Random Shots - Fed Outgunned, EMU Outflanked

As I read the latest round-up of comments by Fed officials that they are certainly not ruling out another round of asset purchases I am wondering whether this signals another round of actual quantitative easing by the Fed or whether investors should change their mindset back to before the crisis where it wasn't the USD that acted as the global carry trade funder but rather the JPY (or maybe the GBP here?). 

Quote Bloomberg

Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said yesterday that a third round of large-scale asset purchases “might become appropriate if evolving economic conditions called for significantly greater monetary accommodation.” A day before, Governor Daniel Tarullo said buying mortgage-backed securities “should move back up toward the top of the list of options.”

They join Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, and Boston’s Eric Rosengren in calling for consideration of further stimulus to boost growth and bring down a jobless rate stuck around 9 percent or higher for 30 months. A stock-market rally and gains in manufacturing and retail sales may convince the Federal Open Market Committee, which meets Nov. 1-2, to decide that it’s too soon for a third round of bond purchases.

You see, the recent initiative of the Fed in the form of Operation Twist is not quantitative easing since it does not involve an expansion of the balance sheet. In stead, it is what we refer to as qualitative easing as the bonds the Fed intends to buy on the long end (to move long rates down to help the mortgage market) will be paid for by proceeds of selling bonds on the short end. 

The biggest problem for the Fed here is not necessarily that Operation Twist is a bad idea. Indeed, to the extent that it fixes the effort squarely on halting the slide in the housing market and supporting volume and price in the primary and second market for mortgage securities I think it is an excellent idea. 

But we are forgetting the auxiliary objective of QE by the Fed; to weaken the USD. Make no mistake that this is an important objective for the Fed even if they have never declared this formally. And herein lies the rub.  Quite simply, with the recent announcement by the BOE of another round of QE worth £75 billion, with the ECB now willingly or unwillingly being forced into increased support of peripheral debt markets and with the BOJ also pledging more stimulus, the Fed is starting to look like the conservative central bank in the G4. [1].

In my opinion, this is very significant and also one of the reasons why Fed officials are busy ensuring markets that they have plenty of ammunition left should economic conditions merit it. But investors should not take anything at face value I think. Before the Fed actually starts to buy those MBS and/or moves to lower interest rates on excess reserves there is a real chance that especially the JPY will start to act more like the JPY of old, a.k.a global carry trade anchor of choice. Of course, this requires the BOJ to back up all the pledges with real action. For now though, the only thing we can say is that the Fed looks set to be outgunned by its peers in the G4. 

EMU Outflanked 

Is Europe now finally getting down to serious business or is it just another round of fudge from the fudge factory that investors have learned to respect for its ability to produce relief rallies out of nothing. Looking at the evidence I am thoroughly inclined to go for the latter even if each failed attempt to shore up market confidence brings Europe closer to full fiscal union. 

Even if Merkel and Sarkozy, and rightly so, appear most concerned with putting pressure on Italy, the most significant issue remains Greece. The country is now in default, a fact that was un-sanctimoniously confirmed by the leaked bailout document which has the Troika admitting that the medicine they were mandated to administer would only make the patient worse and not better.

Quote FT

Greece’s economy has deteriorated so severely in the last three months that international lenders would have to find €252bn in bail-out loans through the end of the decade unless Greek bondholders are forced to accept severe cuts in their debt repayments.The dire analysis, contained in a “strictly confidential” report by international lenders and obtained by the Financial Times, is more than double the €109bn in European Union and International Monetary Fund aid agreed just three months ago. 

The most recent estimate of haircut has now risen to 60% and this, mind you, would only reduce the debt to GDP to 110% and this without any consideration on how Greece is supposed to grow itself out of this level of debt while simultaneously dealing with the default. In addition and only adding to my disdain for the ECB, Reuters reports that the central bank opposed a 60% haircut on account that it  the private sector would refuse likely refuse this leading to a "fullscale" Greek default. 

I am continuingly amazed by the denial here. Ever since the first Private Sector Proposal (PSI) was put on the table, Greek has been in default and figuring out who would pay for recapitalising banks as a function of how large the final haircut ends up are merely steps in the actual default process. 

The second issue on the table is what to do with the increasingly freakishly looking EFSF. There has been no shortage of suggestions on how to increase the scope of the fund using the same guarantee by the same countries for the same amount of money (currently €440 in effective capital). The suggestion that might actually work came from France which has aired the suggestion that the EFSF be turned into a bank which would then allow it to access liquidity from the ECB. Both Germany and the ECB however have vehemently denied this which indicates that there is still notable reluctance to allow the ECB to wield the full arsenal of quantitative easing. 

The proposal which currently seems to have most traction is to turn the EFSF into a monoline insurer which would essentially use its capital to insure anything from 10% to 30% on any new issuance of sovereign debt by Italy and Spain. Crucially, the idea is that this "leverage" would bring calm to markets as this insurance could cover as much as 2 trillion worth of debt. 

I really struggle to find adequate words here. I think this is madness and if any Eurozone politician were afraid that an equivalent of AIG would certainly enter the scene, they now seem content on creating one. The first and most widely flagged issue is this would obviously create a two tier bond market. 

Quote Reuters 

This would create a division between insured and non-insured debt, that could split a country's investor base and suck liquidity out of the market unless new bonds were carefully constructed to allow them to trade on a par with existing debt."The issuer would have to create a new curve of insured debt, limiting the liquidity in both curves with risks that investors would dump the old non-insured bonds," said Commerzbank rate strategist Christoph Rieger.

Based on a 20 percent insurance model, JPMorgan estimates that insured bonds issued by Italy would trade at a yield around 100 basis points below existing debt with new, insured Spanish debt likely to be priced 80 bps lower than existing bonds.

I think this is significant, but we are missing the main point here. If this is set ut Spain and Italy will likely never be able to issue un-insured debt again and the contingent liability here is not only complex but will lock in future capital commitments to this aim of providing first loss insurance. For me, this is a horrible way to spend already scarce capital. 

Another issue is obviously that it assumes that it will make the Spanish and Italian problem go away which it clearly won't. However, much more fundamentally; while the idea is to ring fence Italy and Spain it almost guarantees painful haircuts in the case of Ireland, Portugal and Greece and once again, who will pay for those I might ask. 

The only silver lining I have seen in the latest reports is that it seems to me that while the imminent obejctive is to fiddle with the EFSF, there has also been serious talk about bringing forward the ESM which would have a much stronger mandate and essentially constitute a first step towards socialising of sovereign risk in the euro zone. Until that happens, the EMU and her politicians will be continuously outflanked by economic realities. 

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[1] - I repeat that with the ECB not formally in ZIRP mode, the Fed still has the yield disadvantage here but do we really expect the ECB not to lower going forward? 

QE and the Wealth Effect in the US

Events in Japan and Libya do not seem to have derailed the ongoing positive sentiment in the market, but it might just have alerted various Masters of the Universe that black holes (or was that swans?) are both invisible and unpredictable until they occur. It is precisely because of this that such events are important even if I think that hedging against so-called "tail risks" by buying specially tailored financial products is probably as effective as buying an extra swim suit in anticipation of the next tsunami.

On that note and if there ever was a clearly signalled change in the daily state of the market it is the end of the Fed's QE2 and thus the end of unconventional monetary measures by the Fed. It would then seem to be a simple exercise of discounting information which is already incorporated into current market prices, but it is anything but. This is due to two things in particular;

• While it is certain that QE2 will end, it is considerably more uncertain whether QE itself will end and it seems as if the market is implicitly expecting a continuation in the form of QE3. But it is not clear cut. The macro picture is brightening in the US and Fed officials are getting more hawkish and what was certain a few months ago, may not be so certain today. In addition, if the perception changes into an expectation of an end to QE the path and pace of the Fed's exit strategy is also uncertain.

• There is considerable uncertainty (and disagreement) as to the exact effect of QE in the first place and this shows itself on two fronts. One is the discussion of whether QE has been a success or not and the second is the more technical (yet equally important) question of through which channels QE can be shown to work (if at all). Krugman recently suggested the exactly the stock market effect which this post is based on.

In order to get to grips with this I thought it would be apt to center my analysis on the horse's own mouth as it were and specifically the idea that the Fed is targeting stock prices. Obviously, if asked directly Bernanke and his colleagues would certainly point out that it is not all about stock prices but a much more complex issue of affecting rates on all maturities of the yield curve as well as to repair the the monetary policy transmission mechanism as well as the monetary multiplier.

Yet, given chairman Bernanke's comments that the success of QE2 is linked to rising stock prices I thought it would be interesting to have a look at the macroeconomic effect of rising stock prices and thus the idea of the wealth effect. This is to say, what is the effect of rising stock prices on personal consumption expenditures and thus, in some sense, growth?

In summary, my analysis gives the following hints to the wealth effect in the US

• The wealth effect from the stock market in the US is time variant but appear to be particularly strong in the period 1999 to 2010 which, in some sense, validates the Fed's focus on stock prices.

• The wealth effect also shows up in a negative relationship between changes in the SP500 and changes in the saving rate which suggest that rising asset prices may counteract deleveraging.

• The fiscal multiplier estimated here is also time variant and seems to change signs across periods.

• The marginal propensity to consume seems to have risen over time in the US.

Here, the two last bullet points are secondary to the main focus of this note but still worth thinking about.

(click on pictures for better viewing)*

At a first glance, it is difficult to see any meaningful correlation between the two, but look closer at the period from 2007 and onwards (as well as in 2001) and you will see a closer semblance. But this may also be a case of the infamous spurious correlation as stock prices and consumption are strongly correlated around recessions and thus also in the rebound.

Surely, the linear fit depicted above for the full period is not statistically significant which suggests that measured over the grand sweep of time there is no meaningful correlation between changes in stock prices and changes in consumption expenditures. Importantly, this would also seem to invalidate the Fed's link between QE2 and rising stock prices since such a link is empirically dubious at best. Yet, as the graph from the period 1999 to 2010 shows the link may have strengthened.

To that end I have conducted a small study fitting a linear model with the annual change in consumption expenditures as dependent variable to the change in the SP500 as well as government transfers and real disposable income to control for the marginal propensity to consume and the fiscal multiplier. I use monthly values to get 612 observations in the full sample regression (1960 -2010). Crucially, I split up the dataset in three periods; 1960-1980, 1981-1998, and 1999-2010.

In the full period, the estimation gives an MPC of 0.41 [1], a multiplier from government transfer worth of 0.09 and from the SP500 equal to 0.027 (all significant at 1%). This implies that a 1% annual return in the SP500 yields an increase the annual change of consumption expenditures of 0.027%, but the results also indicate that the "fiscal multiplier" is about three times larger. So, not exactly convincing results to support QE as an attempt to boost consumption through the stock wealth effect.

Splitting the period as noted above [2] does seem to add value to the analysis. For the period 1960-1980 the simple OLS estimate yields nothing and not even the estimate for the MPC is significant [3]. In the period from 1981 to 1998 the MPC is estimated to be 0.48, the multiplier from government transfers at 0.14 and lastly for the SP500 at 0.014 although this estimate is only significant at 10%. The period from 1981 to 1998 thus return a strong fiscal multiplier (at least in terms of significance) while a weak, at best, multiplier from the SP500.

In the final period however, something interesting happens. The MPC increases to 0.58 which squares well with the declining saving rate in the same period. More interestlingly however, the estimate for the fiscal multiplier changes signs while remaining significant at 1%. The estimate suggests that a 1% increase in government transfers will yield a -0.36% decrease in consumption expenditures. Surely, proponents of Ricardian Equivalence would be interested in testing more thoroughly for the validity of this estimate. Meanwhile, the estimate for the wealth effect from stocks is estimated at 0.035 and significant at 1% (and thus quite close to the wealth effect estimated in the full period).

Finally, and focusing on the period 1999-2010, I also fitted a linear model with the savings rate as dependent variable. The rationale here would be that the wealth effect from the stock market should materialise in a negative relationship and thus that a rising stock market would counteract deleveraging. Not surprisingly the coefficients for both changes in income and changes in government transfer are positive which suggests that higher income and transfers from the government leads to higher savings (that Ricardian Equivalence again?). The coefficient estimated for the SP500 is negative and much higher than the wealth effect to consumption. All estimates are significant at 1%.

The What, Why and Where of QE

As my readers would no doubt remind I have added nothing to the debate of whether QE affects stock prices in the first place and then has an effect on the real economy through the wealth effect. I have taken this as given on particular notice of Bernanke's explicit comments on the success of QE2 in relation to a rising stock market.

As it turns out, the story is a bit more complicated than that.

Take Morgan Stanley's Gerald Minack for example who recently came out strongly against the notion of QE as a driver of risky assets which invariably leads to a much more bullish and broad based recovery discourse;

I am pushing back against the view that QE – particularly the large-scale asset purchases – directly drives risk assets. The reason I am skeptical is that no one has to my satisfaction explained how – sentiment aside – QE has had a material effect on the demand for, or funding of, risk assets. It’s not even straightforward to isolate the effect of QE on the assets that the Fed purchased.

(...)

As I see it, QE2 was a $600bn placebo. If enough investors think it was good for risk assets, then perhaps it was good for risk assets. Stopping the placebo may have an effect, but my sense is the macro will remain the key driver of risk assets.

The first part of Minack's objection to the QE-Risk Asset synthesis is important and I have also found it difficult to replicate the idea that QE directly drives risky assets . But the link need not be that specific for the end of QE to have an adverse effect of the growth narrative. I think the underlying reason as to why the market may now be driven by the improving macro picture is exactly because QE is seen as an integral part of that improvement. It then stands to reason that if and when QE ends (without extension) it will have an impact. Another point relates to the idea that the commitment itself to QE is paramount and thus that the largest effect of QE is back loaded around the announcement [4]. I think it is an accurate way to frame the effect of QE but this also implies that a second layer of expectations may take hold in the form of the expectation of the announcement. In reality, it is difficult to see how many of these "announcements" the market has discounted I think.

An altogether more heavy analysis recently came from CSLA's Russel Napier simply noting that investors ought to sell US equities on the failure of QE2. Napier particularly makes the point that QE2 has materially failed to induce banks to increase credit.

Broad money has contracted since the launch of QEII in November 2010 and this suggests that rising growth and inflation are not likely. QEII is boosting unused bank reserves, but banks continue to shrink credit and it is having no direct positive economic impact beyond depressing Treasury yields. Equity-market valuations are close to bubble levels and need the prospect of higher inflation and negative real rates to continue higher: but M3 is contracting.

(...)

The failure of QEII will undermine investor faith in a monetary solution. With equities near bubble valuations, based on cyclically adjusted PE, a failure to reflate risks major downside. The Fed will try again with a new package, but investors would do best by waiting to see how it plays out.

This analysis then suggests a much more imminent and substantial effect of the alleged failure of QE2 and thus also the effect of a non-committal to QE3. Clearly, we are now in the situation where this illusive concept of the monetary transmission mechanism becomes important.

Thus, has QE2 succeeded because it has helped equity prices to rally or has it been a failure because of its inability to induce more than an increase in excess reserves?

I won't pretent to give full answer on this (Napier's analysis is difficult to disagree with) and I would like instead to yield the floor to John P. Hussman who recently had a very well written and balanced column on the end of QE2;

My intent is not to argue strongly that the economy cannot continue to expand as fiscal and monetary stimulus comes off, but instead to at least ask why this should be expected as a foregone conclusion. On the basis of leading indices of economic activity, we observe more indications of economic slowing worldwide than we observe growth. Moreover, strong periods of employment growth have historically been preceded by high, not low, real interest rates. This is far from a perfect relationship, but it is clear that historically, high real interest rates are far more indicative of strong demand for credit, new investment, and new employment than low real interest rates are.

I would file this under "I'd wish I said that". The big question then remains as to what kind of momentum the economy and risky assets will retain once stimulus comes off.

To summarize, I have been critical of the Fed's decision to tie its policies so close to the movements of the stock market and I still am. The idea to implicitly target stock prices is the ultimate form of hubris that a central banker can commit since it plays into the notion that the central bank can consistently fine tune financial markets. It can't. However, my analysis above gives some support to the idea that QE works, and works well, through its effect on stock prices. At least, I would note that the extent to which e.g. Krugman is right the apparent change in the wealth effect over time gives some credence to Bernanke's comments in 60 minutes even if I don't agree with the Fed's strategy on this point.

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* The data used for my estimations are monthly data from the St. Louis Fed's database.

[1] - Clearly this is below traditional Keynesian estimates but remember that we have monthly data in changes and thus likely to have stationary time series (i.e. we have detrended series!).To be rigorous one would obviously have to properly test the unit root properties of the series in question.

[2] - I am considering writing this up as a small paper trying to quantify the structural breaks in the data as well as to fit a non-linear model.

[3] - Which points to the notion developed exactly by researchers (Friedman for one) using data for that period that consumers spend out of permanent income and not current income.

[4] - I believe Goldman Sachs made a top notch study on this.

Random Shots - Return of the Deflation Trade?

I recently asked the opnion of my readers regarding the question of whether the global economy is in for inflation, deflation, or stagflation. Given the obvious issue that it may be all three at different points in time it seems as if recent market action suggests that we should be looking at the d-word.

QE1 + QE2 +...+QEn = Deflation?

Even if macro soothsayer's favorite comparison between Japan and the US is misleading because the former has decidedly more miserable demographics than the former, it is clear that US policy makers are steering into largely uncharted waters.

Consider then Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart's recent comments before the National Association of Business Economics that the Fed would contemplate cueing in QE3 in the event that the current oil price shock proved to be more severe. On the face of it this makes sense in so far as goes the idea that the main effect from sharply rising oil price is a relapse into recession and thus deflation. Indeed, the Fed can hardly be blamed for acting in the context of events which are essentially geo-political in nature.

Yet, it is much more complicated than that.

It then stands to reason that while the Fed should certainly be forward looking in conducting policy the primary effect of ongoing measures of quantitative easing is exactly to put pressures on headline inflation and commodities in general. As I noted recently at this space;

Given that we seem to be looking at a re-run of 2008 it must be factored in that the volatility and speed (and subsequent decline) of commodity prices are a problem in itself. The famous loss function which must then be metaphorically minimised is the one which plots the trade-off between the cost of recurrent flares of commodity prices and the need to act as a counter trend to the destructive forces of a balance sheet recession. Here, it becomes a rather serious issue if one of the main collateral effects of providing buckets of liquidity is to engender strong commodity melt-ups with a subsequent deflationary outcome.

And perhaps this is what is running through the mind of Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher who, in the same picece as linked above, is quoted of voicing oppositon towards QE3 and indeed that he would like QE2 to be phased out sooner rather than later.

Which way the tide will turn at the Fed is not a trivial question. There are plenty of signs that after the SP500 having tested the 1350 level, and failed, the market is running on the evaporating fumes of QE2. As one of my many market spies noted today:

(...) it is definitely possible that the market will discount the end of QE2 ahead of time this time around. This is what happened in Japan too - the market began to rally as soon as their QE2 was announced (since it had rallied smartly on QE1) , but halfway through the implementation the Nikkei began to fall, ultimately losing 45% from the interim peak and ending below the level of the day QE2 was announced. Mind, I'm not saying it will play out in the exact same manner, this is just to point out that there can be leads and lags between QE and its effect on the stock market - the QE1 experience is not necessarily a road map that needs to be repeated.

Again, we have that comparison with Japan which is then only to say that repetitions in the market rarely occur the way you expect them to, but there is definitely an unwinding narrative emerging. Team Macro Man gives their list of bearish omens today and I find it difficult disagreeing with them on the general idea that the reflation trade might be in for a stutter; at least until the next round of QE.

To their list I would add that another favorite punt of the reflationistas, gold, is finding it mightly difficult to reach new highs above the 1420s (today, Thursday, getting a right beating back to 1405ish). Now, we should always remember that the market can move three ways, where sideways is the third. Yet, the fundamentals of the gold trade kind of black or write so the ongoing difficulty reaching new highs will be rightly worrying the g-bugs.

More generally however the SP500 is only now coming down to the 50dma (at pixel time) and I would wait to see whether it forcefully breaches that level before putting on the tin foil hat.

(click image for better viewing)

As you can see dear reader, the chart is telling you to buy the dip, but chartism on such short time scales can make plenty of widows too, so be careful out there.

Looking into the rearview mirror at the ECB

I wasn't really sure whether to cry or laugh last week when Trichet mounted himself in front of the microphones to deliver an almost sure signal of future rate increases by invoking the idea of strong vigilance. Indeed, the ECB let it be known that it was perfectly possible that their April meeting would be accompanied by a rate increase. Game set and match then!

As I have noted before at this space, stranger things have happened than the ECB raising rates just before a global slowdown. I even ventured to call it a leading indicator. Soc Gen's always enjoyable Albert Edwards dryly noted recently (HT: FT Alphaville); “all we need now to push the world back into the recession is an ECB rate rise.”

This seems an apt take on the situation and my good friend Edward Hugh similarly notes that all this has an alltogether well expected outcome invoking the idea of the Chronicle of a Policy Error Foretold.

Now the problem with this latest policy initiative is not only that it represents something akin to the chronicle of an early death foretold for a much troubled and highly fragile Spanish economy, where around 90 percent of mortgages are variable rate ones. 

It also draws attention to an area which it would be much better for the ECB not to draw attention to at this delicate moment in its history: the convenience of having a single-size monetary policy applied to such a diverse group of economies.

I heartily agree that it is due time that we, yet again, try to evaluate what it means to have a single interest policy in the eurozone. More specifically, there is the question of divergence of fortunes when it comes to deflation and inflation;

Inflation on the periphery has much more to do with rising commodity prices and the application of a misguided policy of consumption tax increases as a way of reducing fiscal deficits than ever it has to do with economic overheating.

I think it is pretty obvious that there will be no second round effects in the eurozone periphery and if the ECB is seriously suggesting this to be the case, I would dearly like to see the empirical evidence for such a claim (even a theoretical would do actually!).

Finally, we should never neglect to mention that all this might be a bluff and that the ECB like most other rational institutions can change direction based on the evidence before them. Yet, herein also lies the rub because the current vigilance comes on a backdrop which smells a lot like the last time the ECB raised only to see the deck of cards fold before their eyes. Perhaps they ought to look closer into the rear view mirror.

Random Shots indeed

The immediate conclusion here would seem to be that Trichet should get on a plane and relieve Bernanke of his post in Washington and leave the tower of Frankfurt to Benny. As FT Alphaville (see link above) quotes from Gavekal;

Since its inception, the ECB has typically been slow to cut rates (famously rising them in July 2008!) and slow to raise them. So is the fact that the ECB is now considering a tighter monetary policy before the Fed a sign that the ECB is making a mistake? Or a sign that the Fed is starting to really fall behind the curve?

I am not sure that it is either really. Core inflation in the US is still nudging down but I think that ongoing loose monetary policy will run the risk of replicating the UK more than Japan. Put differently, I think the US economy is in a position where inflation expectations might take hold which is not the case in the Eurozone periphery at large. 

At the time of writing it seems an awful lot as it the deflation trade is back and thus that the market has already sucked QE2 dry and now awaits the third version. A spike in oil prices helps no-one too, but oil at current levels is not the problem, but a quick zoom to 150ish and we would have grave problems. This would then be ample catalyst for QE3 and even if this would not prevent the correction which seems evident now, it would setup another meltup in all things unprintable and risky.

We can only hope then that central banks, on either side of the pond, are taking more than random shots at our current problems.