Today my home country the UK is back in the focus of economics and in several ways. The first returns me to my article of Monday when I pointed out this.
Let me finish off on the subject of monetary financing. The simple truth is that we have an implicit form of it right now. Why is the currency not collapsing? Because nearly everyone else is at it too!
This was on my mind this morning as I noted the announcement from the Bank of England although as I looked at the media I also noted that very few had bothered to read the headline and I have emphasised the relevant part.
HM Treasury and the Bank of England (the Bank) have agreed to extend temporarily the use of the government’s long-established Ways and Means (W&M) facility.
Here are a couple of responses who seem to have avoided reading the release.
‘Helicopter money” begins in the UK, the Bank of England will directly pay for government spending WITHOUT government having to issue debt. This will happen everywhere and should happen here in Ireland. Only way to avoid austerity stupidness later. ( David McWilliams)
Biggest experiment in monetary history: Bank of England to directly finance extra government spending ( @Schuldensuehner)
No-one seems to have told Holger about Zimbabwe or more curiously Weimar in his home country but he might have held his horses back if he had bothered to read the actual release rather than the Financial Times click bait twitter headline.
Bank of England to directly finance extra government spending
Ways and Means
This is described below.
The W&M facility is the government’s pre-existing overdraft at the Bank.
This is a little awkward for the takes above and has another irony in that we see some claiming you cannot treat government borrowing like an overdraft when in fact this bit is one! In terms of amounts it existed yesterday.
Ordinarily a standing balance of around £0.4bn is maintained to support Exchequer cash
management…. As of 8 April 2020, drawings under the W&M facility remain at £0.4bn. The outstanding balance will, as normal, be published weekly on the Bank’s website.
Actually it is some £370 million but these days £30 million seems so small doesn’t it?
In terms of what will happen now well it will get larger.
As a temporary measure, this will provide a
short-term source of additional liquidity to the government if needed to smooth its cashflows and support the
orderly functioning of markets, through the period of disruption from Covid-19.
I have pointed out before that this orderly functioning of markets issue is something of a fantasy, after all the Bank of England is like a London Whale in the UK Gilt market. But as long as this is a short-term measure then it is sensible.
Let me explain with reference to the last time this facility was used in size.
The previous high for use of the W&M account was £19.9bn in 2008.
This was from Christmas Eve 2008 until the 25th of February 2009 when it fell to £4.14 billion and then to the overdraft level of £370 million on the 8th of April. As to the details well it was hard not to have a wry smile when I noted it was Robert Pearson who asked for them via a Freedom of Information request so let me show the relevant part of the reply.
The Government repaid £7.0 billion of the Ways and Means Advance on 17 April 2008. It subsequently decided to increase the balance of the Ways and Means Advance temporarily, by £3.8 billion, in order to smooth the impact of the refinancing of part of the Bank of England’s loan to the Financial Services Compensation
Scheme. The Government will repay the remaining £3.8 billion in 2009-10.
We are told that this will happen again this time around.
. Any drawings will be repaid as soon
as possible before the end of the year.
Quantitative Easing
Rather curiously the financial section of UK social media seem much less interested in the £200 billion of UK QE that has been announced. The UK issued a £3.25 billion of Gilt earlier this week and this led to more than a few reports that we were finding it easy to issue our debt. Whilst this is true it is surely relevant that the Bank of England bought some £4,5 billion of Gilts on the same day. That will happen again today meaning that a total of £13.5 billion will be bought this week.
If we stay with the QE purchases then we have bought out as far as 2071 ( QE for our grandchildren) and paid as much as £221.8 for something which will be redeemed at £100. That is a sign of how much Gilt yields have fallen because believe it or not the 2068 Gilt offers a coupon of 3.5% whereas we would now offer a coupon of 0.75%. Actually you might make a case for 0.5% but I think you get the idea.
UK Net Debt Issuance
In spite of a large amount of Gilt issuance this week by the UK government which is £12.21 billion by my maths if we allow for the Bank of England purchases we remain net buyers of the order of £1.3 billion. This seems likely to continue as this excerpt from a twitter conversation with the Gilt trade Moyeen Islam shows.
At 13.5bn a week, APF will outstrip supply and see 25bn returned in cash terms to the mkt over April.
Mortgages
There is a curious state of play right now. In the opinion of the Bank of England a major factor in its impact on the economy is via the housing market and house prices. These days that is more via QE and the Term Funding Scheme than official interest-rates because so many mortgages now have a fixed interest-rate.
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s housing market has been thrown into the deep freeze by measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and is unlikely to have recovered a year from now, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
Actually when making the point I got this reply from Andy Barnes.
Indeed! If you’re after a 10 year fix as a FTB with less than 40% deposit (quite likely), then you have a grand total of just 2 mortgage products (HSBC) to choose from on the market. Min 20% deposit, relatively extortionate rates of 3.19% and 3.44%.
Comment
A calm analysis of the Bank of England action shows that today’s move is not as so many have broadcast. This does not mean that there are no challenges. For example we have seen the word “temporary” used and regularly abused in the credit crunch crisis. So much so that it is defined as “any time between now and the end of the universe” in my financial lexicon for these times. However the UK government is plainly spending at a very fast rate and it will take a while to issue the Gilts to pay for it. Otherwise the market may get indigestion in spite of all the Bank of England purchases. So for once there is some truth in this being to help create an orderly market.
The bigger danger to my mind is the amount of QE that is being undertaken as we head for £645 billion. There are loads of takes that this is fine and for now it is. But should we ever recover we will have an expanded money supply with velocity picking up and there will be inflation dangers. Not now because even with money there is not a lot to spend it on! But it may happen sooner than we might think.
On the subject of inflation the UK has a new measure and I have formally replied to it.
Movements in the all-HDP items index show a stable increase over time, with an increase of 2.6% since week 1.
Anyway here are part of my thoughts and the full reply is on the Statsusernet website.
I can give an example of an issue here which is valid as this is essentially an anecdote index. In terms of Rice there was a sustained period when the shelves were empty of it and best of luck with getting an online shopping booking! Anyway when I could buy some I had to buy a different type which was some 73% more expensive. Also as I liked the Rice I previously bought I may have been substituting an inferior product making the change larger. So there was quite a shift which I am sure many experienced……….
Accordingly there is much to consider in terms of both the new measure and keeping the normal measures of inflation relevant. In that spirit may I suggest that the indicator saying Antibacterial Cleansing Wipes fell in price in the first week of the measure gets looked at again as the seems to quote the film Star Wars to be from a place “far,far,away…”
Let me finish with some good news which is that UK banks seem to have their US Dollar liabilities under at least some control, which is not true everywhere.
BoE: Allots GBP5 Mln At Contingent Term Repo Facility 3-Month Operation, Zero At 1-Month Operation