Monthly Archives: January 2012

Fin Min Azumi: To Take Decisive Forex Steps If Needed

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With the aggressive fx policies of former Treasury Secretary Paulson fading, the Swiss not being tongue lashed as a currency manipulator and international outlaw for selling their currency, and the euro member nations seeking all the ‘help’ they can get:
I’m watching for other nations seeking export led growth, like Japan, resuming prior policies of keeping their real wages ‘competitive’ by buying the currencies of their target markets.

Japan’s Fin Min Azumi To Take Decisive Forex Steps If Needed

Jan 25 (Dow Jones) — Japan’s finance minister issued a fresh warning Tuesday that he will take “decisive steps” if speculators push the yen up too sharply, after the Japanese currency rose to its strongest level in around three months overnight.

“There is no change in my stance” on foreign exchange issues, Jun Azumi said at a news conference after a regular Cabinet meeting. “If there is excessive volatility or really speculative movement, I will be vigilant against it, and I will take decisive steps if necessary.”
The phrase “decisive steps” is a Japanese code for currency-market intervention.

But Azumi added that Japan’s economy “isn’t necessarily in a bad shape.” He voiced hopes that Europe’s debt crisis would ease, helping Japanese stock markets stabilize.

The yen briefly surged to Y76.21 Monday, as investors fleeing Europe’s debt crisis took shelter in Japan’s currency despite warnings from Japanese policymakers that yen strength was unwarranted.

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Draghi Sees No Evidence ECB Loans Are Financing Economy Yet

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Evidence of real progress will be a statement like:
‘Draghi sees no evidence of any possible channel from ECB loans to the economy’

Bank liquidity is something like wheels on a car.
Without wheels the car won’t function, but neither are wheels alone enough to make it go.

Banks are public/private partnerships, with govt’s role being liquidity provider, as private capital in the first loss position prices risk. And with unlimited liquidity provision comes the necessity of full regulation and supervision of the asset/capital side.

In the US the unlimited liquidity provision comes mainly via FDIC insured deposits, supplemented by funding from the Fed. The Fed is the liquidity provider of last resort for its member banks, while at the same time it uses the banking system’s cost of funds as its instrument of monetary policy.

The euro zone hasn’t figured this out yet.
The liquidity provider of last resort is the ECB, as it’s the ‘issuer of the currency’, and as such not itself liquidity constrained. The member nations are like the US states, and are necessarily liquidity constrained, and therefore not ’empowered’ to be liquidity providers of last resort to their member banks.

So in that sense, as the bank funding by the ECB grows, it’s all gravitating towards what all other nations have in place. The problem is the euro zone leaders don’t understand that aspect of banking, as evidenced by the way they are resisting the shift to ECB funding, and, in fact, working towards moving banks away from ECB funding.

Draghi Sees No Evidence ECB Loans Are Financing Economy Yet

By Jana Randow and Simone Meier

Jan 28 (Bloomberg) — “Do we know that actually this money is going to finance the real economy? We don’t have evidence of this kind yet,” ECB President Mario Draghi told Davos. “There is a lag. We will have to see.” “We know for sure we have avoided a major, major credit crunch, a major funding crisis,” he said today. “You have parts of the euro area where credit is more or less normal, but you have other parts where credit is seriously contracting.” “If you take 0.5 trillion euros and then you take off the reimbursement of other short-term facilities by the banking system in December, you get a figure of roughly 220 billion euros, which is exactly the amount of bank bonds that were to come due in this period of time,” he said.

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EU Leaders to Agree on Rescue Fund, Balanced Budget

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No let up on the austerity demands, which are now to be legislated via balanced budget rules.

EU Leaders to Agree on Rescue Fund, Balanced Budget

Jan 29 (Reuters) — European Union leaders will sign off on a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone at a summit on Monday and are expected to agree on a balanced budget rule in national legislation, with unresolved problems in Greece casting a shadow on the discussions.

The summit – the 17th in two years as the EU battles to resolve its sovereign debt problems – is supposed to focus on creating jobs and growth, with leaders looking to shift the narrative away from politically unpopular budget austerity. The summit is expected to announce that up to 20 billion euros of unused funds from the EU’s 2007-2013 budget will be redirected towards job creation, especially among the young, and will commit to freeing up bank lending to small- and medium-sized companies.

But discussions over the permanent rescue fund, a new ‘fiscal treaty’ and Greece will dominate the talks.

Negotiations between the Greek government and private bondholders over the restructuring of 200 billion euros of Greek debt made progress over the weekend, but are not expected to conclude before the summit begins.

Until there is a deal between Greece and its private bondholders, EU leaders cannot move forward with a second, 130 billion euro rescue program for Athens, which they originally agreed to at a summit last October.

Instead, they will sign a treaty creating the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), a 500 billion-euro permanent bailout fund that is due to become operational in July, a year earlier than first planned. And they are likely to agree the terms of a ‘fiscal treaty’ tightening budget rules for those that sign up.

The ESM will replace the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), a temporary fund that has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal and will help in the second Greek package.

Leaders hope the ESM will boost defenses against the debt crisis, but many – including Italian premier Mario Monti, IMF chief Christine Lagarde and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner – say it will only do so if its resources are combined with what remains in the EFSF, creating a super-fund of 750 billion euros ($1 trillion).

The International Monetary Fund says an agreement to increase the size of the euro zone ‘firewall’ will convince others to contribute more resources to the IMF, boosting its crisis-fighting abilities and improving market sentiment.

But Germany is opposed to such a step.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will not discuss the issue of the ESM/EFSF’s ceiling until leaders meet for their next summit in March. In the meantime, financial markets will continue to fret that there may not be sufficient rescue funds available to help the likes of Italy and Spain if they run into renewed debt funding problems.

“There are certainly signals that Germany is willing to consider it and it is rather geared towards March from the German side,” a senior euro zone official said.

The sticking point is German public opinion which is tired of bailing out the euro zone’s financially less prudent. Instead, Merkel wants to see the EU – except Britain, which has rejected any such move – sign up to the fiscal treaty, including a balanced budget rule written into constitutions. Once that is done, the discussion about a bigger rescue fund can take place.

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US Pension research article

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This is from modest returns and low rates causing ‘savers’ to have to pony up more to provide future nominal incomes.

And it’s a drag on aggregate demand which should be a good thing, as it means we can have lower taxes for any given size govt.
But instead, of course, we let it keep unemployment high and the output gap wide in general.

Pensions & Investments News Alerts:

Verizon to dial up $1.26 billion for pension plans

Boeing to add $1.5 billion to pension plans in 2012

Raytheon, Lockheed Martin to add billions to pension plans

Ford to roll out $3.5 billion in pension contributions

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GDP/Euro Lending Data

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Good report!
Additional notations below:

Karim writes:
U.S. GDP growth in Q4 a bit weaker than expected at 2.8%

Perhaps the FOMC had word of this, explaining the unexpected dovishness?

1.9% of that growth accounted for by inventories. Other contributions: (consumer spending 2%, fixed investment 0.4%, government spending -0.9%, net exports -0.1%).

Rebuilding post earthquake supply lines probably now complete.
Govt spending continues weak, as revenues increase some and the federal deficit falls some.
Imports rise quickly with any increase in consumer spending.

In growth terms: (consumer spending 2%, fixed investment 3.3%, government spending -4.6%, exports 4.7% and imports 4.4%).

So stripping away inventories, growth was below trend. Plus savings rate fell back to 3.7% from 3.9%.

Domestic savings down with spending up indicates increasing consumer debt.
The question is whether this is ‘wanted’ as per increased desires to buy on credit,
or because the decline in govt deficit spending ‘forced’ more consumer debt for ‘essentials’

And, core PCE slowed from 2.1% to 1.1%.

Also explains FOMC dovishness as they see risk as asymmetrical, fearing deflation more than inflation.

In sum, will keep QE3 talk very much alive

And somewhat moot, even as Q1 GDP forecasts are being revised down some, as most don’t think QE matters much for the real economy.

What’s becoming understood is that while there is ‘more the Fed can do’
for all practical purposes there is nothing they can do to further support the real economy.

Euro money and lending data shockingly weak in December.

Might partially explain how some banks apparently got the balance sheet room to buy more national govt debt?

In particular, record single month decline in lending to the non-bank private sector (74bn). Of that, 37bn decline in lending to non-financial corporates and 8bn drop in lending to households.

This should be very supportive of additional ECB rate cuts over the next few months.

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The Fed’s operation tweet vs twist

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Seems to me the force keeping yields down on the short end can be called operation tweet, as the Fed is simply announcing its forecasts for lower rates, which are subject to immediate change, data dependent.

But with operation twist, the Fed actually buys the longer term securities vs just talking about them, as it also lightens up on the shorter term securities.

So after the current knee jerk reaction to tweet I’m looking at the ramifications of twist to dominate.

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Japan Sees Its Public Debt Exceeding A Quadrillion Yen Next Year

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THEN they’ll be the next Greece…

Japan Sees Its Public Debt Exceeding A Quadrillion Yen Next Year

Jan 26 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s Finance Ministry said the country’s public debt will probably exceed a quadrillion yen for the first time next year, adding pressure on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to raise taxes to restore the nation’s finances.

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