Inside the world of negative interest-rates

by Shaun Richards

A feature of modern economic life is that interest-rates were first cut as close to zero as central banks thought they could and then in more than few cases they went below zero giving us the acronym NIRP for Negative Interest-Rate Policy. There was the implication that such a state of affairs would be temporary in that the medicine would work and that interest-rates would then be raised. For example I have put on here before the charts that show that the Riksbank of Sweden has been forecasting interest-rate increases for years whereas the reality was that it either cut or did nothing. Ironically it changed tack a little last December just in time for the world economy to turn down!

As to all this being temporary let me hand you over to ECB President Mario Draghi on the day he cut the Deposit Rate to -0.1% back in June 2014.

Draghi: On the first question, I would say that for all the practical purposes, we have reached the lower bound. However, this doesn’t exclude some little technical adjustments and which could lead to some lower interest rates in one or the other or both parts of the corridor. But from all practical purposes, I would consider having reached the lower bound today.

This has been a feature of central banker speak where they discuss a “lower bound” as if this type of economics is a science. The reality is that the nearest the “lower bound” has got to being a status quo has been this.

Get down
Get down deeper and down
Down down deeper and down
Down down deeper and down

If we let him have the move to -0.2% as a technical adjustment we have to face up to the fact that it is now -0.4% and about to go to -0.5/6%. This has consequences as for example over the past month or so the amount deposited at the ECB at such a rate is 1.86 trillion Euros. So this is a drain on the banking system and therefore wider economic life as well as being a nice little earner for the ECB.

The “lower bound” theme has been the same in the UK as Bank of England Governor Carney asserted it was 0.5% but later decided it was 0.1%. Or you could look at the US Federal Reserve defined “normal” interest-rates as being somewhere above 3% then changed its mind and started cutting them. The truth is that the new normal is that when a central bank raises interest-rates it soon turns tail and starts cutting them.

Switzerland

The Swiss are at the cutting edge of negative interest-rates and it was ECB policy which was the supermassive black hole that sucked them into it. In terms of timing the June 2014 move by the ECB was followed by this in January 2015.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is discontinuing the minimum exchange rate of CHF 1.20 per euro. At the same time, it is lowering the interest rate on sight deposit account balances that exceed a given exemption threshold by 0.5 percentage points, to −0.75%.

For those who have not followed this saga there was an enormous amount of borrowing in Swiss Francs pre credit crunch because interest-rates were there. When the credit crunch hit institutional investors raced to reverse such positions which made the Swiss Franc soar which had the side-effect of crippling those who in eastern Europe who had taken out such mortgages. The SNB found itself like General Custer at Little Big Horn as the ECB version of Indians arrived and gave events another push.

Again there was an implication that this would be temporary until matters calmed down but the reality has been very different. Or to put it another way in central banker speak the word temporary now means permanent.

The signal we now have has been provided by two developments this morning. Let me start with the Swiss one.

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Domestic sight deposits CHF 475.3 bn vs CHF 469.0 bn prior…………. Once again, a notable rise in the sight deposits data and that continues to suggest that the SNB is stepping in to smooth the appreciation in the franc over the past few weeks.

In case you are wondering why those numbers are looked at the SNB only occassionally declares it has intervened in foreign exchange markets and does so via other central banks and the BIS. So to find out we have to look at other numbers and thank you to Bank Pictet for this estimate.

In total, sight deposits have increased by CHF 9.8bn in the last 4 weeks, and CHF 10.3bn in the last 5 weeks.

So like The Terminator the SNB is back. Why? The Swiss Franc has been strengthening again and went through 1.09 versus the Euro. Whereas on the 23rd of April last year I noted that Reuters were reporting this.

The Swiss franc fell to a three-year low of 1.20 against the euro on Thursday as a revival in risk appetite encouraged investors to use it to buy higher yielding assets elsewhere, betting on loose monetary policy keeping the currency weak.

There were still problems though as I pointed out to a background elsewhere of something of a chorus saying the SNB had triumphed..

Any economic slow down would start currently with interest-rates at -0.75% posing the question of what would happen next?

Well we have an economic slow down and we expect the ECB to cut again which according to Bank Pictet will have this consequence.

SNB officials have emphasized the importance of the interest rate differential (mainly versus the euro area) for the exchange rate and thus the policy outlook. The SNB’s policy rate differential with the ECB’s deposit facility rate now stands at 35bp, below the 50bp in 2015 when the SNB lowered its interest rates to -0.75%.

To be fair to Bank Pictet that was from the end of July and so could not factor in the statements from Bank of Finland Governor Ollie Rehn on Friday about “overshooting” market expectations about the ECB move. So the statement below has got more likely.

In that event, should the CHF come under
excessive upward pressure, our best guess is that the SNB would cut the interest rate on sight deposits by 25 bps, bringing it down to -1.0%.

Comment

Thus we are facing a new frontier should the Swiss find they have to cut to -1% interest-rates or as the SNB might put it.

Yes we’re gonna have a wingding
A summer smoker underground
It’s just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down
We’ve got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier. ( Donald Fagen )

This will mean that the pressure for more of this will build.

UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager, told its ultra-wealthy clients on Tuesday that it would introduce an annual 0.6% charge on cash savings of more than €500,000 (£461,000). The fee, to be introduced in November, rises to 0.75% on savings of more than 2m Swiss francs (£1.7m). ( The Guardian ).

In some ways the economic situation has already adjusted to this as the Swiss ten-year bond yield is -1.1% and the thirty-year is -0.6%. Imagine the impact of this on long-term contracts such as pensions. Give me 100.000 Swiss Francs and I will give you 84,000 back in thirty-years, who would do that?

Meanwhile here is something to make UK readers very nervous.

BoE Gov Carney: At This Stage We Do Not See Negative Rates As An Option In The UK ( @LiveSquawk )

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