Showing posts with label Impossible Monetary Policy Dilemma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Impossible Monetary Policy Dilemma. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

13/5/2014: BIS on Unwinding Global QE: There Will Be Pain...


BIS Working Papers No 448 "The exit from non-conventional monetary policy: what challenges?" by Philip Turner published last week offers some interesting analysis of the risks we can expect in the process of the unwinding of the QE measures and other non-orthodox supports extended by the Central Banks following the GFC. The topic of huge importance for anyone interested in the forward analysis of the advanced economies and the one I have covered over the recent years under my thesis of the impossible monetary policy dilemma both on this blog and in my Sunday Times articles.

Note: link to the paper http://www.bis.org/publ/work448.pdf.


"One legacy of the monetary policies pursued since the financial crisis is that central banks in most advanced economies now have exceptionally large balance sheets. And commercial bank reserves (“money”) have risen by several multiples. These policies have made the exit challenge faced by central banks more complex. But there is no consensus on the New Normal for the balance sheet of central banks.

This paper argues that the crisis has forced a critical examination of some widely-held beliefs about the division of labour between different agencies of government in implementing macroeconomic policies. The central bank has become more dependent on what the government decides – on fiscal policy, on government financing choices and on regulations requiring banks and other financial firms to hold government bonds. The exit will succeed only if central banks remain free of fiscal dominance and financial dominance."

But what does this really mean?

The paper starts by positing three orthodoxies or dogmas that dominated the past thinking on monetary-fiscal policies interlinks and that have been proven to be wrong by the current crisis:

"In recent years, The New Keynesian perspective incorporating rational expectations and perfect asset substitutability also had a number of convenient implications for policymakers. It shaped what has been called the pre-crisis “doctrine” of monetary policy, and
therefore was partly responsible for the severity of the recent crisis… [the] three “dogmas” that are of interest for the purpose of this paper:
a) Open market operations in government bond markets (or in foreign exchange markets) do not change relative prices. … [in other words] any purchase or sale of particular assets would lead only to offsetting changes in private demands, with no impact on prices. One corollary of this is that government debt management (that is, the relative supply of short-dated and long-dated bonds by the Treasury) can be separated from monetary policy.
b) The central bank short-term policy rate is the unique instrument of monetary policy aimed at macroeconomic objectives. The impact of policies on other core financial market prices – such as the term premium in the long-term interest rate – was neglected…
c) The “liquidity” of the balance sheets of commercial banks is irrelevant. If adequate capital standards are in place to ensure the viability of a bank, there was no additional need for bank regulators to worry about the liquidity of banks because a sound bank could borrow readily in interbank markets to meet any “temporary” liquidity squeeze. Hence the failure of international regulators in the 1980s to develop common measures of the overall liquidity of a bank (and the decline in liquid asset ratios) seemed unimportant."


As Turner notes: "…all three “dogmas” have been shown by recent events to be false."

In particular, "Central bank balance sheets matter. Large-scale central bank purchases of bonds (and other assets) have lowered long-term interest rates, leading economists to re-examine the portfolio rebalancing affects that the New Classical school had dismissed. The neat separation between central bank open market operations and government debt management has been blurred. And banks now pay much closer attention to the liquidity of their balance sheets (with bank regulation in this area having been strongly reinforced since the crisis). Equally, the scale of balance sheet measures taken by central banks actually reinforces the fundamental logic behind the New Classical theories. An intertemporal perspective – a key insight of rational expectations – has become even more necessary. Because of the substantial lengthening in the maturity of central bank assets, the decisions taken during this crisis will have more long-lasting (and therefore more uncertain) effects than if policy action had been limited to short-term interest rates or short-dated paper."

How big is that 'long-lasting effects' bit?



And more crucially, as we know the size of the problem, how difficult or painful will it be to undo this QE legacy?


Consider one aspect of the legacy: the link between asset prices (financial markets valuations) and the interest rate risk (the cost of undoing the QE). Per Turner: "Getting long-term rates down has contributed to bringing financial asset prices in the core economies back to pre-crisis levels, even higher. And, ...Gambacorta et al (2012) show that the expansion of central bank balance sheets did
increase real GDP. In this sense, QE policies have worked."

But just because it worked in the past, does this mean unwinding it will be cost-less even if 'handled right'?

As Turner points, "there is a reassuring answer. The massive purchases of central banks have had wealth effects that should, in time, stimulate global demand. In addition, stronger asset prices should raise the value of potential collateral for new loans and therefore ease the borrowing constraints facing firms and households. Once stronger aggregate demand is assured, the central bank
could readily unload the assets acquired during the crisis."

In other words, the idea of the 'well-managed exit' is that it will come at the time of demand boom and this demand boom should reduce adverse costs of the exits. In theory.

"The problem with this reassuring answer is that the recent recession – now more than five years long – has lasted so long. Financial asset prices did get a considerable boost. Yet the hoped-for growth in real GDP that would have allowed central banks to scale back crisis-related asset purchases did not materialise."

The good times arrived, but not for the real economy. 'Well-managed' exits are not really on the books, since "this disconnect between the rapid rise in asset prices and the persistent weakness of demand is worrying. Is this a bubble that could suddenly deflate? Or do forecasters underestimate the strength of real demand over the next couple of years?"

And there is more: "Another worry is that global net interest rate exposures must have risen substantially since the crisis. At the core of this is US Treasury debt outstanding held outside the Federal Reserve. This rose from $3 trillion in early 2007 (yielding an
average of 5%) to $8 trillion (with an average yield of 1%) by mid-2013. The rise of government debt in other advanced economies – financed at yields that track US Treasuries – is well-known. Much of this risk is in the banking system: sovereign exposures accounted for 19% of total banking book exposures of large international banks in mid-2012, compared with 11% at end-2008. Lower-rated corporations have also benefited from the negative or zero term premium in government debt markets, so credit risks have probably risen too." Turner does not mention households, but they too were allowed breathing room on funding their debts - as policy rates scaled back, cost of funding mortgages and other debts fell. But debt levels did not fall significantly enough, with exception of bankruptcies and foreclosures cases.

"Furthermore, the link between US yields and yields on EM bonds has increased substantially over the past decade, and EM bond issuance has risen."

In plain English: we are all (governments/taxpayers, corporates, households and even emerging markets) are sitting on a ticking time bomb: once rates start rising, we start feeling the pain of higher debt funding costs. What miracle of 'well-managed exit' strategy can deliver us from this predicament?

The latter is the rhetorical question. "The scale of market turbulence in global bond markets from May to September 2013 demonstrates the importance, in any correction, of the outstanding stocks of assets. Quantities matter. The vastly increased volume of bonds outstanding, some held in leveraged portfolios, means that volatility will rise much more when market sentiment changes than it did in the past when outstanding stocks of bonds were much lower." What's that I hear? More volatility than in previous crises? Surely this cannot be good.

"The turbulence also illustrates the dominance of US Treasuries. A substantial rise in US long-term rates took place without any change in the policy rate in the United States." In other words, the Fed did not pause priming the pump, but rates went up… oops… "Such a strong and global market reaction suggests some sudden unwinding of leveraged positions and powerful contagion across markets."

Bingo! In the markets bubbly high on cheap liquidity, there is no 'well-managed exit' feasible.

Turner is, of course, all BIS on this point. "It is difficult to know what lies ahead."

Except this: rates will go up. "Central banks in the advanced economies are not comfortable with the size and structure of their balance sheets. From September 2009, governors of the major central banks (including Messrs Bernanke and Trichet) expressed the hope that they would soon be able to begin their “exit” from unconventional policies. But such hopes were dashed by the deepening euro crisis from mid-2010. Not only have central bank balance sheets further expanded but – equally important – the maturity of their assets has become much longer."

And with this 'staying in QE', Central Banks are gaining a new risk / problem: "Since their liabilities have remained of very short maturity (typically bank reserves), central banks have a growing maturity mismatch. A sizable term spread gives the central bank a positive running yield: this has boosted its profits typically remitted to the Treasury, often creating a favourable impression with parliaments." (Do recall my recent article on Irish Central Bank annual report published in Sunday Times… Bingo!)

"But higher short-term rates could at some point lead to central bank losses. This has no fundamental significance because the central bank does not face the financing constraint in its own currency that a private agent faces: it can print money." Oops… not Irish Central Bank can't… and ECB does not like to…

"Likewise, the government can raise taxes." Oops again, Irish Government can barely run a deficit at less than double European SGP limits on already sky-high taxes. Raising taxes further would be committing political seppuku.

So the conclusion is that "There will be many years ahead when central banks will have government and other bonds on their balance sheets. The accumulation of such substantial holdings was warranted only by the crisis situation that confronted central banks. It is difficult to know at present what the new “normal” size of such holdings will be. How quickly central banks reduce their bond portfolio will depend on (unknown) macroeconomic or financial developments over the next several years."

That's it, folks, the drunk will have to be primed with whisky for years ahed, lest he wakes up with a horrific hangover. That's the 'solution' to the 'exit' dilemma.

And this might not even solve the problem either. Here is why. Per Turner: "Could central bank sales or purchases of government bonds become viewed as a second policy instrument once monetary policy begins be tightened? Policies of Quantitative Tightening could well moderate any increase in the policy rate." In other words, can Central Banks hold off sales of government paper to allow higher liquidity in the system to offset interest rates increases?

Not so fast: "…one practical difficulty is that it is impossible to quantify how bond markets would react to central bank sales. Using estimates based on past experience of the policies that change the volume and maturity of government debt to be sold (such as those mentioned above) fail to take account of signalling effects. News of central bank selling even on a modest scale could send markets a signal that is more powerful than the actual sales (“They are testing the water for further, larger sales”). …The hyper-sensitivity of markets to guesses about future central bank sales was very well illustrated over the summer of 2013. The mention by Chairman Bernanke of what should have been obvious – that at some point the Fed would reduce the pace of its purchases – wreaked havoc in global bond markets … even with the very clear commitment of the Fed to keep short-term rates close to zero for a considerable time. The size and spread of this market adjustment suggest that many investors had highly leveraged positions."

What about the option of just allowing bonds to mature, thus preventing the need for sales? As Turner points out, this still will not be a neutral policy choice. "It would mean central bank balance sheets remaining large beyond 2020. And it would also mean that the timing of shrinking – which would have effects on financial markets and the macroeconomy – would depend only on the pattern of past purchases and be quite independent of future economic conditions. It could even continue into the next recession." Ah, the dreaded bit no one mentions at all, but the BIS grim reaper… the next recession. You know, while all Governments and Central Banks keep droning on about the next expansion, one has to remember the simply fact of nature: there will be another recession. And given the duration of the current anaemic recovery, it might arrive well before the economies have fully recovered from the previous shock.


Where's me parachute?.. cause this saucer is increasing looking likely to crash.

Friday, November 29, 2013

29/11/2013: McKinsey estimates of QE effects on economies


Recent paper by McKinsey Global Institute, published November 2013 and titled "QE and ultra-low interest rates: Distributional effects and risks" looked at the effects of exceptional monetary policy measures implemented by the central banks in the US, the UK, Japan and the euro area since 2007.

"More than five years [since the beginning of the crisis] …central banks are still using conventional monetary tools to cut short-term interest rates to near zero and, in tandem, are deploying unconventional tools to provide liquidity and credit market facilities to banks, undertaking large-scale asset purchases—or quantitative easing (QE)—and attempting to influence market expectations by signaling future policy through forward guidance. These measures, along with a lack of demand for credit given the global recession, have contributed to a decline in real and nominal interest rates to ultra-low levels that have been sustained over the past five years."



The "ultra-low interest rates have produced significant distributional effects if we focus exclusively on the impact on interest income and interest expense." as the result:


McKinsey's core findings include:

  • ƒ"Between 2007 and 2012, ultra-low interest rates produced large distributional effects on different sectors in advanced economies through changes in interest income and ...expense."
  • "By the end of 2012, governments in the US, the UK, and the Eurozone had collectively benefited by $1.6 trillion, through both reduced debt service costs and increased profits remitted from central banks."
  • "Meanwhile, households in these countries together lost $630 billion in net interest income, with variations in the impact among demographic groups. Younger households that are net borrowers have benefited, while older households with significant interest-bearing assets have lost income."
  • "Non-financial corporations across these countries benefited by $710 billion through lower debt service costs."
It is worth noting that the McKinsey study does not account for the effects of reduced unemployment and shallower recessions that were attributed to the deployment of the monetary policies. Neither does the study account for the effects of higher taxation levied by the Governments on households.

Banking sector effects identified in the study are:

  • "The era of ultra-low interest rates has eroded the profitability of banks in the Eurozone. Effective net interest margins for Eurozone banks have declined significantly, and their cumulative loss of net interest income totaled $230 billion between 2007 and 2012."
  • "...Banks in the US have experienced an increase in effective net interest margins as interest paid on deposits and other liabilities has declined more than interest received on loans and other assets. From 2007 to 2012, the net interest income of US banks increased cumulatively by $150 billion."
  • "Over this period, therefore, there has been a divergence in the competitive positions of US and European banks."
  • "The experience of UK banks falls between these two extremes."

Financial companies and assets:

  • "Life insurance companies, particularly in several European countries, are being squeezed by ultra-low interest rates. Those insurers that offer customers guaranteed-rate products are finding that government bond yields are below the rates being paid to customers."
  • Obviously, not a word about the vast financial repression sweeping across the financial sector, especially in the euro area, which is seeing assets seized for 'tax raising' etc.
  • But a stern warning: "If the low interest-rate environment were to continue for several more years, many of these insurers would find their survival threatened."
  • And, not stated but on everyone's mind: if the low interest-rate environment were to come to an end, wholesale bankruptcy of household and corporate financial balance sheets will do miracles to the economies too...
  • Per McKinsey: "The impact of ultra-low rate monetary policies on financial asset prices is ambiguous. Bond prices rise as interest rates decline, and, between 2007 and 2012, the value of sovereign and corporate bonds in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Eurozone increased by $16 trillion."
  • "But we found little conclusive evidence that ultra-low interest rates have boosted equity markets. Although announcements about changes to ultra-low rate policies do spark short-term market movements in equity prices, these movements do not persist in the long term. Moreover, there is little evidence of a large-scale shift into equities as part of a search for yield. Price-earnings ratios and price-book ratios in stock markets are no higher than long-term averages."

Households:

  • "Ultra-low interest rates are likely to have bolstered house prices, although the impact in the United States has been dampened by structural factors in the market. At the end of 2012, house prices may have been as much as 15 percent higher in the United States and the United Kingdom than they otherwise would have been without ultra-low interest rates, as these rates reduce the cost of borrowing."
  • "If one accepts that house prices and bond prices are higher today than they otherwise would have been as a result of ultra-low interest rates, the increase in household wealth and possible additional consumption it has enabled would far outweigh the income lost to households. However, while the net interest income effect is a tangible influence on household cash flows, additional consumption that comes from rising wealth is less certain, particularly since asset prices remain below their peak in most markets. It is also difficult today for households to borrow against the increase in wealth that came through rising asset prices."
Summary of the effects:

Thursday, September 5, 2013

5/9/2013: ECB Boldly Goes Nowhere... again

The longer it lasts, the uglier it gets... ECB stays put (predictably) on rates today is adding 57th month that the policy rates are deviating from the historical mean, with the 'hill' to mean reversion getting steeper:



Currently, mean-reversion implies an almost 200bps hike without overshooting. Factoring in historical overshooting, we are into 250-300bps territory. Good luck thinking that 'gentle' tapering or 'gradual' restoration or whatever else you might call it going to be painless...

Oh, and for all of this, what do we have on the rates side?


At least, for its pain, the Fed has boldly gone where no one, save for Japan, have travelled before when it comes to rates. Euro area, meanwhile, has been playing chicken with itself...

Thursday, August 22, 2013

22/8/2013: Burry the Debt... Forever!

Pierre Pâris, Charles Wyplosz, 6 August 2013 column for Vox.eu, titled "To end the Eurozone crisis, bury the debt forever" is a perfect referencing point for my thinking on the debt crisis. Read it here: http://www.voxeu.org/article/end-eurozone-crisis-bury-debt-forever

Synopsis: "The Eurozone’s debt crisis is getting worse despite appearances to the contrary. How can we end it? This column presents five major options for reducing crisis countries’ debt. Looking into the details, it seems the only option that is both realistic and effective is for countries to default by selling monetised debt to the ECB. Moral hazard aside, burying the debt seems to be the only way we can end the crisis".

Can't say it better myself!

22/8/2013: Why This Time Things Might Be Different...

The readers of this blog know that I am seriously concerned with the issues of private (household) debt sustainability in the Euro area, as well as in other advanced economies around the world. In fact, my (simplified or stylised) POV on the current crisis is that we have now reached the point of long-term saturation with leverage and this is the main driver for the current Great Recession.

In a normal recession, deleveraging by one side of the economy is accommodated by leveraging up in another. For example, in a Keynesian policy set up, deleveraging of the households and non-financial corporates is accommodated by leveraging up of the fiscal side of the GDP equation. In a monetary policy setting, deleveraging of fiscal / public sector side is accommodated by lowering debt costs and thus increasing credit to the private economy. Lastly, in a normal balancesheet recession, both side of the economy can be helped in deleveraging by a combination of two policies accommodation.

In the current Great Recession, neither one of the three approaches above can work, unless at least one approach directly reduces debt levels - either via a sovereign default/writedown or a private sector writedown on a systemic scale. The reasons for this are two-fold:

  1. Too much debt on all lines of the economic balancesheet: fiscal, household, NFCs and, thus, banks means that lowering the cost of debt financing is not sufficient to deliver signifcant enough room for new debt expansion; and
  2. With emerging markets and middle income economies showing increasingly South-South internalised trade and investment flows patterns, the advanced economies are witnessing structural reductions in the pools of surplus (investable) savings available to them - the effect that is compounded by the adverse demographics in these economies. This means that monetary policy accommodation is funding the liquidity in the financial markets, where normally it would have been going to fund real activity.
In short, debt is the source of the crisis this time around, not the solution to the crisis as in previous recessions. And it is a proverbial perfect storm, as it comes on foot of demographic decline coincident with severe fiscal crises. The resulting squeeze on pensions in the advanced economies and on other age-related public services is yet to come.

Here is an interesting view on the continued crisis dynamics in the area of household debts in the US (with an ample warning for the rest of the advanced world) from Michael Hudson: http://www.alternet.org/economy/big-threat-economy-private-debt-and-interest-owed-it-not-government-debt (H/T to @rszbt Beate Reszat).

Saturday, August 17, 2013

17/8/2013: Long-Term Great Unwinding for ECB?..


On foot of David Rosenberg's pressie on Long-Term Inflation strategy switch (link here), here's the ECB Monetary Policy dilemma illustrated.

First, the steep hill 'walking':


Per chart above, the wind-in-your-face breezing down the interest rates slopes for ECB is more severe than the Fed trip so far. And the duration of this episode is longer in the ECB-own historical context:


In fact, we are into 55th month now of staying away from the mean and that is for the euro era (already too-low by historical metrics) mean. Last two episodes of deviations lasted 30 and 33 months respectively. In severity terms: average overshooting post-revision in previous downward episode (June 2003 - June 2006) was -46 bps and in this period (since March 2009) it is currently running at -146 bps or 317% of the previous episode.

Good luck to anyone believing that ECB policy (repo) rate is not going to head for 3.75-4.0%...