The ECB “taper” meets “To infinity! And beyond!”

Yesterday was central banker day when we heard from Mark Carney of the Bank of England, Mario Draghi of the ECB and Janet Yellen of the US Federal Reserve. I covered the woes of Governor Carney yesterday and note that even that keen supporter of him Bloomberg is now pointing out that he is losing the debate. As it happened Janet Yellen was also giving a speech in London and gave a huge hostage to fortune.

Yellen today: “Don’t see another crisis in our lifetimes” Yellen May 2016: “We Didn’t See The Financial Crisis Coming” ( @Stalingrad_Poor )

Let us hope she is in good health and if you really wanted to embarrass her you would look at what she was saying in 2007/08. However the most significant speech came at the best location as the ECB has decamped to its summer break, excuse me central banking forum, at the Portuguese resort of Sintra.

Mario Draghi

As President Draghi enjoyed his morning espresso before giving his keynote speech he will have let out a sigh of relief that it was not about banking supervision. After all the bailout of the Veneto Banks in Italy would have come up and people might have asked on whose watch as Governor of the Bank of Italy the problems built up? Even worse one of the young economists invited might have wondered why the legal infrastructure covering the Italian banking sector is nicknamed the “Draghi Laws”?

However even in the area of monetary policy there are problems to be faced as I pointed out on the 13th of March.

It too is in a zone where ch-ch-changes are ahead. I have written several times already explaining that with inflation pretty much on target and economic growth having improved its rate of expansion of its balance sheet looks far to high even at the 60 billion Euros a month due in April.

Indeed on the 26th of May I noted that Mario himself had implicitly admitted as much.

As a result, the euro area is now witnessing an increasingly solid recovery driven largely by a virtuous circle of employment and consumption, although underlying inflation pressures remain subdued. The convergence of credit conditions across countries has also contributed to the upswing becoming more broad-based across sectors and countries. Euro area GDP growth is currently 1.7%, and surveys point to continued resilience in the coming quarters.

That simply does not go with an official deposit rate of -0.4% and 60 billion Euros a month of Quantitative Easing. Policy is expansionary in what is in Euro area terms a boom.

This was the first problem that Mario faced which is how to bask in the success of economic growth whilst avoiding the obvious counterpoint that policy is now wrong. He did this partly by indulging in an international comparison.

since January 2015 – that is, following the announcement of the expanded asset purchase programme (APP) – GDP
has grown by 3.6% in the euro area. That is a higher growth rate than in same period following QE1 or QE2 in the United States, and a percentage point lower than the period after QE3. Employment in the euro area has also risen by more than four million since we announced the expanded APP, comparable with both QE2 and QE3 in the US, and considerably higher than QE1.

You may note that Mario is picking his own variables meaning that unemployment for example is omitted as are differences of timing and circumstance. But on this road we got the section which had an immediate impact on financial markets.

The threat of deflation is gone and reflationary forces are at play.

So we got an implicit admittal that policy is pro-cyclical or if you prefer wrong. A reduction in monthly QE purchases of 20 billion a month is dwarfed by the change in circumstances. But we have to be told something is happening so there was this.

This more favourable balance of risks has been already reflected in our monetary policy stance, via the adjustments we have made to our forward guidance.

You have my permission to laugh at this point! If he went out into the streets of Sintra I wonder how many would know who he is let alone be running their lives to the tune of his Forward Guidance!? Whilst his Forward Guidance has not been quite the disaster of Mark Carney the sentence below shows a misfire.

This illustrates that core inflation does not
always give us a clear reading of underlying inflation dynamics.

The truth is as I have argued all along that there was no deflation threat in terms of a downwards spiral for inflation because it was driven by this.

Oil-related base effects are also the main driver of the considerable volatility in headline inflation that we have seen, and will be seeing, in the euro area………. As a result, in the first quarter of 2017, oil-sensitive items  were still holding back core inflation.

I guess the many parts of the media which have copy and pasted the core inflation/deflation theme will be hoping that their readers have a bout of amnesia. Or to put it another way that Mario has set up a straw (wo)man below.

What is clear is that our monetary policy measures have been successful in avoiding a deflationary spiral and securing the anchoring of inflation expectations.

Actually if you look elsewhere in his speech you will see that if you consider all the effort put in that in fact his policies had a relatively minor impact.

Between 2016 and 2019 we estimate that our monetary policy will have lifted inflation by 1.7 percentage points,
cumulatively.

So it took a balance sheet of 4.2 trillion Euros ( and of course rising as this goes to 2019) to get that? You can look at the current flow of 60 billion a month which makes it look a little better but it is not a lot of bang for your Euro.

Market Movements

There was a clear response to the mention of the word “reflationary” as the Euro rose strongly. It rose above 1.13 to the US Dollar as it continued the stronger  phase we have been seeing in 2017 as it opened the year more like 1.04.  Also government bond yields rose although the media reports of “jumps” made me smile as I noted that the German ten-year yield was only 0.4% and the two-year was -0.57%! Remember when the ECB promised it was fixing the issue of demand for German bonds?

Comment

On the surface this is a triumph for Forward Guidance as Mario’s speech tightens monetary policy via higher bond yields and a higher value for the Euro on the foreign exchanges. Yet if we go back to March 2014 he himself pointed out the flaw in this.

Now, as a rule of thumb, each 10% permanent effective exchange rate appreciation lowers inflation by around 40 to 50 basis points.

You see the effective or trade-weighted index dipped to 93.5 in the middle of April but was 97.2 at yesterday’s close. If we note that Mario is not achieving his inflation target and may be moving away from it we get food for thought.

Euro area annual inflation was 1.4% in May 2017, down from 1.9% in April.

So as the markets assume what might be called “tapering” ( in terms of monthly QE purchases) or “normalisation” in terms of interest-rates we can look further ahead and wonder if “To infinity! And Beyond!” will win? After all if the economy slows later this year  and inflation remains below target ………

There are two intangible factors here. Firstly the path of inflation these days depends mostly in the price of crude oil. Secondly whilst I avoid politics like the plague it is true that we will find out more about what the ECB really intends once this years major elections are done and dusted as the word “independent” gets another modification in my financial lexicon for these times

 

UK credit and car loan problems are building

As we look at the UK credit situation there are building pressures almost everywhere we look. This is hardly a surprise if we step back and review the years and years of easy monetary policy involving cutting the Bank Rate to a mere 0.25% and some £445 billion of QE ( Quantitative Easing) as well as other policies. If we stay with QE then the UK is second on the list in terms of how much of its bond ( Gilt) market has been bought by its central bank at 37% according to Business Insider. I doubt Governor Carney will be emphasising this too much when he presents the Financial Stability Report today.

Central bankers are capable of the most extraordinary blindness when it comes to themselves however as I noted when I received this in my email inbox.

Why are house prices in the UK so high? Can prices and mortgage debt continue to rise? How is government policy affecting outcomes? David Miles will explore these issues and consider how the property landscape in the UK might play out over the longer term.

This is the same David Miles who in his time at the Bank of England did as much as he could to drive house prices higher with his votes for Bank Rate cuts, more QE and the bank subsidy called the Term Funding Scheme. He even voted for more QE in the summer of 2013 as the UK economy picked up! Of course in his last month in the autumn of 2015 he claimed he was on the edge of voting for a Bank Rate rise but this only fooled the most credulous. The reality is that he was a major driver in creating this sort of situation. From April.

Yorkshire Building Society is launching a mortgage with the lowest interest rate ever available in the UK at 0.89%.

The new 0.89% product is a two-year variable mortgage with a discount of 3.85% from the Society’s Standard Variable Rate (SVR), which is currently 4.74%, and is available for anyone borrowing up to 65% of the value of their property.

Car Loans

This is another problem area that we have looked at several times due to two main factors. Firstly we have seen quite a rate of growth and secondly the market has changed massively. These days nearly all new cars are bought on credit as this from the Finance and Leasing Association makes clear.

In 2016, members provided £41 billion of new finance to help households and businesses purchase cars. Over 86% of all private new car registrations in the UK were financed by FLA members.

The deals look initially very attractive.

There are often 0% deals available, so it’s worth shopping around.

However there is a “rub” as Shakespeare would put it and we see the danger here as the Financial Times takes up the story..

Most borrowing is in the form of Personal Contract Purchases. Customers pay a deposit and monthly payments for a fixed period. At the end of the contract, they can buy the car from the manufacturer for a price guaranteed at the start.

The in-house banks of car companies, which provide most of the finance for PCPs, generally set this guaranteed price at about 85 per cent of what they think the used car will be worth.

We know that in the United States used car values have dropped sharply so let us look at the UK as the FT explains.

“However, the detail is the key,” said Rupert Pontin, director of valuations at Glass’s. Newer used-cars are losing more of their value and more quickly. A used car that is less than two-and-a-half years old is worth 57.6 per cent of its original value, down from 61.1 per cent in 2014.

“This is likely to continue to be the case for the rest of 2017 and into 2018 as well,” he said, as more cars come off the three-year credit deals they were bought with and that have been wildly popular with UK consumers.

So they are “Fallin'” as Alicia Keys would say. This poses quite a problem for a system which depends on the resale value of the cars. Initially this will probably hit the manufacturers who offer these schemes as those leasing will presumably hand more of the cars back. For deals going forwards though the resale value will be adjusted lower and be factored into the deal making the buyer/consumer get worse terms.

This has changed the car market

I have written in the past about a friend who bought a car and took a contract deal because believe it or not it was £500 cheaper than buying it outright. More is added on this front in a reply to the FT from leftie.

There’s no truth in the description ‘interest free’.  The cost of the loan is built into the ticket price.   We know that because the seller may not offer a discount on the sale price for fear of the ‘interest free’ bluff being found out.  It’s institutionalised dishonesty that traps the unwary and leads to excessive debts.

Whilst some do game the system most are unwary pawns.

I found it was cheaper to buy my small new Ford on PCP credit than pay cash, and the dealer admitted he would get more commission from the former.

Don’t worry, he told me: wait a couple of days for the systems to update then ring Ford and pay off the loan. I did, and accrued interest was negligible. Few people do this – it’s so tempting to hang on to your cash. ( johnwrigglesworth )

So the Merry Go Round rumbles on with the can as ever being kicked about 3/4 years each time. What could go wrong? From the FT.

Many car loans are securitised — packaged together and sold on to investors as bonds — as mortgages were in the run-up to the financial crisis. This has led some to worry that a slowdown in car sales could cause financial instability.

I have noticed something rather troubling this morning and let me make it clear that this is from the US and not the UK but of course such things tend to hop the Atlantic like it is a puddle and not an ocean.

Santander just priced a deep subprime auto deal where 84% of the loans are to borrowers with unverified income. JPMorgan: pic.twitter.com/4xB71F35js

— Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) June 27, 2017

 

This faces ch-ch-changes as explained by the Agents of the Bank of England last week.

Contacts reported a range of potential headwinds, including
the slowdown in real pay growth, upward pressure on new car prices arising from sterling’s depreciation and, for high-volume manufacturers, weaker second-hand car residual values, which had raised the costs of depreciation and so car finance.

Comment

If we start with the UK car market it has seen an extraordinary amount of stimulus. First came its own form of QE as redress payments from the Payments Protection Insurance scandal came into play and next came the easing of the Bank of England. No wonder sales have risen and not all of the drive came from the UK as some came from policies elsewhere as the FT explains.

Thrifty German savers in search of better interest rates have helped fund the debt-fuelled car-buying boom in the UK…..The biggest deposit taker is Volkswagen which had €28bn of consumer deposits in 2015, followed by BMW with €15.9bn. RCI Banque, the bank of Renault, had €13.6bn of deposits.

Meanwhile for Bank of England Governor Mark Carney it is clear that a week is apparently a long time in central banking. Last week we saw boasting.

This stimulus is working. Credit is widely available, the cost of borrowing is near record lows,

This week the Financial Stability Report tells a very different story.

Consumer credit has increased rapidly

Something to cheer like the Governor did? Er no.

Bringing forward the assessment of stressed losses on consumer credit lending in the Bank’s 2017 annual stress
test.

So perhaps not as we see a rise in the capital required by UK banks.

Increasing the UK countercyclical capital buffer rate to 0.5%, from 0%. Absent a material change in the
outlook, and consistent with its stated policy for a standard risk environment and of moving gradually, the FPC
expects to increase the rate to 1% at its November meeting.

That will be two steps of £5.7 billion if the initial estimates are accurate as we note they have finally spotted something we started looking at last summer.

Consumer credit grew by 10.3% in the twelve months to
April 2017

 

Me in City AM

http://www.cityam.com/267366/debate-italian-government-right-commit-eur17bn-rescuing-two?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=dvTwitter

 

 

It is all about the banks yet again

If there is a prime feature of the credit crunch in the financial world it is the woes and travails of the banks. That is quite an anti-achievement when you consider that if you count from the first signs of trouble at the mortgage book of Bear Stearns we are now in out second decade of this period having lost one already. Before we come to today’s main course delightfully prepared first by chefs in Italy and then finished off in Brussels I have a starter for you from the UK.

The Co-op Bank

Back on the 13th of February I gave my views on this institution being put up for sale.

So the bank is up for sale and my immediate thought is who would buy it and frankly would they pay anything? Only last week Bloomberg put out some concerning analysis……..Co-Operative Bank Plc, the British lender that ceded control to its creditors three years ago, has plunged in value to as little as 45 million pounds ($56 million), according to people familiar with the matter.

Since then we have had regular reports in places like the Financial Times that a deal was just around the corner whereas I feared it might end up in the hands of the Bank of England. This morning has come news that the ill-fated sale plans have been abandoned and replaced by a doubling-down by the existing investors. From Sky News.

The beleaguered Co-operative Bank is closing in on a £700m rescue deal with US hedge funds amid ongoing talks about the separation of the vast pension scheme it shares with the Co-op Group.

Much of the issue revolves around funding the pension scheme and if I was worker at the Co-op I would be watching that like a hawk. Also the name may need some review as the shareholding of the Co-operative group falls below 5%.

We have also seen in the UK how a bailed out bank boosts the economy in return for taxpayers largesse. From Reuters.

British lender Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) is planning to cut 443 jobs dealing with business loans and many of them will move to India, the bank said

The Veneto Banks

As we move from our starter to the main course we find ourselves facing a menu which has taken nearly a decade to be drawn up. The Italian response to the banking crisis was to adopt the ostrich position and ignore it for as long as possible. Indeed for a while the Italian establishment boasted that only 0.2% of GDP ( Gross Domestic Product) had been spent on bank bailouts compared to much higher numbers elsewhere. Such Schadenfreude came back to haunt them driven by one main factor which was the rise and rise of non-performing loans in the Italian banking sector which ended up with more zombies than you might expect to see in a Hammer House of Horror production. Even worse this was a drag on the already anaemic Italian rate of economic growth meaning that its economy is now pretty much the same size as when it joined the Euro.

There has been a long program of disinformation on this subject and I am sure that regular readers will recall the claims that Monte Paschi was a good investment made by then Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. There have also been the regular statements by Finance Minister Padoan along the lines of this from Politico EU in January.

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan has defended the way his country dealt with its banking crisis, saying the government had “only spent €3 billion” on bailouts, in an interview with Die Welt published today.

If we are being ultra polite that was especially “odd” as Monte Paschi was in state hands but of course over this weekend came more woe for Padoan. From the European Commission.

On 24 June 2017, Italy notified to the Commission its plans to grant State aid to wind-down BPVI and Veneto Banca. The measures will enable the sale of parts of the two banks’ activities to Intesa, including the transfer of employees. Italy selected Intesa Sanpaolo (Intesa) as the buyer in an open, fair and transparent sales procedure:

I will come to the issue of Intesa in a moment but let us first look at the cost to Italy from this.

In particular, the Italian State will grant the following measures:

• Cash injections of about €4.785 billion; and
• State guarantees of a maximum of about €12 billion, notably on Intesa’s financing of the liquidation mass. The State guarantees would be called upon notably, if the liquidation mass is insufficient to pay back Intesa for its financing of the liquidation mass.

This has opened up a rather large can of worms and as Bloomberg points out we can start with this.

Rome will effectively by-pass the EU’s “single resolution board” which is supposed to handle bank failures in an orderly way and the “Banking Recovery and Resolution Directive,” which should act as the euro zone’s single rulebook.

Why? Well as we have looked at before there was the misselling of bonds to retail investors.

The government could have taken a less expensive route, involving the “bail in” of senior bondholders. It chose not to: Many of these instruments are in the hands of retail investors, who bought them without being fully aware of the risks involved. The government wants to avoid a political backlash and the risk of contagion spreading across the system.

Privatisation of profits and socialisation of losses yet again. Also only on the June 8th we were told this.

Italian banks are considering assisting in a rescue of troubled lenders Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca by pumping 1.2 billion euros (1.1 billion pounds) of private capital into the two regional banks

Good job they said no as they would have been over 3 billion short! Oh and Padoan described the problems as “exaggerated” whereas if we return to reality this was always the real problem.

A bail in has the problem of the retail depositors who were persuaded to invest in bank bonds.

Intesa

This seems to have got something of a free lunch here provided courtesy of the Italian taxpayer. From Reuters.

The government will pay 5.2 billion euros ($5.82 billion) to Intesa, and give it guarantees of up 12 billion euros, so that it will take over the remains of the banks.

So it can clear up the mess? Er not quite.

will leave the lenders’ good assets in the hands of Intesa,

So it is being paid to take the good bits. Heads it wins if things turns out okay and tails the Italian taxpayer loses if they do not as it will use the guarantees. Also as you can see it seems to have thought of everything.

You think Santander made a killing with Pop until you realise #Intesa will even make the state pay for the redundancy package of V&V staff ( @jeuasommenulle )

It may even be able to gain from some Deferred Tax Assets but chasing down that thread is only in very technical Italian.

Comment

There is much to consider here so let me open with the two main issues. The European Banking Union has just been torpedoed by the Italian financial navy. The promised bail in has become a bailout. Next comes the issue of how much all the dilatory dithering has cost the Italian taxpayer? As in the end the cost is way above the sums that Financial Minister Padoan was calling “exaggerated”. I note that BBC Breakfast called the cost 5 billion Euros this morning ignoring the 12 billion Euros of guarantees which no doubt Italy in a by now familiar attempted swerve will try to keep it out of the national debt numbers. Although to be fair Eurostat has mostly shot down such efforts.

Over the next few days we will no doubt be assailed with promises that the money will come back. For some it already has. From the FT.

Intesa Sanpaolo, the country’s strongest lender that will take over the failed banks’ good assets, was the second biggest riser on the eurozone-wide Stoxx 600 index. Shares in the bank were up 3.6 per cent at publication time, to €2.71.

 

 

 

 

 

The cracks at the Bank of England have become fissures

This has been a bad week for the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.  First came the appointment of Professor Silvana Tenreyro to the Monetary Policy Committee which led to even social media to have a brief period of  silence as everyone looked up who she was! Next came a reminder that his Chief Economist Andy Haldane is a modern version of a “loose cannon on the decks” on the edge of going off in almost any direction at any time. Finally last night came a critique from someone Governor Carney went out of his way ( North America) to appoint.

Kristin Forbes

Ms Forbes has given quite a damning account of her time at the Bank of England whilst also confirming several themes of this website.

In July 2014, when I started on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, it was widely expected (including by me) that we would begin increasing interest rates soon. It has been almost three years – and growth has averaged a healthy and above trend 2.3% (year-on-year) over this period. Yet interest rates are now lower – instead of higher – than when I started my term.

Fair play to her for the honesty but of course regular readers will be aware that I forecast this outcome back then. The establishment continue only to talk to themselves which is why we get the phrase “widely expected” when they are wrong as they live in an echo chamber. It is an irony that they try to wear the badge of diversity when in fact it is diversity of ideas that they most need and of course they shun.

Ms Forbes continues to land punches on the Bank of England consensus as another of the themes here the woeful forecasting record gets a mention.

A key justification for the large amount of stimulus that many people (albeit not me) supported in August was a forecast for a sharp contraction in growth to near recession levels and sharp increase in unemployment that would leave a meaningful increase in the number of people without a job. That forecast has not materialized.

As I wrote at the time this was perfectly predictable if you looked at the impact of falls in the value of the UK Pound £ which as a reminder is currently equivalent to a 2.75% cut in Bank Rate. If I was to make a one sentence critique of bringing members of the “international economic elite” to the Bank of England it would be that they invariable fail to understand the impact of changes in the UK Pound £. I write that in sad fashion in this instance because it looked for a time that Kristin Forbes did understand.

After the uppercut comes the left cross.

And as the UK economy has held up well since the Brexit vote, why has there been no consensus to tighten
monetary policy – or at least slightly reduce the substantial amount of stimulus provided in August – since
then?

So she thinks that the Bank of England is full of “Carney’s Cronies” as I have labeled them too?

a majority on the MPC does not support reversing a small portion of last August’s stimulus.

As an aside it is also revealing that even she does not seem to in the words of Blockbuster by Sweet “have a clue what to do” about all the QE. Back in September 2013 I wrote an article in City-AM with a suggestion on this front. Returning to the economic theme she points out that the world has changed at least according to the Bank of England so why has policy not changed?

Instead, over the three full quarters since the referendum, GDP has increased by over three times more (by almost 1 percentage point more) than forecast in the August Inflation Report, and unemployment is 0.5 percentage points lower. Put slightly differently, instead of increasing, unemployment has fallen so much that it is now at its lowest level in over 40 years. At the same time, inflation spiked to 2.9% in May. It is expected to continue increasing over the next few months and remain above target for
over three years.

It has been argued by some by the previous Governor Baron King of Lothbury intimidated some MPC members so as you read this next quote please be aware that his term ended in the summer of 2013 as Mark Carney arrived.

This pattern of different views and dissent by all types of committee members, however, seems to have
changed around 2013 – a period when there were a number of changes at the Bank and to the MPC’s remit,
making it hard to pinpoint the cause……… Not a single dissent since 2013 has come from an internal member.

Finally it would appear that someone at the Bank of England has caught up with a point I have been making since the EU Referendum vote.

Sterling’s recent depreciation appears to be shifting the trend component of UK inflation upward quickly, potentially generating more persistent inflationary pressures

This is all rather different to what Governor Carney told us at Mansion House.

This stimulus is working. Credit is widely available, the cost of borrowing is near record lows, the economy has outperformed expectations, and unemployment has reached a 40 year low.

Loose cannon on the decks

For those unaware this saying came from the Royal Navy where in the days of sailing ships a loose cannon was extremely dangerous to say the least. A modern version of this has been the Chief Economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane which we can see by a simple game of then and now. First just over 11 months ago.

In my personal view, this means a material easing of monetary policy is likely to be needed,…….Put differently, I would rather run the risk of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut than taking a miniature rock hammer to tunnel my way out of prison…….Given the scale of insurance required, a package of mutually-complementary monetary policy easing measures is likely to be necessary.

And this week.

I considered the case for a rate rise at the MPC’s June meeting.

As ever there is no real confession here about being wrong. After all if Andy had built a plane and it crashed on take-off who would fly on one of his planes again? But the central banking echo chamber is not like that even when they present devastating evidence of their own failure.

Wages have been surprisingly weak for much of the period since the global financial crisis. Chart 1 plots
successive Bank of England forecasts of wage growth since 2012. Wage growth in the UK has persistently
disappointed to the downside, on average by around 1 ¼ percentage points one year ahead.

You see our “loose cannon” knew this last August albeit a year less of it yet he still ignored his own frailties and ploughed ahead in that combination of arrogance and panic that we see from the central banking fraternity at such times. Yet in spite of such failure look what happened only last week.

Andrew Haldane, Executive Director, Monetary Analysis and Statistics, and Chief Economist at the Bank of England, has been reappointed for a further three-year term as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee with effect from 12 June 2017.

Rewards for failure indeed. As I asked at the time on what ground was he reappointed please?

Comment

There is much to consider here as the themes of the Bank of England being the worst forecasting organisation in the world and the advent of “Carney’s Cronies” have been in play. However in the speech by Kristin Forbes there was also a confession of the earliest theme of this website so let us get to it.

Even more striking is the lack of other countries’ ability to sustain any tightening in monetary policy since the
crisis.

They are in their own junkie culture style trap but as it is Glastonbury weekend let me hand you over to Muse for a description.

I wanted freedom
Bound and restricted
I tried to give you up
But I’m addicted

Now that you know I’m trapped sense of elation
You’d never dream of
Breaking this fixation

You will squeeze the life out of me

 

What is happening to the economy of Qatar?

Today I intend to take a look at the economy of one of the Gulf states Qatar. It hit the news earlier this month due to these events from Gulf News.

June 5: The UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing Doha of supporting extremism, and giving the countries’ diplomats 48 hours to leave.

June 6: WAM, the UAE state news agency, announces that the country has closed its seaports, as well as its airspace, to all Qatari vessels and airplanes.

So it went into the bad boy/girl camp as diplomatic and economic sanctions were applied. Although in the topsy-turvy world in which we live this happened soon after.

Qatar will sign a deal to buy as many as 36 F-15 jets from the U.S. as the two countries navigate tensions over President Donald Trump’s backing for a Saudi-led coalition’s move to isolate the country for supporting terrorism.

Qatari Defense Minister Khalid Al-Attiyah and his U.S. counterpart, Jim Mattis, completed the $12 billion agreement on Wednesday in Washington, according to the Pentagon.

The sale “will give Qatar a state of the art capability and increase security cooperation and interoperability between the United States and Qatar,” the Defense Department said in a statement.

I do not know about you but if I thought that someone was indeed sponsoring terrorism I would not be selling them fighter jets! Still I suppose it does help achieve one of the Donald’s main aims which is to boost US manufacturing.

Also whilst we are on the subject of “Madness, they call it madness” there was of course the decision to award the 2022 football World Cup to a country with extraordinarily high temperatures. Also one could hardly claim that football was coming home!

How was the Qatari economy doing?

There was a time when it was party, party, party. From the Financial Times.

ministers used to boast about the economy expanding at one of the fastest rates in the world: in the decade to 2016, growth averaged 13 per cent.

Much of this was of course due to higher prices for crude oil and associated products which then changed.

The oil crash in 2014 hastened a spending review, with budget cuts and widespread redundancies across the energy and government sectors, including thousands at the state petroleum group. Jobs have been cut in museums and across education, media and health, with many projects cancelled or delayed.

There was something of a familiar feature to this.

In the West Bay business district, the impact of shrinking corporate and residential demand is stark. The flagship development boomed from 2004 to 2014 but the area is now littered with unoccupied and half-built skyscrapers.

The World Cup Boomlet

Work on this has turned out to be anti-cyclical and has provided a boost.

The Gulf state is building nine sports stadiums, “cooled” fan zones, hotels, sewage works and roads ahead of the football tournament……the government is spending $500m a week on World Cup-related infrastructure.

However there was a consequence.

Qatar, the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas, recorded its first budget deficit in 15 years in 2016 — a $12bn financing gap

Oil

This and its related products are the driver of the economy as OPEC notes.

Oil and natural gas account for about 55 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. Petroleum has made Qatar one of the world’s fastest-growing and highest per-capita income countries.

There are various different measures but Global Finance puts it as the world’s highest per capita GDP in 2016. Of course this wealth mostly simply emerges from the ground mostly in the form of natural gas.

Of course the fact that the price of a barrel of Brent Crude Oil has fallen below US $45 is not welcome in Qatar as it reduces GDP, exports and government revenue. Also since May the price of natural gas has been falling with the NYMEX future dropping from US $3.42 to US $2.89. So bad times on both fronts as Qatar mulls the impact of the US shale oil producers.

Monetary Policy

You might have been wondering why there have not been reports of a crashing Qatari Rial. That is because of this. From the Qatar Central Bank.

QCB has adopted the exchange rate policy of its predecessor, Qatar Monetary Agency, through fixing the value of the Qatari Riyal (QR) against the US dollar (USD) at a rate of QR 3.64 per USD as a nominal anchor for its monetary policy.

So we have a type of fixed exchange rate or if you prefer a currency peg. This means that monetary policy is in effect imported from the United States which led to this.

Qatar Central Bank has decided to raise its QMR Deposit rate (QMRD) on Thursday June 15,2017 By 25 basis point from 1.25% to 1.50% .

Even in these times of low interest-rates one of 1.5% is hardly going to cut it in terms of currency support so minds immediately turn to the foreign exchange reserves. The QCB had 125.4 billion Riyals at the end of April. This was down on the recent peak of 158.3 billion Riyals of July 2015 presumably due to responses to the lower oil price. This meant that a balance of payments current account surplus of 50.1 billion Riyals of 2015 became a 30.3 billion deficit in 2016.

At a time like this people will also note that the external debt of the Qatari government rose from 73.4 billion Rials at the end of 2105 to 116.2 billion at the end of 2016. Also the banking sector has become more dependent on foreign cash according to Reuters.

Qatar’s banks became dependent on foreign funding during the last few years of strong economic growth. Their foreign liabilities increased to 451 billion riyals (97.90 billion pounds) in March from 310 billion riyals at the end of 2015.

Also if we look back to the 13th of this month I noticed this in the statement from the QCB saying that the banking sector was operating normally, which of course usually means it isn’t!

that QCB has sufficient foreign currencies reserves to meet all requirements.

So presumably it has been using them.

Qatar Investment Authority

The QIA manages a portfolio estimated at around US $335 billion and at a time like this investing abroad will look rather clever in foreign currency terms. Although the exact list may not be entirely inspiring.

Main assets include Volkswagen, Barclays, Canary Wharf, Harrods, Credit Suisse, Heathrow, Glencore, Tiffany & Co., Total.

There is speculation that there is pressure to use these assets. From Reuters.

Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund has transferred over $30 billion worth of its domestic equity holdings to the finance ministry and may sell other assets as part of a restructuring drive, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

As someone who cycled past one of those assets – Chelsea Barracks –  only yesterday that provides food for thought for the London property market I think.

Comment

The discussion so far has been about financial issues so let us look at a real economy one which could not be more Arabic.

Saudi blockade on Qatar sabotages multi-billion dollar camel ……….A rescue mission is underway in Qatar after thousands of camels were expelled from Saudi Arabia due to the ongoing blockade. each of them can be worth up to $75,000  ( Al Jazeera )

Also food is being sent from Turkey.

Turkey is sending food supplies to Qatar by sea on Wednesday to compensate for a recent embargo by Qatar’s neighbour states, according to Turkey’s economy minister. (Al Jazeera )

At least it is better than sending soldiers which is unlikely to improve anything. But if we move back to the financial impact we wait to see how much has been spent to support the currency. We can see from the forward rates that there must have been some and maybe a lot. Also is it a coincidence that the UK looks to be taking the investment in Barclays to court? On that subject this from The Spectator is quite extraordinary.

Why I’m sad to see Barclays in the dock, and astonished to see John Varley there

Apparently he should not be there because he was “impeccably well tailored and mannered, who always looked destined for the top — but was also universally liked by his colleagues” something which could have come straight from the satire and comedy about “nice chaps” in Yes Prime Minister.

Meanwhile with the UK weather and the subject of today it is time for some Glenn Frey.

The heat is on (yeah) the heat is on, the heat is on
(Burning, burning, burning)
It’s on the street, the heat is on

Me on TipTV Finance

http://tiptv.co.uk/car-loans-canary-coal-mine-not-yes-man-economics/

Of UK Austerity and the Queen’s Speech

Today in a happy coincidence we get both the future plans of the current government in the Queen’s Speech as well as the latest public finances data. It looks as though the atmosphere is for this at least according to the Financial Times.

But he (the Chancellor) is coming under growing pressure from some Tory MPs — who are reeling from the loss of the party’s majority in the House of Commons at the June 8 election — to learn lessons and increase public spending.

Why? Well this happened.

The opposition Labour party pulled off surprise gains in the UK general election by offering voters a vision of higher public spending funded by increased taxes on companies and the rich.

So there is likely to be pressure on this front especially as we will have a government that at best will only have a small majority.

Mansion House

The Chancellor Phillip Hammond also spoke at Mansion House yesterday and told us this.

And higher discretionary borrowing to fund current consumption is simply asking the next generation to pay for something that we want to consume, but are not prepared to pay for ourselves, so we will remain committed to the fiscal rules set out at the Autumn Statement which will guide us, via interim targets in 2020, to a balanced budget by the middle of the next decade.

Is that an official denial? Because we know what to do with those! But in fact setting a target of the middle of the next decade (so 2025) gives enormous freedom of movement in practical terms. You could forecast pretty much anything for then and the Office for Budget Responsibility or OBR probably has. If we look back over its lifespan we see that one error which is that forecasting wage inflation now would be 5% per annum as opposed to the current 2% has had enormous implications. Also we only need to look back to the 3rd of October to see the Chancellor giving himself some freedom of manoeuvre.

“As we go into a period where inevitably there will be more uncertainty in the economy, we need the space to be able to support the economy through that period,” he said. “If we don’t do something, if we don’t intervene to counteract that effect, in time it would have an impact on jobs and growth.”

As later today the media will no doubt be using OBR forecasts as if they are some form of Holy Grail lets is remind ourselves of the first rule of OBR club. That is that the OBR is always wrong.

A 100 Year Gilt

You might think that with all the political uncertainty and weakness from the UK Pound that the Gilt market would be under pressure. My favourite comedy series Yes Minister invariably had the two falling together. But nothing is perfect as that relationship is not currently true. It raises a wry smile each time I type it but the UK 10 year Gilt yield is blow 1% ( 0.98%) as I type this. In terms of recent moves the market was boosted yesterday by the words of Bank of England Governor Mark Carney who with his £435 billion of holding’s is by far its largest investor. In essence the likelihood of more purchases of that sort nudged higher yesterday and thus the market rallied and yields fell.

Also we live in a world summarised by this from Lisa Abramowicz of Bloomberg.

Argentina has defaulted on its external debt seven times in the past 200 years. It just sold 100-year bonds.

Actually it was oversubscribed I believe and I will let readers decide if they think a yield of 7.9% was enough. The UK however could borrow much more cheaply than that as according to the Debt Management Office the yield on our longest Gilt (2068) is 1.52%. Actually as we move from the 2040s to the 2060s the yield gets lower but I will not extend that and simply suggest we might be able to borrow for 100 years at 1.5% which seems an opportunity.

Actually quite a historical opportunity and we could go further as this from the Economist from 2005 ( h/t @RSR108 ) hints.

In 1751 Henry Pelham’s Whig government pulled together the lessons learnt on bonds to create the security of the century: the 3% consol. This took its name from the fact that it paid 3% on a £100 par value and consolidated the terms of a variety of previous issues. The consols had no maturity; in theory they would keep paying £3 a year forever.

I have a friend who has always wanted to own a piece of Consols to put the certificate on his wall so he would be pleased. Assuming of course they still do certificates…..

Today’s data

It was almost a type of Groundhog Day.

Public sector net borrowing (excluding public sector banks) decreased by £0.1 billion to £16.1 billion in the current financial year-to-date (April 2017 to May 2017), compared with the same period in 2016; this is the lowest year-to-date net borrowing since 2008.

So the financial year so far looks rather like its predecessor. Although below the surface there were some changes as for example it is hard to put a label of austerity on this.

Over the same period, central government spent £123.5 billion; around 4% more than in the same period in the previous financial year.

In case you were wondering on what? Here it is.

Of this amount, just below two-thirds was spent by central government departments (such as health, education and defence), around one-third on social benefits (such as pensions, unemployment payments, Child Benefit and Maternity Pay)

This meant that tax revenue had to be pretty good.

In the current financial year-to-date, central government received £110.2 billion in income; including £79.1 billion in taxes. This was around 5% more than in the same period in the previous financial year.

In case you are wondering about the gap some £20 billion or so is National Insurance which is not counted as a tax.

How much debt?

The amount of money owed by the public sector to the private sector stood at just above £1.7 trillion at the end of May 2017, which equates to 86.5% of the value of all the goods and services currently produced by the UK economy in a year (or gross domestic product (GDP)).

Actually some of this is due to the Bank of England something which we did not hear about yesterday from Governor Carney.

£86.8 billion is attributable to debt accumulated within the Bank of England, nearly all of it in the Asset Purchase Facility. Of this £86.8 billion, £63.3 billion relates to the Term Funding Scheme (TFS).

Comment

There is much to consider about austerity UK style. Ironically in the circumstances we would qualify under one part of the Euro area rules as our deficit is less than 3% of GDP. But of course that is a long way short of the horizon of surpluses we were promised back in the day. Please remember that later today as all sorts of forecasts appear, as the George Osborne surplus remained 3/4 years away regardless of what point in time you were at. As we have run consistent deficits is that austerity? For quite a few people the answer is yes as some have lost jobs or seen very low pay rises as we note it represented a switch. The switch concept starts to get awkward if we look at the Triple Lock for the basic state pension for example.

Moving onto other matters it was only yesterday that Governor Carney was boasting about the credit boom and I pointed out the unsecured portion. Well already the news has not gone well for him.

Provident Financial said recent collections performance had “deteriorated”, particularly in May. ( New York Times)

Presumably they mean the month and not Theresa. Also there was this in the Agents Report about the car market.

Increases in the sterling cost of new cars and decreases in the expected future residual values of many used cars had put some upward pressure on monthly finance payments on Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) plans.

If there was a canary in this coal mine well look at this.

Car companies had sought to offset this in a
number of ways, including increasing the length of PCP
contracts.

As the can gets solidly kicked yet again we wait to see if finance in this area is as “secured” as Governor Carney has assured us.

The Longest Day

The good news for us in the Northern Hemisphere is that this is the longest day although the sweltering heat in London it felt like a long night! So enjoy as for us it is all downhill now if not for those reading this Down Under. I gather it is also the Day of Rage apparently which may be evidenced when the Donald spots this.

Ford Motor Co (F.N) said on Tuesday it will move some production of its Focus small car to China and import the vehicles to the United States ( Reuters )

The Mark Carney experience at the Bank of England

This morning Mark Carney has given his Mansion House speech which was delayed due to the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. One thing that was unlikely to be in the speech today was the outright cheerleading for the reform of the banking sector which was the basis of his speech back on the 7th of April as the news below emerged.

Barclays PLC and four former executives have been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud and the provision of unlawful financial assistance.

The Serious Fraud Office charges come at the end of a five-year investigation and relate to the bank’s fundraising at the height of 2008’s financial crisis.

Former chief executive John Varley is one of the four ex-staff who will face Westminster magistrates on 3 July.

Firstly let me welcome the news that there will be a trial although the conviction record of the Serious Fraud Office is not good. The problem is that this has taken around nine years about something ( £7 billion raised from Qatar ) which frankly looked to have dubious elements when it took place. What you might call  slooooooooooooow progress of justice.

What about UK interest-rates?

We first got a confession about something we discovered last week.

Different members of the MPC will understandably have different views about the outlook and therefore on the potential timing of any Bank Rate increase.

Actually that is an odd way of saying it as five members voted for no change with some more likely to vote for a cut that a rise in my opinion. Although of course Mark Carney has had trouble before with rises in interest-rates which turn out to be cuts!

Next we got a confirmation of the Governor’s opinion.

From my perspective, given the mixed signals on consumer spending and business investment, and given
the still subdued domestic inflationary pressures, in particular anaemic wage growth, now is not yet the time
to begin that adjustment

Indeed he seems keen to kick this rather awkward issue – because it would mean reversing last August’s Bank Rate cut – as far into the future as possible.

In the coming months, I would like to see the extent to which weaker consumption growth is offset by other components of demand, whether wages begin to firm, and more generally, how the economy reacts to the prospect of tighter financial conditions and the reality of Brexit negotiations.

Indeed if we are willing to ignore both UK economic history and the leads and lags in UK monetary policy then you might be able to believe this.

This stimulus is working. Credit is widely available, the cost of borrowing is near record lows, the economy has outperformed expectations, and unemployment has reached a 40 year low.

Missing from the slap on the back that the Governor has given himself is the most powerful instrument of all which is the value of the UK Pound which has given the UK economy and more sadly inflation a boost. Indeed the initial response to the Governor’s jawboning was to add to the Pound’s fall as it fell below US $1.27 and 1.14 versus the Euro. Should it remain there then the total fall since the night of the EU leave vote then it is equivalent to a 2.75% fall in UK Bank Rate which is a bazooka compared to the 0.25% peashooter cut provided by the Bank of England. So if you believe Mark Carney you are likely not to be a fan of Alice In Wonderland.

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Also if he is going to take credit for er “Credit is widely available” then he will be on very thin ice when he next claims the surge in unsecured credit is nothing to do with him.

Carney’s Cronies

Ironically in a way the foreign exchange market was a day late as you see the real change came yesterday.

​The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced the appointment of Professor Silvana Tenreyro as an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC).  Silvana will be appointed for a three year term which will take effect from 7 July 2017.

There are several issues here, if I start with British female economists then that is another slap in the face for them as none have been judged suitable for a decade. Next came the thought that I had never previously heard of her which turned to concern as we were told she came from “academic excellence” in an era where Ivory Towers have consistently crumbled and fallen along the lines of Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. But after a little research one could see why she had been appointed. From a survey taken by the Centre For Macroeconomics.

Question Do you agree that the benefits of reforming the monetary system to allow materially negative policy interest rates outweigh the possible costs?

Agree. Confident. Reforming the monetary system to allow negative policy interest rates will equip the BoE with an additional tool to face potential crises in the future.

Does “reforming the monetary system” sound somewhat like someone who will support restrictions on the use of cash currency and maybe its banning? She is also a fan of QE ( Quantitative Easing ) style policies.

Question Do you agree that central banks should continue to use the unconventional tools of monetary policy deployed in response to the global financial crisis as part of monetary policy under normal economic conditions?

Agree. Confident. A wider set of policy tools would give mature and credible central banks like the BoE more flexibility to respond to changing economic conditions.

What is it about her apparent support for negative interest-rate and QE that attracted the attention of Mark Carney? Of course in a world after the woeful failure of Forward Guidance and indeed the litany of forecasting errors he was probably grateful to find someone who still calls the Bank of England “credible”!

Comment

We have a few things to consider and let me start with the reaction function of foreign exchange markets. The real news was yesterday as a fan of negative interest-rates was appointed to the Bank of England but the UK Pound waited until Mark Carney repeated his views of only Thursday to fall!

Meanwhile there was this from Governor Carney.

Monetary policy cannot prevent the weaker real income growth likely to accompany the transition to new
trading arrangements with the EU. But it can influence how this hit to incomes is distributed between job losses and price rises.

His views on the EU leave vote are hardly news although some are trying to present them as such. You might think after all the forecasting errors and Forward Guidance failures he would be quiet about such things. But my main issue here is the sort of Phillips Curve way we are presented a choice between “job losses” and “price rises” Just as all credibility of such thinking has collapsed even for those with a very slow response function in fact one slow enough to be at the Serious Fraud Office. He is also contradicting himself as it was only a few months ago we were being told by him that wage growth was on the up. Although that February Inflation Forecast press conference did see signs that the normally supine press corps were becoming unsettled about a Governor previously described as a “rockstar central banker” and “George Clooney” look a like.

Governor, back in August the forecast for GDP for this year
was 0.8%. Now it’s being forecast at 2.0%. That’s a really
hefty adjustment. What went wrong with your initial
forecast?

He may not be that bothered as you see much of today’s speech was in my opinion part of his job application to replace Christine Lagarde at the IMF.

With many concerned that global trade is taking local jobs, protectionist sentiments are once again rising
across the advanced world. Excessive trade and current account imbalances are now politically as well as
economically unsustainable.

Number Crunching

This @bankofengland page gets the date wrong by a decade on a page celebrating the 20th anniversary https://t.co/67YazJmq35 pic.twitter.com/H8pXt2LsUU

— Lorcan Roche Kelly (@LorcanRK) June 19, 2017