MacroScope

The week kicks off with a G8 leaders’ summit in Northern Ireland. Syria will dominate the gathering and the British agenda on tax avoidance is likely to be long on rhetoric, short on specifics. But for the markets, this meeting could still yield some big news. For a start, Japanese prime minister Abe is there – the man who has launched one of the most aggressive stimulus drives in history yet has already seen the yen climb back to the level it held before he started. Abe will also speak in London and Warsaw during the week.

The financial backdrop could hardly be more volatile with emerging markets selling off dramatically since the Federal Reserve warned the pace of its dollar creation could be slowed. Berlin has said the G8 leaders are likely to discuss the role of central banks and monetary policy, and Angela Merkel will hold bilateral talks with Abe during the summit. President Barack Obama travels to Berlin after the summit for talks with Merkel.

The central banks of Turkey, Switzerland and Norway all have monetary policy decisions to make in the coming week and may have some interesting things to say about the revival of market turmoil after months of calm. The Norwegians have said interest rates are likely to stay at 1.5 percent for months to come and the Swiss National Bank is unlikely to loosen its cap on the Swiss franc which has served it so well, particularly given markets are now back in flux and traders are starting to talk about flight-to-safety moves again. The elephant in the room is the Federal Reserve’s latest policy decision on Wednesday, followed by a Ben Bernanke press conference.

The Turks are the hottest story of the moment on our patch with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan first saying his patience had run out after almost two weeks of anti-government protests, and then sounding more conciliatory, holding talks with protest leaders. How this ends will go a long way to dictating the investor view of Turkey and how its markets recover (if at all) from a drubbing inspired by a perfect storm of domestic and international factors – about $8 billion had fled Turkish markets from the beginning of May to last Wednesday and a gaping current account deficit doesn’t help.
The central bank has already come in to defend the lira and while it said it saw no need to raise the upper band of its interest rate corridor who knows what the next few days will bring. At its May meeting, it cut all its key rates by 50 basis points, but with the lira under huge pressure you can rule out a repeat of that. Indonesia was first out of the blocks in recent days, becoming the first central bank in Asia to raise rates since 2011. It’s early days but a repeat of the capital outflows that marked the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s is an unpleasant reminder of the damage that can be wrought.

The euro zone bears watching as always, now we’re back into turbulent times.

Spain, France and Germany all hold bond auctions during the week with the benevolent bond market conditions of the first five months of the year now gone. Italian and Spanish borrowing costs fell for 10 months after European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi pledged to do whatever it takes to save the euro but have begun creeping up since Bernanke’s intervention. Both countries have frontloaded their funding for this year, so some of the pressure is off. Germany could start to benefit from safe haven status again so maybe France is the most interesting. Its economy is flatlining, the government is railing against exhortations from Berlin and Brussels to raise the pace of structural reform and yet it can still borrow for 10 years at not much more than two percent.

It seems eons since the euro zone finance ministers’ meetings which made such a hash of the Cyprus bailout but they were only two months ago. Monday’s Eurogroup will be altogether less eventful with some of the gathering probably a little jaded having spent part of their weekend at the G7 outside London where the usual differences about growth versus austerity and banking reform were aired.

No one will be sorry for a more routine meeting and there are no icebergs on the horizon but the agenda is still a full one. Featuring will be the economic situation on the basis of the Commission’s latest forecasts, the state of play in Cyprus, the decision already taken to release more bailout money to Greece, the new steps taken by Portugal to fill the gaps in its budget after the country’s top court struck some measures out, a review of European Commission reports on what is ailing Spain and Slovenia and a broad discussion about the merits of the ESM bailout being allowed to recapitalise bank retroactively from next year.

Italy offers a range of bonds at auction worth up to 8 billion euros which should be snapped up given the European Central Bank’s underwriting of the euro zone and Japanese money coursing through the financial system.

The slow motion Cypriot car crash of the past five days reached impact point last night when not a single lawmaker voted for the bailout with bank levy attached – the first time a euro zone legislature has simply said no.

So what next? The finance minister is in Russia, ostensibly to seek an extension on an existing 2.5 billion euros loan on better terms, but could there be more on offer besides? The Eurogroup made clear last night that the 10 billion euros bailout was still on the table but that Nicosia had to come up with 5.8 billion euros of its own – the sum that a levy on bank depositors was supposed to raise. Could Moscow fill that gap, maybe in return for a slice of the island’s untapped offshore gas reserves? It looks unlikely but not impossible and there are powerful geopolitics at play. That there will be no more money from the euro zone looks like a given and there seems to be a resolve that it would be better to let Cyprus default then buckle at the last moment.

Finance minister Sarris has just said he hopes for a deal on the existing Russian loan today. In Nicosia, the president is meeting party leaders.

What a weekend. The euro zone crossed a dangerous Rubicon by whacking Cypriot bank depositors as part of a bailout – a dramatic departure from previous aid programmes. The finance ministers insist it is a one-off (as they did for Greece) but if investors and bank customers fear a precedent has been set, there could yet be a serious backwash for the euro zone. And all this for six billion euros? It seems perplexing to say the least although our trawl of the streets of the euro zone periphery has detected little alarm so far.

Markets are voting with their feet. The euro has dropped well over one percent, European stock futures are pointing to losses of two to three percent and the safe haven Bund future has leapt a full point at the open. Italian bond futures have done the reverse, suggesting that in the bond market at least, there is more than a little concern about contagion from Cyprus. “The crisis is back,” one bond trader told us. “Precedent” is the word on everybody’s lips. I’ve used it before but Bank of England Governor Mervyn King produced the definitive line on bank runs – it’s never logical to start one but it sure could be logical to join one.

To muddy the waters further, the Cypriots are trying to renegotiate the deal to ease the 6.5 percent burden on smaller depositors and raise it on the richer (from 9.9 percent). This suggests that the president fears that today’s parliamentary vote may be lost without changes. If it is lost – no party has a majority and three of them said yesterday they wouldn’t support the programme – we’re in for a real rollercoaster as everyone scrambles to avoid a default, with all the reputational damage that will do to the euro zone. At that point, we could probably kiss goodbye to the five months of calm imposed by the European Central Bank and its “do whatever it takes” pledge.

Italy will continue to cast a long shadow and has clearly opened a chink in the euro zone’s armour. It looks like the best investors can expect is populist Beppe Grillo supporting some measures put forward by a minority, centre-left government but refusing any sort of formal alliance. That sounds like a recipe for the sort of instability that could have investors running a mile. The markets’ best case was for outgoing technocrat prime minister Monti to support the centre-left in coalition, thereby guaranteeing continuation of economic reforms. But he just didn’t get enough votes. Fresh elections are probably the nightmare scenario given the unpredictability of what could result.

The story of the last five months has been the bond-buying safety net cast by the European Central Bank which took the sting out of the currency bloc’s debt crisis. But now it has an Achilles’ Heel. The ECB has stated it will only buy the bonds of a country on certain policy conditions. An unwilling or unstable Italian government may be unable to meet those conditions so in theory the ECB should stand back. But what if the euro zone’s third biggest economy comes under serious market attack? Without ECB support the whole bloc would be thrown back into crisis and yet if it does intervene, some ECB policymakers and German lawmakers will throw their hands up in horror, potentially calling the whole programme in to question.

In other words, until or unless a durable government is formed in Italy which can credibly say and do the right things, the euro zone crisis is back although not yet in the way it was a year ago when break-up looked possible.

No one really questions Angela Merkel’s supremacy in Germany but losing the key state of Lower Saxony in a Sunday election, albeit by the narrowest of margins, means we’ll have to put on ice proclamations that her re-election for a third term in the autumn is now merely a procession. The centre-left SPD and Greens won the state by a single seat. Merkel and others will speak about the result today. What it probably does affirm is that the Chancellor will be extremely cautious about agreeing to more euro zone crisis fighting measures before the national election is safely out of the way.

We’ve been here before. When the drumbeat of market pressure eases, euro zone policymakers have tended to lose their sense of urgency. Today’s meeting of euro zone finance ministers, the first of the year, could be a case in point. The agenda lists “progress” on Cyprus, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece with no decisions expected.
The meeting is set to anoint Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem as its new chairman after France dropped its objections on Sunday. He will attend the final press conference so it will be interesting to hear his pitch.

The most important area of debate will be the euro zone’s rescue fund and its ability eventually to recapitalize struggling banks directly, thereby breaking the “doom loop” whereby weak governments drive themselves further into debt by propping up listing banks while the lenders are stuffed with that government’s bonds which are liable to lose value. EU leaders seemed pretty clear at last June’s summit that this would be done but there are now suggestions that governments will remain on the hook to at least some extent. That would be a very significant backward step.

So said Winston Churchill of Russia. The Greek debt saga isn’t quite that unfathomable but the economic necessities continue to clash with the political realities.

Eurogroup Working Group – the expert finance officials from 17 euro zone nations who do the clever preparatory work before their finance ministers meet – will convene to today try and get the Greek debt process back on track after a ministerial meeting got nowhere on Monday and in fact ended up in an unusually public spat between its chair, Jean-Claude Juncker, and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

The Eurogroup plus Lagarde will meet again next Tuesday and there are big gaps to bridge although we intercepted the IMF chief in Manila this morning, insisting that a deal was possible, or at least that’s one way of reading her “it’s not over until the fat lady sings” quote.

Euro zone finance ministers meet later today to try and put flesh on the bones of the EU summit agreement 10 days ago. The trouble is there probably won’t be enough meat for markets which failed to rally significantly after the summit deal and are now unnerved by fresh signs of global slowdown.
Friday’s weak U.S. jobs report is the latest evidence to rattle investors so there is unlikely to be any let-up.

Spanish 10-year yields are back above seven percent. Madrid is fortunate not to face a heavy debt issuance month but August is a bit more demanding so time is short to turn things around. Italy’s Mario Monti said on Sunday the euro zone ministers must act now to lower borrowing costs and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy more dramatically said the credibility of the entire European project rests here. He continues to do his bit, pledging on Saturday to produce further deficit-cutting measures, probably on Wednesday. They could include a VAT hike and cuts to public sector benefits.

The Eurogroup is unlikely to dramatically change the terms of trade. It has a lot on its agenda – the proposed bailout of Spanish banks of up to 100 billion euros, a much smaller bailout of Cyprus as well as firming up the summit agreement that the euro zone’s rescue fund should be tasked with intervening on the bond market to bring borrowing costs down and, once a cross-border banking supervision structure is in place (another highly ambitious plan which is supposed to take shape in an even more ambitious six months), to be allowed to recapitalize banks directly.

It’s well and truly a Spain day.
Its 10-year yields may have ducked back below the 7 percent pain threshold but Madrid’s auction of two-, three- and five-year bonds could still be tricky. It is only aiming to sell up to 2 billion euros and should manage to thanks largely to weak Spanish banks buying them up but the five-year bond is likely to command yields last seen in 1996.

After that, an independent audit of Spain’s stricken banking sector is due to be published which will give a guide as to how much of the 100 billion euros offered by the euro zone the banks need to take to be recapitalized. Madrid may then make a formal request for aid at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers later in the day. We’ve had from sources that the audit will say up to 70 billion euros is needed but Spain would be well advised to take more to try and convince markets that it has all bases covered.

The audit is expected to divide the banks into three groups: the weakest regional savings banks heavily exposed to bad property debts, a group of mid-sized banks which face temporary liquidity problems and two ‘good’ banks – BBVA and Santander – that won’t need any help.

Greece is stumbling inexorably towards fresh elections which polls suggest will give the anti-bailout far left a stronger grip on power. Last ditch talks aimed at creating a unity government will continue under the aegis of the president today but the leader of the radical leftist SYRIZA has said he will not turn up. Alexis Tsipras says he wants Greece to stay in the euro but will rip up the bailout agreement. Go figure.
This morning the more moderate left party has said it won’t take part in a government lacking SYRIZA.

A big question is whether the mainstream parties can mount a convincing campaign second time around, playing on the glaring contradiction in SYRIZA’s position and essentially turning the vote into a referendum on euro membership, which the overwhelming majority of Greeks still support. Don’t count on that.

Two ECB policymakers –  Honohan and Coene – were out over the weekend talking about the possibility of a Greek euro exit: there goes another taboo. Policymakers must be running through the hard default and exit scenarios now. We need to be asking.