Showing posts with label cash transactions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cash transactions. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 06, 2016

War on Cash Zimbabwe Edition

If there should be on template as to what happens with, or the possible ramifications of, the war on cash (also "financial inclusion"), one just need to turn to Zimbabwe’s current dilemma.

Zimbabwe’s economy suffered from the second worst hyperinflation in the world in 2008 with the doubling of prices in about 24 hours. With access to credit shut, the country’s central bank Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) resorted to the financing of the cash strapped government’s boondoggles by destroying her currency (Zimbabwe dollar). The average Zimbabweans were compelled to dump the local currency and use foreign currencies such as US dollar, the euro and or South African rand instead. The Zimbabwean dollar was reduced to non currency uses.

Fast forward today. Once again, Zimbabwe’s central bank (RBZ) has reportedly been at war with cash. But this time with the limited ability to "print" money, the RBZ has resorted to different means: they implicitly accuse those who don't use banks for lack of patriotism and may even have forced banks to limit the public's access of bank ATMs!

From AllAfrica.com (bold mine)
AN exasperated Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya has told Zimbabweans that it "a national responsibility for everyone" to use cards when transacting as the country's cash shortages deepened this week. 

Mangudya also hit out at business persons who don't bank their money, opting to keep daily takings at home as a recent order for tobacco farmers to be paid through banks failed to alleviate the liquidity crisis.

The RBZ chief blamed civil service salary and bonus payments for the cash shortages.

But but the opposition People's Democractic Party (PDP) recently insisted that the "cash crisis is because there is no production and real activity in the economy" with the key sectors having effectively "collapsed".

"I ... urge people to use point of sale when transacting," Mangudya was quoted as saying by State media Tuesday.

"It is a national responsibility for everyone; especially at a time we are not in a position to print money. There are local businesspeople that do not bank their daily takings, preferring to keep the money in safes at home, fuelling cash shortages."

Zimbabwe ditched its then virtually worthless local currency in 2009 opting, mainly, for the US dollar and, in the process, denying the RBZ the ability to 'print' - a key monetary policy instrument for boosting the amount of overall money in the banking system.

Local banks were this week reportedly limiting withdrawals and disabling ATMs and the ZimSwitch system.

Mangudya said he was aware depositors were struggling to access their funds.
Zimbabwe’s episode represents just another sign of how governments have become so desperate for them impudently confiscate people’s resources through a variety of means. 

For developed nations, such has been channeled through ZIRP and NIRP and now to the war on cash or the regulation of currency, thus transactions. Eventually, "financial inclusion" will morph into "financial exclusion" as Zimbabweans has exhibited.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Bank of Japan's War on Cash: Demand for Safes and Big Denomination Yen Notes Soar! Gold Priced in Yen Surges!

At the outset of the imposition of NIRP,  the average Japanese seem to be vehemently pushing back on the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) attempts to shanghai their resources.

First, the imposition of NIRP has only caused fissures in the establishment. This can be seen in mainstream media, as well as in the reactions of several politicians to the BoJ

According to Fidelity/DJ Business News (February 18)
A clash Thursday between Japan's central-bank chief and lawmakers highlighted the downside of negative interest rates: They are making the Japanese public feel negative.

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, who announced the nation's first move into minus rates three weeks ago, found himself dodging a concerted attack in Parliament from lawmakers who charged the policy was victimizing consumers and sending a message of despair.
Next, in anticipation of non bank savings, sales of safes (and safety boxes) have suddenly boomed!


From Fortune.com (February 23, 2016)
Negative interest rates mean customers effectively pay a fee for parking cash in banks, so Japanese citizens are beginning to hoard yen, according to the Wall Street Journal, and they need somewhere to put it.

Sales of safes have doubled from the same period a year earlier at chain hardware store, Shimachu, according to theJournal. The chain has already sold out of one model worth $700. Others savers are considering more unconventional storage spaces.

“In response to negative interest rates, there are elderly people who’re thinking of keeping their money under a mattress,” Mariko Shimokawa, a Shimachu saleswoman told the Journal.
Third, real cash demand has spiked as exhibited by zooming demand for the yen's big notes!

From Bloomberg (February 24, 2016)
Demand for 10,000-yen bills is steadily rising in Japan, even as the nation’s population falls and the use of credit cards and other forms of electronic payment increases.

While more cash might sound like a good thing, some economists are concerned that it shows Japanese households are squirreling away money at home instead of investing it or putting it into bank accounts -- where it can make its way back into the financial system and be put to productive use.

That’s a big problem for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his central bank chief, Haruhiko Kuroda, as they try to spur consumption and reflate the stuttering economy.

The mountain of cash in Japan amounts to almost 100 trillion yen ($890 billion), equivalent to about a fifth of the size of the economy. And last year the number of 10,000-yen notes, the biggest bill, increased by 6.2 percent, the largest jump since 2002.
Increased demand for big note cash has likewise surfaced in Europe.
Lastly, gold prices in yen has likewise surged.


Despite the recent correction in the prices of gold based on USD, the yen price of gold continues upward as shown in the chart from the World Gold Council.

Perhaps my observation is being incrementally affirmed
Coupled with growing ban on cash by governments mostly under NIRP, the likelihood of imposition of myriad capital controls, prospective bail-ins or deposit haircuts on troubled banks, and or even perhaps outright protectionism, probably gold senses a massive disruption in the banking system, and the large scale drying up of global liquidity as the public gravitate towards cash with gold functioning as an alternative medium of exchange.
Confiscations of private sector resources to finance desperate bankrupt governments will likely deepen. From zero bound, to zero to negative and to the war on cash, as well as, to various capital, transactional and people controls, these shows of the slippery slope of the government's thrust.  So it won't take long, when governments will likely expand their prohibitions or increased regulations to include safes and safety boxes and gold ownership. Add guns to it. Yes people will need guns to protect their home based savings.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Signs of Coming Tighter Capital Controls: Ban on Cash; Board Game Monopoly Bans Cash

Panic. Desperation.

There has been no clearer signs of panic and desperation by governments to gain greater access of the public’s funding, through, not only of the necessity of Negative Interest rates (NIRP), but most importantly, to prevent any escape from NIRP via the war on cash.

So aside from the crescendoing advocacy by establishment experts to ban cash, they have even initiated the conditioning of the public through cash bans on the popular board game the “Monopoly” 


From the Independent
Monopoly-makers Hasbro have declared war on cheating players everywhere with their latest edition of the game.

Monopoly Ultimate Banking does away with cash entirely.

Instead, players scan cards using a tiny ATM machine.

Monopoly made the move to speed up the game, which is famous for taking several hours if many players are involved.

But it will also prevent cheaters from secretly stashing away fistfuls of notes to spring on other players.

The "tiny ATM" featured in the Ultimate Banking edition of the game is able to scan bar codes on each player's credit card, property cards and chance cards.

To buy a property, players scan their credit card and the property card and the price is deducted from their funds. Players also pay "rent" to one another when they land on a hotel by scanning property and credit cards.
Condition the public first. When popular resistance fades, implement.

Sovereignman’s Simon Black sees such a trend as a dire writing on the wall, Mr Black warns (bold mine)
This is starting to become very concerning.

The momentum to “ban cash”, and in particular high denomination notes like the 500 euro and $100 bills, is seriously picking up steam.

On Monday the European Central Bank President emphatically disclosed that he is strongly considering phasing out the 500 euro note.

Yesterday, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers published an op-ed in the Washington Post about getting rid of the $100 bill.

Prominent economists and banks have joined the refrain and called for an end to cash in recent months.

The reasoning is almost always the same: cash is something that only criminals, terrorists, and tax cheats use.

In his op-ed, Summers refers to a new Harvard research paper entitled: “Making it Harder for the Bad Guys: The Case for Eliminating High Denomination Notes”.

That title pretty much sums up the conventional thinking. And the paper goes on to propose abolishing, among others, 500 euro and $100 bills.

The authors claim that “without being able to use high denomination notes, those engaged in illicit activities – the ‘bad guys’ of our title – would face higher costs and greater risks of detection. Eliminating high denomination notes would disrupt their ‘business models’.”

Personally I find this comical.

I can just imagine a bunch of bureaucrats and policy wonks sitting in a room pretending to know anything about criminal activity.

It’s total nonsense. As long as there has been human civilization there has been crime. Crime pre-dates cash. And it will exist long after they attempt to ban it.

Perhaps even more hilarious is that many of these bankrupt governments have become so desperate for economic growth that they now count illegal drug activity and prostitution in their GDP calculations, both of which are typically transacted in cash.

So, ironically, by banning cash these governments will end up reducing their own GDP figures.

What’s really behind this? Why is there such a big movement to ban something that is used for felonious purposes by just a fraction of a percent of the population?

Cash, it turns out, is the Achilles’ Heel of the financial system.

Central banks around the world have kept interest rates at near-zero levels for nearly eight years now.

And despite having created massive bubbles and enabled extraordinary amounts of debt, their policies aren’t working.

Especially in Europe, the hope of stoking economic growth (and even the sickening goal of inflation) has failed.

So naturally, since what they’ve been trying hasn’t worked, their response is to continue trying the same thing… and more of it.

Interest rates across the European continent are now negative.

Japanese interest rates are now negative.

And even in the United States, the Federal Reserve has acknowledged that negative interest rates are being considered.

They have no other choice; raising rates will bankrupt the governments they support and derail any fledgling economic growth.

Look at how low interest rates are in the US– and yet 4th quarter GDP practically ground to a halt. They simply cannot afford to raise rates.

As global economic weakness continues to play out, central banks will have no other option but to take interest rates even further into negative territory.

That said, negative interest rates will be the destruction of the financial system.

Because sooner or later, if banks have to pay negative wholesale interest rates to each other and to the central bank, then eventually they’ll have to pass those negative rates on to their customers.

Many banks have already started doing this, especially on larger depositors.

We’ve seen this in Europe where some banks charge their customers negative interest to save money, and in some extraordinary circumstances, pay other customers to borrow money.

It’s total madness.

There’s a certain point, however, when interest rates become so negative that no rational person would hold money in the banking system.

Eventually people will realize that they’re better off withdrawing their money and holding physical cash.

Sure, cash doesn’t pay any interest. But it doesn’t cost any either.

If you have a $200,000 in your savings account at negative 1%, you’d have to pay the bank $2,000 each year.

Clearly it would make more sense to buy a safe and hold most of that money in cash.

Problem is, the banks don’t have the money.

For starters, there’s literally not enough cash in the entire financial system to pay out more than a fraction of all bank deposits.

More importantly, banks (especially in the US and Europe) are extremely illiquid.

They invest the vast majority of your deposit in illiquid loans or securities of dubious long-term value, whatever the latest stupid investment fad happens to be.

And many banks have been engaging in a substantial balance sheet shift, rotating bonds from what’s called “Available for Sale” to “Hold to Maturity”.

This is an accounting trick used to hide losses in their bond portfolios. But it also means they have less liquidity available to support bank customer withdrawal requests.

The natural side effect of negative interest rates is pushing people to hold money outside of the banking system.

Yet it’s clear that a surge of withdrawal requests would bring down that system.

Banks don’t want that to happen. Governments don’t want that to happen.

But since central banks have no other choice than to continue imposing negative interest rates, the only logical option is to ban cash and force consumers to hold their money within the banking system.

Make no mistake, this is absolutely a form of capital controls. And it’s coming soon to a banking system near you.
From indirect (inflationism) to direct confiscation (wealth tax, bank deposit haircuts, forex and market controls, NIRP and war on cash). 

And such intensifying signs of panic and desperation are indications why the world is headed for a crisis bigger than 2008

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Chart of the Day: In Europe, Negative Rates and War on Cash Reinforce 'Cash is King'


The Bloomberg chart of the day shows a robust surge in cash in circulation in the Eurozone

The Bloomberg explains (hat tip Mises Blog)
Europe’s ATMs worked overtime in 2015. A record 1.08 trillion euros ($1.17 trillion) of banknotes were in circulation, almost double the value 10 years ago, according to data compiled by the European Central Bank. That’s a counterargument to some bankers who say that electronic forms of cash will replace paper money sooner rather than later.

The value of banknotes in circulation rose 6.5 percent last year, the most since 2008. There are financial reasons - including negative rates on deposits - but part of the increase could be related to the influx of refugees, who don’t have bank accounts.
Negative rates and the war on cash will push more and more people to use cash

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

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.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Phisix 7,100: Downgrades Transforms into Capex Cuts! More Signs of Cracks in the Philippine Property Bubble!

The actual aim of the flood of laws restricting or even prohibiting the use of cash is to force the public to make payments through the financial system. This enables governments to expand their ability to spy on and keep track of their citizens’ most private financial dealings, in order to milk their citizens of every last dollar of tax payments that they claim are due. Joseph T. Salerno Why Government Hates Cash

In this issue

Phisix 7,100: Downgrades Transforms into Capex Cuts!  More Signs of Cracks in the Philippine Property Bubble!
-Snowballing Downgrades: Ayala Land Suddenly Slashes 2015 Capex by 20%!
-Media Ignores the Risk from an Increase in Rural-Coop Banks NPLs, Why This Matters
-More Cracks in the Property Bubble: Philippine Housing Credit Growth Tops the World in 1Q 2015!
-July OFW Remittances Slump, But BPO to the Rescue! Says Media
-The Other Face Of Financial Inclusion Is Financial Repression, BSP to Launch War On Cash!
-Asian Currencies Rally On Expectations of a FED Stay; Thailand and Malaysia Launches Stimulus
-PSEi 7,100: 3.2% Rally on a Low Peso Volume; Major Shifts in Index Heavyweights

Phisix 7,100: Downgrades Transforms into Capex Cuts! More Signs of Cracks in the Philippine Property Bubble!

Snowballing Downgrades: Ayala Land Suddenly Slashes 2015 Capex by 20%!

Last week I wrote, “With the huge variance between government G-R-O-W-T-H numbers and establishment expectations, then more downgrades should be expected.[1]

Well, it appears that G-R-O-W-T-H downgrades have not been limited to the forecasting aspect on media headlines. Real consequences have emerged even at the corporate world.

The Philippines largest real estate company, Ayala Land (ALI) has reportedly slashed its capital expenditure budget by about 20% from the initial Php 100 billion earmarked for the year.

The fascinating thing is that company officials seem to fudge on the reason for such abrupt decision by citing technicalities.

Here is a statement by an ALI official on the capex cut as quoted by Businessworld: “We just want to prioritize. We just want to make sure that we tighten the actual spend to keep our debt at a certain level, but not at the expense of affecting our projects…It’s more of rationalization of spending, especially on land acquisitions.” Hence, the recent move was more about implementing “tighter cash management.”[2]

Prioritize spending? Tighten cash management? Hasn’t there been a real estate boom juggernaut that should entail of an avalanche of cash from property sales and rents that should be more than enough to cover debt servicing and to finance expansions?

Besides, why worry about cash flows or to keep the firm’s “debt at a certain level” when G-R-O-W-T-H, as have been popularly assumed, would ALWAYS be there? 

Yes, why the sudden parsimony??? (!)

Could it have been perhaps that the series of recent downshifts in the headline G-R-O-W-T-H projections has influenced on their outlook and thus the subsequent action to pare capex? Could it also have been that despite the published numbers, the firm’s actual performance maybe lower than expected? Or could it have been both?

Or the kernel of it, has ‘tighter cash management’ really been a euphemism for LESSER G-R-O-W-T-H expectations???

In today’s world, truth must be shunted aside for what is politically correct. And of course the politically correct du jour theme is state of nirvana that has allegedly been attained. And any imperfection or blemish would be denied! So the technical gibberish.

Yet what seems forgotten is that lesser investments should translate to diminished earnings G-R-O-W-T-H (all things equal)!

So given the firm’s present price levels, which had been frantically pumped and pushed by manipulators this week, lower earnings growth should compound on its ridiculously exorbitant valuations! As of September 17, based on PSE data, Price Earning Ratios (PER) was at an incredible 33.38! And as of Friday, PBV was at a fantastic 4.16 (based on PSE July 2015 report where book value was at 8.42)! A mature real estate company priced for perfection!

Yet has this overvaluation not signified a serious “misalignment in asset prices”?

Alternatively, could it have been that all the recent spate of money raising activities at the capital markets had been intended, not for capex, but for boosting the interests of insiders?

But again, without selling G-R-O-W-T-H then there would be less appetite by the public to finance future fund raising. So G-R-O-W-T-H will be THE main issue.

Yet the capex cuts won’t likely stop here.

More questions to expand such thought. Will ALI be the only real estate company to trim on its capex? Or has ALI lit the proverbial fire of a seminal bandwagon? Or asked differently, will there be other firms in the industry that will be following suit?

Will capex cut backs be limited to the real estate sector or will this spread into the other industries too? 

What happens if cut backs on capex evolves or progresses into a national phenomenon? Will this not reinforce the ongoing slowdown in the statistical G-R-O-W-T-H or the GDP momentum?

And what would be the conditions of the built-in or accumulated leverage in the system when the G-R-O-W-T-H materially recedes? Will Non Performing Loans soar further?

Where will the much ballyhooed consumer spending growth model get its financing once the tapering of capex will result to lesser investments and therefore reduced jobs? And how will the few resident consumers continue with their spending binge once banking system tightens as consequence to a G-R-O-W-T-H downturn? 

Finally, given the current string of current and prospective downgrades, what then justifies valuations at current levels? 

Will HOPE serve as worthwhile strategy in managing one’s portfolio?

These are interesting developments that have been fundamentally ignored by the establishment consensus.

Yet the feedback loop between debt overload and slowing G-R-O-W-T-H has now reared on its ugly head!

Media Ignores the Risk from an Increase in Rural-Coop Banks NPLs, Why This Matters

Has ALI’s decision to prune capex also been influenced by this?



The above represents the media release section from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas website.

Two things of note from the above: one, NPLs from Rural and Coop Banks and two, remittances both of which I highlighted in red and green rectangular boxes respectively 

First, signs of the spreading Non Performing Loans (NPLs)

From Google search, I found only three media outfits that seem to have covered the NPLs of Rural and Coop banks, particularly Philstar, Interaksyon and Manila Times.

Interestingly, either rural-coop banks have been considered as an insignificant sector unworthy of mention or that most of media have decided to drop or censor the BSP disclosure because it would NOT fit the “This Time is Different” boom story.

Yet little is understood that developments at the rural-coop banks are RELATED to the general banking system.

And here is the official disclosure from the BSP[3] (bold mine): The gross non-performing loans (NPLs) of rural (RBs) and cooperative banks (CBs) represented 12.04 percent of the banks’ total loan portfolio (TLP) at end-March 2015. The latest NPL ratio increased marginally from the 11.85 percent posted at end-2014, the lowest quarterly NPL ratio recorded by RBs and CBs since end-September 2012. The rise in the NPL ratio was because gross NPLs grew by 2.17 percent while TLP increased by only 0.51 percent. Among economic sectors, the largest recipients of loans from RBs and CBs at end-March 2015 were agriculture, forestry and fishing; wholesale and retail trade; loans to individuals for consumption purposes; and real estate activities. To mitigate credit risks, the banks also set aside loan loss reserves amounting to 57.56 percent of their gross NPLs at end-March. The figure is marginally lower than the 58.30 percent posted a quarter earlier.

Lower credit growth vis-à-vis ageing soured loans (NPLs) growth has exactly been the same dynamic that has underpinned the bulging of auto and real estate loans in 1Q 2015 in the universal commercial and thrift banks, as I wrote last week.

During the past 2 quarters, auto and real estate NPLs have been growing faster than total loan growth. In 1Q 2015, auto and real estate loan NPLs have virtually grown at par and or has overtaken total credit growth.

While the BSP reported subdued NPL numbers for universal-commercial-thrift banks, this was largely due to credit card, salary loans and other loans which offset the ongoing degeneration of auto and real estate loans.

But the camouflage will not last.

Statistics should be understood, and not swallowed hook line and sinker.

As refresher, the NPL ratio comes with a time asymmetric significance[4]:
Total portfolio loan growth has been derived from newly acquired loans during the stated period. However, NPLs have emanated from loans acquired from the past that have gone sour during the abovestated reporting period

The point is that for as long as new loans outpace growth in NPLs then the statistical metric of loan coverage on NPLs will remain depressed even if NPLs have been growing.

And because NPLs have represented ageing loan portfolio performance, any slowdown in new loan growth will magnify NPLs. In addition, because of the furious pace of new loans growth rate, today’s big growth in loans will become tomorrow’s NPLs.
Such time asymmetric significance tells us why NPLs will become a banking system problem: “today’s big growth in loans will become tomorrow’s NPLs”


Based on the BSP’s consumer finance survey report of 2012[5] which covered 2009 housing loans, rural-coop banks played the second largest private sector providers of finance for homeownership, after money lenders. 

However given the current credit boom, the distribution mix of housing loans must have changed to favor the core banking institutions.

But the point is: Rural and coop banks should still play a very important role in housing loans particularly in Areas Outside the National Capital Region (AONCR)

Nonetheless even the latest numbers underscore its significance. From the BSP Chief’s pitch for financial inclusion in a speech last July[6]: (bold mine) 47% of Filipinos borrow money, of whom 72% borrow from family, friends and informal lenders. Banks as source of borrowing stood at only 4.4%, lower than lending/financing companies (12%), cooperatives (10.5%), microfinance NGOs (9.9%) and government entities (6.1%).

Said differently, ongoing developments at rural and coop banks looks likely a manifestation of the radically changing conditions in the domestic banking system.

Yes, this looks likely as the Philippine or localized version of the periphery (rural-coop) to the core (universal-commercial-thrift) transmission phenomenon.

And because rural and coop banks seem as more vulnerable, hence the incipient signs of NPLs rising “slightly” or the initial headline appearance.

Simply stated, rural and coop banks are likely the initial symptoms of banking system’s progressing entropy.

And as seen in rural-coop banks, rising NPLs has commenced to nibble away at the loan loss reserves. As NPLs swell, the foundations of loan loss reserves erode.

Yet what happens if the NPLs spread or diffuse to overcome total credit growth at the core? And importantly what happens to the so-called solid ‘capital buffers’ once asset values fall along with a sustained rise in NPLs?

More Cracks in the Property Bubble: Philippine Housing Credit Growth Tops the World in 1Q 2015!



And why shouldn’t NPLs balloon at the core of the Philippine banking system?

This shocking data from IMF’s Global Housing Watch reveals that in 1Q 2015, the Philippines grabbed the lead or held the tiara for the fastest housing real credit growth year on year in the world!!!!!!!

This practically squares with the BSP’s study on land prices in Makati CBD and Quezon City which reportedly zoomed by 25% and 10% respectively.

This comes at a time when stocks had been repeatedly pushed to record upon record highs.

Ironically this represents the same period when statistical GDP have been revised down to 5% which is far from mainstream’s expectations of 7%!


This period also marked the collapse of general liquidity as measured by M3 and a stunning dive by CPI!

It also highlights on the moderation of general banking system credit growth that had been concomitant with soaring auto and real estate NPLs!

Yet understand the statistics. Realize that the numbers backing credit growth of different nations are NOT THE SAME.

There have been only a few sections in the population with access to the formal system’s banking housing mortgage facilities.

Unless those IMF numbers represents growth in the context of mostly the percolation of credit growth in the population, the implication is that only those few with access to the banking system have been gorging on expanded credit volume to have prompted the explosive growth rates in 1Q 2015 that topped the world!

The BSP’s own numbers on the formal banking system hardly supports credit growth based on penetration level. The BSP defines a formal account “to an account held in financial institutions such as banks, cooperatives or microfinance institutions and can be a mobile money account as well”[7]. Based on the BSP and World Bank’s Findex estimates “3 million new accounts were opened between 2011 and 2014”. This implies of a penetration level of 31.3% of Filipino adults with formal financial accounts in 2014 which grew by 17.7% from the penetration level of 26.6% in 2011.

Since it took FOUR years to enroll 3 million people or increase the formal banking system’s penetration level by 4.7%, hence it is unlikely for 1Q 2015 housing credit growth rate at about 15% to account for mostly an increase in the population’s penetration level.

Note on statistics: I’m referring to the bank formal accounts and not access to housing or mortgage credit which should even signify a much smaller number.

Alternatively this means that, again, housing credit expansion have been based on mostly on existing accounts in financial institutions. The same accounts have been frantically anteing up on their speculative bets on real estate, financed by imbibing more and more credit volume.

Said differently, those awesome rates of housing credit growth represent a deepening of concentration of credit risks to the few with access to the formal banking system!


Given the recent slump, the appeal on domestic stock markets for punters appears to have waned. So the speculative focus seems to have shifted instead to real estate. 

The Global Property Guide reported that for the 2Q, inflation in Philippine housing prices (based on Makati 3 bdr condos) have again snared the fourth spot in the world! Housing prices ballooned by 7.91% (nominal) or 6.61% (inflation adjusted)! That’s a lot more than the 2Q statistical GDP penciled at 5.6%!

Nominal housing prices have been about 50% more than pre-Asian crisis levels. Those zero bound rates have gravely inflated property prices in the name of G-R-O-W-T-H.

Of course, demand alone does not entirely account the ballooning credit. Price levels also influence credit volume. This means that the higher the property prices, the more money will be required to acquire them, thus greater demand for credit.

Yet the slump in systemic liquidity and CPI in the face of soaring property prices and housing credit only suggests of two developments: Lots of the fresh credit have been used to pay for exiting debt, and lots of new credit to finance property speculation!

Yet hardly has new money found its way onto productive investments (which represents the key driver for economic growth)! Hence the widespread price slump in the real economy.

When the BSP report on 1Q land prices came out, I wrote[8],
But in the 1Q, concomitantly with 1q real estate, the PSEi was pushed to a string of record highs.

In other words, while the statistical economy, and most likely, the real economy have materially been slowing, the toys for the big boys have become the object of intense speculative actions.

It is perhaps a reason why prices on the general economy have been on a downfall as rampant speculations on asset markets have substituted real economy investments and consumption activities in 1Q 1015.
Current dynamics suggests of a continuing trend: rampant speculations on asset markets that has substituted real economy investments and consumption activities! No bubble eh?

Sad to say, rip roaring price inflation in properties have NOT been signs of a sound economic model. Instead, such are symptoms of an artificial unsustainable boom, where past and present demand has been borrowed from the future.

And since all actions have consequences, such borrowed demand will have to be paid for, again, in the future. But the future has arrived! This means that the fantastic run on property prices represents the ‘terminal phase’ that portends of a coming reversal…sooner than later. 

To apply economics 101, the law of demand tell us that as the price of a product increases, quantity demanded falls. Applied to property (ceteris paribus-all things being equal), a sustained rise in the trajectory of property prices decreases affordability or reduces the pool of potential buyers or shrinks the market size.

(Have ALI officials come to realize this?)

And because property speculation entails expanded use credit, increased volume and deepened banking system’s exposure to the sector extrapolates to heightened credit risks from which banks themselves—in response to growing NPLs and or in view of an economic slowdown—and or the government, will eventually have no choice but to put a rein on them. And when they do so, speculation and economic activities which supported all these should grind to a screeching halt. Consequently, this means a KIBOSH on statistical GDP and SURGING NPLs.

Additionally, skyrocketing property prices have been occurring in the face of a current economic downturn. This should mean LESS and LESS headline support for demand. And it’s more than just the headlines. There should be real economic repercussions. Diminished liquidity from a downturn means the monetary spigot for speculative activities will tighten. And a tightening means reduced funds available for speculation.

Moreover, reduced income from an economic growth downshift extrapolates to less money for speculation or reduced demand for big ticket items.

To sum it up, 1Q 2015 provides a rich insight of the diverging conditions of Philippine economy which exposes on the heightened fragility or what seem as the terminal stage of the domestic real estate bubble.

The four divergent signs: The “slight” rise in NPLs in rural-coop banks in conjunction with rapid deterioration of auto and real estate banking portfolio. Meanwhile, housing credit growth boomed along with a breathtaking surge in housing prices, both of which hugged international headlines.

Such divergences wonderfully serve as progressing symptoms of what the IMF calls as the “buildup of unsustainable economic imbalances and misalignments in asset prices”

As always divergences, which represents unseen or tacit conflicts of internal economic forces, will eventually find resolution via convergence.

July OFW Remittances Slump, But BPO to the Rescue! Says Media

The second BSP headline issue that I would like to deal with relates to the July remittances.

The BSP headline says “Personal Remittances Reach US $15.7 billion in January-July 2015”. The BSP once again conceals or sanitizes what has been a negative development. When G-R-O-W-T-H underperforms, they substitute the headline with “reach x amount”.

A headline from a business news outfit was more candid. The Businessworld Online bannered, “Weak peso causes remittances to barely grow in July”. The secondary lines noted that remittances “grew at the slowest pace since at least 2010”


Of course, it is hardly accurate to say that the weak peso “caused” remittances to barely grow. Correlation isn’t causation. 

Nonetheless, I commend the Businessworld for their attempt to report facts.

Both monthly growth rates in Cash and Personal remittances dived to just .5% in July.

This marks the second time this year where remittance growth was subdued at a rate less than .5%. The first was in January.

Besides, declining OFW remittances looks like an ongoing trend.

It’s simply a revelation that at current levels, the law of diminishing returns has been affecting OFW dynamics.

There are limits to everything…BPOs included!

What’s more. July’s OFW remittance data essentially debunks the poppycock peddled by the establishment that the lower peso will not only increase spending power of remittance recipients but also encourage OFWs to send more remittances!

The BSP’s disclosure exposes on the why: “This is partly due to the depreciation of currencies in their host countries against the US dollar, which reduced the dollar equivalent of their remittances.[9]

Get that? Since OFWs have been dispersed throughout the world, they are mostly paid by their employers in local currencies of their host nations. And since US dollar have been surging against most currencies of the world, the conversion of OFW revenues in local currencies to US dollar meant LESS US dollars.

So instead of G-R-O-W-T-H, the strengthening US dollar means lower remittances sent!

The establishment fundamentally frames their rose colored arguments on US dollar aspect of remittances. But they have been blind or purposely omit to see the effects of the strong US dollar on the SOURCE of remittances.

As I recently wrote: Revenues of both OFWs and BPOs are SOURCED externally. This means OFW remittances depend on the INCOME of foreign employers. BPOs revenues depend on the INCOME of foreign based principals. This likewise means that the economic, social and political CONDITIONS of the nations serving as HOST to foreign employers and foreign principals essentially determine indirectly the REVENUES of OFWs and BPOs.

However, like the BSP, some in mainstream media have been afflicted by a deep state of denial such that instead of directly reporting the slump in July OFW remittances, they write about how BPOs will substitute for the deficiencies of OFW remittances.

This Inquirer article writes with a halo effect on government projection on BPOs growth trends: Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima earlier said that BPO revenues were on track to eclipsing remittances as the economy’s main source of strength. By 2017, the BPO industry is expected to rake in $28.9 billion from a projected $21.2 billion this year.[10]

Well haven’t the Philippine government been missing a lot of their recent targets? Haven’t their GDP G-R-O-W-T-H, CPI and even tax collection objectives been askew? So what’s the probability that current trend will continue? Because the government say so? Proof by assertion?

Additionally, to write about BPO eclipsing remittances in 2017 signifies a non sequitur. Reason? July remittances (recent past) is different from BPO in 2017 (future). One is a fact, the other is an estimate. Apples to oranges.

Also, July remittances signify as the strawman which the BPO has been erected to crush! Awesome reporting!

And here is a stunningly absurd statement: (bold mine) Due to the stable supply of dollars from recurring sources such as remittances and outsourcing, the economy never runs out of dollars needed to pay for imported goods such as fuel and food, and for foreign debt payments

Huh? For someone to claim with the adverb “never” means two things. The person has attained God like omniscience or has been infected by overweening confidence on things which the writer has really been clueless of.

Like all human activities, BPOs are subject to changes in demand and supply. The supply side of BPOs are dependent on many fluidly variable factors such as political, legal, labor/manpower, wages, input prices, infrastructure, competition and many others. A significant change in one or two of them may alter whatsoever comparative and competitive advantage the Philippines holds today. For instance, soaring taxes, or skyrocketing wages or a war with a neighbor will likely reduce the appeal for BPO investments or operations.

India used to be the lone powerhouse of BPOs, that’s until the Philippines got into the fray. Yet India holds six of the top ten in BPO destinations with 2 from the Philippines, one from Poland and from China based on the 2015 rankings by Tholons

The same applies to the demand side or the clients or principals of local BPOs, where any major changes in the conditions of their host nations or on global conditions may affect BPO investment or operations. For example, a global recession or depression may likely upend or delay the BPO boom.

Nothing is set on the stone.

Even more laughable is the credulous attempt to bloviate at the endless boom without explaining the complex entwined relationships of the BPO industry, demand and supply of dollars and coordinating function of the USD-Php exchange rate on demand and supply, except to assume on it. Economic reporting with the absence of the role of prices! Yet a silly conclusion! How marvelous!

Yet whatever happened to the other US dollar revenue earners tourism or exports, have they ceased to exist? 


If the economy has sufficient dollars then US-Php wouldn’t have risen. Despite this week’s rally, the USD Php is still up 3.8%. 

Additionally, GIRs (supply of dollars) would not be in a decline. Yet never ending supply?

This should serve as a sterling example of propaganda material that has been passed off or masqueraded as a news report.

Now back to July remittances. With another sharp fall in remittance growth rates, how will this boost consumption? Pray for December? What if USD continues to strengthen? Wait for Godot? And what if Godot remains absent, what happens to the perpetual fountain of consumer spending?

And how will this affect the delirious race to build supply side? Vacant stores at shopping malls will be called “renovation”?

Or will consumption growth, like Sadako, just jump out of the computer terminal?

The Other Face Of Financial Inclusion Is Financial Repression, BSP to Launch War On Cash!

Last July, the BSP launched the Financial inclusion program which they call as National Strategy for Financial Inclusion (NSFI). In coordination with 12 other agencies, the said program’s ultimate goal is to achieve “inclusive growth”. This mainly through the provision of “effective access to a wide range of financial products and services”[11]. Lately they added “financial education and consumer protection”[12] to the ambit of the means to attain such ends.

So the BSP lists or enumerates a litany of why financial inclusion is needed. It includes the numbers of people with no bank accounts, untapped savings at households, credit access outside the banking system and etc...

In short, NSFI signifies nothing less than a political rhetoric with a simple objective: Transform the informal economy into the formal economy regulated by government.

As a side note, theoretically I am in favor of such financial integration. However, theory is different from practice. Yet like any tools, social policies can be used for or against the interests of its constituents.

So despite all the supposed idealistic supporting goals of “shared economic development”, “uphold social cohesion” and “reduce income inequality”, none of this will be the outcome.

Why? Simple because of demonstrated/revealed preference. Or action speaks louder than words.

No less than current or incumbent policies tell us why such idealistic financial integration goals will not be used for the benefit of the public.

First, there will be no “shared economic development”, “uphold social cohesion” and “reduce income inequality” with policies that promotes the interests of political agents and their cronies, through trickle down policies. From the BSP Chief last May, “While the trickle-down approach to spread the benefits of development is good, it is not enough; we want to be more proactive”[13]

The trickle down approach or the picking of winners through political means entails imposing coercion against the very people it purports to protect. This drives a wedge on beneficiaries relative to the non-beneficiaries. For now, the pseudo economic boom has kept social order seemingly tranquil. But this will change once the bust cycle gets reinforced.

Furthermore, the competition to wield the government’s machinery itself will be extrapolate to social division (everyone wants to rule), fragmentation (us against them) and corruption (use any means to win). It’s not just about money, it’s about power. And the struggle for power represents a boilerplate for the ventilation of schism through violence.

Second, there will neither be “inclusive growth” nor even “consumer protection” from financial repression, particularly negative real rates policies. Again from the BSP chief in a September 2014 speech: “Right now because of excess liquidity in the system, the industry doesn’t seem to mind much that real interest rates are negative”[14]

In a speech at Deputy General Manager, Bank for International Settlements, or the central bank of central bankers, Hervé Hannoun explains negative interest rates[15]: In essence, the monetary stimulus aims to lift short-term growth via five main channels: by boosting credit to the real economy (the credit channel), by lifting asset prices (the asset valuation channel), by forcing investors away from safe assets towards riskier ones (the portfolio balance and risktaking channels), by lowering the exchange rate (the exchange rate channel) and by attempting to nudge inflation up towards objectives with a view to warding off a so-called deflationary spiral (the reflation channel).

In other words, negative rates represent an invisible redistribution program that benefits borrowers as against savers, and pension holders (“boosting credit”), a subsidy on asset owners (“lifting asset prices”) as against non-asset owners, as well as support for foreign currency holders (“lowering the exchange rate” and “nudge inflation”) as against domestic currency holders.

None of these comes for the benefit of the average citizens. Instead all of these work against the average residents.

Such kind of redistribution program has vile consequences. Even the patron of inflationism recognized of its evils. From John Maynard Keynes[16] (bold mine)
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
The reality is that instead of “inclusive growth”, the unstated goal of financial inclusion is to wage “war on the informal economy”, where the ultimate goal of the government is to capture efficiently resources from the public through its financial tentacles, the banking system.

I predicted that the financial inclusion will lead to a “war on cash”[17].
Bankrupt governments will do all it can to seize resources from its constituents. Given that the banking system functions as the main depot of the economy's monetary resources, then the banking system will serve as the main channel for this.  As a quote widely attributed to American felon Willie Sutton, he robbed banks "because that's where the money is"

On the initial phase, government interventions will be benign. This will be through the imposition of taxes, fees, other surcharges and "persuading" clients to invest in securities of government and of their cronies.

Then, the next phase will be through INDIRECT confiscations. Such will be channeled through monetary policies inflationism (Zero bound, or negative interest rates and QE) and war on cash (limits to cash transactions).

And when the conditions becomes dire, appropriations will shift to DIRECT means: capital controls, deposit haircuts, and as the above, the expropriation of money stashed at the banking system's safety deposit boxes.
The war on cash has apparently arrived on the Philippines.

As a side note, the move to ban hoarding coins represents an earlier war on cash.

From the government mouthpiece, the Inquirer: THE DAYS of using physical cash to pay for nearly anything and everything that consumers buy may soon come at an end. Regulators are set to release by yearend a “constitution” for cashless payments in the country, covering rules that private sector stakeholders such as telecommunication firms and “plastic” money providers should have to adhere to. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Deputy Governor Nestor A. Espenilla Jr. said the goal would be to turn cell phones, and debit and credit cards as the main modes of payment for most Filipinos, even for those buying small items at community sari-sari stores (convenience stores)[18].

So from zero bound, the BSP now shifts to “cashless payments” via mobile banking as a medium or platform to force an integration of the informal economy with the government. Remember, like hard selling salespeople, the presentation or the focus has always been on the benefits. The cost is presented as zero. The sad part is that people will belatedly discover that the costs will be greater than the benefit.

To apply the analogy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the other face of financial inclusion is financial repression!

Asian Currencies Rally On Expectations of a FED Stay; Thailand and Malaysia Launches Stimulus

As I have been saying here, NO trend goes in a straight line.


So Asian currencies found an excuse, through the US Federal Reserve’s action to stay the course, to bounce back. This is with the exception of Indonesia’s rupiah.

Based on the official quotes from Friday’s close the USD-PHP fell by 1.01% to 46.415 as against last week’s 46.89.

Based on Bloomberg’s weekend quote the peso was even lower at 46.27. Hence the bigger USDPHP loss above. But based on four other fx quotes I follow, the peso was weaker at 46.5. So we will just see what happens on Monday.

Anyway, the crashing ringgit finally found a breather. Based on Bloomberg’s quote Malaysia’s ringgit rallied 2.79%. I guess this should be official that’s because this number had been confirmed by the news.

Well this week’s rally can be considered a relief rally that has been most likely based on short covering. However, I expect the US dollar to continue to eventually firm up again.

There are lots of denials on the likelihood of an Asian crisis 2.0. But again instead of looking at merely statistical numbers, actions of politicians illustrates a lot of undeclared conditions of respective economies.

The Thai government, according to Nikkei Asia[19], announced an emergency 136.3 billion baht ($3.86 billion) stimulus package aimed at improving the long-ailing economy by spurring domestic demand. The package consists mainly of public investments in rural areas and what is in effect a subsidy to those in low-income brackets

Heck, what’s the “emergency” all about?

Meanwhile, the beleaguered Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s administration likewise declared several measures last week. These included a US$4.6 billion stock market rescue fund, mulls of a mandate to repatriation of earnings worth 500 billion ringgit ($115 billion) of state owned investment funds as well as blue chip companies, ponders to abolish import duties on 90 items and domestic spending worth 6.77 billion ringgit (US$1.6 billion) by Malaysian government's investment holding arm, Khazanah Nasional on various industries, specifically tourism, hospitals, BPOs and creative industries.

Curiously why all these rush to support the stock market and to engage in political spending?

Finally, the US Federal Reserve’s decision to keep rates as it is, which was based on “recent global economic and financial developments” means that the September Fed liftoff issue is history. Yet if Asian currencies weaken again anytime soon then please don’t blame the Fed’s potential December rate hike.

The Indonesian rupiah failed to respond positively to the Fed’s stay. The currency’s loss has extended for the tenth week, “its longest losing streak since 2000” according to Bloomberg. Well, the sustained run on the rupiah simply exhibits a domestic disorder that has little connection with the FED’s liftoff.

Back to the Fed. The Fed has clearly been cornered. They are unlikely to raise rates in 2015. Yet by citing global uncertainty, US stock markets reacted unfavorably post Fed decision. So by keeping on its interest rate stance, the FED indirectly wanted to support the stock market, however, bringing up concerns over global certainty seem to have backfired. Such unintended consequences puts into spotlight the Fed’s diminishing credibility.

As a side note, Ms Yellen turned down negative interest rates as path for present consideration, but she opened the Fed’s doors on this for the future: "if the outlook were to change in a way that most of my colleagues and I do not expect, and we found ourselves with a weak economy that needed additional stimulus, we would look at all of our available tools." Using negative rates is "something that we would evaluate in that kind of context," Ms. Yellen said.[20]
The immediate risk is one of the return of investor risk aversion on a global scale. And a medium term risk is one of a global recession at zerobound.

And a recession at zerobound will be one for the books.

Should this happen then this means central bankers have lost their magic.

This time is different! (In the context of central banking)

PSEi 7,100: 3.2% Rally on a Low Peso Volume; Major Shifts in Index Heavyweights

Apparently, the index managers found a second wind to finally break the string of 7 weekly losses.

The PSEi soared by 3.19% over the week again on another low volume pump.

Officially peso volume traded swelled to a huge Php 94 billion or an average daily volume of Php 18.8 billion, but that’s because of special block sale worth Php 59.23 billion of cement company Lafarge Republic Inc.

Publicly listed Aboitiz Equity Venture along with Irish partner CRH Plc, under investment vehicles, AEV CRH Holdings, Inc. and CRH Aboitiz Holdings, Inc bought about 88.85% of the company’s shares held by Calumboyan Holdings, Inc., Lafarge Holdings (Philippines), Inc., Round Royal, Inc. and South Western Cement Ventures, Inc. The AEV-CRH partnership also bought other minority shareholders via a tender offer.

The special block sale constituted 91% of the week’s volume. Excluding this, the average daily volume was at measly Php 6.956 billion.


The oversold rebound was broad based. All major indices posted gains. But the bulk of the advances came from the property sector which was led by SMPH. SMPH skyrocketed by 14.03% over the week to set a new record!

These are spectacular signs of desperation to attain record highs in the face of current economic conditions! 

This week’s major pumps had been concentrated to a few major index sensitive issues. Aside from SMPH, BDO posted +7.18% while AC +7.42%.

The other major gainers looked like cameo performers: EDC +17.12%, FGEN +9.59% and DMC +6.0%, actions of which seem to characterize a bear market’s sucker’s rally.

Among the 30 PSEi issues, 19 issues gained while 9 issues posted losses. Two were unchanged.

At the broader markets advancers took the week with a clean slate. Advancers routed decliners by a margin of 164. However, this comes after 6 of 8 weeks of intense selling.

Yet this week’s activities caused SMPH to leapfrog in terms of market cap weighting (see right).

As of Friday, SMPH holds the fourth spot from about 6 or 7 last week. Curiously four of the top 5 issues belong to the SM and Ayala group. The four issues carry a weighting of an astounding 30.69%!

This comes as PLDT’s share continues to swoon.

Moreover, two of the top 5 are property companies from the SM and Ayala Group. Yet more signs of a manipulated pump? And, ominous signs of times?


The index managers backed by the bulls have been attempting to fill the gap created by the August 24 crash.

While technically speaking the breakout of 7,100 has been successful, it has failed to convincingly establish new grounds.

Yet those early intraday pumps during the last three sessions have all failed to maintain their gains for the day. (charts from Bloomberg)

And what used to be an afternoon delight pumps initiated by manipulators had now reversed into dumps, including the spectacular ‘marking the close’ dump last Friday.

In other words, there seems to be quite a substantial number of sellers at 7,100 and above. And the inability by manipulators and their bullish cohorts to generate significant volume makes 7,100 a sturdy resistance level.

Besides, manipulators may have exhausted themselves from last Monday’s incredible low volume (Php 4.56 billion, Php 5.18 billion including block sales) panic buying pump that climaxed with a marking the close which accounted for 38% of the day’s gains!

Yet the imposing gains some of the majors, SMPH, BDO and AC makes them equally vulnerable to a steep downside move.

Finally the PSE tells us that there are only about 640,665 direct stock markets accounts in 2014 where 95.3% are retail accounts. This leaves 29.892 accounts or 4.7% representing institutions.

These numbers tell us that market prices on the margin are determined mostly by the 4.7% or the 29,892 institutional accounts who deliver the bulk of the market’s volume.

The thin number of population of participants reveals why the PSEi can easily be manipulated.




[2] Businessworld Online Ayala Land reins in land bank spending, cuts capex September 18, 2015

[3] Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas NPL Ratio of Rural and Coop Banks Rises Slightly September 15, 2015


[5] Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas 2012 Consumer Finance Survey based on 2009 BSP.gov.ph

[6] Amando M. Tetangco, Jr. Opportunities in Financial Inclusion and Financial Integration Bangko ng Sentral ng Pilipinas July 21, 2015



[9] Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Personal Remittances Reach US$15.7 Billion in January-July 2015, September 15, 2015

[10] Inquirer.net BPOs seen to surpass OFW remittances September 17, 2015



[13] Amando M. Tetangco, Jr. Acting Together for Financial Inclusion May 20, 2015

[14] Amando M. Tetangco, Jr Convergence in a Divergent World September 23, 2014

[15] Hervé Hannoun, Deputy General Manager, Bank for International Settlements Ultra-low or negative interest rates: what they mean for financial stability and growth Speech at the Eurofi High-Level Seminar, Riga, 22 April 2015

[16] John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1919. pp. 235-248. PBS.org