What does the 10 year yield of Greece tell us?

by Shaun Richards

Today’s headline or title introduces a subject which I find both frustrating and annoying.This is not only because it regularly misunderstood but also because it represents something of a financialisation of the human experience. What I mean by that is that some have used it as a way of suggesting an improvement in Greek economic performance that does not exist. Personally I sometimes wonder if it is used because it is the one signal that does show a clear improving trend. Let me illustrate with this from the LSE European Politics blog this morning.

A fall like that looks good on the face of it. Few point out the irony which is that falls in bond yields like that used to mean that a country was heading into at best a recession and probably a depression. Actually a drop from around 10% to around 4% indicates that something may be wrong so let us investigate.

The Greek bond market

A troubling sign arrives when we look for the benchmark 10 year bond of Greece and see that the benchmark page at the Hellenic Republic debt agency or PDMA is “under construction”. If we look at the data at the end of 2017 we see that of total debt of 328.7 billion the total of bonds is around 50.4 billion and if we add in treasury bills and the like we get to 65.4 billion.

By comparison the European Stability Mechanism or ESM tells us this.

The loan packages from the ESM and EFSF are by far the largest the world has ever seen. The two institutions own half of Greece’s debt.

Actually the support for Greece totals some 233 billion Euros which means we need to add the IMF and the original Greece “rescue” package to the numbers above.

Oh and as to the bond total well there is still the SMP which sounds like something used in the Matrix series of films but is in fact the Securities Markets Program which has mostly been forgotten but still amounts to 85 billion Euros. These days that is I guess a balancing item in the ECB accounts but it does appear here and there.

The ECB’s interest income from its SMP holdings of Greek government bonds amounted to €154 million (2016: €185 million).

There was a time that the SMP was a big deal and regular readers will recall so was its “sterilisation” but the ECB got bored with that in 2014 and gave up. Oh well!

But if we move on we see that there are relatively few Greek bonds around and of those that do exist the ECB holds a fair bit.

Why has the bond yield fallen then?

You could argue that the bond yield should have fallen before. A possible reason for it not doing so is that it is now too small a market for big hedge funds to bother with, especially if we note that a busy month now for the market (December) had a volume of 120 million Euros. But if we look from now there have been changes in the bond metrics. For example the average maturity of Greek bonds has risen mostly by the fact that ESM loans have an average maturity of 32 years. Also bond investors may have noticed a certain “To Infinity! And Beyond” willingness from the ESM and added that to the overall bond maturity of 18.32 years.

Fiscal Matters

The LSE blog summarises matters like this.

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Greece has outperformed Programme budget targets . According to the Hellenic Fiscal Council, Greece may have reached a 3.5% primary surplus in 2017 already, versus a target of 1.75%. There are reasons to be optimistic about Greece meeting the fiscal targets in 2018 as well. Maintaining a 3.5% primary surplus also in the years to come appears feasible. On balance, the overall improvement of the fiscal situation is impressive.

From a bond investor’s point of view this if combined with the extended average maturity looks more than impressive as it means on their metrics the thorny issue of repayment has been kicked into the future. They will also like this statement from the ESM on the 27th of March.

 Today the Board of Directors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) approved the fourth tranche of €6.7 billion of ESM financial assistance for Greece. …….The tranche will be used for debt service, domestic arrears clearance and for establishing a cash buffer.

Problems in the real economy

There is a very descriptive chart in the LSE blog.

This shows us that the initial credit crunch impact on Greece was what we might call Euro area standard. But those of a nervous disposition might want to take the advice of BBC children’s programming from back in the day and look away now from the real crisis. Here we saw “shock and awe” but not of the form promised by Christine Lagarde which back then was France’s Finance Minister. An attempt to achieve the fiscal probity so approved of by bond markets saw the economy plunge into quite a recession and made an already bad situation worse. But the rub is that the recovery such as it is was not the “V-shaped” bounce back you might expect but rather this.

However, not only is there no indication of any catching up following the crisis, but also the pace of growth remains below the Eurozone’s.

So whilst we now have some growth there has been no relative recovery and in fact on that metric things have got worse. This comes in spite of the “Grecovery” theme of around 2013 which was an example of what we now call Fake News and of course was loved by the Euro area establishment. The reality is not only did thy make the recession worse they seem to have managed to prevent a bounce back as well. We can bring this up to date with the latest business survey for Greek manufacturing.

At 55.0, the index reading signalled a
marked rate of growth, albeit one that was weaker
than the multi-year high seen in February (56.1).

I am pleased to see that but you see that is slightly worse than what the UK did in March. I will not tire you with the different themes and descriptions in the media but simply say I am sad for Greece and  its people and use the famous words of Muhammad Ali.

Is that all you’ve got George?

Comment

If we step back we can see the impact of what is called “internal competitiveness” or if you prefer squeezing real wages. Let us look at that a different way as the UK had some of this albeit not as much. But the measure here we gives us a scale of the disaster is unemployment which has got better in Greece but comparing an unemployment rate of 20.8% with one of 4.3% is eloquent enough I think.

It also gives us an easy cause of this issue raised by the LSE.

Direct tax revenues are not performing very well. The high rate of social contributions has probably increased the area of tax evasion.

Also I am reminded that the IMF has failed in an area it mostly used to be successful in.

The external position has improved sharply, although more because of weakness in domestic demand than strength in export activity. Export performance remains underwhelming.

You see on that performance any improvement will simply put Greece back into balance of payments problems which is sort of where we came in. Also there is this from the Bank of Greece.

On 8 March 2018 the Governing Council of the ECB did not object to an ELA-ceiling for Greek banks of €16.6 billion, up to and including Wednesday, 11 April 2018, following a request by the Bank of Greece.

The reduction of €3.2 billion in the ceiling reflects an improvement of the liquidity situation of Greek banks, taking into account flows stemming from private sector deposits and from the banks’ access to wholesale financial markets. 

So it has got better but it has yet to go away.

Thus in summary we see that we have seen something of a divorce between the Greek financial and real economies. Prospects for the bond market look good but the real economy has not done much more than stop falling with a lot of ground still to be reclaimed. Those who look at credit conditions will not be reassured by this from the LSE blog.

 According to the Bank of Greece, the annual growth rate of credit to the private sector stood at -1.0% in February, and that of credit to corporations at 0.2%.

There was a time when the supporters and acolytes of the Euro area “shock and awe” package accused me and others who were in the default and devaluation camp of being willing to collapse the economy so let me finish with some Michael Jackson.

Remember the time
Remember the time
Do you remember, girl
Remember the time

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