What have a trillion euros done for the economic outlook? Not much yet
The trillion euro sugar rush that made Q1 the best start to the year for global stocks in more than a decade has already worn off, but what is most striking is not how quickly it ended. It’s how little the economic outlook has changed.
Cheap central bank money mainly seems to have boosted stocks and the optimism of stock market forecasters, who generally are the most bullish of the lot with or without wads of cheap money.
An analysis of Reuters Polls over the past three months, starting just before the European Central Bank made the first of two gargantuan injections of cheap three-year money into the banking system, reveals what many have fretted might happen.
Derived from professional market forecasters and economists, they showed that the cash would probably do a lot to push up asset prices in the short term but do little to help a stalled euro zone economy with rising unemployment.
The consensus for Q1 euro zone GDP has stagnated at a quarterly contraction of 0.2 percent in the past three monthly Reuters polls, starting from the December poll, taken before the ECB’s first of two long-term refinancing operations (LTROs).
Over the same period, the outlook for 2012 growth as a whole deteriorated from none at all to a mild 0.3 percent contraction.
Frankfurt’s DAX had its best Q1 since 1998, up a staggering 18 percent. European shares more broadly rose 7 percent – still, the kind of return an investor might hope to get during a good year, not three months.
Who’d be a central banker?
The focus is already on the euro zone finance ministers meeting in Copenhagen, starting on Friday, which is likely to agree to some form of extra funds for the currency bloc’s future bailout fund. What they come up with will go a long way to determining whether markets scent any faltering commitment on the part of Europe’s leaders.
In the meantime, top billing goes to Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann speaking in London later. He is heading an increasingly vocal group within the European Central bank who are fretting about the future inflationary and other consequences of the creation of more than a trillion euros of three-year money. There is no chance of the ECB hitting the policy reverse button yet but the debate looks set to intensify. A combination of German inflation and euro zone money supply numbers today (which include a breakdown on bank lending) will give some guide to the pressures on the ECB.
Central bankers face a very mixed picture with U.S. recovery and high oil vying with the unresolved euro zone debt crisis and signs of slowdown in China.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was sitting firmly on the fence yesterday, saying he did not know whether more QE would be required in Britain or not. Tellingly, he also did not know whether euro zone policymakers will take advantage of the window of opportunity offered them by the ECB or not. King illuminated a common theme coming from central bankers, saying the onus was firmly on the politicians now, while his colleague Adam Posen noted that the reason Britain’s recovery has lagged America’s is because of the former’s tough austerity measures. That’s another debate that is echoing around the euro zone. In the States, Bernanke said it is too soon to declare victory in the U.S. economic recovery.
Back to the euro zone and Spanish media was alive with reports that the EU was pressing Madrid to take a bailout to recapitalize its wobbly banks. The denials from both centres were so emphatic that it seems not to be true. It seems EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia spelled out three options to clean up Spain’s banking sector: using Spanish public funds, finding private investment or applying for European aid. Journalists present leapt on the latter. That may well become true in the end … but not yet.
Spain faces a general strike on Thursday while Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is promising Friday’s 2012 budget will deliver eye-watering austerity for a country already sinking back into recession.
from Global Investing:
January in the rearview mirror
As January 2012 drifts into the rearview mirror as a bumper month for world markets, one way to capture the year so far is in pictures - thanks to Scott Barber and our graphics team.
The driving force behind the market surge was clearly the latest liquidity/monetary stimuli from the world's central banks.
The ECB's near half trillion euros of 3-year loans has stabilised Europe's ailing banks by flooding them with cheap cash for much lower quality collateral. In the process, it's also opened up critical funding windows for the banks and allowed some reinvestment of the ECB loans into cash-strapped euro zone goverments. That in turn has seen most euro government borrowing rates fall. It's also allowed other corporates to come to the capital markets and JP Morgan estimates that euro zone corporate bond sales in January totalled 46 billion euros, the same last year and split equally between financials and non-financials..
But to the extent that the ECB move was aimed primarily at preventing a seizure of the banks, then one measure of success can be seen in the degree to which it steepened government yield curves in Spain and Italy. A positive yield curve, which measures the gap between short-term and long-term interest rates, is effectively commercial banks' ATM -- they make money by simply borrowing short-term and lending long. This chart then shows some normality returning to the benchmark interest structure.
from Mike Dolan:
Sparring with central banks
Just one look at the whoosh higher in global markets in January and you'd be forgiven smug faith in the hoary old market adage of "Don't fight the Fed" -- or to update the phrase less pithily for the modern, globalised marketplace: "Don't fight the world's central banks". (or "Don't Battle the Banks", maybe?)
In tandem with this month's Federal Reserve forecast of near-zero U.S. official interest rates for the next two years, the European Central Bank provided its banking sector nearly half a trillion euros of cheap 3-year loans in late December (and may do almost as much again on Feb 29). Add to that ongoing bouts of money printing by the Bank of England, Swiss National Bank, Bank of Japan and more than 40 expected acts of monetary easing by central banks around the world in the first half of this year and that's a lot of additional central bank support behind the market rebound. So is betting against this firepower a mug's game? Well, some investors caution against the chance that the Banks are firing duds.
According to giant bond fund manager Pimco, the post-credit crisis process of household, corporate and sovereign deleveraging is so intense and loaded with risk that central banks may just be keeping up with events and even then are doing so at very different speeds. What's more the solution to the problem is not a monetary one anyway and all they can do is ease the pain.
Low interest rates and liquidity schemes can't solve what ails the developed world. Societies must accept that in order to alter their current perilous course they must undergo great change, moving away from entitlements to which they have become accustomed. The alternative is weak economic growth, a loss of competitiveness and negative external balances -- a loss of face and place in the global hierarchy.
As if to reinforce the underlying point that the developed world faces a protracted reform period that tests political, economic and social priorities, credit rating firm Standard & Poors' -- not the most popular company in corridors of power over the past year -- warned on Tuesday that it may downgrade the debt of "a number of highly-rated" Group of 20 countries from 2015 if their governments fail to enact reforms to curb rising healthcare spending and other costs related to ageing populations.
For Pimco, the political and social resistance to this sort of change is already showing itself to be significant both in Europe and the United States. People clearly don't want to see pensions and benefits cut but politicians have already grown government and sovereign indebtedness close to their maximum. Accommodative central banks that helped them get there only ended up fueling credit, consumption and housing bubbles and distorting the balance of the economy away from production and into an increasingly bloated financial sector. That, clearly, ended in tears as finance itself needed bailing out and compounded the sovereign debt burden.
So if harder, longer-term choices and reforms are now needed, central banks ability to continually reflate the world economy by monetary means alone is at best uncertain, Pimco argues. The risk of major upheavals along the way in Europe, for example, has the potential for major market volatility and economic seizures.
from Amplifications:
A centralized Europe is a globalized Europe
By Jean-Claude Trichet
The views expressed are his own.
PARIS – Whenever people seek a justification for European integration, they are always tempted to look backwards. They stress that European integration banished the specter of war from the old continent. And European integration has, indeed, delivered the longest period of peace and prosperity that Europe has known for many centuries.
But this perspective, while entirely correct, is also incomplete. There are as many reasons to strive towards “ever closer union” in Europe today as there were back in 1945, and they are entirely forward-looking.
Sixty-five years ago, the distribution of global GDP was such that Europe had only one role model for its single market: the United States. Today, however, Europe is faced with a new global economy, reconfigured by globalization and by the emerging economies of Asia and Latin America.
It is a world where economies of scale and networks of innovation matter more than ever. By 2016 – that is, very soon – we can expect eurozone GDP in terms of purchasing power parity to be below that of China. Together, the economies of China and India could be around twice the size of the eurozone economy. Over a longer time horizon, the entire GDP of the G-7 countries will be dwarfed by the major emerging economies’ rapid growth.
So Europe must cope with a new geopolitical landscape that is being profoundly reshaped by these emerging economies. In this new global constellation, European integration – both economic and political – is central to achieving ongoing prosperity and influence.
Jean-Claude Trichet you may be too feckless to realize it, but you are well on your way to a cemented reputation of failure on par with Neville Chamberlain. You failed (and continue to fail) to understand the nature, scope, and depth of the crisis.
You more than any other held the key to averting disaster. And you more than any other deliberately ignored the danger. Now you more than any other will take the blame.
I have little doubt that your brain will continue to inculcate you from these troubling thoughts as it has previously done so well.
Billions are suffering as a result of your myopia. Here’s wishing you a comfortable retirement.
from Global Investing:
Hungary’s Orban and his central banker
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent central banker?" Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban may not have voiced this sentiment but since he took power last year he is likely to have thought it more than once. Increasingly, the spat between Orban's government and central bank governor Andras Simor brings to memory the quarrel England's Henry II had with his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, over the rights and privileges of the Church almost 900 years ago. Simor stands accused of undermining economic growth by holding interest rates too high and resisting government demands for monetary stimulus. The government's efforts to sideline Simor are viewed as infringing on the central bank's independence.
So far, attacks on Simor have ranged from alleging he has undisclosed overseas income to stripping him of his power to appoint some central bank board members. But the government's latest plan could be the last straw -- proposed legislation that would effectively demote Simor or at least seriously dilute his influence. Simor says the government is trying to engineer a total takeover at the central bank. "The new law brings the final elimination of the central bank's independence dangerously close," he said last week. The move is ill-timed however, coming exactly at a time when Hungary is trying to persuade the IMF and the European Union to give it billions of euros in aid. The lenders have expressed concern about the law and declined to proceed with the loan talks. But the government says it will not bow to external pressure and plans to put the law to vote on Friday. That has sparked general indignation - Societe Generale analyst Benoit Anne calls the spat extremely damaging to investor confidence in Hungary. "I just hope the IMF will not let this go," he writes.
Central banks and governments often fail to see eye to eye. But in Hungary, the government's attacks on Simor, a respected figure in central banking and investment circles, is hastening the downfall of the already fragile economy. For one, if IMF funds fail to come through, Hungary will need to find 4.7 billion euros next year just to repay maturing hard currency debt. That could be tough at a time when lots of borrowers -- developed and emerging -- will be competing for scarce funds. Central European governments alone will be looking to raise 16 billion euros on bond markets, data from ING shows. So Orban will have to tone down his rhetoric if he is to avoid plunging his country into financial disaster.
But this week the tussle has intensified as the central bank has shrugged off Orban's call for more "growth-friendly policies" and raised interest rates by half a point. The rate rise, the second in as many months, brings interest rates to 7 percent, sparking rage in the ruling party. But the central bank, quite logically, argues higher rates are necessary to protect Hungary's currency, the forint, from further weakness. And it has signalled it is fully prepared to raise rates again at the next meeting if required.
Love, dissent and transparency at the Fed
All four Federal Reserve policymakers who dissented on U.S. central bank policy this year will lose their votes next year. That could make the New Year full of love, but not necessary free from dissent, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher joked on Friday.
Fisher, like Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota and Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser, lobbied and lost against Fed easing earlier this year; all three dissented twice. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans dissented twice from the other side of the aisle, arguing for further easing at the most recent two meetings against the majority’s decision to stand pat.
None will have votes next year. Not, of course, because they voiced their opposition to the majority, but simply because votes rotate among regional Fed presidents according to a set schedule, and it just so happened that all four regional Fed presidents with votes this year used those votes to dissent.
“We still love each other — in fact we’ll love each other more because we are not going to be voters next year – we’ll have to hug each other and have solidarity,” Fisher told reporters after a speech in Austin on Friday. But Fisher for his part vowed that even without a vote he will “not be quiet,” and said that whether colleagues will cast dissents will depend on what proposals are put on the table.
Fisher also suggested that he may balk at new efforts – now under consideration at the Fed – to boost transparency at the nearly 100-year-old central bank.
“We are so transparent, you can put your hands through us,” he quipped. “Name another business, let alone a government agency, any private business in the world, that puts their balance sheet on the Net every two weeks. Do you realize how much work that takes? Anyway we do that, all of us speak, we are publishing our economic forecasts, which can or cannot be of useful efficacy — they are only forecasts and they are all based on the predicament, the assumption rather, of appropriate monetary policy which we determine at the table. We are laying everything on the table…We are about to turn 100, and nothing that’s 100 years old should be providing a full frontal view. It’s unbecoming.”
from Global Investing:
Phew! Emerging from euro fog
Holding your breath for instant and comprehensive European Union policies solutions has never been terribly wise. And, as the past three months of summit-ology around the euro sovereign debt crisis attests, you'd be just a little blue in the face waiting for the 'big bazooka'. And, no doubt, there will still be elements of this latest plan knocking around a year or more from now. Yet, the history of euro decision making also shows that Europe tends to deliver some sort of solution eventually and it typically has the firepower if not the automatic will to prevent systemic collapse. And here's where most global investors stand following the "framework" euro stabilisation agreement reached late on Wednesday. It had the basic ingredients, even if the precise recipe still needs to be nailed down. The headline, box-ticking numbers -- a 50% Greek debt writedown, agreement to leverage the euro rescue fund to more than a trillion euros and provisions for bank recapitalisation of more than 100 billion euros -- were broadly what was called for, if not the "shock and awe" some demanded. Financial markets, who had fretted about the "tail risk" of a dysfunctional euro zone meltdown by yearend, have breathed a sigh of relief and equity and risk markets rose on Thursday. European bank stocks gained almost 6%, world equity indices and euro climbed to their highest in almost two months in an audible "Phew!".
Credit Suisse economists gave a qualified but positive spin to the deal in a note to clients this morning:
It would be clearly premature to declare the euro crisis as fully resolved. Nevertheless, it is our impression that EU leaders have made significant progress on all fronts. This suggests that the rebound in risk assets that has been underway in recent days may well continue for some time.
So what exactly have investors and been doing while waiting for the fog to clear in Brussels? The truth on most benchmark prices and indices is "not very much" -- at least not since world markets got the collywobbles in early August about US downgrades and debt ceilings, euro sovereign debt angst and double dip recession. Yet, since the European stocks nadir in late September prodded the Franco-German alliance into more serious action, there has been some impressive market gains of between 10 and 20% across most equity sectors and national indices. More broadly, after a year of intense political and financial turmoil across the globe, developed market equities are only down about 4% year-to-date -- a 10 point outperformance on emerging markets, for example.
And the clearing of the euro fog now allows investors to start looking beyond the Brussels cauldron and review how the rest of the world is shaping up. What they find, surprisingly for those drowning in disaster commentaries, is‘not all that bad – especially, but not exclusively in the United States. There's been a string of more positive economic data releases throughout October and these have continued through the back end of last week and early this week. The bellwether Philadelphia Fed industrial index rose to its highest in six months; U.S. durable goods orders (excluding volatile aircraft orders) rose at their fastest pace in six months in September; U.S. new home sales rose at their fastest in five months; business surveys show Chinese manufacturing is back expanding again in October for the first time in three months; U.S. power firms are reporting a pickup in industrial activity in H2, Ford has increased fourth quarter forecast for North American vehicle production. The U.S. Q3 earnings season hasn’t been half bad either – with a third of the S&P500 reported, some 70 percent beat forecasts and the main strength was in the industrial world. What’s more for markets, seasonal equity flows are typically in an updraft for the rest of the year, all things being equal. Fund managers already started rebuilding equity positions in September.
European business and consumer sentiment surveys have continued to push lower through the policy logjam, unsurprisingly, even if real data contradicts some of that anecdotal ‘evidence’. And this may well translate into the wider investment theme as the euro crisis ebbs. Europe may agree to adapt grudgingly to solve its immediate problem but tyhen pay the price in economic growth because it’s less worse than the alternative of financial chaos.
On the more immediate horizon, there may be groans from those hoping to escape summit mania as G20 leaders are set to meet in Cannes next Thursday and Friday -- with a hoped-for endorsement of the euro plan and a specific interest in the EFSF/IMF/SPV idea that seems to be courting sovereign wealth funds from China and other emerging giants from the BRICs to use a special conduit to buy euro sovereign bonds. ECB rate cuts too may be firmly back in the frame on Thursday as Mario Draghi takes the helm of the central bank for the first time. The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee gives us its latest decision on Wednesday. US payrolls looms large on Friday, with a heavy European earnings sked including Barclays, BMW, ING, BNPP, Unilever, CS, ArcelorMittal, RBS, Commerzbank, and many more.
Supervising the supervisors
A new Brookings Institution report from the self-appointed Committee on International Economic Policy and Reform suggests that, given a spotty recent record, supervisors and policymakers at the world’s top central banks need to be watched themselves. The group of 16 high-profile economists and financial experts, which includes former Brazilian central bank chief Arminio Fraga, Berkeley professor Barry Eichengreen, Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff and Mohamed El-Erian from Pimco, proposes a new international watchdog that might ensure actions taken by individual countries are coordinated and smoothed out:
We call for the creation of an International Monetary Policy Committee composed of representatives of major central banks that will report regularly to world leaders on the aggregate consequences of individual central bank policies.
The proposal comes as the Federal Reserve, faced with a weakening U.S. economy, ponders another round of unconventional monetary stimulus. Many analysts believe the Fed will take some type of step to support low long-term rates at its September 20-21 meeting. When the Fed implemented its second round of bond-buying, it came under harsh criticism from emerging economies for pushing up their exchange rates with ultra-low rates in the United States.
The Brookings report suggested the Fed’s go-it-alone approach can be self-defeating:
Central banks are more likely to safeguard their independence and credibility by acknowledging and explicitly addressing the tensions between inflation targeting and competing objectives than by denying such linkages and proceeding with business as usual.
The panel urges explicit international coordination — however politically unfeasible.
The cross-border spillovers from monetary policy provide yet another reason for rethinking not just the domestic monetary policy framework but also mechanisms for ensuring compatibility between large-country policies.
from Global Investing:
Emerging consumers’ pain to spell gains for stocks in staples
Food and electricity bills are high. The cost of filling up at the petrol station isn't coming down much either. The U.S. economy is in trouble and suddenly the job isn't as secure as it seemed. Maybe that designer handbag and new car aren't such good ideas after all.
That's the kind of decision millions of middle class consumers in developing countries are facing these days. That's bad news for purveyors of everything from jeans to iphones who have enjoyed double-digit profits thanks to booming sales in emerging markets.
Brazil is the best example of how emerging market consumers are tightening their belts. Thanks to their spending splurge earlier this decade, Brazilian consumers on average see a quarter of their income disappear these days on debt repayments. People's credit card bills can carry interest rates of up to 45 percent. The central bank is so worried about the growth outlook it stunned markets with a cut in interest rates this week even though inflation is running well above target
All that bodes ill for shares in companies selling so-called consumer discretionaries in developing countries -- non-essential items such as autos and high-end cosmetics.
But someone's loss is someone's gain. Shares in companies selling consumer staples --food, beverages, prescription meds and tobacco -- are starting to pick up. In short, everything that outperforms during economic downturns. MSCI's index of emerging market staples is flat on the year, doing only slighly better than consumer discretionaries. But guess what? In August, when everything was selling off staples did ok. They fell 2.4 percent, much better than MSCI's discretionaries index which lost 8 percent.
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch's monthly survey shows fund managers went overweight consumer staples in August for the first time this year. Back in January when investors were optimistic about the U.S. economic outlook, almost 60 percent of fund managers were underweight staples. They still like discretionaries but cut that position pretty sharply last month.
What of Brazil? Carlos de Leon, a fund manager at RCM still sees opportunities there, especially as minimum wages will rise by an above-inflation 12 percent next year. But unsurprisingly, his picks are consumer staples and defensives including toll road operators, fuel distributors and utilities.
Cheap central bank money mainly seems to have boosted stocks and the optimism of stock market forecasters
houch!!
the problem is that this money must be repaid in three years
look to market capitalization of spain italy portugal ecc..
in europe there is a lot of people with losses of 30 50% on share prices in their portfolio “wealth effect” is a good boost for consumers investors ecc.