Gold reversed the gains of the last two weeks, anticipating a resolution to the eurozone’s “Grexit” crisis. Follow-though below $1170/ounce would warn of a test of primary support at $1140/$1150. Repeated peaks below zero on 13-week Twiggs Momentum signal a primary down-trend. Breach of primary support would offer a long-term target of $1000/ounce*.
* Target calculation: 1200 – ( 1400 – 1200 ) = 1000
Richard Koo in a 2012 paper identifies 3 challenges facing the eurozone:
The current crisis in the eurozone consists essentially of two macroeconomic problems and one capital flow problem. The first macro problem is profligate government spending, as exemplified by Greece. In such cases austerity is required: the government must cut spending and raise taxes to regain its financial health and credibility.The second macro problem is massive private sector deleveraging in spite of record low interest rates observed in countries such as Spain, Ireland and Portugal following the bursting of their real estate bubbles.
The problem with capital flows is specific to sharing a common currency in the eurozone:
When presented with a deleveraging private sector, fund managers in non-eurozone countries can place their money only in their own government’s bonds if constraints prevent them from taking on more currency risk or principle risk. Consequently, a large portion of excess private savings must be invested in JGBs in Japan, Gilts in the UK, and Treasuries in the US. In contrast, eurozone fund managers who are not allowed to take on more principle risk or currency risk are not required to buy their own country’s bonds: they can also buy bonds issued by other eurozone governments because they all share the same currency. Thus, fund managers at French and German banks were busily moving funds into Spanish and Greek bonds a number of years ago in search of higher yields, and Spanish and Portuguese fund managers are now buying German and Dutch government bonds for added safety, all without incurring foreign exchange risk. The former capital flow aggravated real estate bubbles in many peripheral countries prior to 2008, while the latter flow triggered a sovereign debt crisis in the same countries after 2008.
His solution:
There is a simple and straightforward solution to the two macro problems and one capital flow problem described above: eurozone governments should limit the sale of their government bonds to their own citizens. In other words, only German citizens should be allowed to purchase Bunds, and only Spanish citizens should be able to buy Spanish government bonds. If this rule had been in place from the outset of the euro, none of the problems affecting the single currency today would have happened.
Read more at Richard Koo, Revitalizing the Eurozone without Fiscal Union, April 2012.
……a large country with a huge structural current account surplus does not just export products. It also exports bankruptcy and unemployment, particularly if the counterpart capital flow consists of short-term debt.
~ Martin Wolf
Read more at Germany’s strange parallel universe – FT.com.
Nirmala Menon at WSJ quotes Mark Carney, incoming governor of the Bank of England:
Mr. Carney, currently Canada’s top central banker, said Europe can draw lessons from Japan on the dangers of taking half measures……..“Deep challenges persist in its financial system. Without sustained and significant reforms, a decade of stagnation threatens,” Mr. Carney said in his final public address as governor of the Bank of Canada.
Read more at Carney Warns Europe Faces Decade of Stagnation Without Key Reforms – Real Time Economics – WSJ.
Translation from an interview by Marcel de Boer & Martin Visser with Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citgroup:
Is Europe creating zombie banks?
These already exist. Most of the banks are zombie banks. There is little new lending to businesses and households. Zombie banks will not offer credit even on good projects — that is already evident on a large scale.
Full article (in Dutch) at ‘De meeste banken zijn zombiebanken’ | Het Financieele Dagblad.
Felix Salmon makes this succinct observation:
If a gaffe is what happens when a politician accidentally tells the truth, what’s the word for when a politician deliberately tells the truth? Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the current head of the Eurogroup, held a formal, on-the-record joint interview with Reuters and the FT today, saying that the messy and chaotic Cyprus solution is a model for future bailouts.
Those comments are now being walked back, because it’s generally not a good idea for high-ranking policymakers to say the kind of things which could precipitate bank runs across much of the Eurozone. But that doesn’t mean Dijsselbloem’s initial comments weren’t true; indeed, it’s notable that no one’s denying them outright…..
Read more at The Dijsselbloem Principle | Felix Salmon.
Noam Chomsky in an interview with EUROPP editors Stuart A Brown and Chris Gilson:
Europe’s policies [austerity during a recession] make sense only on one assumption: that the goal is to try and undermine and unravel the welfare state. And that’s almost been said. Mario Draghi, the President of the European Central Bank, had an interview with the Wall Street Journal where he said that the social contract in Europe is dead. He wasn’t advocating it, he was describing it, but that’s essentially what the policies lead to…….
Chomsky has the cart before the horse. Collapse of welfare states in Europe led to austerity — not the other way round. Joe Hockey had a slightly different take on events in Europe in his April address to the Institute of Economic Affairs:
The Age of Entitlement is over. We should not take this as cause for despair. It is our market based economies which have forced this change on unwilling participants. What we have seen is that the market is mandating policy changes that common sense and years of lectures from small government advocates have failed to achieve.
Reduction of trade barriers and shrinking of the technological advantage enjoyed by developed nations will lead to the inevitable demise of the social contract. Free competition demands efficiency. Countries cannot remain competitive while carrying burdens imposed by a welfare state.
From the outside it looks like these [Eurozone] countries are faced with a debt crisis. From the inside it looks a lot more like a jobs crisis. Check out the chart below…….
via There’s No Solving Europe’s Debt Crisis Without Solving the Jobs Crisis – Bloomberg.
Hat tip to @10yearBonds
By Marc Chandler
Look at the turn around in the current account. In the 12-months through July, the euro area recorded a seasonally adjusted cumulative current account surplus of almost 63 bln euros, which is about 0.7% of the region’s GDP. The comparable figure in the 12-months through July 2011 was a deficit of a little more than 22 bln euros….
The weakness of the euro area economies has slowed imports and several countries, including some in the periphery, have seen a pick up in exports. Growth differentials probably is the more significant explanation, but we do recognize that from last November through July, the euro had declined about 10% on a trade-weighted basis……
While the current account is intuitively clear, the financial account is surprising. As the euro was falling in July to multi-year lows, talk circulated of capital flight. Yet, the financial account showed a net inflow of 18 bln euros of combined portfolio and direct investment.
via Europe’s Balance of Payments account shows sizeable portfolio inflow.
By GEOFFREY T. SMITH
The ECB will buy in the secondary market only government bonds with remaining maturities between one and three years without announcing any limits in advance, and as long as the government in question is under a program approved by the euro zone.
The measures will primarily benefit fiscally troubled countries like Spain and Italy, which are facing difficulties financing their budget deficits…
