MacroScope

Brazilian economic policy is fast becoming a shining example of the law of unintended consequences. As activity fades and inflation picks up, the government has tried several different measures to fix the economy – and almost every time, it ended up creating surprise side-effects that made matters worse. Controls on gasoline prices tamed inflation, but opened a hole in the trade balance. Efforts to reduce electricity fares ended up curbing, not boosting, investment plans.

Perhaps that’s the case with yesterday’s surprise decision to scrap a key tax on foreign inflows into fixed-income investments. The so-called IOF tax was one of Brazil’s main defenses in its currency war, making local bonds less appealing to speculators and helping prevent an excessive appreciation of the real.

As the Federal Reserve started to discuss tapering off its massive bond-buying stimulus, investors began to flock back to the United States. So with less need to impose capital controls, Brazil thought it would be a good idea to open its doors again to hot money. Analysts overall also welcomed the move, announced by Finance Minister Guido Mantega in a quick press conference on Tuesday, in which he said that excessive volatility is “not good” for markets and that Brazil was headed to a period of “lesser” intervention in currency markets.

So what happened in the first morning after the move?

Volatility spiked, with the real swinging from a 2 percent rise to a 1 percent drop within hours. The central bank came to the rescue, offering to sell as much as $2 billion in derivatives designed to curb currency losses. Although fewer capital controls are usually welcome in the long term, at first they boost volatility. That will only get worse if a U.S. payrolls report due Friday strenghtens the case for tapering off stimulus.

Argue Guilherme Loureiro and Marcelo Salomon, from Barclays:

Zeroing the IOF tax eliminates an important barrier that prevented foreign investors from liquidating local rates positions (as they would have had to pay tax again to push money into Brazil). And the elimination of this barrier should, in fact, increase the volatility of USD/BRL, especially in moments of stress in global capital markets. While the decision to cut the IOF tax helps attract foreign flows, it also will demand more FX intervention from the BCB to dampen excessive volatility.

The European Central Bank takes centre stage. While others in the euro zone are saying the way Cyprus was bailed out – with bank bondholders and big depositors hit – could be repeated, the ECB insists it was a one-off.

Fearful of any signs of contagion it will continue to talk that talk and there’s no sign of it having to do more so far, with no bank run even in Cyprus let alone further afield. But the last two weeks has reignited debate about what the ECB might have to do in extremis. It’s no nearer deploying its bond-buying programme but it could flood the currency area’s financial system with long-term liquidity again if called upon.

Interest rates are expected to be held at a record low 0.75 percent. Hints of policy easing further out are not out of the question. As ever, Mario Draghi’s hour long press conference will be minutely parsed but there will be nothing to match the Bank of Japan which earlier announced a stunning revamp of its policymaking rules – setting a balance sheet target which will involve printing money faster and pledging to double its government bond holdings over two years.

In times of currency wars, it’s best not to shoot yourself in the foot. By imposing several capital controls in the past years, Brazil might have tightened monetary policy right when the economy started to falter, Nomura’s strategist Tony Volpon wrote in a research note on Friday.

Brazil’s mediocre economic growth in the past two years has been a mystery, indeed. Some say it has been due to the global slowdown – which contrasts with steady growth elsewhere in Latin America. Many others blame Brazil’s several supply bottlenecks. But then, why don’t businesses see them as an investment opportunity?

The missing link, Volpon argues, has been the imposition of capital controls. Inflows dropped suddenly, reducing the supply of cheap foreign money available for banks and companies. So, even though the central bank cut local interest rates ten straight times to a record low of 7.25 percent, money supply growth has actually slowed since January 2012.

Incumbency, it is often said, confers many advantages.

Sitting U.S. presidents certainly have reaped its benefits – in the past 80 years, only three have been unseated.

Most economists believe the same benefits apply to reserve currencies. Yes, the U.S. dollar may one day be supplanted as the leading international currency, the thinking goes, but that day is many decades away.

Then again, maybe not.

A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks more closely at the dollar’s own rise to the top in the 20th century suggests, among other things, that “the advantages of incumbency are not all they are cracked up to be.”

By Wei Gu and Edward Hadas
The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own.

China will have to get used to monthly trade deficits. Special factors contributed to the $4.2 billion negative number for the first two months of 2012, but something fundamental is changing. A smaller portion of China’s imports are of goods which will be processed for export, and a higher portion is going straight into domestic consumption.

A 13 percent volume increase in soybean imports may be partly due to precautionary purchase after drought losses in South America. And the 50 percent year-on-year increase in copper imports is suspicious. Copper can be used a wheeze to circumvent tight monetary policy. Importers get a letter of credit for commodity imports, sell the commodity quickly and keep the credit until maturity.

Currency analysts are divided over whether U.S. criticism of Japan’s forex policy will change Tokyo’s currency stance. While some say it could raise the hurdle for further Japanese intervention, others think it might not have much impact. Rob Ryan, FX strategist at BNP Paribas in Singapore says the effect will be limited given uncertainty about the Japanese economy’s outlook and current levels of dollar/yen and cross/yen pairs.

“I think if they (Japanese authorities) feel they have to intervene, they will intervene,” Ryan says, adding that a dollar drop down to the “low 76s” might be enough to prompt further action from Japan.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in its semi-annual report on international exchange rate policies issued on Tuesday that the U.S. did not support Japan’s recent bouts of solo FX intervention, adding that they took place when volatility in dollar/yen was relatively low. USD/JPY was currently trading at Y77.98, not too far from a record low of Y75.311 hit on Oct. 31, when Japan conducted massive yen-selling intervention.

The debt crises in the euro zone and United States are claiming some innocent bystanders. Investors fleeing for the safety of the Swiss franc have ratcheted up pressure on Hungary, where thousands of households have watched with horror as the  franc surges to successive record highs against their own forint currency. In the boom years before 2008,  mortgages and car loans in Swiss francs seemed like a good idea --after all the forint was strong and Swiss interest rates, unlike those in Hungary, were low.  But the forint then was worth 155-160 per franc. Now it is at a record low 260 -- and falling -- making it increasingly painful to keep up repayments. Swiss franc debt exposure amounts to almost a fifth of Hungary's GDP. And that is before counting loans taken out by companies and municipalities.

Hungarian families could get some relief in coming months via a government plan that caps the exchange rate for mortgage repayments at 180 forints until the end of 2014.  But the difference will have to be paid -- with interest -- from 2015.  Meanwhile, the issue threatens to bring down Hungary's banks which must pick up the cost in the meantime and will almost certaintly see a rise in bad loans --  no wonder shares in Hungary's biggest bank OTP are down 25 percent this month.  "(The franc rise) suggests a massive jump on banks' refinancing requirements going forward, " says Citi analyst  Luis Costa.

These overburdened banks will end up cutting lending to businesses, meaning a further hit to Hungary's already anaemic economic growth. ING analysts earlier this month advised clients to steer clear of Hungarian shares, "given the burden from (forint/franc) depreciation not only on loan-takers but also the implications this has for the domestic growth story."

One of the most closely guarded secrets at the APEC summit in Japan’s port city of Yokohama this weekend is not what the Asia-Pacific leaders might say about currencies and global imbalances. No, that’s all going to be thrashed out at the G20 meeting Thursday and Friday in Seoul. The big topic of speculation here at the Pacifico Yokohama Convention Center is what the leaders will wear when they gather for the annual class photo that concludes the meetings.

U.S. President George W. Bush (L) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin wear Chilean ponchos at APEC meeting  in Santiago in 2004. REUTERS

The last time Japan hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit was 1995 in Osaka. There the leaders, apparently trying to depict the Japan Salaryman look, came out in business suits. Nobody remembers much about that APEC meeting, except that it took place in the magnificent, gold-embellished Osaka Castle. 

The growing acrimony in the international debate over China's currency policy has led some to warn that Beijing could dig in its heels if pushed to hard to let its yuan rise.

But Barclays Capital says Beijing could let its currency strengthen as early as next month, notwithstanding its public resolve against Washington's threat to label it as a currency manipulator.

"They do have a 'If you stop pushing, we'll do it' attitude, which is kind of childish, really. But it will happen because they are the only country in the world, besides India, where there is a whiff of inflation," says Barclays' asset allocation head Tim Bond.

Interesting take on the rise in commodity prices from Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics. The rise has little to do with the weaker dollar and everything to do with expectations of global economic recovery, he says.

The broad-based revival in commodity prices since March clearly reflects a combination of factors. One of these is the pure accounting effect of the depreciation of the dollar. Other things being equal, a fall in the U.S. currency will of course put upward pressure on commodity prices when measured in dollar terms – commodity producers with bills to pay in other currencies such as euros and pounds will require a higher price in dollars, while consumers outside the dollar bloc will be more able to pay that higher price. However, the movements in currencies have generally been small compared to the underlying movements in commodity prices.

Looking closely at the relative performance of different commodities, Jessop reckons the rally has primarily been led by oil and industrial metals, which are the most sensitive to the economic cycle. Inflation-driven commodities such as precious metals, including gold, have underperformed in the rally, he says.