Category Archives: Inflation

Chinese liquidity drill

Posted on by

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…

:(

Share

Bill Gross – Fed tapering plan may be hasty:

Posted on by

I agree with a lot of this

‘Mortgage originations have plummeted by 39% since early May.’

The Fed’s financial obligations ratios have turned up as well.

But it’s not about QE in any case

It takes private credit expansion or net exports to overcome fiscal drag.

Bill Gross: Fed tapering plan may be hasty

By William H. Gross

June 25 (Bloomberg) — “June Gloom,” as the fog and clouds that often linger over the Southern California coast this time of year are known, appears to have spread to the Federal Reserve. At his press conference last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank may begin to let up on the gas pedal of monetary stimulus by tapering its asset purchases later this year and ending them in 2014.

We agree that QE must end. It has distorted incentives and inflated asset prices to artificial levels. But we think the Fed’s plan may be too hasty.

Fog may be obscuring the Fed’s view of the economy—in particular, the structural impediments that will inhibit its ability to achieve higher growth and inflation. Bernanke said the Fed expects the unemployment rate to fall to about 7% by the middle of next year. However, we think this is a long shot.

Bernanke’s remarks indicated that the Fed is taking a cyclical view of the economy. He blamed lower growth on fiscal austerity, for example, suggesting that should it be removed from the equation the economy would suddenly be growing at 3%. He similarly attributed rising housing prices to homeowners who simply like or anticipate higher home prices, as opposed to emphasizing the mortgage rate, which is really what provided the lift in the first place.

Our view of the economy places greater emphasis on structural factors. Wages continue to be dampened by globalization. Demographic trends, notably the aging of our society and the retirement of the Baby Boomers, will lead to a lower level of consumer demand. And then there’s the race against the machine; technology continues to eliminate jobs as opposed to provide them.

Bernanke made no mention of these factors, which we think are significant forces that will prevent unemployment from reaching the 7% threshold during the next year. Falling below “NAIRU” (the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment—usually estimated between 5% and 6%) is an even more distant goal.

Indeed, the Fed’s views on inflation may be the foggiest of all. Bernanke said the Fed sees inflation progressing toward its 2% objective “over time.” At the moment, we’re nowhere near that.

The Fed’s plan strikes us as a bit ironic, in fact, because Bernanke has long-standing and deep concerns about deflation. We’ve witnessed this in speeches going back five or 10 years—the “helicopter speech,” the references not only to the Depression but to the lost decades in Japan. He badly wants to avoid the mistake of premature tightening, as occurred disastrously in the 1930s. Indeed, on several occasions during his press conference, Bernanke conditioned his expectations of tapering on inflation moving back toward the Fed’s 2% objective.

The chairman, of course, may be equally concerned about the market effects of tapering and determined to signal its moves early. However, as the spike in interest rates shows, this path is fraught with danger, too.

We’re in a highly levered economy where households can’t afford to pay much more in interest expense. Monthly payments for a 30-year mortgage have jumped 20% to 25% since January. Mortgage originations have plummeted by 39% since early May.

High levels of leverage, both here and abroad, have made the global economy far more sensitive to interest rates. Whereas a decade or two ago the Fed could raise the fed funds rate by 500 basis points and expect the economy to slow, today if the Fed were to hike rates or taper suddenly, the economy couldn’t handle it.

All this suggests that investors who are selling Treasurys in anticipation that the Fed will ease out of the market might be disappointed. If inflation meanders back and forth around the 1% level, Bernanke may guide the Committee towards achieving not only an unemployment rate but also a higher inflation target.

It’s reasonable, of course, for Bernanke to try to prepare markets for the inevitable and necessary wind down of QE. But if he has to wave a white flag three months from now and say, “Sorry, we miscalculated,” the trust of markets and dampened volatility that has driven markets over the past two or three years could probably never be fully regained. It would take even longer for the fog over the economy to lift.

Share

health care inflation slowing

Posted on by

I’m all for efficiency and cutting waste and fraud, but it does reduce aggregate demand, begging a tax cut or spending increase elsewhere to sustain output and employment.

Health Care Cost Inflation on Track to Slow in 2014: Report

By Dan Mangan

June 18 (CNBC) — Already sluggish health-care inflation is expected to slow down even more in 2014 as consumers, employers and the federal government continue looking to cut medical costs, a new report said Tuesday.

And the rate of health-care inflationas distinct from total medical spendingcould drop further in future years as Obamacare rolls out and employers and consumers pay greater attention to costs, suggests the report by the professional services firm PwC.

In 2014, the health-care inflation rate is projected to slow to 6.5 percent, according to the new Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers report by PwC’s Health Research Institute.

That’s 1 percent less than the 7.5 percent inflation rate for 2013 that HRI projected last year.

After accounting for changes in health insurance benefit designs that drive down cost, the net growth rate of inflation next year is projected to be just 4.5 percent, according to HRI The report based those projections on analysis of the large-employer market that covers around 150 million Americans.

Share

JPY

Posted on by

Unfortunately what Japan risks is an exit from headline deflation but no growth in output and employment to show for it. What they’ve done might be to cause the currency to depreciate about 25% via ‘portfolio shifting’, which may not expand real domestic demand. In fact, in real terms, it may go down, leaving them with higher prices and a lower standard of living.

Yes, the currency shift makes imports more expensive, which means there will be some substitution to domestic goods which cost more than imports used to cost, but less than they now cost. But for many imports there are no substitutions, so the price increase simply functions like a tax increase.

And yes, exports, particularly nominal, will go up some, but so does the cost of inputs imported. And yes, some inputs sourced elsewhere will instead be sourced locally, adding to domestic employment and output, but not to real domestic consumption.

At the macro level what counts is what they do with regards to keeping the govt deficit large enough to accommodate the need to pay taxes and net save. Net exports ‘work’ by reducing real terms of trade when the govt purchases fx, which adds net yen to their economy. I call the fx purchases ‘off balance sheet deficit spending’. But so far the govt at least says they aren’t even doing that, and the lifers etc. now deny having done much of that either?

What has changed fundamentally is they are importing more energy since shutting down their nukes. Again, this functions as a tax on their economy (taxonomy for short? really bad pun intended!).

On the other hand, as above, buying fx by either the private or public sector is, functionally, deficit spending, which in this case first supports exports, but could add some to aggregate demand, depending on the details of relevant propensities to consume, etc.

The entire point of all this is Japan can cause some ‘inflation’ as nominal prices are nudged up by the currency depreciation, but with only a modest increase in real output via an increase in net exports that fades if not supported by ongoing fx purchases. And all in the context of declining real terms of trade as the same amount of labor buy fewer imports, etc. which is the engine that makes it ‘work’ on paper.

And for the global economy it’s another deflationary shock in a deflationary race to the bottom as other wanna be exporters compete with Japan’s massive cut in real wages.

So yes, they are trying to cause inflation, but not for inflation’s sake, but as a way to increase output and employment. But I’m afraid what they are missing that the causation doesn’t work in that direction.

In conclusion, this was the thought I was trying to flesh out:

Just because increasing output can cause inflation, it doesn’t mean increasing inflation causes real output and employment to increase.

sorry, this all needs a lot more organizing. Will redo later.

Share

Tokyo Urged to Undertake Serious Fiscal Reforms

Posted on by

More of: “In the land of the blind the one eyed man gets his good eye poked out…”

Operationally, the BOJ, monopoly supplier of yen reserves, can peg long rates just as easily as short rates.

If they back off on fiscal they’re right back where they started from, as QE is a bit of a tax hike, but for the most part just a placebo.

And lighting up the nukes likely puts trade back in surplus, firming the yen again, with the lifers who sold JGB’s for foreign bonds and foreign currency exposure/got short yen adding a bit of excitement when they try to cover.

Not to mention the China slowdown.

And none of this helps US demand any.

Tokyo Panel Urges Abe to Tighten Finances

Mitsuru Obe

May 27 (WSJ) —TOKYO—Following last week’s brief jump in Japanese government bond yields that helped precipitate a sudden slide in Tokyo stocks, an advisory panel to Japan’s finance minister published a report Monday urging the government to undertake serious fiscal reform to avoid further rises in yields.

“Fiscal reconstruction has become all the more important” because of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive monetary and fiscal stimulus measures, the report said, while warning that a loss of fiscal rectitude could send bond yields higher and undermine the efforts of the Bank of Japan 8301.JA -1.43%to stimulate the economy.

The report comes after the central bank launched an aggressive bond-buying program in April. The BOJ’s change in stance initially pushed bond yields down. But uncertainty over the impact of buying on such a huge scale—up to 70% of newly issued debt—saw yields bounce back up.

As the country’s currency, the yen, broke above 100 to the dollar earlier this month for the first time in more than four years, bond yields climbed along with equity prices. When they hit 1% on May 23, a level not seen in more than a year, the equity market’s upward march halted.

The panel’s chairman, Tokyo University Prof. Hiroshi Yoshikawa, declined to say how last week’s financial turmoil may have influenced the panel’s conclusion in the report. But Mr. Yoshikawa didn’t mince his words, as he warned against any attempt by the Abe administration to push back painful reforms, such as planned tax hikes and fiscal consolidation.

“Any attempt to go ahead with more fiscal stimulus would be a contravention of the spirit of this report,” he told a news conference.

Mr. Abe’s administration came into office in late December, amid an economic slowdown in Europe and China. Pledging to lift the Japanese economy out of decadeslong stagnation, Mr. Abe’s government has launched aggressive monetary easing and fiscal stimulus measures, a policy program popularly known as Abenomics.

The report argued, however, that “such unusual policy measures cannot be continued indefinitely.”

“Unless the government moves ahead with and makes progress in fiscal consolidation, the BOJ’s policy could be viewed as an act of debt financing by the central bank, causing bond yields to rise, and canceling out the effects of its monetary easing,” it said.

The report also noted that a rise in bond yields would also complicate the task of the exiting the so-called quantitative easing program down the line. Under a newly introduced inflation target, the BOJ is obliged to achieve 2% price growth, and the bank has said it would keep its aggressive easing in place until it secures that target.

The report said that “even if the BOJ wants to reduce its government bond purchases, it won’t be able to do so unless there are alternative buyers of bonds in the market.” Without private sector buyers, long-term interest rates could go up far beyond levels in line with economic growth rates, the report warned.

The Abe administration is expected to make clear its fiscal reform goals next month.

The report urged the government to produce a credible and concrete fiscal reform road map that would include specific numerical targets, rather than just expressing a strong determination.

Share

Bernanke

Posted on by


Karim writes:

Question: On timing of tapering
Answer:
If the labor market continues to improve at the current pace, could taper in the next few meetings.
Asked if he expected this to occur before Labor Day; depends on the data.
Did not answer question about how much warning he would give the market before tapering.

Question: Exit principles
Answer:
First have to wind down purchases. He emphasized that the outlook for the labor market is the key driver (not inflation) for whether to taper. And he emphasized that buying at a lesser pace is still easing.
Says no need to sell securities at this point. Makes case for letting securities roll-off in terms of market impact and remittances to Treasury. And he also expresses a desire to return to a Treasury only balance sheet at some point, though also says MBS likely to just roll off the balance sheet.

Text Excerpts Below

  • A key adjective between some and improvement in the labor market is still missing!
  • Removing policy accommodation and policy tightening not appropriate at this juncture (no guidance).
  • Also notes that buying assets at a lower pace (tapering) is still providing accommodation.
  • Many focusing on removing policy accommodation phrase thus has nothing to with tapering (that it is referring to ending QE altogether).
  • Rest of text is largely a rehash of defense of cost/benefit analysis of low rates, headwinds from fiscal policy, and scarring effects of long-term unemployment.


Good report, thanks!

Some interesting language here:

Conditions in the job market have shown some improvement recently. The unemployment rate, at 7.5 percent in April, has declined more than 1/2 percentage point since last summer. Moreover, gains in total nonfarm payroll employment have averaged more than 200,000 jobs per month over the past six months, compared with average monthly gains of less than 140,000 during the prior six months. In all, payroll employment has now expanded by about 6 million jobs since its low point, and the unemployment rate has fallen 2-1/2 percentage points since its peak.

Despite this improvement, the job market remains weak overall: The unemployment rate is still well above its longer-run normal level, rates of long-term unemployment are historically high, and the labor force participation rate has continued to move down.


Over the nearly four years since the recovery began, the economy has been held back by a number of headwinds. Some of these headwinds have begun to dissipate recently, in part because of the Federal Reserve’s highly accommodative monetary policy. Notably, the housing market has strengthened over the past year, supported by low mortgage rates and improved sentiment on the part of potential buyers. Increased housing activity is fostering job creation in construction and related industries, such as real estate brokerage and home furnishings, while higher home prices are bolstering household finances, which helps support the growth of private consumption.

Recognizing the drawbacks of persistently low rates, the FOMC actively seeks economic conditions consistent with sustainably higher interest rates. Unfortunately, withdrawing policy accommodation at this juncture would be highly unlikely to produce such conditions. A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further.

The Chairman has previously indicated that inflation risks are asymmetrical, as they feel reasonably secure about being able to deal with higher inflation via rate hikes, vs feeling reasonably insecure about addressing deflationary forces given the 0% lower bound on rates.

Such outcomes tend to be associated with extended periods of lower, not higher, interest rates, as well as poor returns on other assets.

Japan, for example

Moreover, renewed economic weakness would pose its own risks to financial stability.

Euro zone?

In the current economic environment, monetary policy is providing significant benefits. Low real interest rates have helped support spending on durable goods, such as automobiles, and also contributed significantly to the recovery in housing sales, construction, and prices. Higher prices of houses and other assets, in turn, have increased household wealth and consumer confidence, spurring consumer spending and contributing to gains in production and employment. Importantly, accommodative monetary policy has also helped to offset incipient deflationary pressures and kept inflation from falling even further below the Committee’s 2 percent longer-run objective.

Again, deflation concerns

That said, the Committee is aware that a long period of low interest rates has costs and risks. For example, even as low interest rates have helped create jobs and supported the prices of homes and other assets, savers who rely on interest income from savings accounts or government bonds are receiving very low returns. Another cost, one that we take very seriously, is the possibility that very low interest rates, if maintained too long, could undermine financial stability. For example, investors or portfolio managers dissatisfied with low returns may “reach for yield” by taking on more credit risk, duration risk, or leverage. The Federal Reserve is working to address financial stability concerns through increased monitoring, a more systemic approach to supervising financial firms, and the ongoing implementation of reforms to make the financial system more resilient.

Share

Thinking Caps On – Grab a Coffee – Sales/Trading Commentary

Posted on by

From: JJ LANDO
At: May 14 2013 07:41:14

Consider the following thought experiment. These are the scenarios:
A. The Treasury decides that it will fund itself 30% more in Overnight Bills and reduce issuance across the curve.
B. The Fed announces it will increase QE by 30% (it will remit the net income of this activity back to the Treasury like taxes)
C. Congress announces a new tax on all passive income from USTs, to holders both at home and abroad (ie Central Banks), for all new-issue USTs
D. Lew pre-announces that we will ‘selectively default’ and apply a haircut of on all future Treasury coupon payments of new issues.

Here’s what’s funny. Most intelligent market participants will say things like:
A. Stocks down a few percent on fear of downgrade. Economy slightly weaker or unchanged.
B. Stocks up 5-10% and economy grows another 1% for 1-2yrs; monetary stimulus.
C. Stocks down 5-10% on tax hike (like last year) that maybe corrects. Economy slows 1-2% for a year or so because it’s a tax hike (ie fiscal consolidation).
D. Stocks down 80% and we go into a great depression on steroids. All investment dollars flee the US. I can’t tell you what happens next because my Bloomberg account gets shut down. They might even declare an Internet Holiday.

Here’s what’s craziest: THESE ARE ALL THE SAME THING. The name and the process is different, the OPTICS is different, but the net is the same. There’s the government and there’s everyone else. The government either pays more out – in interest payments or transfer payments or vendor payments, or it takes back more in taxes or default or interest ‘savings.’ Everything the government net gets in ‘revenue’ the rest of the world loses in income. Everything the government dissaves (deficits) the rest of the world saves. Equal and opposite.

[You need to further get around the idea that reserves are overnight bills and there’s no such thing as ‘monetary base’ – just interest rates; that lower discount rates are lower no matter how you get there; that rate cuts are taxes are austerity, even considering the benefit to risk assets from ‘lower riskfree discount rates’… it’s all basically true if you think abt it long and hard].

Here we are, almost 550 rate cuts into this thing, and inflation everywhere with QE is basically falling (see chart), and incomes are falling everywhere but in the top brackets (see page 9 here for a TRULY SOBERING CHART)… let us never forget that the goal is TO IMPROVE PEOPLE’S QUALITY OF LIFE NOT TO JUICE GDP . Thus economics as a whole also has some major shortcomings. Exporting your way to prosperity is the same as turning your entire population into servants to foreign masters. Disinflation due to lower input costs or better goods or technological gains are good things. HOWEVER if suddenly 20-somethings find social currency in free online friend status rather than cars and houses and weddings – if it makes them happy that’s great but it is also a downward shift in the demand curve that if isn’t replaced leads to someone somewhere being unemployed. These are different issues that shouldn’t all be swept under the ‘disinflation’ rug.

But I digress. Where am I going with all this?
Let’s pretend risk is now in the last 6m-18m phase where everything rallies, everyone in the pool, everyone chases any risk premium to sell, and the underlying income trends are irrelevant. Since I also will posit the Fed isn’t hiking in the next 18 months, I now believe the Fed will entirely miss this risk cycle. Which means they are on hold beyond any trading horizon. So what triggers the end of the cycle? Most would argue – the fear that they ‘tighten’ or ‘hike’ or ‘aren’t on hold anymore.’
To that I disagree…the income and earnings just isn’t there and QE is hurting…in fact the reason the consumer is now tracking +3-4% has been due to a decline in the savings rate (1-handle in q1 as tax hikes hit) that is prone to reverse…it’s MUCH more likely is what triggers the end is that the world starts to understand that QE is a lot like a tax (+ some ‘Richfare’) rather than a stimulus…and that lower rates do raise asset prices for the asset rich but lower incomes and the net to the median person is not what it appears…I see progress on this day every front…TBAC is starting to get it…the inflation markets are starting to get it… we’ll get there … low rates forever…buy blues..

Share

REINHART: Regarding Hilsenrath//+ Retail Sales

Posted on by

A number of people have inquired about this morning’s front page article in the WSJ by Jon Hilsenrath, “Fed Maps Exit from Stimulus.”

This seems constructed by Jon in a way that is very much reminiscent of the three-day inflation scare and talk of early exit he created last year. Note four points:

1. Jon does not have access to policy makers in the way the WSJ beat reporter once had. The days of Wessel and Ip are over. Bernanke was very reluctant to provide informal guidance to begin with, and the practice virtually ceased with the report of the Subcommittee on Communications at the beginning of last year. Essentially, they decided to speak authoritatively in FOMC statements and everyone was free to offer their own view in the public record after that, but not off camera.

2. The first two paragraphs are an extended, bloated, version of the single sentence in the statement that said “The Committee is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its purchases to maintain appropriate policy accommodation as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes.” Those paragraphs don’t say anything more than the Fed has a plan to do its job. This reminds me of the CNBC banner yesterday morning while Bernanke was giving his speech on financial stability. It said “BREAKING NEWS: THE FED IS MONITORING FINANCIAL STABILITY.” It would have been just as informative to run the banner “BREAKING NEWS: THE FED IS STILL IN BUSINESS.”

3. Note that the only two on-the-record, active voices are Charlie Plosser and Richard Fisher. Those two are probably last on the list of reliable co-conspirators for the core of the Committee that makes policy. But those quotes, plus the older Williams’ one, allows Jon to write “Fed officials” to make it sound like he has access to the second floor of the Board. It also lets him bring out the stale dealers survey.

4. Note the inconsistencies in the story. Fed officials want to put more volatility in the market by conveying that QE is a flexible, smoothly adjusting instrument. The problem is that this makes more sense if the effect of QE was on flows, not stocks, which they have studiously denied for four years. By the way, if those conspiring officials want to make clear it won’t be a slow, steady retreat of accommodation, than they better tell Janet Yellen to stop showing the optimal policy path. Good luck to that.

I believe the central message, which is what I have described in earlier notes: Fed officials want to put as much volatility as possible back into the market before starting to raise rates, provided financial conditions otherwise remain supportive to sustained expansion. They’ll take opportunities to do so on the back of an equity market rally. But Jon Hilsenrath is not the means they will do so.

Vincent


Karim writes:
RETAIL SALES

  • April retail Sales were strong both in terms of the actual advance and composition. Moreover upward revisions to the control group for Feb and March imply an upward revision to Q1 GDP from 2.5% to 2.8%.
  • The 0.5% advance in the control group for April was more impressive due to the breadth and composition of the gains. In particular, all the major discretionary spending categories were quite strong: electronics 0.8%, clothing/accessories 1.2%, sporting goods 0.5% and restaurants 0.8%.
  • As the chief economist of the ISCS commented the other day on chain store sales for April: It is most likely being boosted by a stronger household wealth effect from higher home and stock market prices. Although it was an improvement of recent months, the pace was still dampened by adverse seasonal weather,
  • With fiscal drag peaking this quarter, and private sector growth maintaining the momentum it has shown since Q4 of last year, its making 3-3.5% growth more plausible in the second half. Most dealer forecasts are still in the 2-2.25% area.

HILSENRATH

  • Technically, Reinhart is correct: Hilsenrath is not the mouthpiece for the Fed and this is not all new news.
  • But, he is piecing together a story that the Fed wants out there. That the last hiking cycle was too predictable in terms of both pace and size (25bps/meeting). So, the idea that they can taper a bit and skip a meeting; or taper a bit and taper at a greater pace at the next meeting, are ideas they probably want out there.
  • My guess is Bernanke outlines these concepts in greater detail next week at his JEC testimony (May 22) and that if we get another 175k or greater in private payroll growth plus another strong month in retail sales for May, we could see some tapering at the June meeting.
  • Also notable was Bernanke’s comment on Friday that the Fed is ‘looking closely for signs of excessive risk taking”.

Share

Fitch: Why Sovereigns Default on Local Currency Debt

Posted on by

Seems like subversive propoganda to me.
They deliberately ignore the obvious fixed vs floating fx distinction, for example.
A few comments below:

Fitch: Why Sovereigns Default on Local Currency Debt

May 10 (Fitch) — Fitch Ratings says in a newly-published report that the popular perception that sovereigns cannot default on debt denominated in their own currency because of their power to print money is a myth. They can and do.

Local currency defaults in the recent era include: Venezuela (1998), Russia (1998), Ukraine (1998), Ecuador (1999), Argentina (2001) and Jamaica (2010 and 2013). Nonetheless, we recognise that local currency defaults are less frequent than foreign currency defaults and are unlikely for countries with debt mainly denominated in local currency at long maturity.

Russia and Argentina, for example, had headline, well publicized fixed exchange rate policies, where they fixed the value of their currency to the $US. Failing to recognize that in this report is intellectually dishonest.

To assess the capacity which sovereigns have to inflate away their debt, this report uses our debt dynamics model to illustrate how much surprise inflation might be required for three hypothetical scenarios. For a country with a large primary budget deficit, gains to the debt to GDP ratio from even quite high inflation would be short-lived. While for a country with a debt to GDP ratio of 100%, primary deficit of 1%, real growth equal to the real interest rate and a 10-year average debt maturity, it would take a jump to 30% inflation (from our 2% baseline) for three years and 10% thereafter to bring the debt ratio below the 60% Maastricht threshold.

There is no such thing as ‘inflate away their debt’ as govt debt represents the global net savings of financial assets of that currency. So all that can be said in this context is that ‘savings desires’ are, for all practical purposes, always going to be there as some % of GDP.

Undoubtedly, higher inflation can be used to raise seigniorage (the difference between the value of money and the cost to print it)

This is nonsensical with floating exchange rate policy ( non convertible currency) as, for example, all US govt spending can be called ‘printing’ as it’s just a matter of the Fed crediting a member bank account. Likewise, taxing is ‘unprinting’ as it’s just a matter of debiting a member bank account. With fixed fx policy, it’s the ratio of convertible currency outstanding vs the actual fx reserves at the CB, a very different matter.

and remittance of central bank profits to the government, up to a point. Nevertheless, in the long run, the ratio of government debt/GDP will rise if the government is running a primary budget deficit (excluding interest payments and including seigniorage), assuming the real growth rate does not exceed the real interest rate, irrespective of the inflation rate.

An unanticipated burst of inflation can reduce the real value of government debt as long as the debt is not of short maturity (as higher inflation is quickly reflected in the marginal cost of funding), index linked or denominated in foreign currency (as the exchange rate would depreciate). Thus countries with such characteristics – which give them ‘monetary sovereignty’ – do have some capacity to inflate away their debt.

Linking govt payments to an index is a form of fixed exchange rate policy and yes, govts can and do default on these types of fixed exchange rate ‘promises.’

Inflation is economically and politically costly.

Politically costly, yes, but economically, there are no studies that show real costs to the economy from inflation.

Thus, even if a sovereign has a capacity to inflate away its debt, it might choose not to. It is also far from clear how much money would need to be printed to deliver the ‘right’ inflation rate, as the current debate over quantitative easing highlights. Instead a sovereign might view a Distressed Debt Exchange (DDE) as a less bad policy option. Fitch classifies a DDE as a default.

This is a confused rhetoric and a display of total ignorance of actual monetary operations.

The myth that sovereigns that can print money cannot default on debt in their own currency has also fed the proposition that such local currency ratings are irrelevant.

Fitch is again refusing to distinguish convertible and non convertible currency policy.

Fitch disagrees that default is inconceivable or impossible. The agency agrees that countries with strong monetary sovereignty and financing flexibility are unlikely to default and these are important factors in Fitch’s sovereign rating methodology that affect both local and foreign currency ratings.

A sovereign’s local currency rating is closely linked to its foreign currency rating. It is typically one or two notches higher, owing to the sovereign’s somewhat greater capacity to pay debt in local currency, as taxes are usually paid in local currency and it may have better access to a stable domestic capital market, as well as some capacity to print money. It may also be more willing to service local currency debt if more of it is held by local banks and other residents.

Share