One of the supposed constants of the credit crunch era has been the economic performance of Germany. Earlier this week saw a type of confirmation of past trends as the European Central Bank or ECB updated its capital key, which is calculated on the basis show below.
The shares of the NCBs in the ECB’s capital are weighted according to the share of the respective Member States in the total population and gross domestic product of the European Union (EU), in equal measure.
Few will be surprised to read that in Euro area terms ( other European Union members are ECB shareholders with the Bank of England at 14.33%) the share of Germany has risen for 25.6% to 26.4%. That poses an issue for any future ECB QE especially as the Italian share has declined. But a little food for thought is provided by the fact that the Bank of England share went up proportionately more.
The economic outlook
As the latest monthly economic report from the Bundesbank points out the situation is not starting from its usual strength.
Economic output in Germany dipped slightly in
the third quarter of 2018. According to the
Federal Statistical Office’s flash estimate, real
gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by
0.2% in seasonal and calendar-adjusted terms
as compared to the previous quarter.
That has tended to be swept under the carpet by the media partly because of this sort of analysis.
This decline was mainly caused by a strong temporary
one-off effect in the automotive sector.
Central banks always tell you a decline is temporary until they are forced not too and in this instance we see two bits at this particular cherry as “temporary” finds “one-off” added to it. But the detail begs a question.
Major problems in connection with the introduction
of a new EU-wide standard for measuring exhaust emissions led to significant production
stoppages and a steep drop in motor vehicle
exports.
Fair enough in itself but we know from our past analysis that production boomed ahead of this so we are counting the down but omitting the up. Whereas next we got something I had been suggesting was on the cards.
At the same time, private consumption was temporarily absent as an important force driving the economy.
This reminds me of my analysis from October 12th.
Regular readers will be aware of the way that money supply growth has been fading in the Euro area over the past year or so, and thus will not be surprised to see official forecasts of a boom if not fading to dust being more sanguine.
The official view blames the automotive sector but if we take the estimate of that below we are left with economic growth of a mere 0.1%.
IHS Markit estimates that the autos drag on Germany was around -0.3 ppts on GDP in Q3
Apparently that is a boom according to the Bundesbank as its view is that the economy marches on.
Despite these temporary one-off effects, the economic
boom in Germany continues.
Indeed we might permit ourselves a wry smile as the usual consensus that good weather boosts an economy gets dropped like a hot potato.
as well as the exceptionally hot, dry
weather during the summer months.
No ice-creams or suntan oil apparently.
What about now?
The official view is of a powerful rebound this quarter but the Markit PMI survey seems to be struggling to find that.
If anything, the underlying growth trajectory for the industry remains downward: German manufacturers reported a near stagnation of output in November, the sharpest reduction in total new orders for four years and a fall in exports not seen since mid-2013. Moreover, Czech goods producers, who are sensitive to developments in the autos sector, again commented on major disruption,
If we look wider we see this.
The Composite Output Index slipped to a near four-year low of 52.3 in November, down from 53.4 in October.
Moving to this morning’s official data we were told this.
In October 2018, production in industry was down by 0.5% from the previous month on a price, seasonally and calendar adjusted basis according to provisional data of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
It was 1.6% higher than a year ago on the other side of the coin but Bundesbank hopes of a surge in consumption do not seem to be shared by producers.
The production of consumer goods showed a decrease of 3.2%.
Yesterday’s manufacturing orders posed their own questions.
+0.3% on the previous month (price, seasonally and calendar adjusted)
-2.7% on the same month a year earlier (price and calendar adjusted)
Deutsche Bank
The vultures are circling again and here is how the Wall Street Journal summed it up yesterday.
Deutsche Bank shares were down about 4% in afternoon trading Thursday in Frankfurt, roughly in line with European banks amid broader market declines. Deutsche Bank shares have fallen 51% this year to all-time lows below €8 ($9.08).
As I type this it has failed to benefit much from today’s equity market bounce and is at 7.73 Euros. Perhaps because investors are worried that if it has not done well out of “the economic boom” then prospects during any slow down look decidedly dodgy. Also perhaps buyers are too busy laughing at the unintentional comedy here.
Deutsche Bank on Thursday and last week defended senior executives. Improving compliance and money-laundering controls “has been a real emphasis of current management,” and the bank has made “enormous investments” in fighting financial crime, said Mr. von Moltke, who joined the bank in 2017, in the CNBC interview.
Could it do any worse? The numbers are something of a riposte also to those like Kenneth Rogoff who blame cash and Bitcoin for financial crime.
Deutsche Bank processed an additional €31bn of questionable funds for Danske Bank than previously thought – that takes the total amount of money processed by the German lender for Danske’s tiny Estonian branch to €163bn ( Financial Times).
That compares to the present market value of 16 billion Euros for its shares. That poses more than a few questions for such a large bank and whilst banking sectors in general have been under pressure Deutsche Bank has been especially so. Personally I do not seem how merging it with Commerzbank would improve matters apart from putting a smoke screen over the figures for a year or two. One thing without doubt is that it would make the too big to fail issue even worse.
Comment
If we look at the broad sweep Germany has responded to the Euro area monetary slow down as we would have expected. What is less clear is what happens next? This quarter has not so far show the bounce back you might expect except in one area. The positive area is the labour market where employment is 1.2% higher than a year ago and wages have risen with some estimates around 3%. So the second half of 2018 seems set to be a relatively weak one.
One area which must be an issue is the role of the banks because as they, and Deutsche Bank especially, get weaker how can they support the economy via lending to businesses? At least with the fiscal position strong ( running a surplus) Germany has ammunition for further bailouts.
Moving back to the ECB I did say I would return to the capital key change. It means that under any future QE programme it would buy relatively more German bunds except with its bond yields so low with many negative it does not need it. Also should the slow down persist there is the issue of it being despite monetary policy being so easy.