Last year we introduced the Euroglut concept: the idea that the Euro-area’s huge current account surplus reflects a very large pool of excess savings that will have a major impact on global asset prices for the rest of this decade. Combined with ECB quantitative easing and negative rates we argued that this surplus of savings would lead to large-scale capital flight from Europe causing a collapse in the euro and exceptionally depressed global bond yields.

This is indeed strange- the notion that a current account surplus causes currency depreciation?

The current account surplus, in general, is evidence of restrictive fiscal policy that constrains domestic demand, including domestic demand for imports, along with depressing wages which adds to ‘competitiveness’ of EU exporters. Normally, however, this causes currency appreciation that works against increased net exports, unless the govt buys fx reserves. But this time it’s been different, as ECB policies and uncertainty surrounding Greece and related political events have managed to frighten global portfolio managers into doing the shifting out of euro financial assets in sufficient size to cause the euro to fall, particularly vs the $US, giving a further boost net EU exports.

With European portfolio outflows currently running at record highs, this piece now asks: Can outflows continue? How big will they be? The answer to this question is critical: the greater the European outflows, the more the euro can weaken and the lower global bond yields can stay.

Again, this is a very strange assertion, as exporters selling the dollars earned from their exports for euro needed to pay their domestic expenses in fact drain net euro financial assets from the global economy.

What can happen is that speculation and portfolio shifting can be associated with agents borrowing euro or depleting ‘savings’ which they sell for dollars, for example, to accomplish their desired currency weightings. And these new euro borrowings and savings reductions do indeed create new euro deposits for the purpose of selling them, which drives down the value of the euro as previously discussed. This leaves those selling euro for dollars either ‘short’ euro vs dollars, or underweight euro financial assets in their portfolios.

However, at some point the drop in the euro that makes EU real goods and services less expensive for Americans to import, and at the same time makes US goods and service more expensive for EU members, can cause EU net exports to increase. That is, Americans buy imports with their dollars, and the EU exporter then sells those dollars to get euro to pay their EU based production costs, and generally keep their net profits in euro as well. That is, EU exports to the US are facilitated by exporters selling dollars for euro, which is the opposite of what the speculators and portfolio managers are doing.

To review the process, speculators and portfolio managers sell euro for dollars driving the euro down to the point where the EU exporters are selling that many dollars for euro, all as the exchange rate continuously adjust as it expresses ‘indifference levels’.

And should the speculation and portfolio shifting drive the euro down far enough such that the net export activity is attempting to sell more dollars for euro than the speculators and portfolio managers desire, the evidence will be a reversal in the exchange rate as the dollar then falls vs the euro.

We answer the outflows question by modeling the Euro-area’s net international investment position (NIIP). We argue that Europeans now have to become net creditors to the rest of the world and that the NIIP needs to rise from -10% of GDP to at least 30%. We estimate that this adjustment requires net capital outflows of at least 4 trillion euros.

No ‘net capital inflow’ is needed for the EU to lend euro. As always, it’s a matter of ‘loans create deposits’. That is, the euro borrowings as I described create euro deposits as I described. The notion that borrowing comes from ‘available funds’ is entirely inapplicable with the floating exchange rate policies of the dollar and the euro.

They were right about that!.

I say it’s from portfolio shifting and speculation desires exceeding the trade flows, even as restrictive fiscal policy and now currency depreciation from portfolio shifting and speculation has caused an acceleration of net exports.

They say it’s from a pool of ‘excess savings’.

European outflows have been even bigger than our initial (high) expectations, so we are revising our EUR/USD forecasts lower. We now foresee a move down to 1.00 by the end of the year, 90cents by 2016 and a new cycle low of 85cents by 2017.

It’s very possible, if the portfolio shifting and speculation continues to grow faster than the EU’s current account surplus grows. However, should the growing current account surplus ‘overtake’ the desired portfolio shifting and speculation, the euro will reverse and appreciate continuously until it gets high enough for the current account surplus to fall to desired portfolio and speculative fx weightings.

Second, we expect continued European inflows into foreign assets, particularly fixed income. Our earlier work demonstrated that the primary destination of European outflows will be core fixed income markets in the rest of the world, and evidence over the last few months supports these trends: most European outflows have gone to the US, UK and Canada. These flows should keep global yield curves low and flat.

Yes, to the extent that euro portfolios desire to shift to dollar financial assets due to the interest rate differential the shift can continue. However, history and theory tells us this is limited as the desire to take exchange rate risk is limited. Euro portfolios are most often matched with euro liabilities, and so shifting to dollar financial assets can result in substantial euro shortfalls should the exchange rate shift adversely. In fact, many portfolios, if not most, including the banking system, are in some way legally prohibited from exchange rate risk exposure.

Finally, we see Euroglut as continuing to constrain monetary policy across the European continent for the foreseeable future. Since our paper in September central banks in Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Poland have all eased.

Except this ‘easing’ is in the form of lower interest rates, which is effectively a fiscal tightening as govts pay less interest to the non govt sectors, which in fact works to make the euro stronger. Likewise, the deflationary forces unleashed by restrictive fiscal policy likewise imparts a strong euro bias.

These countries run large current account surpluses.

Yes, a force that generates currency appreciation as previously described.

This is why, once the shifting and speculation has run its course, I expect the euro to appreciate continuously until it gets high enough to again reverse the trade flows from surplus to deficit.

Feel free to distribute.

Through a unique mix of huge excess savings and structurally low yields, the entire European continent will continue to be a major source of global imbalances for the rest of this decade.

The talk is that the new ECB longer term euro funding policy will mean euro member banks will suddenly start buying member nation euro debt and thereby ease the funding issue.

That doesn’t make sense to me. I see the 20 billion euro/wk bond purchases as possibly being enough to stabilize things, but not this.

Here’s my take:

So even if a bank officer now wants to buy, say, Italian debt out to 3 years because he can get ECB funding for that term, he probably has to go to an investment committee, so it is unlikely to happen overnight:

And the investment committees go something like this.

Investment officer:

‘now that we can get 3 year term funding from the ECB, i recommend we add to our italian debt position and make a 3% spread, which is a 30% return on equity’.

Committee responses:

‘why does the availability of term funding alter our current policy of reducing holdings to reduce credit risk?

what are the regulatory limits?

will the regulators allow us to own more?

what about the risk of downgrade which could force a sale?

what about repo haircuts if prices fall?

what if it’s decided Italy is unsustainable and the euro ministers vote on private sector haircuts?

how will taking on this risk affect our ability to raise capital?’

etc.

While banks may indeed buy more euro member nation debt due to the availability of the new term funding, I don’t think that new funding is enough to cause them to make that decision.

I do think the term funding will be used by banks with problems obtaining term funding to lock in the term cost of funds.

Jan 28 (Bloomberg) — “Do we know that actually this money is going to finance the real economy? We don’t have evidence of this kind yet,” ECB President Mario Draghi told Davos. “There is a lag. We will have to see.” “We know for sure we have avoided a major, major credit crunch, a major funding crisis,” he said today. “You have parts of the euro area where credit is more or less normal, but you have other parts where credit is seriously contracting.” “If you take 0.5 trillion euros and then you take off the reimbursement of other short-term facilities by the banking system in December, you get a figure of roughly 220 billion euros, which is exactly the amount of bank bonds that were to come due in this period of time,” he said.

Evidence of real progress will be a statement like:

‘Draghi sees no evidence of any possible channel from ECB loans to the economy’.

Bank liquidity is something like wheels on a car.

Without wheels, the car won’t function, but neither are wheels alone enough to make it go.

Banks are public/private partnerships, with govt’s role being liquidity provider, as private capital in the first loss position prices risk. And with unlimited liquidity provision comes the necessity of full regulation and supervision of the asset/capital side..

In the US the unlimited liquidity provision comes mainly via FDIC insured deposits, supplemented by funding from the Fed. The Fed is the liquidity provider of last resort for its member banks, while at the same time it uses the banking system’s cost of funds as its instrument of monetary policy.

The euro zone hasn’t figured this out yet.

The liquidity provider of last resort is the ECB, as it’s the ‘issuer of the currency’, and as such not itself liquidity constrained. The member nations are like the US states, and are necessarily liquidity constrained, and therefore not ’empowered’ to be liquidity providers of last resort to their member banks.

So in that sense, as the bank funding by the ECB grows, it’s all gravitating towards what all other nations have in place. The problem is the euro zone leaders don’t understand that aspect of banking, as evidenced by the way they are resisting the shift to ECB funding, and, in fact, working towards moving banks away from ECB funding.

April 15 (NYT) — The bailout of Greece, while still not fully consummated, has brought an eerie calm in European financial markets.

It is, for sure, a huge bailout by historical standards. With the planned addition of International Monetary Fund money, the Greeks will receive 18 percent of their gross domestic product in one year at preferential interest rates. This equals 4,000 euros per person, and will be spent in roughly 11 months.

Despite this eye-popping sum, the bailout does nothing to resolve the many problems that persist. Indeed, it probably makes the euro zone a much more dangerous place for the next few years.

Next on the radar will be Portugal. This nation has largely missed the spotlight, if only because Greece spiraled downward. But both are economically on the verge of bankruptcy, and they each look far riskier than Argentina did back in 2001 when it succumbed to default.

Portugal spent too much over the last several years, building its debt up to 78 percent of G.D.P. at the end of 2009 (compared with Greece’s 114 percent of G.D.P. and Argentina’s 62 percent of G.D.P. at default). The debt has been largely financed by foreigners, and as with Greece, the country has not paid interest outright, but instead refinances its interest payments each year by issuing new debt. By 2012 Portugal’s debt-to-G.D.P. ratio should reach 108 percent of G.D.P. if the country meets its planned budget deficit targets. At some point financial markets will simply refuse to finance this Ponzi game.

The main problem that Portugal faces, like Greece, Ireland and Spain, is that it is stuck with a highly overvalued exchange rate when it is in need of far-reaching fiscal adjustment.

For example, just to keep its debt stock constant and pay annual interest on debt at an optimistic 5 percent interest rate, the country would need to run a primary surplus of 5.4 percent of G.D.P. by 2012. With a planned primary deficit of 5.2 percent of G.D.P. this year (i.e., a budget surplus, excluding interest payments), it needs roughly 10 percent of G.D.P. in fiscal tightening.

It is nearly impossible to do this in a fixed exchange-rate regime — i.e., the euro zone — without vast unemployment. The government can expect several years of high unemployment and tough politics, even if it is to extract itself from this mess.

Neither Greek nor Portuguese political leaders are prepared to make the needed cuts. The Greeks have announced minor budget changes, and are now holding out for their 45 billion euro package while implicitly threatening a messy default on the rest of Europe if they do not get what they want — and when they want it.

The Portuguese are not even discussing serious cuts. In their 2010 budget, they plan a budget deficit of 8.3 percent of G.D.P., roughly equal to the 2009 budget deficit (9.4 percent). They are waiting and hoping that they may grow out of this mess — but such growth could come only from an amazing global economic boom.

While these nations delay, the European Union with its bailout programs — assisted by Jean-Claude Trichet’s European Central Bank — provides financing. The governments issue bonds; European commercial banks buy them and then deposit these at the European Central Bank as collateral for freshly printed money. The bank has become the silent facilitator of profligate spending in the euro zone.

Last week the European Central Bank had a chance to dismantle this doom machine when the board of governors announced new rules for determining what debts could be used as collateral at the central bank.

Some anticipated the central bank might plan to tighten the rules gradually, thereby preventing the Greek government from issuing too many new bonds that could be financed at the bank. But the bank did not do that. In fact, the bank’s governors did the opposite: they made it even easier for Greece, Portugal and any other nation to borrow in 2011 and beyond. Indeed, under the new lax rules you need only to convince one rating agency (and we all know how easy that is) that your debt is not junk in order to get financing from the European Central Bank.

Today, despite the clear dangers and huge debts, all three rating agencies are surely scared to take the politically charged step of declaring that Greek debt is junk. They are similarly afraid to touch Portugal.

So what next for Portugal?

Pity the serious Portuguese politician who argues that fiscal probity calls for early belt-tightening. The European Union, the European Central Bank and the Greeks have all proven that the euro zone nations have no threshold for pain, and European Union money will be there for anyone who wants it. The Portuguese politicians can do nothing but wait for the situation to get worse, and then demand their bailout package, too. No doubt Greece will be back next year for more. And the nations that “foolishly” already started their austerity, such as Ireland and Italy, must surely be wondering whether they too should take the less austere path.

There seems to be no logic in the system, but perhaps there is a logical outcome.

Europe will eventually grow tired of bailing out its weaker countries. The Germans will probably pull that plug first. The longer we wait to see fiscal probity established, at the European Central Bank and the European Union, and within each nation, the more debt will be built up, and the more dangerous the situation will get.

When the plug is finally pulled, at least one nation will end up in a painful default; unfortunately, the way we are heading, the problems could be even more widespread..

ECB monetizing or not?

(email exchange)

Warren, I can’t tell from this article if the European Central Bank is issuing new currency in exchange for national government bonds or not?

This in fact is a very good article.

Yes, the ECB is funding its banks, and yes, they do accept the securities of the member nations as collateral.

However that funding is full recourse. If the bonds default the banks that own the securities take the loss.

The reason a bank funds its securities and other assets at the Central Bank is price. Banks fund themselves where they are charged the lowest rates. And the Central Bank, the ECB in this case, sets the interbank lending rate by offering funds at its target interest rate, as well as by paying something near it’s target rate on excess funds in the banking system. That is, through its various ‘intervention mechanisms’ the ECB effectively provides a bid and an offer for interbank funds.

In the banking system, however, loans ‘create’ deposits as a matter of accounting, so the total ‘available funds’ are always equal to the total funding needs of the banking system, plus or minus what are called ‘operating factors’ which are relatively small. These include changes in cash in circulation, uncleared checks, changes in various gov. account balances, etc.

This all means the banking system as a whole needs little if any net funding from the ECB. However, any one bank might need substantial funding from the ECB should other banks be keeping excess funds at the ECB. So what is happening is that banks who are having difficulty funding themselves at competitive rates immediately use the ECB for funding by posting ‘acceptable collateral’ to fund at that lower rate.

One reason a bank can’t get ‘competitive funding’ in the market place is its inability to attract depositors, generally due to risk perceptions. While bank deposits are insured, they are insured only by the national govts, which means Greek bank deposits are insured by Greece. So as Greek and other national govt. solvency comes into question, depositors tend to avoid those institutions, which drives them to fund at the ECB. (actually via their national cb’s who have accounts at the ECB, which is functionally the same as funding at the ECB).

As with most of today’s banking systems, liabilities are generally available in virtually unlimited quantities, and therefore regulation falls entirely on bank assets and capital considerations. As long as national govt securities are considered ‘qualifying assets’ and banks are allowed to secure funding via insured deposits of one form or another and the return on equity is competitive there is no numerical limit to how much the banking system can finance.

So in that sense the EU is in fact financially supporting unlimited credit expansion of the national govts. They know this, but don’t like it, as the moral hazard issue is extreme. Left alone, it becomes a race to the bottom where the national govt with the most deficit spending ‘wins’ in real terms even as the value of the euro falls towards 0. When the national govts were making ‘good faith efforts’ to contain deficits, allowing counter cyclical increases through ‘automatic stabilizers’ and not proactive increases, it all held together. However what Greece and others appear to have done is ‘call the bluff’ with outsize and growing deficits and debt to gdp levels, threatening the start (continuation?) of this ‘race to the bottom’ if they are allowed to continue.

The question then becomes how to limit the banking system’s ability to finance unlimited national govt. deficit spending. Hence talk of Greek securities not being accepted at the ECB. Other limits include the threat of downgraded bonds forcing banks to write down their capital and threaten their solvency. And once the banking system reaches ‘hard limits’ to what they can fund a system that’s already/necessarily a form ‘ponzi’ faces a collapse.

The other problem is that when the euro was on the way up due to portfolio shifts out of the dollar, many of those buyers of euro had to own national govt paper, as their is nothing equiv. to US Treasury securities or JGB’s, for example. That helped fund the national govs at lower rates during that period. That portfolio shifting has largely come to an end, making national govt funding more problematic.

The weakening euro and rising oil prices raises the risk of ‘inflation’ flooding in through the import and export channels. With a weak economy and national govt credit worthiness particularly sensitive to rising interest rates, the ECB may find itself in a bind, as it will tend to favor rate hikes as prices firm, yet recognize rate hikes could cause a financial collapse. And should a govt like Greece be allowed to default the next realization could be that Greek depositors will take losses, and, therefore, the entire euro deposit insurance lose credibility, causing depositors to take their funds elsewhere. But where? To national govt. or corporate debt? The problem is there is nowhere to go but actual cash, which has been happening. Selling euro for dollars and other currencies is also happening, weakening the euro, but that doesn’t reduce the quantity of euro deposits, even as it drives the currency down, though the ‘value’ of total deposits does decrease as the currency falls.

It’s all getting very ugly as it all threatens the value of the euro. The only scenario that theoretically helps the value of the euro is a national govt default, which does eliminate the euro denominated financial assets of that nation, but of course can trigger a euro wide deflationary debt collapse. The ‘support’ scenarios all weaken the euro as they support the expansion of euro denominated financial assets, to the point of triggering the inflationary ‘race to the bottom’ of accelerating debt expansion.

Bottom line, it’s all an ‘unstable equilibrium’ as we used to say in engineering classes 40 years ago, that could accelerate in either direction. My proposal for annual ECB distributions to member nations on a per capita basis reverses those dynamics, but it’s not even a distant consideration.

Where are ‘market forces’ taking the euro? Low enough to increase net exports sufficiently to supply the needed net euro financial assets to the euro zone, which will come from a drop in net financial assets of the rest of world net importing from the euro zone. This, too, can be a long, ugly ride.

As a final note, the IMF gets its euros from the euro zone, so using the IMF changes nothing.

An interesting move by the ECB would be to offer short to medium term notes in the market place.

As discussed over the years, unlike other currencies, the euro has no ‘risk free deposits’ available to anyone other than member banks and foreign governments.

This has probably caused substantial numbers of investors to sell their euro for other currencies rather than hold any of the available euro denominated financial assets.

If so, ECB notes could mark the return of these portfolio to ‘normal’ allocations to euro denominated financial assets, which would offer strong support for the euro vs other currencies.

And with the ECB measuring success by the strength of the euro, this could be an attractive proposition.

It would attract euro deposits from the banking system, which the ECB can easily accommodate by continuing its current policy of liquidity provision for its member banks as needed.

Additionally, and not that it actually matters for inflation, lending, aggregate demand, etc., most monetarists would not include these notes as part of the ‘money supply’ but instead as an anti inflationary ‘sterilization’ measure.

As previously discussed, and relayed to the finance minister in Greece, there is no reason to assume the ECB will cut off liquidity to Greek banks.

First, those banks are private institutions, and regulated and supervised by the ECB, who has deemed them ‘solvent’ and ‘adequately capitalized’ and therefore eligible for liquidity support as members in good standing.

Think of it this way, if NY went rogue, would the Fed cut off Citibank?

On Monday, ECB President Mario Draghi told European lawmakers that, so far, the bank had helped out Greek lenders to the tune of 118 billion euros ($133 billion) – about 66 percent of Greece’s overall economy. At the end of 2014, that sum was only half the current level.

So people transferred their deposits to other banks, and those other banks wouldn’t redeposit/lend those euro back to the Greek banks via the interbank market, at any rate of interest.

So instead the lost deposits were replaced by what functionally are deposits from the ECB via what’s called the ELA. What’s wrong with that? Why have an interbank market at all? Why not simply let banks have debits/deposits from the ECB as needed as long as they are deemed adequately capitalized and in good standing by that same ECB? And no other entity has the access and authority to fully regulate and supervise, qualifying it regarding the decision of providing ‘liquidity’.

The way I say it is ‘the liability side of banking is not the place for market discipline.” Hopefully they know this and don’t decide to punish privately owned ECB member banks for sins of their govt.

The banks need, and I propose, ECB deposit insurance for all euro zone banks.

Currently the member governments insure their own member bank deposits and do the regulation and supervision.

So to get from here to there politically they need to turn over banking supervision to the ECB.

Let me suggest that’s a change pretty much no one would notice or care about from a practical/operational point of view?

The political problem would come from losses from existing portfolios that, in the case of a bank failure due to losses in excess of equity capital, currently would be charged to the appropriate member nations.

So under my proposal, for the ECB to suffer actual losses a member bank that it supervises and regulates would have to suffer losses in excess of its capital.

And none of the member governments currently think that their banks have negative capital, especially if they assume member governments don’t default on their debt to the banks.

And this ‘fix’ for the banking system would help insure the member governments don’t default on their obligations to their banks.

The euro zone has three financial issues at this point. One is bank liquidity which this proposal fixes. Second is national government solvency, and third is the output gap.

They need to allow larger government deficits to narrow the output gap, but that first requires fixing the solvency issue.

The solvency issue can be addressed by having the ECB guarantee all of the member government debt, which then raises the moral hazard issue.

The moral hazard issue can be addressed by giving the EU the option of not having the ECB insure new government debt and forbidding its banks to buy new government debt as a penalty for violators of the debt and deficit limits of the Stability and Growth Pact.

(Email exchange): Given this view warren, do you think Natl Bk of Greece goes to zero here?

Or do you think Europe will do a “shock an awe” 100b package that makes greek banks a buying opportunity?

Wish I knew!

They might like to, but they still don’t have an answer to the moral hazard issue or popular support for a ‘bailout’.

What’ they’d like to do is figure out a way to isolate Greece, hence the presumed proposals from yesterday, but those aren’t satisfying either.

And any major package weakens the others who have to fund it in the market place.

Nor do they have a way to enforce their austerity demands and keep them from being reversed once it’s known they’ve taken the position that it’s too risky to let any one nation fail.

They are still in a bind, and their austerity measures mean they don’t keep up with a world recovery.

Also, a Greek restructure that reduces outstanding debt is a force that strengthens the euro as it reduces outstanding euro financial assets.

The negative is that it further reduces euro ‘savings desires’ and drives more portfolios to shift away from euro.

And domestic taxes are still payable in euro, so there is that fundamental support.

Again, could go either way from here.

Sometimes that’s how it is!

The end game is unfortunately unfolding as Spanish bank losses become Spanish govt losses.

Deposit insurance is only credible at the ‘Federal’ level, not the ‘State’ level.

If the ECB had to write the check the issue would be inflation, but not solvency.

The euro govts can no more fund bank losses than the US States could cover bank losses.

And the euro zone response of spending cuts and tax increases only makes matters worse.

From inception, the euro system has been exactly this kind of accident waiting to happen.

(Email exchange): Warren, I am interested in your views on this development.

It would strike me as either blather or a dramatic reversal of fortune for the continent.

Any thoughts?

Weber has been against it from day one, which tells me he doesn’t get it at all. For now he’ll keep getting over ruled, but that can change down the road when ECB management turns over.

Yes, if this were to happen in this kind of economy it could all head catastrophically south very quickly again, and, as before, not end until the ECB resumes writing the check.

The problem is he doesn’t understand that inflation and currency weakness would follow from excess spending by the national govts, which is both not the case and under control of the ECB while they are funding. Instead he thinks the bond purchases per se somehow matter, though with no discernible transmission channel.

No Crisis Of The Euro As A Currency.

He looks at the euro as a currency as per the single mandate of price stability.

With Euro As Currency Is Evidently Not In Danger.

There is no euro crisis as the value of the euro has been reasonably strong.

Fear That Non-Standard Measures Stoke Inflation Totally Unfounded.

They are now comfortable that the bond buying is not inflationary as it doesn’t alter actual spending on goods and services (aggregate demand) and in fact the required austerity reduces it.

ECB Still Against Taking Defaulted Govt Bonds As Collateral.

Ok, but so far there aren’t any.

ECB Still Against Credit Event.

No reason to let any member nation default and be released from their obligations.

Rescue Fund Must Be Operational As Soon As Possible.

EFSF Should Be Appropriately Leveraged.

Implying ECB involvement as suspected.

Govts Should Be Responsible For Making Safety Nets Work.

Which requires they be backstopped by the ECB which dictates austerity in return for said backstopping.

EFSF Shouldn’t Get Banking Licence.

Banks Must Shore Up Capital As Soon As Possible.

Govts Must Be Ready To Recapitalize Banks If Needed.

All of which requires ECB as backstop directly or indirectly.

Need Euro-Zone Fin Min, Executive Branch In Future.

Which would be ECB ‘funded’ much like the US Fed/treasury relation.

Crisis Questions Econ, Fincl Strategy Of All Developed Economies.

Working Assumption That Govts Will Overcome Crisis.

Euro Is Credible, Stable.

Again, the value of the euro is telling for the ECB.