Negative interest rates Archives - the patient investor

September 6, 2019

Interest spreads hold sway over the global economy

An inverted yield curve is a reliable predictor of recessions but it also warns of falling bank profits. When the spread between long-term Treasury yields and short-term rates is below zero, net interest margins are squeezed.

Yield Differential (10y - 3m)

In a normal market, with a steep yield curve, net interest margins are wide as bank’s funding maturity is a lot shorter than their loan book. In other words, they borrow short and lend long. Few bank deposits have maturities longer than 3 to 6 months, while loans and leases have much longer maturities and command higher interest rates.

When the yield curve inverts, however, the spread between long and short-term rates disappears and interest margins are squeezed. Not only is that bad for banks, it’s bad for the entire economy.

When their interest margins are squeezed, banks become risk averse and lending growth slows. That is understandable. When interest margins are barely covering operating expenses, banks cannot afford credit write-downs and become highly selective in their lending.

Slowing credit growth has a domino-effect on business investment and consumer spending on durables (mainly housing and automobiles). If there is a sharp fall in credit growth, a recession is normally not far behind¹.

Bank Loans & Leases

Right now, the Fed is under pressure to cut interest rates to support the US economy. While this would lower short-term rates and and may flatten the yield curve, cutting interest rates off a low base opens a whole new world of pain.

Quartz this week published a revealing commentary on the damage that negative interest rates in developed economies are doing to bank net interest margins :

The problem for commercial banks is that government bond and mortgage interest rates keep going lower, but it isn’t as easy to cut deposit rates — the rate at which banks themselves borrow from customers — at the same pace. After all, it’s tough to convince people to keep deposits in an account that returns less than they put in (even though this already happens, invisibly, through inflation).

Bank Net Interest Margins in Developed Countries

Ultra-low interest rates are likely to squeeze bank margins in a similar way to the inverted yield curve. And with a similar impact on credit growth and the economy.

If I was Trump I would be pleading with the Fed not to cut interest rates.

Footnote:
1. The NBER declared a recession in 1966 when the S&P 500 fell 22% but later changed their mind and airbrushed it out of history.

November 4, 2012

Nationalbanken Defends Sub-Zero Bemoaned by Banks | Bloomberg

Peter Levring and Frances Schwartzkopff write that Denmark’s central bank has taken an unusual step to defend the krone from capital inflows similar to those experienced earlier by Switzerland.

The central bank has kept its deposit rate at minus 0.2 percent since July, in an effort to fight off a capital influx and maintain the krone’s peg to the euro.

Deposits held at the central bank are charged a fee of 0.2%, rather than paid interest as in the US.

At the same time, the industry is still paying its customers to hold their deposits in an effort to attract stable funding and reduce reliance on wholesale financing. That’s turned deposit banking in Denmark into a losing business.

The measure would encourage banks to increase lending, loosening credit standards to avoid the charge on excess reserves. It would also reduce the rate paid on call deposits, while increasing bank competition for more stable time deposits.

via Nationalbanken Defends Sub-Zero Bemoaned by Banks: Nordic Credit – Bloomberg.

July 31, 2012

FT Alphaville » Negative rates as a precursor to the death of banking

Izabella Kaminska: The [European research] team at Morgan Stanley concludes:

Banks earnings have already come under significant pressure from the flattening of the yield curve. Unless negative real rates came with a material steepening of the curves (not our rates colleagues’ view), banks earnings would come under even greater pressure. In fact, the greatest risk our rates colleagues see would be for negative rates 2-3 years down the curve, in which case banks would need to re-price credit further. In our view, as banks’ confidence in loan growth and margins fell, so would their confidence on their capital plans and so lending would remain weak. We see Japan’s experience as good case study in this.

via FT Alphaville » Negative rates as a precursor to the death of banking.