Will Mario Draghi, the President of the ECB, go through with a genuine quantitative easing program as he implied in his press conference on November 6th? It’s possible, especially if euro area inflation continues to fall, as we are predicting in the months to come, under the effect of falling oil prices, in particular. Besides the assurance of bigger and bigger liquidity injections to the financial sector, what impact would a potential QE plan have on the real economy?
Archives par catégories : Countries/Regions
The wheels have come off in Germany
Business sentiment, orders, manufacturing…the telltale signs of a trend reversal in the German economy are all there: the euro area’s biggest economy is in a downturn.
This might come as news to some observers and we will discuss the primary reasons behind the situation and try to provide answers to the biggest questions raised by the impending downwards revision to German growth forecasts:
– Recession or no recession in the euro area next year?
– Another crisis looming?
– What is the solution?
Could US Housing Prices Plummet Again?
In the past two years, the contradictions on the U.S. housing market have continued to get worse. Higher property prices, often seen as an indicator of a healthier market, now seem disproportionate compared with the reality of a market that is still limping from the battering it took during the crisis. As Fed members seem increasingly impatient to trigger a rate hike cycle, the imbalances resulting from this distortion pose a serious threat that prices could fall again.
Yellen resists market calls, but does she really have a choice?
Download the article (French version)
The main risk from the FOMC’s meeting in the past two days was a possible change of direction on Fed monetary policy. It looks like the bank is staying the course. Today’s statement was unequivocal: there will be no rate hike in the foreseeable future. We can only tip our cap to the Fed’s determination in resisting mounting pressure from the market. Janet Yellen would be taking an imprudent risk if she were to rise to the bait and hint at a possible rate hike. Indeed, the U.S. economy may be doing better than it was a few months ago but its ability to weather an increase in long-term interest rates, which would be the obvious corollary to anticipations of a rate hike, is, in our opinion, close to nil….even after apparently positive GDP numbers from the second quarter.
T-Bonds or S&P, which of these markets has got it wrong?
Improving economic indicators, ongoing accommodative monetary policy from the Fed and the bountiful reporting season have propelled U.S. equity indices to new highs in recent days: the S&P has added gains of 6% in the last three months making for a YTD gain of 18% and has even flirted with the 2,000 point level. The confidence backing up these trends is, however, a far cry from the signals the bond markets are sending us. Since the end of April, the yield on 10-year T-bonds has fallen to below 2.50%, i.e. 25 basis points less than mid-April levels and 50bps off from where it started the year. Such distortions between equity and bond markets are tough to reconcile over the duration and will end up being corrected. It is merely a question of when and to what extent. The response will come from economic changes in the coming months. So what should the market being taking a very hard look at?
U.S. Real Estate, Does It Still Matter?
Download the full article
The U.S. housing recovery, considered a slam dunk by the vast majority of economists since spring 2012, has sputtered since summer 2013. Even though most economic indicators have been pointed higher in recent months, real estate has been the odd man out. Housing starts have been wildly unstable from one month to the next and are hardly increasing at all. At less than 900,000 housing units in June, they are on par with end-2012 and still a long way away from returning to their long-term average, while many observers predicted they would do so by the end of this year.
How worried should we be? What would happen if activity in this sector failed to return to normal levels during the current cycle? What weight will the Fed give to these disappointments in its decision-making process?
Now What Do We Do?
Download
The raft of data coming out of the euro area in recent weeks has been more and more mediocre and has erased all doubts: the strategy for extricating the economy from the crisis in the past few years has been a failure. None of the mechanisms born of resulting from decisions made by European leaders have delivered results or are about to:
-the structural policies aimed at improving competitiveness have failed, because global trade is tanking
-as proof: Germany’s export outlook is sputtering and the ability of the euro area’s biggest economy to act as the region’s growth driver (i.e. its “appointed” role) is going up in smoke;
-fiscal austerity’s only effect, under such conditions, is to fuel deflationary pressures and are counter-productive in controlling public debt levels.
These failures hardly come as a surprise. Like many of our peers, we have been decrying these shortcomings but did we really need to spell them out before hoping to make a convincing enough argument to effect the urgent change in the direction of European economic policy? With the situation becoming increasingly dire, where should, at present, our fears and hopes lie?
No QE, so we’ll have to settle for the minutes…
The ECB says it needs time to beef up its anti-deflation measures. Let’s not kid ourselves, the bank is in no hurry. There seems to be but one justification for its move to space out its meetings from every four to every six weeks and the innovation that consists of publishing its minutes: deflate ballooning expectations of future intervention.
This, in reality, was the only take-away from the ECB’s monthly monetary policy meeting held this week. In other words, there is no revolution under the European skies: the pace of change is still in slow motion and lacking in ambition.