The world’s poster child for losing decades looks to stay a step ahead:

(Nikkei)–Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda vowed Thursday to gradually raise the nation’s consumption tax to 10% by mid the 2010s during a summit meeting of the Group of 20 leading economies in Cannes, France.

The announcement at the summit has effectively made the tax hike an international pledge, and is expected to be included in an action program due out Friday.

Noda stressed the importance of rebuilding debt-ridden Japanese finances and told G-20 leaders that fiscal consolidation is a must “for Japan to be put back on a sound economic growth path, regardless of the debt crisis in the euro zone.”

He also spoke to reporters that a Diet dissolution should be carried out before implementing the tax hike. “If we go to the people in a general election (to seek a mandate on the consumption tax hike), we should do so after passing related bills but before implementing them,” he said.

As to Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, Noda told reporters he will accelerate efforts to iron out differences within the Democratic Party of Japan, which he leads. “We have to close ranks and shouldn’t be split,” he said.

Noda showed his flexibility in making concessions to a controversial redemption period of reconstruction bonds aimed at funding rebuilding efforts of the March 11 disaster, in hopes of enlisting support from the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito, the main opposition parties.

“Our policy chief said that we envisage a 15-year period (for the redemption of reconstruction bonds), but there’s room for concessions,” he said.

Looks to me like the lack of noises out of Japan means there won’t be a sufficient fiscal response to restore demand.

If anything, the talk is about how to pay for the rebuilding, with a consumption tax at the top of the list.

That means they aren’t going to inflate.
More likely they are going to further deflate.
Yes, the yen will go down by what looks like a lot, maybe even helped by the MOF, but I doubt it will be enough to inflate.

In fact, all the evidence indicates that Japan doesn’t don’t know how to inflate, nor does anyone else.

Worse, what they all think inflates, more likely actually deflates.

0 rate policies mean deficits can be that much higher without causing ‘inflation’ due to income channels and supply side effects.
There is no such thing as a debt trap springing to life.
Debt monetization is a meaningless expression with non convertible currency and floating fx.
QE mainly serves to further remove precious income from an already income starved economy.

Only excess deficit spending can directly support prices, output, and employment from the demand side, as it directly adds to incomes, spending, and net savings of financial assets.

The international fear mongering surrounding deficits and debt issues is entirely a chicken little story that’s keeping us in this depression (unemployment over 10% the way it was measured when the term was defined) that’s now taking a turn for the worse.

The euro zone is methodically weakening it’s ‘engines of growth’- its own (weaker) members being subjected to austerity measures that are reducing their deficit spending that paid for their imports from Germany. And now China, Japan, the US and others will be cutting imports as well.

UK fiscal austerity measures are accelerating on schedule.

The US is also working to tighten fiscal policy, particularly now that both sides agree that deficit reduction is in order, beaming as they make progress towards agreeing on the cuts.

The US had 6 depressions while on the gold standard, which followed the only 6 periods of budget surpluses.
And now, even with a floating fx policy and non convertible currency that allows for immediate and unlimited fiscal adjustments,
we have allowed the deflationary forces unleashed by the Clinton budget surpluses to result in this 7th depression.

We were muddling through with modest real growth and a far too high output gap and may have continued to do so all else equal.

But all else isn’t equal.

Collective, self inflicted proactive austerity has been working against growth, including China’s ‘fight against inflation.’

And now Japan’s massive disaster will be deflationary shock that, in the absence of a proactive fiscal adjustment, is highly likely to further reduce world demand.

Hopefully, the Saudis capitulate and follow the price of crude lower, easing the burden somewhat on the world’s struggling populations.
If so, watch for a strong dollar as well.

And watch for a lot more global civil unrest as no answers emerge to the mass unemployment that will likely get even worse. Not to mention food prices that may come down some, but will remain very high at the consumer level as we continue to burn up our food supply for motor fuel.

And it’s all only likely to get worse until the world figures out how its monetary system actually works.

Market Color

Short~medium term JGB rallied due to additional monetary ease expectation related to unsterilized FX intervention money.

First, intervention in this direction- buying dollars- does ‘work’ and is infinitely sustainable.
It’s a political decision, much like the ECB buying national govt. debt. There is no nominal limit.

Second, the only reason they stopped was political pressure from the US, with the then Treasury secretary resorting to name calling like ‘currency manipulator’ and ‘outlaw.’ Otherwise the yen probably would not have been allowed to go under 100.

Third, their institutional structure functions to support the classic export led growth model- suppress domestic demand with consumption type taxes, relatively tight fiscal given institutionally driven savings desires, etc.

Fourth, this strategy causes the currency to strengthen and requires the govt. buy dollars to sustain desired levels of exports and employment.

Net exports necessarily equal net domestic holdings of foreign currency. Think of it this way. If Japan sells something to the US, and we pay for it in dollars, they have two choices. Either hold the dollars, in which case nothing more happens in the real economies and Japan has net exported and the US net imported. Or buy something in the US or any other nation with the dollars and import it to Japan in which case there are no net exports.

Japanese government started FX intervention last night with JY100bn in Tokyo and continued their effort in overseas and ended up with selling JY2trn in total. Many market participants are now saying that it will lead to monetary ease since BOJ will not absorb this JY2trn from the market and this is one of the main reasons for JGB rally today. However, I don’t think it will cause any such impact since government issues T-Bill for that amount (JY2trn) anyway.

When the BOJ buys dollars for the MOF, and pays for them with yen, that adds yen deposits to the domestic economy, thereby increasing the yen net financial assets held domestically. That’s an inflationary bias which is what they are trying to do.

In the first instance those newly added yen sit as yen balances in member accounts at the BOJ. And since they earn no interest the marginal cost of funds is 0, which happens to be where the BOJ wants it anyway.

‘Sterilizing’ is simply offering alternative interest bearing accounts such as JGB’s to the holders of the clearing balances. This would need to be done if the BOJ wanted higher rates. Or, the BOJ could simply pay interest on clearing balances if it wanted higher rates.

But the quantity of balances per se is of no ‘monetary’ consequence. As I like to say, for central banking it’s necessarily about price (interest rates) and not quantities.

So with rates already at 0, there is no more ‘monetary easing’ possible. The only ‘monetary easing’ the BOJ can do at this point is bring longer rates down some, but there isn’t much scope for that either. And they probably know by now lowering long term rates does nothing of major consequence for the real economy.

The question now is how far they will go. They’d probably like the yen back to north of 100 vs the dollar, and will move slowly to see how much political pressure they get from the US as they move in that direction. In fact, they may already be getting political pressure. I don’t know either way.

With political pressure building for China to adjust their currency upward as the US elections approach, this move by Japan might attract more attention than otherwise.

The irony/tragedy for the US is, of course, we should welcome all such moves, open ourselves for virtually unlimited imports from anywhere in the world (with sufficient quality control restrictions- no poison dog food, contaminated wall board, etc.), and enjoy the tax cut that comes along with it so we have sufficient purchasing power to be able to buy all of our own domestic output at full employment plus whatever the rest of the world wants to net export to us.

And apparently that’s a LOT right now. So with current policy of grossly overtaxing us for the size govt. we currently have, the losses of grossly over taxing ourselves may be north of 30% of US gdp, which is a staggering loss for us, and gone forever.

The only thing between what we have now and unimaginable prosperity remains the space between the ears of our policy makers, etc.

Please feel free to distribute, plagiarize, post anywhere, whatever!

*Rinban Result*

*upto 1yr to maturity (310bn)

Highest: +0.1bp
Average: +0.3bp
Allocation: 27.7%


* 1yr~10yr to maturity (250bn)

Highest: +1.5bp
Average: +2.1bp
Allocation: 19.0%

Asian players are a worry for eurozone

By Gillian Tett

July 14 (FT)

The saga behind next week’s stress test release is a case in point. During most of the past year, governments of countries such as Germany, Spain and France have resisted the idea of conducting US-style stress tests on their banks, in spite of repeated, entreaties from entities ranging from the International Monetary Fund to the Bank for International Settlements, and the US government.


However, after a meeting of G20 leaders in Busan last month, those same eurozone governments performed a U-turn, by finally agreeing to publish the results of such tests.


Some observers have blamed the volte-face on lobbying inside the senior echelons of the European Central Bank. Others point the finger to American pressure. In particular, Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, had some strongly worded discussions with some of his eurozone counterparts in Busan, where he urged – if not lectured – them to adopt these tests.

However, Europeans who participated in the Busan meeting say it was actually comments from Asian officials that created a tipping point. In the days before and after that G20 gathering, eurozone officials met powerful Asian investment groups and government officials who expressed alarm about Europe’s financial woes. And while those officials did not plan to sell their existing stock of bonds, they specifically said they would reduce or halt future purchases of eurozone bonds unless something was done to allay the fears about Europe’s banks.

That, in turn, sparked a sudden change of heart among officials in places such as Germany and Spain. After all, as one European official notes, the last thing that any debt-laden European government wants now is a situation where it is tough to sell bonds. “It was the Asians that changed the mood, not anything Geithner said,” says one eurozone official.

This raises some fascinating short-term issues about how the bond markets might respond to the stress tests. It is impossible to track bond purchase patterns with any precision in a timely manner in Europe, since there is no central source of consolidated data.

However, bankers say there are signs that Asian investors are returning to buy eurozone bonds. This week, for example, China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange bid for €1bn (£1.27bn, £835m) of Spanish bonds, helping to produce a very successful auction.

Yes, it’s a two edged sword.

Asian nations want to accumulate euro net financial assets to facilitate exports to the euro zone.

Before the crisis euro nations were concerned that the strong euro, partially due to Asian buying, was hurting euro zone exports

However, as the crisis developed, euro nations got to the point where they were concerned enough about national govt solvency and the precipitous fall of the euro (which was in some ways welcomed by exporters but worrying with regards to a potential inflationary collapse) to agree to measures to support their national govt debt sales which also meant a stronger euro.

So now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Solvency issues have been sufficiently resolved by the ECB to avert default, but at the ‘cost’ of a resumption Asian buying designed to strengthen the euro to support Asian exports to the euro zone.

As before the crisis, however, the euro zone has no tools to keep a lid on the euro (apart from re introducing the solvency issue to scare away buyers, which makes no sense), as buying dollars and other fx is counter to their ideology of having the euro be the world’s reserve currency.

So the same forces remain in place that drove the euro to the 150-160 range, which kept net exports from climbing.

The export driven model is problematic enough without adding in the additionally problematic idiosyncratic financial structure of the euro zone.

As for the stress tests, as long as the ECB is funding bank liabilities and buying national govt debt banks and the national govts can continue to fund themselves with or without Asian buying.

I’d have to say at this point in time the euro zone hasn’t gotten that far in their understanding of their monetary system or they probably would not be making concessions to outside forces.

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Geithner Pledges Smaller Deficit as China Talks Start

By Rebecca Christie and Rob Delaney

July 27 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pledged the U.S. will shrink its budget deficit over the next four years and boost national savings,

Ah, ‘national savings,’ that gold standard measure that’s inapplicable with our non convertible dollar and floating fx policy.

Today it’s nothing more than another term for our trade balance.

‘National savings’ falls when the federal deficit rises and those funds thus created are held by non residents.
On a gold standard (or other fixed fx regime) that represented a gold outflow, as non residents were holding US currency that was convertible into gold on demand. And the gold supply was the national savings.

Anyone who uses that term in the context of non convertible currency is either ignorant or deliberately misleading.

and he called on China to maintain efforts to ease the impact of the global recession. “We are committed to taking measures to maintaining greater personal saving and to reducing the federal deficit to a sustainable level by 2013,” Geithner said in opening remarks for Strategic and Economic Dialogue meetings with Chinese officials in Washington.

Since total non government savings of financial assets equals federal deficit spending to the penny (it’s an accounting identity) cutting the deficit and increasing domestic savings can only be done by simultaneously reducing our trade deficit by exactly that much. That would likely mean importing a lot less from china.

So what his words are telling them is that the US is committed to buying less from them. That should give them a lot of comfort?

Geithner’s comments reinforced his efforts to reassure China, the largest foreign holder of American government debt, that this year’s record U.S. budget gap won’t pose a long-term danger. The shortfall is on course to reach $1.8 trillion in the year through September.

Geithner and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are hosting Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Dai Bingguo, a state councilor, at the meetings today and tomorrow, the first such gathering since President Barack Obama took office.

Obama called for the two nations to deepen cooperation and work together to help the global economy. “As Americans save more and Chinese are able to spend more, we can put growth on a more sustainable foundation,” Obama said in his remarks. “Just as China has benefited from substantial investment and profitable exports, China can also be an enormous market for American goods.”

Wonderful, we work and produce goods and services for them to consume. That is called diminished real terms of trade and a reduced standard of living for the us.

Outside Investment

U.S. officials said last week they plan to raise concern
about China’s resistance to foreign investment at the talks,

China’s growing dollar reserves result mainly from foreign investment, where foreigners buy yuan with dollars so they spend the yuan in China on real investment (and maybe a bit of speculation).

while Chinese officials this year have highlighted their own worries about the value of their American investments.

Yes, and the play us for complete fools.

Geithner fielded a bevy of questions about the deficit during his June visit to Beijing. China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries reached $801.5 billion in May, recording about a 100 percent increase on the level at the beginning of 2007, according to U.S. government figures.

“Recognizing that close cooperation between the United States and China is critical to the health of the global economy, we need to design a new framework to ensure sustainable and balanced global growth.”

No hint of what that ‘framework’ might actually be.

After seeing the ‘framework’ they’ve come up with for the US financial structure the odds of anything functionally constructive seem slim.

The Obama administration will take steps to put the U.S. on course for economic health, he said.

Like reducing the federal budget deficit when current steps have fallen far short of restoring aggregate demand?

Obama’s Goals

“The president also is committed to making the investments in clean energy, education and health care that will make our nation more productive and prosperous,” Geithner said. “Together these investments will ensure robust U.S. growth and a sustainable current account balance.”

Non look to add to aggregate demand in any meaningful way, especially with the associated tax increases.

And investement per se reduces standards of living. It’s only when that investment results in increased productivity for consumer goods and services is there an increase in our standard of living.

Geithner also repeated his call for China, which has posted record trade surpluses in recent years, to increase demand at home.

“China’s success in shifting the structure of the economy towards domestic-led growth, including a greater role for spending by China’s citizens, will be a huge contribution to more rapid, balanced, and sustained global growth,” Geithner said.

Just what we need, a billion non residents increasing their real consumption and competing with us for real resources.

In the talks today and tomorrow in Washington, U.S. officials said they plan to tell the Chinese the American rebound from a recession won’t be led as much by consumers as past recoveries.

That means our standard of living won’t be recovering even though GDP is recovering.

The American side also will urge China to rely more on household spending and less on exports for growth, an official told reporters in a July 23 press briefing in Washington.

Clearly the obama administration does not understand the monetary system and is working against actual public purpose.

The U.S. is concerned that there’s been a hardening of attitudes regarding China’s treatment of foreign investment, the official also said last week. China’s exchange-rate policy is another topic for discussion, the official said.

Total confusion on that front as well.

We push for a weak dollar/strong yuan policy so prices for China’s products at our department stores rise to the point we can’t afford to buy them.

Then we try to get them not to sell their dollar reserves because it might make the dollar go down.

From Mauer:

Hey, why don’t we all move to Latvia, where they do all of the stuff that Geithner advocates:

Latvia, which pegs its currency to the euro, now has a “strong”, stable currency. Good for them. They are sustaining this strong currency by crushing demand. Exports are down 28pc, but imports are down even more. The result of this Stone Age policy is economic contraction of 18pc this year, and 4pc in 2010.

But hey, you’ve got a “healthy” currency and a country which is pursuing a “sensible” fiscal policy with lots of belt tightening. And supposedly “building up national savings” as a consequence of these wonderful policies.

Where do we find these people?

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US, China Agree to Broaden Strategic Dialogue, Clinton Says

by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan and Eugene Tang

Feb 22 (Bloomberg) — Clinton thanked China for its continued purchases of U.S. Treasury notes, demand for which is needed to pay for Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan.

No it isn’t. It will be a very different world when our leaders somehow come to realize how the monetary system works.

Yang said China, the world’s largest holder of Treasuries, will invest its almost $2 trillion in foreign-currency reserves based on the principles of ensuring liquidity and protecting value.

‘Appreciate Greatly’

“I appreciate greatly the Chinese government’s continuing confidence in U.S. Treasuries,” Clinton said. “I think that’s a well-grounded confidence.”

At an earlier meeting, State Councilor Dai Bingguo told Clinton that she looked “younger and more beautiful” than she appears on television.

Chuckling heartily, Clinton said, “Well, we will get along very well.”

Glad to see the US not saying anything negative about China’s new export subsidies announced last week.

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A once in a lifetime opportunity to increase the US standard of living squandered.

Increasing domestic demand unilaterally and letting the rest of the world grow via net exports to the US is in our best interest.

Clinton begins Asia trip, calls for Global Economic Cooperation

by Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

Feb 16 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kicked off the start of a weeklong trip to East Asia by calling for more cooperation from the region in alleviating the worldwide recession.

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How about:

‘Conduct ongoing fiscal adjustments to support domestic demand at full employment levels?’

Not quite, but moving in that direction.

They would all rather export than sell their output internally.

Pacific Rim Leaders Vow Further ‘Extraordinary’ Steps on Crisis

By Shamim Adam and Bill Faries

Nov. 23- Leaders of Pacific Rim nations promised to work together on further “extraordinary” steps to combat the global economic crisis and pledged to refrain from erecting new barriers to trade and investment.

Leaders of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, which includes the U.S., China and Japan and accounts for half of world output, also called for improved corporate governance and backed efforts to thaw frozen credit markets.

“We have already taken urgent and extraordinary steps to stabilize our financial sectors and strengthen economic growth and promote investment and consumption,” the group said in a statement during its meeting in Lima, Peru. “We will continue to take such steps, and work closely, in a coordinated and comprehensive manner, to implement future actions.”

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(email exchange)

Yes! And it’s deep- Hungarian homeowners borrowed yen to buy their homes, for just one example.

And with Japan an importer of all its crude, lower prices make yen that much harder to get, much like USD. And maybe even more so.

>   
>   On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 9:17 AM, James wrote:
>   
>   Liquidation of Yen carry trades also in full force…..
>   

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Thailand Proposes Asia Pool $350 Billion for Crisis

Not a good sign that they think they need that much in USD. Looks like they are too strung out on USDs.

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Looks like our loss is going to be their gain due to our leaders being in this way over their heads.

Highlights

Premier: China’s steady growth can help

Oct 6. (China Daily) Maintaining “steady and fast” growth is the largest contribution China can make to help the world overcome the current financial crisis stemming from the United States, Premier Wen Jiabao said Sunday.

“It will be the biggest contribution to the world for a huge country with 1.3 billion people to maintain steady and fast growth in the long term,” Wen said during an inspection to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

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This happens all the time with fixed exchange rates and currency boards.

The only way for banks to get ‘real’ (convertible) $HK for their depositors is to buy them from the monetary authority with $US. That usually means banks have to borrow $US to meet withdrawals of $HK, and most banks won’t have $US lines of more than a relatively small percentage of their deposits. With a strict currency board arrangement the monetary authority isn’t allowed to lend (convertible) $HK or its $US reserves, though in HK they sometimes do. But even those reserves are finite, and way smaller than total bank liabilities.

Historically the result has been a deflationary mess, with GDP dropping double digits, high unemployment, bank failures, and collapsing property and other asset prices.

At the macro level, the only way the island can get the $US it needs to buy $HK from the monetary authority is to net export (or sell assets for $US). The value of the $HK can’t go down (the monetary authority has more than enough $US reserves to buy back all the real $HK it’s sold), so the way costs of production go down is via local deflation due to the collapse in aggregate demand until prices are low enough to drive the needed exports.

Hopefully nothing comes of it this time around. But it hasn’t been that kind of year…

Hong Kong Savers Fret as Bank East Asia Fights Rumors

by Kelvin Wong and Theresa Tang

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) For the first time since the Asian financial crisis more than a decade ago, Hong Kong has faced a bank run.

Hundreds of depositors lined up at the city’s third-largest lender Bank of East Asia Ltd. yesterday as the bank hit out at “malicious rumors,” and Chairman David Li rushed back to Hong Kong from the U.S. to reassure clients and investors. The city’s central bank jumped to BEA’s defense and police said they’re investigating phone text messages questioning its health.

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(an email exchange)

A few of things:

First, the rising wages in the 70′s led to bracket creep that put the budget in surplus in 1979 and resulted in a severe recession soon after.

This time around it is unlikely the inflation takes much of a dent out of the deficit so it’s more likely demand will be sustained to support prices. And, at least so far, Congress has acted to sustain demand and support prices with the latest fiscal package and more seemingly on the way.

Second, last time around the oil producers for the most part didn’t spend all that much of their new found revenues and thereby drained demand from the US economy. This time around they seem to be spending on infrastructure at a rate sufficient to drive our exports and keep gdp muddling through.

Third, I recall it was maybe the deregulation of nat gas that freed up a cheap substitute for electric utilities and unleashed a massive supply response as nat gas was substituted for crude at the elect power producers. After 1980 opec cut production by something like 15 million bpd to hold prices above 30 until they could cut no more without capping all their wells and the price tumbled to about 10 where it stood for a long time. This time around that kind of excess supply is nowhere in sight.

>
>   On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 11:59 PM, Russell wrote:
>
>   Stephan Roach is chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, and pens
>   this missive for the FT, in which he contextualizes why the
>   Fed’s options are limited:
>
>   ”Fears of 1970s-style stagflation are back in the air. Global
>   bond markets are growing ever more nervous over this possibility,
>   and US and European central bankers are talking increasingly
>   tough about the perils of mounting inflation.
>
>   Yet today’s stagflation risks are very different from those that
>   wreaked such havoc 35 years ago. Unlike in that earlier period,
>   wages in the developed economies have been delinked from prices.
>   That all but eliminates the automatic indexation features of the
>   once dreaded wage-price spiral – perhaps the most insidious
>   feature of the “great inflation” of the 1970s. Moreover, as the
>   stunning surge of the US unemployment rate in May suggests,
>   slowing economic growth in the industrial economies is likely to
>   open up further slack in labour markets, thereby putting downward
>   cyclical pressure on wages over the next couple of years.
>
>   But there is a new threat to global inflation that was not present
>   in the 1970s. It is arising from the developing world, especially in
>   Asia, where price pressures are lurching out of control. For
>   developing Asia as a whole, consumer price index inflation hit 7.5
>   per cent in April 2008, close to a 9½-year high and more than double
>   the 3.6 per cent pace of a year ago. Sure, a good portion of the recent
>   acceleration in pricing is a result of food and energy – critically
>   important components of household budgets in poorer countries and
>   yet items that many analysts mistakenly remove to get a cleaner read
>   on underlying inflation. But even the residual, or “core”, inflation rate
>   in developing Asia surged to 3.8 per cent in April, more than double
>   the 1.8 per cent pace of a year ago…”
>
>

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(an interoffice email)

>
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 5:05 AM, Sean wrote:
>
> Today Korea announced a plan to spend $10bb to counter the effects of
> rising oil prices. The $100bb will include tax rebates and subsidizing
> power providers. This is with GDP growing at 5.8% ( although expected
> to slow to the mid 4% range and CPI at 4.9% – the package is expected
> to add 0.2% to GDP.
>
> There is no political will in Asia to avoid measures that sustain demand
> for energy related products – subsidy cuts have been very small and the
> outcry loud enough to prevent further meaningful cuts. Inflation is
> ripping in Asia, the second round effects are unavoidable and its going
> to be imported to the US.
>
>

Thanks, looks like Japan cpi break evens have a long way to go!

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