MacroScope

After a tumultuous fortnight where the European Central Bank, U.S. Federal Reserve, German judges and Dutch voters combined to markedly lift the mood on financial markets, we’re probably in for a more humdrum few days, although a raft of economic data this week will be important – a critical mass of analysts are saying that after strong rallies, it will require evidence of real economic recovery, rather than crisis-fighting solutions, to keep stocks heading up into the year-end.

A weekend meeting of EU finance ministers reflected the progress made, but also the remaining potential pitfalls. Our team there reported the atmosphere was notably more relaxed and Spain’s announcement that it would unveil fresh economic reforms alongside its 2013 budget at the end of the month sent a strong signal that a request for bond-buying help from Madrid is likely in October. If made, the ECB could then pile into the secondary market to buy Spanish debt  if required and hopefully drag Italian borrowing costs down in tandem with Spain’s.

BUT. The Nicosia meeting also exposed unresolved differences between Germany and others over plans to build a banking union. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said handing bank oversight to the European Central Bank is not in itself sufficient to allow the euro zone’s rescue fund to directly assist banks – another key plank of the euro zone’s arsenal. It sounds like that debate went nowhere.
Having largely been the dog that hasn’t barked so far, public unrest is on the rise with big marches in Portugal and Spain over the weekend against further planned tax hikes and spending cuts.

And, putting further out risks such as Italian elections to one side, it remains to be seen whether euro zone policymakers have learned from previous mistakes when they took their foot off the gas each time the crisis hit a lull. It is noticeable that German officials are already telling anyone who will listen that a Spanish aid programme may well not be necessary given the extent of the country’s borrowing costs since Mario Draghi’s late-July declaration that he would do whatever it takes to save the euro. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s setpiece news conference today could shed some light here.

Our working hypothesis has been that having put so much effort into shoring up Spain, the euro zone couldn’t conceivably let Greece drop, thereby plunging the whole lot of them back into crisis. That still holds true – Greece must get more time and/or money to meet its bailout targets. But Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter muddied the waters on Sunday,  saying Athens would get only “a few more weeks” and no more cash. Fekter has a track record as something of a loose cannon but if she’s right, Greece is doomed, and most importantly for the rest of the euro zone, doomed quickly.

Is everything falling into place to at least declare a moratorium in the euro zone debt crisis?

Well the ESM rescue fund getting a go-ahead from Germany’s consitutional court and the Dutch opting to vote for the two main pro-European parties, following Mario Draghi’s confirmation last week that the European Central Bank would buy Spanish and Italian bonds if required, means things are starting to look a little rosier.

The risks? Next spring’s Italian election, and what sort of government results, casts a long shadow and it is just about conceivable that Spain could baulk at asking for help, given the strings attached, although the sheer amount of debt it needs to shift by the end of the year will almost certainly force its hand. If the Bundesbank mounted a guerrilla war campaign against the ECB bond-buying programme it could well undermine its effectiveness. That is a big if given broad German political support for the scheme. Key countries remain deep in recession with little prospect of returning to growth because of the imperative to keep eating away at their debt mountains, which could eventually trigger a dramatic public reaction. France could well get dragged into that category.

Despite Mario Draghi’s game changer, or potential game changer, the coming week’s events still have the power to shape the path of the euro zone debt crisis in a quite decisive way, regardless of the European Central Bank’s offer to buy as many government bonds as needed to buy politicians time to do their work.

The nuclear event would be the German constitutional court ruling on Wednesday that the bloc’s new ESM rescue fund should not come into being, which would leave the ECB’s plans in tatters since its intervention requires a country to seek help from the rescue funds first and the ESM’s predecessor, the EFSF, looks distinctly threadbare. That is unlikely to happen given the court’s previous history but it could well add conditions demanding greater German parliamentary scrutiny and even a future referendum on deeper European integration. For the time being though, the markets are likely to take a binary view. ‘Yes’ to the ESM good, ‘No’ very bad.

Dutch elections on the same day look to have been robbed of some of their potential drama with the firebrand hard-left socialists now slipping in the polls and the fiscally conservative Liberals neck-and-neck with the likeminded centre-left Labour party. But there are no guarantees and Germany could yet be robbed of one of its staunchest allies in the debt crisis debate.

After some perplexingly negative initial market reaction to the Draghi gambit everything turned around. European stocks leapt nearly 2.5 percent yesterday and Asian shares are set to bank their biggest daily gain in six weeks. Italian and Spanish borrowing costs have fallen markedly.

The fact that the ECB has set no limit on how many bonds it might buy marks this scheme out as very different to its predecessor but we’ve seen many false dawns before so it behoves us to keep an eye on what might prevent ECB President Mario Draghi drawing a line under nearly three years of debt crisis.

       1. Could Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, who remains strongly opposed, quit as his predecessor did last year? Very unlikely for now though there could be a later confrontation, on which more below. It was notable how many of Angela Merkel’s political lieutenants were deployed in public to back Draghi yesterday, although the German press have taken an altogether more negative view which could inflame German public opinion.

Ben Bernanke has done it again. In his much-anticipated speech Friday, the Federal Reserve chairman managed to tell both investors and politicians what they wanted to hear – that “the stagnation of the labor market in particular is a grave concern” – all while saying next to nothing new about where U.S. monetary policy is actually headed. That the Fed, as Bernanke also noted, stands ready to ease policy more if needed was well known to anyone paying attention the last few months. We also know that the high jobless rate, at 8.3 percent in July, has long been Bernanke’s main headache in this tepid economic recovery.

Still, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday, it was like Bernanke tossed a bone to the hounds on Wall Street and in the Beltway without even getting up off his lawn chair.

For markets, hungry as they are for a third round of quantitative easing (QE3), the “grave concern” comment says the high unemployment rate and mostly disappointing job growth since March gives the Fed little if any choice but to act. U.S. stocks climbed and the dollar dropped after the speech, with traders and analysts citing the remark. “‘Grave’ concern with labor market is striking,” said David Ader, head of government bond strategy at CRT Capital Group.

Having not enjoyed a summer lull for a good few years, we might as well take advantage of this one which appears set to last for another couple of weeks yet (famous last words).

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s pledge to do whatever it takes to save the euro zone continues to underpin markets who view a litany of grim economic evidence as increasing the likelihood of further central bank action, not just from Europe but China and the United States too, thereby leaving them somewhat becalmed. (Remember the Greenspan put?)

The ECB chief’s intervention remains strictly in the realms of the rhetorical for now. The proof will come in September at the earliest – an ECB policy meeting in the first week is likely to set out the parameters as to how it might act to lower Spanish and Italian borrowing costs, a week later the German constitutional court rules on the viability of the euro zone’s permanent rescue fund, then euro zone finance ministers gather in Cyprus for a key meeting. Also in September, the troika of Greek lenders will return to decide whether Athens has done enough to secure its next bailout tranche.

Sometimes, a week away from the fray can bring perspective. Sometimes, you miss all hell breaking loose.
My last day in the office saw European Central Bank President Mario Draghi utter his “we will do whatever it takes” to save the euro declaration. The markets took off on that, only to sag when the ECB didn’t follow through at last Thursday’s policy meeting.

In fact, it was never that likely that the ECB would rush to act, particularly since Draghi’s verbal intervention had started to push Italian and Spanish borrowing costs lower and the troika of lenders was still musing over Greece. But it seems to me that, despite German reservations, the ECB president has shifted the terms of trade, something market action is beginning to reflect.

There can be little doubt now that the ECB will intervene decisively if required – and the removal of that doubt takes away the main question that has kept markets on edge every since a bumper first quarter evaporated. Yes, there are caveats – notably the fact that Draghi said the ECB would only step in if countries first request assistance. With that will come conditionality and surveillance but it seems highly unlikely that Spain, for example, will be required to come up with any further austerity measures given what it is already doing. Spanish premier Rajoy seemed to soften Madrid’s opposition to seeking help last week, though he said he wanted to know precisely what the ECB might do in return. Until now, seeking sovereign aid has been a taboo for Spain. If that’s changed, it’s also big news.

Europe will do what it takes to save the euro, after it tries everything else. That seems to be the conventional wisdom about the continent’s muddled handling of a financial crisis now well into its third year.

The latest whipsaw came this week when, having hinted at aggressive action on the part of the European Central Bank, its president, Mario Draghi, backtracked a bit by saying the ECB “may” take further non-standard measures such as purchases of government bonds of countries like Spain and Italy, which have come under extreme market pressure.

John Praveen, chief investment strategist at Prudential International Investments Advisers, notes Draghi appears to have attached a new condition to ECB bond buys. Those countries must first ask for a formal bailout from the European Union, which they are reluctant to do because of the tough austerity measures that would then be imposed on them.

Financial markets on Thursday were starkly disappointed with the European Central Bank and its president, Mario Draghi. He had promised recently to do everything in his power to save the euro and yet announced no new bond-buying at the central bank’s latest meeting. Riskier assets sold off and safe-haven securities benefitted.

But Francesco Garzarelli of Goldman Sachs, Draghi’s former employer, has a different take on the matter:

We see a material change in the central bank’s approach to the crisis, and a coherent interplay between fiscal and monetary policy. The underwhelming part of today’s announcements lies in the lack of details on the asset purchases and other measures to support the private sector. But it appears that these will have more structure around them than the SMP (Securities Markets Program).

Moody’s put Germany on notice that it might cut its credit rating and did the same for the Netherlands and Luxembourg. It cited a growing chance that Greece could leave the euro zone, and the contagion and costs that could flow from that, as well as the possibility that Berlin might have to increase its support for Italy and Spain. Both are self-evident risks and markets have not really reacted though it’s interesting timing that Spanish Economy Minister de Guindos is meeting his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, in Berlin later. The Moody’s warning could also feed into darkening German public opinion about the merits of offering any more help to its sick partners.

German Bund futures opened just 10 ticks lower and European stocks edged higher after a sharp Monday sell-off. A jump in China’s PMI index has helped sentiment a little. The euro remains on the back foot but if it continues to fall that should actually help euro zone economies, making their exports more competitive. We’re programmed to treat government statements with scepticism but it’s hard to argue with the German finance ministry which said last night that the risks cited by Moody’s were nothing new and the sound state of German public finances was unchanged.

Nonetheless, reminders of the depth of the debt crisis are close at hand. So dislocated is the Spanish debt market that is hard to gauge what costs Spain will be required to pay at today’s T-bill auction because a combination of summer holidays and worries about the country’s finances mean trading has virtually dried up. With benchmark bond yields hitting euro-era highs on Monday, however, the debt sale of 3 billion euros in 3- and 6-month bills is likely to be expensive.
Also last night, clearing house LCH.Clearnet SA  increased the cost of using Spanish and Italian bonds to raise funds via its repo service, which could put further upward pressure on already surging yields.