Credit Writedowns Pro

The last few days have made clear that monetary policy is having less and less impact as time goes along.In particular, the latest salvos from the Bank of Japan smack of desperation, as if BOJ Governor Kuroda has decided to throw everything but the kitchen sink into his grab bag of unorthodox monetary policy. Because the Bank of Japan is so far along the curve toward both secular stagnation and unorthodox policy to counteract that slowing, we should pay attention to how their experiments go. I do not expect good results.

I haven’t posted much recently – mostly because there haven’t been many developments economically that change my macro view. We still live in a slow growth world, where recession is not the base case n the US, the UK, or the eurozone. And none of the data we have seen in the last few weeks has changed that path.

The Bank of England has cut interest rates and started a quantitative easing program that includes both government and corporate bonds. This approach was enough to send the pound Sterling down to $1.31 and 10-year gilt rates to a record low of 0.677%. While I reiterate my previous bullish views on Anglo-Saxon long rates, US dollar strength and on the UK […]

Stocks have mostly recovered since Brexit and the strong dollar and Yen have reversed much of their overvaluation in recent days. The question remains as to what the fallout from the UK’s departure from the EU will be. I continue to believe the near-term economic impact will be muted, and that Brexit will come to be seen as mostly a political event. But it is a political event with wide-reaching potential ramifications.

As the Brexit worries began two weeks ago, I flagged Italian banks – more than the UK economy – as one of my principle concerns, because of the potential to cause systemic damage to the euro system. And now the contagion is spreading, with Deutsche Bank the most obvious weak link. The question now is twofold. First, does the Italian banking crisis solve itself without a major overhaul of EU institutional arrangements. Second, if not, how does the EU solve this problem? Some brief thoughts below.

This is going to be a quick post to update you on where I think things are headed now that we have the two final candidates for UK Prime Minister. My overall view continues to be that the base case is for a moderate negative economic, assuaged by currency, fiscal and monetary offsets, causing the UK to avoid recession but with longer-term hits to growth from trade frictions and a loss to jobs in the financial sector. The issues now are immigration, the timing of the invocation of Article 50 and the single market.

At this juncture, the leading candidates for British Prime Minister are both women on either side of the referendum vote. However, both are saying they will guide the UK out of the European Union. Meanwhile Chancellor George Osborne’s fiscal stimulus looks set to concentrate on lowering corporate tax, which will continue to widen the income gulf, a major contributor to the vote to leave the EU. Markets have stabilized with the Pound taking the brunt of the post-Brexit fallout.

UK Chancellor Osborne has now abandoned his 2020 budget surplus target. Combine this with the dovish statements by Bank of England governor Mark Carney yesterday and you can see some serious policy changes in play to minimize the near-term downside risk. But, of course the risks to the UK are longer-term and the near-term risks are mostly elsewhere in the global economy. I continue to believe this favours safe assets i.e. government bonds.

This is a quick run through of the post-Brexit vote decision tree. The opportunities and constraints after the UK vote to leave the EU are now coming into view. It is clear that the UK is likely to leave the EU given not only statements by Prime Minister Cameron but also the Home Secretary Theresa May, both of whom campaigned for ‘Remain’. But it is also clear that the EU will not broker formal or informal discussions with the UK until the UK has invoked Article 50, which can only be done by an act of Parliament. Below, I want to run through some of the constraints in order to build a few scenarios that I see as possible now that we are a week into the post-Brexit era.

The unexpected ‘Leave’ victory in the recent referendum on EU membership introduces considerable political risk by elevating tail risk scenarios to reasonable worst case status. However, in a global economy that is already slow and already lacks policy space, the referendum outcome also introduces economic and financial risk. Below I have some general thoughts on those risks, with the US dollar, Italian banks, and Japanese deflation foremost among them. At a later point, I hope to also go into some more detailed scenario handicapping.

As I start this post, I am naming it “Why I’m on US recession watch despite 2% growth”. I don’t know if that name will stick when I publish this piece; nonetheless, that is the theme I am trying to get across. When I look at the economic data, it shows a near-term in the 2% growth range – stall speed or slightly below. But when I look at the same data for medium-term clues, I still see reasons to be concerned, and, therefore, I continue to be on recession watch. Finally, I am not at all sure the Fed sees the picture as I do. December was a policy mistake. And I can’t rule out others going forward.

I’ve been following the Fed’s forward guidance recently and, frankly, I find it confused. On the one hand, it was a clear mistake to have raised rates in December. We see this now in retrospect due to the tightening of financial conditions that policy divergence , a strong dollar and the collapse of oil prices had wrought in January and February. The Fed recognized the shift and backpedaled on its ‘promise’ of 300 basis points of rate hikes through 2018. But, now that financial conditions have eased, the Fed is back to talking up rate hikes yet again – this, despite a flattening yield curve.