The dissonance between the reality of emerging market financial forest fires breaking out all over the world and the US investor’s overwhelming confidence is staggering.
This is how a global crisis starts. The weakest fault lines are the first to crack. Worldwide, that is exactly what is happening. And it’s starting to creep from the true EM frontiers to the weaker economies in more established markets.
Where to begin? Contagion… The Argentine peso dropped another 5.0% this week, bringing y-t-d losses to 23.7%. The Turkish lira fell 3.9%, boosting 2018 losses to 15.4%. As notable, the Brazilian real dropped 3.7% (down 11.5% y-t-d), and the South African rand sank 4.0% (down 3.0% y-t-d). The Colombian peso fell 3.0%, the Chilean peso 2.7%, the Mexican peso 2.7%, the Hungarian forint 2.3%, the Polish zloty 2.1% and the Czech koruna 2.0%.
EM losses were not limited to the currencies. Yields continued surging throughout EM. Notable rises this week in local EM bonds include 54 bps in Brazil, 27 bps in South Africa, 34 bps in Hungary, 36 bps in Lebanon, 25 bps in Indonesia, 28 bps in Peru, 14 bps in Turkey, 20 bps in Mexico and 11 bps in Poland.
Dollar-denominated EM debt was anything but immune. Turkey’s 10-year dollar bond yields spiked 41 bps to 7.16%, the high going back to May 2009. Brazil’s dollar bond yields surged 29 bps to 5.58%, the highest level since December 2016. Mexico’s dollar yields jumped 18 bps to 4.64%, the high going all the way back to February 2011. Dollar yields rose 19 bps in Chile, 28 bps in Colombia, 19 bps in Indonesia, 14 bps in Russia, 14 bps in Ukraine and 167 bps in Venezuela (to 32.80%). Losses are mounting quickly for those speculating in EM debt.
Previous problems have not gone away – they’ve instead festered and metastasized. EM debt, the China Bubble, Italy and euro monetary integration, to name just a few. This week was clearly an escalation in global de-risking/de-leveraging dynamics. How much speculative leverage has accumulated (since 2012) in Italian, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish debt? ECB rate manipulation and “money printing” stoked an artificial boom. It’s come at a very steep price. Myriad problems associated with a deeply flawed monetary integration are waiting to resurface, as we’re witnessing in Italy.
I know it sounds crazy – pure heresy – to most. But there’s a shot that the world has commenced a crisis period that will unfold into something more comprehensive and challenging than 2008. And at least in the U.S., financial crisis is the furthest thing from people’s minds. Not even on the radar. Not possible.
ORIGINAL SOURCE: Weekly Commentary: Crisis Watch by Doug Noland at Credit Bubble Bulletin on 5/19/18