James Saft

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Europe‘s rule-based approach to fiscal reform will fall short because it effectively ignores the dynamics of credit markets, which laid the tracks along which this train wreck traveled.

Europe moved last week to impose some discipline on its member states’ fiscal houses, choosing a rule-based fudge rather than the fiscal union that a common currency probably ultimately needs. It will thus take discretion away from member states, pre-committing them to austerity measures during tough times, while doing very little to address the malfunctions in the banking system which create destructive credit bubbles in the first place.

Reforming Europe‘s fiscal framework without addressing the financial system which created all of the credit is like having alcoholics take ever more severe pledges of sobriety and penalties but still allowing them to own cocktail lounges.

To be sure, some sort of reform is welcome. The past decade has provided ample evidence that the previous framework was easy to game for states without sufficient discipline.

That said, while the shambolic arrangements of the euro zone have hamstrung attempts to react to the crisis, the means by which euro zone states got themselves into trouble are varied.

There is, however, one common denominator – a credit bubble was a necessary precondition to the borrowing which now leaves various European sovereign borrowers suspect.

This is as true of Ireland as it is of Greece. It is also true of France and may someday be true of Germany, if the current stream of policy thought is brought to its logical conclusion.

Ireland suffered a collapse in sovereign credit-worthiness because its banks engaged in a Ponzi-fest of lending, both to their domestic clients and to borrowers abroad. Ireland was brought low by assuming, effectively, the credit risk for Irish banks, while a policy of austerity has combined with the natural fallout of a credit bust to crater tax receipts, further undermining the state’s ability to service its debts.

Something not too dissimilar happened in Spain with housing-related credit but not on the same scale and, so far, without an outright banking crisis. There too a credit bubble floated the economy, flattered tax receipts and put off the reckoning Spain is now undergoing.

Greece too fattened at the trough of the credit bubble, using easy global credit to allow it to finance profligate government spending, despite endemic tax fraud and corruption. You have to note here too that if a state fabricates its economic statistics no number of new rules or treaty revisions will work. Greece‘s problem wasn’t simply that it could borrow at German-like rates while being an old-fashioned emerging market, it was that it was doing so in the midst of probably the biggest global credit bubble ever.

AND ON TO FRANCE

And then we come to France, and its banks. Investors are now demanding more than a percent extra in interest to hold French bonds compared to German ones, in large part because France is the obvious bag-holder should its horrifically over-leveraged banks come undone. And yes, those banks have created credit and bestowed some of it on France itself, and much of it on doubtful borrowers further south, thus piling leverage upon leverage.

This seems to be a real blind spot in European – really in global – policy making. It is instructive to note that the European Central Bank has focused most of its ire on sovereign borrowers, which it refuses to coddle with direct purchases of government debt, while at the same time taking ever more extreme steps to keep banks alive with generous financing.

Last week the ECB came out with a host of liquidity provisions aimed at banks, including new long-term funding options, a relaxing of collateral rules and allowing national central banks to finance certain bank loans. Of course some of this liquidity will simply find its way back into sovereign debt, or at least many European states must hope so.

As far as Europe‘s reform of its banks goes, most of the effort is expended on making banks solvent, without effective measures to short-circuit the next credit bubble. That bubble will only happen after an almighty credit bust, which is now on its way as banks pull back from lending and seek to dispose of assets.

Looking through the coming recession and credit crunch, the excessive co-dependence of states and their banking systems looks likely to continue. There are no convincing measures under discussion in either Europe or the U.S. to break the too-big-to-fail guarantees, and so long as financial institutions are run for private profit while benefiting from a public guarantee the risk is the formation of another credit bubble.

Maybe next time it won’t be excessive government borrowing. It doesn’t need to be. The financial system will create the money, and governments will foot the bill for the instability that ultimately follows.

States must break the state/bank co-dependency or ultimately the banks will, perhaps literally, break the states.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.)

James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

It looks as if we will need to see some kind of miracle intervention from the European Central Bank — a Deus ex ECB — or the euro zone is heading for a nasty divorce.

Either the ECB comes across with a mandate-busting rescue, probably involving direct lending to Italy and rolling the currency printing presses, or the forces aligned against currency union will roll over Italy and into France.

Italian political chaos and a move by some clearing houses to demand more margin on Italian debt helped to drive 10-year yields of the troubled sovereign borrower to a euro-era record of 7.5 percent on Wednesday. The market appears to doubt that the EFSF rescue fund will be big enough and operative enough to back Italy effectively.

The sheer size of what would be required to backstop Italy, which has the world’s third-largest bond market, throws doubt in turn on support for Spain, whose bonds are also selling off, and the ability of France to maintain its AAA rating, without which Germany is left alone as the bulwark against a gigantic bank run.

The ECB has been buying Italian bonds in the secondary market but still sees itself as only providing transitional support until other European rescue initiatives can take its place.

There is no time for that, and the ECB, and the nations which ultimately govern it, must decide if they are going to stick to their stated principles or preserve the euro.

“What is needed is a clear statement from the ECB that it would act as the lender of last resort for a sovereign that meets explicit and tough conditions and can thus safely be deemed to be solvent,” Holger Schmieding, economist at Berenberg Bank wrote in a note to clients.

“We still believe that the ECB would step in to save the euro and itself in the end, and that the Bundesbank may even acquiesce to that once all other alternatives to keep the euro together have been exhausted.”

To save the euro the ECB must declare that it will act as a lender of last resort for euro zone sovereigns, wade into primary bond markets in huge size, effectively monetizing government debt by printing money to fund borrowing. To work, this has to be accompanied by believable pledges not just of economic reform, but to bring on fiscal integration and to change forever the role of the ECB.

Doesn’t sound very likely, does it, especially in the next week or two.

A SMALL MATTER OF THE LAW

Not only is this anathema to many within the ECB, it is expressly against the treaty which describe what it may and may not do. Article 101 of the European Treaty expressly forbids the ECB from lending to governments and Article 103 prohibits the euro zone from becoming liable for the debts of member states. That means that either the ECB has to in essence go rogue, violating its founding principles, or the mechanisms of structural change have to pull off a miracle in the next week to change its mandate.

The amount of debt the ECB would take on to its balance sheet might also eventually require a recapitalization of the central bank itself, no small matter.

If that all somehow comes to pass, then the rest of ailing Europe, seeing how Italy was bailed out solely because it is big, will immediately try to reopen the terms of their own bailouts. Not to mention the fact that these actions would almost certainly face enormous political and legal challenges in Germany and elsewhere.

Not only does this all seem far-fetched, it is far from clear that it is a good idea. As soon as the ECB starts printing money the euro will tumble, and the Federal Reserve will be under pressure to engage in its own round of quantitative easing to counter the drag on its own economy that a newly strong dollar represents, raising the specter of hot currency wars.

One alternative is an IMF-led bailout of Italy, perhaps supported by some cash from the EFSF. This too may be too big a task for the IMF to garner sufficient support from its own funders. Imagine the election year challenge the Obama administration would face in explaining why it provided hundreds of millions in support to Europe via the IMF.

The other choices are equally unpalatable. Simply letting Greece go, which might have worked several months ago, is now not enough. The consequences to the global banking system and economy if Italy and perhaps others left at the same time are mind-boggling.

Why equities have traded as well as they have given these risks is a mystery. Perhaps massive money printing will be good for riskier assets; a euro break-up surely will not.

One way or another, it is looking as if we are going to find out.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. You can email him at jamessaft@jamessaft.com)

In a field of endeavor with a long and glorious history of folly, the European Central Bank is preparing to commit an error for the ages: hike interest rates into the face of a crisis of existence for the euro zone.

There is an increasing likelihood that when the ECB meets  on April 7 they will respond to surging energy costs and 2.4 percent annual inflation – the highest since 2008 – by raising interest rates, probably by a quarter of a percent.

“Inflation rates … are now durably above the common definition of price stability in the euro zone,” ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet told an audience in Paris on Monday.

This reinforced expectations of a hike he introduced in early March when he dropped the words “strong vigilance” into remarks following the last interest rate-setting meeting, a phrase that served as a one month warning of rate hikes to come during the 2005-2007 rate hike campaign.

Reports that the ECB is preparing a new bail-out lending vehicle for Irish banks, taken as a precursor to a wider effort at bank relief, are being read in markets as further evidence that the ECB is ready to tighten. The reasoning is that, having squared away the banks, and their mutually dependent sovereign guarantors, nothing will stand in the way of an old fashioned bout of inflation scourging.

Here we see the ECB’s conception of itself – as an institution proudly above the political fray and dedicated single-mindedly to price stability – clouding its ability to treat with reality.

“Sure”, you can almost hear ECB types say to themselves, “we’ve accepted some pretty horrendous collateral, and sure, we’ve kept insolvent banks alive through providing massive liquidity, but at heart we are just honest inflation hating bankers, just like our forebears at the Bundesbank.”

Actually though, as Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Adam Posen points out, the Bundesbank, when confronted with the oil shock and global recession of 1979-80 dealt with energy-driven inflation quite differently.

“The Bundesbank made public that it would take several years to bring inflation back to its target long-run inflation level, even though it would partially offset the shock immediately and inflation would rise. In fact, it took six years for German inflation to be brought back to 2.0 percent, and both the Deutsche Mark and the Bundesbank retained their counter-inflationary credibility,” Posen said in a February speech.

Now, when you recall that the Bundesbank was slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun in its attitude towards inflation, the ECB’s current course of action looks even more, to be polite, remarkable.

GREECE,  IRELAND, PORTUGAL

Remarkable, especially, when you consider what is being asked of the peripheral euro zone countries. Greece, for example, last year tightened fiscal policy by 8.0 percent of GDP, a statistic that is more impressive before you learn that its economy, partly as a result, shrank by 5.0 percent. You really cannot do that too many years in a row, either mathematically, or politically.

A semi-revolt against austerity measures in Portugal prompted the resignation of Prime Minister Jose Socrates last week, leaving a European rescue plan in limbo. Portugal is now being pressured to accept a bailout, but there is real doubt as to whether it will sign on for the measures expected, and even more doubt as to whether it can stick with them over time.

Inflation is not the problem in Portugal, it is declining standards of living, exacerbated by rising energy costs, but really the result of a squeeze on labor and consumption that is its only means of regaining competitiveness as it has no currency of its own to devalue.

Or take Ireland, which is fighting for better bailout terms, its latest gambit being to push the idea of burden sharing for bank creditors to its crippled banking system. As burden sharing means banking crisis, you can take this as a negotiating position. Or consider Spain, whose own banking system and economy will not be helped by the ECB fighting inflation.

Meanwhile there is a lack of convincing evidence even in the stronger countries of the euro zone that inflation is hardening into large wage rises.

In the meantime, there is evidence that the European recovery, uneven as it is, is facing headwinds. Measured in real terms, currency in circulation and overnight bank deposits in the euro zone are contracting, a strong leading indicator of a slowdown. While this trend started in the weak periphery, it has spread to the core, and is troubling.

A rate hike will rain down even more pain on struggling Spain and its peers and will on the margins make their task of outgrowing their debts and honoring their European commitments even less feasible and will do exactly nothing about the real cause of inflation – rising energy prices.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.)

Looking to hedge against a spike in inflation? Equities may not be much help.

Neither, for that matter, will you do all that well over the longer haul with bonds, cash or even commodities, at least on the historical evidence. In short, when it comes to investing, inflation is a real drag.

It’s impossible to know if, much less when, the current very stimulative monetary policy in the developed world will spur inflation, but increasingly indicators are raising concerns. Emerging market economies show signs of overheating, while prices of food and many other commodities are surging.

The traditional view has been that equities are an effective hedge against inflation, in least over the long term, because companies will, all things being equal, eventually pass on inflation to their clients as higher prices.

That’s the theory, but the practice may prove to be much different, according to a study by IMF economists Alexander Attie and Shaun Roache, who examined the performance of a range of traditional asset classes in the aftermath of inflation shocks.

“Among traditional asset classes, inflation hedges are imperfect at best and unlikely to work at worst,” according to Attie and Roache.

First, the authors looked at returns in the 12 months after inflation shocks in the period after the 1973 end of the Bretton Woods system of fixed currencies. The results were not surprising; bonds got killed, equities did badly, as did cash, while commodities were an effective hedge. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) did about as badly as equities, somewhat undermining the argument for real estate during inflationary periods.

All well and good, but really only of use for the small number of daredevils who are willing to make big asset allocation shifts over a short period of time.

For most savers, not to mention pension funds and endowments, the more useful question is how do you hedge against inflation for the longer term?

The results for equities were not encouraging.

“Equity returns decline in the months following an inflation shock and do not experience a meaningful recovery thereafter, leaving them as the worst performing asset class in our sample,” according to the study.

“Our findings are consistent with evidence from a range of earlier studies and add further weight to the evidence against the theoretical arguments for equities as a real asset class providing inflation protection when inflation is rising.”

Over the 18 months after the shock, real returns were negative, though less negative than bonds, which get hammered by inflation. Equities improve a bit over the next couple of years, but even when looked at in the long run of more than five years an inflation shock makes for losses in real terms.

IN THE LONG RUN WE’RE ALL …
As for the other asset prices, inflation proves very difficult to hedge against even over the longer term. Take commodities, the star performer in the first 18 months after inflation bites; spot prices decline in the medium term and when you get above five years after the inflationary event you are looking at actual losses in spot prices. This might be because inflation hits demand, but also might be because high prices spur greater investment in efficiency, which over the long term also moderates demand.

While bonds get killed in the first couple of years after an inflation shock, after about three years returns improve, presumably partly because investors demand higher yields to make up for nasty recent experiences.

Cash returns do a bit better, but even cash, which can go where it likes in search of better returns as inflation increases, fails to serve as a perfect hedge over the longer term.

So, how to hedge against inflation? Inflation-protected bonds such as TIPS would work, but to be a hedge you have to buy and hold to maturity, as outside forces can easily distort returns through the life of a given bond.

Given that inflation is a portfolio killer, why then are equity markets booming? Well, in emerging markets where inflation is kicking in first they are not. In developed markets, investors seem to be placing a touching amount of faith in central bankers. After all, if the Federal Reserve and ECB don’t pull the plug on stimulus in time, inflation can easily get out of control.

Or perhaps equity markets are betting the central banks will fail to stoke growth and be forced to blow a larger asset market bubble as a consequence.

Or maybe everybody thinks they will be the genius who gets out in time.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. email: jamessaft@jamessaft.com)

The good news is that the European Central Bank will probably start a massive additional round of quantitative easing to fight the break-up of the euro zone.

The bad news is that they will, as ever, only choose the right policy, as Winston Churchill said of the Americans, after exhausting all of the alternatives.

Global share markets rallied furiously on Wednesday, fed by hopes that the ECB would increase its bond-buying efforts, a possibility raised by its chief Jean-Claude Trichet in an appearance before the European Parliament. Trichet faces stern opposition inside the ECB from fellow central bankers, notably German Axel Weber, who believe that policy should be normalized rather than loosened.

This opposition, in combination with an unsure political climate, means that euro zone authorities will probably continue to try to buttress, enlarge and formalize the bailout mechanism while trying to maintain the fiction that something approaching normality reigns in European money and bank funding markets.

Why would QE be used to fight the break-up of the euro zone, now being widely discussed as the crisis spreads to ever larger member states?

Because QE, or really we should simply call it the monetization of government borrowing, offers some hope of easing the austerity now being imposed on Ireland and soon to come in Portugal and Spain.

Europe has made a choice to not allow member states to default or to allow their weakened banks to default, as default would threaten banks elsewhere. That leaves weakened economies carrying a crushing amount of debt, debt they will attempt to repay by budget cuts. This is a recipe for an economic death spiral, as a smaller and smaller economy becomes less and less able to shoulder its debt service.

Without their own currencies to devalue, the weak of Europe have no other safety valves.

While QE is genuinely dangerous, it will ease conditions and can be directed at peripheral bond markets.Default is a better option, but Europe is unwilling to go there, at least not yet.

So, QE it will be, but the issue becomes when and how large.

“If the political masters in Europe wish to maintain the status quo then the answer lies in the monetization of debt. The ECB, with the ability to print money, can support the market by buying government bonds,” Stefan Isaacs, of fund manager M&G Investments, wrote in a note to investors.

“However what is needed is ‘shock and awe’ rather than tentative, reactionary responses, if indeed the ultimate goal is to support the euro in its current guise. That said, I’m not convinced that an about-turn is likely any time soon. The hawks in the ECB remain, for now, firmly attached to their mandate of price stability.”

EUROPE LOOKS FOR A BAZOOKA
For now, the ECB is likely to do what it can by way of bond purchases and liquidity support while temporizing over the pace and scale of returning the system to normality.

The focus of action, then, will be on increasing the size and prestige of the European Financial Stability Facility,  created in May and so far employed to help both Greece and Ireland. ECB council member Weber suggested in November this could be increased and there have been some indications that both the euro zone and IMF are discussing this.

This strategy is appealing to Weber and to others in Europe because it emphasizes euro zone strength and resolve, taking real money and lending it to allow member states time to pay back their debts, rather than printing up a mess of inflation and euro weakness to ease the pain.

A muscular strategy, but also a failing one. The 750 billion euros was meant to be big and intimidating back in May, but now looks paltry. If Spain needs help would 1.5 trillion euros look much better? Not if the debts of the weak Spanish regional banks are not partly extinguished. The same math of austerity and growth that applies now to Ireland will apply to Portugal and Spain in time.

So, QE, preferably large, from the ECB, but likely not until they are pushed early next year.

If this happens, or rather as its likelihood rises, it will drive a massive rally in risk assets and drive even more liquidity to Asia. Many investors will be giddy that the ECB and Federal Reserve are both driving asset prices higher, while a substantial minority, fearing inflation, will flee government debt and buy energy, commodities and gold.

The big loser, in the near term, will be China, which will have to eat European- and U.S.-exported inflation and will fret over its trillions in euro and dollar reserves.

(At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund.  email Saft at: jamessaft@jamessaft.com)