The last 24 hours have shown an instance of a central bank losing its grip and another losing the plot. This is significant because central banks have been like our overlords in the credit crunch era as they slashed interest-rates and when that did not work expanded their balance sheets using QE and when that did not work cut interest-rates again and did more QE. This made Limahl look rather prescient.
Neverending story
Ah
Neverending story
Ah
Neverending story
Ah
Also in terms of timing we have today the last policy meeting of ECB President Mario Draghi who has been one of the main central banking overlords especially after his “What ever it takes ( to save the Euro) ” speech. Next month he will be replaced by Christine Lagarde who has given an interview to 60 Minutes in the US.
Christine Lagarde shows John Dickerson how she fakes drinking wine at global gatherings.
US Repo Problems
Regular readers will recall that we looked at the words of US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on the 9th of this month.
To counter these pressures, we began conducting temporary open market operations. These operations have kept the federal funds rate in the target range and alleviated money market strains more generally.
This involved various moves as the overnight Repos found this added too.
Term repo operations will generally be conducted twice per week, initially in an offering amount of at least $35 billion per operation.
These have been for a fortnight and added to this was a purchase programme for Treasury Bills.
In accordance with this directive, the Desk plans to purchase Treasury bills at an initial pace of approximately $60 billion per month, starting with the period from mid-October to mid-November.
Regular readers will recall that I described this as a new version of QE and it has turned out that the Treasury Bill purchases will be larger than the early estimates by at least double.
This theme of “More! More! More!” continued yesterday with this announcement from the New York Federal Reserve.
Consistent with the most recent FOMC directive, to ensure that the supply of reserves remains ample even during periods of sharp increases in non-reserve liabilities, and to mitigate the risk of money market pressures that could adversely affect policy implementation, the amount offered in overnight repo operations will increase to at least $120 billion starting Thursday, October 24, 2019. The amount offered for the term repo operations scheduled for Thursday, October 24 and Tuesday, October 29, 2019, which span October month end, will increase to at least $45 billion.
Apologies for their wordy opening sentence but I have put it in because it contradicts the original statement from Jerome Powell. Because the “strains” seem to be requiring ever larger interventions. Or as Brad Huston puts it on Twitter.
9/17: We’re doing repos today and tomorrow.
9/19: We’re extending repos until 10/10. $75B overnight, $30B term
10/4: We’re extending repos until 11/4
10/11:We’re extending repos until Jan 2020
10/23:We’re expanding overnight repo offering to $120B, $45B term
This reinforces the point that I believe is behind this as I pointed out on the 25th of September
The question to my mind going forwards is will we see a reversal in the QT or Quantitative Tightening era? The supply of US Dollars is now being reduced by it and we wait to see what the consequences are.
This added to the US Dollar shortage we have been looking at for the past couple of years or so. It would seem that the US Federal Reserve is worried about a shortage at the end of this month which makes me wonder what they state of play will be at the year end when many books are squared? Also in terms if timing we will get the latest repo announcement at pretty much the same time as Mario Draghi starts his final ECB press conference.
The Riksbank of Sweden
It has made this announcement today.
In line with the forecast from September, the Executive Board has therefore decided to leave the repo rate unchanged at –0.25 per cent. As before, the forecast indicates that the interest rate will most probably be raised in December to zero percent.
I will come to my critique of this in a moment but we only have to progress another sentence or two to find that the Riksbank has provided its own critique.
The forecast for the repo rate has therefore been revised downwards and indicates that the interest rate will be unchanged for a prolonged period after the expected rise in December.
That is really quite a mess because we are supposed to take notice of central bank Forward Guidance which is now for lower interest-rates which will be achieved by raising them! Time for a reminder of their track record on this front.
$SEK. A hike to 0% signaled by #Riksbank
Over past two meetings end-point cut by 85bps – yet Riksbank will hike. Very strange.
Decision consistent with idea of a reversal rate of 0% (below-0% = counterproductive). Peculiarly, Riksbank never admitted as much… #rikshog pic.twitter.com/5oUacD6b1o
— Martin Enlund 🦆🚁 (@enlundm) October 24, 2019
As you can see their Forward Guidance has had a 100% failure rate. You do well by doing the reverse of what they say. As for now well you really could not make the bit below up!
If the prospects were to change, monetary policy may need to be adjusted going forward. Improved prospects would justify a higher interest rate. If the economy were instead to develop less favourably, the Executive Board could cut the repo rate or make monetary policy more expansionary in some other way.
QE
Well that never seems to go away does it?
In accordance with the decision from April 2019, the Riksbank is purchasing government bonds for a nominal total amount of SEK 45 billion, with effect from July 2019 to December 2020.
The central bank will keep the government sweet by making sure it can borrow very cheaply. The ten-year yield is negative albeit only just ( -0.03%) although in an undercut Sweden is running a fiscal surplus. That becomes really rather odd when we look at the next bit.
The Economy
I have criticised the Riksbank for pro-cyclical monetary policy and it seems set to do so again.
after several years of good growth and
strong economic activity, the Swedish economy is now growing more slowly.
So they have cut interest-rates in the good times and now seem set to raise them in weaker times.
Next comes this.
As economic activity has entered a phase of lower growth in
2019, the labour market has also cooled down. Unemployment is deemed to have increased slightly during the year.
If we switch to last week’s release from Sweden Statistics we see something of a challenge to the “increased slightly” claim.
In September 2019 there were 5 110 000 employed persons. The unemployment rate was 7.1 percent, an increase of 1.1 percentage points compared with September 2018……In September 2019, there were 391 000 unemployed persons aged 15─74, not seasonally adjusted, an increase of 62 000 compared with September 2018.
If we move to manufacturing then the world outlook seemed to hit Sweden in pretty much one go in September according to Swedbank.
The PMI dropped by 5.5 points in September to 46.3 from a downward revision of 51.8 in August. This is the largest monthly decline since autumn 2008 and was part of the reason why the PMI fell in the third quarter to the lowest level since early 2013.
Comment
The US Federal Reserve is the world’s central bank of last resort and currently that is not going especially well. So far it has added around US $200 billion to its balance sheet and seems set to push it back over US $4 trillion. Yet the problem seems to be hanging around rather than going away as it feels like a plaster is being applied to a broken leg. A gear or two is grinding in the banking system.
Moving to Sweden we see a case of a central bank adopting pro-cyclical monetary policy and now finds itself planning to raise interest-rates in a recession. Yet the rise seems to make interest-rates lower in the future! I am afraid the Riksbank has really rather jumped the shark here. It now looks as if it has decided that negative interest-rates are a bad idea which I have a lot of sympathy with but as I have argued many times the boom was the time to end it.
Sweden has economic growth of 4% with an interest-rate of -0.5% ( 28th of July 2017)
The Investing Channel