quantitative easing Archives - the patient investor

June 15, 2018June 15, 2018

Zombie banks or zombie economies?

The last three decades was the era of zombie banks, with financial crises threatening the very survival of our financial system. Major banks close to the edge of the precipice, first in Japan but followed by the USA and Europe, were only rescued by drastic action by central banks. The flood of easy money kept the zombie banks afloat but every action has unintended consequences, especially when you are the Fed, BOJ or ECB.

Fed Balance Sheet and Funds Rate Target

Now that the Fed is attempting to unwind its swollen $4.4 trillion balance sheet — see The Big Shrink Commences — and normalize interest rates, Stephen Bartholomeusz at The Age highlights some of the unforeseen consequences:

US rate hikes are already sending threatening ripples through other economies as capital flows towards the US and the US dollar strengthens.

Argentina has sought assistance from the International Monetary Fund. Turkey, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, India and Pakistan have all been forced to raise their rates to defend their currencies.

US monetary policy and its rate structure is setting it apart from most of the rest of the developed world in a fashion that will impose pressure on economies that may be more fragile than they might previously have been regarded in an ultra-low global rates environment.

…..A consequence of the policies pursued by the Fed, the ECB and the Bank of Japan since 2008 has been a significant increase in global debt – at government, corporate and household levels – as ultra-low rates and torrents of liquidity ignited a global borrowing binge.

There was a particular appetite in developing economies for US dollar-denominated debt, which became abundant and cheap as US investors were incentivised and enabled by the Fed to take on more risk in return for higher returns.

The US rate rises, combined with a stronger US dollar, are now putting a squeeze on emerging market economies.

If the ECB were to also start unwinding its stimulus, economies and banking systems within the weaker southern regions of the eurozone would come under intense pressure, along with more debt-laden companies.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that after a decade of unprecedented policy interventions in economies and markets there could be unintended consequences that emerge as those policies are wound back.

The ECB indicated overnight that it will halt bond purchases at the end of 2018 and plans to keep interest rates accommodative “through the summer of 2019 and in any case for as long as necessary…”

ECB unwinding still appears some way off but tighter monetary conditions emanating from the Fed may be sufficient. Developing economies that gorged on low-rate US dollar-denominated debt during the liquidity surge are finding themselves in difficulties as the tide goes out.

Meanwhile in Australia

From Karen Maley at the AFR:

Australian banks are being squeezed by higher borrowing costs as the US Federal Reserve accelerates its interest rate hikes and drains liquidity from global financial markets…..

The woes of the local banks have been exacerbated by an unexpected and savage spike in a key Australian short-term interest rate benchmark – the three-month bank bill swap rate, or BBSW, in the past few weeks.

Analysts estimated that the spreads paid by Australian banks have climbed by close to 40 basis points since the beginning of the year, which has swollen the wholesale borrowing costs of the country’s banks by some $4.4 billion a year.

The ASX 300 Banks Index is headed for a test of primary support at 7000/7200. Breach of 7000 would warn of another decline, with a long-term target of the September 2011 low at 5000.

ASX 300 Banks Index

Aussie banks are being squeezed by higher interest rates on their international borrowing but are unable to pass this on to borrowers for fear of upsetting the local housing market. House prices are already under the pump, especially in the top end of the market.

Zombie banks would be too harsh but Aussie banks are in for a rough time over the next year or two.

March 3, 2018

The Fed and Alice in Wonderland

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland a young Alice experiences a series of bizarre adventures after falling down a rabbit hole. The new Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will similarly have to lead global financial markets through a series of bizarre, unprecedented experiences.

Down the Rabbit Hole

In 2008, after the collapse of Lehman Bros, financial markets were in complete disarray and in danger of imploding. The Fed, under chairman Ben Bernanke, embarked on an unprecedented (and unproven) rescue attempt — now known as quantitative easing or QE for short — injecting more than $3.5 trillion into the financial system through purchase of long-term Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

Fed Total Assets

The Fed aimed to drive long-term interest rates down in the belief that this would encourage private sector borrowing and investment and revive the economy. Their efforts failed. Private sector borrowing did not revive. Most of the money injected ended up, unused by the private sector, as $2.5 trillion of excess commercial bank reserves on deposit at the Fed.

Fed Excess Reserves

Richard Koo pointed out that the private sector will under normal cirumstances respond to lower interest rates with increased borrowing but during a financial crisis, when their balance sheets have been destroyed and their liabilities exceed their assets, their sole focus is to restore their balance sheet, using surplus cash flow to pay down debt. The only way to prevent a collapse is for the government to step in and plug the gap, borrowing surplus capital and investing this in infrastructure.

One Pill Makes you Larger

Fortunately Bernanke got the message.

US and Euro Area Public Debt to GDP

… and spread the word.

Japan Public Debt to GDP

And One Pill Makes you Small

Unfortunately, other central banks also followed the Fed’s earlier lead, injecting vast sums into the financial system through quantitative easing (QE).

ECB and BOJ Total Assets

Driving long-term yields to levels even Lewis Carroll would have struggled to imagine.

10-Year Treasury Yields

The Pool of Tears

Then in 2014, another twist in the tale. Long-term yields continued to fall in Europe and Japan, while US rates stabilised as Fed eased off on QE. A large differential appeared between US and European/Japanese rates (observable since 2014 on the above chart), causing a flood of money into the US, in pursuit of higher yields.

….. with an unwanted side-effect. The Dollar strengthened. Capital inflows caused the trade-weighted value of the US Dollar to spike upwards beween 2014 and 2016, damaging US export industries and local manufacturers facing competition from foreign imports.

US Trade-Weighted Dollar Index

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

A jobless recovery in manufacturing and low wage growth in turn led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 promising increased protectionism against global competition.

US Manufacturing Jobs

Then in 2017, to the consternation of many, despite rising interest rates the US Dollar began to fall.

US TW Dollar Index in 2017

Learned analysis followed, ascribing the weakening Dollar to rising commodity prices and a recovery in emerging markets. But something doesn’t quite add up.

International bond investors are a pretty smart bunch. When they look at US bond markets, what do they see? The new Fed Chairman has inherited a massive headache.

Donald Trump is determined to stimulate job growth through tax cuts and infrastructure spending. This will certainly create jobs. But when you stimulate an economy that is already at full employment you get inflation.

Who Stole the Tarts?

Jerome Powell is sitting on a powder keg. More than $2 trillion of excess reserves that commercial banks can withdraw without notice. Demand for bank credit is expected to rise as result of the Trump stimulus. Commercial banks, not known for their restraint, can make like Donkey Kong with their excess reserves provided by the Bernanke Fed.

Under Janet Yellen the Fed mapped out a program to withdraw excess reserves from the market by selling down Treasuries and MBS at the rate of $100 billion in 2018 and $200 billion each year thereafter. But at that rate it will take 10 years to remove the excess.

Bond markets are worried about what will happen to inflation in the mean time.

Off With His Head

The new Fed Chair has made all the right noises about being hawkish on inflation. But can he walk the talk? Especially with his $2 trillion headache.

….and the Red Queen, easily recognizable from Lewis Carroll’s tale, tweeting “off with his head” if a hawkish Fed threatens to spoil the party.

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don’t do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

….When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low….

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

~ White Rabbit by Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane (1967)

February 26, 2018February 26, 2018

Richard Koo: Surviving in the Intellectually Bankrupt Monetary Policy Environment

Richard C. Koo, Chief Economist, Nomura Research Institute, at the ACATIS Value Konferenz 2016 in Frankfurt

Why QE doesn’t work.

I have the greatest respect for Richard Koo and his unconventional, balance-sheet-recession approach to economics.

It strikes me is that if central banks lower interest rates to stimulate borrowing and borrowing does not rise because borrowers are repaying debt to restore solvency, then it will backfire and hurt GDP. Households reliant on income from investments, especially in financial assets, will experience a significant loss of income from lower interest rates and will reduce their consumption accordingly. Falling consumption will cause a drop in GDP.

Investments in financial assets consist not only of household bank deposits and bonds, but also insurance sector and pension fund investments in financial assets (mainly bonds) which will raise insurance premiums and lower pensions as a result.

April 28, 2016

Lighting a fuse

The Fed quit quantitative easing more than a year ago, limiting total assets on its balance sheet to $4.5 trillion. But more than $2.5 trillion of cash injected into the financial system had been deposited straight back into the Federal Reserve system by banks as excess reserves, earning 0.25% p.a.

Fed Total Assets and Excess Reserves

Fresh money continued to leak into the financial system as banks drew down their excess reserves, highlighted above by the widening gap between Total Assets and Excess Reserves. In December 2015 the Fed doubled the rate payable on excess reserves to 0.50% p.a. The intention is clearly to attract more excess reserves and narrow the gap, or at least slow the rate at which excess reserves are being withdrawn to prevent further widening.

Easy money policies followed by central banks around the world are not achieving the desired result of reviving business investment. If we examine the Fed’s track record over the last two decades, sharp surges in business credit were accompanied by speculative bubbles — stocks ahead of the Dotcom crash and housing ahead of the GFC — with disastrous results. GDP failed to respond.

Business Credit Growth v. Nominal GDP

The latest rally in global markets is also driven by monetary easing, this time in China, with a massive surge in the money supply signaling PBOC intentions to print their way out of trouble (and into an even bigger hole).

Ineffectiveness of monetary policy in solving structural problems has often been described as “like pushing on a string”. But recent experience shows it is more like lighting a fuse.

This is a nightmare, which will pass away with the morning. For the resources of nature and men’s devices are just as fertile and productive as they were. The rate of our progress towards solving the material problems of life is not less rapid. We are as capable as before of affording for everyone a high standard of life …. and will soon learn to afford a standard higher still. We were not previously deceived. But to-day we have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time – perhaps for a long time.

~ John Maynard Keynes: The Great Slump of 1930

August 22, 2015

China’s dangerous currency manipulation

I am surprised at John Mauldin’s view in his latest newsletter Playing the Chinese Trump Card:

….This whole myth that China has purposely kept their currency undervalued needs to be completely excised from the economic discussion. First off, the two largest currency-manipulating central banks currently at work in the world are (in order) the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank. And two to four years ago the hands-down leading manipulator would have been the Federal Reserve of the United States.

John is correct that China has in recent years engaged in less quantitative easing than Japan, Europe and the US. And these activities are likely to weaken the respective currencies. But what he ignores is that these actions are puny compared to the $4.5 Trillion in foreign reserves that China has accumulated over the last decade. That is almost 2 years of goods and services imports — far in excess of the 3 months of imports considered prudent to guard against trade shocks. Arthur Laffer highlights this in his recent paper Currency Manipulation and its Distortion of Free Trade:

Foreign Reserves

Accumulation of excessive foreign reserves is the favored technique employed by China, and Japan before that, to suppress currency appreciation over the last three decades. Dollar outflows through capital account, used to purchase US Treasuries and other quality government and quasi-government debt, are used to offset dollar inflows from exports. This allows the exporting state to maintain a prolonged trade imbalance without substantial appreciation of their currency. And forces the target (US) to sustain a prolonged trade deficit to offset the capital inflows. Laffer sums up currency manipulation as:

….. when a country either purchases or sells foreign currency with the intent to move the domestic currency away from equilibrium or to prevent it from moving towards equilibrium.

Even Paul Krugman (whose views I seldom agree with) has been wise to the problem for at least 5 years:

…..economist Paul Krugman and a group of senators led by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer wanted to impose a 25% tariff on Chinese imports.

Prolonged current account imbalances cause instability in global financial markets. A sustained US current account deficit was one of the primary weaknesses cited by Nouriel Roubini in his forecasts of the 2008 financial crisis (the other side of the equation was a sustained Chinese surplus). But currency manipulation is not only dangerous, it is also short-sighted. International trade is a zero-sum game. For every dollar of goods, services, capital or interest that goes out, a dollar of goods, services, capital or interest must come in. For every country that runs a current account surplus, another must run a deficit. Without international regulation, each country will try to engineer a trade surplus in order to boost their domestic economy at the expense of their trade partners. An endless game of beggar-thy-neighbor.

Participants will suffer long-term consequences. The power of financial markets is unstoppable. Central banks attempt to hold back the tide, distorting price signals and shoring up surpluses (or deficits), at their peril. The market will have its way and restore equilibrium in the long term. As Japan in the 1990s and Switzerland recently experienced, the further you move markets away from equilibrium the more powerful the opposing backlash will be. The scale of China’s market manipulation is unprecedented, and caused large-scale distortions in the US. The end result forced the Fed to embark on unprecedented quantitative easing which, in turn, is now impacting back on China.

The impact will not only be felt by China, as John points out:

The low rates and massive amounts of money created by quantitative easing in the US showed up in emerging markets, pushing down their rates and driving up their currencies and markets. Just as [governor of the Central Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan] (and I) predicted, once the quantitative easing was taken away, the tremors in the emerging markets began, and those waves are now breaking on our own shores. The putative culprit is China, but at the root of the problem are serious liquidity problems in emerging markets. China’s actions just heighten those concerns.

Chinese hopes for a soft landing are futile.

November 12, 2014

Will the stock market collapse when QE is withdrawn?

This chart in Westpac’s Northern Exposure chart summary implies that US stocks rely on Fed balance sheet expansion (QE) for support.

Fed Securities Held Outright v. S&P 500

The curve shows an almost perfect fit. There are just two things wrong with it. First, the scales on the left and right sides of the chart are not proportionate: the scale on the left compares a 9 times increase to a 3 times increase on the right. Second, while the Fed has expanded its balance sheet to more than $4 Trillion, a large percentage of that money has washed straight back to the Fed — deposited by banks as excess reserves.

Fed Total Assets and Excess Reserves

The impact on the working monetary base (monetary base adjusted for excess reserves) is far smaller: a rise of 66% (or $544 billion) over the past 7 years.

Fed Total Assets minus Excess Reserves compared to Working Monetary Base

A chart since 1985 shows nominal GDP (GDP before adjustment for inflation) normally expanded between 5% and 7.5% a year outside of recessions. But NGDP has not recovered above 5% after 2008. This may be partly attributable to lower inflation, but the Fed would clearly want to see NGDP above 5% — roughly 3% real growth and 2% inflation.

Working Monetary Base Growth compared to NGDP

We can also see that growth of below 5% in the working monetary base is often precursor to a recession, 1995/1996 being one exception. The second is when the Fed took their foot off the gas pedal too early, after QE1 in 2010, but were able to resume in time to head off a major contraction. They have been far more circumspect the second time and are likely to maintain monetary base growth North of 5%. Too sharp a slow-down would be cause for concern.

When we calculate the ratio of total US stock market capitalisation to the working monetary base [blue line] it is apparent that market response to the increase in monetary base is far more cautious than it was in 1998/1999.

Working Monetary Base Growth compared to NGDP

With Forward Price to Earnings Ratios for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq close to their long-term average (Westpac Northern Exposure, Page 118), I consider the likelihood of the QE taper precipitating a major market collapse to be remote.

July 14, 2014

Fed excess reserves shrinking

Commentators have highlighted the fact that bank excess reserves held on deposit at the Fed — and on which banks are paid interest at 0.25% p.a. — are declining. This would suggest that bank lending is rising, increasing inflationary pressure.

Fed Excess Reserves- Weekly

The Fed is well aware of the situation

Fed Excess Reserves and Total Assets

…and has responded to the recent slow-down by scaling back asset purchases (quantitative easing). They are likely to track the decline of excess reserves to ensure that the impact on the working monetary base (monetary base minus excess reserves) is contained — along with inflationary pressures.

August 31, 2013

John Mauldin: Effect of the taper

The last two times the Fed has ended a period of quantitative easing, the air has come out of the market balloon. Has this coming move been so telegraphed that the reaction will be different than in the past, or will we see the same result? Want to bet your bonus on it? Or your retirement?

~ John Mauldin

See graph at Mauldin Economics

June 3, 2013

Impact of QE (or lack thereof) is reflected by excess reserves

JKH at Monetary Realism writes:

….there is a systematic tendency in the blogosphere and elsewhere to misrepresent the impact of QE in a particular way in terms of the related macroeconomic flow of funds…… Most descriptions will erroneously treat the macro flow as if banks were the original portfolio source of the bonds that are being sold to the Fed, obtaining reserves in exchange. This is not the case. A cursory scan of Fed flow of funds statistics will confirm that commercial banks are relatively small holders of bonds in their portfolios, especially Treasury bonds. The vast proportion of bonds that are sold to the Fed in QE originate from non-bank portfolios……. Many descriptions of QE instead erroneously suggest the strong presence of a bank principal function in which bonds from bank portfolios are simply exchanged for reserves. In fact, for the most part, while the banking system has received reserve credit for bonds sold to the Fed, it has also passed on credits to the accounts of non-bank customers who have sold their bonds to the banks. This is integral to the overall QE flow of bonds.

There is a simpler explanation of what happens when the Fed purchases bonds under QE. Bank balance sheets expand as sellers deposit the sale proceeds with their bank. In addition to the deposit liability the bank also receives an asset, being a credit to its account with the Fed. Unless the bank is able to make better use of its asset by making loans to credit-worthy borrowers, the funds are likely to remain on deposit at the Fed as excess reserves — earning interest at 0.25% per year. Excess reserves on deposit at the Fed currently stand at close to $1.8 trillion, reflecting the dearth of (reasonably secure) lending/investment opportunities in the broader economy.

June 1, 2013

The 7 Reasons Why People Hate QE | Eric Parnell

Excellent article by Eric Parnell sets out the negative impacts of quantitative easing (QE):

…the Fed has dramatically expanded its policy scope into areas that are normally the territory of fiscal policy. This has included specifically targeting selected areas of the economy such as the U.S. housing market including the aggressive purchase of mortgage backed securities (MBS)…
….the Federal Reserve has elected to provide direct and generous support to financial institutions and risk takers, some of which directly contributed to the cause of the crisis. Unfortunately, this subsidy is being funded by effectively taxing the income generating capability of the millions of Americans who are either retired or living on a fixed income…
[QE] has forced Americans who had planned their lives and retirements around the ability to generate high quality and safe rates of return to now take on extraordinary risks to achieve these same goals.
By flooding financial markets with liquidity, it has completely distorted the true price setting mechanism across all asset classes.
It has forced many investors across all different philosophies and disciplines to significantly shorten their time horizons and holding periods associated with their investments.
The daily direction of financial markets is no longer driven by economic or market fundamentals…..Instead, investment markets are now almost entirely at the mercy of what Chairman Bernanke or his associates on the Federal Reserve might say or not say on any given trading day.
Lastly and even more broadly than investment market forces, QE has the detrimental effect of not allowing the economy to cleanse itself…… misses the very important point that recessions are actually good for an economy. This is due to the fact that it forces an economy that has become sloppy with the excesses from the previous expansion to work these excesses off and reallocate capital more efficiently.

But writing an article such as this is the same as writing 7 Good Reasons Why People Hate Chemotherapy. We all dislike QE. QE is not something that central banks apply through choice. QE is something — like chemotherapy — they apply when they have no choice. QE is the lesser of two evils — the greater evil being a deflationary spiral like the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The important lesson to take from this is: How to Avoid QE. Manage credit growth and the monetary base more conservatively during the good times. Remove the punch bowl just as the party gets going — so we don’t end up with a massive hangover when it’s over.