MacroScope

““The recovery has finished, we are now contracting. The forward looking indicators suggest that things will deteriorate further in the coming months,” – Chris Williamson, chief economist at PMI compiler Markit.

Thursday’s PMI surveys make very worrying reading. Not a single economist out of the 37 polled by Reuters predicted the euro zone services number would fall below the 50 level that divides growth from contraction. In the event, it fell from 51.5 last month to 49.1 in September – its lowest reading since July 2009.

Economists like the PMI surveys because they have a very good track record of predicting moves in the economy. Before the Great Recession hit in 2008, they were among the first indicators that hinted at a downturn to come.

The monthly Reuters economy poll of last week put only a roughly one-in-three chance of a recession happening in the euro zone over the next 12 months. Expect that to rise in the next survey.

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” That insight of Milton Friedman’s underpins the general perception of a rising money supply as associated with a booming economy. So why, as Europe teeters and the United States struggles, have U.S. monetary aggregates like M1 and M2 been spiking sharply in the last two months? According to Paul Ashworth, chief economist at Capital Economics, it is a knee-jerk reaction to fear, which has driven investors away from European securities and into dollar-denominated deposits:

The surge in M2 over the past couple of months is very similar to the one seen after the collapse of Lehman Brothers three years ago.  … The shift clearly reflects renewed concerns about the health of banks in light of their exposure to euro-zone sovereign debt. In particular, investors are withdrawing their money from accounts at foreign banks.

Greece is in the danger zone. Even as the country’s finance minister sought to reassure his euro zone counterparts at a meeting in Poland, Greek credit default swaps were pricing in a more than 90 percent chance of default, according to Reuters calculations of Markit data. Economists in a Reuters poll see a 65 percent chance of that happening, probably within a year.

Such fears recently sent jitters across financial markets, prompting some words of comfort from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that they are determined to keep Greece in the euro zone. But speculation is growing that Greece will default, and that it will be a messy ordeal. Here are some of the potential dangers if it occurs:

* Greece may be seen as setting a precedent for Portugal and Ireland, analysts said. Yields on peripheral euro zone debt could surge rapidly, making funding costs increasingly unsustainable as yields on Italian and Spanish 10-year bonds surge back towards 7 percent. The ECB could have to intervene more aggressively in the secondary bond market to the detriment of its balance sheet.

A fresh twist in Hungary’s Swiss franc debt saga. The ruling party, Fidesz, is proposing to offer mortgage holders the opportunity to repay their franc-denominated loans in one fell swoop at an exchange rate to be  fixed well below the market rate.  This is a deviation from the existing plan, agreed in June, which allows households to repay mortgage installments at a fixed rate of 180 forints per Swiss franc (well below the current 230 rate). Households would repay the difference, with interest, after 2015.

If this step is implemented and many loan holders take up the offer, it would be terrible news for Hungary’s banks. The biggest local lender OTP could face a loss of $2 billion forints, analysts at Budapest-based brokerage Equilor calculate.  Not surprisingly, OTP shares plunged 10 percent on Friday after the news, forcing regulators to suspend trade in the stock. Shares in another bank FHB are down 8 percent.

But Fidesz’ message is unequivocal.  ”The financial consequences should be borne by the banks,”  Janos Lazar, the Fidesz official behind the plan says. The government is to debate the proposal on Sunday.

Italy is the latest victim of market contagion in Europe’s ongoing debt crisis. The country has one of the largest public debts in the world, making investors worried it could be the next domino to fall given poor economic growth and domestic political tensions.

Both the country’s stock and bond markets have been under pressure. Italy’s short-term borrowing costs have already surpassed Spain’s, and long-term rates are well on their way to doing the same.

Nick Bullman, founder and managing partner of CheckRisk, told Reuters Insider that Europe’s bank “stress tests” were way too soft on Italy’s banks. He argues Unicredit and Intesa could need a minimum of 4.4 billion euros to plug the capital holes they face.

Amid the storm of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, investors have found a safe harbor in the Swiss franc. Attracted by its low levels of inflation and stable debt-to-GDP ratio, traders have pushed Switzerland’s currency up 15 percent against the euro in 2010 and 6 percent so far this year. This has been a boon to the Swiss government’s ability to finance its operations — Switzerland’s 10-year benchmark bond is currently yielding just 1.53% — as well as Swiss tourists, who are enjoying huge discounts on trips abroad thanks to their favorable exchange rate.

Swiss exporters, though, are not so thrilled with the franc’s rally. Nearly half of the Swiss corporate executives that the central bank surveyed earlier this year admitted they “experienced negative effects” due to the currency’s strength. But it’s the chairman of the Swiss National Bank, a former hedge-fund manager named Philipp Hildebrand, who may be come out as the biggest loser from these events. In an effort to contain the franc’s upward climb early last year, Hildebrand spent 147 billion francs — nearly 25% of the country’s GDP — buying mostly euros, U.S. dollars, and British pounds sterling. The central bank reported a book loss of nearly $21 billion last year as the franc continued its ascent.

Now Hildebrand, like his American counterpart Ben Bernanke, is facing heat at home for his unorthodox monetary maneuvers. Reuters Zurich bureau chief Emma Thomasson wrote an illuminating profile of Hildebrand last month that nicely captured his opponents’ gripes.

Joschka Fischer was never one to mince words when he was Germany’s foreign minister in the late ’90s and early noughts. So it is not overly surprising that he has painted a picture in a new post of a world with only two powers — the United States and China — and an ineffective and divided Europe on the sidelines.

More controversial, however, is his view that China will not only grow into the world’s most important market over the coming years, but will determine what the world produces and consumes — and that that will be green.

Fischer, who was leader of  Germany’s Green Party, reckons that due to its sheer size and needed GDP growth, China will have to pursue a green economy. Without that, he writes in his Project Syndicate post, China will quickly reach limits to growth with disastrous ecological and, as a result, political consequences.

This week’s rehashing of European banking concerns – related variously to the Basel III impact on German banks, the ongoing morass re Anglo Irish Bank or any other scare story you want to exhume — provided the latest excuse for a global markets wobble as September kicked off. Yet, with some justified head-scratching over what really was new to the world this week as opposed to last week, price moves showed little conviction. Most losses were quickly recouped and decibel level of the commentariat, still frantically competing to warn you of the next disaster, toned down.

The world’s major sovereigns and banks have big financial problems, no doubt, and Europe more than its fair share. The rescues of the Spring did not provide a silver bullet and genuine repair will likely take a painfully-long time. But we’ve also had a lot of time to adequately discount these risks and the marketplace at large is already positioned extremely cautiously. That’s why the idea of sudden, blind panic on these long-running sagas seems just a little OTT – especially against a relatively stable, if bruised, economic backdrop. The bigger issue many investors are grappling with is the growing difficulty in making money in a hyper-cautious, low-growth environment. Ask Stanley Druckenmiller. If he threw in the towel because money-making conditions are just lousy, then you can be sure others see the same. Anecdotally at least, pressurised hedge funds – who faced rising redemptions through the summer – are ultra-cautious about open positions and seem quick to cut and run on even the slightest gain, long or short. (A bit like continually shouting ‘bank!’ on reaching £100 pounds on The Weakest Link!) Big institutional funds, meantime, are sufficiently uncertain about the market and economic direction that many are already keen to lock down for the remainder of the year and are hugging benchmarks to preserve whatever capital they have without resorting to zero-yielding cash or barely-more-attractive TBonds. U.S. midterms in November only add the caution. In short, it will take a pretty major positive or negative surprise to truly set these markets alight and there is every chance we won’t get a decisive one for some time.  We already have historically high vol and caution – but relative steady, unspectacular conditions for all that. The smart money may simply be tempted to buy or sell any hysterical extremes. Is may even be possible that some are tempted to foster a long-absent patience gene?

As to next week? There’s welter of new economic data to maybe add some flavour. The biggest potential movers are August China production and investment stats (now, oddly, being released Saturday rather than Monday) and then US retail sales, Philly Fed and German ZEW indices later in the week. On the issue du jour re European banks/sovereigns, an informal EU summit on Thursday provides the main set-piece – but BIS central bankers meeting in Basel this weekend and Spanish and Italian debt auctions next week may add their own spice.

Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, was in a good mood on Thursday.

The 16-country bloc’s central bank is starting to see light at the end of the tunnel after a long, hard slog through the financial crisis and the resulting Great Recession, and this gives the policymakers a chance for some R&R.

“We are now … in a situation, which is obviously better than before,” Trichet said after the 16-country bloc’s central bank kept interest rates on hold at a record-low 1.0 percent. “Again, I don’t declare victory.”

The euro zone is not the only large currency union in the world.  There is also the United States. While it may be pushing things to see California as Germany and Mississippi as Greece, there is still a disparity in the potential of the economies of the U.S. States.

Harvard economics professor Martin Feldstein, the former chairman of  Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, reckons the dollar zone could offer some help to the euro zone. U.S. state deficits are minimal compared with Europe’s, he says in an op ed piece for The Washington Post. Even cash-strapped California’s is only about 1 percent of state GDP.

The secret, according to Felstein , is that all U.S. states have constitutions prohibiting borrowing for operating purposes. Bonds for infrastructure projects, yes. For salaries, services or transport payments, no.