As the earth rock keeps spinning we continue to monitor global events that could make investors/traders dizzy. This week the FOMC is EXPECTED to announce that it will begin its quantitative tightening (QT) by revealing the date of its plan to shrink its balance sheet by a net $10 BILLION of assets a month ($6 billion of Treasuries, $4 billion of MBS) and increasing the amounts quarterly so the program results in little market disruption. Remember, Chair Yellen has said she believes that it will be “like watching paint dry.” The world’s equity markets — especially the U.S. — are reflecting little concern about the Fed withdrawing “small” amounts of liquidity.
Posts Tagged ‘Euro’
Notes From Underground: The FOMC, BOJ and German Elections Lead the Way to Quarter-End
September 18, 2017Notes From Underground: A Take On Mario Draghi in Two Parts
September 10, 2017Part I: Mario Draghi, the master of obfuscation was at his best Thursday as he dodged MULTIPLE questions about the recent STRENGTH in the euro. Journalists were very well prepared and even threw back Draghi’s previous responses about how a 10 percent currency appreciation would lower inflation measures by 0.5 percent. But Draghi met each question with a, “Yes, we discussed it as some members of the ECB Board were concerned about the EURO and its impact on exports and import prices.”
Notes From Underground: Fischer and Cohn, Out; Draghi In (the Spotlight)
September 6, 2017In keeping this note as short as possible, let’s start with Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer’s resignation. I am posting snippets from the August 20 entry, in which I noted the great piece in the Weekend Financial Times with its Stanley Fischer interview. The article noted the one open disagreement with Chair Yellen in which he was miffed about not being consulted about an FOMC decision. We don’t know if Stanley Fischer is resigning because of health reasons, personal issues or over policy disputes. But this I am sure: Lael Brainard has been elevated within the group of Fed Governors as she is the confidant of Chair Yellen, thus the FED takes a dovish stance. In her dovish speech she maintains that while desiring to keep FED FUNDS steady there is room to initiate some of the balance sheet unwind. This was also her stance in June when she presented arguments for QT versus raising the fed funds rate. The impact from the initiation of Boockvar’s QT would not be as great on the U.S. dollar.
Notes From Underground: The Unemployment Data? I Suppose It’s Meaningless
August 31, 2017It’s the first Friday of the month so that means we will have the jobs report at 7:30 CDT and 7:29:59 if you are a high frequency trading operation you do the math. Consensus is for 180,000 non-farm payrolls and the overall rate remaining unchanged at 4.3%. The most important piece is the average hourly earnings (AHE), which is predicted to be 0.2% which is lower than the July data. Regardless, with the economic impact from Hurricane Harvey still an unknown the FED will be kept from raising interest rates at its September meeting. But if the AHE is strong the FED may move to commence shrinking its balance sheet because Lael Brainard has already informed us that the FED analysts theorize that QT has far less economic impact then a RISE in the fed funds rate.
Notes From Underground: Arthur’s Song, Lost Between the Moon and New York City
August 28, 2017A long-time reader of Notes From Underground posted a comment to a previous post promoting long GOLD/short YEN. When I asked him about this trade he noted the onset of currency wars. There is no question, as I have regularly shown that many foreign central banks’ currency’s strength is a reason to maintain very low interest rates and if in place QE programs. I certainly agree with Arthur about this narrative. But from a relative value perspective the Japanese yen has already benefited from its weakening versus the EURO, Aussie, Kiwi, Canada and Swiss franc.
Notes From Underground: It’s All About the Narrative
August 27, 2017The Kansas City Fed Symposium was steeped in boredom as all the hype failed to live up to the expectations of the media. The excitement centered around Mario Draghi potentially dropping hints about the beginning of quantitative tightening (QT). Rick Santelli spoke with former FOMC Governor Mark Olson, who rightfully predicted Chair Yellen would not reveal any sense of Fed intentions but he was dead wrong about Draghi. Olson opined that Yellen put the spotlight on President Draghi, but the ECB President must have suffered stage fright as he very bland when speaking to concerns about the Trump administration’s move to economic nationalism. There was not a single word about ECB policy.
Notes From Underground: The ECB, FOMC Minutes and Dudley’s Speech
August 17, 2017On Wednesday, I joined Rick Santelli for a chat, which was centered on the ECB and other central banks’ impact on global equity and debt markets. Just before the appearance, there appeared a Reuters story that said President Draghi would not speak about the ECB’s potential Quantitative Tightening, which my readers know supported what I have been steadfast in my conjecturing about possible ECB actions. IN A NOD TO A READER (hello, AGH), while it appears that all central banks pursue a common policy, THERE’S NO MONETARY EQUIVALENCE. Yes, they all purport to raise inflation the political variables each push for different outcomes.
(Click on the image to watch me and Rick discuss the central banks.)
Notes From Underground: Draghi, the ECB and Germany
August 15, 2017The upcoming meeting in Jackson Hole has become the focus of the global investment community. Why? After Draghi’s comments in Sintra, Portugal on June 27 sent global bond yields higher, the financial world will gauge whether Draghi’s speech will signal the beginning of their own balance sheet shrinking. If Draghi were to announce the end of the quantitative easing, the impact would be for the EURO to rise for European BOND YIELDS to rise and, most importantly, the greatest increase in yields would be in the peripheral bonds (and maybe the most significant impact will be on global equity markets). BUT LET ME BE CLEAR, I THINK THIS IS A VERY LOW PROBABILITY EVENT and I will do a deep analysis as to why. Yet again:
1. In yesterday’s Financial Times, there was an article titled, “Draghi Faces Easing Dilemma A Strong Euro Sparks Concern.” The article notes that the STRONG EURO keeps inflation down and therefore prevents the ECB from fulfilling its 2% inflation mandate. Draghi is caught in a dilemma of his own making and there really is no way out as long as it speaks to the idea of a 2% inflation target that is self-imposed by the bank. Many months ago I conjectured that President Draghi would prefer a strong rally in the euro before the September German election. A strong euro silences the Bundesbank as it allows for Draghi to use a strong currency as a measure of the success for the ECB’s policy. If the EURO rallies further it will harm the French, Italian and Spanish economies, which are starting to experience growth, than it will impact the Germans. A one-price euro will not lead to Germany losing its edge within the EU for a single currency prevents that so the peripheral nations will have to engage in wage restraint to sustain its recent growth. The idea of wage suppression will hinder a rise in inflation providing the greatest problem for Draghi’s ECB;
2. In Tuesday’s FT, Thomas Hale and Kate Allen wrote a story titled, “Hopes For European ‘Safe’ Bonds Lean On Pre-Crisis Techniques.” The reporters visit the issues of “aiming to make the continent’s financial system safer, the idea involves taking sovereign bonds from different European countries and packaging them together into safe bonds that would then carry various levels of risk.” This is what we called financially engineered sub-prime debt a decade ago. Take the German bunds, French oats and bundle with Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish sovereign debt and you have a AAA instrument. The urge to create a EUROBOND is the essence of Draghi’s ECB and there are numerous ideas of how to achieve this end. As the article point out, “It is also a way of bringing European sovereign debt markets closer together without explicit ‘mutualisation,’ where debt is collectively issued by multiple countries, an idea that has proved politically toxic in Germany, in particular.”
The politics of the eurobond have become difficult because the Germans are VERY aware that it is the Bavarian Burghers who will be the creditors of the entire project. Every debt instrument must be guaranteed by credible collateral and several of the European peripheral nations lack the credibility of a solid creditor and making matters worse the weak creditors do not have a printing press. Why would Mario Draghi wish to undermine his efforts to backdoor his way to a EUROBOND by slowing the accumulation of debt assets. THE ECB IS NOT THE FED FOR DRAGHI HAS SET IT ON A PATH TO FULFILL THE MANDATE OF THE PRESERVATION OF THE EURO. Draghi needs to maintain the status quo until September 24 when he believes that Chancellor Merkel will prevail in the German election. Merkel has been a willing partner with President Draghi in his efforts to create a more perfect European union;
3. Also in Tuesday’s FT Claire Jones reported on the effort of challenges to the ECB’s QE program. Germany’s HIGH COURT issued an opinion that said some of the ECB’s actions may violate EU law.
In a case brought to Karlsruhe by “… right-wing members of Germany’s establishment” the German Constitutional Court issued a statement that there are “… significant reasons indicate that the ECB decisions governing the asset purchase programme violate the prohibition of monetary financing and exceed the monetary policy mandate of the ECB.” The court decided to refer the case to the European Court of Justice to get a sense of what the ECJ opinion is before hearing the case. The process could take a year before the German Court hears the case. The article cites a point made by German lawyer Hendrik Haag that “the wait for the ECJ decision may well be an elegant way out for the ECB. It may put pressure on the ECB to be a bit quicker with tapering the ECB programme.”
I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH THIS LAWYERLY ASSESSMENT. In my view it gives the ECB further time to increase the balance sheet so furthering the effort for a EUROBOND. I will await Draghi’s speech from Jackson Hole but again, THE ECB HAS A MUCH DIFFERENT DESIRE THEN THE FED. Mario Draghi will play for time to hope for the best for his guardian angel, Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Heads up: I will be on CNBC with Rick Santelli tomorrow morning around 9:20am CDT.
Notes From Underground: Shelter From the Storm
August 9, 2017Not a word was spoke between us,there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point ,had been left unresolved
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm
Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm
When Bob Dylan released this song 42 years ago it was on the album Blood on the Tracks. When the FED embarked on its QE1, QE2 and QE3 it was to respond to the blood coursing through the streets of the U.S. financial system. The U.S. banking system was threatened with insolvency and the FED‘s monetary injections sheltered the banking system from a storm of forced systemic liquidation of assets. QE1 coupled with a questionable TARP program did prevent a systemic liquidation but QE2 and QE3 I always believed were superfluous but in the land of counterfactuals it is an impossible point to prove.
Notes From Underground: Jobs Report Gives the Fed the OK to QT
August 6, 2017Friday’s unemployment report was on the strong side, although certainly not much stronger than market consensus. Yes, nonfarm payrolls were on the high-end but average hourly earnings were right on target, hours worked remained the same at 34.5 and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.3%, but that could be due to a slight rounding error. The markets traded as if the FED could possibly raise rates in September, but I believe the jobs report provides the impetus for the FED to commence with QT. The U.S. yield curves reacted in such a manner as the 2/10 curve actually rose 3.5 basis points, closing at 91.5.
