Trigger-happy central banks spark bond euphoria

 The recovery in Europe has been electric since the European Central Bank opened the floodgates in December. Photo: PA

"The credit market's on fire," said Suki Mann at Societe Generale. "We have seen a massive grab for yield. The mood is so good that even if Greece were to default it would probably make no difference."

The average borrowing cost for high-grade US companies has dropped to 3.52pc, just shy of all-time lows. American firms took advantage of the hunt for safe yield to raise $70bn (£44bn) last week alone, led by McDonald's and IBM.

The recovery in Europe has been electric since the European Central Bank (ECB) opened the floodgates in December, lending banks €489bn (£410bn) at 1pc for three years, with more to come later this month.

Europe saw the biggest one-month compression in high-grade debt yields in January since records began, excluding the V-shaped rebound after the 2008 crash. Telecom Italia's yields have dropped 180 basis points this year.

"The ECB was the game-changer. A lot of this money seems to have gone into corporate bonds and it makes sense because non-financial corporates are the strongest in history with big cash reserves and very defensive balance sheets," he said.

Data from Deloitte shows large companies have amassed record cash reserves on both sides of the Atlantic, with British non-financial firms sitting on £731bn, and US corporations holding $1.73 trillion in cash.

"High-grade companies like Google, Caterpillar, and the German auto-makers are now better credits than most governments," said Marc Ostwald at Monument Securities.

Spain's energy group Repsol can borrow for five years at 3.55pc, undercutting the Spanish state at 3.75pc. American companies cannot beat the US Treasury at 0.82pc but the gap has narrowed. Five-year yields for both Procter & Gamble and Caterpillar are 2.1pc, while GE is at 2.24pc.

Mr Ostwald said the world's central banks have eliminated most of the risk, promising to keep interest rates near zero for at least two years, even if the latest rush into junk bond segment of the market and is looking "overcooked".

Stephen Jen from SLJ Macro Partners said the double blast of a "trigger-happy Fed" and an activist ECB has transformed the outlook for global assets this spring. "All investors should respect the rule 'don't fight the Fed'. A new rule is 'don't fight the ECB'. Certainly the market should not fight the Fed and the ECB at the same time," he said.

Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS, said companies' ultra-cautious stance and their aversion to a fresh blitz of debt-drived takeovers makes them an alluring place to park money. These "super-corporates" have decoupled from eurozone woes. "The credit default swaps on Siemens, Carrefour, and Nestle hardly moved during the sovereign debt crisis last year," he said.

Bank bonds are the great exception to Europe's credit rally. The side-effect of the ECB's lending blitz is that the bank has gobbled up collateral. Since the ECB has first claim on this, the process reduces ordinary "unsecured" bondholders to ever lower ranking – affecting €2.6 trillion in European bank debt.

Holders of senior bank bonds are being relegated to junior status. "Banks are pledging more and more of their assets to the ECB: for unsecured bondholders, it all adds up to structural subordination," said John Raymond from CreditSights.

The risk is this could back-fire if banks over-indulge at the next ECB tender, borrowing a further €1 trillion or more. For now the party is in full swing.

View the original article here

Relax, central banks can still save us

Even if Europe and America slide back into recession with fiscal deficits already dangerously stretched and interest rates on the floor, financial authorities still have the means to prevent a spiral into debt-deflation.

Whether they have nerve to use those means if necessary, and whether they can overcome deep rifts to act in unison and with overwhelming force, is another matter. It would help if China and other reserve powers stopped sniping from their clay towers. They will suffer just as badly, or worse, if the damn breaks.

Perhaps oddly, I am not as uber-bearish as some at this juncture. It is far from clear to me that the US is crashing into a second slump. While the Philly Fed’s manufacturing index for August was catastrophic at minus 30.7, it is a twitchy index.

Paul Dales at Capital Economics says it flashed false warnings in 1995 and 1998. The US Conference Board’s leading indicators are more reliable. They are signalling sluggish growth.

Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s financial stability chief, says global banks have raised equity by $500bn since the bubble burst. They have slashed assets by $3 trillion, and halved leverage ratios from 40:1 to a long-run average of 20:1. “UK and US banks’ cash ratios are at their highest levels for several decades,” he said.

Citizens and firms on both sides of the Atlantic are running a “financial surplus” near 2.5pc of GDP, compared to a 1pc deficit five in 2006. US companies are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. The West is better cushioned this time.

There is much wreckage left, of course. A quarter of US mortgages are under water. A shadow inventory of unsold homes must still be cleared. Detox will be long and painful.

Yet it no longer makes sense to talk of a US housing bubble. The price to incomes ratio has halved to three, among the world’s lowest. Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, and Atlanta are down to 2.4.

But let us concede - as a 'Gedanken Expirement' - that arch-bears are right to fear a full-blown global slump. Are we powerless?

The US cannot easily crank up fiscal stimulus with a deficit already at 10.8pc of GDP (IMF estimate). Much as I admire Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman – vindicated in his prediction that US 10-year bond yields would fall to historic lows – he misuses history to argue that spending on the scale of World War Two could safely lift America out of slump.

Yes, the US pushed public debt above 120pc of GDP to defeat Hitler, and Britain topped 200pc defeating Napoleon. Both countries marched on to greatness, but in each case they were the world’s paramount industrial power.

Who was going to threaten US Treasuries or the dollar in the late 1940s when Germany and Japan were under US occupation, and America accounted for half of global GDP?

Military demobilisation allowed an instant cut in the US budget deficit. Today the rot is structural, a failure to stop health care and ageing costs spiralling out of control.

So with fiscal policy exhausted, the burden must fall on monetary policy. Here we have barely begun to use our atomic arsenal even at zero rates. As Milton Friedman taught us – though nobody in Frankfurt -- it is a fallacy to think that low rates are loose. Zero can be extremely tight.

That may be the case now with US Treasury yields signalling deflation and M2 velocity collapsing as it did pre-Lehman.

To those who argue that the Fed is pushing on the proverbial string, David Beckworth from the University of Texas replies that the Fed showed between 1933 and 1936 that it could deliver blistering growth of 8pc a year despite debt deleveraging in the rest of the economy.

My own view is that Ben Bernanke has strayed from classic Friedman policy, blunting the effect of his two rounds of QE. Under his doctrine of “credit easing” he has steered bond purchases to banks. This has limited effect on the quantity of money.

A Friedmanite would argue that Bernanke has barely tried monetary stimulus. Yet he has greatly eroded his political capital in the process, especially by arguing that the purpose of QE2 was to push up inflation and help Wall Street. These were tone deaf justifications. “Treasonous” is the verdict of Governor Rick Perry of Texas. That was to be expected, but it does complicate matters.

The eurozone obviously needs looser money. M3 broad money is stagnant and real M1 deposits have turned negative, even in Germany and Holland. Real M1 is contracting at an alarming pace in Italy. EMU growth has wilted, five countries are spinning towards default, and the banking system is seizing up. This cries out for a change of course, yet the European Central Bank is still tightening.

The ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet said “we do not do QE”. Indeed, Germany forbids it. Not only has the Bundesbank forgotten that the Bruning deflation of 1931 destroyed Weimar - not the hyperinflation of 1923 - it is imposing its policy blunder on the whole currency bloc. The visible result of piling monetary contraction on top of fiscal contraction is to push the Club Med over the edge.

The lesson of 2008-2010 is that further QE by the Fed alone risks a dollar slide and a further global crisis. A successful monetary blitz - if required - would need joint action by all major central banks in concert, including the ECB with no 'ifs’, 'buts’, and hostile body language. Some $6 trillion would suffice, or 10pc of global GDP.

We are not there yet. The August squall may pass. US growth may surprise, and China may avoid a hard landing. For all our squabbling, we still live in a benign world where ships and capital move freely and leaders talk to each other.

Remember what the world looked like when Franklin Roosevelt moved into the White House in March 1933 and shut down the US banking system.

The front page of the New York Times on his first Monday in office announced: "Hitler Bloc Wins A Reich Majority, Rules Prussia"; "Japanese Push On In Fierce Fighting, China Closes Wall, Nanking Admits Defeat"; "City Scrip To Replace Currency"; "President Takes Steps Under Sweeping Law of War Time"; "Prison For Gold Hoarders".

That was a serious situation.

View the original article here

European Central Bank tightens screw on Ireland, Portugal and Spain

 European Central Bank President Jean Claude Trichet warned Ireland not to depend on long-term support from Europe Photo: Reuters

“The central bank must guard against the danger that the necessary measures in a crisis period evolve into a dependency as conditions normalise,” said Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB’s president.

Luxembourg’s ECB governor, Yves Mersch, echoed the warnings, saying the bank could not continue “cleaning up” in crises. “If rates are low for too long, this leads to a higher risk appetite. We will pay the price if we fail to confront these inevitable dangers,” he said.

More than 98pc of Spanish mortgages are priced off the floating Euribor rate. Any ECB rate rise would be devastating given that there is already a glut of 1.5m homes coming on to the market, according to consultants RR de Acuna.

The ECB warnings came as a troika of officials from the ECB, the Commission, and the International Monetary Fund began a fact-finding mission in Dublin, examining books to determine whether Ireland is strong enough prop up its banking system.

Finance minister Brian Lenihan admitted that Dublin was considering “substantial contingency capital” to boost banks, but denied that this would burden the Irish state.

Dublin insists that there is no threat to Ireland’s 12.5pc corporation tax rate but Mary Lou McDonald from Sinn Féin said the country was essentially under foreign occupation. “Officials from the EU and IMF and any other vultures circling around this country should be told to get lost.”

Central bank governor Patrick Honohan said a rescue would amount to “tens of billions”. The Irish state is funded until June but this is proving no defence against a run on the banking system.

The euro recovered against the dollar and Europe’s bourses rallied on hopes that the Irish crisis has been contained, but Fitch Ratings said there was still “considerable uncertainty” about the fate of Irish bank debt and bondholder losses.

Credit default swaps on Irish, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish debt continued to hover at high levels yesterday amid confusion over the contagion risk.

Any bail-out depletes the EU’s €440bn (£374bn) rescue fund, reducing the safety buffer for other countries.

Each rescue reduces the number of donor states able to support the EU safety net, and tests political patience in Germany. “There is a danger that once Ireland has been dealt with markets will concentrate even more on countries such as Portugal and Spain,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann of Commerzbank.

Rescue loans for Ireland – as for Greece – add to the debt load without tackling the core problem of solvency. A view is taking hold in the markets that this policy merely delays the inevitable day of EMU debt restructuring.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Flat-Earth European Central Bank misreads oil spike again, and kicks Spain in the teeth

Dr Weber could hardly have done more to fuel the raging flames of euroscepticism in Germany, where 189 professors have warned of "fatal consequences" if the EU crosses the Rubicon to a `transfer union’ of shared debt liabilities. The three Bundestag blocs in Angela Merkel's coalition have issued a paper virtually ordering her to resist demands for yet more bail-out concessions at this month’s EU summit.

So yes, the ECB has a credibility problem in Germany. Yet to raise rates into an oil shock – as it did July 2008 when the global system was already buckling – is the central banking cousin of Flat Earth belief.

This is not a repeat of 2008, of course, yet something is still deeply wrong. The M3 money supply contracted in January and December. It has been negative since August (from €9.52 trillion to €9.48 trillion), and so has narrow M1. Private credit is growing at just 2pc.

This is the same bank that sat on its hands through the torrid autumn of 2005, keeping real rates negative as M3 growth rose at 8pc (double the ECB’s reference rate of 4.5pc), and as the Irish/Club Med property bubbles spiralled out of control.

Germany needed rates below the Euroland equilibrium at that moment. This is dirty secret that almost everybody in the German policy debate now chooses to forget, or never acknowledged. The ECB discriminated against Club Med. I should have thought Spain could sue the bank for misconduct at the European Court over that breach of its mandate.

Spain is now being whacked again. One-year Euribor rates jumped 14 basis points to 1.92pc within hours after ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet uttered the code words “strong vigilance”. As the ECB knows, this is the rate used to price most Spanish mortgages.

Homeowners due for rescheduling in March will take the hit immediately. Fresh waves will follow each month, with knock-on effects for banks and Cajas already grappling with record defaults. Fitch Ratings said on Friday that the financial system will need €38bn in fresh capital to right the ship.

The Spanish might justly feel aggrieved, and judging by the comment threads of the Madrid press – "Put Trichet on trial", "Leave the EU immediately", "Create a currency for the South" – a vocal minority of Spaniards are going through their moment of EMU Epiphany.

Spain is doing what is required: slashing its twin deficits; biting the bullet on the Cajas (unlike Germany with the Landesbanken); and boosting exports faster than France or Italy. But Spain's chances of pulling through without a blow-up are contingent on EU authorities not committing another of their serial stupidities.

It was Mrs Merkel's call for creditor haircuts in October that pulled the rug from under the Irish, and set off EMU's Autumn contagion. Now the ECB is tossing its own hand-grenade into the peripheral debt markets, and doing so before there is any grand deal by EU leaders on a viable EU rescue machinery.

A month ago Mr Trichet sought to dampen prospects of a rate rise, insisting that inflation was "contained". Since then there has been a Mid-East revolution, the loss of 1m barrels of day (bpd) of Libyan oil, and a $15 premium on Brent crude to reflect the risk of Saudi revolt? This is dramatic, but not in itself inflationary.

Oil supply shocks depress the rest of the economy. They drain demand, acting as a tax siphoned off to Mid-East rentiers or the Kremlin. Headline inflation rises, but it signals the opposite of what is happening below the water line.

The ECB seems caught in a 1970s time-warp, wedded to the fallacy that the Yom Kippur oil shock caused the Great Inflation. The actual cause was rampant growth of the broad money supply, US spending on the Vietnam War and the Great Society, and a near ubiquitous picture of over-stimulus and over-heating across the West. It was a demand story, not a supply shock. Chalk and cheese.

The West is not over-heating today, except perhaps Germany, and that may not last as China slows. The eurozone grew just 0.3pc in the fourth quarter of 2010. The UK contracted. The US labour participation rate has continued falling over the last year to 64.2pc, the lowest since 1984.

Yes, China, India, and Brazil are overheating, pushing up global crude, metal, and grain prices. China alone is adding 850,000 bpd of oil demand each year, eating deep into global spare capacity. This is indeed a commodity demand story for the BRICs, but it has the characteristics of a supply shock for the West. There is nothing the ECB can usefully do about this, and it is suicidal to try. It is the task of the People's Bank to curb China’s credit bubble.

Trichet invoked the ECB's shibboleth of "second round” inflation effects. This is a sick joke as Spain and Portugal cut public wages by 5pc, Italy imposes a pay-freeze, and Ireland cuts the minimum wage by 11pc.

What he really meant is that settlements in Germany are creeping up. The car workers union IG Metall has secured a pay deal of 3pc to 3.5pc. Higher pay in Germany is exactly what is needed to help narrow the North-South gap in competitiveness without forcing wage deflation on Club Med, and it is exactly what the EMU-lords refuse to countenance. So the whole Euroland system must have a 1930s deflation bias.

It is twelve years since the launch of EMU. There has been no meaningful convergence of the disparate economies since then. The one-size-fits-all monetary policy continues to cause havoc. All that changes with the evolving economic cycle is a rotation in the locus of stress, and a change in its features.

Meanwhile, everything is tilted to meet the German imperative, but not enough to satisfy Germany. Nobody is satisfied.

Membership of monetary union as currently constructed is like walking with a sharp stone in your shoe, forever. You can put up with it, or take the stone out.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

European Central Bank arms itself for Spanish crisis

Spain's government and banks have to refinance almost ?300bn of debt next year, leaving the country prey to a buyers' strike Photo: AFP

The ECB said it would raise its subscribed capital by €5bn (£4.2bn) to €10.76bn, the first increase since the launch of the monetary union.

"Basically they are insuring themselves in case they have to step up bond purchases, and that probably implies Spain," said Julian Callow from Barclays Capital. "They have to be ready to dig the fire-break early on this because Spain is too large to handle, and there is risk of contagion to Italy."

The ECB's move came as Spain braved the debt markets following a downgrade alert by Moody's. Madrid paid the highest interest rates for a decade with yields on 10-year bonds rising to 5.45pc, compared with 4.63pc in November.

Spain's government and banks have to refinance almost €300bn of debt next year, leaving the country prey to a buyers' strike. "The auction wasn't a disaster but the markets are going to lose patience very quickly if the bond spreads widen further," said Elizabeth Afseth from Evolution Securities.

The ECB has so far bought €71bn of Greek, Irish, and Portuguese bonds in a bid to cap yields, but this was done against Bundesbank objections, and may breach EU treaty law. Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB's president, is irked that the bank is having to shoulder the burden of propping up the EMU periphery, blurring the lines between fiscal and monetary policy. Critics in Germany say the ECB is turning into a "bad bank" for toxic debts.

Mr Trichet has tried to nudge EU leaders into taking over the task by deploying the EU's €440bn rescue fund in eurozone debt markets, meeting German resistance.

Officials fear that the ECB could face losses on bond purchases, as well as loans worth €334bn to Greek, Irish, Portuguese, and Spanish banks – much of it in exchange for suspect housing collateral. Barclays Capital said eurozone central banks have already lost about €5bn.

A report by Goldman Sachs said EMU states hold $760bn (£487bn) of Spanish debt securities, on top of other loans, or
three-quarters of all foreign holdings. "Debt sustainability in the European periphery is to a very large extent a domestic problem for the eurozone," it said.

France has $252bn, Germany $212bn, Luxembourg $77bn, Ireland $62bn, The Netherlands $61bn, and Belgium $48bn. Outside EMU, Britain has $69bn and the US $26bn.

The loss profile is different to the US housing crisis, when European creditors were heavily on the hook. American banks will not return the favour by absorbing big losses if the EMU debt woes escalate.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.