Esperando a QE

[SAMPLERKING]

esperando ansioso la opinión de miss marple respecto a lo de ayer

Ya somos dos querido hamijo...

Es un placer leer siempre a Miss Marple

 

[Miss Marple]

El QE anunciado ayer es más de lo esperado (50.000 millones adicionales durante 18 meses=900.000 millones), presentado cuidadosamente para que parezca más; con solo un 20% de mutualización. Una de cal y otra de arena. SuperMario ha hecho su trabajo, que es intentar posponer lo más posible el reconocimiento de que el sistema financiero europeo (como el global) está quebrado por el peso de unas deudas impagables.

Se trata sólo de ganar tiempo, de que parezca que las deudas se pueden pagar, para lograr que "vuelva a fluir" el crédito. Las deudas no son impagables porque sean demasiado grandes, sino porque los países, empresas y particulares endeudados no son capaces de producir la riqueza necesaria para devolverlas. Pero el problema no es la deuda en sí (si lo fuera, se hace default y ya está); el problema es que las economías occidentales se sustentan casi exclusivamente en el crédito desde hace décadas, y lo que no se puede hacer es cancelar las deudas y seguir pidiendo crédito.

Repito: el problema no es la deuda, sino el crédito. El crédito se basa en la promesa creíble de que las deudas se pagan. Por eso el default general no es una opción que contemplen. Quizá hubiera sido posible hace unos años, con austeridad de verdad y reconversión a sectores productivos: Islandia es el ejemplo, el único caso en tiempos recientes; una economía pequeña, poco sofisticada (aparte de la aberración de un sector bancario que creció desmesuradamente, como un cancer, en unos pocos años), y aún así causó convulsiones en el sistema financiero internacional. Tras el espejismo bancario Islandia volvió al turismo y la pesca del atún. Pero en países donde el sector productivo lleva décadas desmantelándose (y donde una gran parte de la población vive del dinero público de una forma u otra) es mucho más difícil vivir sin crédito. Si se añade un sector financiero globalizado e interrelacionado, donde un default tiene muchas más ramificaciones de las aparentes, pues se entiende que la opción de permitir defaults generalizados sea anatema.

SUperMario y sus compinches sueñan con crear inflación que se coma las deudas y permita que siga la alegre rueda del crédito. Pero la inflación no viene porque no queda solvencia, no queda casi nadie a quien prestar que pueda razonablemente dar la impresión de que podría devolver lo prestado. SuperMario, Yellen y demás tienen la difícil misión de seguir imprimiendo dinero para que los bancos y gobiernos al menos no colapsen, al tiempo que mantienen la ilusión de que no existe el riesgo moral, de que las deudas se pagan y el sistema crediticio funciona.

Seguirán por tanto con la charada mientras se pueda. Al final habrá mutualización; se imprimirá sin freno; habrá deudas públicas del 300% del PIB, a la japonesa. Pero se estirará todo lo posible, se intentará restringir, y para ello se combinará con severos discursos, supuesta austeridad, recortes y reformas para hacer a los de abajo "más competitivos", y sacrificios rituales de gente, empresas y hasta países prescindibles que se metieron demasiado en la trampa del crédito y se quemaron. Ni idea de lo que puede durar esto. Los movimientos anti-sistema tipo Podemos en realidad no se oponen a esto, solo están en desacuerdo con el reparto del crédito. Su triunfo no revertirá el proceso, sino que lo acelerará. Quizá eso no sea mala cosa. O quizá sí, porque lo que venga detrás puede que no nos guste a ninguno.

Menudo tocho me ha quedado, y encima desviado del tema original. Creo que voy a abrir otro hilo.

 

[mcd]

........ el problema no es la deuda, sino el crédito. ....

o dicho a la pata la llana: "el problema es la deuda futura"

y todos sabemos que esto es todo para continuar el mal reparto de daños

El BCE, su QE y la pescadilla que se muerde la cola. - Rankia

que tampoco va a ser frenado por los partidos emergentes

 

[Serpiente_Plyskeen]

The Great American Invasion Into Europe’s Debt Market Has Begun - Bloomberg Business

The Great American Invasion Into Europe’s Debt Market Has Begun

by Lisa Abramowicz
12:09 PM EDT
April 7, 2015

Do American Companies Have a Punch Bowl in Europe?

Just when debt-addicted American companies were starting to worry that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was going to take their proverbial punch bowl away, along came Mario Draghi.

The European Central Bank president has made borrowing so cheap in the region that foreign corporations are selling record amounts of debt. Forget the deeper, bigger U.S. corporate-bond market. Borrowing in euros is all the rage these days because it’s about 2 percentage points less expensive to do so.

About 65 percent of the record 60 billion euros of investment-grade bonds sold in March came from overseas companies, according to a March 27 Bank of America report. And a lot of those sellers are based in the U.S.

“The appeal of Europe is likely to continue throughout 2015,” Fitch Ratings analysts Michael Larsson and Monica Insoll wrote in an April 1 report. They predict non-European issuers will sell twice as much euro-denominated debt this year than they did in 2014.

The trend comes down to basic math.

Yields on investment-grade bonds in Europe have fallen to 0.99 percent, compared with 2.9 percent on those in the U.S., according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. Debt is so cheap in Europe that U.S. companies are saving money even if they buy currency hedges that have gotten expensive as the dollar’s soared versus the euro, according to Fitch.

Junk Bonds

And it’s not just top-rated companies. Speculative-grade borrowers including Huntsman Corp. and IMS Health Holdings Inc. have also headed to Europe to raise cash, according to Fitch.

“Riskier credits also achieve a larger discount than stronger names, and this is likely to boost the U.S. high-yield footprint in Europe,” the Fitch analysts wrote. Stimulus-driven “search for yield is pushing European investors into embracing a wider range of credits.”

Yields of 4.3 percent on euro-denominated high-yield bonds are about 2.2 percentage points lower than those on dollar-denominated notes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch data show.

So even if the Fed does hike interest rates this year, it may not matter too much to U.S. corporate borrowers. They’ve found, courtesy of Draghi, a new source of financing that is plenty cheap.

 

[Serpiente_Plyskeen]

Refloto este hilo, aprovechando que Ambrosio ha escrito un artículo al respecto - por si alguien no lo conoce, es un palmero pro-UK que siempre escribe artículos acerca de lo dolidos que están (estamos) todos los demás. A mí me sigue pareciendo que merece la pena seguirlo, a pesar de su sesgo, porque a veces un enemigo que te dice las verdades que no quieres oir (ni considerar) puede ser mucho mejor que un amigo que las calla.

Resumiendo: Que China se prepara para tomar el relevo del QE Europeo cuando este deje de tener efecto. Como los Europeos lo hicimos después del Japonés, los Japoneses después del Americano, y los Americanos después del Británico. De victoria en victoria hasta la derrota final, vaya. Por ahora, que también hay que decirlo, con un QE local, para rescatar a sus administraciones locales, pero poniendo ya la primera piedra para el QE futuro.

Shanghai equities roar as China floats QE-lite - Telegraph

Shanghai equities roar as China floats QE-lite

The central bank is acting as a lender-of-last-resort for debt-strapped local governments struggling to sell new bonds on the open market

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Washington

8 :32PM BST 27 Apr 2015

China is drafting plans for bond purchases to boost liquidity and shore up the country's $2.6 trillion edifice of local government debt, becoming last of the world's big economic powers to resort to quantitative easing.

The news propelled the Chinese stock market to a seven-year high on Monday, helped by fevered talk of a merger between Sinopec and PetroChina, the country's two oil giants..

The Shanghai Composite index of equities has risen by 40pc this year and 125pc since June, even as the economy grapples with a property slump.

Corporate profits fell 2.6pc in the first quarter and swathes of industry are mired in recession. "The operational situation of industrial enterprises remains grave," said the National Bureau of Statistics.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) is looking at menu of unconventional measures to expand its balance sheet, according to officials cited by Market News. These include the option of buying $160bn of local government bonds from the banks.

While this is already being dubbed "China's QE", it may not add much stimulus and has an entirely different purpose from actions by the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, or the Bank of Japan. The latter were attempting to drive down borrowing costs once short-term rates could drop no further. China is still a long way from the 'zero-bound'.

"It is only akin to QE in the sense that it involves asset purchases by the central bank," said Mark Williams from Capital Economics.

The PBOC appears to be stepping in to help local governments as they struggle to find market buyers under a new debt-swap regime, a reform pushed through earlier this year to clamp down on regional finances.

"It is acting as lender-of-last-resort for local governments. This is not a monetary policy measure, or part of broad monetary loosening. If they wanted to do that they would cut the reserve requirement ratio (RRR), which is 18.5pc and still very high," he said.

The PBOC slashed the RRR by 100 basis points earlier this month - the biggest cut since 2008 - but this was chiefly to offset monetary tightening caused by a surge of capital flight in March.

It is not stimulus as such but that has not stopped investors reacting with euphoria, stoking further excesses in a market already in the thrall of dangerous speculation.

A record 3.3 million people opened 'A-Share' accounts last week and joined the stampede. Margin debt has risen to a record 8pc of the free float on the stock exchange, evoking comparisons with the final blow-off on Wall Street in 1929.

"Financial logic dictates that asset prices cannot decouple from the growth of the global economy forever," said Mark Haefele from UBS. "Investments eventually need to be justified by profits. The assets on the receiving end of liquidity can change suddenly."

Ma Jun, the PBOC's chief economist, insists that the Chinese economy can weather the current slowdown for now without the need for major stimulus, citing healthy levels of job growth.

There is no doubt that the authorities are taking precautionary action to head off a very bumpy landing. Seven-day interbank lending rates have dropped by 200 basis points to under 3pc since the cash-crunch in March, a sign of easing.

Mr Ma said the PBOC's measures were intended to offset "passive" monetary tightening occurring for other reasons. The country's slide into near-deflationary conditions has automatically pushed up real borrowing costs for Chinese companies by five percentage points since 2011.

The Chinese authorities still have enormous fire-power. They could cut the RRR all the way down to 5pc or even lower in extremis, injecting at least $2 trillion of credit into the financial system. But this would perpetuate the same corrosive 'on-off cycle' of ever-rising debt.

Total debt has reached 250pc of GDP, if all forms of trusts, shadow banking, and off-shore lending are included. "No country has ever survived that sort of rise without something bad happening," said Nariman Behravesh, global economist for IHS Global Insight.

Mr Behravesh said a financial crisis is unlikely since the Chinese state controls the banking system, but that alone cannot conjure away excesses on this scale. "What is more likely is a Japanese-style lost decade. The question is at what point they forget about reforms and just stimulate again and put off the day or reckoning because they can't bear the pain. We're not there yet but we are seeing a dramatic slowdown," he said.

President Xi Jinping seems determined to tough it out, opting to lance the boil of excess credit early in his 10-year term, and before it escapes control altogether. He has established such a tight grip on the Communist Party that he can probably withstand an economic squall.

Finance minister Lou Jiwei warned over the weekend that there is a 50pc likelihood that China will slide into the "middle-income trap" over the next five to ten years unless it curbs leverage. The low-hanging fruit of easy catch-up development has already been exhausted.

Citigroup estimates that growth has dropped to 4.6pc over the last year, far below the official claims of 7pc. The Conference Board thinks the real figure is just 4pc.

Diana Choyleva at Lombard Street Research says GDP actually contracted by 0.2 in the first quarter, led by an ominous plunge in real domestic demand of 2.1pc. "Beijing has made a conscious policy choice to go for “creative destruction”, although we have yet to see the extent of corporate defaults," she said

"Sceptics of China’s ability to rebalance without a major crisis are right to worry, as the task is fraught with uncertainty. China has taken a huge gamble."