Tag: news

While it’s not surprising that 2007 – the year when spirits were high, housing prices had just hit a record and the financial bubble was about to burst but not yet- was a “swinging one” on the Hill, with a whopping 25 sexual harassment settlements, the most in the past 20 years, we wonder what happened in 2002 when only 10 settlements led to a near record $4 million in awards. This question was prompted by the first ever release of Congressional harassment records, unveiled yesterday for the first time by the Congressional Office of Compliance.

Below is the breakdown of settlement number by year since 1997…

… and the amount quietly paid out in settlement awards:

To be sure, the controversial and sensitive issue of Congressional harassments has taken center stage this week, with female lawmakers making fresh allegations of sexual harassment against unnamed members who are currently in office, and the unveiling of a new bill on Wednesday to change how sexual harassment complaints are reported and resolved. On Thursday, a former Playboy playmate shared her story of being groped and kissed without her consent by Sen. Al Franken in 2006.

And until yesterday, there was little specific data to help illuminate just how pervasive sexual harassment is on Capitol Hill, but finally one figure has emerged: the total that the Office of Compliance, the office that handles harassment complaints, has paid to victims. On Thursday, the Office of Compliance released additional information indicating that it has paid victims more than $17 million since its creation in the 1990s. That includes all settlements, not just related to sexual harassment, but also discrimination and other cases.

According to CNN, an OOC spokeswoman said the office was releasing the extra data “due to the interest in the awards and settlement figures.” The OOC has come under fire in recent days for what lawmakers and Hill aides alike say are its antiquated policies that do not adequately protect victims who file complaints. CNN also learned that during the current Congress, no settlement payment approval requests have been made to the congressional committee charged with approving them.

Here’s what we know about that money:

When was this money paid out?

According to a report from the Office of Compliance, more than $17 million has been paid out in settlements over a period of 20 years — 1997 to 2017.

How many settlements have there been?

According to the OOC data released Thursday, there have been 264 settlements. On Wednesday, Rep. Jackie Speier, the California Democrat who unveiled a bill to reform the OOC, announced at a news conference Wednesday that there had been 260 settlements

Where did the settlement money come from?

Taxpayers. Once a settlement is reached, the money is not paid out of an individual lawmaker’s office but rather comes out of a special fund set up to handle this within the US Treasury — meaning taxpayers are footing the bill. The fund was set up by the Congressional Accountability Act, the 1995 law that created the Office of Compliance.

How many of the settlements were sexual harassment-related?

It’s not clear. Speier told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday that the 260 settlements represent those related to all kinds of complaints, including sexual harassment as well as racial, religious or disability-related discrimination complaints. The OOC has not made public the breakdown of the settlements, and Speier says she’s pursuing other avenues to find out the total.

In its latest disclosure, the OOC said that statistics on payments are “not further broken down into specific claims because settlements may involve cases that allege violations of more than one of the 13 statutes incorporated by the (Congressional Accountability Act).”

Who knows about the settlements and payments?

After a settlement is reached, a payment must be approved by the chairman and ranking member of the House administration committee, an aide to Chairman Gregg Harper, a Mississippi Republican, told CNN.
The aide also said that “since becoming chair of the committee, Chairman Harper has not received any settlement requests.” Harper became chairman of the panel at the beginning of this year. It’s not clear how many other lawmakers — if any — in addition to the House administration committee’s top two members are privy to details about the settlements and payments.

A source in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office told CNN that Ryan is not made aware of the details of harassment settlements. That source also said that the top Democrat and Republican on the House administration committee review proposed settlements and both must approve the payments. Similarly, a source in Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office told CNN that Pelosi also is not made aware of those details, and that they are confined to the parties of the settlement and the leaders of the administration committee. “Leader Pelosi has expressed support for the efforts of Rep. Speier who is working on multiple bills to reform the secretive and woefully inadequate process,” the source added.

When asked about Ryan’s knowledge of any sexual harassment settlements, a spokesperson for Ryan’s office noted that the committee is conducting a full review of workplace harassment and discrimination.
What do these settlements tell us about the scope of the sexual harassment problem on Capitol Hill?

It is unclear how much of the $17 million is money paid to sexual harassment cases because of the Office of Compliance’s complex reporting process. However, even knowing that dollar figure doesn’t quantify the problem: a source within the Office of Compliance tells CNN that between 40 and 50% of harassment claims settle after mediation — an early stage in the multi-tiered reporting process.

And the number of settlements reached may not be indicative of how widespread sexual harassment is, as many victims chose not to proceed with OOC’s process for handling complaints. Tracy Manzer, a spokeswoman for Speier, told CNN last week 80% of people who have come to their office with stories of sexual misconduct in the last few weeks have chosen not to report the incidents to the OOC.

* * *

Now if only we could find out just what happened in 2002 to make that year such an outlier in terms of settlement awards… although we have the feeling the Bill Clinton may somehow be involved.

via http://ift.tt/2j1bmU7 Tyler Durden

New Fed Chief Powell – A “Swamp Critter Extraordinaire”

 – Is the New Fed Chief Jeremy Powell a “Swamp Critter Extraordinaire”?
– Trump surrounding himself with elites disconnected from everyday society
– Realities of America’s difficulties not recognised by US power makers
– Powell will likely continue to protect Wall Street over Main Street
– Savers should diversify to protect themselves from Fed’s ponzi policies

Editor: Mark O’Byrne

Just like many of his other campaign promises, Trump isn’t doing a great job of draining the swamp. His nominee for Fed Chair is Jerome Powell.

Powell is a ‘swamp critter extraordinaire’ so declared by Bill Bonner last week. We’re inclined to agree. Name-calling is poor sportsmanship when it comes to politics, but hey, Trump started it.

When Trump traveled around the United States campaigning for the most privileged position in the country he lashed out at the seemingly abstract promise to ‘Drain the Swamp’ at every opportunity. He used it to criticise anything he didn’t like about the status-quo.

He made the ‘swamp critters’ the fall-guys for every hardship Americans were facing. In many ways he was right.

Yet as has been the case throughout the last eleven months, Trump hasn’t done a great job of turning rhetoric into reality.

He has continued to fill the swamp rather than drain it. Spending by lobbyists has reached levels unseen since 2012. Secretaries are flying in private government jets and Trump uses Republican Party money to fund his own legal expenses.

This is nothing compared to the senior appointments he has made. Trump has taken ‘swamp critters’ and placed them in positions of such power and influence one wonders what his supporters make of it all.

Hypocrisy was a word heard frequently during the Obama Presidency. Obama was great with words and preached peace while practicing war. Trump’s hypocrisy is on a whole new level.

Powell is just his latest appointment. With an estimated fortune of $55 million the likely new Fed Chair  has spent his career in Washington flip-flopping between roles in both regulation and industry. He is now set to take the wheel at a job whose sole role is to steer the US economy. Indeed, some more imperially minded Americans see the job as being to steer the global economy.

Trump is like a school boy with football stickers, keen to make up the set of Team Wall Street. As Vox outlined:

Trump will have in place a Wall Street Fed chair to go with his Wall Street Treasury secretary, Wall Street Council of Economic Advisers chair, and Wall Street slate of bank regulators.

In a country that is set to see 8,000 retail store closings this year (more than in 2008), where not a single person is employed in nearly one out of every five U.S. families and almost 60% of people do not have enough money saved to even cover a $500 emergency expense, can another Washington elite be expected to build an economy that will benefit the many?

Powell, another Swamp dweller or worse, a crony?

Unsurprisingly Powell’s nomination was a step away from the norm for Trump. Previous Presidents have usually renominated the incumbent chair. Given Trump’s ongoing criticism of Yellen a replacement was expected.

One thing that was expected was the financial stature and Wall Street position of a Trump nominee. Powell is a Republican who built a vast wealth as a partner at Carlyle. In Powell’s latest financial disclosure (June 2017) he lists his net worth between $19.7 million and $55 million. Once he is Fed Chair he will be  the richest Fed chair since banker Marriner Eccles, who held the position from 1934 to 1948.

What wasn’t quite expected in this nomination was how similar to Yellen the nominee would be.

Powell has often backed Ms. Yellen on a number of issues from raising interest rates to reducing the Fed’s balance sheet. He has supported every policy decision since joining the Fed, including interest rate increases, and supported its decision to unwind the bond-buying program put in place during and after the 2008 financial crisis.

There might be some difference in bank regulation. Yellen has often given a somewhat skeptical view of the pro-business approach by the current White House. However given Trump’s appointment of Randy Quarles, a dedicated deregulator, as the Fed’s vice chair in charge of regulation, there is likely to be little noticeable change here.

As Bill Bonner explains:

The important thing, from our point of view, is that he can be relied upon to do exactly as expected.

Like Ms. Yellen, he will be in favor of shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet… and raising interesting rates… until the money supply tightens and all hell breaks loose.

Then, he will move heaven and earth to protect the Deep State from bankruptcy… with an aggressive program of QE Encore.

The one area where there is a major difference is the the strong academic background in monetary policy that both Yellen and Ben Bernanke shared. This is where Powell is most certainly lacking. But, given the horrors seen as a result of previous chairpersons, this might not be such a terrible thing.

Where this will backfire is if Powell is easily persuaded by the views of others. Others who might just not have the entire country’s interests at heart, say… everyone else from a pro Wall Street position?

This isn’t an impossible thing to imagine. He reportedly likes to raise any concerns he has in private rather than in public. At first this sounds like a professional approach, but in a political climate where the President will bully publicly we perhaps need a Fed Chair who is willing to shout about any concerns he has. Powell seems to be a people-pleaser.

What the president wanted was a Republican without particularly strong views on monetary policy, someone who would continue with Yellen’s softly, softly approach to raising rates but would be ready to roll back some of the post-crisis regulations imposed on the financial sector. By those criteria, Powell was the perfect choice. The Guardian

In short, Powell comes from the background Trump likes and he seems to have the personality the President can handle. Powell is unlikely to make life difficult for Trump and the rest of the swamp. Worryingly we may be faced with little upset as it will be business as usual but this may result in far more upset in the wider economy.

Far removed from reality 

Powell isn’t the only one who appears to have never looked beyond America’s elite when it comes to life experience. He will no doubt have to have a close working relationship with the US Treasury Secretary whose department works hand in hand with the Federal Reserve to preserve economic stability.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is a banker turned Hollywood film producer with little known experience of policy and public finance.

To look at his resume is to basically read a tailor-made mockery of Trump’s pledge to drain the swamp of ‘bankers’ and ‘globalists’.

Prior to becoming Trump’s Chief fundraiser Mnuchin was a banker who had previously worked at hedge funds. During the financial crisis he (along with Soros and others) bought the failing IndyMac bank. It was rebranded to OneWest bank and received some major criticism surrounding its quick approach to foreclosing on homeowners:

Back in 2011, local housing activists and the Occupy movement in Los Angeles camped out on [Mnuchin’s] lawn to save the home of Rose Mary Gudiel, a La Puente, California, resident who faced eviction after being just two weeks late on one mortgage payment. The activists threatened to move all of Gudiel’s furniture into Mnuchin’s $26 million Bel Air estate if the eviction wasn’t stopped. Twenty police officers and a helicopter met the protesters.

Why was Mnuchin’s front lawn the focal point for the protest? Because years after forming Dune Capital in 2004, Mnuchin’s hedge fund purchased the failed lender IndyMac, one of America’s largest home lenders and a leading distributor of Alt-A mortgages, a subprime hybrid which did not require borrowers to accurately state their incomes. After IndyMac failed, Dune led the investment group that purchased it from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in 2009, renaming it OneWest Bank. Mnuchin became OneWest’s principal owner and chairman.

…Protected by a federal backstop, OneWest turned $3 billion in profits from 2009 to 2014, off an initial investment of $1.65 billion. They spun $1.86 billion of that out to investors in dividend payments. Meanwhile, the FDIC wound up losing $13 billion on the IndyMac failure, and will pay an estimated $2.4 billion to OneWest for its foreclosure costs.

Things haven’t much improved for the Treasury Secretary’s image since his government appointment. During his time he has gone on to marry actress Louise Linton. Their marriage got off to a rocky start when they came under investigation for requesting a government jet to take them on their honeymoon.

Since then Linton has enjoyed posting snapshots into her designer life by posting on instagram. It’s almost like an Imelda Marcos in waiting.

Of course, a man can’t be blamed for his wife’s lack of taste or subtlety. But his approach to policies should also come under some scrutiny, which isn’t hard given how close to the surface of the swamp they are.

He has repeatedly praised Yellen and flip-flopped on tax reform. He has even expressed an interest in following the lead of other countries by issuing 50–100 year bonds government bonds. As Dr. Joseph Salerno explained in reference to Austria’s 70-year bond, this is a bad and dangerous move that only serves to benefit the elite.

The creation of [long-term bonds] enables the political elite to covertly and repeatedly plunder and impoverish productive savers, capitalists, entrepreneurs and workers, while avoiding the need to incur the wrath of the productive class by raising taxes.

So with untrained, wealthy Powell keen to people-please at every opportunity and Mnuchin showing off his vast wealth and lack of understanding for the poor, things aren’t looking promising when it comes to Making American Great Again.

What is the moral of the story of critters of the swamp?

Sadly the moral is likely to be that we should not trust a government to protect our individual interests. Even if they come to power with the best of intentions, they rarely have the genuine desire of improving the lives beyond the few.

From every political experiment in history there have been few examples where all of the country’s citizens feel they have benefited equally. There have also been few examples of politicians following through on their promises.

In regard to the US the worrying point of concern is that Trump appears to have forgotten the devastating consequences that low interest rates have had on normal people. This is something he campaigned on and yet has almost guaranteed its future presence in the US economy by nominating yet another Yellen-type.

On paper Yellen improved the economy, unemployment has fallen and the US Fed’s balance sheet is set to be reduced. However these ‘improvements’ aren’t being felt by US citizens.

Hard-working individuals, from the upper middle classes downwards are being forced to choose between putting their savings into a bubblicious stock market or receive nothing in return (or worse) from their bank account. Meanwhile the economy is awash with food stamps, untenable personal loans and growing inequality.

The future does not appear to look any different. We stand and watch with curiosity but in the meantime suggest savers take charge of their own finances. Ensuring they are well protected from the damaging policies made in regard to the United States’ economy.

This isn’t just a point to note for those in the U.S.

The power of the U.S. dollar is so extensive that Powell’s leadership will have far-reaching consequences around the world. Powell will likely take instruction from Trump and his Wall Street swampies, suggesting that the world no longer just has to fear Trump’s tweets but also his take on the management of the dollar as well.

The best way to protect yourself from dollar debasement and ongoing devaluation is to invest in gold. This is exactly the approach taken by a number of central banks. They know that gold cannot be devalued by the US Federal Reserve and will only benefit from Trump’s dangerous, Wall St approach to economic and monetary management.

Physical gold held in an allocated and segregated manner protects from counter party risks. The same cannot be said for the paper and digital U.S. dollar and its many counter party risks.

Trump’s appointment of Powell, the latest addition to the Goldman Sachs / Wall Street line-up, confirms Trump’splans to let the wealthy counter parties take precedence over the masses.

 

Related reading:

Russia Buys 34 Tonnes Of Gold In September

Gold Price Reacts as Central Banks Start Major Change

Central Bank Wants Every Citizen To Own 3.5 Ounces of Gold Bullion

Gold Coins and Bars Saw Demand Rise 17% to 222T in Q3

 

News and Commentary

Gold prices inch up, head for second weekly gain (Reuters.com)

Stocks Climb After Tumultuous Week; Dollar Falls (Bloomberg.com)

Stocks Rebound on Tech Rally as Treasuries Weaken (Bloomberg.com)

How Mt. Gox’s bitcoin customers could lose again (Reuters.com)

Saudi Arabia Suspends Bank Accounts and Expropriates Detainees (Bloomberg.com)

Palladium – This Year’s Best Commodity Is One of the Smallest Metals Markets (Bloomberg.com)

Source: Bloomberg

Prepare for a crash (MoneyWeek.com)

What happens when the next recession hits? (StansBerryChurcHouse.com)

Turks Just Bought The Most Gold Ever As Lira Tumbles (ZeroHedge.com)

How The Fed Destroyed The Functioning American Democracy And Bankrupted The Nation (ZeroHedge.com)

What History Teaches About Interest Rates (DailyReckoning.com)

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

17 Nov: USD 1,283.85, GBP 969.31 & EUR 1,088.19 per ounce
16 Nov: USD 1,277.70, GBP 969.01 & EUR 1,085.53 per ounce
15 Nov: USD 1,285.70, GBP 976.62 & EUR 1,086.29 per ounce
14 Nov: USD 1,273.70, GBP 972.47 & EUR 1,086.59 per ounce
13 Nov: USD 1,278.40, GBP 977.59 & EUR 1,097.89 per ounce
10 Nov: USD 1,284.45, GBP 976.44 & EUR 1,102.19 per ounce
09 Nov: USD 1,284.00, GBP 980.98 & EUR 1,106.29 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

17 Nov: USD 17.09, GBP 12.95 & EUR 14.49 per ounce
16 Nov: USD 17.04, GBP 12.92 & EUR 14.48 per ounce
15 Nov: USD 17.12, GBP 13.00 & EUR 14.45 per ounce
14 Nov: USD 16.94, GBP 12.92 & EUR 14.45 per ounce
13 Nov: USD 16.93, GBP 12.93 & EUR 14.53 per ounce
10 Nov: USD 17.00, GBP 12.92 & EUR 14.60 per ounce
09 Nov: USD 17.10, GBP 13.03 & EUR 14.69 per ounce

Recent Market Updates

– UK Debt Crisis Is Here – Consumer Spending, Employment and Sterling Fall While Inflation Takes Off
– Protect Your Savings With Gold: ECB Propose End To Deposit Protection
– Internet Shutdowns Show Physical Gold Is Ultimate Protection
– Gold Coins and Bars Saw Demand Rise 17% to 222T in Q3
– Prepare For Interest Rate Rises And Global Debt Bubble Collapse
– Platinum Bullion ‘May Be One Of The Only Cheap Assets Out There’
– World’s Largest Gold Producer China Sees Production Fall 10%
– German Investors Now World’s Largest Gold Buyers
– Gold Price Reacts as Central Banks Start Major Change
– Why Switzerland Could Save the World and Protect Your Gold
– Invest In Gold To Defend Against Bail-ins
– Stumbling UK Economy Shows Importance of Gold
– Wozniak and Thiel Fuel Bitcoin-Gold Debate: Gold Comes Out On Top

Important Guides

For your perusal, below are our most popular guides in 2017:

Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Switzerland

Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Singapore

Essential Guide to Tax Free Gold Sovereigns (UK)

Please share our research with family, friends and colleagues who you think would benefit from being informed by it.

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Defense Secretary James Mattis will get an earful from his boss this morning, after an “authorized user” of the Pentagon Twitter account retweeted – and then swiftly deleted – a tweet calling for President Donald Trump to resign after the president slammed Sen. Al Franken while remaining silent about Alabama Sen. Candidate Roy Moore.

On the official Department of Defense twitter account right now… http://pic.twitter.com/46fwYLKBCB

— Rebecca Morin (@RebeccaMorin_) November 16, 2017

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement that an authorized operator of the Defense Department's official Twitter site “erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense. The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.”

Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White posted the same statement on Twitter.

An authorized operator of the @DeptofDefense’s official Twitter site erroneously retweeted content that would not be endorsed by the Department of Defense. The operator caught this error and immediately deleted it.

— Dana W. White – DoD (@ChiefPentSpox) November 16, 2017

The Defense Department account has 5.2 million followers.

President Trump stirred up a late-night controversy of his own Thursday after calling a picture of Al "Frankenstein" groping the breasts of Los Angeles radio host Leeann Tweeden “really bad.”

The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps? …..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2017

He also accused Franken on hypocrisy, tweeting: “And to think that just last week he was lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women. Lesley Stahl tape?”

.And to think that just last week he was lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women. Lesley Stahl tape?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2017

The White House’s official position on allegations that Moore had inappropriate sexual contact with at least seven women when they were teenagers – one of whom was just 14 at the time – is that the Alabama voters should decide his fate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has threatened to expel Moore should he win the seat.

via http://ift.tt/2z9E3ZR Tyler Durden

Mario Draghi gave the keynote speech at the Frankfurt European Banking Congress this morning in which he focused on the strong outlook for the Eurozone economy and how his monetary policy is playing a vital role. The speech was peppered with upbeat phrases and adjectives like solid, robust, unabated, endogenous propagation, resilient, remarkable and ongoing. According to Draghi.

The euro area is in the midst of a solid economic expansion. GDP has risen for 18 straight quarters, with the latest data and surveys pointing to unabated growth momentum in the period ahead. From the ECB’s perspective, we have increasing confidence that the recovery is robust and that this momentum will continue going forward.

Draghi is confident that future growth will be unabated for three reasons.

• Previous headwinds have dissipated;
• Drivers of growth are increasingly endogenous rather than exogenous; and
• The Eurozone economy is more resilient to new shocks.

In terms of previous headwinds, Draghi notes that global growth and trade have recovered, while the eurozone has de-leveraged.

For some years global growth and world trade have been a drag on the recovery. Now, we are seeing signs of a sustained expansion. Global PMIs remain strong. The share of countries in which growth has been improving relative to the previous three years has risen from 20% in mid-2016 to 60% today. And this has fed through into a rebound in world trade, which is growing at its strongest annual rate in six years, and may well become a tailwind going forward.

Domestically, a key headwind in the past has been the necessary deleveraging by firms and households. But this is also now diminishing as debt returns to more sustainable levels. For the euro area, gross corporate debt to value added is now roughly back to its pre-crisis level. In vulnerable countries the decline has been steeper. In Spain, corporate debt has fallen from 215% of gross value added in early 2012 to close to 150% today – the same level it had at the end of 2004. Italian firms have seen their debt ratio fall by around 30 percentage points since end 2012, returning to the same level as in mid-2007.

For households, gross indebtedness is also edging down and now stands just below its mid-2008 level. And importantly for the recovery, household deleveraging is now happening largely “passively” – i.e. through nominal growth – rather than “actively”, that is, through paying down debt or write offs.

Regarding the second reason, Draghi sees the exogenous factors of falling oil prices and monetary policy have less impact as growth has become self-sustaining. This sort of confidence from central bankers is often mistimed, but this is Draghi’s assertion.

Now, we see more signs that growth is “feeding on itself”, i.e. spending multipliers and endogenous propagation are again supporting activity. This cycle is most evident for private consumption, which has remained robust even as oil prices have risen by about 30 dollars since the start of 2016. Consumption is being supported by a virtuous circle between rising labour income and rising employment. Employment in the euro area has reached its highest level ever, while unemployment has fallen to its lowest rate since January 2009. Importantly, this has taken place against the backdrop of a rising participation rate, which is now 2 percentage points above its pre-crisis level… The fact that unemployment has fallen so much while labour participation has been rising is a remarkable success story. As consumption has strengthened and spending multipliers have taken hold, investment has also followed with a lag. Since 2016, investment has contributed almost 45% to annual GDP growth, compared with under 30% in the two years previously.

Turning to his third reason, Draghi believes that two factors are behind the Eurozone’s increasing reliance to new shocks. First, the increasing convergence between the performance of Eurozone countries, for example, in terms of GDP growth and employment, and credit conditions. Second, the resilience of the financial sector. We will refrain from making any remark about Deutsche Bank or a big chunk of the Italian banking industry, but this was Draghi’s comment.

The other trend is the growing resilience of the financial sector. The total capital ratio of significant banks has increased by more than 170 basis points since early 2015. Their return on equity has risen from 4.4% at the end of 2015 to 7.1% at the start of this year, even as their leverage ratios have declined. All banks have benefited from the upward trend in returns on assets since the start of our monetary policy easing in 2014, although in some cases starting from low levels. Clearly this trend hides some variation among banks, which is largely driven by differences in their business models.

Low-for-long interest rates might contribute to a build-up of financial risks, and this has to be carefully monitored. At present we do not see systemic risks emerging at the euro area level. If there are some local pockets of risk, the defence lies in micro-prudential and macro-prudential policies, not changing area-wide monetary policy. Furthermore, in such an environment any backtracking on financial regulation would be a mistake, as the pre-crisis experience has shown.

Draghi would be rare amongst central bankers if he did see systemic risks, just like they never see asset bubbles, but we digress. One area where Draghi had to acknowledge a less than stellar performance was inflation, given the misguided view that reducing purchasing power is a good thing. He characterised progress as “incomplete and partial”. However, he sees two reasons for optimism.

Two indicators are important for gauging the durability of inflation. The first is the outlook for growth, since this helps us assess whether inflation will continue to rise as we expect. The second is underlying inflation. This allows us to assess whether inflation will stabilise around our aim once the effects of volatile factors, such as oil and food price swings, have faded away.

The growth outlook is now clearly improving, for all the reasons I have mentioned. But the underlying inflation trend remains subdued. According to a broad range of measures, underlying inflation has ticked up moderately since the start of this year, but it still lacks clear upward momentum. A key issue here is wage growth. Since the trough in mid-2016, growth in compensation per employee has risen, recovering around half of the gap towards its historical average. But overall trends remain subdued and are not broad-based.

On the ECB’s asset purchase program, Draghi stated that the reduction in monthly purchases from 60 billion Euros to 30 billion reflects the “growing confidence” in the economy. Asset purchases could be extended beyond September 2018 if there has not been a “sustained adjustment in the path of inflation”. Indeed, he noted that the reduced pace of purchases coupled with the extension of the time horizon had essentially left financial conditions unchanged. Having talked up the Eurozone recovery and prospects, Draghi urged politicians to do their part, a not so subtle way of taking credit for recent successes.

With the recovery ongoing, now is the right moment for the euro area to address further challenges to stability. This means actively putting our fiscal houses in order and building up buffers for the future – not just waiting for growth to gradually reduce debt. It means implementing structural reforms that will allow our economies to converge and grow at higher speeds over the long term. And it means addressing the remaining gaps in the institutional architecture of our monetary union.

So Draghi is very bullish, although we suspect his Eurozone recovery is somewhat more fragile than he would admit, but time will tell. Mark Ostwald, global strategist at ADM ISI, commenting on the timing of Draghi’s speech noted:"It comes ahead of next week's 'account' of the October council meeting, which may well highlight that Signor Draghi was rather economical with the truth about how many council members wanted to signal a specific end point for the QE programme, as has been more than evident in speeches since."

via http://ift.tt/2zKs8RC Tyler Durden

Yesterday’s torrid, broad-based rally looked set to continue overnight until early in the Japanese session, when the USD tumbled and dragged down with it the USDJPY, Nikkei, and US futures following a WSJ report that Robert Mueller had issued a subpoena to more than a dozen top Trump administration officials in mid October.

And as traders sit at their desks on Friday, U.S. index futures point to a lower open as European stocks fall, struggling to follow Asian equities higher as the euro strengthened at the end of a tumultuous week. Chinese stocks dropped while Indian shares and the rupee gain on Moody’s upgrade. The MSCI world equity index was up 0.1% on the day, but was heading for a 0.1% fall on the week. The dollar declined against most major peers, while Treasury yields dropped and oil rose. 

Europe’s Stoxx 600 Index fluctuated before turning lower as much as 0.3% in brisk volumes, dropping towards the 200-DMA, although about 1% above Wednesday’s intraday low; weakness was observed in retail, mining, utilities sectors. In the past two weeks, the basic resources sector index is down 6%, oil & gas down 5.8%, autos down 4.9%, retail down 3.4%; while real estate is the only sector in green, up 0.1%. The Stoxx 600 is on track to record a weekly loss of 1.3%, adding to last week’s sell-off amid sharp rebound in euro, global equity pullback. The Euro climbed for the first time in three days after ECB President Mario Draghi said he was optimistic for wage growth in the region, although stressed the need for patience, speaking in Frankfurt. European bonds were mixed. The pound pared some of its earlier gains after comments from Brexit Secretary David Davis signaling a continued stand-off in negotiations with the European Union.

In Asia, the Nikkei 225 took its time to catch up to the WSJ report that US Special Counsel Mueller has issued a Subpoena for Russia-related documents from Trump campaign officials, although reports pointing to North Korea conducting ‘aggressive’ work on the construction of a ballistic missile submarine helped the selloff. The Japanese blue-chip index rose as much as 1.8% in early dealing, but the broad-based dollar retreat led to the index unwinding the bulk of its gains; the index finished the session up 0.2% as the yen jumped to the strongest in four-weeks. Australia’s ASX 200 added 0.2% with IT, healthcare and telecoms leading the way, as utilities lagged. Mainland Chinese stocks fell, with the Shanghai Comp down circa 0.5% as the PBoC’s reversel in liquidity injections (overnight net drain of 10bn yuan) did little to boost risk appetite, as Kweichou Moutai (viewed as a bellwether among Chinese blue chips) fell sharply. This left the index facing its biggest weekly loss in 3 months, while the Hang Seng rallied with IT leading the way higher. Indian stocks and the currency advanced after Moody’s Investors Service raised the nation’s credit rating.

The dollar was pressured even as tax reform moved a step forward given Trump-Russia probe came back into focus. Two-year Treasury yield hit a fresh high and bonds slipped. The euro stayed on course to its best week in two months as Draghi remains bullish on prospects of higher wages; the kiwi hit its lowest level since June 2016.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury yield curve remained on investors’ radar, reaching its flattest levels in a decade, reflecting a belief that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a tax overhaul expected to boost share prices if it becomes law. The legislative battle now shifts to the Senate. As Bloomberg notes, as “Washington took one step closer to tax reform and China’s central bank injected the most cash since January into its financial system this week, investors have been trying to decide if resilient global growth and strong earnings forecasts warrant sticking it out in equities. Lofty valuations contributed to fund managers paring back some exposure after global shares reached record highs earlier this month.”

As earnings season drew to a close with 90 percent of U.S. and European companies having reported, analysts said results were supportive but weaker than the previous quarters. “While they look good overall, the strong momentum apparent since Q1 is now fading,” said Societe Generale analysts, adding that consensus earnings estimates are no longer being raised for U.S. or euro zone stocks.

As also reported on Thursday, Fed’s Williams suggested that central banks should consider unconventional policy tools for use in the future, including higher inflation targets and income targeting. Williams also suggested that negative rates need to be on list of potential tools if the US enters a recession, even as he said that a December hike, followed by 3 hikes in 2018 is perfectly reasonable. “What really matters is gradual normalisation not timing, should raise rates to around 2.5% in the next couple of years” he said adding that “Low inflation in a way is lucky as it allows strong growth, however, if it does not pick up over the next few years he will re-think the rate path.”

Oil prices were on track for weekly losses, slipping from two-year highs hit last week on signs that U.S. supply is rising and could potentially undermine OPEC’s efforts to tighten the market. U.S. light crude stood at $55.53 a barrel, up 0.7 percent on the day but still within its trading range in the past couple of days. It was down 2.1 percent on the week. Brent futures hit a two-week low of $61.08 a barrel but last stood 0.3 percent higher at $61.53. It was down 3.1 percent for the week.

Economic data today includes housing starts, building permits.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures down 0.1% to 2,583.25
• STOXX Europe 600 down 0.2% to 384.06
• MSCI Asia up 0.4% to 170.15
• MSCI Asia ex Japan up 0.5% to 558.90
• Nikkei up 0.2% to 22,396.80
• Topix up 0.1% to 1,763.76
• Hang Seng Index up 0.6% to 29,199.04
• Shanghai Composite down 0.5% to 3,382.91
• Sensex up 0.8% to 33,377.55
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.2% to 5,957.25
• Kospi down 0.03% to 2,533.99
• German 10Y yield rose 1.1 bps to 0.387%
• Euro up 0.2% to $1.1795
• Brent Futures up 0.7% to $61.78/bbl
• Italian 10Y yield rose 0.2 bps to 1.572%
• Spanish 10Y yield rose 0.6 bps to 1.548%
• Brent Futures up 0.7% to $61.78/bbl
• Gold spot up 0.3% to $1,282.59
• U.S. Dollar Index down 0.3% to 93.69

Top Overnight News

• House Republicans pass tax bill, while Senate Finance Committee approves different version
• Special Counsel Robert Mueller is said to have served President Donald Trump’s election campaign a subpoena in mid-October seeking documents related to Russia contacts
• ECB President Mario Draghi said he was confident for wage growth in the euro area
• While U.K. Brexit Secretary David Davis said there would be some clarity on the Britain’s divorce bill with the European Union in a “a few more weeks,” there are signs that talks with EU leaders are in a new stand-off
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe says he will push through initiatives to boost productivity and compile a new economic policy package next month
• Canada is open to a Mexican proposal to review the North American Free Trade Agreement every five years instead of ending the deal automatically if not renegotiated, which the U.S. had demanded, Reuters reports, citing two unidentified government sources
• Senate Panel Approves Tax Plan as GOP Leaders Gird for Battle
• Murdoch Has His Pick of Suitors as He Ponders Fox’s Fate; Sky Rises Most Since June on Interest From Comcast, Verizon
• Chinese Stocks Tumble as State Media Warning Triggers Selloff
• India’s First Moody’s Upgrade in 14 Years Bets on Reforms
• Draghi Says Confidence on Inflation Will Help Drive Wage Gains
• China Issues Draft Rules to Curb Asset Management Product Risks
• Bitcoin Flirts With Record $8,000 High, Leaving Sell-Off Behind
• PDVSA Looks Like a ‘Zero’ to Man Who Ran Elliott’s Argentina Bet
• Manafort Spent Millions on Home Updates But Numbers Don’t Add Up
• Tesla Seals Order From Michigan Grocery Chain for Semi Trucks
• Luxoft Holding Second Quarter Adjusted EPS Beats Estimates
• JPMorgan’s Gu Sees ‘Very Robust’ Pipeline for Hong Kong IPOs

In Asia, the Nikkei 225 took its time to catch up to a report suggesting that US Special Counsel Mueller has issued a Subpoena for Russia-related documents from Trump campaign officials, although reports pointing to North Korea conducting ‘aggressive’ work on the construction of a ballistic missile submarine probably helped the selloff. The Japanese blue-chip index rose as much as 1.8% in early dealing, but the broad-based dollar retreat led to the index unwinding the bulk of its gains; the index finished the session up 0.2%. Australia’s ASX 200 added 0.2% with IT, healthcare and telecoms leading the way, as utilities lagged. Mainland Chinese stocks fell, with the Shanghai Comp down circa 0.4% as the PBoC’s injections have done little to underscore risk appetite, as Kweichou Moutai (viewed as a bellwether among Chinese blue chips) fell sharply. This left the index facing its biggest weekly loss in 3 months, while  the Hang Seng rallied with IT leading the way higher. The PBoC injected a net CNY 810bln this week, against a net drain of CNY 230bln last week. Japanese PM Abe promised to rid the country of deflation once and for all. He pledged to use all policy tools, including tax reforms and deregulation, to push up wages in order to put an end to the country’s persistent deflation he also noted that he wants to increase pressure on North Korea along with the international community. Japanese Finance Minister Aso stated that Japan is to continue to firmly escape deflation. South Korea’s FX authority warned that the pace of the KRW’s gains has been fast. A BoK official warned that the KRW has appreciated fast in a short time, and reiterates that FX authorities are monitoring the situation. Moody’s raised India’s sovereign rating to Baa2 from Baa3, outlook to stable from positive.

Top Asian News

• India Rating Raised by Moody’s as Reforms Boost Growth Potential
• China to Rein Risks in Asset Management Industry
• China Warning Wipes $6 Billion From Stock Loved by Goldman
• Erdogan Says Turkey Has Withdrawn Troops From NATO Exercise
• China Stocks Cap Worst Week Since August as Moutai Battered

European bourses trading modestly lower this morning, with downbeat earnings weighing sentiment, while the spill-over from a soft Asian session has dented risk in Europe. Vivendi shares had been lower as much as 2% after a weak earnings update. FTSE 100 slipping slight amid the strength in GBP, which is back above 1.32 against the greenback. Comments from ECB’s Draghi have sparked some additional movement, as while largely sticking to the post-October 26 policy meeting presser he appeared more confident about the growth and inflation outlook (economic activity more self-propelling, underlying inflation to converge with headline etc). Hence, a decline in Bunds below parity to a 162.50 low, but again not yet posing a real threat to more substantial downside targets/supports. Market contacts suggest that 162.48 needs to be breached from an intraday chart perspective to bring Thursday’s 162.38 Eurex base into contention, and recall there are more/bigger stops anticipated below 162.36. On the upside, assuming 162.48 holds, yesterday’s 162.82 session high is the first proper line of resistance. Gilts have also retreated into negative territory alongside Bunds and USTs, to 124.45 vs 124.77 at best and their 124.72 previous settlement.

Top European News

• We’ll Wait for U.K. Brexit Concessions, EU Leaders Tell May
• From EON to Fortum: How to Save Nasdaq’s Fading Power Market
• Carige Talks With Underwriters Continue as Deadline Looms
• Elior Plunges Most on Record as Hurricane Irma Wrecks Party
• Norway Idea to Exit Oil Stocks Is ‘Shot Heard Around the World’

In FX, the USD is down again, but off worst levels seen so far this week as the Index holds within a 93.500-93.900 broad range. Some respite for Dollar from progress on the tax reform bill, but another Russian-related probe into Trump’s election campaign has capped the upside. The Euro was underpinned by upbeat comments from ECB President Draghi, and holding close to 1.1800 vs the Usd. Hefty option expiries still in play from 1.1790-1.1800 through 1.18250 and up to 1.1840-50. The Yen regaining a safe-haven bid amid the latest US political challenge against the President, with Usd/Jpy down to new multi-week
lows sub-112.50. AUD/NZD is the biggest G10 losers on broad risk-off sentiment and the recovering Greenback, with Aud/Usd back below 0.7600 and Nzd/Usd even weaker under the 0.6800 handle. Note, cross flow also weakening the Kiwi as Aud/Nzd trades back at 1.1100+ levels.

In commodities, Brent and WTI crude futures trading higher by 0.4% and 1.3% respectively, the latter making a break above yesterday’s at USD 55.59, however has met resistance at the USD 56 handle. Iraq/Kurd oil flow to Ceyhan rises to 254k bpd, according to Port Agent

Looking at the day ahead, a slightly quieter end to the week although the ECB’s Draghi is due to give a keynote address on “Europe into a new era – how to seize the opportunities”. The Bundesbank’s Weidmann is also slated to speak while the Fed’s Williams speaks in the evening. US housing starts for October and the Kansas City Fed’s manufacturing activity index for November are the data highlights.

US Event Calendar

• 8:30am: Housing Starts, est. 1.19m, prior 1.13m; MoM, est. 5.59%, prior -4.7%
• 8:30am: Building Permits, est. 1.25m, prior 1.22m; MoM, est. 2.04%, prior -4.5%
• 10am: MBA Mortgage Foreclosures, prior 1.29%; Mortgage Delinquencies, prior 4.24%
• 11am: Kansas City Fed Manf. Activity, est. 20.5, prior 23

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Maybe the S&P 500 will be the new hard currency of the world as nothing seems to break it at the moment. After a very nervous last week (longer in HY and EM) for markets, the S&P 500 closed +0.82% last night (best day since September 11th) and for all the recent fury and angst is only 0.34% off its’ all-time closing high. The Nasdaq gained 1.30% to a fresh all time high and the Stoxx 600 was also up for the first time in eight days. The positive reaction seems to have started in Asia yesterday, in part as commodity prices stabilised somewhat and news that China’s PBoC injected cash with the largest reverse repo operation since January. Then US markets got an additional boost from Cisco guiding to its first revenue gain in eight quarters and Wal-Mart posting its strongest US sales in more than eight years. There was also a little sentiment boost from the House passing its tax bill.

This morning in Asia, markets are strengthening further. The Nikkei (+0.11%), Hang Seng (+0.78%) and Kospi (+0.28%) are all modestly up while the Shanghai Comp. is down 0.55% as we type. Moody’s upgraded India’s sovereign bond rating for the first time since 2004. It’s one notch higher to Baa2/Stable (also one notch higher than S&P’s BBB-) with the agency citing ongoing progress in economic and institutional reforms. India’s 10y bond yields is down c10bp this morning to 6.96%. Elsewhere, UST 10y has partly reversed yesterday’s moves and is trading c2bp lower.

Now back to US tax reforms, which is a small step closer to resolution. The House has voted (227-205) to pass its version of the tax reform bill despite 13 Republicans dissenting. President Trump tweeted “a big step toward fulfilling our promise to deliver historic tax cuts…by the end of the year”. Notably, the more challenging task may now begin in terms of passing the Senate’s version where fiscal constraints are tighter and the Republicans only have 52 of the 100 seats in the Chamber. Overnight, the Senate Finance Committee voted to approve its revised tax package, so a full chamber vote could come as early as the  week after Thanksgiving. If passed, the two versions of the tax bill will need to be somehow reconciled. Our US economist believes there is a decent chance that some version of tax reform can be achieved, but this is likely to be a Q1 event with potential stumbling blocks along the way.

Turning to the various Brexit headlines, PM May flew out last night to Sweden for an informal summit with European leaders seeking to kick start the stalled Brexit talks. She is expected to meet with the Swedish Premier and Irish counterpart before meeting with EU President Tusk on Friday. Following on, the Brexit Secretary Davis noted that we have to “wait a few more weeks” for clarity on how much UK is willing to pay in the divorce settlement. Elsewhere, Goldman Sachs CEO Blankfein tweeted “many (fellow business leaders) wish for a confirming vote on (Brexit)…so much at stake, why not make sure consensus still there?”

Moving onto central bankers’ commentaries. In the US, the Fed’s Mester sounded reasonably balanced and remains supportive of continued gradual policy tightening. She noted “anecdotal feedback from business contacts suggest they are increasing wages”, but it’s going to be hard to see strong wage growth because productivity growth is low. Overall, she sees “good reasons” that inflation will rise back to 2% goal, but “it’s going to take a little longer…”

The Fed’s Williams noted one more rate hike this year and three more in 2018 remains a “reasonable guess” subject to incoming data. Finally, the Fed’s Kaplan  reiterated the Fed would continue to make progress towards achieving its 2% inflation target, but noted that the neutral fed funds rate is “not that far away”.

In the UK, BOE Governor Carney reiterated that interest rates would probably rise “a couple of times over the next few years” if the economy evolved in line with the Bank’s projections, but also cautioned that the fundamental economic impacts of Brexit will only be “known over a very long period of time”. That said, he noted the BOE will remain nimble and support the economy no matter what the result of the Brexit negotiations will be. Elsewhere, Chancellor Hammond has confirmed that the Treasury does not plan to change the inflation gauge that the BOE targets from CPI to CPIH – which includes owner occupied housing costs and is the new preferred price measure by the Office for National Statistics.

Now recapping other markets performance yesterday. Within the S&P, only the energy and utilities sector were modestly in the red (-0.58%), partly weighed down by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund plans to sell c$40bln of energy related stocks to make it less vulnerable to the sector. Elsewhere, gains were led by telco, consumer staples and tech stocks. European markets were all higher, with the DAX and CAC up c0.6% while the FTSE 100 was the relative underperformer at +0.19%. The VIX index dropped 10.4% to 11.76.

Over in government bonds, UST 10y yields rose 5.3bp following the House’s approval of the tax plans and a solid beat for industrial production, while Gilts also rose 2.3bp, in part due to slightly stronger retail sales figures. Other core bond yields were little changed (10y Bunds flat, OATs -0.4bp), while Italian yields marginally underperformed (+0.5bp), partly reflecting that Banca Carige has failed to get banks to underwrite its planned share sale – making a bail in more likely, as well as recent polls (eg: Ipsos) showing the 5SM party taking a modest lead versus peers. Elsewhere, some of the recent pressure in the HY space appears to be reversing with the Crossover index 9.2bp tighter.

Key currencies were little changed, with the US dollar index up 0.13% while Sterling gained 0.18% and Euro fell 0.18%. In commodities, WTI oil dipped 0.34% yesterday but is trading marginally higher this morning after Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its willingness to extend oil cuts at the November 30 OPEC meeting. Elsewhere, precious metals were slightly higher (Gold +0.03%; Silver +0.54%) while other base metals continue to softened, although losses are moderating (Copper -0.17%; Zinc -0.84%; Aluminium -0.35%).

Away from the markets, our US economists have published their latest outlook for the US economy. They note the US economy is on good footing for continued above-trend growth in 2018 and beyond. Overall, they believe private sector fundamentals are broadly sound, the labour market has more than achieved full employment and financial conditions are highly supportive of growth. On real GDP growth, their forecast for 2018 is unchanged at 2.3%, but 2019 is up a tenth to 2.1% while growth in 2020 is expected to slow to 1.5% as monetary policy tightening gains traction. The Unemployment rate is expected to fall to 3.5% by early 2019, so although inflation should remain low through year-end, our team’s medium-term view that core inflation should normalise is intact. Hence, in terms of rates outlook, they still expect the next rate increase in December, followed by three hikes in 2018 and four more in 2019. Elsewhere, tax reform is a wild card, though it faces significant political challenges. Conversely, potential disruptions to trade policy would be a negative development. For more detail, refer to their note.

Before we take a look at today’s calendar, we wrap up with other data releases from yesterday. In the US, the October IP was above expectations at 0.9% mom (vs. 0.5%) and 2.9% yoy – the highest since January 2015, in part as the post storm recovery efforts gets underway. Aggregate capacity utilization was also beat at 77% (vs. 76.3% expected) – highest since April 2015 and the NAHB housing market index was also above at 70 (vs. 67) – highest since March. Elsewhere, the November Philly Fed index was slightly below expectations but still solid at 22.7 (vs. 24.6 expected), with both the new orders and employment indices above 20. Finally, the weekly initial jobless claims was slightly higher (249k vs. 235k expected), perhaps impacted by the delayed filings following the storms and the Veteran’s day holiday, while continuing claims fell to a new 44 year low (1,860k vs. 1,900k expected).

In the UK, core retail sales (ex-auto fuel) for October slightly beat expectations, at 0.1% mom (vs. flat expected) and -0.3% yoy (vs. -0.4% expected). In the Eurozone, the final reading for October CPI was unrevised at 0.1% mom and 1.4% yoy, but France’s 3Q unemployment was slightly higher than expected at 9.7% (vs. 9.5%).

Looking at the day ahead, a slightly quieter end to the week although the ECB’s Draghi is due to give a keynote address on “Europe into a new era – how to seize the opportunities”. The Bundesbank’s Weidmann is also slated to speak while the Fed’s Williams speaks in the evening. US housing starts for October and the Kansas City Fed’s manufacturing activity index for November are the data highlights.

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Submitted by Koos Jansen, BullionStar.com.

While the gold price is slowly crawling upward in the shadow of the current cryptocurrency boom, China continues to import huge tonnages of yellow metal. As usual, Chinese investors bought on the price dips in the past quarters, steadfastly accumulating for a rainy day. The Chinese appear to be price sensitive regarding gold, as was mentioned in the most recent World Gold Council Demand Trends report, and can also be observed by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) premiums – going up when the gold price goes down – and by withdrawals from the vaults of the SGE which are often increasing when the price declines. Net inflow into China accounted for an estimated 777 tonnes in the first three quarters of 2017, annualized that’s 1,036 tonnes.

Exhibit 1.

Demonstrated in the chart above Chinese gold imports and known gold demand by the Rest Of the World (ROW) add up to thousands of tonnes more than what the ROW produces from its mines. One might wonder where Chinese gold imports come from, which is why I thought it would be interesting to analyse as detailed as possible who’s supplying China. Is one country, or only the West, supplying China? Although absolute facts are difficult to cement, my conclusion is that China is supplied by a wide variety of countries on several continents this year.

China doesn’t publish its gold import figures so we have to measure exports from other countries to the Middle Kingdom for this exercise. This year the primary hubs that exported to China have been Switzerland and Hong Kong. The Swiss net exported 18 tonnes to China in September, which brings the year to date total to 221 tonnes, down 4 percent year on year. Because Switzerland is the global refining centre, a storage centre and trading hub I’ve plotted a chart showing its gross imports and exports per region.

Exhibit 2.

I’ve included Asian countries with significant mining output that are net exporters at all times, like Uzbekistan, in ROW to get the best perspective of above ground stock movement.[/caption] In the above chart we can see that Switzerland was a net exporter to China in all months, but in most months Switzerland in total was a net importer, displayed by the red line; for each of those months Switzerland itself was not the supplier to China.

Combined with data from Eurostat (on the UK’s total net flow) and USGS (on the US’ total net flow) the Swiss data tells me that gold moving from Switzerland to China had several sources this year. In January, for example, it was the UK that was supplying – being a net exporter in total and a large exporter to Switzerland. I must add that in theory little gold from the UK arrived in China via Switzerland, as the numbers don’t say which bar from whom was sent to who. But we can say “the UK made it possible China bought an X amount of gold in the open market at the prevailing price that month”. The same approach suggests that in June it was the US and Switzerland (Switzerland being a net exporter that month), and in September it was Asia (including the Middle-East) supplying gold to customers of Swiss refineries at the prevailing prices. There was not one source of above ground stock that exported to China (via Switzerland) as far as I can see.

The Hong Kong Census And Statistics Department (HKCSD) has recently published data indicating China absorbed 30 tonnes from the Special Administrative Region in September, down 8 percent relative to August and down 44 percent compared to September last year. A decline was expected because China has stimulated direct gold imports circumventing Hong Kong since 2014. Nevertheless, Hong Kong net exported 515 tonnes to the mainland through the first three quarters of 2017 (down 15 percent year on year).

Exhibit 3.

Hong Kong is a gold trading hub too, though. If Hong Kong is a net exporter to China, the actual source can be any country. Have a look at the next chart that shows the net flows through Hong Kong per region: the West, East and ROW (1). I’ve also added the net flow with China.

Exhibit 4. I’ve included Asian countries with significant mining output that are net exporters at all times, like Uzbekistan, in ROW to get the best perspective of above ground stock movement. To be clear, the blue line + the grey line + the yellow line = the red line. All lines are “net import”, calculated as import minus export. While Switzerland is included in the West, gold from all over the world can flow via Switzerland to Hong Kong.

First observe the red line, “Hong Kong total net flow”. We can see that in 2013 Hong Kong became a massive net importer until about half way through 2015. The major suppliers to Hong Kong during this period were Switzerland and the UK, next to the ROW.  I’m not aware of what type of entities were accumulating in Hong Kong at the time. The largest net importer from Hong Kong was China (included in the East).

After 2015 supply from the West (through Hong Kong) has slowly dried up while demand by China continued, shown by the blue line coming to zero and the yellow bars remaining to trend sub-zero. And thus Hong Kong commenced net exporting gold itself as we can see the red line in the chart falling far below zero. Apparently, since 2015 Hong Kong is a net exporter.

How much gold is left in Hong Kong? Unfortunately, online data from the HKCSD goes back only to 2002. The HKCSD does keep physical records from its international merchandise trade statistics from before 2002 but strangely “gold export” from 1972 until 1998 is omitted in these books (2).

Exhibit 5.

As you can see in this last chart Hong Kong has suffered net exports from 2002 until 2008 and after 2015. It’s possible there is still bullion in Hong Kong if it had been accumulated before 1998, but since 1998 Hong Kong already “net lost” 727 tonnes. Another possibility is that refineries in Hong Kong import a lot of scrap gold, which is nearly impossible to track in customs reports and is not included in any of my data, that is being refined into bullion and exported. In this case Hong Kong is not a net exporter, or less of a net exporter. We’ll see in coming months or years if Hong Kong can continue net exporting bullion.

In exhibit 4 we can see a vague correlation between “Hong Kong net export to the China” and “Hong Kong’s total net export” for 2016 and 2017. It looks like Hong Kong is feeding its big brother. Or is it?

There is a gold kilobar futures contract listed on the COMEX that is physically deliverable in Hong Kong. The trading volume of this contract is neglectable, and so is physical delivery, but remarkably the designated vault (Brinks) throughput is sky-high. When looking at a chart of kilobars received and withdrawn at the Brinks vault in Hong Kong, supplemented by cross-border gold trade, there is a pattern revealed: the amount of kilobars received and withdrawn, and Hong Kong’s gold total import and re-export to China are correlated.

Exhibit 6.

The chart suggests that Hong Kong is mainly supplying China from its imports (and any gold supplying other countries than China was stored in Hong Kong in previous years or was sourced from scrap). As the imports are correlated to kilobars received in the Brinks vault and kilobars withdrawn are correlated to re-exports to China, both flows seem to be one and the same trade. I don’t know for sure, but I think this is largely true. The next question is from what countries does Hong Kong import bullion to dispatch to China? From countries all over the world. Have a look.

Exhibit 7.

The composition is quite diverse. From the first until the the third quarter of this year gold came in from Switzerland, South-Africa, the US, Australia and the Philippines, inter alia.

Next to gold flowing through Switzerland and Hong Kong to China, countries that supplied gold directly to China this year have been Australia at 20 tonnes (3), the US at 14 tonnes, Japan at 3 tonnes and Canada at 4 tonnes. The UK has practically exported zero gold directly to China this year. In total Hong Kong (515 tonnes), Switzerland (221 tonnes), Australia (20 tonnes), the US (14 tonnes), Japan (3 tonnes) and Canada (4 tonnes) net exported 777 tonnes to China mainland in the first three quarters of 2017 (4).

Conclusion

It must be mentioned that in theory gold import by China arrives in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (which is not the domestic market) where the Shanghai International Gold Exchange (SGEI) operates. As most of you know the SGEI can serve foreign customers that can import gold traded on the SGEI, for example into India. Hence, it’s possible not all gold imported into China mainland arrives in the domestic market but ends up in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone or abroad. Global cross-border trade statistics by COMTRADE, however, show that barely any country is importing from China.

Until new evidence shows up my best guess is that China net imported 777 tonnes in the first nine months of 2017, sourced from all corners of the world: the UK, South-Africa, Australia, Switzerland, the US, Middle-East and Philippines. It seems Chinese banks are active all over the world looking to buy gold on the dips, snapping up physical metal when the time is right.

Chinese imports add to China's domestic mining output. The China Gold Association disclosed on November 1 that mine production accounted for 313 tonnes, down 10 % compared to last year. Nearly all this gold (313 + 777) is sold through the SGE. Withdrawals from the vaults of the SGE accounted for 1,505 tonnes over this period, implying 415 tonnes (1,505 – 313 – 777) was supplied by scrap and disinvestment (or partially recycled through the SGE system).

Since all non-monetary gold imported and mine production ends up in the private sector, my estimate for total gold owned by the Chinese people now stands at 16,575 tonnes. Added by a more speculative estimate of 4,000 tonnes held by the PBOC makes 20,575 tonnes.

Exhibit 8.

If you like to learn more about the Chinese gold market please read The Chinese Gold Market Essentials or visit the BullionStar University.

Footnotes

1) Hat tip to Nick Laird from Goldchartsrus.com for providing the HKCSD data from January 2002 until September 2017.

2) Huge hat tip to Winson Chik that went to the HKCSD office in Hong Kong for us to obtain the data from before 2002!

Exhibit 9. Courtesy Winson Chik.

3) The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) amended its gold export data to China and Hong Kong until August 2016. Before that I had my own way of computing direct gold export from Australia to China – which is now obsolete. A few days ago I got confirmed by ABS they stopped amending the data as China has allowed gold import bypassing Hong Kong. ABS data on gold export to China can now be taken at face value. On November 10, 2017, ABS wrote me:

Previously ABS amended exports of gold bullion going to Hong Kong to China as at the time the ABS had been provided with information to suggest that the majority of gold exports to Hong Kong ultimately ending up in China. In 2016 a review of this methodology was undertaken, and it was determined that in recent years direct imports to the Chinese mainland have become increasingly common. by 2013-14, China eased restrictions on the direct importation of gold to ports outside of Hong Kong, and as a result users have abandoned using Hong Kong gold imports as an appropriate proxy measure for Chinese imports. The ABS implemented improvements to more accurately reflect the country of final destination of gold bullion, non-monetary (excl. unwrought forms and coins of HS 7118 and HS 9705) (AHECC 71081324) exported to Hong Kong and China in August 2016. The series were revised back to January 2012, inclusive. This impacted the country series only, as published in tables 14a and 36a-36j of International Trade in Goods and Services, Australia (cat. no. 5368.0) and detailed country statistics available on request. Total levels were not impacted, nor will there be any implications for other ABS collections. The ABS defines the country of final destination for exports as 'the last country, as far as it is known at the time of exportation, to which goods are to be delivered'. The ABS conducted a review of the country of final destination of gold bullion into China and Hong Kong. There was evidence that Hong Kong had ceased serving primarily as an intermediate shipping country of gold into China and was importing and transforming gold bullion in its own right.

4) Data from Australia and the US for September hasn’t been released yet, so the numbers disclosed are provisional.

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Blain’s Morning Porridge, Submitted by Bill Blain of Mint Partners

The Great Crash of 2018? Look to the bond markets to trigger Mayhem!

I had the impression the markets had pretty much battened down for rest of 2017 – keen to protect this year’s gains. Wrong again. It seems there is another up-step. After the People’s Bank of China dropped $47 bln of money into its financial system (where bond yields have risen dramatically amid growing signs of wobble), the game’s afoot once more. The result is global stocks bound upwards. Again. It suggest Central Banks have little to worry about in 2018 – if markets get fraxious, just bung a load of money at them.

Personally, I’m not convinced how the tau of monetary market distortion is a good thing? Markets have become like Pavlov’s dog: ring the easy money bell, and markets salivate to the upside.

Of course, stock markets don’t matter.

The truth is in bond markets. And that’s where I’m looking for the dam to break. The great crash of 2018 is going to start in the deeper, darker depths of the Credit Market.

I’ve already expressed my doubts about the long-term stability of certain sectors – like how covenants have been compromised in high-yield even as spreads have compressed to record tights over Treasuries, about busted European regions trying to pass themselves off as Sovereign States (no I don’t mean the Catalans, I mean Italy!), and how the bond market became increasingly less discerning on risk in its insatiable hunt for yield. Chuck all of these in a mixing bowl and the result is a massive Kerrang as the gears of finance explode!

Well.. maybe..

I’m convinced bond markets are the REAL bubble we should be watching. 

I’m convinced it’s going to start in High Yield.. so let’s start by talking about Collateralised Loan Obligations – the CLO market. Did you know that since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 only 20 out of 1392 deals have seen their riskiest tranches default? (I pinched the numbers from a Bloomberg article.) When I quoted these numbers in the office everyone was surprised.. Surely losses were greater?

Of course not.

It wasn’t just banks that benefitted from Too-Big-To-Fail. (TBTF) Most CLOs did very well. In 2008 smart credit funds realised they would benefit on the back of TBTF and did exceeding well out buying cheap CLOs from panicked sellers. As the GFC unfolded in the wake of Lehman’s default, the global financial authorities pulled out the stops to stop contagion. Banks were unwilling to realise further losses, interest rates plummeted, meaning the highly levered companies issuing the debt backing CLOs survived and were better able to repay their existing debt.

The 2008 GFC was about consumer debt – triggered by mortgages. We still have consumer debt crisis problems ahead (in credit cards, autos and student loans). There is also the fact Consumers have suffered most these past 10-yrs as massive income inequality has left them paid less and paying more for everything – which is most definitely going to come back and haunt markets at some point.

But, I do think the next Financial Crisis is likely to be in Corporate debt, and will be an credit market analogue to the consumer debt crisis of 2008. The Hi-yield market is the likely source – as markets recovered banks started lending again, and low rates forced investors out the credit-risk curve to buy returns. The funds who used to buy nothing but AAAs are now buying speculative single B names. Such is the demand for assets, these companies have been able to lever up and refinance, increase leverage and refinance further, at ever faster rates.

It’s been exacerbated by private equity fuelling returns through debt.  As demand has increased exponentially, borrowers have been able to slash Covenants, making it easier and simpler for over-indebted companies to raise more and more dosh.

Where does it end?

As rates rise we’re going to see the “Toys’R’us” moment repeated on a grand scale. The rise of and fall of Zombie companies that simply can’t meet debt payments is bound to contage not just the rest of the credit market, but also stocks. 

More immediately, the realisation a crisis is coming feels very similar to June 2007 when the first mortgage backed funds in the US started to wobble. (The first few pebbles rolling down the hill before the landslide?) It explains why we’re seeing the highly levered sector of the Junk bond markets struggle, and companies correlated to struggling highly levered consumers (such as health and telecoms) also in trouble.

Basically, the very little is really fixed since the 2008 financial crisis. 10-years later, here we are with the next bubble about to burst. Corporate debt watch out.

Which leads us to the UK Housing Sector…

A few days I commented on how UK house prices have risen 50% over the last 5-years – a period which has seen incomes stagnate. The result is its practically impossible for anyone on a normal salary to even contemplate ever affording their own house – a very good article in the FT yesterday saw the author explain he’d have to save 20% of his gross income for 60 years to be able to put down a deposit on the bed-sit he lives in!

In short, the great myth of the Thatcher generation is dead. The dream of home ownership in the UK won’t happen for our children’s generation.. They will be forced to rent, and that’s a very expensive market here in London. At the moment a mortgage is far cheaper than renting – but as rates rise that will correct a little. 

Somehow we have to create decent rental accommodation at a cost comparable or below mortgages. After all, if you own a house you save money on accommodation, and you get all the upside from appreciation of the asset. Historically, housing has been a better performing asset to own than even stocks – so perhaps there is even a tax angle there, but one no sane politician would date to broach. 

To make it happen we need to encourage public and private landlords with the where-with-all to build new quality rentals – and surprisingly this may be possible under current government polices announced yesterday such as privatising the Housing Associations. As this point regular readers will be in shock – “Blain praising the government? Pass the smelling salts”!

Insurance and pension funds will fund the assets – they know house are literally “safe as houses”!  There is a clear role for Housing Associations to become even more important quality providers of rental/social accommodation.

The big risk is some political fool will decide to enhance their electoral prospects with some ill-conceived “right-to-buy” policy which will simply fuel expectations, drive up consumer borrowing, and fuel a boom market once more putting property out of reach for the masses. 

Meanwhile, I suppose we should be worrying about the fact Merkel still can’t put a government together, the fact it’s now pay to get out of jail in Saudi, and all the other noise. Will anyone be listening to Theresa Maybe in Brussels today?

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Authored by 720Global's Michael Liebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

“Before long, we will all begin to find out the extent to which Brexit is a gentle stroll along a smooth path to a land of cake and consumption.” – Mark Carney, Bank of England Governor

In 1939, the British Government, through the Ministry of Information, produced a series of morale-boosting posters which were hung in public places throughout the British Isles. Faced with German air raids and the imminent threat of invasion, the slogans were aimed at helping the British public brave the testing times that lay ahead. The most enduring of these slogans simply read:

 “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Ironically, it was the only one of the series that was never actually displayed in public as it was reserved for a German invasion that never transpired. Today, the British Government may wish to summon a fresh propaganda strategy to address a new threat on the horizon, that of the eventuality of Brexit.

The Kingdom Divided

The United Kingdom (UK) is in the process of negotiating out of all policies that, since 1972, formally tied it to the economic dynamics of the broader western European community. Since the unthinkable Brexit vote passage in June 2016, the unthinkable has now become the undoable. The negotiations, policy discussions, logistical considerations and legal wrangling are becoming increasingly problematic as they affect every industry in the UK from trade and finance to hazardous materials, produce, air travel and even Formula 1 racing.

The worst case scenario of a disorderly or “hard” Brexit, whereby no deal is reached by the March 2019 deadline, is the most extreme for investors along the spectrum of potential outcomes. A deadlock, which is unfortunately the most likely scenario, would result in tariffs on trade between the UK and the European Union (EU). Such an outcome would result in a rapid deterioration of British economic prospects, job losses and the migration of talent and businesses out of the country. Even before the path of Brexit is known, a number of large companies with UK operations, including Barclays Bank, Diageo, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft, are discussing plans to move or are already actively moving personnel out of Britain. Although less pronounced, the impact of a “hard” Brexit on the EU would not be positive either.

The least damaging Brexit outcome minimizes costs and disruption to business and takes the form of agreement around many of the key issues, most notably the principle of the freedom of movement of labor. The current progression of events and negotiations suggests such an agreement is unlikely. The outcome of negotiations between the UK and the EU will be determined by politics, with the UK seeking to protect its interests while the EU and its 27 member states negotiate to protect their own.

To highlight the complexities involved, the challenges associated with reaching agreements, and why a hard Brexit seems most likely, consider the following:

• Offering an early indication of the challenges ahead, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel stated that she wants the “divorce arrangement” to be agreed on before terms of the future relationship are negotiated. The UK has expressed a desire for these negotiations to run concurrently
• A withdrawal agreement (once achieved) would need to be ratified by the UK
• A withdrawal agreement would have to be approved by the European Parliament
• A withdrawal agreement would have to be approved by 20 of the 27 member states
• The 20 approving states must make up at least 65% of the population of the EU or an ex-UK population of 290 million people
• If the deal on the future relationship impacts policy areas for which specific EU member states are primarily responsible, then the agreement would have to be approved by all the national parliaments of the 27 member states

The summary above shows that the unprecedented amount of coordination and negotiation required within the 27 member states and between the EU Commission, the EU Council and the EU Parliament, to say nothing of the UK.

The “do nothing and see what happens” stance taken by the British and the EU would likely deliver a unique brand of instability but one for which there is a precedent.

The last time we observed an economic event unfold in this way, investment firm Lehman Brothers disappeared along with several trillion dollars of global net worth. Although the Lehman bankruptcy was much more abrupt and less predictable, a hard Brexit seems likely to similarly roil global markets. The “no deal” exit option, which is the path currently being followed, threatens to upend the intricate and endlessly interconnected system of global financial arbitrage. Markets are complacent and seem to have resigned themselves to the conclusion that since no consequences have yet emerged, then they are not likely.

Lehman Goes Down

In late 2007 and early 2008, as U.S. national housing prices were falling, it was becoming evident that the financial sector was in serious trouble. By March of 2008, Bear Stearns was sold to JP Morgan for $2 per share in a Fed-arranged transaction to stave off bankruptcy. Bear Stearns stock traded at $28/share two days before the transaction and as high as $172 per share in January 2007. Even as evidence of problems grew throughout the summer of 2008, investors remained complacent. After the Bear Stearns failure, the S&P 500 rallied by over 14% through mid-May and was still up over 3% by the end of August following the government seizure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. While investors were paying little attention, the solvency of many large financial entities was becoming more questionable. Having been denied a Federal Reserve backstop, Lehman failed on September 15, 2008 and an important link in the global financial system suddenly disappeared. The consequences would ultimately prove to be severe.

On September 16, 2008, the first trading day after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, the S&P 500 index closed at 1192. On September 25, just 10-days later, it closed 1.43% higher at 1209. The market, in short time, would eventually collapse and bottom at 666 in six short months. Investors’ inability to see the bankruptcy coming followed by an inability to recognize the consequences of Lehman’s failure seems eerily familiar as it relates to the current status of Brexit negotiations.

If all efforts to navigate through Brexit requirements are as complicated and difficult as currently portrayed, then what are we to expect regarding adverse consequences when the day of reckoning arrives? Is it unfair to suspect that the disruptions are likely to be severe or potentially even historic? After all, we are not talking about the proper dissolution of an imprudently leveraged financial institution; this is a G10 country! The parallel we are trying to draw here is not one of bankruptcy, it is one of disruptions.

As it relates to Brexit, Dr. Andreas Dombret, member of the executive board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, said this in a February 2017 speech to the Bank of International Settlements –

“So while economic policy will of course be an important topic during negotiations, we should not count on economic sanity being the main guiding principle. And that means we also have to factor in the possibility that the UK will leave the bloc in 2019 without an exit package, let alone the sweeping trade accord it is seeking. The fact that this scenario would most probably hurt economic activity considerably on both sides of the Channel will not necessarily prevent it from happening.”

Rhyming

On June 23, 2016, the day before the Brexit vote, the FTSE 100 closed at 6338. After a few hours of turbulence following the surprising results, the FTSE recovered and by the end of that month was up 2.6%. Today, the index is up 17.5% from the pre-Brexit close. The escalating risks of a hard exit from the EU clearly are not priced into the risky equity markets of Great Britain.

Data Courtesy: Bloomberg

Conversely, what has not recovered is the currency of the United Kingdom (chart below). The British Pound Sterling (GBP) closed at 1.4877 per U.S. dollar on June 23, 2016, and dropped by 15 points (-10%) to 1.33 by the end of the month following the Brexit vote. Over the past several months the pound has fallen to as low as 1.20 but more recently it has recovered to 1.33 on higher inflation readings and hawkish monetary policy language from Bank of England (BoE) governor Mark Carney. Despite following through on his recent threats to hike interest rates, the pound has begun to again trend lower.

Data Courtesy: Bloomberg

Carney has voiced concern over Brexit-induced inflation by saying that if global integration in recent decades suppressed price growth then the reduced openness to foreign markets and workers due to Brexit should result in higher inflation. This creates a potential problem for the BoE as a disorderly exit from the EU hurts the economy while at the same time inducing inflation. Such a stagflation dynamic would impair the BoE’s ability to engage in meaningful monetary stimulus of the sort global financial markets have become accustomed since the financial crisis. If the central bankers lose control of inflation, QE becomes worthless.

Some astute observers of the currency markets and BoE pronouncements argue that Carney’s threat of rate hikes are aimed at halting the deterioration of value in the pound and preventing a total collapse of the currency. That theory is speculative but plausible when analyzing the chart. Either way, whether the pound’s general weakness is driven by inflation concerns or the rising risks associated with a hard Brexit, the implications are stark.

What is equally evident, as shown below, is the laissez-faire attitude of the FTSE as opposed to the caution and reality being priced in by the currency markets. In Lehman’s case, the stock market was similarly complacent while the ten year Treasury yield dropped by nearly 2.00% from June 2007 to March 2008 (from a yield of 5.25% to 3.25%) on growing economic concerns and a flight-to-quality bid.

Data Courtesy: Bloomberg

A Familiar Problem

As discussed above, the Bank of England may find itself in a predicament where it is constrained from undertaking extreme measures due to inflation concerns or even being forced to tighten monetary policy despite an economic slowdown. Those actions would normally serve to support the pound. Further, if the prospect of a hard Brexit continues to take shape, capital flight out of the UK may overwhelm traditional factors. In efforts to prevent the disorderly movement of capital out of the country, the BoE may be required to hike interest rates substantially. Unlike the resistance of equity markets to bad news, the currency markets are more inclined, due to their size and much higher trading volume, to fairly reflect the dynamics of the economy and the central bank in a reasonable time frame.

Our perspective is not to presume a worst case scenario but to at least entertain and strategize for the range of possibilities. Equity markets, both in the UK and throughout the world, transfixed by the shell game of global central bankers’ interventionism, are clearly not properly assessing the probabilities and implications of a hard Brexit.

All things considered, the pound has rallied back to the high end of its post-Brexit range which seems to suggest the best outcome has been incorporated. If forced to act against inflation, the Bank of England will be hiking rates against a stagnant economy and a poor economic outlook.  This may provide support for the pound in the short term but it will certainly hurt an already anemic economy in the midst of Brexit uncertainty.

Summary

Timing markets is a fool’s errand. Technical and fundamental analysis allows for an assessment of the asymmetry of risks and potential rewards, but the degree of central bank interventionism is not quantifiable. With that premise in mind, we can evaluate different asset classes and their adherence to fundamentals while allowing a margin of error for the possibility of monetary intervention. After all, if central banks print money to inflate asset prices to create a wealth effect, some other asset should reveal the negative effects of conjuring currency in a fiat regime – namely the currency itself. In the short term, it may appear as though rising asset prices create new wealth, but over time, the reality is that the currency adjustments off-set some or all of the asset inflation.

Investors should take the time, while it is available, to consider the gravity of the disruptions a hard Brexit portends and look beyond high flying UK stocks to the more telling movement of the British pound. Like with Lehman and the global financial system in 2008, stocks may initially be blind to the obvious. Although decidedly not under the threats present during World War II, the British Government and the EU lack the leadership of that day and will likely need more than central banker propaganda to weather the economic storm ahead.

Keep calm and carry on, indeed.

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The recovery in Eurozone growth has become part of the synchronised global growth narrative that most investors are relying on to deliver further gains in equities as we head into 2018. However, the “Zombification” of a chunk of the Eurozone’s corporate sector is not only a major unaddressed structural problem, but it’s getting worse, especially in…you guessed it…Italy and Spain. According to the WSJ.

The Bank for International Settlements, the Basel-based central bank for central banks, defines a zombie as any firm which is at least 10 years old, publicly traded and has interest expenses that exceed the company’s earnings before interest and taxes. Other organizations use different criteria. About 10% of the companies in six eurozone countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain are zombies, according to the central bank’s latest data. The percentage is up sharply from 5.5% in 2007. In Italy and Spain, the percentage of zombie companies has tripled since 2007, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated in January. Italy’s zombies employed about 10% of all workers and gobbled up nearly 20% of all the capital invested in 2013, the latest year for which figures are available.

The WSJ explains how the ECB’s negative interest rate policy and corporate bond buying are  keeping a chunk of the corporate sector, especially in southern Europe on life support. In some cases, even the life support of low rates and debt restructuring is not preventing further deterioration in their metrics. These are the true “Zombie” companies who will probably never come back from being “undead”, i.e. technically dead but still animate. Belatedly, there is some realisation of the risks.

Economists and central bankers say zombies undercut prices charged by healthier competitors, create artificial barriers to entry and prevent the flushing out of weak companies and bad loans that typically happens after downturns. Now that the European economy is in growth mode, those zombies and their related debt problems could become a drag on the entire continent.

 

“The zombification of the corporate sector and banks (is) a risk for future living standards,” Klaas Knot, a European Central Bank governor and the head of the Dutch central bank, said in an interview.

 

In some ways, zombie firms are an unintended side effect of years of easy money from the ECB, which rolled out aggressive stimulus policies, including negative interest rates, to support lending and growth. Those policies have been sharply criticized in some richer eurozone countries for making it easier for banks to keep struggling corporate borrowers alive.

Talking of realising the risk, as usual the Bundesbank is acting as Mario Draghi silent conscience.

The ECB said in late October it would extend its giant bond-buying program through next September, likely pushing back the date of any interest-rate increase until at least 2019. A small group of central-bank officials opposed the decision, including Jens Weidmann, president of Germany’s Bundesbank. In a speech in September, Mr. Weidmann cited an academic study that concluded a bond-buying program by the ECB in 2012 had helped stabilize banks in southern Europe and boost lending but resulted in more loans to weak companies by the same banks. There was no positive impact on employment or investment, the study found.

The WSJ focuses on two industries with structural challenges, namely retail and shipping, and begins with a company which is an archetypal Zombie, Stefanel.

Italian clothing maker and retailer Stefanel SpA became famous for its knitted coats and cardigans. Many economists, investors and bankers know Stefanel as something starkly different: a zombie company. It has posted an annual loss for nine of the last 10 years and restructured its bank debt at least six times, including several grace periods when Stefanel only had to pay interest on what it owed. After booming during Italy’s post-World War II expansion, Stefanel and its lumbering factories were overwhelmed by Spanish fast-fashion giant Zara and then battered by the economic slowdown that hit Italy in 2008. Stefanel is still alive but staggering. So are hundreds of other chronically unprofitable, highly indebted companies being kept afloat with new infusions from lenders and shareholders, especially in Southern Europe.

As the WSJ goes on to highlight, even the radical corporate and debt restructuring of Stefanel has only reduced its debt by 12%.

Banks restructured Stefanel’s debt even when the apparel maker’s financial problems worsened. The banks continued to collect interest, and some of the loans were repaid, but their decisions not to wipe the debt off their balance sheets meant the banks had less money for healthy firms. Stefanel’s lenders included Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, where bad loans peaked at nearly $58 billion in 2016. The Italian government took over the bank earlier this year.

The bank and Stefanel declined to comment. As part of a new restructuring plan, two distressed-debt funds will get a 71% stake in Stefanel by year-end for about $13 million. Giuseppe Stefanel, the founder’s son and company’s largest shareholder, will wind up with a stake of about 16%, down from his previous 56%. Banks owed $125 million by Stefanel will see that decline to about $110 million. Banks demanded that Mr. Stefanel give up control and step down as chief executive as a precondition for approving the turnaround plan, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Stefanel will remain non-executive chairman and “have no control whatsoever,” the person said. Mr. Stefanel declined to comment.

We fear that this is unlikely to be enough to see Stefanel through the next downturn. But it’s not just southern Europe, German banks have been the largest lenders to the struggling shipping industry, where Zombie companies abound. Moody’s estimated that the five biggest German lenders to the shipping industry had roughly $26 billion of distressed shipping loans at the end of last year. This is a ratio of 37% compared with total shipping loans and was up from 28% the year before.  

The relationship between Nordeutsche Vermoegen and HSH Nordbank is the example the WSJ cites to show how are keeping companies alive, barely. From the WSJ.

“Some of these zombie companies are getting financed at (interest rates of) 2% because banks are trying to throw good money after bad,” said Basil Karatzas, a shipping-industry consultant in New York…German shipping company Norddeutsche Vermoegen Holding GmbH & Co. KG suffered total losses of $1.1 billion from 2010 to 2015. Its debt quadrupled to more than $2 billion, or almost nine times revenue, from 2007 to 2010. The companthe “Zombification” of a chunk of the Eurozone’s corporate sector is not only a major unaddressed structural problem, but it’s getting worsey hasn’t reported annual results for 2016. In 2016, Norddeutsche Vermoegen got a half-billion euros in debt relief from HSH Nordbank, a German bank that was until recently the world’s largest lender to the shipping industry. According to the shipping company’s financial statements, Norddeutsche Vermoegen made a profit due to “loan forgiveness by the bank.” Norddeutsche Vermoegen and HSH Nordbank declined to comment.

The gravity of the situation has warranted greater scrutiny by the ECB as the article explains. Back in May, the ECB announced on-site inspection for banks with exposure to distressed shipping debt. In a speech earlier this month, Draghi acknowledged the bad debt problem, while lamenting that many banks lack the ability to absorb losses.

“We all know the damage that persistently high levels of NPLs can do to banks’ health and credit growth. And though NPL levels have been coming down for significant institutions – from around 7.5 per cent in early 2015 to 5.5 per cent now – the problem is not yet solved. “Many banks still lack the ability to absorb large losses, as their ratio of bad loans to capital and provisions remains high,” he said.

The ECB faces a Catch-22, pressing banks to address the problem more aggressively not only threatens the banks, but the provision of credit to the broader economy. The WSJ highlights the Morgan Stanley view that a resolution in Italy, for example, will last a decade.

Italian banks have set aside half of the value of their $407 billion in gross problem loans at the end of 2016, according to the country’s central bank. That means the banks would be hit with billions of euros in additional losses if they sell the loans. Many lenders would rather hold on to the shaky loans and hope for the best. The ECB proposed last month requiring banks to set aside more cash to cover newly classified bad loans. The proposal was criticized by senior Italian officials, including former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

 

“If they pass new rules, credit to small businesses will be impossible,” he wrote on Twitter. Some banks in Italy have begun to tackle the problem, including by announcing plans to sell billions of dollars of bad loans within three years. Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate it will take the country’s banks 10 years to reach the European average for nonperforming loans.

This impressive piece of journalism ends on a thought-provoking note from Portugal which perfectly describes the endless suffering of the corporate “undead” in structurally challenged industries.

In Portugal, a program set up in 2012 by the government as part of the country’s bailout aimed to help heavily indebted companies reach agreements with creditors, avoid insolvency and free up money to invest and grow. In practice, the revitalization program can discourage banks from pulling the plug on battered companies, said Antonio Samagaio, an accounting professor at ISEG-Lisbon School of Economics and Management. The reason: The program allows lenders to take fewer write-downs because debt that isn’t forgiven still is considered performing for accounting purposes. Lisgráfica Impressão e Artes Gráficas SA, one of Portugal’s largest printers, entered the program in early 2013. Banks forgave 65% of the company’s debt and agreed to extend repayments. That helped Lisgráfica to keep most of its workers on the job. Now, though, Lisgráfica is having trouble making its debt payments. The company’s revenue has been hurt by the advertising decline at newspaper and magazine clients. Lisgráfica’s losses are widening.

Of course, at the heart of these structural problems are the failure by central banks to, firstly not create an artificial sense of prosperity via credit bubbles, but secondly, to accept some shorter-term pain for longer-term free-market gain. As Schumpter asserted “The process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism”, but this isn't capitalism.  
 

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