The IMF debt arrow warning misses the real target

Yesterday brought the latest forecasts from the IMF ( International Monetary Fund). Don’t worry I am not concerned with them as after all Greece would be now have recovered if they were right. But there is a link to the Greece issue and the way that it has found itself trying to push an enormous deadweight of debt which meant that Euro area policy had to change to make the interest-rates on it much cheaper. Here is the ESM or European Stability Mechanism on that subject.

1% Average interest rate on ESM loans to Greece (as of 28/04/2017)

That is a far cry from the “punishment” 4.5% that regular readers will recall that Germany was calling for in the early days and the implementation of which added to the trouble. Also if we continue with the debt theme there is another familiar consequence.

That is because the two institutions can borrow cash much more cheaply than Greece itself, and offer a long period for repayment. Greece will not have to start repaying its loans to the ESM before 2034, for instance.

So in the words of the payday lenders Greece now has one affordable monthly payment or something like that. As we note the IMF research below I think it is important to keep the consequences in mind.

The IMF Fiscal Monitor

Here is the opening salvo.

Global debt hit a new record high of $164 trillion in 2016, the equivalent of 225 percent of global GDP. Both private and public debt have surged over the past decade.

Later we get a breakdown of this.

Of the $164 trillion, 63 percent is non financial private sector debt, and 37 percent is public sector debt.

That is a fascinating breakdown so the banks have eliminated all their own debt have they? Perhaps it is the new hybrid debt being counted as equity. Also the IMF quickly drops its interest in the 63% which is a shame as there are all sorts of begged questions here. For example who is it borrowed from and is there any asset backing? In the UK for example it would include the fast rising unsecured or consumer credit sector as well as the mortgaged sector but of course even that relies on the house price boom for an asset value. Then we could get onto student debt which whilst I have my doubts about some of the degrees offered in return I have much more confidence in young people as an asset if I may put it like that. So sadly the IMF has missed the really interesting questions and of course is stepping on something of a land mine in discussing government debt after its debacle in Greece.

Government Debt

Here is the IMF hammering out its beat.

Debt in advanced economies is at 105 percent of
GDP on average—levels not seen since World War II.
In emerging market and middle-income economies,
debt is close to 50 percent of GDP on average—levels
last seen during the 1980s debt crisis. For low-income
developing countries, average debt-to-GDP ratios have
been climbing at a rapid pace and exceed 40 percent
as of 2017.

If we invert the order I notice that there are issues with the poorer countries again.

Moreover, nearly half of this debt is on
nonconcessional terms, which has resulted in a doubling
of the interest burden as a share of tax revenues
in the past 10 year.

This gives us food for though as you see one of the charts shows that such countries have received two phases of what is called relief, once in the 90s and once on the noughties. Is it relief or as Elvis Presley put it?

We’re caught in a trap
I can’t walk out
Because I love you too much baby

Next time I see Ann Pettifor who was involved in the Jubilee debt effort I will ask about this. Does such debt relief in a way validate policies which lead such countries straight back into debt trouble?

Advanced Countries

Here the choice of 2016 by the IMF is revealing. I have a little sympathy in that the data is often much slower to arrive than you might think but the government debt world has changed since them. Any example of this came from the UK only this week.

General government deficit (or net borrowing) was £39.4 billion in 2017, a decrease of £19.0 billion compared with 2016; this is equivalent to 1.9% of GDP, 1.1 percentage points below the reference value of 3.0% set out in the Protocol on the Excessive Deficit Procedure.

It is hard not to have a wry smile at the UK passing one of the Maastricht criteria! But the point is that the deficit situation is much better albeit far slower than promised meaning that whilst the debt soared back then now prospects are different.

In truth I fear that the IMF has taken a trip to what we might call Trumpton.

In the United States—where
a fiscal stimulus is happening when the economy is
close to full employment, keeping overall deficits above
$1 trillion (5 percent of GDP) over the next three
years—fiscal policy should be recalibrated to ensure
that the government debt-to-GDP ratio declines over
the medium term.

I have quite a bit of sympathy with questioning why the US has added a fiscal stimulus to all the monetary stimulus? I know it has been raising interest-rates but the truth is that it has less monetary stimulus now rather than a contraction. Those of us who fear that modern economies can only claim growth if they continue to be stimulated or a type of economic junkie culture will think along these lines. But also they lose ground with waffle like “full employment” in a world where the Japanese unemployment rate is 2.5% as to the 4.1% in the US. Oh and whilst we are at it there is of course the fact that Japan has been running such fiscal deficits for years now.

What about interest-rates and yields?

There was this from Lisa Abramowicz of Bloomberg yesterday.

While U.S. yields may still be rising, the world is still awash in central-bank stimulus. The amount of negative-yielding debt has actually grown by nearly $1.4 trillion since February, to about $8.3 trillion: Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Negative Yielding Debt index

My point is that for all the talk and analysis of higher interest-rates and yields we get this.

Comment

There is a fair bit to consider here and let me open with a bit of tidying up. Comparing a debt stock to an income/output flow ( GDP) requires also some idea of the cost of the debt. Moving on an opportunity has been missed to look at private-debt as we note that US consumer credit has passed the pre credit crunch peak. Of course the economy is larger but there are areas of troubled water such as car loans. This matters because the last surge in government debt was driven by the socialisation of private debt previously owned by the banks.

If we note the debt we have generically then there are real questions now as to high interest-rates can go? Some of you have suggested around 3% but in the end that also depends on economic growth which is apposite because the slowing of some monetary indicators suggests we may be about to get less of it. Should that turn further south then more than a few places will see an economic slow down that starts with both negative interest-rates and yields. These are the real issues as opposed to old era thinking.

• First, high government debt can make countries
vulnerable to rollover risk because of large gross
financing needs, particularly when maturities are
short

In reality that will be QE’d away if I may put it like that and the real question is where will the side-effects and consequences of the QE response appear? For example the distributional effects in favour of those with assets. Perhaps the real issue is the continuing prevalence of negative yields in a (claimed) recovery………From the Fab Four.

You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
And in the middle of negotiations
You break down

Me on Core Finance TV