What happens if the Euroboom fades or dies?

by Shaun Richards

Amidst the excitement ( okay the financial media had little else to do…) of the US ten-year Treasury Note reaching a yield of 3% yesterday there was little reaction from Europe. What I mean by this was that there was a time when European bond yields would have been dragged up in a type of pursuit. But as we look around whilst there may have been a small nudge higher the environment is completely different. Of course Germany is ploughing its own furrow with a 0.63% ten-year yield but even Italy only has one of 1.77%. In fact in a broad sweep Portugal has travelled in completely the opposite direction to the United States as I recall it issuing a ten-year bond at over 4% last January whereas now it has a market yield of 1.68%.

Of course much of this has been driven by all the Quantitative Easing purchases of the European Central Bank or ECB. This gives us a curious style of monetary policy where the foot has been on the accelerator during a boom. Putting it another way there are now over 4.5 trillion Euros of assets on the ECB balance sheet. However in another fail for economics 101 the amount of inflation generated has not been that much.

Euro area annual inflation rate was 1.3% in March 2018, up from 1.1% in February. A year earlier, the rate was
1.5%. European Union annual inflation was 1.5% in March 2018, up from 1.4% in February ( Eurostat)

As you can see the rate is below a year ago in spite of the extra QE.  However some ECB members are still banging the drum.

‘S MERSCH SAYS CONFIDENCE ON INFLATION HAS RECENTLY RISEN – BBG ( @C_Barraud )

That is an odd way of putting something which is likely to weaken the economy via lower real wages is it not? Thus confidence goes into my financial lexicon for these times especially as to most people such confidence can be expressed like this.

Global benchmark June Brent LCOM8, -0.18% settled at $73.86 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, down 85 cents, or 1.1%. It had touched a high of $75.47, the highest level since November 2014. ( Marketwatch)

So in essence the confidence is really expectations of a higher oil price which as well as being inflationary is a contractionary influence on the Euro area economy. Here is Eurostat on the subject.

 Indeed, more than half (54.0 %) of the EU-28’s gross inland energy consumption in 2015 came from imported sources

Sadly it avoids giving us figures on just the Euro area but let us move on adding a higher oil price to the contractionary influences on the Euro area.

Oh and there is an area where one can see some flickers of an impact on inflation of all the QE. From Eurostat.

House prices, as measured by the House Price Index, rose by 4.2% in the euro area and by 4.5% in the EU in the
fourth quarter of 2017 compared with the same quarter of the previous year……….Compared with the third quarter of 2017, house prices rose by 0.9% in the euro area and by 0.7% in the EU in the fourth quarter of 2017

Those who recall the past might be more than a little troubled by the 11.8% recorded in Ireland and the 7.2% recorded in Spain.

Money Supply

I looked at this issue on the 9th of this month.

If we look at the Euro area in general then there are signs of a reduced rate of growth.

The annual growth rate of the narrower aggregate M1, which includes currency in circulation
and overnight deposits, decreased to 8.4% in February, from 8.8% in January.

The accompanying chart shows that this series peaked at just under 10% per annum last autumn.

The broader measure had slowed too which is awkward if you expect higher inflation for example from the oil price rise. This is because the rule of thumb is that you split the broad money growth between output and inflation. So if broad money growth is lower and inflation higher there is pressure for output to be squeezed.

Other signals

The Bundesbank of Germany told us this yesterday.

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The Bundesbank expects the German economy’s boom to continue, although the Bank’s economists predict that the growth rate of gross domestic product might be distinctly lower in the first quarter of 2018 than in the preceding quarters.

The industrial production weakness that we looked at back on the 9th of this month is a factor as well as a novel one in a world where the poor old weather usually takes a beating.

the particularly severe flu outbreak this year ……. The unusually severe flu season is also likely to have dampened economic activity in other sectors, the economists note.

Perhaps we will see headlines stating the German economy has the flu next month. Oh and in the end the weather always gets it.

In February, output in the construction sector declined by a seasonally adjusted 2¼% on the month. This, the Bank’s economists believe, was attributable to the colder than average weather conditions.

So the boom is continuing even though it is not. As this is around 28% of the Euro area economy it has a large impact.

This morning France has told us this. From Insee.

In April 2018, households’ confidence in the economic
situation was almost unchanged: the synthetic index
gained one point at 101, slightly above its long-term
average.

So a lot better than the 80 seen in the late spring/summer of 2013 but also a fade from the 108 of last June. Also yesterday we were told this.

The balances of industrialists’ opinion on overall and
foreign demand in the last three months have dropped
sharply compared to January – they had then reached their
highest level since April 2011.

That makes the quarter just gone look like a peak or rather the turn of the year especially if we add in this.

Business managers are also less optimistic about overall and foreign demand over the next three months;

bank lending

The survey released by the ECB yesterday was pretty strong although it tends to cover past trends. Also it seemed to show hints of what we might consider to be the British disease.

Credit standards for loans to households for house purchase eased further in the first quarter of 2018……..In the first quarter of 2018, banks continued to report a
net increase in demand for housing loans

And really?

Net demand for housing loans continued to be driven
mainly by the low general level of interest rates,
consumer confidence and favourable housing market
prospects

Comment

The ECB finds itself in something of a dilemma. This is because it has continued with a highly stimulatory policy in a boom and now faces the issue of deciding if the current slow down is temporary or not? Even worse for presentational purposes it has suggested it will end QE in September just in time for the economic winds to reverse course. Added to this has been the rise in the oil price which will boost inflation which the ECB will say it likes when in fact it must now that it will be a contractionary influence on the economy. This means it is as confused as its namesake ECB in the world of cricket.

Such developments no doubt are the reason why ECB members are on the media wires the day before a policy meeting ignoring the concept of purdah. Also I suspect the regular section on economic reform ( the equivalent of a hardy perennial) at tomorrow’s press conference might be spoken with emphasis rather than ennui. From Reuters.

The European Central Bank, after suffering a political backlash, is considering shelving planned rules that would have forced banks to set aside more money against their stock of unpaid loans. The guidelines, which were expected by March, had been presented as a main plank of the ECB’s plan to bring down a 759 billion euro ($930 billion) pile of soured credit weighing on euro zone banks, particularly in Greece, Portugal and Italy.

Also we return to one of the earliest themes of this website which was that central banks would delay any return to normal monetary policy. Back then I did not know how far they would go and now we wait to see if the ECB will ever fully reverse it’s Whatever it takes” policy or will end up adding to it?

 

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