MacroScope

With the rhetoric getting more heated, the three-year market fixation on bond yields could well be supplanted by currencies in the months ahead.

This week, everything points towards the first meeting this year of G20 finance ministers and central bankers in Moscow on Friday and Saturday. We’ve already got a clear steer from sources that even though France wants the strong euro on the agenda there will be little pressure put on Japan and others whose policies are pushing their currencies lower. Having urged Tokyo to reflate its economy last year, its G20 peers can hardly complain now that it has. That is not to say there won’t be lots of words on the issue though.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece saying the G7 – or at least its European and U.S. constituents – are planning a joint message ahead of the G20 to warn against a destabilizing competitive currency devaluation race. If true, this will have a big impact on the FX market.

There has already been some noise in Europe with France saying a medium-term target should be set for the euro but Germany refusing to play ball. ECB chief Mario Draghi indulged in a bit of gentle verbal intervention last week and EU monetary chief Olli Rehn was out over the weekend calling for “closer coordination” on currencies, noting the particular problems a strong euro would pose for southern, high debt members of the euro zone. On the other hand, ECB policymaker Joerg Asmussen said France’s problem was its internal competitiveness, not the euro.

The world’s top central banks are expanding their balance sheets by printing money, or at least not reversing course, while the ECB’s balance sheet is tightening, partly due to banks paying back early cheap money the central bank doled out last year. Neither does the ECB’s statute allow it to intervene directly to weaken the euro so it could well be the loser as others explicitly or implicitly follow policies that will drive their currencies down. That’s the last thing a still struggling euro zone economy needs, as Draghi observed.

Italy comes to the market with a five- and 10-year bond auction today and, continuing the early year theme, yields are expected to fall with demand healthy. It could raise up to 6.5 billion euros. A sale of six-month paper on Tuesday was snapped up at a yield of just 0.73 percent. Not only is the bond market unfazed by next month’s Italian elections, which could yet produce a chaotic aftermath, neither is it bothered by the scandal enveloping the world’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi, which is deepening by the day.

Even before this week (it also sold nearly 7 billion euros of debt on Monday), Italy had already shifted 10 percent of its annual funding needs. Clearly it, and Spain, is off to a flying start which removes a lot of potential market pressure.

But the disconnect with the miserable state of the two countries’ economies should still give pause for thought. Flash Q4 Spanish GDP figures, out later, are forecast to show its economy contracted by a further 0.6 percent in the last three months of the year, with absolutely no end to recession in sight. That looks like a good opportunity to detail the state of the Spanish economy and how it could yet push Madrid towards seeking outside help. Italian business confidence data are also due.

Early September skirmishes turned this week into full-scale “currency wars”, to use Brazil’s terminology. Dramatic language, but not unwarranted. The markets have taken Fed signals of preparation for further money printing as an effective attempt at a dollar devaluation, allowing the country export its deflationary pressures overseas via capital outflows to higher-yielding developing countries.

The major developing nations, for all the arguments favouring currency revaluations of 20-25% over the next couple of years, are not going to stand idly by and watch that happen overnight. But their attempts to offset the impact of soaring local currencies and attendant asset bubbles merely floods local economies with cash at a time when fighting inflation — not deflation — is their priority. Brazil has raised the red flag, but the likes of Turkey and Taiwan are also registering fears about the impact of another bout of US monetary pump priming. Meantime, the gloves are off in the US-China yuan row; possible trade measures are being invoked in DC; and there is little chance of cooler heads prevailing this side of the US mid-term elections. This story will run.

What’s certain is the G20 finance meeting in South Korea on Oct 22 has significant work to do. Next week the battle lines are already drawing up at the Asia-Europe summit in Brussels (and China’s PM Wen and Japan’s PM Kan both travel) and then the annual IMF/G7 meetings in DC. The key US September payrolls report on Friday, for good measure, may be the deciding data set for the Fed to pull the trigger on QEII. And also meeting next Thursday is the Bank of England, itself back in a QE frame of mind if you listened this week to one of its policymakers Adam Posen