Monday, February 03, 2014

Phisix: Will the Global Risk OFF Environment Intensify?

The reason why I think that too deliberate striving for immediate usefulness is so likely to corrupt the intellectual integrity of the economist is that immediate usefulness depends almost entirely on influence, and influence is gained most easily by concessions to popular prejudice and adherence to existing political groups.  I seriously believe that any such striving for popularity – at least til you have very definitely settled your own convictions, is fatal to the economist and that above anything he must have the courage to be unpopular- Friedrich August von Hayek

Global financial markets performed as expected[1] this week characterized by sharp volatility in both directions with a downside bias.
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The Risk OFF mode appears to be spreading from emerging markets and now to the developed market contemporaries. Except for the Philippines and Indonesia, most of the world bourses posted NEGATIVE returns for January.

Negative returns in January have not been a good portent for stock market returns for the year. The seasonality factors of the influx of yearend bonuses and annual asset allocation, known as the January Effect[2], particularly for the S&P 500 seem to have failed to weave their periodical wonders. As Jeffrey Hirsch of the Stock Market Almanac, who created the January Barometer via Yale Hirsch, noted last December[3] “as the S&P goes in January so goes the year”. The S&P’s history shows that the January effect has 89.1% accuracy. You can see the chart from moneyweek.com here.

I am not a fan of seasonality based forecasting. Despite the 89.1% accuracy, the S&P’s performance for 2014 can always result in favor of the outlier or the 10.9%. Different factors drive each year’s performance. For instance, late last year the mainstream worshippers of the Philippine bubble sold the seasonal ‘Santa Claus rally’ for the Phisix which I argued otherwise[4]. By the close of 2013, the statistical outlier proved the day: the Phisix posted a -9% return for November-December.

But I would have to share with the stock market almanac the likely probability of a negative return for the S&P 500 for 2014, for one simple reason: stock market bulls have frontloaded returns of the S&P which had been driven to record territory through record borrowings as exhibited by record net margin debt and by record accumulation of various bonds to finance a massive wave of stock market buyback. This comes in the face of the second series of the US Federal Reserve’s withdrawal of monetary accommodation this week, as Chairman Ben Bernanke exits in favor of his replacement incoming Janet Yellen[5].

The record breaking streak by US stocks has also been revealing of a shift in the composition of participants: the swelling of retail investors chasing returns as institutional investors reduce exposure. All these, for me, constitute the Wile E. Coyote momentum that eventually leads to the Wile E. Coyote moment (Wile Coyote surprisingly discovers that he has run far off from the cliff). The Wile E. Coyote moment can easily morph into an economic and or financial Black Swan[6].

So aside from massive internal imbalances, external factors in terms of the continuing riot in emerging markets have been compounding to the pressures of the S&P 500. The same dynamics should hold true for the financial markets of other developed economies that has benefited from the last hurrah of easy money policies of 2013.

Yet if financial markets in developed economies continue to remain under pressure (e.g. falling stocks) this will aggravate financial market conditions of emerging markets. Unless contained, the feedback loop between emerging markets-developed markets may lead to a precipitate acceleration of a downward spiral.

Has Emerging Market Woes been Bullish for the US stock markets?

One of the bizarre rationalisation used by the US stock market bulls has been to show how the US stock market benefited from the troubles of Emerging Markets during the 1990s which they posit as a likely repeat of history. The seemingly schadenfreude analysis suggests that revulsion on Emerging Market assets will likely will find a haven or rotate to US stocks.

I believe that such an argument represents a warped perception of reality for one simple reason; the failure to appreciate the material changes in the contribution of emerging markets to the global economy and financial markets.

First of all emerging markets have grown faster than advanced economies such that emerging markets now account for 38% of the global GDP (2010). See chart here.

In addition, as share of global consumer spending, emerging markets have already supplanted the US. As of 2010, the US share has declined from a high of 35% in 2000 to a little above 25% whereas Emerging Markets have expanded from less than 25% in 2000 to just under 35%, see chart here.

More important has been the burgeoning share of financing via exploding bond issuance, record capital flows, and the recent ballooning of index-tracking Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which has served as a vehicle for record portfolio flows.

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Record emerging market capital flows (top) and Record Emerging Market US Dollar Bond issuance (bottom)[7]

Some data on the growing significance of emerging market to the world in terms of finance to chew on, from Reuters[8] (bold mine):
Emerging markets have attracted about $7 trillion since 2005 through a mix of direct investment in manufacturing and services, mergers and acquisitions, and investment in stocks and bonds, the Institute for International Finance estimates.

JPMorgan estimates outstanding emerging market bonds at $10 trillion compared with just $422 billion in 1993. Assets of funds benchmarked to emerging debt indices stand at $603 billion, more than double 2007 levels, it said, and over $1.3 trillion now follows MSCI's main emerging equity index.

Mutual fund data from Lipper, a ThomsonReuters service, shows that in the past 10 years net inflows into debt and equity markets was in the region of $412 billion.

Significantly, there have been few major hiccups in emerging economies in that period, and only in the global crisis year of 2008 and in 2013 were there any net redemptions, Lipper showed.

The result, many say, is a recipe for fund redemptions snowballing when returns fall below a certain level.

Losses in one or two markets can leave managers with no choice but to liquidate other positions to protect the fund's net asset value (NAV), the main indicator of how profitable a fund is relative to its assets.
Others argue that despite the growing importance of the Emerging Markets, they remain of little threat to developed economies. The following charts are examples[9]
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If we only see and read the statistical data of the small exposures of developed economies and the US to emerging markets and refrain from thinking beyond what could happen next, then sure, the impact will indeed be small.

But this hasn’t been the way the world works. Even when the exposure would seem negligible, if the adverse impact of emerging markets to the US and developed economies won’t be offset by growth (exports, bank assets and corporate profits) in developed nations or in frontier nations, then there will be a drag on the growth of developed economies, which would hardly be inconsequential. Why? Because the feedback loop from the sizeable developed economies will magnify on the downside trajectory of emerging market growth which again will ricochet back to developed economies and so forth. Such feedback mechanism is the essence of periphery-to-core dynamics which shows how economic and financial pathologies, like biological contemporaries, operate at the margins or by stages.

And as noted above, the problem hasn’t just been about emerging markets but also about immensely mispriced assets, powered by massive accumulation of debt, promoted by devotees of inflationism, that seem to have come under pressure from the side effects of prolonged easy money conditions and accentuated by the reduction of free lunch policies that has worked in favor of Wall Street at the expense of main street since 2008.

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How will these not have an effect on the S&P 500 when the % share of foreign sales of S&P companies has ballooned to almost half of the total[10]? In 2003 foreign sales comprised 41.84% relative to 2012 where foreign sales grew to 46.59%. Think of how much smaller foreign sales had been during the 90s.

So while emerging markets sales does not entirely represent foreign sales, yet if the turmoil in Emerging Markets intensifies, then such a drag will gnaw on the growth conditions of the rest of the world that will be reflected equally on the foreign sales of the S&P 500 companies and to stock market prices.

So arguing 1990s as parallel today is a good example of mistaking the forest from trees.

Others further argue that the miseries of EM will be discriminatory or selective.

Perhaps in the future. But hardly a dynamic seen from the present. The following clue from Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland[11].
For the week versus the dollar, the Hungarian forint declined 3.7%, the Polish zloty 2.7%, the Russian ruble 1.7%, the Czech koruna 1.6%, the Bulgarian lev 1.4%, the Colombian peso 1.1%, the Chilean peso 0.9% and the Brazilian real 0.6%. The yen was little changed this week against the dollar, notably holding last week’s strong advance. Over two weeks versus the yen, the Argentine peso has declined 17.1%, the Russian ruble 6.6%, the Hungarian forint 6.1%, the Chilean peso 5.1%, the Brazilian real 5.0%, the Colombian peso 4.7%, the Polish zloty 4.6%, the South African rand 4.4%, the South Korean won 4.1% and the Indian rupee 3.9%.

Notable yield increases this week included Ukraine 10-year (dollar) yields jumping 55 bps to 9.85%. Russian yields rose 26 bps to 8.35%, Poland yields surged 30 bps to 4.70%, Hungary yields rose 36 bps to 6.0%, and South African yields rose 36 bps to 8.90%. As for equities, India’s Sensex index dropped 2.9%. Stocks in Taiwan were down 1.8%, Thailand 3.1%, Philippines 2.0%, Turkey 4.0%, Russia 3.4% and Chile 4.4%,
Discriminatory? Selective? Or the reverse of the rising tide lifts all boats?

If emerging markets has been attributed by some as having pulled out the global economy from the recession of 2008[12], now will likely be the opposite dynamic, the ongoing mayhem in emerging markets are likely to weigh on the global economy and equally expose on the illusions of strength brought upon by credit inflation stoked by inflationist policies.

As one would observe, most people have been programmed to shut down on facts which runs against their personal biases. This is what I call as the Aldous Huxley “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored” syndrome.

1997 Asian Crisis was a DEBT Crisis

The Aldous Huxley syndrome can also be seen in the local setting. The top honcho for one of the largest life insurance reportedly predicted a modest 10% gain for the Phisix[13].

I have no quibble in the cited figure which is a guess. This may or may not come true.

However I have to address the blatant inaccuracies from the claim the Philippines may withstand the hiccup in emerging markets due to floating exchange rate, vast foreign reserves and so-called sound footing of the banking system because banks then were crippled by high interest rates and by elevated non-performing loans.

First of all the 1997 Asian Crisis was about a DEBT crisis.

From Wikipedia.org[14], (bold mine)
Many economists believe that the Asian crisis was created not by market psychology or technology, but by policies that distorted incentives within the lender–borrower relationship. The resulting large quantities of credit that became available generated a highly leveraged economic climate, and pushed up asset prices to an unsustainable level. These asset prices eventually began to collapse, causing individuals and companies to default on debt obligations.
Fixed exchange rate only served to enhance the buildup of bubble conditions that had already been in place. As I pointed out in the past, when Japan’s bubble popped in 1990, much of Japan’s yield chasing money found their way to ASEAN[15] which partly help inflate the credit bubble. I would posit that even if the Philippines had a floating currency exchange then the bubble will have emerged anyway. 

Of course, the Philippines was the least hit among ASEAN peers in the Asian Crisis. This is not because any special policies but because of the relatively less credit problems due to the low penetration level of households in the banking sector which is still true today.

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Moreover, the claim that banks had been crippled by high interest rates and high Non performing loans (NPL) as a basis to say that Philippines banks are “sound” today signify as comparing apples to oranges.

After a credit bubble in the 1981-82[16], the Philippine government called for a debt moratorium in October 1983 but then resisted reforms prescribed by the IMF until a year after[17]. The debt moratorium can be seen by the spike in lending rates which more than doubled by 1983 (right window). The agreement on the IMF program by the Philippine government in 1984 may have led to a reversion of lending rates.

Political instability and concerns over debt conditions re-emerged to send lending rates skyrocketing again by 1987. The advent of the Aquino government led to a series of agreements (e.g. Paris Club) with IMF and various creditors, which hardly had been smooth sailing, for access to new money and for debt reduction measures over the following years.

It was perhaps only after the execution of the Brady Plan[18]—where the government used funds borrowed from IMF, World Bank and from other sources to purchase debt from the banks at half the price or at 50% discount, a rescheduling of debt due between 1990 and 1994, and the subscription of banks to US $700 million of new loans—when lending rates began its descent.

So the so-called Asian Economic Miracle or otherwise known as the “Four Asian Tigers”[19] or the new paradigm during heydays of inflationary boom thrived on low interest rates. And that high interest rates and a spike in NPLs came about as the boom metastasized into a bust in 1998 (left window)

As you can see, the comparison between a milieu of high interest rates and high Non performing loans (crisis scenario, during the aftermath of 1997) with low interest rates today (non-crisis scenario yet) has been arrantly misguided.

And it would be a serious mistake to project low NPLs tomorrow because of the low NPLs today. Such are examples of bubble logic. Perpetual low NPLs assume that unlimited debt growth will hardly have any real repercussions.

As for NPLs, at best, they are coincident indicators. Normally they are lagging indicators.

As I previously wrote[20],
NPLs are low because the current boom continues. NPLs become reliable indicators, when asset quality deteriorates or when the credit boom is in the process of reversing itself into a bust. Again they are coincident if not lagging indicators.
The Risks in Philippine Corporate Bonds

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Developments in the bond markets are hardly a sign of “sound” finance. We can see part of this via the domestic corporate bond markets

According to the recent data from Deutsche Bank[21], the size of the Philippine corporate bond market in 2013 signified a measly 9.3% of the economy where 47.5% of corporate bonds outstanding are denominated in foreign currencies. Of the total bonds issued between 2009 and 2013, 34.1% have been in foreign currencies where floating rates signified 3.5% of the total issued. Meanwhile in terms of corporate leverage Philippine corporate bonds have a debt to equity ratio of 96.3 second only to China’s 104.6 as of 2012

The small size of bond markets fit exactly with the low penetration level of households in the banking and financial system. This means that the dearth of savings being intermediated into investments via the banking sector or via the capital markets have hardly been signs of real growth.

Importantly, because of the small size of the corporate bond market, the top 10 share in terms of % to the total is at 90.8%. Said differently, the benefits and risks of Philippine corporate bonds have been concentrated to these top 10 issuers.

The good news is that only a small portion or 3.5% of outstanding bonds issued have been floating rates. The bad news is that almost half of Philippine corporate bonds have been priced in foreign currencies. The depreciating peso means that more peso will be required to service every foreign currency unit of debt. A sustained fall of the peso will hurt the debt issuers. Worse, Deutsche Bank’s debt equity ratio for Philippine corporates at 96.3 reveals how leveraged those concentrated issuers have been.

Of the 30 top issuers 25 are publicly listed companies. The top 10 issuers have mostly been the blue chips, via ADB’s Asian Bond Monitor as of November 2013 namely[22] according to size of local currency bonds: San Miguel Brewery Inc, Ayala Land Inc., Ayala Corporation, BDO Unibank Inc., SM Investments Corporation, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co, Philippine National Bank, Globe Telecom Inc, Maynilad Water Services and Energy Development Corporation

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Also based on the same ADB data, banks and financial services have been the top issuers, followed by holding companies and real estate. Practically the same sectors contributing to the statistical economic boom.

As one would note Philippine financial system can be characterized as small but whose high debt exposures have been concentrated to a few.

As a popular saw goes, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. And the fat lady has begun her concert rehearsals as seen in different Emerging Markets.

So NPLs will become an issue of concern when the credit conditions of these companies will be tested in the face of surging interest rates.

The best hope for the bulls is hardly about the Philippines becoming immune via “well positioned” claptrap but for the current EM storm to be just as another “hiccup”

The Great Divide: Statistical Boom Versus Deteriorating Public Sentiment

Speaking of statistical economic boom, the Philippines posted 7.2% economic growth for 2013. This has been exalted by bubble faithful as continued signs of progress. The timing of the release of the news came amidst a sharp decline in local stocks last Friday. Curiously some local investors, who appear to be price insensitive, drove up select Phisix issues as if the current conditions had been in a state of a mania. By the session’s end, the Phisix shaved off 1% from the intraday depth. The Phisix ended the day with a remarkably heavy volume at Php 8.9 billion even as foreigners sold heavily.

Have the majority owners been driving up their stocks for the Chinese New Year’s day celebrations, for month end adjustment or for other non-profit reasons? Or has Friday’s actions been conducted by some price insensitive third party agents using other people’s money with the desire to paint a positive aura backed by the release of the statistical growth figures?

I find the economic growth data release curious because the BSP usually publishes banking loan data ahead of the National government’s economic growth data.

Yet the statistical “new paradigm” boom practically showed the same sectors whom have been absorbing a lot of debt, in particular construction, financial intermediation and real estate.

And another curious item has been the significant growth in obscure areas of the durable equipment data in the capital formation category, in particular “Other general industrial mach” and “Other misc. durable equipment”. Yet these figures have been acquired via surveys which the NSCB notes, “the estimates are affected by the limitations of these surveys.”

Regardless of the ambiguous figures backing the statistical growth, here are my other more important observations on this[23]

I have noted that such statistical growth figures reveals no more than having been pumped up by credit. The 2013 growth data also divulges that statistical growth has largely been from entities with access to the banking and financial system. And given the limited banking access, statistical growth represents growth in the formal economy and hardly the informal economy. This means statistical growth has been hardly representative of the real economic conditions. The 2013 economic data continues to show how supply side has been growing faster than the demand side. Evidently the latter is unsustainable and will be exposed when fat lady sings.

I am not a fan of surveys but given the barrage of optimistic surveys by the so-called top rated businessmen and CEOs or the like, I noticed that survey reports concerning the general populace appear to have been sidelined by those especially from the financial industry.

Interestingly two recent surveys from two different companies tells of the same story

First the survey from SWS. From the Inquirer[24].
An estimated 11.8 million Filipino families rated themselves as poor, while some 8.8 million families said they were “food-poor,” a recent survey by Social Weather Stations (SWS) found.

The survey was conducted from Dec. 11 to 16 nationwide and the results were first published in the BusinessWorld newspaper.

SWS found 55 percent of the respondents saying that they were poor, up from 50 percent, or 10.8 million families, three months earlier.

It also found that 41 percent of the households considered themselves food-poor, up from 37 percent, or 7.9 million, in September. The poverty threshold is the monthly budget that households need in order not to consider themselves poor.
55% of people saying they are poor from 50% a quarter ago means an increase of 10% of people who think themselves as poor. The same sense of proportionality can be seen from those who consider themselves as “food poor” which is from 37 to 41%.

The boom has been making more people think about becoming poorer? How can that be? The fans of asset bubbles will likely retort with a snark, “they’re just being irrational!”

Another more eye opening survey from Pulse Asia, again from the Inquirer[25]
Despite the country’s high economic growth, most Filipinos considered their quality of life, both at the national and personal levels, to have worsened in the previous 12 months, results of a Pulse Asia survey last December showed.

They also expected the situation to remain the same for the whole of 2014.

The majority of Filipinos (55 percent) said the national quality of life deteriorated in the past 12 months, while 36 percent said the national situation remained unchanged. Nine percent said it improved.

Pulse Asia interviewed 1,200 adults all over the country from Dec. 8 to 15. The survey has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percentage points at the 95-percent confidence level.

The figures last month differed significantly from those recorded in March 2013, Pulse Asia said.

Back then, 48 percent of Filipinos saw no change in the national quality of life in the previous 12 months. Thirty percent said it deteriorated and 23 percent noted an improvement.

From March to December last year, the percentage of Filipinos who said that the national quality of life worsened in the previous 12 months increased across geographic areas—ranging from 14 percentage points to 33 points; and among socioeconomic groups—ranging from 14 points to 30 points.
The Pulse Asia report has even been gloomier. The proportion itself from the current survey reveals a disturbingly huge chasm: 9% improvement versus 55% deterioration. Wow! 

Applying the relative changes on ‘Improvement’ in March 2013 at 23% and in December 2013 at 9%; we see an astonishing 61% drop in positive outlook! As for the relative changes in ‘deterioration’ in March at 30% and in December at 55%, that would extrapolate to a whopping 83% surge in negative sentiment!! 

The survey cites Meralco and Typhoon Yolanda as factors driving sentiment, but how can Meralco be a national issue when the company covers the National Capital Region (NCR) and the region’s fringes for her franchise? I would opine that price inflation may be a bigger factor driving this radical change in sentiment.

Yet if there has been any truth to these surveys then this means that whatever the statistical growth hasn’t been shared by most of the population (in numbers, in geographic areas, in the distribution of socio economic groups).

Even when we account for ‘improvement’ criteria, for both March and December, the proportionality of growth 23% and 9% seem to reflect on the distribution of the formal sector. However, the 9% improvement in December means that even many in the formal sector feels polarized from the current boom.

Worse, the above are signs that the informal economy have been in sick bed for quite sometime.

And such also seems to validate my perspective of the skewedness or specifically the non-representativeness of statistical growth data relative to real economic conditions.

So while the government can talk about their robust statistical growth ad infinitum to ensure their access to the credit markets in order to finance their politically correct justified boondoggles, as well as, to redistribute resources from society to the small segment (politically connected elites) who benefits from the credit fuelled property and stock market bubble out of zero bound rates policies, the real economy may be pushing back.

If this sentiment persist to become a trend or even deepens, then in terms of politics we can expect the political divide to widen. Ala Thailand, this may even lead to a political crisis sometime ahead.

And applied to the economy, this means bad news coming soon to the supply side whom has been overexpanding and whose undertaking have been backed by intensive credit inflation. Reason for the coming bad news? The negative sentiment suggests that there will be likely less buyers for their projects or services or securities.

The much vaunted Filipino consumer may have already hit the proverbial wall.




[2] Investopedia.com January Effect

[3] Jeffrey A. Hirsch & Christopher Mistal As January Goes, So Goes Full-Year 2014 $SPY December 17, 2013




[7] Institute of International Finance January 2014 Capital Flows to Emerging Market Economies January 30, 2014; Institute of International Finance Economic Recovery and Dependence on Asset Values January 8, 2014



[10] S&P Dow Jones Indices S&P 500® 2012: GLOBAL SALES MacGRAW Hill Financial

[11] Doug Noland End of the Era Credit Bubble Bulletin PrudentBear.com January 31, 2014






[17] Robert S. Dohner and Ponciano Intal, Jr Debt Crisis and Adjustment NBER.org 1989

[18] Photius Coutsoukis Philippines External Debt Photius.com 1991

[19] Wikipedia.org Four Asian Tigers


[21] Deutsche Bank What’s behind recent trends in Asian corporate bond markets?, January 31, 2014 DBResearch.de

[22] ADB ASIA BOND MONITOR November 2013 Asianbondsonline.org


[24] Inquirer.net 55% in SWS survey say they are poor January 14, 2014

Emerging Market Turmoil: The Fallacy of Foreign Currency Reserves as Talisman

One fascinating populist meme about how specific emerging markets may survive the recent tantrums has been to cite foreign exchange reserves as talisman or amulet to a crisis. 

As reminder any balance of payment disorders are symptoms and not the source of crisis. The common denominator of every crisis is DEBT.

Central Bank Dilemma: To Use Foreign Currency Reserves or Not?

There have been two contrasting approaches adapted by EM central bankers to the current EM tantrums.

Instead of using forex reserves, Turkey’s government has opted to use the interest rate channel to deal with the current disturbance.

Turkey with a record of forex reserves at $ 149.7 billion, almost 2x the Philippines at $ 84 billion, surprised her financial market by massively raising key interest rates across the board to combat the sinking lira. The one week repo rate was increased by a stunning 550 basis points or from 4.5% to 10%! Read my lips FIVE HUNDRED FIFTY basis points. The lira had a one day celebration. Unfortunately the FED reduced monetary accommodation anew that wiped out the one day gains and even led the lira to set new record lows! The market seems to be saying that the current interest rate levels despite the increases have not been sufficient to compensate for the risks. This means more interest rates hikes or the Turkish government will have to begin using her record forex reserves.

Turkey is in dire straits as I discuss here[1]. Not only have the financial system been burdened by huge pile up of debt, they have about $ 160 billion of short term debt due this year. So a sustained lira depreciation and rising rates in Turkey’s creditor nations will mean a double black eye for deeply indebted transcontinental country.

Worst, foreign banks have $ 350 billion of credit exposure on Turkey’s financial system. How much of Turkey’s economy can absorb such tremendous spike in interest rate or a crashing lira before the economy tailspins? Should there be a credit event in Turkey how much of these $350 billion in debt held by foreign banks will be defaulted upon? What will be the repercussions? Are sinking stocks in Europe and the US signs of these? You think that Turkey’s conditions are merely signs of a “hiccup”?

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The second approach has been to use forex reserves to fight off a crashing currency. This has been the case with Argentina whose currency has been collapsing whether seen from official rates or black market rates (left window).

The Argentinean government has been draining her forex reserves which have been down by a third now to US $29 billion[2]. This has forced the government to devalue to 8 pesos from 6 pesos last week, even when the black market has long been devaluing. Argentina’s government also raised interest rates by six percentage points[3].

The reason for the draining of reserves? Because the socialist government which nationalized many major industries have come short of securing financing. The Argentine government has massively increased spending by running down the reserves (right window). Argentina remains highly indebted and has still unresolved debt restructuring issues which has been a legacy from her default in 2002[4].

Argentina’s economic data can’t be relied on as the government has threatened domestic economic industry of jail time if they published data which goes against the declaration of the government[5]. What has been evident is that the government’s spending spree and the shrinking access to the pool of global credit markets have been instrumental in inciting a currency crash.

You think Argentina’s dilemma poses as a knee jerk reaction?

Foreign Currency Reserves are Manifestations of Bubbles

I find it ludicrous for the mainstream to keep yelling “forex reserves!”, “forex reserves!”, “forex reserves!” as if forex reserves function as some quaint magical amulet against evil spirits.

But this is reality. The source of problems has not been due to a war with some bad spirits but rather excessive debts looking for a release valve in the face of rising interest rates.

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Think of it, the world has $11.434 trillion of foreign currency reserves mostly in US dollars as of the 3rd quarter of 2013, according to the COFER data from the IMF.

If “forex reserves!” equals the magical talisman then we would NOT be experiencing any of these volatilities at all. But this market revulsion has been HAPPENING. It’s been happening IN SPITE of the RECORD international reserve assets. And it has been happening REAL TIME!

The problem is that foreign currency reserves serve as real time manifestations of accrued imbalances rather than the cure to the problem. I can discuss that this as related to the Triffin Dilemma as I did before[6], but this will unduly extend this already prolonged discussion.

The bottom line is that the US dollar standard which financed the world with the FED’s printing machine has fuelled a business cycle in an international scale.

Americans built their comparative advantage via engineering of mostly tradeable debt instruments that has led to a massive growth in her financial industry known as financialization

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The financial industry with less than 10% weighting in the S&P 500 in 1990 became the biggest industry in 2007 as she exported subprime mortgage papers around the world[7].

Meanwhile the world assembled a global network supply chain to supply the US with goods which ultimately transformed into globalization. And US Financialization helped fulfil demand by the world, who accumulated US dollars via trade expressed in record forex reserves, to recycle savings into US dollar assets. Of course the developed world also learned mimic their version of financialization. 

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At the end of the day, the US dollar standard has brought about record debt levels not only for mature market economies (right window) but for the entire world—estimated by the ING in 2012 at $223.3 trillion or 313%(!) of the GDP[8]. EM debt has been estimated at $66.3 trillion or 224% (!) of GDP in 2012.

Accompanying record debt has been record financial assets[9] that have been galloping far away from global economic growth (left window).

Even more, the world’s ramping up of US dollar reserves by the printing local currency by domestic central banks has fuelled bubbles on a national scale.

Why forex reserves are manifestations of imbalances? Austrian economist Antony Mueller explains[10]. (bold mine)
The expansion of debt by the issuer of the international reserve medium augments the stock of international reserves and the increase of the reserves works like a growth of the global money supply. Central bank balance sheets show that the circulating domestic money forms a debit item, while foreign reserves are part of the credit side. All other things being equal, an increase in foreign reserves implies money creation. This way, foreign debt accumulation by the issuer of a global reserve currency impacts monetary demand through two channels: in the debtor country by the domestic spending of foreign savings, and in the creditor country by the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves which augment the money supply
Where the release valves from the stockpile of foreign reserves are to be expected? Again Professor Mueller (bold mine)
The country, which emits the international reserve currency, does not face a foreign exchange constraint; thus there will be no immediate limit for this process to go to its extremes. Additionally, an expansion of this kind must not be accompanied by price inflation right away. The prices for tradable goods may stay low for a considerable period of time and instead of a price inflation the bubble emerges in the asset markets. After all it is the transaction in the capital account of the balance of payments -- the buying and selling of debt instruments -- which lies at the heart of the process and it is here where the music plays in terms of the bubble. Bubbles, however, have the nasty habit of imploding because they are build on some unsustainable element. This factor within an international debt cycle concerns debt service payments, and this has consequences for international trade and economic growth
Has it not been that the outflows from EM local currency debt instruments and from domestic currency a reflection of troubles in the capital account of the balance of payments?

Eventually bubble enthusiasts will come to realize, that screaming “forex reserves!” “forex reserves!” “forex reserves!” will not serve as free passes to bubbles.

Russian Ruble: A Domestic Outflow

As a final thought, I recently pointed at the unique case of the ongoing pressure on Russia’s currency, the ruble. Russia would have been seen by the mainstream as having a strong external finance conditions, since she has $510 billion of forex reserves (6x the Philippine reserves), has significant surpluses in both trade balance and current account balance (though the latter has been dwindling).

Yet Russia suffers from both property bubble fuelled by credit inflation and runaway local government debt. Lately one of the 200 largest bank in terms of assets the ‘My Bank’ suspended withdrawals for a week. Why would My Bank suspend withdrawals unless she has been financing some problem? Perhaps signs of a bank run?

And guess who’s been selling the ruble?

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Well strange as it seems, it has not been foreign outflows as mainstream paints them to be. Russia continues to post foreign capital inflows from 2012 to 2013 (left window). It has been residents whom have been scampering off Russia at a pace that has been picking up pace (right window). There may be various reasons for this such as safehaven, alternative investments or even possibly signs of recognition of a bursting bubble as discussed here[11].

The point worth repeating is that every conditions are unique and that there are no “line in the sand” or specific thresholds before a revulsion on domestic credit occurs.

This brings us to the periphery to core dynamic. For every crisis the first manifestations will be via steepening and spreading of dislocations in the financial markets. Then this transitions into a liquidity squeeze. And finally liquidity squeezes will hit on the real economy possibly either through a credit event first before an economic recession or vice versa.

For those afflicted by the Aldous Huxley syndrome, keep in mind that in the 2007-8 global crisis, the Phisix fell by more than 50% even when the Philippines had floating exchange rate, record forex exchange reserves and low NPLs. The Philippines even narrowly escaped a statistical recession.

Of course one may argue that today’s problem has been different than in 2008. One might assert that today has been an emerging market problem. Part correct. But there are always two sides to a coin. Applied to current events, while one side of the coin is the emerging markets, the other side is the US-developed economies.

But don’t forget: Both of the two sides share the same coin: the DEBT problem coin. Example, just look at how entwined Turkey’s problem has been with foreign banks. The magic number:  $350 billion.




[2] Bloomberg.com The Price of Argentina's Devaluation January 30, 2014






[8] Wall Street Real Time Economics Blog Number of the Week: Total World Debt Load at 313% of GDP May 11, 2013

[9] Institute of International Finance Economic Recovery and Dependence on Asset Values January 8, 2014

[10] Antony P. Mueller Do Current Account Deficits Matter? Mises.org Journals

Saturday, February 01, 2014

Why the Chinese Government Cannot Afford a Bubble Bust

A recent disturbing sturdy reveals how deep the wealth of Chinese households have been tied to real estate sector. The massive concentration of wealth poses as a grand policy dilemma for the Chinese political leadership. 

Writes Bloomberg’s William Pesek (hat tip Mark Thornton) [bold mine]
Gan, a professor at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, Sichuan and at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, recently crunched some disturbing numbers on the level and distribution of household income and wealth. After examining survey results from 28,000 households and 100,000 individuals, Gan believes that roughly 65 percent of China’s household wealth is sitting in real estate.

An astounding 90 percent of households in nation of more than 1.3 billion people already owns homes. In the first half 2012, he found, about 42 percent of demand for properties came from buyers who already owned at least one. Many of these homes and apartments, it goes without saying, were bought in the midst of one of history's biggest real estate booms and bubbles.

“The Chinese housing market is clearly oversupplied,” Gan told Tom Orlik, a Bloomberg economist based in Beijing. “Existing housing stock is sufficient for every household to own one home, and we are supplying about 15 million new units a year. The housing bubble has to burst. No one knows when.”

When is does, the damage to household wealth will reverberate across the second-biggest economy, devastate consumption and increase risks of social unrest. In other words, it's something the Communist Party can't allow to happen. While Xi's promises to tolerate less gross domestic product growth as he weans China off its addiction to exports, the pressure to sustain property prices will take precedence over reform.
While it may be true that the Communist Party can't allow bubbles to pop, this assertion would seem like the modern day equivalent of King Canute who in trying to “rebuke the flattery of his courtiers” to show them the limits of a king's power, “set his throne by the sea shore and commanded the tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes”. In other words, Chinese political leadership may kick the can down the road but they will be unable to stop economic reality from coming to fruition. This is a question of 'when' and not an 'if'. And that 'when' may be soon.

In reality, the current unsustainable real estate bubble signifies the “unintended consequences” or policy backlash from the policies adapted by the Chinese government, particularly financial repression (to corral the resources of her constituents via mandates) along with PBoC’s inflationism as earlier explained here.

China’s boom phase of the bubble cycle seems to have reached an advanced or maturing state.

When the political leadership tried to restrain the bubble in June 2013, Chinese markets went haywire as exhibited by soaring interest rates. Rising interest rates and price inflation are signs of the deepening insufficiencies of resources to supply or finance these bubbles.

The Chinese government then backtracked and began infusing money into the system. The outcome has been to escalate a runaway credit which underpinned a juggernaut in the run up of property prices.

Moreover, with new regulations aimed at curbing lending growth, credit dynamics has fundamentally shifted from banking sector into shadow banks. Local governments, whose career has been underpinned by meeting statistical economic growth quotas, resorted to new schemes of availing  credit in order to finance local projects for political goals by circumventing new regulations.

And with huge amount of debt targeted for a rollover this year in the face of rising interest rates, I pointed out that China’s bubbles could serve as a potential trigger to a global Black Swan event.

In addition, fears over looming systemic instability from a major default has compelled the Chinese government owned bank to bail out a troubled Trust product a week prior to the week long celebration of this year's Spring Festival. Yet such bailout is likely to serve as a magnet for more credit inflation.

The Chinese government seems faced with the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea. Accommodate credit, unstable debt conditions compounds, bubble inflates even more. Stop credit, economic depression emerges.

So the Chinese government appears to be approaching her bubble problems with a whack a mole (game) or deal with the problem as they surface. The dilemma will be magnified when the “mole” transmutates into “gremlins”.

The depth of exposure by the Chinese households on her gigantic property bubble means that a bust will bring about a major setback to the Chinese economy (and will most likely ripple across the world). 

This may also extrapolate to a pushback on the much vaunted “Chinese century”. [The Chinese may recover swiftly if real reforms towards a market economy will be pursued]

The predicament of the Chinese government as predicted by the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises: 
The boom can last only as long as the credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown upon the loan market. But it could not last forever even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole monetary system

Friday, January 31, 2014

Behind Russia’s Central Bank’s “Unlimited Intervention”

With the ruble under fire, the Russian central bank mimics ECB Mario Draghi’s “Do whatever it takes” with their own “unlimited intervention” in the hope to stem the faltering currency. 

[I’ll argue below that this seems more than about the currency where the latter is only a symptom]

From Bloomberg:
Bank Rossii, which aims to let the ruble trade freely by 2015, bought the most rubles since September 2011 this week to slow the currency’s drop as central banks from Turkey to South Africa raised interest rates to prop up their currencies. The Moscow-based regulator will intervene “without quantitative limitations” until the ruble returns to the target band or the corridor is lifted to its level, it said in a statement on its website, reiterating the present framework for the currency…

The central bank has spent $29 billion since May 29 to smooth exchange-rate fluctuations, cutting its gold and forex reserves to $496.7 billion, the lowest level since 2011.

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The effect of Bank Rossii’s “unlimited intervention” has been to spike ruble against the USD yesterday. The ruble has been under pressure along with most emerging markets currencies. 

The question is will this serve as a temporary patch or will this enough to calm Russia’s financial tantrums? I believe that like her peer, the Turkish central bank's who surprised with a “shock and awe” of dramatically pushing up interest rates, this will have a short term impact.


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And like everywhere else, Russia’s currency woes have been manifestations of homegrown credit bubbles rather than fickle foreign money flows as consequence to zero bound rates.

Following the global crisis in 2008 Bank Rossii stepped on the interest rate pedal.

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The result? Again like anywhere else, from 2008 loans to the private sector has more than doubled. 

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This has been accompanied by a near doubling of M2 during the same period.

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Part of that credit bubble has been due to Bank Rossii’s foreign currency reserve accumulation. [As a side note, the ruble’s weakness comes amidst a mountain of forex reserves which many mistake as a free lunch to bubbles.]

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The build up in foreign exchange reserves has been reflected on the Bank Rossii’s asset growth.

So zero bound rates and Bank Rossii’s forex accumulation has prompted for a credit fueled property boom which supposedly had been one of the “hot” market for real estate in the world in 2013.

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While Russia’s housing prices has not reached the pre global crisis of 2007 level (left), housing loans acquired from mostly local institutions have ballooned (middle) to record highs.

And as one would further observe, the gravitation to the real estate boom via housing loans came with declining housing loan rates (right) as charts from Global Property Guide reveal

Zero bound rates has not just been an enticement for the private sector to splurge, the real aim of zero bound rates has been to redistribute of resources from the real economy to the government and to their favored interest groups. This is known as financial repression. Zero bound rates (negative real rates) is just part of the many ways government applies financial repression.

And as proof, while Bank Rossii held rates artificially down, Russia’s local government went into a spending binge.

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The Stratfor writes: (bold mine)
Most of Russia's regional governments have always had some level of debt, but resource-based export revenues have kept it mostly manageable since the 1998 crisis. However, since the 2008-2009 financial crisis, most of the regions' debt has risen by more than 100 percent -- from $35 billion in 2010 to an estimated $78 billion in 2014, and Standard & Poor's has estimated that this will rise to $103 billion in 2015. Russia's overall government debt -- the federal and regional governments combined -- is around $300 billion, or 14 percent of gross domestic product. This is small for a country as large as Russia, but the problem is that so much of the debt is concentrated in the regions, which do not have as many debt reduction tools as the federal government does.

Of the 83 regional subjects in Russia, only 20 will be able to keep a budget surplus or a moderate level of debt by 2015, according to Standard & Poor's calculations. This leaves the other 63 regions at risk of needing a federal bailout or defaulting on their debt.

Currently, the Russian regions are financing their debt via bank loans, bonds and budget credits (federal loans, for example). Each region has to get federal approval to issue bonds, because regional bonds create more market competition for the federal and business bonds. Most of the banking loans to the regions carry high interest rates and are short term (mostly between two and five years). The federal loans come with much lower rates and longer repayment schedules (mostly between five and 20 years), so naturally federal credits and loans are more attractive for the local governments, though unprofitable for the federal government. The issuance of federal credits or loans to the regions in 2013 was limited; initially, Moscow said it would issue $4.8 billion in new credits to the regions in 2013, but only issued $2.4 billion due to its own budgetary restrictions. This is one contributing factor to the dramatic local-government debt increases.
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In terms of federal external currency debt one may note that Russian foreign liabilities jumped by 34% in just two years. So the devaluing ruble will magnify on the Russia’s external credit risks.

Russia’s major exports has been predominantly commodities, particularly oil, the latter accounts for 71% of total exports in 2012. This has allowed Russian government to post a surplus in both the trade balance and her current account. [note the latter graphs I will not show anymore as this post might exceed the 512k size limits, so pls just click on the links]

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Despite the huge foreign reserve, current account surpluses and balance of trade account, Russia has been experiencing private capital outflows since 2008 both from the formal and likewise in the informal sector.

The informal sector has been estimated at 50-65% share of the economy where earlier I pointed out that the Russian government attempted to wage war against this sector by putting limits on cash transactions. Russia, according to Global Financial Integrity (GFI), has been the fifth largest victim of illicit capital outflow notes the RT

In my view, such outflows have partly been consequence to the economic and financial repression which has been reflected by the huge informal sector. Some in the formal and informal sector may have sought monetary refuge or safehaven from the grips of Russia’s autocratic government (e.g Cyprus, Cayman Islands). Some perhaps may have sought alternative investments abroad, and some may have been sensing trouble ahead in the Russian economy.

And symptoms of the latter can be seen via last week’s suspension of cash  withdrawals for a week by ‘My Bank’ supposedly one of Russia’s top 200 lenders by assets, according to the Zero Hedge

Some questions: Has this signified the continuing war against the informal economy? But if so, why limit to My Bank? Or has this been signs of a Russian bank in serious trouble? If the latter, has the problems of My Bank been large enough for the Bank Rossii to stay at the sidelines and compel My Bank to take her own measures? Will this not send signals to depositors and investors that Russia’s banking system may be in dire predicament? Could the Bank Rossi’s “unlimited intervention” have been really directed to calm the banking sector or forestall a depositor stampede/bank run?

Interesting twist of events.

In other words, instead of the mainstream’s impression that today’s emerging market rout has been led by foreign money, in Russia’s conditions, the weak ruble and the spike in bond yields 10 year Russian treasuries may have been mostly an exodus of resident money.

And this Wall Street Journal article seems to back my suspicion “High capital outflows have become a sore point in Russia in recent years, with critics saying official corruption is hampering the investment climate and driving money out of the country. The central bank considers debt redemption, dividends paid to foreign shareholders, Russian residents buying foreign currencies, and mergers and acquisitions as capital outflow.”

Bottom line:

One huge foreign reserves, and surpluses in current account and balance of trade account serve as no free pass to bubbles. Russia’s case is just one example

Two contra popular wisdom, it doesn’t take foreign money to pull the trigger for a bust to occur as in the case of Japan in the 1990. While there has hardly been a full credit bust in Russia yet, developing events seem to indicate that Russia’s credit bubble may have already reached its maximum elasticity point (in the face of rising bond yields). And the bubble bust will likely be sparked by a capital flight from resident depositors and investors.

Russia’s plight seems far from over.









Thursday, January 30, 2014

Welcome the Year of the Wooden Horse: Happy New Year!

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2014 is the year of the wooden horse. What should we expect from the wooden horse?

Well, here is a clue from the New Strait Times
In the year of the Wood Horse, the most dominant element is Fire. Fire element industries, therefore, will generally do well. These industries include oil and gas, airlines, restaurants, IT, electronics, metaphysics, and spiritual studies. With Fire being extremely prosperous, it does indicate a general impatience, volatility, and unrest in the minds of people. In the year’s birth chart, the element of Water is missing, indicating a lack of ideas and deeper thoughts. Put these two situations together, we will see a tendency for more fighting and quarrels across the world. Fire-related natural disasters are also to be expected, such as volcano eruptions, earthquakes, and also forest fires.

The second most prominent element of the year is Wood. Therefore, Wood industries, such as education, printing, fashion, herbs and botany, are expected to continue flourishing. The Earth element, in the presence of extreme Fire, starts to harden. This indicates obstructions and lethargy in Earth industries, such as property and real estate. The Metal element, which is weak in the year’s birth chart, also indicates challenges in sectors such as finance, the auto industry, and machinery. Changes in the legal system and financial trends are to be expected when strong Fire melts Metal. However, with the Water element missing, a lot of big decisions will be made based on emotions and fear, rather than wisdom and intelligent reasoning. The year will also see Water-related industries, such as tourism, travel, and fishery, slowing down.
Regardless of the above; Happy new year!

Quote of the Day: Protection against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.
(bold and italics mine)

This is from English philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill from his essay On Liberty as published at the Bartleby.com.

Video: Humor: Here Comes "The Kronies"

(hat tip Bob Murphy)