Saturday, October 31, 2015

Financial Inclusion Sweden Edition: From Banks to Microwaves

The Philippine government, mainly through the BSP, has been pursuing measures to promote allegedly “inclusive growth” via “Financial inclusion”—which is the formalization of the finances of the informal sector through formal financial institutions supervised by the central bank. [In my view, this represents a subtle war on the informal sector, as a first step]

The Swedish government’s recent actions have taken financial inclusion to more advanced levels, they reveal of what financial inclusion has truly been about—financial repression at its finest! Said differently, the Swedish experience reveals its real purpose...the outright confiscation of society's resources!

The Swedish experience have not been limited to only negative interest rates (and the recent QE4) but on efforts to push for a cashless society through…what else….the abolition of cash! 

A cashless society should be a nirvana for central bankers as they would be in total control of everyone’s resources!

I have posted a similar version earlier but my emphasis was on the war on interest rates.

Austrian economist David Howden at the Mises Blog has a trenchant insight on the Swedish government’s ongoing 'war on cash'. (bold added)
It used to be that central banks were constrained in setting monetary policy by the zero lower bound. Nominal interest rates cannot fall below zero because people would just hold cash under their mattresses instead.

Of course, if the existence of cash is getting in the way of monetary policy why not just eliminate cash completely? 

Sweden is the first country to experiment with negative interest rates in a cashless society. 


Although retail banks have yet to pass on that negative to rate to Swedish consumers, the longer it’s held there the more financial pressure there is for banks to pass the costs onto their customers. That’s a problem because Sweden is the closest country on the planet to becoming an all-electronic cashless society. 

Remember, Sweden is the place where, if you use too much cash, banks call the police because they think you might be a terrorist or a criminal. Swedish banks have started removing cash ATM machines from rural areas, annoying old people and farmers. Credit Suisse says the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is: “If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong.” 

Ironically, this latest episode of the war on cash has benefitted one sector of the economy: microwaves. 

A resistance is forming, and some people are protesting the impending extinction of cash. Björn Eriksson, former head of Sweden’s national police and now head of Säkerhetsbranschen, a lobbying group for the security industry, told The Local, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.” 

Let´s hope that using a microwave doesn´t come to be seen as a suspicious act warranting a call to the police in Sweden.
Well, a “resistance is forming” and microwaves as household cash vaults/boxes are simply symptoms of financial inclusion morphing into financial exclusion. 

And the escalation of political crackdown on people's savings through cash, directly and indirectly, will only fuel more opposition. 

Oh, expect an economic-financial downturn or a crisis to intensify governments everywhere to push for a war on cash, and equally, the vehemence of its drawback.

And that emerging “resistance” movement may be ventilated in politics (first as lobby, then on the streets) as the public will most likely take on other unorthodox options to preserve one’s savings.

Think foreign currency (for the average Swedes, instead of the krona, they may save in "cash" in their household "microwaves" through the euro, the pound, the US dollar), bitcoins and or gold/precious metals. Local physical currency alternatives may also emerge in parallel with the krona.

Financial repression will only push people out of the formal institutions.

Friday, October 30, 2015

Asian Crisis Watch: Taiwan’s 3Q GDP Contracts, Government Launches Stimulus

Impact from a strong USD, China’s economic slump and domestic property bubble? 

From Focus Taiwan:
Taiwan's gross domestic product (GDP) recorded a negative year-on-year growth of 1.01 percent in the third quarter of the year, failing to meet a government forecast of 0.1 percent growth, according to government data released Friday.

The Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said that the third-quarter GDP figure was the lowest since the second quarter of 2009, when the country's economy fell 1.24 percent from a year earlier amid a global financial crisis.

The GDP data for the July-September period reflected a poor export performance resulting from weak global demand and worse-than-expected domestic demand, the DGBAS said. 

In August, the DGBAS predicted a year-on-year GDP growth of 0.1 percent for the three-month period.

After seasonal adjustments, the country's third-quarter GDP registered a 0.05 percent quarterly growth.
Exports Down…
In the third quarter, Taiwan's merchandise exports fell 13.86 percent from a year earlier in U.S. dollar terms, with outbound sales of electronics devices, the backbone of the country's exports, down 7.88 percent.

After inflationary adjustments, Taiwan's real goods and services exports in the July-September period dropped 2.85 percent year-on-year, missing an earlier projection of a 0.39 percent increase.

In the three month period, Taiwan's real merchandise and services imports fell 1.47 percent from a year earlier, missing the projected 1.64 percent increase by a wide mark. The DGBAS said the weaker exports and imports dragged down the entire GDP growth by 1.11 percentage points for the third quarter.

Slower outbound sales resulted in lower income, which affected private consumption in the third quarter, the DGBAS said. Private consumption in the third quarter grew only 0.89 percent year-on-year, far short of the estimated 2.94 percent increase, the government agency said.
And so with domestic investments…
It said capital formation, which includes public and private investments, fell 1.25 percent from a year earlier, missing an earlier government forecast of a 0.04 percent increase.

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The firming USD relative to Taiwan's Dollar as seen in the US/TWD chart above from investing.com
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Taiwan’s annual GDP crumbled during the past 2 Quarters

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With exports down, manufacturing have also shrank in 4 months from May to August

Retail sales (year on year) have been in contraction from July to September

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Loan growth has been in a cascade.

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And with loan growth down, property inflation has turned the corner. The annual housing growth rates and the nominal index exhibits this downshift.

In fear of a bubble, part of the slowdown has been due to property curbs too imposed by the national government, according to Global Property Guide and  by DBS
 
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Taiwan’s stock market, as measured by the TWSE, entered the bear market zone last August 2015 (down 25% peak to trough). 

The ‘bad news is good news’ rally which powered the TWSE away from the bear market still shows the index down by 14% from the August bottoms.

And so, Taiwan’s government have  been in a dilemma.

All these market and economic signals had earlier prompted Taiwan’s central bank to cut policy interest rate last September the first since 2011.

And like any conventional pious Keynesian abiding government, the response on the economic contraction has been to use politics: a NT $4 Billion (USD $123 million) stimulus. Political solution to economic problems.

From another Focus Taiwan article
The Cabinet on Friday announced a series of short-term stimulus measures, including subsidies for the purchase of energy-efficient home appliances and for domestic travel, in a bid to boost Taiwan's flagging economy.

The package, which will be effective Nov. 7 to Feb. 29, also includes a subsidy for buyers who replace their second-generation (2G) cell phone with a 4G smartphone.

The measures were announced by Premier Mao Chi-kuo at a press conference, which was attended by Vice Premier Chang San-cheng and other top officials.

It is estimated that the package will cost the government NT$4 billion and add NT$1.54 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP). Money needed for the measures will come from the Cabinet's special reserve fund so Legislative approval is not required.

The measures include a subsidy of NT$2,000 per person for the purchase of air conditioners, refrigerators, television sets or water heaters certified with Grade 1 or Grade 2 energy-efficiency performance.
And political response almost always fixates at the short term.

But if the political fixes fail, and the downturn is sustained, economic contraction will imply of the amplification of financial losses that would have ramifications on the credit channel. And increased credit woes will boomerang back on economic activities. The escalation of the feedback mechanism may lead to insolvencies. And snowballing insolvencies heighten the risks of a crisis.

Will economic contraction be limited  to Taiwan? Or will other nations within the region suffer the same dynamic wherein Taiwan leads the pack? Singapore barely escaped a technical 3Q GDP recession.

Interesting turn of events.

 


Negative Interest Rates: Has Money Lost its Value?

Agora Publishing head Bill Bonner at Bonner and Partners explains
A negative nominal interest rate – meaning a negative rate before you account for inflation – implies an odd world…

…maybe even a world that cannot really exist.

To lend at less than zero suggests you believe the present value of money is less than its future value – in other words, deflation. And you must assume that the risk of default or inflation is near zero.

This allows the Italians to go out and build roads or pay pensions with money that cost them less than nothing.

How long this will last, we don’t know. But as long as rates remain below zero (and they could go lower!) money is not just free… it’s a cost not to borrow!

Imagine you are buying a house. (Now, you can see the mischief afoot!) If lenders are willing to grant a loan at a negative nominal interest rate that’s secured by nothing more than the full faith and credit of the Italian government, then lenders should surely be willing to extend credit to you against the value of your house.

That would leave you with a curious mortgage – one that pays you interest. At the Italian rate, a $1-million house would come with an extra income of about $19.16 a month.

This raises profound metaphysical issues. If a mortgage carries negative interest, it implies that the house (an equal capital value) also has negative value.

After all, you have to pay someone to live in it. And if houses are worth less than nothing, we have to wonder what a car is worth… or a diamond ring… or a luxury cruise?

Does that mean that money has no value? Or even negative value?

After all, you can no longer give it to someone in exchange for a positive interest payment. Now you must pay him to store it for you, as though it were furniture that won’t fit in your house. You don’t like it anymore. But you don’t have the heart to throw it away.

And if money has no value, what happens when you hire, say, a gardener to pull out weeds? Should you pay him? Or should he pay you? How many hours should he have to work for you before you consent to take his money?

The whole thing is so contrary to nature we gasp when we think of it. We are flummoxed.

But you are a smart person, dear reader: Maybe you can figure it out for us.

The Strange Case of Sweden

This is all prelude to taking up the strange case of Sweden…

All we know about Sweden is what we learned by watching the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

And all we learned from that was that Swedes tend to be murderers, sadists, lesbians, and pock-marked wimps.

Maybe that accounts for the torturous financial system the Swedes are creating.

Reports Business Insider:

Sweden is shaping up to be the first country to plunge its citizens into a fascinating – and terrifying – economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society.

The Swedish central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, on Wednesday held its benchmark interest rate at -0.35%, the level it has been at since July.

Though retail banks have yet to pass that negative rate on to Swedish consumers, they face increased pressure to do so as long as the rates remain where they are. That’s a problem, because Sweden is the closest country on the planet to becoming an all-electronic cashless society.

Remember, Sweden is the place where, if you use too much cash, banks call the police because they think you might be a terrorist or a criminal. Swedish banks have started removing cash ATMs from rural areas, annoying old people and farmers. Credit Suisse says the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is: “If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong.”

A resistance is forming, and some people are protesting the impending extinction of cash. Björn Eriksson, former head of Sweden’s national police and now head of Säkerhetsbranschen, a lobbying group for the security industry, told The Local, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.”

Alert readers will recognize this negative interest story as one we have been following. We believe it won’t be long before we have negative rates in the U.S., too.

The feds will pivot to even stricter controls on cash to gain more control over the economy and practically unlimited power to tax and spend – without congressional approval.

Sweden is ahead of the U.S. feds on this one. We can only hope it goes far ahead, fast, and blows itself up before the U.S. pivots down that path, too.
Negative interest rates are now being combined with the "war on cash" to ensure the capture of resources by the government and their cronies.

All these as warned by the great Austrian economist in his magnum opus "Human Action" in 1940 or 75 years back.
Public opinion is prone to see in interest nothing but a merely institutional obstacle to the expansion of production. It does not realize that the discount of future goods as against present goods is a necessary and eternal category of human action and cannot be abolished by bank manipulation. In the eyes of cranks and demagogues, interest is a product of the sinister machinations of rugged exploiters. The age-old disapprobation of interest has been fully revived by modern interventionism. It clings to the dogma that it is one of the foremost duties of good government to lower the rate of interest as far as possible or to abolish it altogether. All present-day governments are fanatically committed to an easy money policy.
The result of which would be... 
The wavelike movement affecting the economic system, the recurrence of periods of boom which are followed by periods of depression, is the unavoidable outcome of the attempts, repeated again and again, to lower the gross market rate of interest by means of credit expansion. There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Quote of the Day: Two Kinds of Refugees, People and Money

Money will flee areas where it is repressed just as people will flee areas where they are repressed. Capital controls can be seen as the monetary analogy of the Berlin Wall. Capital controls are indications of a failed economic system that benefits the politically connected elite at the expense of the people.
This is from Austrian economist Patrick Barron at the Ludwig von Mises Canada in a comment on China's underground banks

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Sweden’s Central Bank Launches QE4, Norway’s Wealth Fund Suffers Biggest Loss and China’s Steel Demand Slumps at Unprecedented Speed

Why are central bankers around the world in a panic?

From Bloomberg: (bold mine)
The Riksbank expanded its bond-purchase plan for a fourth time since February as policy makers in Sweden struggle to keep pace with stimulus measures in the euro zone.

The quantitative easing program was raised by 65 billion kronor ($7.6 billion). The bank opted to keep the benchmark repo rate at minus 0.35 percent, as estimated by 13 of the 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Two had foreseen a cut.

“There is still considerable uncertainty regarding the strength of the global economy and central banks abroad are expected to pursue an expansionary monetary policy for a longer time,” the Riksbank said in a statement on Wednesday. “An initial raise in the rate will be deferred by approximately six months compared with the previous assessment.”

How low can the Riksbank go?
Since the European Central Bank signaled last week it may expand an already historic stimulus program as early as December, policy makers outside the euro zone have girded for the next stage of a currency war that few have adequate tools to fight. The Riksbank’s expanded QE program means it will have purchased 200 billion kronor in bonds by the end of June 2016, it said.

“The Riksbank is haunted by the krona and a soft ECB,” Torbjoern Isaksson, an economist at Nordea, said by phone. Nordea will probably stick to its forecast that the Riksbank will lower its repo rate further in December, Isaksson says.
When central banks panic, this represents a Pavlovian classical conditioning signal for the greater fools to indulge in a buying mania of risk assets

chart from Zero Hedge

Aside from stocks, the previous easing by the Riksbank has only been inflating Sweden’s incredible housing bubble.

Yet all the easing by the central bankers seem to have failed to do its wonders even in stocks. One of the unfortunate casualty is a government fund.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund reportedly suffered its biggest loss in four years. From another Bloomberg report (bold mine)
The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund posted its biggest loss in four years, dragged down by Chinese stocks and Volkswagen AG, just as the Norwegian government prepares to make its first ever withdrawals to plug budget deficits.

The $860 billion fund lost 273 billion kroner ($32 billion) in the third quarter, or 4.9 percent, the Oslo-based investor said on Wednesday. Its stock holdings declined 8.6 percent, while it posted a 0.9 percent gain on bonds and a 3 percent return on real estate. It was the first back-to-back quarterly loss in six years.

“We have to expect fluctuations in the value of the fund when there are large movements in the market,” said Yngve Slyngstad, its chief executive officer. “With the fund as big as it is today, this can have a considerable impact in the short term. The fund has a long-term horizon, however, and is in a good position to ride out short-term volatility.”

The period was marked by turbulence as worries of a China slowdown and prospects of a U.S. rate increase wiped trillions of dollars off the value of global markets. The MSCI World Index lost 9 percent while the MSCI Emerging Markets Index plunged 19 percent in the quarter. The selloff was exacerbated by a rout in commodities.

The fund had a loss of 21.3 percent on Chinese stocks in the period and 16.6 percent on its emerging market equities.
New capital transferred to Norway's sovereign wealth fund
To compound on the woes of the Norwegian government, the growing budget gap as consequence of low oil prices and high social spending would probably lead to a drawdown by the government on her wealth fund. So the fund's 'long term horizon' may never occur.
From CNBC:
The signs are worrying: For the first time ever, Norway announced plans to tap its fund to make up for lost oil revenues earlier this month.

The country plans on withdrawing around $450 million from the fund which had $820 billion under management as of the end of June of this year.

While this is not a massive slice of the pie, analysts are worried that the behemoth fund's days of stellar growth may be numbered especially with oil prices predicted to stay low for longer and the $100 per barrel price tag something of a distant memory.

The fund, officially called the Government Pension Fund Global, has accumulated over 25 years of investing oil revenues, making headlines at the start of last year when it rose to 5.11 trillion Norwegian crowns, which at the time was worth $828.66 billion. This meant every person in Norway became a theoretical crown millionaire for the first time thanks to strong oil and gas prices.

Sovereign wealth funds control around $7 trillion of assets, largely created through investing natural resource revenues. After Norway, oil rich Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia manage in the region of $770 billion and $670 billion respectively, according to data from Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.

Norway's economy is currently not under any strain due to soundly managed finances according to economists. But with 40 percent of Norway's exports coming from oil and gas and oil prices down 60 percent since last summer, the fund has come under pressure.
Everything is interconnected. 

The losses of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has been partly due to her exposure on Chinese risk assets. The Riksbank’s QE has been in response to the global economy also due to the rapid slowing of Chinese economy.

Yet deepening economic troubles continue haunt China.

According to a honcho of a big Chinese steel firms, demand for steel has slumped at an ‘unprecedented’ rate.

From another Bloomberg report (bold mine)
If anyone doubted the magnitude of the crisis facing the world’s largest steel industry, listening to Zhu Jimin would put them right, fast.

Demand is collapsing along with prices, banks are tightening lending and losses are stacking up, the deputy head of the China Iron & Steel Association said on Wednesday.

“Production cuts are slower than the contraction in demand, therefore oversupply is worsening,” said Zhu at a quarterly briefing in Beijing by the main producers’ group. “Although China has cut interest rates many times recently, steel mills said their funding costs have actually gone up.”
Behold the central bank magic! Instead of easing, funding costs goes up!

More…
China’s mills -- which produce about half of worldwide output -- are battling against oversupply and sinking prices as local consumption shrinks for the first time in a generation amid a property-led slowdown. The fallout from the steelmakers’ struggles is hurting iron ore prices and boosting trade tensions as mills seek to sell their surplus overseas. Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. forecast last week that China’s steel production may eventually shrink 20 percent, matching the experience seen in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“China’s steel demand evaporated at unprecedented speed as the nation’s economic growth slowed,” Zhu said. “As demand quickly contracted, steel mills are lowering prices in competition to get contracts.”

Making Losses
Medium- and large-sized mills incurred losses of 28.1 billion yuan ($4.4 billion) in the first nine months of this year, according to a statement from CISA. Steel demand in China shrank 8.7 percent in September on-year, it said.

Signs of corporate difficulties are mounting. Producer Angang Steel Co. warned this month it expects to swing to a loss in the third quarter on lower product prices and foreign-exchange losses. The company’s Hong Kong stock has lost more than half its value this year. Last week, Sinosteel Co., a state-owned steel trader, failed to pay interest due on bonds maturing in 2017.

Crude steel output in the country fell 2.1 percent to 608.9 million tons in the first nine months of this year, while exports jumped 27 percent to 83.1 million tons, official data show. Steel rebar futures in Shanghai sank to a record on Wednesday as local iron ore prices fell to a three-month low.
Losses and unwieldy debt will have a feedback mechanism that escalates on the already dire conditions.

And more of China’s ‘epic bubble’ as shown in charts from the Bloomberg… (bold mine)

Companies with less cash than short-term debt, net losses and contracting revenue have jumped to 200, according to the filings through June 30 compiled by Bloomberg from firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. About half are in the commodities sector while about 20 percent are industrial companies. A maker of carbon materials used in batteries is among borrowers that may have trouble repaying obligations by year end, Guotai Junan Securities Co. said….

Desperate for yield, the mania on bonds intensifies
Investors are chasing lower-rated bonds after the central bank cut interest rates six times in a year. That’s dragged down the extra yield on five-year AA graded corporate securities over government notes to 196 basis points, near the lowest in five years. Brokerages including Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. and Industrial Securities have warned that the exuberance may be creating a bubble.

The rise in corporate debt loads is outpacing economic expansion. Borrowings by companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges jumped 22.7 percent in the most recent filings compared with the end of last year, exceeding the 6.8 percent economic growth for 2015 that analysts surveyed by Bloomberg forecast.
You see, these are great reasons to panic buy risk assets. Who knows, these frantic measures by central banks may just spark the much awaited miracle. It’s been a long wait since though. Central banks have been easing since late 2008. And in nearly 7 years, instead of stability, we see more signs of instability which is why we go back to square: Central banks freaking out!

Of course, if central banks fail, well then, the fool and his money are soon parted.

Quote of the Day: Is Man Wolf or Sheep?


So, which is it? Is man wolf or sheep? Paradoxically, it seems he is both. He’s a wolf to his fellow man, but a sheep when it comes to obeying other wolves. Perhaps this explains why so many notorious school bullies are themselves victims of bullying.

Unfortunately, the very nature of sheep is that they lack principle and courage. They want to avoid thinking about the fact that the wolf is a killer who can be restrained from devouring sheep only through the use of force. As a result, history has been written in blood and violence. 

Against this backdrop, it takes a strong individual not only to hold convictions that are in opposition to the majority, but to stick with those convictions and ignore the lemming parade as it passes his door. The sad truth is that such an individual can’t do much to put an end to the brute force that is used time and again to bend man’s will.

But what he can do is use his free will to stick to a personal moral code of nonaggression and refuse to go along with the evil actions of others — including, and especially, those of institutional leaders. Through his exercise of free will, he can choose to be vigilant about not allowing himself to become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

If you are among the minority who are able to accomplish this on a consistent basis, I congratulate you for your heroic efforts. We each have to save our own souls before we can begin to figure out a way to save the masses from the wolves.
This excerpt is from an article of self development author Robert Ringer at his website

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Phisix 7,250: Breakout on Shrinking Volume, Media Mounts Elaborate PR Campaign on the Property Sector, Why?

Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used, not to convey facts or even allegations of facts, but simply to arouse emotions. Undefined words are a big handicap in logic, but they are a big plus in politics, where the goal is not clarity but victory — and the votes of gullible people count just as much as the votes of people who have common sense.—Thomas Sowell

In this issue

Phisix 7,250: Breakout on Shrinking Volume, Media Mounts Elaborate PR Campaign on the Property Sector, Why?
-Real Estate “Barber” Jones Lang LaSalle Sees ‘No Bubble’; But They Saw No US Bubble in 2007 Too!!!
-Rental Markets Indicate of Developing Price Strains, Global Property Guide Laments Manila’s Ghost Cities!
-Infrastructure, Construction and Property Boom? Where are the Jobs? Why the Price Deflation?
-Phisix 7,250: Gap Filling Breakout on Shrinking Volume, Peso Underperforms Asia
-China’s Government Sixth Interest Rate Cut: It’s NOT a Silver Bullet, It’s a Sign of Panic!

Phisix 7,250: Breakout on Shrinking Volume, Media’s Mounts Elaborate PR Campaign on the Property Sector, Why?

Real Estate “Barber” Jones Lang LaSalle Sees ‘No Bubble’; But They Saw No US Bubble in 2007 Too!!!

If you haven’t noticed, for the last two weeks, mainstream media has mounted what seems as an avalanche of “good news” or a full scale publicity relations campaign to promote the property sector.

Intriguingly, why the sudden media blitz? Have there been strains in the industry to have prompted for this? Has there been an upsurge in skepticism for media to defend the industry by citing ‘experts’, or in reality, insider opinions? Or has sales been stalling?

Well, Warren Buffett once remarked: Don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Mr. Buffett’s “barber” parable was essentially directed at financial entities with hidden agendas or conflict of interests (agency problem).

The New York Times interpreted this quote as a “thinly veiled dig at Wall Street bankers and the perverse incentive system for corporate “advice”[1].

Industry insiders will tend to promote their interests than to candidly tell anyone of the real conditions.

Mr. Buffett’s don’t-ask-the-barber syndrome or the agency problem well applies to the Philippines today. This has been evident not only in the stock market but more importantly in the real estate industry.

The rabid denial of the real problems by projecting past into the future by industry insiders is a manifestation of don’t-ask-the-barber syndrome.

In defense of the industry, one of the last week’s articles cited a representative or an industry spokesperson who claims that because of statistical G-R-O-W-T-H, there is no bubble. In their dismissal of bubble concerns, the international real estate agency, the Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) averred that properties represent “a connection between real income and the value of property”[2]

Really?

So what’s the connection between the sizeable downswing in the domestic formal statistical economy with skyrocketing properties? Or why has G-R-O-W-T-H rates of GDP and of property prices been substantially diverging? Or has the public’s income been growing in similar proportion to the spikes in land prices—25% in Makati CBD year on year and 10.3% in Ortigas during the 1Q—even when statistical GDP decelerated to 5%???? Through how and what means has property values been manifesting real income growth?


Also what explains the streaking slump of prices of everything else in the real economy—as seen through various to government measures: CPI*, general wholesale* and retail, construction materials wholesale and retail*, producers price index—to even money supply growth in the face of rocketing property prices and still double digit bank credit growth? The BSP** and bubble worshippers should reconcile on these divergences. 

[*updated links]
[**The BSP explains in their 3Q inflation report that 2Q GDP was an outcome of “accelerated” consumer spending. Really now? Curiously, prices in the real economy have been collapsing. Unless the demand-supply (price-quantity) curve has been rendered obsolete and or dysfunctional, such sustained price collapse can only be explained as a consequence of a surfeit of supply—even when imports and manufacturing were in doldrums—or a slack in demand or both! Consumer spending growth, where?]

Anyway, property booms have not been signs of real economic booms but of speculative manic punts. Such speculative manias are manifestations of chronic monetary disorder that emerged out of financial repression policies. And speculative manias are representative of malinvestments. And malinvestments or the misallocation of resources are visible through the race to build capacity, based on expectations from an envisioned endless fountain of demand (which for bubble worshipers seem to fall from the heavens) that will only end in tears as theory and as history have always shown.

Some adverse repercussions from a property bubble I raised in 2013[3]:
Property bubbles will hurt both productive sectors and the consumers. Property bubbles increases input costs which reduces profits thereby rendering losses to marginal players but simultaneously rewarding the big players, thus property bubbles discourage small and medium scale entrepreneurship. Property bubbles can be seen as an insidious form of protectionism in favor of the politically privileged elites.

Property bubbles also reduces the disposable income of marginal fixed income earners who will have to pay more for rent and likewise reduces the affordability of housing for the general populace.
So instead of merely dealing with the economics, this time it would seem better to examine the track record of this (property) barber’s previous recommendations.

Question: Did JLL get to accurately identify the previous bubble before it blew up?

I know; past performance may not extrapolate to future outcomes. But past performance can give also us a clue on, not only on the methodology they employ, but also on the ethics practiced by firms or by individuals.

Flashback to the pre-Lehman US crisis.

At the climax of the stock market bubble even as US real estate has been on a descent, in August 2007, the company’s hotel arm predicted a $48 billion boom in hotel dealings for 2007[4]: (bold mine) U.S. hotel deal activity to June has already reached $32 billion, higher than we initially predicted. This represents more than half of the global volume of $56 billion for the same period,' said Kristina Paider, senior vice president of research and marketing for Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. 'One half of the sales of this period were driven by REITs being taken private, and another third was private equity groups buying up real estate as well as management and brands, as seen with Blackstone's recent purchase of Hilton Hotels Corporation.' The 14th edition of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels' Hotel Investor Sentiment Survey ('HISS') highlights investors' ongoing enthusiasm for the hotel sector. It shows that Americas' buyers outnumber sellers by 5:2. Investors indicated upscale hotels as their preferred asset type in 26 of the 29 surveyed markets. The survey also shows that 18.5% of respondents are now expecting to build hotel assets, indicating that investors are being pushed to consider development due to the shortage of available investment stock.

Unfortunately, one year after, or when the 2007 crisis was at its crux the same bullish firm admits[5]: (bold added) For the first nine months of 2008, hotel transaction volume was sluggishespecially in comparison to the rapid-fire buying and selling of 2007. Year-to-date through August 2007, total transaction volume was $36 billion, compared to year-to-date 2008 volume of $7.2 billion, according to Art Adler, CEO–The Americas of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. (By the way the title of the article sourced above had been spot on: “Transactions worse than most predicted”)

Bullish sentiment suddenly turned bearish. Yet the company had been caught blind or was totally clueless!

And it was not just about WRONLY predicting about the hotel industry’s ebullience, they were “Rah! Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-bah!” “no property bubble!” or “This time is different” or “bubble FOREVER!” on the US luxury property m market in 2007[6]: (bold mine)
“The triumph of the glamour cities turns conventional wisdom on its head—for quite a while, experts including Yale's Robert Shiller have been predicting that these cities, having been hyped the most, would likely fall farthest, fastest. The decoupling of national and local real-estate trends, which were once much more closely linked, reflects the lives of the new "superprime" property buyers themselves, roughly 50 percent of whom are expatriates, according to the global-property research firm Jones Lang LaSalle. While globalization has allowed money, but not necessarily people, to roam the world more freely, Cañas and his colleagues are an exception—they float on a cushion of international capital, largely immune to regional concerns, and are flush with cash…With so much money in so many more people's pockets, the demand for luxury housing in the most-sought-after cities has simply outstripped available supply, hence the eye-popping prices. This is especially true in the toniest quarters of these cities, where growth is often double or even triple the over-all city figures. "It's quite an interesting irony that these buyers are globally footloose," says Sue Foxley, head of residential-property research at Jones Lang LaSalle, "because there are probably only 100 streets around the world on their shopping list.
Awesome!

Demand for housing… outstripped available supply…rationalizations that sound familiar today?

What differentiates speculative demand from actual demand? Do they know?


Well in hindsight or in fait accompli, we all know how this turned out. 

The Case Shiller New York Home price Index shows how New York as part of the glamour cities, which supposedly should have “decoupled” from real estate trends, were allegedly “immune to regional concerns”, were “flush with cash” and whose buyers were glorified as “new superprime buyers”, collapsed by about 25%, from its zenith in 2007 to 2010!

What happened to all the rationalizations or romanticization of the bubble?

Yet in the culmination of the crisis (October 2008) the company turned decidedly bearish on UK rental properties[7]: (bold added) Since early spring the world has, of course, gone much further to pot, reflected by the 1800-points drop in the FTSE 100 shares index. That has led rival property agents Jones Lang LaSalle to reach a much gloomier conclusion this month. They say rents for prime properties will fall by 22% by 2010, taking them down to £89.50 per square foot.


Unfortunately, UK’s rental markets turned in the opposite direction from their prognostication, as prime rents zoomed in 2010[8]: “Exacting lending criteria forcing many to rent rather than to buy – rents up over 12% in prime central London from a year ago as corporate letting market rebounds”. The chart above represented the overall rent in UK’s property market.

Such dismal performance in predicting markets’ inflection points reveal that the company seems more concerned about momentum chasing. And momentum chasing means banking or relying on recency bias (or anchoring), as well as, fickle crowd sentiment for their opinion, analysis and corresponding recommendations!

And they look like wonderful practitioners of Keynes’ sound banker principle: A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him

Tersely said, for entities that embrace the sound banker rule, they will NEVER see a bubble; even if the bubble stares at, and or even breathes or huffs and puffs on their faces. Such entities won’t see or know “irrational pricing”, as in pre-2008, because they are shills for irrationality!

After all, pardon the ad hominem, they wouldn’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. So they will go on with the ritual of incantations of an everlasting inflation boom based on selective ‘favorable’ statistics to frame their highly flawed no-bubble premises.

I wouldn’t count on this barber’s credibility.

Rental Markets Indicate of Developing Price Strains, Global Property Guide Laments Manila’s Ghost Cities!

On a similar vein, surprise (!) another article reveals that basic economic laws have been operating in the domestic real estate sector: “Increasing rents in established districts like Makati and Bonifacio Global City (BGC) has prompted a search for other office locations around Metro Manila as well as the provinces[9]”.

Although the article also was intended as another press release for the real estate industry, it unintentionally disclosed of what seems as developing strains from the ongoing price inflation.

The law of demand says that ceteris paribus or given all things constant “as the price of a product increases, quantity demanded falls”. So in application to the local property sector, this means that successive increases in rents has effectively been reducing demand for office locations at established districts like Makati and Bonifacio Global City. So tenant actions are simply manifestations that the law of demand works. Duh!

But another economic law in response to inflation seems also in operation.

Rising rents has impelled office consumers/tenants to resort to the substitution effect. The substitution effect which prods consumers to “replace more expensive items with less costly alternatives” can be seen above as…commercial tenants have been in “search for other office locations around Metro Manila…”!

So the law of demand and the substitution effect have been in motion!

The above anecdote affirms my arguments that severe property inflation in the establishment districts have been putting pressure on profits of BPOs and other office consumers/tenants to prompt them to look or scout for alternatives areas.

This is further evidence of how property bubbles discourage entrepreneurship or diminishes productive economic activities! Absurdly priced assets will reach its existential limits. Bubble exists because prices have been misaligned with real economic conditions in response to policy manipulation of the yield curve!

And the belief that BPOs are insensitive to prices that may affect their profits represents sheer bunkum.

Yet the law of supply tells us that “an increase in price results in an increase in quantity supplied”.

Let us apply this fundamental economic law to current conditions.

Now the critical question is: given the reduced demand due to serial increases in rental prices which supposedly is being ventilated through the ‘substitution effect’, what will happen to the recent skyrocketing of property prices in the “established districts”? How will this affect the “increases in quantity supplied” or massive inventories built within those areas? Will there be a feedback mechanism between prices and the ongoing marginal shift in demand? If so, how will these affect profitability of developers and building operators? How will this also influence their capex plans? Moreover, how will this impact credit profiles, credit risks and general credit conditions?

Such news anecdote tells us that not only have the basic laws of economics been functional, importantly, economics 101 have been signaling escalating problems which is being glossed over, ignored or denied by the cheerleaders of the industry: Debt financed EXCESS capacity!

Yes, it is getting to be a lot more interesting!

To add to the string of pro-property hype, the popular international housing agency, Global Property Guide (GPG) in a confused article but meant to likewise tout on the domestic property sector also says G-R-O-W-T-H should sustain the upside momentum of prices of mostly the upscale property markets.

I say ‘confused’ because they bewail of “Manila’s Ghost Cities” or what they see as developing excess capacity on property markets serving the OFW driven ‘Barrio Fiesta’ middle class segment! They rightly point out that the middle class, powered by OFWs, doesn’t seem to have sufficient incomes to sustain demand from a huge inventory buildup by developers. So they warn of “Ghost cities”. It’s the second time they wrote about ‘Manila’s ghost cities’.

Ironically, in the same report, they say license-to-sell or permits to sell middle class housing spiked by 43% in 2Q 2015 from last year! Yet they see this as good news!

I guess that the GPG haven’t heard that growth rate of OFW remittances have fallen to less than 1% in two consecutive months, July and August (August was even a negative!). So what should happen to all inventories built for the OFW market?

Their ‘confusion’ not only stems from cheering one aspect which paradoxically they lament later, more importantly, they fail to see that one segment’s problem will eventually affect the other segments of the same sector that may also spillover to the other industries. For instance, some of the biggest developers cater to both high and mid end markets!

Furthermore, since properties are heavily financed by leverage or substantially rely on credit, one sector’s woes will the same contagion dynamics through the credit channel.

After all, the economy is complexly interfaced or interconnected.

More importantly, reliance on merely statistics to project demand can be a dicey proposition. The statistical economy is NOT the same as real economic activities. The statistical economy is supposed to represent estimates of actual performance. Because they are only estimates, they are subject to statistical deviation or errors.

Additionally, not only can statistical G-R-O-W-T-H be inflated to suit political goals of the incumbent leaders, statistical growth can be boosted from unproductive activities that will extract from future real economic activities or reduce the pool of real savings. (see my discussion on China’s interest rate cut)

Sound demand will arise from growth in incomes from real productive market based entrepreneurial activities, and not from speculation or yield chasing or from redistribution.

It must be stressed too that a growing population (demographic dividends) will amplify economic growth only when accompanied by income growth, again from the market based entrepreneurial activities.

And as noted above, current credit fueled demand for properties, which mostly have been about yield chasing speculations in response to financial repression policies, will prove to be unsustainable.

No less than the BSP’s own consumer loan data has exposed of the growing symptoms of malinvestments: the record jump in land prices in Makati and Ortigas in 1Q 2015 was concomitant with the swelling 1Q 2015 real estate NPLs! What happens more if property prices stop inflating or when credit expansion slows even more from the current rates???

Besides, haven’t these entities heard that property giant ALI has announced a surprise cut in capex for 2015 supposedly due to “tighter cash management”? Or has this been the reason for the mass media campaign blitz?

Infrastructure, Construction and Property Boom? Where are the Jobs? Why the Price Deflation?

With the growth rate of OFW remittances substantially underperforming, I have noted last week of its possible ramifications on the race to build supply, the US dollar stock and the statistical GDP.

I said that if the September data won’t come up with 15.5% growth to retain the 5% quarterly growth, then the PSA-NSCB would have a hard time embellishing the fabled ‘consumer growth’ story via 3Q GDP. Of course, statistical ‘Sadako’ have always been the handy alternative.

Just a reminder, OFW remittances are not the same as BPO remittances. OFW remittances signify as money intended for final consumption. BPO remittances signify as gross business revenues for BPO firms. It would be a folly to believe that apples (OFWs) are similar to oranges (BPOs), because the distribution of spending will be different between them.

And another thing, I raised the issue that the recent attenuation of OFW remittances may be a function of weakening economic conditions of the Middle East. I used Saudi Arabia as example.

Well here are more circumstantial evidences. Last week, according to a report from Bloomberg, the Saudi Arabian government has reportedly been delaying payments to contractors for the “first time since 2009”. Companies working on Saudi’s infrastructure projects have been waiting for six months for payment! In addition, the IMF also has warned that the Saudi Arabian government may be headed for bankruptcy as she might run out of assets “needed to support spending within five years if the government maintains current policies”, from another Bloomberg report. All these have been indicative of the region’s dire economic straits to have likely reduced hiring on OFWs and wage growth of existing OFWs.

In the same report, I have also noted that government spending mostly through infrastructure reportedly zoomed in August.

Yet where is its alleged multiplier effect? Or has such activities percolated to the economy?

The online jobs market tells of little improvements. 


Monster.com’s August Job data reveals of steep losses that continues to haunt the online job markets. 

Year on year, Monster’s online hiring (left) was a huge negative 31%, but this represents a marginal improvement from July’s even deeper negative 36%.

Their data reveals that only two industries posted positive gains, particularly the IT, Telecom/ISP sector, which “witnessed the steepest growth at 10% year-over-year and the BFSI sector (banking, financial services and insurance) “which saw year-over-year growth of 2% after registering consecutive annual declines since March 2015”[10]

So the boom in the IT sector remains but the BFSI data could either be a dead cat’s bounce or a fledging recovery. I’d bet the former.

Meanwhile, Production/ Manufacturing, Automotive and Ancillary sector registered “the lowest activity since January 2015” accounting for “saw the steepest decline in online hiring activities with a year-over-year decline of -62%.”

It’s a curiosity, vehicles sales have been reported at record highs, so why the steepest decline in online job opening? Or have the auto industry been scaling back in anticipation of a slowdown?

And where o where has been the boom in construction jobs?

I also tabulate data of two other online firms every Thursday. I find that Monster’s data in consonant with the largest online job website, which is partly owned by a publicly listed holding company. I will call this firm “A”.

Nominal job opening numbers of “A” also zoomed in August but this failed to reach May highs (right window). The job numbers include overseas hiring. In the latter half of September until last week, online job openings plummeted again! Construction jobs also have plunged! Why?

Media says everything in the property and construction sector has been booming!


The third online job site I follow tells of a different story.

I call this firm online job “B”. For “B”, there was no August spike as nominal numbers demonstrate that online jobs continue to swoon! “B”’s numbers are incredible. Overall job openings have crashed by 54% from April! Construction jobs have similarly dived by an even more remarkable number: 66%!

All these job numbers seem to be in harmony with the ongoing slump in the government’s survey of retail prices of construction materials.


The following numbers are stunning! 

Here is how the Philippine Statistics Authority sees it from a year on year basis[11]: (bold mine) On an annual basis, the Construction Materials Retail Price Index (CMRPI) in the National Capital Region (NCR) moved at its previous month’s rate of -0.4 percent. In September 2014, it grew by 1.3 percent. Negative annual rates were still posted in the indices of electrical materials at -1.5 percent; tinsmithry materials, -1.1 percent; and miscellaneous construction materials, -9.2 percent. Moreover, slower annual increments were noted in the corresponding indices of carpentry materials and masonry materials at 1.2 percent and 3.9 percent. A higher annual increase was however, registered in the indices of painting materials and related compounds and plumbing materials at 0.8 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively.

Now the month on month. Measured from a month ago level, the CMRPI in NCR declined by 0.2 percent in September. The indices of carpentry materials, masonry materials and tinsmithry materials dropped by 0.1 percent and miscellaneous construction materials, -3.1 percent. No movement was however recorded in the other commodity groups. Prices of nails, cement, corrugated GI sheets and steel bars went down during the month. The other construction materials group generally remained stable this month as they registered a zero growth.


The government’s price measure of wholesale construction materials[12] has even been worst! 

Wholesale prices have been in DEFLATION for TEN straight MONTHS! And the scale price declines have been significant!

Hasn’t this been a striking irony? For a country supposedly undergoing a construction boom, the industry’s prices have been on a DEFLATIONARY cascade, whether year on year or month on month! 

Just Incredible! 


This comes even as banking loans to the construction sector have been on fire! While the rate of growth of banking loans to the construction sector has certainly subsided or has halved from the peak in 2013, they are still growing at 30% (32.5% y-o-y in August)!!! September data will be due next week.

Yet, where have all the money from banking loans been flowing to? Why the collapse in job openings whether general jobs or in construction jobs??? Why the persistent price deflation in construction materials since March (for retail) and since December 2014 (for wholesale)????!!!

The supply side is unlikely the major force behind this as imports and manufacturing have been sluggish for most of the year. Import growth rates have only rebounded in June and July.

This leaves demand.

But if demand has been stagnant then what’s the media's hubbub over infrastructure and property boom? Either media has been immeasurably exaggerating, or the government have been getting her data inaccurately from her surveys.

Additionally, to say falling prices have been a result of external influences signifies a bunch of hooey. One, as shown above, the industry’s falling prices, if accurate, has been widespread. Even those imported items, given the strong USD, have shown downside pressures!

Two, falling prices abroad will be theoretically counterbalanced by demand and supply in the domestic economic setting. Said differently, if demand has truly been robust, then falling prices abroad will be offset by increased demand here, hence price declines will hardly happen consistently or in a streak as seen above.

Yet, has money from the banking loans to the general economy, which growth rates have been MORE THAN DOUBLE than the GDP, been mostly channeled to debt repayment? 


Are credit strains being reflected on domestic yield curve to impel for a massive flattening, despite the manipulations to force a steepening???

A recovery in BFSI jobs? The narrowing spreads shows a compression of net interest margins and eventually financial profit squeeze.

Or has most of credit expansion been directed to property (and stock market) speculation? And thus the downside momentum of statistical GDP, since speculative activities have become dominant or has replaced productive economic engagements.

These indicators run contrary to media hype!

Phisix 7,250: Gap Filling Breakout on Shrinking Volume, Peso Underperforms Asia

The Philippine Phisix stormed out of its consolidation mode to erase this year’s losses. This week’s astounding 2.56% gains emerged out of a very weak volume breakout. 

This week’s gains has lifted year to date returns to .08%.


Friday’s afternoon headline from Wall Street Journal pretty much explains last week’s frantic pumps!

In stocks, the Philippine PSEi was one of the outperformers of the Asia (left). On the other hand, the peso one of the Asia’s underperforming currency last week (right).

Based on official close, the USD PHP soared by .85% to close at 46.44. 



In other words, the falling peso has defied or has diverged from the bullish backdrop at the PSE. Add the narrowing bond yield spreads to such disharmony. 

In the past the weak peso coincided with an equally feeble PSEi. Has the peso-PSEi correlations changed?


Yet this week’s breakout brings the 2013 the taper tantrum gap filling move in play. 

As I have previously noted, the gaps from the two 6+% one day crashes in 2013 were both filled. Eventually both ended much lower than the lows established from the crash (right)

The new low signified as the staging point for the recovery.

Will history will rhyme or will this time be different?

Let me delve deeper on the PSE breadth.

This week’s rally has been broad based.

All sectors posted major gains with the service and industrial sector leading the pack or contributing to most of the index gains. The industrial sector had been spearheaded by energy issues and by URC, while the service sector was largely buoyed by PLDT.

Of the 30 PSEi issues, 27 advanced while 3 issues declined.

This week’s aggregate market breadth went in favor of advancers. Advancers led by a hefty margin of 82. But this margin came largely from two days of activities. On a daily basis decliners led by 3 days to two.

Yet in a display of the late cycle activities, many third tier or ‘basura’ issues have essentially run amuck or have shown wild volatilities that run in both directions (but with an upside bias).


Perhaps the most telling feature for this week’s action has been the breakout with strikingly THIN volume. 

For the past two weeks, on a daily basis, nominal peso volume has mostly traded at Php 5-6 billion range (upper window). This comes even when the Phisix attempted to break past the previous resistance levels at 7,150.

Yet Friday’s October 23rd breakout came with volume even LESS than the other Friday’s October 16th volume when the PSEi closed marginally higher by .14% to 7,055!

Even more amazing has been that on an aggregate basis, daily volume (averaged weekly) accounted for the THIRD lowest for the year!

Breakout on diminishing volume! Just awesome!

Of course, what would the current boom look like without help from price fixers?

China’s Government Sixth Interest Rate Cut: It’s NOT a Silver Bullet, It’s a Sign of Panic!

The Chinese SIXTH interest rate cut won’t serve as a silver bullet.

Why? The Gavekal Team explains[13] (bold mine)
The measure is supposed to spur growth and make life a little easier on debt-ridden Chinese companies. In the immediate term it may give a slight boost to the economy, but there is no chance this measure, or others like it, will keep the Chinese economy from slowing much further in the years ahead. Let us explain.

The continued and dramatic slowing of the Chinese economy in the years ahead is baked in the cake. For the last decade Chinese growth has been fueled by investment in infrastructure (AKA fixed capital formation). In an effort to sustain a high level of growth massive and unprecedented investment in fixed capital was carried out and fixed investment has now become close to 50% of the Chinese economy. On the flip side, consumption as a percent of GDP has shrunk from about 46% of GDP to only 38% of GDP. Most emerging market countries run with fixed investment of around 30-35% of GDP and with consumption accounting for about 40-50% of GDP – exactly the opposite dynamic of the Chinese economy.  China has run into a ceiling in terms of the percent of the economy accounted for by fixed investment and now fixed investment must shrink to levels more appropriate for China’s stage of economic development. This necessarily implies a slowing of the Chinese economy from what the government says is near 7% to something closer to 2-4%, and that is in the optimistic scenario in which consumption growth picks up the pace to mitigate the slowdown in investment.

This is why cuts in rates mean practically nothing for China’s long-term economic prospects. In the short-term rate cuts may postpone corporate bankruptcies by allowing companies to refinance debt at lower rates. Rate cuts may also make housing more affordable, on the margin. But these are cyclical boosts that act as tailwinds to China’s economic train. No amount of wind, save a hurricane, is going to keep the train from slowing.
clip_image018
It is important to reiterate that last week’s policy response accounts for the sixth action in just 11 months, as shown in the above chart (below window).

This goes to show that one policy measure have led to subsequent sets of similar policy actions. That’s aside from the other administrative responses (partly depicted below). This means that the previous series of rate cuts have failed in its objectives, hence, should signify as failure of government’s responses. 

Importantly, to cram FOUR rate cuts in SIX months suggests that the PBOC has been in a panic mode. Why ramrod credit on her constituents whom have already been smothered by too much debt?

Obviously, the present policy response also represents the ‘doubling down’ of the same measures in the hope that at a certain level such monetary therapy would work its wonders. It’s a great example of doing the same thing over again and expecting different results from it. Someone once called this insanity.

Importantly too, with fixed investment now “close to 50% of the Chinese economy” such are manifestations of years of accrued unsustainable economic maladjustments (see upper window in chart).

The fixed investment boom emerged out of the government diktat. Part of this accounted for the thrust to shield the economy from the global financial crisis in 2008 through a massive $586 billion stimulus package. The fixed asset boom has principally been financed by credit expansion that piggybacked on the stimulus. The outcome has been to swell China’s banking assets to $28.84 trillion in 1Q 2015 (mostly through loans) which is almost double US banking assets at $15.545 trillion as of October 2015.

Such massive politically dictated investments, mostly channeled through local government units and their private sector representatives, have accounted for the immense ghost projects and the industrial capacity excesses.

In other words, the government’s fixed asset boom model can’t simply be sustained. More importantly, the $29 trillion of balance sheet expansion that has bankrolled such vast malinvestments will obviously see a day of reckoning.

Yet how effective was the initial actions? Or what has happened during the past year or when the rate cut was initiated last November?

Well first, the stock market experienced a colossal bubble and its consequent harrowing collapse that wiped out $4 trillion in value at its depth.

In response, the government transformed the stock market into a zombie. Sellers have been regulated, restricted, harassed or prosecuted. Last week, the head of a state owned Chinese securities company reportedly committed suicide after regulators prevented the officer from leaving the country due to ongoing investigations of ‘market manipulation’ and ‘insider trading’.

The government have also deployed tens of USD billions (some acquired through credit) to shore up the stock market through mandated purchases by state owned firms and by some private brokerages. So whatever rally we are seeing today stands on the foundations of a sustained political lifeline support. Take away such lifeline, and we should see another bout of turmoil.

Second, those interest cuts seem to have succeeded in temporarily bolstering housing prices particularly in May to August. Unfortunately, according to the Bloomberg, such nationwide price growth has been weakening as “values in first-tier cities that have led the recovery are softening”. Yet loans to the property sector have been spiraling. Property loans have spiked by 20.9% year on year last September! 

Third, the Chinese have been addicted to asset bubbles. With housing and stocks in stupor, corporate bonds have become the new objects of leveraged manic speculations. And leverage has been channeled through repos.

Reports the Bloomberg[14]: Where China's retail investors traded stock on margin, when it comes to corporate bonds investors appear to be using a different form of leverage known as repo. Repoing bonds allows investors to effectively pawn the assets in exchange for short-term loans that can be deployed into additional assets. According to HSBC, the daily volume of one-day repos on the Shanghai Stock Exchange has doubled since 2014, indicating investors are using that particular form of leverage to juice their returns. Meanwhile, structured products that allow investors in more junior tranches to leverage on the senior slices have also appeared, effectively allowing investments to be leveraged by as much as 10 times. 

Sadly, the happy days from repo financed bond punts appear to have hit the proverbial wall as China’s repo markets have recently been showing signs of strains. Another Bloomberg article notes that[15]: “Chinese bankers say a debt-driven bond market rally is starting to show the same signs of overheating that preceded a collapse in equities. Repurchase transactions allowing investors to use existing note holdings as collateral to borrow money for one day doubled in the past year to a record 2.1 trillion yuan ($331 billion) on Tuesday. The cost of such funding in the interbank market has risen to 1.87 percent from a five-year low of 1 percent in May and has swung violently before, reaching 11.74 percent in June 2013. A similar contract on the Shanghai stock exchange climbed to 2.21 percent as equities rallied. Credit spreads near the narrowest in six years are being questioned after a state-owned steel trader missed a bond payment.” 

Fourth, capital flight has been accelerating. China’s hissing bubbles have spurred massive capital flight. Outflows were reported at $500 billion from January to August. Such ‘record’ outflows have caused China’s highly touted foreign exchange reserves to recede from its peak of $3.99 trillion in June 2014 to $3.514 trillion in September for a reduction of 12%! 

These outflows have likewise prompted the government to devalue the yuan last August. The Chinese government have become so desperate to preserve the illusion of stability, by preventing the decline of its foreign reserves, for them to resort to the camouflage of foreign currency swaps. 

The Bloomberg reports that “The People’s Bank of China and local lenders increased their holdings in onshore forwards to $67.9 billion in August, positions that would boost China’s currency against the dollar. The amount is five times more than the average in the first seven months, PBOC data show…Standard central-bank intervention to support a currency generally involves selling dollars and buying the home tender. In this case, China’s large state banks borrowed dollars in the swap market, sold the U.S. currency in the cash spot market and used forward contracts with the central bank to hedge those positions.”[16]

Additionally the government have been exploring ways to curb outflows like imposing a Tobin’s Tax (a tax on forex transactions)

Fifth, China’s statistical and real economy has been patently diverging. The Chinese government reported 6.9% 3Q GDP growth but many other measures barely support such number. Electricity generated last September was down by 3.1%. September coal and cement production posted contractions of 2.2% and 2.5%, respectively. Crude steel also shrank by 3% in September. Producer’s prices or prices of manufacturing inputs continue to plumb lower, September posted -5.9%, a tenth consecutive month where PPI deflation has been over 4%. Despite soaring credit growth, CPI rose by only 1.6% in September.

Strikingly, September imports collapsed by 20.4%! This signifies 11 straight month of decline. Exports was also down by 3.7% in September, marking the third consecutive month of contraction. Even outward investments to Africa plunged by 84% for the first half of the year (year on year). Meanwhile, retail sales only inched higher by 10.9% in September from August’s 10.8%. The rate of retail sales growth has halved from 2011.

Given what seems as a sharply slowing economy in the face of a gargantuan debt burden, a feedback mechanism from the escalation of these two forces would be catastrophic.

So last week’s rates cuts have been intended to kill as many birds with one stone: namely, sustain the ‘animal spirits’ in the manifold domestic bubbles (property, stocks and bonds), postpone bankruptcies through the refinancing debt at lower rates, ensure the unbridled access to credit, flush the system with liquidity, fund government spending, stanch capital flight, keep the yuan and shibor steady or stable, support statistical G-R-O-W-T-H and HOPE that all these would bring about real economy growth. Of course, such hope would entail the diminishment of the risks of increased social instability which would jeopardize the reign of the incumbent leaders.

As for the shift to mythical consumption economy, it is important to understand that one can only consume what is produced. One cannot consume what is unavailable.

Probably many would like to experience space tourism. But present technology and industry economics may have been inadequate to provide for an economically viable space tourism market. Yes there have been only 7 space tourists so far. There are yet no facilities, like hotels in orbital space stations or resorts at other planets or even the moon. Nonetheless, space tourism projects are being developed and should be on the pipeline in the coming years.

The lesson is consumption is a function of production. Alternatively this means consumption cannot just fall from heavens. Consumption has to be funded principally by income (or savings or credit—the latter represents future income) generated from production, and consumed on production outputs—as seen in available products and services.

So unless the Chinese government will be successful to replace the US dollar, with her currency, the yuan, as the world’s currency reserve for her to benefit from seigniorage profits, which should allow the Chinese political economy to go on a twin (budget and trade) deficits (Jacques Reuff’s ‘deficit without tears’), adapt financialization that would enable her to substitute production, and or, export production abroad, her constituents would need income for consumption. Where do you think such income will come from? From Sadako?



[1] New York Times Buffett Casts a Wary Eye on Bankers March 1, 2010

[2] Businessworld, JLL sees new growth areas for PHL property October 22, 2015



[5] Hotel Management.net Transactions worse than most predicted October 20, 2008

[6] Newsweek The Global Urban Real Estate Boom March 18, 2007

[7] Evening Standard How care homes found themselves in a tangle October 8, 2015

[8] Black Brick Property News Bulletin November 2010


[10] Monster.com Online Hiring in the Philippines Declines -31% (August) October 5, 2015



[13] Bryce Coward Q: Is the Chinese Rate Cut a Silver Bullet? A: No! Gavekal Blog October 23, 2015