence both Italy and Spain if it came to it. But will it come to it?
from MacroScope:
Disquiet at the ECB
A day for central bankers and maybe the hint of a row brewing within the ECB. After days of jitters, euro zone bond markets were calmed a little this week when ECB policymaker Benoit Coure said the central bank’s government bond-buying programme could be revived if Spain started teetering.
That is decidedly not what the orthodoxists in Frankfurt would have wanted to hear. They are already worried that the creation of more than a trillion euros of three-year money could be stoking future inflation and creating addicted banks and feel that the bond-buying programme crosses a red line -- that the ECB should not fund governments.
