Category Archives: Currencies

comments on euro zone and india

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Do you think they know austerity causes loans to go bad?

Troubled loans at Europe’s banks double in value (FT) European banks’ non-performing loans have doubled in just four years to reach close to €1.2tn and are expected to keep rising. A report by PwC found that non-performing loans (NPLs) rose from €514bn in 2008 to €1.187tn in 2012, with rises in the most recent year driven by deteriorating conditions in Spain, Ireland, Italy and Greece. It predicted further rises in the years ahead because of the “uncertain economic climate”. Richard Thompson, a partner at PwC, said the “reshaping” of European bank balance sheets had several more years to run as lenders shed troubled and unwanted loans and attempted to strengthen their balance sheets. He estimates European banks are sitting on €2.4tn of non-core loans that they plan to wind down or sell off. The first eight months of 2013 have seen €46bn of European loan portfolio transactions, equal to the entire amount recorded in 2012.

Do you think they know higher rates support higher inflation and weaken the currency?

India’s Central Bank Expects Inflation to Remain Stubborn (WSJ) The Reserve Bank of India Monday sounded concern about inflation, which it said would remain outside its comfort zone this fiscal year. In its half-yearly review of macroeconomic and monetary developments, released a day before its monetary-policy meeting, the RBI also highlighted the need to boost economic growth. But its stress was more on inflation. Inflation at the wholesale level—the main measure of prices in India—notched a seven-month high of 6.46% in September. It has remained above the central bank’s comfort level of 5% for four consecutive months through September. The RBI said it expects both consumer and wholesale inflation to remain around their current levels. “This indicates persistence of inflation at levels distinctly above what was indicated by the Reserve Bank earlier in the year,” it said.

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Euro up to 137 vs $

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The last thing they want is the euro to get strong and eat into their fledgling trade surplus and, in general, do its deflationary thing.

But what can they do? Discourage Japan and the rest from buying their member nation’s debt? Not.

Buy $, yen, etc? No- ideologically impossible. Gives the appearance that fx reserves are backing the euro, etc.

That leaves ‘monetary easing’ of some sort that doesn’t directly work, but hopes to scare investors out of euro.

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Currency depreciation not necessarily the silver bullet

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BOJ Survey Shows Consumer Sentiment Worsen As Energy Prices Rise

October 2 (Dow Jones) — A Bank of Japan survey showed Wednesday that consumer sentiment worsened for the first time in three quarters as a rise in energy prices amid a lack of major wage increases negatively affected their views on the economy. The central bank’s survey of the general public showed that the diffusion index measuring the current state of the economy fell to minus 8.3 from minus 4.8. Of the poll of 2,252 consumers, 83% of respondents said they expect the prices of goods and services to rise over the coming year. That’s higher than 80.2% in the previous June survey. The survey also showed that 16.2% of the respondents see the economy improving in coming year, down from the previous 24.3%.

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Comments on Volcker article

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Here’s my take on the Volcker article

My comments in below:

The Fed & Big Banking at the Crossroads

By Paul Volcker

I have been struck by parallels between the challenges facing the Federal Reserve today and those when I first entered the Federal Reserve System as a neophyte economist in 1949.

Most striking then, as now, was the commitment of the Federal Reserve, which was and is a formally independent body, to maintaining a pattern of very low interest rates, ranging from near zero to 2.5 percent or less for Treasury bonds. If you feel a bit impatient about the prevailing rates, quite understandably so, recall that the earlier episode lasted fifteen years.

The initial steps taken in the midst of the depression of the 1930s to support the economy by keeping interest rates low were made at the Fed’s initiative. The pattern was held through World War II in explicit agreement with the Treasury. Then it persisted right in the face of double-digit inflation after the war, increasingly under Treasury and presidential pressure to keep rates low.

Yes, and this was done after conversion to gold was suspended which made it possible. And they fixed long rates as well/

The growing restiveness of the Federal Reserve was reflected in testimony by Marriner Eccles in 1948:

Under the circumstances that now exist the Federal Reserve System is the greatest potential agent of inflation that man could possibly contrive.
This was pretty strong language by a sitting Fed governor and a long-serving board chairman. But it was then a fact that there were many doubts about whether the formality of the independent legal status of the central bank—guaranteed since it was created in 1913—could or should be sustained against Treasury and presidential importuning. At the time, the influential Hoover Commission on government reorganization itself expressed strong doubts about the Fed’s independence. In these years calls for freeing the market and letting the Fed’s interest rates rise met strong resistance from the government.

Not freeing the ‘market’ but letting the Fed chair have his way. Rates would be set ‘politically’ either way. Just a matter of who.

Treasury debt had enormously increased during World War II, exceeding 100 percent of the GDP, so there was concern about an intolerable impact on the budget if interest rates rose strongly. Moreover, if the Fed permitted higher interest rates this might lead to panicky and speculative reactions. Declines in bond prices, which would fall as interest rates rose, would drain bank capital. Main-line economists, and the Fed itself, worried that a sudden rise in interest rates could put the economy back in recession.

All of those concerns are in play today, some sixty years later, even if few now take the extreme view of the first report of the then new Council of Economic Advisers in 1948: “low interest rates at all times and under all conditions, even during inflation,” it said, would be desirable to promote investment and economic progress. Not exactly a robust defense of the Federal Reserve and independent monetary policy.

But in my humble opinion a true statement!

Eventually, the Federal Reserve did get restless, and finally in 1951 it rejected overt presidential pressure to maintain a ceiling on long-term Treasury rates. In the event, the ending of that ceiling, called the “peg,” was not dramatic. Interest rates did rise over time, but with markets habituated for years to a low interest rate, the price of long-term bonds remained at moderate levels. Monetary policy, free to act against incipient inflationary tendencies, contributed to fifteen years of stability in prices, accompanied by strong economic growth and high employment. The recessions were short and mild.

I agreed with John Kenneth Galbraith in that inflation was not a function of rates, at least not in the direction they believed, due to interest income channels. However, the rate caps on bank deposits, etc. Did mean that rate hikes had the potential to disrupt those financial institutions and cut into lending, until those caps were removed.

In general, however, the ‘business cycle’ issues are better traced to fiscal balance.

No doubt, the challenge today of orderly withdrawal from the Fed’s broader regime of “quantitative easing”—a regime aimed at stimulating the economy by large-scale buying of government and other securities on the market—is far more complicated. The still-growing size and composition of the Fed’s balance sheet imply the need for, at the least, an extended period of “disengagement,” i.e., less active purchasing of bonds so as to keep interest rates artificially low.

Artificially? vs what ‘market signals’? Rates are ‘naturally’ market determined with fixed fx policies, not today’s floating fx.

In fact, without govt ‘interference’ such as interest on reserves and tsy secs, the ‘natural’ rate is 0 as long as there are net reserve balances from deficit spending.

Nor is there any technical or operational reason for unwinding QE. Functionally, the Fed buying securities is identical to the tsy not issuing them and instead letting its net spending remain as reserve balances. Either way deficit spending results in balances in reserve accounts rather than balances in securities accounts. And in any case both are just dollar balances in Fed accounts.

Moreover, the extraordinary commitment of Federal Reserve resources,

‘Resources’? What does that mean? Crediting an account on its own books is somehow ‘using up a resource’? It’s just accounting information!

alongside other instruments of government intervention, is now dominating the largest sector of our capital markets, that for residential mortgages. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to note that the Federal Reserve, with assets of $3.5 trillion and growing, is, in effect, acting as the world’s largest financial intermediator. It is acquiring long-term obligations in the form of bonds and financing those purchases by short-term deposits. It is aided and abetted in doing so by its unique privilege to create its own liabilities.

The Fed creates govt liabilities, aka making payments. That’s its function. And, for example, the treasury securities are the initial intervention. They are paid for by the Fed debiting reserve accounts and crediting securities accounts. All QE does is reverse that as the Fed debits the securities accounts and ‘recredits’ the reserve accounts. So it can be said that all QE does is neutralize prior govt intervention.

The beneficial effects of the actual and potential monetizing of public and private debt, which is the essence of the quantitative easing program, appear limited and diminishing over time. The old “pushing on a string” analogy is relevant. The risks of encouraging speculative distortions and the inflationary potential of the current approach plainly deserve attention.

Right, with the primary fundamental effect being the removal of interest income from the economy. The Fed turned over some $100billion to the tsy that the economy would have otherwise earned. QE is a tax on the economy.

All of this has given rise to debate within the Federal Reserve itself. In that debate, I trust that sight is not lost of the merits—economic and political—of an ultimate return to a more orthodox central banking approach. Concerning possible changes in Fed policy, it is worth quoting from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s remarks on June 19:

Going forward, the economic outcomes that the Committee sees as most likely involve continuing gains in labor markets, supported by moderate growth that picks up over the next several quarters as the near-term restraint from fiscal policy and other headwinds diminishes. We also see inflation moving back toward our 2 percent objective over time.

If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the Committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the monthly pace of [asset] purchases later this year. And if the subsequent data remain broadly aligned with our current expectations for the economy, we would continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around midyear.

In this scenario, when asset purchases ultimately come to an end, the unemployment rate would likely be in the vicinity of 7 percent, with solid economic growth supporting further job gains, a substantial improvement from the 8.1 percent unemployment rate that prevailed when the Committee announced this program.

I would like to emphasize once more the point that our policy is in no way predetermined and will depend on the incoming data and the evolution of the outlook as well as on the cumulative progress toward our objectives. If conditions improve faster than expected, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. If the outlook becomes less favorable, on the other hand, or if financial conditions are judged to be inconsistent with further progress in the labor markets, reductions in the pace of purchases could be delayed.

Indeed, should it be needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase in the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability.

Implying QE works to do that.

I do not doubt the ability and understanding of Chairman Bernanke and his colleagues. They have a considerable range of instruments available to them to manage the transition, including the novel approach of paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, potentially sterilizing their monetary impact.

Reserves can be thought of as ‘one day treasury securities’ and the idea that paying interest sterilizing anything is a throwback to fixed fx policy, not applicable to floating fx.

What is at issue—what is always at issue—is a matter of good judgment, leadership, and institutional backbone. A willingness to act with conviction in the face of predictable political opposition and substantive debate is, as always, a requisite part of a central bank’s DNA.

A good working knowledge of monetary operations would be a refreshing change as well!

Those are not qualities that can be learned from textbooks. Abstract economic modeling and the endless regression analyses of econometricians will be of little help. The new approach of “behavioral” economics itself is recognition of the limitations of mathematical approaches, but that new “science” is in its infancy.

Monetary operations can be learned from money and banking texts.

A reading of history may be more relevant. Here and elsewhere, the temptation has been strong to wait and see before acting to remove stimulus and then moving toward restraint. Too often, the result is to be too late, to fail to appreciate growing imbalances and inflationary pressures before they are well ingrained.

Those who know monetary operations read history very differently from those who have it wrong.

There is something else that is at stake beyond the necessary mechanics and timely action. The credibility of the Federal Reserve, its commitment to maintaining price stability, and its ability to stand up against partisan political pressures are critical. Independence can’t just be a slogan. Nor does the language of the Federal Reserve Act itself assure protection, as was demonstrated in the period after World War II. Then, the law and its protections seemed clear, but it was the Treasury that for a long time called the tune.

And didn’t do a worse job.

In the last analysis, independence rests on perceptions of high competence, of unquestioned integrity, of broad experience, of nonconflicted judgment and the will to act. Clear lines of accountability to Congress and the public will need to be honored.

And a good working knowledge of monetary operations.

Moreover, maintenance of independence in a democratic society ultimately depends on something beyond those institutional qualities. The Federal Reserve—any central bank—should not be asked to do too much, to undertake responsibilities that it cannot reasonably meet with the appropriately limited powers provided.

I know that it is fashionable to talk about a “dual mandate”—the claim that the Fed’s policy should be directed toward the two objectives of price stability and full employment. Fashionable or not, I find that mandate both operationally confusing and ultimately illusory. It is operationally confusing in breeding incessant debate in the Fed and the markets about which way policy should lean month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter with minute inspection of every passing statistic. It is illusory in the sense that it implies a trade-off between economic growth and price stability, a concept that I thought had long ago been refuted not just by Nobel Prize winners but by experience.

The Federal Reserve, after all, has only one basic instrument so far as economic management is concerned—managing the supply of money and liquidity.

Completely wrong. With floating fx, it can only set rates. It’s always about price, not quantity.

Asked to do too much—for example, to accommodate misguided fiscal policies, to deal with structural imbalances, or to square continuously the hypothetical circles of stability, growth, and full employment—it will inevitably fall short. If in the process of trying it loses sight of its basic responsibility for price stability, a matter that is within its range of influence, then those other goals will be beyond reach.

Back in the 1950s, after the Federal Reserve finally regained its operational independence, it also decided to confine its open market operations almost entirely to the short-term money markets—the so-called “Bills Only Doctrine.” A period of remarkable economic success ensued, with fiscal and monetary policies reasonably in sync, contributing to a combination of relatively low interest rates, strong growth, and price stability.

Yes, and the price of oil was fixed by the Texas railroad commission at about $3 where it remained until the excess capacity in the US was gone and the Saudis took over that price setting role in the early 70’s.

That success faded as the Vietnam War intensified, and as monetary and fiscal restraints were imposed too late and too little. The absence of enough monetary discipline in the face of the overt inflationary pressures of the war left us with a distasteful combination of both price and economic instability right through the 1970s—a combination not inconsequentially complicated further by recurrent weakness in the dollar.

No mention of a foreign ‘monopolist’ hiking crude prices from 3 to 40?

Or of Carter’s deregulation of nat gas in 78 causing OPEC to drown in excess capacity in the early 80’s?

Or the non sensical targeting of borrowed reserves that worked only to shift rate control from the FOMC to the NY fed desk, and prolonged the inflation even as oil prices collapsed?

We cannot “go home again,” not to the simpler days of the 1950s and 1960s. Markets and institutions are much larger, far more complex. They have also proved to be more fragile, potentially subject to large destabilizing swings in behavior. There is the rise of “shadow banking”—the nonbank intermediaries such as investment banks, hedge funds, and other institutions overlapping commercial banking activities.

Not to mention restaurants letting people eat before they pay for their meals. This completely misses the mark.

Partly as a result, there is the relative decline of regulated commercial banks, and the rapid innovation of new instruments such as derivatives. All these have challenged both central banks and other regulatory authorities around the developed world. But the simple logic remains; and it is, in fact, reinforced by these developments. The basic responsibility of a central bank is to maintain reasonable price stability—and by extension to concern itself with the stability of financial markets generally.

In my judgment, those functions are complementary and should be doable.

They are, but it all requires an understanding of the underlying monetary operations.

I happen to believe it is neither necessary nor desirable to try to pin down the objective of price stability by setting out a single highly specific target or target zone for a particular measure of prices. After all, some fluctuations in prices, even as reflected in broad indices, are part of a well-functioning market economy. The point is that no single index can fully capture reality, and the natural process of recurrent growth and slowdowns in the economy will usually be reflected in price movements.

With or without a numerical target, broad responsibility for price stability over time does not imply an inability to conduct ordinary countercyclical policies. Indeed, in my judgment, confidence in the ability and commitment of the Federal Reserve (or any central bank) to maintain price stability over time is precisely what makes it possible to act aggressively in supplying liquidity in recessions or when the economy is in a prolonged period of growth but well below its potential.

With floating fx bank liquidity is always infinite. That’s what deposit insurance is all about.
Again, this makes central banking about price and not quantity.

—

Feel free to distribute.

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Emerging Nations Save $2.9 Trillion Reserves in Rout

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Smart not to intervene and use reserves.

And even the 19% isn’t as much as Japan’s recent approx. 25% drop, so they all remain stronger vs the yen. So the US now loses ‘competitiveness’ vs a whole mob of exporters cutting ‘real’ wages vs US, Canada, UK, and the Eurozone etc. As the ongoing global race to the bottom for real wages continues…

And maybe some day they’ll figure out that cutting rates supports a currency as it cuts interest paid by govt, making the currency ‘harder to get’.

And that exports are real costs and imports real benefits.

And that real standards of living are optimized by sustaining domestic full employment with fiscal adjustments.

Emerging Nations Save $2.9 Trillion Reserves in Rout

By Jeanette Rodrigues, Ye Xie and Robert Brand

September 4 (Bloomberg) — Developing nations from Brazil to India are preserving a record $2.9 trillion of foreign reserves and opting instead to raise interest rates and restrict imports to stem the worst rout in their currencies in five years.

Foreign reserves of the 12 biggest emerging markets, excluding China and countries with pegged currencies, fell 1.6 percent this year compared with an 11 percent slump after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The 20 most-traded emerging-market currencies have weakened 8 percent in 2013 as the Federal Reserve’s potential paring of stimulus lures away capital.

After quadrupling reserves over the past decade, developing nations are protecting their stockpiles as trade and budget deficits heighten their vulnerability to credit-rating cuts. Brazil and Indonesia boosted key interest rates last month to buoy the real and rupiah, while India is increasing money-market rates to try to support the rupee as growth slows. Central banks should draw on stockpiles only once currencies have depreciated enough to adjust for the trade and budget gaps, according to Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

“If fundamentals are going against you, it’s not credible to defend a currency level — investors would rush for the exit when they see the reserves depleting,” said Claire Dissaux, managing director of global economics and strategy at Millennium Global Investment in London. “The central banks are taking the right measures, allowing the currencies to adjust.”

‘Fragile Five’
The South African rand, real, rupee, rupiah and lira, dubbed the “fragile five” by Morgan Stanley strategists last month because of their reliance on foreign capital for financing needs, fell the most among peers this year, losing as much as 19 percent.

Foreign reserves in the 12 developing nations including Russia, Taiwan, South Korea, Brazil and India, declined to $2.9 trillion as of Aug. 28, from $2.95 trillion on Dec. 31 and an all-time high of $2.97 trillion in May, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The holdings increased from $722 billion in 2002.

The figures don’t reflect the valuation change of the securities held in the reserves. China, which holds $3.5 trillion as the world’s largest reserve holder, is excluded to limit its outsized impact.

In the three months starting September 2008, reserves dropped 11 percent as Lehman’s collapse sent the real down 29 percent and the rupee 12 percent. India’s stockpile declined 16 percent during the period, while Brazil spent more than $14 billion in reserves in six months starting October, central bank data show.

‘Contagion Potential’
“Often, on the day of the intervention or its announcement, a currency will get a small bounce upward,” Bluford Putnam, chief economist at CME Group Inc., wrote in an Aug. 28 research report. “For the longer-term, however, market participants often return to a focus on the basic issues of rising risks and contagion potential.”

Putnam said “aggressive” short-term interest rate increases that “dramatically” raise the costs of going short a currency can work to stem an exchange-rate slide.

The Turkish and Indian central banks have developed tools to fend off market volatility while keeping their benchmark rates unchanged. Turkey adjusts rates daily and Governor Erdem Basci promised more “surprise” tools to defend the lira while vowing to keep rates unchanged this year. Since July, India has curbed currency-derivatives trading, restricted cash supply, limited outflows from locals and asked foreign investors to prove they aren’t speculating on the rupee.

Records Lows
India’s steps failed to prevent its currency from touching a record low of 68.845 per dollar on Aug. 28. The lira tumbled to an unprecedented 2.0730 the same day.

The rupee plummeted 8.1 percent in August, the biggest loss since 1992 and the steepest among 78 global currencies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The lira plunged 5.1 percent, the rand dropped 4.1 percent, the real fell 4.6 percent and the rupiah sank 5.9 percent, the data show.

The Indian currency rose 1.1 percent 67.0025 per dollar as of 1:46 p.m. in Mumbai today, while its Indonesian counterpart gained 0.3 percent to 11,409 versus the greenback. South Africa’s rand appreciated 0.8 percent to 10.2549 per dollar, while the Turkish lira strengthened 0.4 percent to 2.0505.

Interest-rate swaps show investors expect South Africa and India’s benchmark rate will increase by at least 0.25 percentage point, or 25 basis points, by year-end, according to data compiled by HSBC Holdings Plc. In Brazil, policy makers are forecast to raise the key rate by 100 basis points to 10 percent, and Turkey will lift the benchmark one-week repurchase rate by 200 basis points to 6.5 percent, the data show.

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Turkey’s Babacan Warns Of Financial Turmoil

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Turkey’s Babacan Warns Of Financial Turmoil

By Yasemin Congar

August 27 (Al Monitor) — Emerging markets will soon find themselves operating in a new world order. Few people are as painfully aware of this as Turkey’s Deputy Premier Ali Babacan.

A soft-spoken politician whose key positions in three successive Justice and Development Party (AKP) governments included a two-year stint as foreign minister, Babacan is currently the highest-ranking cabinet member responsible for the economy.

Needless to say, he was all ears when US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested on May 22 before the US Congress that it could begin to downsize its $85 billion-per-month bond-buying program.

Babacan had seen that coming. He warned Turkey repeatedly against overspending in 2012 — even at the risk of displeasing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — because he knew cheap loans would soon grow scarce.

Loans in lira are at whatever the CB wants them to be.

Indeed, the United States is getting ready to curtail the stimulus that has injected cash into emerging markets for the last four years.

QE isn’t about cash going anywhere, including not going to EM.

What they got was portfolio shifting that caused indifference rates to change.

Stocks plummeted at the news and national currencies fell against the dollar, with India, Brazil and Turkey all registering substantial losses.

Again, portfolio shifts reversing causing indifference levels to reverse.

Still, answering questions on live television on May 23, Babacan was as cool-headed as ever. First, he reminded the viewers that the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan would follow suit, thus making the impact of the Fed’s exit even stronger on Turkey. Then he said, “If they carry out these operations in an orderly and coordinated fashion, we will ride it out.”

Hope so. They need to focus on domestic full employment.

As Babacan would surely have known, that is a big if. Despite a recent call for coordination by the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, sell-offs in emerging markets do not seem to be a major concern for the architects of the taper plan.

“We only have a mandate to concern ourselves with the interest of the United States,” Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Fed, told Bloomberg TV. “Other countries simply have to take that as a reality and adjust to us if that’s something important for their economies.”

In fact, adjustment is not a question of choice here. Emerging economies will have to find a way to continue funding growth and paying off debt without the liquidity infusion. It won’t be easy.

Can’t be easier. Lira liquidity for their banking system is always infinite.

It’s just a matter of the CB pricing it. I’d suggest a Japan like 0% policy and a fiscal deficit large enough to allow for full employment.

The looming exodus of cash and higher borrowing costs have already caused permanent damage in Turkey. The lira weakened dramatically on Aug. 23, with the dollar surpassing two liras for the first time in history.

That was not what caused the decline.

The decline was from portfolio managers changing their indifference levels between the lira and the dollar or euro, for example.

Turkey’s Central Bank dipped into its reserves, but a $350 million sale of foreign exchange reserves failed to calm the market.

A mistake. No reason to buy their own currency with $ reserves, which should only be used for ’emergency imports’, such as during wartime. All the intervention did was support monied interests shifting portfolios.

Babacan, for his part, has been referring to Bernanke’s May 22 speech as a turning point. The global economic crisis has entered a new phase since that day, he said. “We’ll all see the spillover effects and new faces of the crisis in the coming months.”

What they will mostly see is the effects of their policy responses if they keep doing what they’ve been doing.

He did not stop there. In his signature straight-shooting manner, he also signaled a downward revision. “It should not be surprising for Turkey to revise its growth rate below 4%. … We set our annual exports target at $158 million, but it looks difficult to reach this target as well.”

Which opens the door for a tax cut/spending increase/fiscal adjustment to sustain output and employment.

A politician who seldom walks and talks like a politician, Babacan has been a maverick of sorts in the government. He entered politics in 2001 when he joined Erdogan and others to found the AKP. At the time, he was a 34-year-old with a degree from the Kellogg School of Management and work experience as a financial consultant in Chicago. In 2002, he was appointed the state minister for economy and became the youngest member of the cabinet.

Today, Babacan still has the boyish looks that earned him the nickname “baby face,” and he still exhibits a distaste for populism.

Guess he doesn’t support high levels of employment. In that case they are doing the right thing.

The most significant feature of Turkey’s recent economic success is fiscal discipline, and no one in the government has been a stronger supporter of that than Babacan.

Yikes! Kellogg school turns out flakes… :(

Around this time last year, when a fellow cabinet member, Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan — equally hardworking, yet keener on instant gratification — criticized the Central Bank’s tight monetary policy, Babacan slammed him.

“We do not have the luxury of pressing the brakes,” Caglayan had said. Babacan’s response: “In foggy weather, the driver should not listen to those telling him to press the gas pedal.”

The weather is clear, the driver is blind.

In what came to be known as the “gas-break dispute,” Erdogan threw his weight behind Caglayan and criticized the statutorily independent Central Bank for keeping interest rates too high.

Agreed!

Last week, the Central Bank hiked its overnight lending rate for the second month in a row by 50 basis points to 7.75%. Erdogan and Caglayan watched quietly this time, hoping the raise would help prevent the lira from sliding further. It did not.

Of course not. It makes it weaker via the govt spewing out more in lira interest payments to the economy.

As Babacan’s proverbial fog is slowly lifting to reveal a slippery slope, I can’t help but wonder if he feels vindicated by the turn of events. Probably not, since the risk that awaits Turkey now is worse than a taper tantrum, and Babacan must know just how bad it can get.

The Fed’s decision exposed Turkey’s vulnerability.

Yes, ignorance.

Described by economist Erinc Yeldan as “a gradually deflating balloon, subject to erratic and irregular whims of the markets,” Turkey’s speculative growth over the last four years has been financed by running a large current account deficit, which in turn was funded with hot money that is no longer readily available.

Nonsensical doubletalk.

As Standard Bank analyst Timothy Ash pointed out last week, “It is a bit hard to recommend [buying the lira or entering] bond positions while inflation remains elevated, and the current account is still supersized at $55-60 billion, with that huge external financing requirement.”

Or, it’s hard selling the dollar or euro with their intense deflationary/contractionary policies…

Estimated at $205 billion, or a quarter of Turkey’s gross domestic product (GDP), the external financing requirement is huge, indeed.

There is no such thing.

“A more extreme measure of vulnerability would add the $140 billion of foreign-held bonds and shares,” Hugo Dixon wrote in his Reuters blog. “If this tries to flee, the lira could plunge.”

Huh???

Babacan admits that “Turkey might feel the negative effects of the Fed’s policy shift a bit higher than others … due to our already higher current account deficit.”

Turkey’s reliance on hot money to turn over its short-term external debt, which has been increasing more rapidly than the national income, is only the tip of the iceberg. What makes Turkey’s robust growth rates of 9% in 2010 and 8.5% in 2011 unrepeatable might be the disappearance of cheap loans. However, the real reason behind the unsustainability of such growth is structural.

Growth can be readily sustained with lira budget deficits and a 0 rate policy would help with price stability as well.

From insufficient capital accumulation and a low savings ratio to poor labor efficiency, the Turkish economy suffers chronic ills that can only be cured through radical reforms, including a major overhaul of the education system.

Education is good, but unemployment is the evidence the deficit is too small.

Again, Babacan knows it. Earlier this year, he commented on the government’s plan to increase the GDP per capita to $25,000 in 2023 by pointing out an anomaly:

“No other country in the world with an average education of only 6.5 years has a per capita income of $10,500. And no country with such an education level ever had an average income of $25,000. Without solving our education problem, our 2023 targets will remain a dream.”

Some say ignorance is bliss. Listening to Babacan makes me think they may be right. After 11 years, being part of a government that failed to do what you know should have been done cannot be much fun.

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Comments on research report

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From DB,
Comments below:

Commentary for friday: the second print on Q2 GDP growth showed a significant upward revision to +2.5% from +1.7% as previously reported. Recall that growth was only +1.1% in Q1.

After the 3rd downward revision

Given that the deflator was revised a tenth higher (0.8% vs. 0.7% as previously reported), the magnitude of the overall revision is even more impressive. Personal consumption was unrevised at +1.8% in Q2,

Down from 2.3% in Q1 if I recall correctly

While business fixed investment was only modestly softer (+4.4% vs. +4.6%). Residential investment was also reduced slightly (+12.9% vs. +13.4%). The big changes to Q2 growth were in inventories and international trade. Inventory accumulation was lifted to $62.6b from $56.7b as first reported, thereby adding 0.6 ppt to growth compared to 0.4 ppt previously.

The question is voluntary to restock from a Q1 dip or sales growth forecast, or involuntary due to lower than expected sales.

In terms of trade, firmer exports and softer imports drove net exports to improve; as a result, the original -0.8 ppt drag from trade was revised up to zero.

Question is whether exports can be sustained through Q3 as the dollar spike vs Japan and then the EM’s hurts ‘competitiveness’

The government drag on Q2 was revised to become slightly larger (-0.2 ppt vs. -0.1 ppt as first reported). Nonetheless, the federal government drag on economic activity has diminished significantly compared to the impact in Q1 (-0.7 ppt) and Q4 2012 (-1.2 ppt). A diminished drag from the public sector should enable overall GDP growth, which was +1.6% year-on-year in Q2, to close the gap with private sector growth, which was +2.5% over the same period.

I see it this way- the govt deficit spending is a net add of spending/income. So with the deficit dropping from 7% of GDP last year to maybe 3% currently, with maybe 2% of the drop from proactive fiscal initiatives, some other agent has to be spending more than his income to sustain sales/incomes etc. If not, output goes unsold/rising inventories and then unproduced. The needed spending to ‘fill the spending gap’ left by govt cutbacks can come from either domestic credit expansion or increased net exports (no resident credit expansion/savings reductions. I don’t detect the domestic credit expansion and net export growth/trade deficit reduction seems likely given the dollar spike and oil price spike?

If we achieve +3.0% growth in the current quarter and +3.5% in Q4, this will push the year-on-year rate to +1.7% in Q3 and +2.5% by yearend. (this is in line with the Fed’s central tendency forecasts, which are due to be updated at the september FOMC meeting.)

In order for our growth forecast to come to fruition, we will need to see a pickup in consumer spending,

Hard to fathom, as personal consumption has been slipping from 2.3 in Q1 to 1.8 in Q2, and walmart and the like sure aren’t seeing any material uptick in sales? Car sales are ok, but further gains from the June high rate seems doubtful as July has already posted a slower annual rate.

homebuilding and business investment relative to first half performance. The first two series are likely to be boosted by sturdier employment gains, and hence faster household income growth.

Seems early Q3 reports show falling mtg purchase applications, home sales falling month to month, and lots of anecdotals showing the spike in mtg rates has slowed things down. So growth from Q2 seems unlikely at this point?

We are confident that the pace of hiring will pick up in the relatively near term, because jobless claims continue to hold near cyclical lows.

New jobs dropped to 160,000 in july, and claims measure people losing their jobs, not new hires. Also, top line growth, the ultimate driver of employment, remains low, so assuming actual productivity hasn’t gone negative a spike in jobs is unlikely?

Given the usefulness of jobless claims as a payroll forecasting tool, it should come as little surprise that they are also significantly correlated with wage and salary growth. In fact, over the past 25 years, the current level of jobless claims has typically coincided with private wage and salary growth above 6% compared to 3.8% in Q2.

As above, claims may have correlated with all that in the past, but the causation isn’t there. Looks to me like claims are more associated with ‘time from the bottom’ as with time after the economy bottoms firings tend to slow, regardless of hiring?

Meanwhile, the third growth driver noted above—business investment—will largely depend on the corporate profit trend. Yesterday’s second print on GDP provided the first look at economy-wide corporate profits, which rose +3.9% in Q2 vs. -1.3% in Q1. Many analysts fretted the decline in profits in Q1, because they tend to drive business investment and hiring plans. We dismissed the Q1 weakness as a temporary development which occurred in lagged response to the growth slowdown in Q4 2012 and Q1 2013. The fact that profits are reaccelerating (+5.0% year-on-year versus +2.1% in Q1) is an encouraging development in this regard.

Profits also are a function of sales, which are a function of ‘deficit spending’ from either govt or other sectors, as previously discussed. And, again, i see no signs of ‘leaping ahead’ in any of those sectors.

Faster GDP growth through yearend should result in even stronger corporate profit growth.

Agreed! But didn’t he just say that the GDP growth would come from business investment that’s a function of profits (and in turn a function of sales/GDP)?

To be sure, the additional growth momentum now evident in the Q2 GDP results makes our 3% target for current quarter growth more easily attainable. –CR

I don’t see how inventory growth is ‘momentum’ and seems there are severe headwinds to Q3 net exports as drivers of growth?

And govt is there with a deficit of only 3% of GDP to help offset the relentless ‘unspent income’/demand leakages inherent in the global institutional structure.

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From SCE

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Taken from ‘Soft Currency Economics’, 1993

That was 20 years ago and the same error persists!!!

:(

How the Government Spends and Borrows as Much as it Does Without Causing Hyperinflation

Most people are accustomed to viewing savings from their own individual point of view. It can be difficult to think of savings on the national level. Putting
part of one’s salary into a savings account means only that an individual has not spent all of his income. The effect of not spending as such is to reduce the demand for consumption below what would have been if the income which is saved had been spent. The act of saving will reduce effective demand for current production without necessarily bringing about any compensating increase in the demand for investment. In fact, a decrease in effective demand most likely reduces employment and income. Attempts to increase individual savings may actually cause a decrease in national income, a reduction in investment, and a decrease in total national savings. One person’s savings can become another’s pay cut. Savings equals investment. If investment doesn’t change, one person’s savings will necessarily be matched by another’s’ dissaving’s. Every credit has an offsetting debit.

As one firm’s expenses are another person’s income, spending equal to a firm’s expenses is necessary to purchase its output. A shortfall of consumption results in an increase of unsold inventories. When business inventories accumulate because of poor sales: 1) businesses may lower their production and employment and 2) business may invest in less new capital. Businesses often invest in order to increase their productive capacity and meet greater demand for their goods. Chronically low demand for consumer goods and services may depress investment and leaves businesses with over capacity and reduce investment expenditures. Low spending can put the economy in the doldrums: low sales, low income, low investment, and low savings. When demand is strong and sales are high businesses normally respond by increasing output. They may also invest in additional capital equipment. Investment in new capacity is automatically an increase in savings. Savings rises because workers are paid to produce capital goods they cannot buy and consume. The only other choice left is for individuals to “invest” in capital goods, either directly or through an intermediary. An increase in investment for whatever reason is an increase in savings; a decrease in individual spending, however, does not cause an increase in overall investment. Savings equals investment, but the act of investment must occur to have real savings.

The structural situation in the U. S. is one in which individuals are given powerful incentives not to spend. This has allowed the government, in a sense, to spend people’s money for them. The reason that government deficit spending has not resulted in more inflation is that it has offset a structurally reduced rate of private spending. A large portion of personal income consists of IRA contributions, Keoghs, life insurance reserves, pension fund income, and other money that compounds continuously and is not spent. Similarly, a significant portion of business income is also low velocity; it accumulates in corporate savings accounts of various types. Dollars earned by foreign central banks are also not likely to be spent.

The root of this paradox is the mistaken notion that savings is needed to provide money for investment. This is not true. In the banking system, loans, including those for business investments, create equal deposits, obviating the need for savings as a source of money. Investment creates its own money. Once we recognize that savings does not cause investment it follows that the solution to high unemployment and low capacity utilization is not necessarily to encourage more savings. In fact, taxed advantaged savings has probably caused the private sector to desire to be a NET saver. This condition requires the public sector to run a deficit, or face deflation.

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Chinese liquidity drill

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With floating fx, it’s necessarily about price (interest rate) and not quantity.

That includes China’s ‘dirty float’, a currency not convertible on demand at the CB, but with periodic CB market intervention.

Loans necessarily create deposits at lending institutions, and they also create any required reserves as a reserve requirement is functionally, in the first instance, an overdraft at the CB, which *is* a loan from the CB.

So from inception the assets and liabilities are necessarily ‘there’ for the CB to price.

Liquidity is needed to shift liabilities from one agent to another.

For example, if a depositor wants to shift his funds to another bank, the first bank must somehow ‘replace’ that liability by borrowing from some other agent, even as total liabilities in the system remain unchanged.

That ‘shifting around’ of liabilities is called ‘liquidity’

But in any case at any point in time assets and liabilities are ‘in balance.’

It’s when an agent can’t honor the demand of a liability holder to shift his liability to another agent that liquidity matters.

And if a bank fails to honor a depositor’s request to shift his deposit to another institution, the deposit remains where it is. Yes, the bank may be in violation of its agreements, but it is ‘fully funded.’

The problem is that to honor its agreements to allow depositors to shift their deposits to other banks, the bank will attempt to replace the liability by borrowing elsewhere, which may entail driving up rates.

Likewise, banks will attempt to borrow elsewhere, which can drive up rates, to avoid overdrafts at the CB when the CB makes it clear they don’t want the banks to sustain overdrafts.

The problem is that only the CB can alter the total reserve balances in the banking system, as those are merely balances on the CB’s own spread sheet. Banks can shift balances from one to another, but not change the total.

So when the total quantity of reserve balances on a CB’s spreadsheet increases via overdraft, that overdraft can only shift from bank to bank, unless the CB acts to add the ‘needed’ reserves.

Or when one bank has excess reserves which forces another into overdraft, and the surplus bank won’t lend to the deficit bank.

This is all routinely addressed by the CB purchasing securities either outright or via repurchase agreements. It’s called ‘offsetting operating factors’, which also include other ‘adds and leakages’ including changes in tsy balances at the fed, float, cash demands, etc.

And when the CB does this they also, directly or indirectly, set the interest rate as they do, directly or indirectly, what I call ‘pricing the overdraft.’

So to restate, one way or another the CB sets the interest rate, while quantity remains as it is.

And those spikes you are seeing in China are from the CB setting rates indirectly.

The evidence from China is telling me that the western educated new kids on the block flat out don’t get it, probably because they were never told the fixed fx ‘monetarism’ they learned in school isn’t applicable to non convertible currency???

In any case the CB is the monopoly supplier of net reserves to its banking system and therefore ‘price setter’ and not ‘price taker’, and surely they learned about monopoly in school, but apparently/unfortunately have yet to recognize their currency itself is a simple public monopoly?

Thinking back, this is exactly the blunder of tall Paul back some 33 years ago. He made the same rookie mistake, for which he got credit for saving the US, and the world, from the great inflation of his day.

However, the fact that he made it worse, vs curing anything is of no consequence.

What matters is how the western elite institutions of higher learning spin it all…

:(

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