The blue touch paper has been lit on the Money Supply boom of 2020

Today as I shall explain later is a case of back to the future especially for me. It brings an opportunity to examine one of the economic features of the current Covid-19 pandemic. This is a surge in money supply growth which has been quite something such that I think we will look back and consider it to be unprecedented. I expect that to be true in absolute terms in many places and it is already being true in relative terms in many.

The Euro Area

This morning has brought another signal of this so let us go straight to the ECB data.

Annual growth rate of narrower monetary aggregate M1, comprising currency in circulation and overnight deposits, increased to 11.9% in April from 10.4% in March.

Previously we had eight months of growth of ~8% so as you can see going to 10.4% and then 11.9% shows that the accelerator has been pressed hard and maybe the pedal has been pushed to the metal. If we switch to the cause of this which is mostly the rate of QE purchases by the ECB well you can see below. Apologies for the alphabeti spaghetti.

ECB PSPP (EUR): +9.545B To 2.216T (prev +10.936B To 2.207T) –

CSPP: +1.181B To 213.147B (prev +2.324B To 211.966B) – CBPP: +1.028B To 280.778B (prev +1.030B To 279.750B) – ABSPP: -377M To 30.738B (prev +161M To 31.115B) –

PEPP: +30.072B To 211.858B (prev +28.878B To 181.786B) ( @LiveSquawk) ( B= Billion and T=Trillion )

These are the weekly increases and if we stick to the money supply we see that in one week alone some 42 billion Euros of QE took place which means that on the other side of the ledger the narrow money supply has been increased by the same amount. Some of this was previously taking place and the more recent boost is called PEPP and is of the order of 30 billion Euros a week.

What this means is that the total amount of narrow money has gone from just under 9 trillion Euros in January to just over 9.5 trillion in April and will be going past 10 trillion fairly soon ( at the current pace in July).

Tucked away in the detail is that people have been wanting cash as well. The amount in circulation rose by 25.6 billion Euros in March and by 15.1 billion in April. Only a couple of months but that represents a clear shift of gear as we note April was the same as the whole of the third quarter last year and 2020 so far has already exceeded 2019.

Broad Money

This is a case of the same old song.

Annual growth rate of broad >monetary aggregate M3 increased to 8.3% in April 2020 from 7.5% in March.

The pick-up in annual growth is of the order of 3% and this is the highest growth rate for nearly 12 years, well until next month anyway! Switching to totals it is now 13.6 trillion Euros.

The breakdown is rather revealing I think.

The annual growth rate of the broad monetary aggregate M3 increased to 8.3% in April 2020 from 7.5% in March, averaging 7.1% in the three months up to April. The components of M3 showed the following developments. The annual growth rate of the narrower aggregate M1, which comprises currency in circulation and overnight deposits, increased to 11.9% in April from 10.4% in March. The annual growth rate of short-term deposits other than overnight deposits (M2-M1) decreased to -0.3% in April from 0.0% in March, while the annual growth rate of marketable instruments (M3-M2) decreased to 6.7% in April from 10.1% in March.

This tells us a couple of things. The opener is that the expansion is a narrow money thing and in fact narrow money over explains it. That means that in terms of wider bank intermediation there was a credit contraction here as we shift from M1 to M3 via M2.

Also at first it looks like the rate of deposits from businesses has picked up but then we see it seems to be insurance companies and pension funds. Or if you prefer the ECB has just bought a load of bonds off them and they have deposited the cash for now.

From the perspective of the holding sectors of deposits in M3, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by households increased to 6.7% in April from 6.0% in March, while the annual growth rate of deposits placed by non-financial corporations increased to 13.7% in April from 9.7% in March. Finally, the annual growth rate of deposits placed by non-monetary financial corporations (excluding insurance corporations and pension funds) decreased to 12.3% in April from 16.9% in March.

Although that might seem obvious we have seen stages where it has not appeared to be true.

Credit

The credit punch bowl has been out too.

As regards the dynamics of credit, the annual growth rate of total credit to euro area residents increased to 4.9% in April 2020 from 3.6% in the previous month. The annual growth rate of credit to general government increased to 6.2% in April from 1.6% in March, while the annual growth rate of credit to the private sector increased to 4.4% in April from 4.2% in March.

The main thing of note here is the surge in credit given to governments which links to the increases in public expenditure we have seen. There has been quite a swing here as it was negative ( -2%) as recently as February and had been negative for 9 months. So the Stability and Growth Pact was applied and then abandoned.

Looking at the breakdown the fall in loans to households is presumably a decline in mortgage lending and I think you can all figure out why companies were borrowing more.

The annual growth rate of adjusted loans to the private sector (i.e. adjusted for loan sales, securitisation and notional cash pooling) stood at 4.9% in April, compared with 5.0% in March. Among the borrowing sectors, the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to households decreased to 3.0% in April from 3.4% in March, while the annual growth rate of adjusted loans to non-financial corporations increased to 6.6% in April from 5.5% in March.

@fwred of Bank Pictet has got his microscope out.

Wow, another massive increase in bank loans / credit lines to euro area corporates, up €73bn in April following €121bn in March (both the largest on record by a huge margin)…….Finally, the surge in bank loans in March-April was broad-based across countries. No one left behind.

His Euro area glass is always full so let me point out that there are times when companies are borrowing to invest (good) and times they are borrowing because they are in trouble.

Also he has been kind enough to illustrate one of my main themes so thank you Fred and the emphasis is mine

Euro area corporates are drawing on their credit lines and taking new bank loans like there *is* tomorrow.

Side-effect: most banks will easily qualify for the lowest TLTRO-III rate from June (-1%).

What a coincidence!

Comment

This is an example in a way of the circle of life as back in the day I got a job because as a graduate monetary economist City firms wanted people to look at the money supply. Although there was a difference in that the central banks and governments were trying to bring it down as opposed to pumping it up. Rather ominously it did not work as planned and sometimes did not work at all.

How should it work? In essence the extra money balances (narrow money) should be spent relatively quickly and thereby give the economy a boost. That is why I look at narrow money and as an indicator it has worked pretty well. The catch or “rub” as Shakespeare would put it is velocity or how quickly the money circulates and there we have a problem as it is hard to measure especially right now. We know that for a while it will have been extremely low because in many areas you simply cannot spend money at the moment.

As we look internationally we see many examples of this. I have gone through the Euro area data today but if we switch to the US the numbers are even higher. The annual rate of M1 growth is 27.5% there so the pedal may even have been pushed through the metal. Care is needed as definitions vary but even using a more Euro area one it looks as though it would be over 20%.

As well as some hoped for economic growth there is a clear and present danger which is inflation. We seem likely to be singing along with BB King.

Hey, Mr. President
All your congressmen too
You got me frustrated
And I don’t know what to do
I’m trying to make a living
I can’t save a cent
It takes all of my money
Just to eat and pay my rent

I got the blues
Got those inflation blues