US bond prices are pointing to an oncoming recession, raising the question of whether the Fed stays the course on its path to rate normalcy. Tony Nash, CEO, Complete Intelligence, discusses.
SM: BFM 89 Nine. Good morning. You’re listening to the Morning Run. It’s 7:05 A.M. On Thursday, the 31 March, looking rather cloudy outside our Studios this morning. If you’re heading on your way to work, make sure to drive safe. First, let’s recap how global markets closed yesterday.
KHC: US markets down was down. .2% S&P 500 down .6% Nasdaq down 1.2%. Asian markets, Nikkei down zero 8%. Hong Kong’s up 1.4%. Shanghai Composite up 2%. STI up 3%. Fbm KLCI close flat.
SM: So fairly red on the board today. And for some thoughts on where international markets are headed, we have on the line with us, Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Tony, good morning. Always good to have you. Now markets are speculating that the brief inversion of the two over ten year US Treasury yields this week is a sign of an oncoming recession. So do you agree with this? And if not, what might explain these brief periods of inverting or inversion?
TN: It could be a sign. Shazana, I think we have to see a more consistent and meaningful inversion to say that we’re definitely headed into a recession. So what this means is that what a yield curve inversion means is that people have to pay more for shorter duration money. So right now, if you look at, say, the five year treasury, the yield is 2.4% and the ten year is around two point 35%. So it’s cheaper to borrow longer term money, which is really weird. It could have a lot of reasons. Maybe companies need money more. They’re short on cash and they’re more willing to pay for it. So that would be a sign of a recession. So if we see a more consistent yield driven version, we see the two and the five years continue to be higher rates, then we need to be more concerned. For now, there’s a lot of speculation, but we just don’t necessarily see the certainty of it yet.
TCL: Tony, markets are wondering whether the Fed is going to push ahead with this rate policy on tightening because this volatility both in share markets and bond markets is a bit muddling for the analysts and the fund managers to make sense of. What’s your point of view?
TN: Yeah, I think at least for the last few months the Fed has been fairly consistent. But of course, we’ve had exogenous type of events, the war between Russia and Ukraine being the biggest, and that has had an impact on raw materials costs. So food in the case of Ukraine with wheat and sunflower oil and all this other stuff and energy with Russia. So it doesn’t matter what a central bank does necessarily. They can’t push down the price of oil through monetary policy. What they can do is demand destruction. And this is why we think that they’re going to lead with some fairly sizable 50 basis point rises, say in May for sure, and possibly in June. I don’t know if you saw that today. JPmorgan was out with a note saying that there will be 50 basis point rises in both May and June, which would be a pretty sharp rise in interest rates. The good news is we see a sharp rise initially, but then they’ll only do that for a short period of time to cut off demand pretty quickly and hopefully cut down on some of the demand for petrol and oil and some of these other materials.
TCL: Okay. So your sense is that the Fed and JPowell will stay the cost and increase rates, but what’s happening in Japan is quite the opposite. They’re actually showing quite discernible decoupling because they’re staying with zero interest rates. I think the ten year yield on the JGBs is about zero point 25%. What does that spell? Because the Japanese yen is now down at a six minute seven year low. Obviously, there’s a big sense of what’s going on here. What’s your point of view?
TN: J I think yesterday announced that they would have unlimited purchases of Japanese government bonds. So what they’re doing through that is it’s an open door for them to insert currency. It’s kind of a backdoor to growing their money supply, which leads to evaluation of the yen. And so Japan is in a place right now where they want to grow their export sector. They do that through yen evaluation. The competition between, say, Japan, China, Korea is there. China’s exports keep growing despite a strong Chinese Yuan Japan. There are other central banks. It’s partly that reason, meaning the ECB tightening and the Fed tightening, but it’s also competitiveness of Japan of their exports. So there are a number of reasons at play there.
KHC: So you were saying that earlier that maybe we will see 50 basis points increase in May or June. How do you think the share prices of US banks and financial institutions typically would do in this kind of environment, and would they be ultimate winners?
TN: They could be, I guess the only dilemma there would be the impact on mortgage. So if the Fed raises rates really quickly and it has an impact on mortgage demand and mortgage defaults, then that could be a real problem for banks. But short of that, I think they’re probably in a decent place to do fairly well. Of course, that’s company specific and all that sort of thing. But I think financial services in general should do fairly well on a relative basis.
TCL: Yeah. Tony, if it goes ahead as follows. Right. And Japan does not increase rates like the US is, it just extends its debt to GDP ratio. I think Japan is now 255% to GDP. I think the US is well above 100%. That’s quite disconcerting. What happens? How does it all end? Because it’s quite clear that Japan cannot raise rates because it just cannot fall into recession.
TN: Well, the problem with Japan raising rates is their population. And you all know this story, but they can’t necessarily raise productivity without automation. So they have to automate to be able to raise their productivity, to be able to raise their rate of growth. So that’s the foundational problem Japan have now with the BOJ buying with their JGB purchases, they’re actually buying the debt that the Japanese Treasury creates. Okay. So it’s this circular environment where the Japanese Treasury is creating debt to fund their government, and the BOJ is buying that debt basically out of thin air. They’re retiring. Okay. So Japan is in a really strange situation where it’s creating debt and then it’s buying it and retiring it. And this is a little bit of modern monetary theory, which is a long, long discussion. But Japan is in a very strange place right now.
SM: Tony, thanks very much for speaking to us this morning. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that are moving markets at the moment. And in the conversation there with a look at Japan and just the curious situation that it finds itself in amid all these economic and geopolitical pressures happening in the world.
TCL: Yeah, it’s really weird, right? The Japanese are so much in debt and they can’t get out of it. They’re creating these debts and they’re buying back this debt. It’s quite insane. But America does the same thing with their bond buying program until this year. Right. And that they haven’t even significantly cut that program. It’s really weird because what happens then for the US dollar? What happens to the Japanese yen down the line when your paper currency is near as meaningless? Right. It’s not banked by anything. It’s just being printed every day Willy nilly. It’s really weird.
SM: So all eyes are, of course, on the Fed, I guess, the most powerful central bank in the world, and how much it’s going to raise rates when it’s actually going to start or stop its QE in since quantitative easing, opposite of that. Somebody tell me what it means. Qt. There we go. And when they start reducing, that’s something that everyone’s watching very closely. Let’s take a look at some of the international headlines that have caught our eye. We see something coming out of Shanghai. Volkswagen said yesterday that it would partly shut down production at its factory in Shanghai because the lack of key components indicating further how a resurgence of the Omikan variant has disrupted the Chinese economy and global supply chains. The Shanghai factory operated in a joint venture with SAIC of China, and it’s one of Volkswagen’s largest facilities. It shut down for two days in mid March, but reopened now. It looks like it’s going to have to shut down again.
KHC: Yes. And the company also gave indication they didn’t give actually any indication on when normal production will resume. But China is booked Vegas largest market in the essential source of sales and profit. So the country is in the midst of the worst outbreak since 2020. And so that should prompt the government to impose lockdowns and restrictions. And even car maker like Tesla is also having a large factory in Shanghai also have to suspend production because of this strict covet policies. And so voice mechanics, they’re actually having a lot of shortages and slowdowns in other markets as well.
SM: So it’s really the twin it’s the twin issues, right? It’s the pandemic on one hand and then it’s also the geopolitical events in Ukraine that’s really affecting it’s, leading to a shortage of auto parts. So all this comes together and it’s not great for car makers in Shanghai at the moment. Turning our attention to another headline, if we look over at Russia, Russia is going to lift the short selling ban on local equities later today. And this is actually removing one of the measures that helped limit the declines in the stock market. After a long, record long shutdown, the bank of Russia also said equities trading hours will be expanded from a shortened four hour session to the regular schedule of 950 to 650 P. M. Moscow time. So I guess they’re trying to get back to normal but how we see that impact the stock market is still, I think, an open question. Yeah.
KHC: And since the stock market has since that stock actually gained 1.7% and the daily move also has been limited. Prior to the resumption of trading, the Russian government actually took measures including preventing foreigners from exiting local equities and banning short selling and to avoid the repeat of 33% slump scene in the first day of the Ukraine invasion last month.
TCL: Yeah, this whole Russia Ukraine invasion is set off a domino effect of domino effect quite catastrophic. Or repercussions manufacturing in capital markets in currencies. How does it all end?
SM: We don’t know. We don’t know the end to that story. And how long 717 in the morning. Stay tuned to BFM 89.9%.
In this episode, we talked about some really interesting tech earnings like of Facebook and Amazon, crude and natgas prices, and the bond market. How does the NFP data affect the bond market? Also discussed central bank’s reaction to inflation and why you should be keeping your eyes on the CPI?
This is the fifth episode of The Week Ahead in collaboration of Complete Intelligence with Intelligence Quarterly, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.
For those who prefer to listen to this episode, here’s the podcast version for you.
TN: Hi, everyone, and welcome to The Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. And I’m joined by Tracy Shuchart, Nick Glinsman, and Albert Marko. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. It helps us a lot get visibility, and it really helps you get reminded when a new episode is out so you don’t miss anything.
We had a lot this week. We had tech earnings, some really interesting tech earnings and market activity as a result. We had crude really ripping this week. And we had bonds raging at the end of the week. So really a lot happening across sectors, NASA classes.
So let’s start with the bond market, Nick. We seem to have gotten pretty much what you mentioned on last week’s show. So can you go into kind of what’s happened and what’s happening in the bond market right now?
NG: Yeah, we’ve basically been ambushed by inflation. That’s what’s happened. You saw yesterday out of the ECB, which was a hawkish twist, possibly one of the worst press conference performances I’ve ever seen in my life. But the facts of the matter are you’ve got five, six, 7% inflation in various countries of the EU. In Lithuania, you’ve got 12%. Okay. So they are failing at their predominant original mandate, which was inflation per the Bundes back from what I’ve been told, there were several members of the MPC.
TN: Sorry. When you say she, you mean Christine Lagarde?
NG: Christine Lagarde. Several members of the NPC wanted to get moved yesterday. Not going to happen but it’s reasonable to think perhaps two hikes this year, but that will still take us to -20 basis points. It will still be negative. Okay. And then that upset the European bond markets.
You have the Bank of England go first with 25 basis points, four dissenters wanting half a point. That started to rock the bond markets a little bit. Then the press conference out of the ECB, and you basically had, goodness how many Sigma move it was in two-year bubbles, two-year German government bonds. But they basically went up over 20 basis points in a couple of hours, terminating early this morning, and they’ve stayed elevated.
And then you had this non farm payroll data. Everybody got it wrong. And the thing is, if you think this month’s figures are nonsense, well, look at the revision.
TN: Sorry, when you mentioned the NFP data, what’s important about the NFP data? Because I think some people looked at the headline employment numbers, some people looked at the wage rate. So can you tell us what’s important there?
NG: Two things. One is nobody was expecting a non farm payroll at like this. Some people will say, well, it’s always going to be revised. Well, okay, then look at the near $400,000 upward revision for December. It’s. All their data. The way it’s coming out. The BLS isn’t necessarily the best, but everything that they look at is strong labor market.
The thing that really upset the bond market was the average hourly earnings. 5.7%. To Albert’s point last week. Wage inflation is here to stay. So having been inundated with calls this morning, that really affects what the Fed… The Fed actually are fighting for their credibility.
TN: When you say wage inflation is here to stay, but it’s really, is the Fed trying to break the back of wage inflation?
NG: Well, that’s something they could impact. Right. By increasing the demand side of the market. We’ll have another idea on inflation next week. The CPI. And the lowest forecast is 7%. The highest is 7.6%. They’re not getting the favorable comparisons because oil has continued to move up. Energies continue to move up. Right.
So assuming we’ve got a seven big handle and heaven help us if we haven’t hit the 8 handle at all, this Fed has no choice. Because as you can see with the bond market, the bond market is going to do the Fed’s job if they don’t do, it.
So every time we get to what you had over the last couple of days with a bit of pullback before the ECB had a bit of pullback by some of the Fed members, the FMC members, and the yoke of, steepened.
AM: I got a question for you, Nick. Can you buy bonds if oil goes vertical? Because I think we both think that oil is going 120 north.
NG: Yeah. Well, no. I think that’s another reason why you can’t be long bonds at the moment and the bond market will adjust to it.
Everybody said the bond vigilantes are dead. When you look at the percentage moves and the price of the bonds, they’re not these are big moves going on.
TS: Nick, can you address a little bit about what will happen to the credit markets as far as the bond movement?
NG: High yield seem to do okay today, which investment grade, fine. Historically, in rising rates, you should see investment grade is somewhat better. High yield, no. High yield. I mean, if these rates are going to start moving up and some of the stuff I heard today tells me “one and done” is not going to happen. It’s going to be more and they’re not going to have a choice.
And the central banks have been basically what you had in the last seven or eight days is the central banks admitting they made a policy error or two last year. And now they’re fearful of making further policy errors. So they’ve got to be seen to do.
And again, to Albert’s point last week, clearly the Biden administration is, had their backs on the inflation front. And I suspect from what I was being told, we’re going to be quite surprised at potentially how aggressive this Fed could be. Not 50 basis points in March. That will be too quick. Too much, too quick. But May, June could well be in play because these numbers aren’t coming down. They’re just not coming down.
TN: Okay. So regardless Q2 is when things start to happen on the interest rate front, on the rates front, right?
NG: Yeah. In terms of QT, I was told the second half, beginning of the second half. Second half.
TN: So does that mean July or November?
NG: Probably means July. Okay.
AM: I honestly think it’s a possibility we do that beforehand just because fiscal cliff is coming in March.
TN: How do they go from QE to QT? Just like that? They shouldn’t be doing QE right now anyway. That’s true. It’s still doing QE. So they missed a beat there.
AM: How do you taper if you’re doing QE still? Why doesn’t anybody ask that question or answer?
TN: I ask it every week.
AM: Tony, I was on this thing with Andreas and “we’re going to taper.” I’m like, “okay, sure.” On paper. But the reality is you’re not because the QE is continuous.
TN: I don’t know. It seems to me from what Nick is saying, it may not be continuous. It seems like that has to stop because the policy position is going to stop in March. Right?
NG: Exactly. Which is why I think 25 basis points, not 50. However, I think right now, until they’ve caught up somewhat forward guidance is not going to be with clarity.
They want to get back to normal so they can be forward guiding according to what we were used to in the deflationary times. Pre-Covid. Okay.
TN: Okay. So when you say pre-Covid, you mean pre-Covid in terms of interest rate and balance sheet?
NG: Yeah. I think it’s exactly what I’ve been told this morning. They want to get back to the interest rate level that was prevalent then. They want their balance sheet back at that level.
TN: Okay.
NG: And I think that what’s happened is not only have they been shocked by inflation, they shouldn’t be shocked by the false-ty of their forecast, but I think they were shocked by the fact that we’ve got a lot of bubbles going on.
Equity market value, housing market, NFT, crude oil. Crude oil’s not a bubble. Bonds have been a bubble. So I think we’ve got some surprise. And of course, that will then feed it.
Remember I said originally, there’s either a riot in the bond market or riot in equity market.
TN: That’s right.
NG: One or the other. It started with bonds, and then we got a bit of an equity riot yesterday, which was more earnings related. But the thing about it is if you look at interest rates as gravity, zero interest rates with basically zero gravity. So you’re on the moon. Equity starts have been up here. If they’re raising rates, they’re increasing the level of gravity. News and law means that something starts to fall.
I was also told if it’s not a cascade, if it’s orderly, sort of down 20% from here, they’re okay with it.
TN: Okay. That puts us at what, 36?
NG: 35, 36,000, which is still above where we were before Covid. Right?
TN: Right.
NG: Fed will be happy with it. This put, is not, there’s no clarity on the put anymore.
TN: Okay. Is it safe to say that your view by the end of the year is sometime between now and the end of the year will hit 35, $3600?
NG: Look, the Fed. These rate markets will carry on. Any mistake by the Fed, any hesitation, it’s going to be punished by rates. And you’ve seen what’s happening, and it happens. It crosses over. You saw what happened in the European bond market as well this Thursday. Bank of England. You saw Gilts market also adjust, and that flowed through to the US market and it continued today.
TN: So do you think the ten-year crosses 2% next month?
NG: Oh, yeah. My target on the ten-year for this year is 260.
TN: Okay, great. So let’s take that and a central bank’s reaction, inflation. Tracy, we’re seeing crude prices just kind of a rocket ship. So can you talk us through that and let us know how does that contribute to next week’s CPI? And Nick mentioned CPI, but what do you expect for that as well?
TS: Well, I mean, I expect CPI to be high. However, the Fed doesn’t really include energy and housing in there and food in their metrics. So that doesn’t necessarily play into that.
That said, I think what we saw today was a lot of shorts being squeezed out of the market. That said, still expecting higher crude prices later this year into Q3.
The reason being because the global oil inventories just drew another 8 million. We have OPEC that just announced another 400K increase for next month this week. Right. And they haven’t even been able to keep up with their production increases. I mean, their compliance is over 132% right now. They just don’t have the spare capacity to move forward. US products consumed last week hit 21.6 million barrels. That’s over 2019 levels.
So globally, we’re seeing higher demand with lower supplies. So this market is likely to continue higher just because of actual supply and demand issues, which I’ve been talking about week over week.
What’s also interesting today is that nobody’s really talking about is that Saudi Aramco just announced that they’re mulling another 50 billion equity stake sale. Right. And so it would be a good thing to keep kind of oil prices higher and inventory is kind of lower. Right?
TN: Sure.
TS: There’s a lot going on in the market right now.
TN: Okay. And as we see this cold front come through different parts of the US, of course, it’s winter. But do you expect, say, Nat gas to continue to rally or say, for the next couple of weeks or next couple of months, or do you expect that we’re kind of in the zone where we’re going to be through the winter?
TS: I mean, I think we’re kind of in the zone. US nat gas prices are not as subject to the volatility or the constraints that say European nat gas prices are concerned. I mean, we have an overabundance of Nat gas, we tend to flare it.
We’re going to be this year the world’s largest exporter. Right. But that’s not necessarily going to bring I mean, you have to look at our gas prices trading at four or $5 compared to nat gas prices in Europe trading at $40. So I think we’re at a sideways market right now just because of the oversupply that we have.
What we are saying is depending on what area you live in, then natural gas prices tend to vary. So we’re looking at the North East, for example, where we have this cold front. Nat gas prices are at $11. Right. But Henry Hub, which is what everybody’s trading is still at 4 to 5. We’re going to see not gas prices rise in Texas right now because we have a cold front coming through. But again, that’s a regional market.
TN: I was just complaining about gasoline prices being $3 here in Texas earlier today, so I just can’t deal with it. Where is it where you guys are?
AM: $4.25 in Tampa.
TN: $4.25?! Holy cow. What about you, Tracy?
TS: $3.99 in the Northeast.
TN: We’re right at $3, and I can barely stand it.
Okay, let’s move along with the geopolitical stuff. So, of course, Ukraine is on everyone’s mind. And we’ll put a link to this in the show description, the video from the State Department spokesman and the AP diplomacy reporter. Albert, can you talk us through a little bit of that kind of what’s happening there and what is that doing to the situation to find a diplomatic solution?
AM: Well, simplistically, I mean, you have the Biden administration trying to amp up the rhetoric and make it more dramatic, basically to distract from what’s going on domestically in the United States from inflation and social issues, and SCOTUS picks down the list of the problems that are facing the Biden administration. That exchange was unbelievable.
You had an AP reporter just taking him to task and saying “where’s the declassified information? And his response was, “I’m telling you verbally right now, and that’s the declassified information.” That’s unbelievable. You’re not going to get away with that.
This is just more of a symptom of the ineptitude of Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State. He shouldn’t even be called “Secretary of State” anymore. It should be “Secretary of statements,” because that’s all he does. He doesn’t do anything else. And when it’s concerning with Ukraine and his method for, “diplomacy”, he’s a non factor. The United States is a non factor, right now.
They’re behind the eight ball where they keep talking up this rhetoric and putting their allies in Europe behind the black ball here. What do we do here? We need support from the United States to show strength, but realistically, we can’t stop them going into Ukraine.
TN: Okay. Yeah. So let’s just go onto a viewer question here from @SachinKunger. He says, what will happen if there is an actual escalation between Russia and Ukraine? What’s the likelihood of actual escalation and what do you think would happen? Both you and Tracy? Part of it is commodity prices. Is there an impact on commodity supply chains, meaning wheat and gas and other stuff to Europe or other places, or is that not necessarily a huge issue?
AM: Well, I believe we’re about 75% that they’re going to have some sort of incursion into Ukraine. I mean, you don’t mobilize that many people and create supply chain logistics to not do anything. That question really depends on the level of incursion. Right. Because if it’s just ten, 20,000.
TN: It goes back to Biden’s minor incursion.
AM: That’s the Pentagon’s working model. And that’s my working model. 10, 20 thousand, you go in the same place as you were before, you loot the countryside, cause a little disturbance. The west looks weak. You leave after a month or so. Right. That’s the likelihood situation.
Of course, the markets are going to freak out in day one.
TS: That’s exactly what I was going to say. I mean, obviously you’re going to see a reaction in the commodities markets just because we’ve had four years of really not much geopolitical risk factored into a lot of these markets, the agricultural markets, the energy market. Right. Pretty much after Libya had a ceasefire in 2020, all that risk premium kind of came out of at least the energy markets and the agricultural markets, we haven’t really seen a lot of geopolitical risks.
So of course, the markets will freak out. I totally agree with Albert on this point. Whether that’s going to last or not, that’s a totally different story.
TN: Yeah. I also think that we’ve had so much money supply that that cushions geopolitical risk on some level. And interest rates have been so low that that cushions geopolitical risk as well. So as we’re in this interest rate cycle and this balance sheet cycle, geopolitical risk counts for more. It’s more costly for companies, it’s more costly for countries and investors.
NG: I would add one other thing. These markets are not trading liquidly. So these moves on geopolitical risk could be exaggerated. Right?
TS: Exactly. My point is that geopolitical risk will be exaggerated at this point.
NG: You can see there’s no liquidity, right?
AM: Yeah. To be fair, any kind of event right now just makes the markets look like it’s a crypto exchange. 30% up, 30% down 300 points on the ES. That’s insane.
TN: On that, Albert, let’s move to some tech earnings and let’s talk about Facebook and Amazon. So if we want to talk about big moves, everyone kind of knows this, but can you talk us through a little bit of that? But I’m more interested in why it’s happening. Why is everyone negative on Meta and why are they positive on Amazon?
AM: Well, from my perspective, the Fed and their cohorts use maybe a dozen companies to pump the markets. Right. They’re mainly tech. Right. They’ve expanded out into a few other things, but it’s mainly tech, Facebook being one of them, Amazon being another. AMD and Google and all these guys. Right. All these big tech names.
Now when you see Facebook miss and a couple of other miss, and the markets start to get weak, there’s a point to where… This goes back to what Nick says about different levels in the markets and whatnot. He always stresses that with me. There’s a point to where if they break this level, we’re going down to 4100 or 4000 or God forbid, 3900. Right. So that lined up right when Amazon’s earnings were coming up. And I’m looking at the market and I’m looking at these levels and I’m like, there is absolutely no way they’re going to allow Amazon to miss. Whether they let them look the books or say something in guidance or whatnot. And lo and behold, what happened? Amazon beat. Did they really beat? Probably not. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then Pinterest that nobody cares about beats and then Snapchat. I don’t even know what the hell why they’re a company. They beat unbelievably. I think they were up like 50, 60% and after hours. Right.
So now they have their juice to pump the markets back up to 45, 30 or even maybe 4600 next week before the fiscal cliff becomes a problem.
TN: Okay.
TS: You also have to look at the bond market. Right? I mean, the more the ten-year tanks, the more that’s going to drag on tech.
TN: Right. So what does that tell us about the next couple of weeks, specifically next week? But the next couple of weeks? As we’ve seen, say Meta come down, Facebook come down. But we’ve seen these other things really rally. Where is tech as a sector?
AM: It’s a pump sector. That’s all it is right now. There’s nothing really behind it. It’s built on zero rates. Well, we know we’re going to get rate heights. So what are you betting on at the moment?
TN: Right. And that’s the basis of my question. If tech is a deflation play and we’re in inflationary environment and we’re going to have rate rises, what does that mean for tech in the near term? So are we at the kind of tail end of tech? That’s my real question.
NG: We’re at the tail end whilst we have to see these interest rate rises come through. And actually, you don’t necessarily have to see the central banks officially raise because if they don’t, the bond markets are… And then there’ll be a catch up. This is the problem. If they Underperform in their credibility catch up because they’ve already implicitly admitted their errors of policy, bond market will adjust and they have to catch up again.
Now, if they do something surprising on the rate side. So yesterday was an ECB shock, right? Today, there was nothing to do with the Fed. It was the data. Well, we’ve got that CPI date next week. Right. That’s going to be very interesting because I agree with Tracy. Core is at a certain level which is still too high. But it’s the full Monty, the full CPI that labor uses when they’re discussing their wage claims. Practically, that’s the behavior of economy.
TN: CPI is the single biggest event next week. Is that fair to say?
TS, AM, NG: Yes.
TN: Okay, so let’s look at that. What if it is, say seven, which is kind of the expectation, I guess the lower bound of expectation kind of. Right? So let’s say it’s seven or let’s say it’s even five. What does that mean for us? Does that mean continued, easy Fed? Or does that mean you have the same assumptions and that’s just kind of a milestone or something that we’re passing along the way to higher rates anyway?
NG: We’re on the way to higher rates anyway.
TN: Okay.
TS: I mean, if it’s five, the market, temporarily if it’s five, the market temporarily will probably rally because that lessens the effect that Fed is going to raise. Right. That percentage will probably go down. But that’s a temporary. If we’re just talking about market reaction on the data release, I don’t really see that happening. I don’t see 5% coming in. I don’t see that a possibility.
TN: But then let’s look at the other side. What if it’s eight and a half? What happens then?
NG: Well, then in the old days, it would have been an inter meeting rate hike.
TN: Okay. Right.
NG: And the bond market will just, it’ll be another riot. Even if the core is steady. Big figure eight on the full CPI? that would shock a few people. Like people were shocked today with the non- farm payroll data.
Literally, if you could watch Bloomberg TV, it was like. They couldn’t believe what was going on.
TN: So we’re in that place in the market where the porridge has to be just right. Is that fair to say?
TS: I think we’re in for volatility. Right? I mean, we’ve been experiencing volatility for the last month or so. I think this will continue until March, until we have some resolution of whether the Fed is going to raise rates or not.
In between, it’s going to be volatile because everybody’s looking at intermittent data saying, does this mean the Fed is going to raise rates? Does this mean the Fed is going to look do you know what I mean? So I think we’re in that pushbull thing, and I think that volatility will continue into next week. I think that volatility will continue until actually the March meeting, until we get some resolution on whether the Fed is going to raise rates and by how much.
TN: Okay. So if I just a couple of things for you to agree or disagree with, just short yes, no. Next week volatility in equities with downside bias, you agree or disagree?
AM: Disagree.
TN: Disagree. Nick, you agree or disagree? Downside bias, you agree. Tracy, equities, agree or disagree?
TS: I think it depends on the sector. Okay. Give me one or two. I think we’ll see, my downside bias is in tech and then obviously, yes, because it’s heavy tech. Right. And so I think we see sideways markets in the Dow and the Russell.
TN: Okay, then let’s do the same exercise for commodities. I know there’s a lot of companies out there, but generally commodities. Choppy with an upside bias. Agree or disagree?
TS, AM: Agreed.
NG: That’s a dollar call.
TN: Okay. Explain that.
NG: Yesterday because of the dollar’s weakness against the Euro and the Dixie, I tend to agree with you. I think it’s going to be choppy until we see the color of the CPI number.
TN: Okay. Very good. Anything else to add for the week ahead?
NG: Just keep your eyes on the bond market. My mantra.
TN: Very good. Okay.
TS: Keep your eyes on B come.
TN: Thanks guys. Thanks very much. Have a great weekend. And have a great week ahead.
TS: Thank you.
TN: I don’t know the left side of my screen is the pineapple people.
AM: We’re going to call Nick Luke for the episode today.
NG: The professional version of Luke.
AM: Okay. Anyways, I’m done joking. Let’s get this thing on the road. Okay.
We have a first-time QuickHit guest for this episode, Daniel Lacalle, a well-respected economist, author and commentator. Daniel shares his expertise on the eurozone and European Union. What is happening there in terms of Covid recovery? How does the region compare to other economies like Japan, China, or the USA? Will the ECB follow what the BOJ did? Will there be talks of deflation or inflation in Europe? How about the quantitative easing especially with a possibility of a more conservative ECB chair? Also, will Europe suffer the same power crisis as China and will Europeans be able to absorb inflation?
Daniel Lacalle started his career in the energy business and then moved on to investment banking and asset management. Right now, he’s into consulting and also macroeconomic analysis and teaches in two business schools.
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on November 18, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this Europe’s economic recovery: More like Japan, China or the US? Quickhit episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any contents provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TN: We spoke a few weeks ago on your podcast, and I’ve really been thinking about that since we spoke, and I wanted to circle back with you and talk about Europe. There’s a lot happening in Europe right now, and I think on some level, the US and China get a lot of the economic commentary. But really, Europe is where a lot of things are happening right now. And I’d like to generally talk about what is the near term future for Europe. But I guess more importantly, in the near term, what are some of Europe’s biggest economic impediments right now? I’m really curious about that. So what do you see as some of their biggest economic impediments.
DL: When we look at Europe, what we have to see from the positive side is that countries that have been at war with each other for centuries get along and they get along with lots of headlines. But they’re getting along sort of in a not too bad way. Good. Yeah, that’s agreed. But it is true that the eurozone is a very complex and a very unique proposition in terms of it’s, not the United States, and it’s not unified nation like China. It’s a group of countries that basically get together under the common denominator of a very strong welfare state. So unlike China or the United States, which were built from different perspectives. In the case of the eurozone, it’s all about the welfare state as the pillar.
DL: From there, obviously, productivity growth, job creation, enterprises, et cetera, are all, let’s say, second derivative of something that is a unique feature of the European Union. No, the European Union is about 20% of the world’s GDP, about 7% of the population, probably. And it’s about 55% of the social spending of the world. So that is the big driver, 7% of the population, 20% GDP, 55% of the government spending in social entitlements.
So that makes it a very different proposition economically than the United States or China. Where is the eurozone right now? The eurozone and the European Union in particular were not created for crisis. It’s a bull market concept. It’s a Bull market agreement. When things go swimmingly, there’s a lot of agreement. But we’ve lived now two crisis. And what we see is that the disparities between countries become wider when there is a crisis, because not everybody behaves in the same manner. Cultures are different. Fiscal views are different. So that is a big challenge. The situation now is a situation that is a bit of an experiment because the Euro has been an incredible success. When I started.
DL: When I started in the buy side, everybody said the Euro is not going to last. And there it is. And it’s the second world reserve currency in terms of utilization, significantly behind the United States. So it’s been a big success. But with that big success comes also a lot of hidden weaknesses. And the hidden weaknesses are fundamentally a very elevated level of debt, a very stubborn government spending environment that makes it very difficult for the European Union and the eurozone to grow as much as it probably could. And it also makes it very difficult to unify fiscal systems because we don’t have a federal system. We don’t have like the United States is.
The situation now is the eurozone is recovering. It’s recovering slowly. But some of those burdens to growth are obviously being very clear. Think about this. When Covid19 started, estimates from all global entities expected China to get out of the crisis first, the eurozone to get out of the crisis second, and the United States to be a distant third. It’s… the United States has surpassed its 2019 GDP levels. The eurozone is still behind. So it’s interesting to see how the expectations of recovery of the eurozone have been downgraded consistently all of the time. And therefore, what we find ourselves in is in a situation in which there’s almost a resignation to the fact that the eurozone in particular, but also the European Union. The eurozone is a small number of countries. The European Union is larger, for the people that are watching. It’s going to recover in a sort of almost L shape. It was going to recover with very low levels of growth, with much weaker levels of job creation and with a very significant and elevated level of debt. So that’s basically where we are right now.
Obviously, the positives remain. But it’s almost become custom to accept low growth, low job creation, low wage growth and low productivity.
TN: It seems to me that if we switch to say, looking at the ECB in that environment, how does the ECB deal with that in terms of higher inflation, lower growth, a weakening Euro? Now, I want to be careful about saying weakening Euro. I don’t necessarily think the bottom is going to fall out. I know there are people out there saying that’s going to happen. But we’ve seen over the past, particularly three weeks, we’ve seen some weakness in the Euro. What does that look like? Do we see kind of BOJ circuit 2012 type of activity happening? Or is there some other type of roadmap that the ECB has?
DL: It’s a very good comparison. The ECB is following the footsteps of the Bank of Japan. In my opinion, in an incorrect analysis of how the ECB the European Central Bank behaved in the 2008 crisis. There is a widespread of mainstream view that the ECB was too tight and too aggressive in its monetary policy. Aggressive in terms of hawkishness in the previous crisis. And if it had implemented the aggressive quantitative easing programs that the Federal Reserve implemented, everything would have gone much better. Unfortunately, I disagree. I completely disagree.
The problems of the eurozone have never been problems of liquidity and have never been problems of monetary policy. In fact, very loose monetary policy led to the crisis. Bringing interest rates from 5% to 1%. Massively increasing liquidity via the banking channel, but increasing liquidity nonetheless. And so the idea that a massive quantitative easing would have allowed the eurozone to get out of the crisis faster and better has been also denied by the reality of what has happened once quantitative easing has been implemented aggressively.
So now what the ECB is doing is pretty much what the Bank of Japan does, which is to monetize as much government debt as possible with a view that you need to have a little bit of inflation, but it cannot be high inflation because in the United States, with 4% unemployment, 4.6% unemployment, you may tolerate 6% inflation. For a while. But I can guarantee you that in the European Union, in the Eurozone with elevated levels of unemployment and with an aging population, very different from the United States. Very different in the European Union almost 20% of the population is going to be above 60 years of age pretty soon. Aging population and low wages with high unemployment or higher unemployment than in the United States. A very difficult combination for a very loose monetary policy.
The Bank of Japan can sort of get away with being massively doveish because it always has around 3% unemployment. So structural levels of unemployment. But that’s not the situation of the eurozone. So I think that the experiment that the ECB is undertaken right now is to be very aggressive despite the fact that the level of inflation is significantly higher than what European citizens are able to tolerate. Obviously, you say, well, it’s 4% inflation. That’s not that high. Well, 4% inflation means that electricity bills are up 20%, that gasoline bills are up another 20%, that food price are up 10% so we need to be careful about that.
So very dangerous experiment. We don’t know how it’s going to go. But they will continue to be extremely doveish with very low rates. That’s why the Euro is weaker, coming back to your point. Extremely dovish despite inflationary pressure.
TN: So it’s interesting central banks always act late and they always overcompensate because they act late. So do you think that maybe a year from now because of base effects, we’ll be talking about deflation instead of inflation like, is that plausible in Europe, in the US and other places, or is that just nonsensical?
DL: Well, we will not have deflation, but they will most certainly talk about the risk of deflation, because let’s start from the fact that the eurozone has had an average of 2% inflation. In any case, most of the time. There’s been a very small period of time in which there was sort of flat inflation. Right. So will they talk about the risk of deflation? Absolutely they will. I remember the first time I visited Japan. I remember talking to a Japanese asset manager and saying, “well, the problem of Japan is deflation, isn’t it?” And he said to me, you obviously don’t live in this country. So will they talk about deflationary pressures? Maybe. Yes.
Think about this. If you have 5% inflation in 2021 and you have 3% inflation in 2022, that is 8.1% inflation accumulative. But falling inflation.
TN: Right. Exactly. Yeah. And it could be a way to justify central banks continuing to ease and continuing to intervene. And so Japan’s found itself in a really awkward position after eight, nine years of really aggressive activity. It’s just really hard to get out once you stop, right? So I do worry, especially about the heritage of the ECB, with kind of the Dutch and German chairs being very conservative. This is a pretty dramatic change for them, right?
DL: Huge. Because you’ve mentioned the key part is that everybody says, well, the ECB will do this. The ECB will do that. But the problem is that the ECB cannot do most of what they would consider normalizing. Because Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, it would be an absolute train wreck if the ECB stops purchasing sovereign bonds of those countries. Because the ECB is… This is something that you don’t see in the United States. The ECB is purchasing 100% of net issuances of these countries.
So what’s the problem? Is that? Think about this. Who would buy Spanish or Portuguese government bonds at the current yields if the ECB wasn’t buying them? Nobody. Okay. Let’s think of where we would start to think of purchasing them. We would probably be thinking about a 300-400% increase in yields to start thinking whether we would purchase Portuguese, Greek, Italian, French bonds? Not just the Southern European, but also France, et cetera.
So I think that is a very dangerous situation for the ECB because it’s caught between a rock and a heart place. Very much so. On the one hand, if it normalizes policy, governments with huge deficit appetite are going to have very significant problems. And if it doesn’t normalize, sticky inflation in consumer goods and nonreplicable goods and services is going to generate because it already did in 2019, protests. Because we tend to forget that in 2018 and 2019, we had the gilets jaunes, you probably remember the Yellow Vests in France. You probably remember the protest in Germany about the rising cost of living. The protests in the north of Spain. So it’s not like everybody is living happily. It’s that there were already significant tensions.
TN: Right? Yeah. I think the pressure is, the inflationary pressures that say consumers are feeling here in the US and Europe and parts of Asia, definitely acute, and people are talking more and more about it.
If we move on to say specifically to energy, since that’s where you came out of, right? So we’re seeing some real energy issues globally and energy prices globally. But when we look at gas, natural gas, specifically in Europe, do you expect to see a crisis in Europe like we’ve seen in China over the last three months where there are power outages, brownouts, hurling blackouts, that sort of thing? Or do you think there’ll be a continuity of power across Europe?
DL: In my opinion, what has happened in China is very specific to China because it’s not just a problem of outages because of lack of supply. Most of the lack of supply problem comes from a shortage of dollars. So many companies in China have been unable to purchase the quantities of coal that they required in a rising demand environment because they had price controls and therefore they were losing money.
They would have to purchase at higher prices and generate at a loss. That is not the case in Europe. In Europe, the problem of gas prices is a problem of price definitely, obviously. It’s very high and it’s also feeding to our prices because of the merit order. But it’s not a problem of supply in the sense that getting into an agreement with Russia to increase 40% their supplies of natural gas into the European Union was extremely quick. From the 1st November to beginning of this week, gas form has increased exports to Europe by 40%.
Problem? Prices have not fallen as much as they went up before. For the south of Europe, it’s a problem fundamentally, of access to ships because LNG obviously is very tight. Vessels are not available as they used to be. There might be a certain tightness in terms of supplies, but I find it very difficult to see, let’s say, a Chinese type of shortage of supply because it’s a matter of price. Will we have to pay significantly more for natural gas and significantly more for power, but not necessarily feel the problem that the Chinese did because they had lost making generation in coal.
TN: Great. Okay, that’s very good. That’s what I’d hoped you say, but it’s great to hear that. Let’s switch just a little bit and talk about kind of European companies because we talked about rising prices, like energy. We talked about inflation and consumers say bearing inflationary pressures.
In European companies, we’ve seen that American companies have been able to raise prices in America quite a lot, actually. And consumers have borne that. Chinese companies haven’t really been able to do that. Their margins are really compressed because consumers there haven’t been able to bear the price rises. What are you seeing in Europe, and how do you think that impacts in general European companies, their ability to absorb price rises or pass them on to consumers? And how long can they continue to bear that?
DL: Yeah. One of the things that is very distinct about Europe is the concept of the so called, horrible name, “National Champions.” In power, in telecommunications, in banking, in oil and gas, etc. Etc. We tend to have each country a couple of dinosaurs, most of them, that are so called National Champions. These cannot pass increases of inputs to final prices because they receive a call from the red phone from the Minister in the country. And no my friend, the prices are not going up as they probably should.
So the automotive sector? Very difficult because there’s a lot of over capacity and at the same time, tremendous cost pressure that you cannot pass because of the lack of demand as well, or the lack of demand relative to supply. The airline sector? Cannot pass the entire increase of cost to consumers. The power sector? Very difficult, big companies, very close to governments. They’re suffering immensely from regulatory risk. So very difficult. So you have those.
However you would say, okay, so that sort of shields inflationary pressures out of consumers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t because those are very large companies, but they’re very small in terms of how much they mean, for example, the prices of food or the prices of delivered natural gas. Even though you purchase natural gas, there’s a strict pass through in those, for example. You might not increase your margins. You might lose a little bit, but the pass through happens. It goes with a delay. In the United States, everything happens quickly. In the United States, shut down the economy, unemployment goes to the roof, then it comes down dramatically like V shape, opposite V shape. In the Eurozone, things happen slower. And that’s why it’s a bigger risk, because the domino effect, instead of being very quick and painful and quickly absorbed is very slow.
TN: Interesting. Okay. Very good. Well, Daniel, thank you for your time. Before we go, I’d like to ask everyone watching. If you don’t mind, please follow us on our YouTube channel. That helps us a lot in terms of adding features to our podcast.
Daniel, thank you. As always, this has been fantastic, and I hope we can come back and speak to you sometime in the future. It will be a great pleasure. Always a fantastic chat. Thank you very much.
In this QuickHit episode, our guest Julian Brigden answers “What signals are markets missing right now?” How important is the equity market right now in the current economic cycle? Most importantly, how long before we can see directional change in the market, and what you should do before then?
Julian Brigden is based in Colorado and started in the markets in the very late 80s, trading precious metals. He moved into trading FX, then switched into sales for various investment banks. He also worked for a policy consultancy group called Medley Global Advisors in the very late 90s to early 2000s and fell in love with the research space. Just over ten years ago, he set up MI2. MI2 was grown organically. Julian can be seen together with Raul from Real Vision where he does Macro Insider.
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on November 3, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this What signals are markets missing right now? Quickhit episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any contents provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TN: Julian, I’ve watched a lot of your videos, and I love a lot of the thoughts you’ve talked about recently about velocity, about the yield curve, about central banks. It’s all great stuff. I guess one of the things that I’m really wondering right now, especially, is what is the market missing? What are market participants missing? Because this is something that I don’t hear a lot of talk about. We hear a lot of the Fed should do this or this asset is going that way or whatever. But what is the market missing right now?
JB: Right. So we’ve been on this inflation gig since, actually, March of 2020. Sorry. Apologies. So at the depths kind of the pandemic. It’s a very long thesis. I’ve probably been in the inflation court really since the end of 2016. But in this sort of current phase, and we’ve been in and out of them, you have to. That’s what markets are about. We have been on this inflation kick since March of 2020. And initially it was just a trade breakevens, which are a metric of inflation in the bond market had got crushed because they were held by the risk parity boys as their inflation hedge in their portfolios. And they delevered like everyone else did in the spring of 2020. And those things dropped to like, five-year inflation was priced at 50 basis points.
Well, Tony basically trades the cycle, right. So as the economy recovers, which you had to assume it would, they were going to come back. But as we’ve sort of taken a step back and from a bigger picture perspective, we’d always said that even as soon as Trump came in, when you start playing with just monetary, that’s one thing. But when you add that fiscal side into the equation, into the mix, it becomes totally and utterly different.
And we’ve actually always used the period from the mid 1960s to the late 1960s. That’s where I kind of think we are. So we’ve had these sort of pro-cyclical, unnecessary, excessively large fiscal stimulus. And they came to create this accelerative oscillation. Okay. So I’ve got a couple of very smart ones, way smarter than me.
Classic example of the A students working for the C student. And we were looking at inflation back in 2016, and I was just looking at the chart in the 60s, and my quant came up to me and went, Boss, that’s an accelerative oscillation. And I said, Steven, what the hell is that? And he goes, well, he was, by the way, he was a mining expert, specialized in explosives. And he said, kind of what you do when you model an explosive wave is it goes out in a wave until it hits something. And if it hits it at the wrong time, far from the wave decelerating because you expected to hit something and stop, it can actually accelerate the oscillation of the wave. And so essentially, from an inflation perspective is that the way that you think about this is you get something like the Trump stimulus, which was back in late 2016, totally unnecessary fiscal stimulus at the wrong point of the cycle, where we didn’t need it.
So far from sort of rolling over like a sine wave, which the economic cycles behave that way, too. And inflation cycles generally behave that way because of self limiting on the tops and the bottom, cycle actually picks up amplitude. And what you tend to do is you create policy error after policy error after policy error because you’re behind the curve all of a sudden, you know what it’s like in trading, right?
If you’re on your game and you’re short something or long something and it moves in your direction, you might take some profit. Look for the retracement, double up, whack it hard. You get caught the wrong way into the move and your head just becomes discombodulated. And that’s what happens from a policy perspective. So. When I look at this current situation, the first thing I would say is I think people are, they’ve finally woken up to this concept that maybe inflation is not transitory. I think they’re right. We’ve been on this gig for a long time, but the immediate risks, I think, are twofold.
The first one is they are not. And it’s not necessarily here in the US. I think it’s going to be a problem here in the US, but I think it could be a bigger problem, actually, in Europe and for the bond market that matters because all those bond markets are all fungible. Right. So if bonds blow out or your eyeboard, the front end contracts in Europe blow out, it’s all going to affect our markets over here. And. They’ve totally underestimated the price pressures in the pipeline.
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JB: Yeah, we have. But not. I think we’ve got another maybe three months of numbers of I think could make people’s eyes bleed. You’ve got this price pressure in the system. Three possible outcomes. Price pressures dissipate. PPI pressures just dissipate. Okay?
Well, we just got the market survey this last week. Pressures are up. We just got the ISM services. Price pressures are back up to the previous highs. We just got the Swedish service thread bank PMI services yesterday. Price pressures at new highs. Okay.
TN: China’s PPI are like 14% or something year on year, right?
JB: Exactly. And their PMI price pressure number, which was dropping, just re accelerated. So option number one, that somehow price pressures just miraculously evaporate, doesn’t seem like an option. Option number two, the companies eat the price increases. They take them in margins. Well, if that’s the case. And this is one of the things the equity market hasn’t woken up to, then your assumptions on margin growth are. The good stuff that you can get here in Colorado, right.
Now thus far in the United States, it’s absolutely not the case, right? Companies are pushing through those price increases. Okay. Which brings you to option number three. Price inflation, given where these PPIs are, right? So US, even the final demand, the new sort of slightly adjusted, surprising how when they do adjust these things, Tony, they generally drop from the old metric?
Now it’s like, two and a half to 3% under the old PPI series. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. Eight and a half percent here in the US. I think we printed another 45 high in Sweden. And I’m picking Sweden because it’s a nice open economy. And you see the data come through very quickly. I think there’s one of those 17%. Spain, 23. Eurozone, 13 and a half. Okay. So higher than the US.
If companies can pass those price increases on, what makes people think for a nano second that CPI is going to stay here in Sweden at two and a half in the Eurozone at four. Why couldn’t Eurozone HICP, which is their CPI, which is max only ever had a 5% spread to PPI, right? At the moment, we have a nine plus spread. Why couldn’t HICP print somewhere, my guess is between eight and a half and eleven?
TN: So those are Chinese figures?
JB: Yeah. Exactly. What the hell does this? Do you think Lagarde is going to be able to say, like King Canute, “stop?”
TN: So in one of your interviews that I watched, you said central bank assets and inflation are effectively the same thing. And I think that’s really interesting. Can you explain that a little bit?
JB: So the balance sheet? Yeah. Essentially. Look, you print money, which is what it is. QE is printing money. Monetary 101. This is how the Roman Empire ended up falling apart. And you can inflate asset prices because I know this is not how central banks initially told you it worked actually. Having said that, I do love it. And we’ll come to this, I think the second point, the markets are missing in a second, and another central banker.
The only central banker who’s been truly honest was Richard Fisher, the old Dallas Fed central bank chairman. And I love the Texans from the Dallas Fed because they’re just straight shooters. They’re just bloody honest, right? I mean, he came out on CNBC, and I remember watching this interview because it was done on CNBC Europe, I think. And the guy always had one of the British guys on CNBC in the US. The guy nearly fell off his damn chair when Richard Fisher said, “of course, it was about the equity market. It was always about the equity market.” Right.
We just front load this stuff and they could boost asset prices. And you can look at the PA of the S&P. You can look at the S&P itself. You can look at the NYSE, you can look at the value line geometric index, which is a super broad metric of US Equities, and you can put them all against the Feds balance sheet. And it’s the same thing.
TN: Let me ask you this. And I hear you and I am aligned with what you’re saying. The question is, why does it have to do with the equity markets? And my understanding is that it has to do with equity markets because that’s where American 401Ks are. And there’s such a large baby Boomer cohort with their money in 401Ks that they can’t be losing their wealth. Is that the reason why it’s always about equity markets?
JB: Well, I mean, I say it’s housing as well, right. But they tend to try and deemphasize that one because politically, that can be a bit of a pain in the ass. Right. But look, this is true monetary debasement 101, right? I mean, we wrapped it up in this veneer that is G7 central banking or the sophisticated theories. But we’ve done this throughout history, right? We just debased the currency.
People forget in the Weimar Republic, the Reichsmark was imploding in value. Sorry, the pre-Reichsmark was imploding in value, and the stock market was going up thousands of percent today to keep phase with this because it’s a claim on a tangible asset, right? A cash flow or a piece of land or a factory or whatever, right? So this is not new. I think this is. No, I think it’s not so much about the 401Ks. The thing that I think is truly problematic in the US is what I refer to as the financialisation of the real economy.
Tony, that CEOs are not paid to produce a thing. There are actually numerous companies in the S&P that I’ll argue don’t produce anything, right? They are simply an utterly shepherds of an equity price. That’s how they’re compensated. We talk about perverse incentives. Okay. That’s how they’re compensated. They basically compensate to bubblish their stock as much as they possibly can.
And as a result, the minute that stock prices got going up, let alone fall. They look immediately to the bottom line as to how to address costs and keep those profits falling. So if you look at the correlations between, and it’s just frightening, the correlations between total US employment and the NYSE, broad metric of US Equities, Capex and NYC. They’re the same bloody chart.
TN: Sure.
JB: So literally, you can’t really allow stocks even to go sideways for an extended period of time. You’ve got to keep this game go.
TN: Sure, it’s not the flow, right? We’re in a flow game. We’re not in a stock game.
JB: Bond markets much more flow in terms of the shape of the curve is much more a flow thing. Equities are really about, they care when the flows turned off, but they’re really about the quantity.
TN: Overall stock. Okay. So what else are markets missing?
JB: The second thing is I just want to raise this. There’s a really important Bloomberg story out today by Bill Dudley, the ex New York Fed President, ex Goldman guy. And once again, I love the honesty of these retired US Fed guys. And he’s been talking at some length about policy error. But today is fundamentally the issue.
So let’s use that old storyline. If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it fall? Okay. So in the last few weeks, we’ve had a lot of pressure at the front end of these bond markets. We built in rate hikes. And that’s a market assumption on what the Fed or ECB or the Bank of England or the RBA or whatever is going to do with their policy, right?
But at the end of the day, Tony, do we care what banks here in the US earn in the overnight from Fed funds? No. There’s literally no relevance unless you’ve got some sort of liable based funding mortgage. But really, essentially, even then, has no relevance to the real world. Right? Policymakers raise policy rates to affect broad financial conditions. And broad financial conditions are essentially five metrics depending on the waiting in every single index. And they are short term rates, let’s say two years. Long term rates, let’s say ten years. Credit, tightness. Level, equity market. And the Dollar.
And what you can see in the US and most other places is despite the fact that we’ve seen these big moves at the front end of these bond markets, financial conditions haven’t budged. Ten-year yields, if anything, have fallen. It’s a bare flattener. It’s kind of what you would expect at this point in the cycle. But nonetheless, there is no tightening coming from the ten year sector. Because there is no tightening coming from the ten-year sector.
There is no tight, not much tightening going on in the mortgage market, okay? Because there is no tightening coming from the ten-year sector, the equity market where the Algos literally just trade ten-year treasuries is their metric and wouldn’t know what a Euro dollar was, in order to fund the interest rate contract if it bit them in the proverbial ass, okay? Have completely ignored what’s going on. The dollar is caught in the wash between these various central banks who are all behind the curve and has gone nowhere. And credit hasn’t moved, because he’s looking at the equity market.
So there has been no tightening of financial conditions. What Bill Dudley said is that’s all that bloody matters. And so until there is a tightening of financial conditions in an economy which at least the President, probably, I suspect well into the middle of next year could change quite dramatically in the middle of next year. But for the moment, and that’s a eight, seven, eight month trading horizon, until there is a tightening of financial conditions, which means stocks down, credit wider, dollar up, ten-year yields higher. Those two year yields have to go further and further and further and further.
And this concept that the market is currently pricing, that we’re going to try and raise a little bit. And the whole edifice is going to blow up because they have what they refer to as the terminal rate, kind of the highest projection of where rates are essentially going to go in the tightening cycle is that one six is wrong.
We may have to go way through that. And Bill Dudley actually talks about 2004, 2006, where the Fed started off way behind the curve and the economy just kept running. Demand was there and they had to go 225 basis points and they had to do all sorts of other stuff before the damn things slowed down.
TN: True. When we consider that. So you’re saying, really seven, eight months before we see a major directional change in markets. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
JB: Well, look, I think there’s sufficient, I do not see this as a slowing economy. I see this as an economy where demand is utterly excessive because central banks and policy makers misread. I think it was a fair mistake to make. I’m not critical of that, misread Covid.
TN: Sure. Policy errors are all over the place.
JB: All over the shop. Right. So we have far too easy, excessive policy. Right. Look, today the Fed is going to taper, but let’s be honest, tapering isn’t tightening. Tapering is less easing. We are driving into the brick wall that is the output gap, right. The economy at full capacity, not at 120 billion a month. But let’s say from next month, 105. Right. If you drove into a brick wall in your car at 105 versus 120, I think it would make very little difference to the outcome.
TN: That’s a good point. But we all remember the taper tantrum. So will we see a bit of a breather in markets before things amp up again? Or do you think people are just going to take and stride this time?
JB: I don’t think we get a taper tantrum this time. I think the Fed has been pretty clear. You’re sort of getting a little bit of a taper tantrum at the front end of these bull markets. But because most of the world doesn’t look at wonks like me, care what EDZ3 is, right? Or LZ3 in the UK, right? Or Aussie two year swaps. But most people don’t, aren’t aware of them, and they should be. But I mean, that’s what policymakers have to watch.
And as I said, I think the bigger thing is how far the rates have to go in an economy where demand is literally off the charts, where we’re seeing wage growth in the private sector from the ECI at 4.6%, where John Deere factory workers just rejected a 10% wage increase this year with following subsequent increases that probably work out around six odd percent over the next five years where they just said, forget it. Not enough, right? Not enough.
TN: Look at retail sales. The stepwise rise in retail sales over the past six months is incredible how quickly.
JB: I’m looking at stuff and if you look at the senior loan, which is the banking where they ask the bank loan offices what they intend to lend and who they’re lending to, and are they tightening conditions or whatever. Lending, they’re falling over backwards to try to lend money. Now we know that people have got some cash on sidelines because of the stimulus.
We know that companies have still got PPP loans that they’re still working through. So demand is a little lower, but supply is literally off the chart. So lending bank willingness to lend to consumers, decade highs, right. Bank willingness to lend to companies all time survey highs, 30-year highs. Right. So even if we were to get and I don’t think this is the case, even if wages would not keep space with inflation next year in the US, people have got plenty of places to go and borrow money to keep consuming.
So I just think this is an economy which is in the middle of its cycle. I mean, most cycles are three years long, three plus years long, with 15 months 16 months into this thing. I mean, this is mid cycle stuff. It’s the easiest of easy money, right?
TN: Okay. And so just kind of to end the three-point sermon, what else are markets missing? This is really interesting for me because I’m hearing a lot of different kinds of thesis out there every day, but very few about kind of what the market’s missing.
JB: Look. And I think it comes back to the final point, which we alluded to earlier. The equity market is making an assumption, of course, the equity market, I’m a bond guy and an FX guy. I hate the equity market. My glass is absolutely, defensively, half empty. Right. And ideally someone’s paid in it. But that’s the best day for it. That’s like the best market for me. Right. But the XG market is doing its classic thing where they’re just assuming the best of both worlds. So they’re assuming that margins are going to grow, so there is no cost pressure that could infringe on those. And we’re starting to see that.
I think Q4 numbers that we get in Q1 will start to get a little bit more interesting. Right. But we sure what wild wings or whatever the thing is called the Buffalo Wing place just got stumped because their wage costs were up and their input costs were up and they couldn’t pass it on. Right. But the equity market, as is classic, has taken the highest margins in 20 years, which is what we have now. And they’ve assumed that next year it grows even more. And in ’23, it grows yet again. Okay.
So as I said, if you’ve got this cost push and firms can’t pass it on, that doesn’t happen. Margins get crushed. Don’t think that’s a risk here in the US at the moment. Do think that’s a risk in Europe because these PPI increases are just so large. Right. And if you’re a Spanish company and your PPI went up 23.6%, you cannot pass on 23.6% increases to the consumer. In the US, if your prices went up eight and a half, you can wiggle a little bit through productivity, maybe a couple. You can probably get away with 5% price increases. Okay. So margin assumptions may be utterly wrong, but if they aren’t, what does that mean, Tony? It means that price inflation is rising, and in which case inflation is not transitory. And that’s the second big assumption. So they’ve assumed margins rise. Oh, and conveniently, inflation is transitory. And that in a cost push environment, you can’t square that circle. Right. One has to be wrong.
My gut is at the moment, it’s the latter in the US, not the former, more worried about the former in Europe in Q4. But that’s another thing, which I think the market has miraculously misread. But as I said, as those pricing pressures come through, I think policymakers and markets will have to adjust significantly. And I think it set us up for a policy error sometime next year. Probably huge. Probably.
TN: We’ll trip over ourselves with policy errors until we see this. And then when we do see some sort of reckoning, we’ll have even more policy errors.
JB: Correct. As Raul and I say constantly on Macro Insiders you just do buy the dip. You just got to figure out when the dip comes because you don’t want to be in when the dip comes and when you hold your nose and grab your bits and decide that you’re going to jump into the deep end and buy it by the seller.
TN: Great. Julian, thank you so much for your time. This has been fantastic for everyone watching. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It really helps us a lot to get those subscribers. And Julian, I hope we can revisit with you again sometime soon. Thanks very much.
This is Part 2 of the inflation discussion with Steven van Metre and Peter Boockvar with your host Tracy Shuchart. In this second part, they talked about the possibility of the Fed tapering this year or early in 2022. How about the possible rate hike and what will possibly happen in other parts of the world like Bank of Japan and Bank of England if ever this happens? What is Powell doing exactly and why? Is there a possibility of a new Fed chair next year? And what do they think about stagflation?
Peter Boockvar is the Chief Investment Officer and portfolio manager at Bleakley Advisory Group. He has a daily macromarket economic newsletter called The Boock Report.
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on October 14, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this Quick Hit Cage Match: Van Metre vs Boockvar on Inflation Part 2 episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any contents provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TS: Do you see the Fed tapering? And if they do, how much is this going to affect inflation? And also, I know the market is saying the Fed is going to raise rates in ’22, 2023. But is this a reality at all?
But before we jump into that, I just wanted to remind you to please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
PB: I think the Fed will at least start the taper and see how it goes. The thing that is different with this taper is that it’s coinciding with central banks around the world that are also beginning to remove accommodation. However slow, however glacial that process is, they’re all outside of the BOJ. They’re all doing it at once.
So if the Fed starts to taper in December, which they basically told you that they will, well, the Bank of England could be raising rates in December. We recently got a rate hike from Norway a month or two ago from South Korea. We’ve had Canada and Australia trimmed QE. Even the ECB has trimmed QE. So there’s a global shift to tightening. And I do believe tapering is tightening to define that. Just as we saw last year, the past 18 months obviously massive global easing.
Now I can’t even discuss the rate hike situation because I’m not even sure that they’re going to be able to get through the tapering. If you look back to 2010, every single notable market correction in equities and also fixed income markets outside of Covid and the one evaluation in August 2015 coincided with the end of QE, where it was a hard stop QE1 and QE2. And then obviously you had the taper 2013 and then obviously around rate hikes. Every single one coincided with a tightening of policy. And even again, it was gradual. It still affected markets. And we’re going to have it again to think that we’re going to somehow get through tapering without any accidents, I think, is delusional. And you believe that there’s a free lunch and it’s a matter of what kind of accident occurs by this.
Now QE itself essentially, at the end of the day, it’s an asset swap. And yeah, does some of that money sort of filter into markets? Yeah, maybe, I guess. But a lot of it’s psychological, but it also does help to, at least on the short end, suppress interest rates to where they would be otherwise. That said, when QE has been on, you’ve been paid to steepen the curve when QE is off, it pays to flatten it. And I think we’ve seen some recent flattening in the yield curve. And I think that that has been the right trade to do when QE is about to turn off.
But to Steve’s point about the bottom 50%. Well, if you get a short equity market correction, well, the top 50% is going to feel that as well. And yeah, can that filter into how they spend for sure? But that doesn’t necessarily resolve the supply issues.
That’s how this inflation story is going to recalibrate. The supply side is going to take a couple of years, and it’s going to be less demand. That is going to recalibrate this inflation story. And I think that is. No central bank wants to preside over a declining economy. But unfortunately, you’re going to have to have a trade off. You want lower inflation and a slower economy or an economy, as is but fast inflation, that’s going to hurt the people that can least afford it.
SVM: Yeah, this balance sheet taper thing is really interesting because I will be on record. I’ll hold on record still, and I don’t think the Fed’s going to do it. Although, as Peter mentioned, you just said that you think that the Fed is going to start and then quit. I’ve had to come to your side of the fence on that deal, mainly because when Powell spoke at Jackson Hole, it seemed like he was saying, we can’t make this mistake. We got to keep easing because we could let off the gas too soon.
And then for whatever reason, there’s this massive pivot between that and the last meeting. And he’s going to have a disadvantage going into the November F-O-M-C. And not have the non farm payroll report because he concludes me on Wednesday. Nonfarm payroll is out on Friday. Maybe he’s got some early access, who knows? But it seems like all of a sudden he’s in a panic to start tapering.
Now, could this be because we know the treasury is going to reduce their issuance of notes and bonds as we borrow less money, and he doesn’t want to be over purchasing? Sure. Could it be, as Peter mentioned, that the other central banks are tapering and starting to raise hike rates. And that’s interesting, because the way I look at it is that would be a catalyst if the Fed doesn’t start tapering, that the dollar goes higher.
Well, there’s part of the inflation story that almost nobody is looking at. What if the dollar gets up into 96, 97, maybe even close to 100? I mean, we’re talking about destroying the inflation story just from the dollar alone. And is this one of those things where we had coordinated easing? So now we need to have coordinated tapering to keep the dollar from going up too much? I’m not sure what his motivation is, but I will say this. There’s no way that they get to the end of that taper. There’s a 0% chance they’re going to raise rates. And even if they did, it doesn’t matter. They’ve effectively given the banks a pass by saying, look, there’s no reserve requirement because, well, you’ve got all these QE reserves you don’t need anymore.
The whole idea that we’re going to get this balance sheet unwound. I think the bond market is telling us the Fed’s making a mistake. I think, Peter, you and I agree that we don’t know how many months they’re going to go? The only question is, at what point is there a payroll report or some data that comes out that the Fed goes, “Oh, my God, we made a big mistake.”
PB: I’ll tell you why he’s doing this. Well, first of all, the whole purpose of monetary policy, as we know, is to push the demand side. And if you look at what are the two most interest rate sensitive parts of the economy — it’s housing and autos. So is Powell with a straight face going to say, I need to pedal to the metal, continue to stimulate the demand for housing and autos, when you can’t find an auto and the price of the home is worth 20% more than last year? They need to take their foot off that demand pedal. And he does not want to be Arthur Burns. He does not want to be Arthur Burns. And right now he is headed towards being Arthur Burns.
And the Fed is going to reach a pivot point, where if inflation still remains sticky and persistent, but growth is really decelerating to a greater extent than it already is. And we know that the Atlanta Fed third quarter GDP number has one handle on it. He’s going to have to reach a point, do I try to come inflation, but then risk further weakness in the economy and a fall in asset prices, which JPowell obviously inflated. Where is he going to just not really respond quick enough. And being in Washington, we can be sure he probably leans towards trying to save the economy, but then that creates its own problems.
The one thing in the dollar, the dollar is going to get tied into this, too, because if he remains too easy for too long, well, that may sacrifice the dollar. If he is more aggressive at dealing with inflation, well, then you can see a faster move in the dollar. So he’s just been an absolutely no win situation here. But there is going to be a pivot point where he’s going to reach that we’ll have to see, does he go down the Paul Volcker route, or is he going to go continue down the Arthur Burns route?
SVM: See, Peter, you just said it best. He didn’t know what his situation. And all we’re debating is, at what point does he back off and quit because he realizes it’s not working? I mean, we can look at the velocity of money and see the monetary policy is not functioning properly.
I mean, there was a lot of people that predicted at the end of the last quarter that as economy reopen, velocity would pop. But it didn’t because of the fact that monetary policy is not transmitting into the economy. And so now the real issue is if he starts tapering and it does do what it’s supposed to do, does he inadvertently tighten financial conditions? I mean, this is such a mess of what he’s got to deal with. And I don’t know if you’ll agree with me honest, but I don’t think they have a clue what they’re doing.
I think they’re just betting that this is all going to work out, that Powell, as himself, is going to get renominated. And somehow, in the end, either he’s going to look like a superhero and say, look, see, I did it and go out as one of the most celebrated Fed chairs ever. Or he’s going to find someone else to blame this on when it doesn’t work.
PB: The Fed has been winging it for decades, and this all goes back to Greenspan. In 1994, he raised rates aggressively. We know he blew up Mexico, he blew up Orange County, California, and he took that at heart. He learned a lesson. And so you go into the late 90s when everything is on fire. Stock market bubble. We know he was very slow to raise interest rates because he didn’t want to repeat 1994.
And then, of course, you have the blow up. And he’s obviously quick to raise interest rates. But remember the mid 2000s, every single. When he started raising interest rates, he did it every single meeting, and in every single statement, it said, we are doing this at a measure pace, because he didn’t want to repeat 1994.
And then what we have, obviously, the housing bubble and so on and so on. And then now you take Powell. We know Janet Yellen was afraid to raise interest rates. Took them seven years to get off zero. And then after finally raising, took them another twelve months to finally raise rates again. And then Powell started to pick up the pace. And then he blew himself up in the fourth quarter of 2018. And then that helps to explain why they’re going so slow now.
Then you throw in, of course, the whole social justice. The Feds become the Ministry of Social Justice now and how they view monetary policy. But yeah, to your point, they are winging it. And they’ve been winging it for decades.
SVM: And you bring up an interesting point about 2018. I’m really glad you did, because a lot of people forgot that we started easy to the point that it didn’t really make a lot of sense from the outside look in it. And so now this whole notion, and I don’t know what your reaction was, but I remember hearing the press conference when he’s like, okay, when Powell said, “We’re going to gradually unwind the balance sheet by mid 2022.” I’m like, since when is “gradual” six months. There’s no way this is going to work for you, buddy, but good luck if you’re going to pull it off.
PB: Yeah. And the Fed got lucky for a period of time. They got lucky in 2017 because the markets rallied and ignored Fed rate hikes and the beginning of the shrinking of their balance sheet. They were double tightening and they got bailed out because everyone focused on the corporate income tax cut. That obviously happened at the end of 2017. But that entire year, the Vix got down to eight. Every dip was bought because everyone was pricing in that tax cut. But once that tax cut was in place, the Fed then raised interest rates again in January 2018. And then we immediately shift back to the Fed is double tightening here between the balance sheet and rates. And that obviously coincided with the fourth quarter of 2018.
So we know in the Fed tapering, the Fed tightens until they hit a wall. The Fed tightens until something breaks, and you can be sure something will break in 2022. It’s just a matter of how deep they get. And also one last point here is that having low inflation gives central banks that Wayne’s World Concert pass that all access to do anything they want for how long as they want, when there’s no inflation. But once you get inflation into the numbers, into the economy, their flexibility is greatly diminished. And that will be an interesting sort of tug of war as they get further into the tapering and something eventually breaks.
TS: One last question, a couple of last question. How do you feel about Stagflation? I kind of amend the Stagflation camp. Do you think that’s a cop out or how do you feel about that?
SVM: I think it’s temporary. I mean, we’re supposed to be rising unemployment. I mean, I guess with people coming off the ranks, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll go back up. I don’t think that’s likely to happen. And then you tend to get that with higher prices. But when we start looking at the bond market. The bond market is starting to tell us that, hey, this Stagflation is going to be transitory. And then the risk that I see is that we get into outright deflation from here.
PB: To me, I just look at stagflation as just slower growth and higher inflation. And in an economist textbook, they think that slow growth means lower prices. Faster growth means higher prices. I’m just looking at the Bank of Japan. The Bank of Japan said we need to get inflation at 2%, and somehow that will then generate faster growth. To me, they’ve got that backwards. You need stable prices in order to develop and sustain healthier growth.
So right now. But the Stagflation it’s sort of intertwined in the sense that it’s the inflation and what is driving it. So it’s the inflation itself that is beginning to impact consumer spending. And it’s the factors that are creating the inflation, like the supply bottlenecks that in itself, are also creating slower growth.
TS: Excellent. One last question, just for a thought experiment. I mean, say Powell does leave the Fed next year and we have find a Dove, right. So what does the Fed look like at that point if we have a dove as a Fed chair?
PB: Well, 2022 becomes completely politicized. The Fed’s already politicized, but it becomes Uber politicized in 2022 because of the elections in November. And if a Lael Brainard becomes the next Fed chair in February, 2022, you can be sure that Steve and I are right, that there’s no chance in hell they’re going to finish this taper because the second something breaks, you know, they’re going to back off and they’re going to do their best to, or at least the Democrats headed by the Lael Branard will do their best to maintain control of Congress.
SVM: Yeah. I’ll put that as a low probability chance that Powell is out. If he does, I’m 100% agree.
PB: I agree. I think he stays as well.
SVM: Yeah, 100% agree. I think it’s a big risk for the Biden administration to pull him. He hasn’t really done anything wrong. But if he does, again, I think Peter is spot on. I mean, now it becomes even more political than the Fed is supposed to be. And he’s right, as soon as something goes wrong, I mean, we’re going to 120 billion a month. Yeah, right. It’ll be multiples of that in a second.
TS: All right. Well, I want to thank you both again for everything you shared with us today. Can you each tell us where we can find you on social media or otherwise?
PB: Well, I just want to say thank you to Tracy and Steve. Thank you for having me in this debate and discuss this with you. It was definitely a fun time. If you want to read my daily readings, you can subscribe to boockreport.com. boockreport.com And our wealth management business is at bleakley.com.
TS: Excellent.
SVM: I want to thank you as well. Peter, you and I know this has been a long time coming for us to be on the same screen together. I had a blast. Totally looking forward to the next time. If you want to find more about me, you could go to my website. stevenvanmetre.com On Twitter @MetreSteven. On YouTube at @stevenvanmetrefinancial.
TS: Great. And for everyone watching, please don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and we look forward to seeing you on the next QuickHit.
US markets continue their bullish trend. BFM 89.9 asks Tony Nash if this is due to better than expected corporate earnings in the coming quarters or the Fed monetary policy. Also discussed are the OPEC+ oil production and how oil will be affected by hurricane Ida, and what’s the status of supply chain specially around semiconductors?
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Show Notes
WSN: We speak to Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Now, US markets, I think it’s a bit of a choppy day, but still, nonetheless, the trend is bullish one. And what is that based on, though, is it expectations of stronger corporate earnings this quarter or just driven by ample liquidity flooding financial markets?
TN: I think more the latter than the former. We saw really good corporate earnings in the previous quarter, but in the current quarter, we’re hearing more rumblings of trouble with earnings. And that’s part of the base effect in the previous quarters, in 2020, companies had cut a lot of costs late in the year, so they’re reaping the benefits now. We’re starting to see the base effects come in where they had already cut a lot of those expenses in Q3 of 2020. So now we’ll see that going forward, we won’t see as much kind of profitability.
So what’s the baked into the market right now? It’s the Fed, it’s stimulus. It’s an expectation of a $3 trillion fiscal stimulus bill. So if we start to hear that this $3 trillion fiscal infrastructure bill won’t happen, we’ll see some disappointment if we see the jobs numbers on Friday come in disappointing, we’ll see some dampened momentum. And if we hear any more talk about tapering, which I don’t think we will for at least six months. But if we do, we’ll see some downward pressure in the market.
So all of those things are possible. But in the meantime, the Fed is injecting $120 billion into the market every month to keep everyone happy. And markets seem to be taking it well.
WSN: And I want to stay on corporate earnings, because I just wonder whether the recent inflationary pressures on the economy will be reflected in perhaps lower margins for corporate’s incoming quarters.
TN: Sure, companies are feeling pressure not just with raw materials and input factors, but also with salaries. Wage inflation in the US is pretty high right now. Companies are feeling it from all sides. So I think those margins are much thinner, both on those base effects I mentioned earlier. Also inflationary effects, both in terms of input goods and wages.
PS: And you say you paint a bit more cloudy picture for the US, but if you compare the US economy and financial markets versus Europe and China, they really have outperformed global peer strike. Could you explain it disparities there?
TN: When you look at China, I think it really has a lot to do with stimulus. China is really late to the game in terms of providing stimulus. They spent quite a long time in 2020 and 2021 deleveraging their economy. So getting rid of debt. Very procyclical. China was shrinking and they were delivering, which is maybe healthy for the balance sheet, but not necessarily the best thing to do to grow the economy.
In Europe, the ECB is really nervous with inflation. And so they may take more aggressive action against inflation instead of continuing to loosen to accelerate the economy. So the US is outperformed because nobody thinks the Fed is going to take aggressive action year, certainly. And probably not at least until Q two of 2022.
WSN: And how do you think the US dollar will react against the Euro and the yen in light of all these recent FED announcements on the timing of the tapering and also the rate hikes?
TN: We have the dollar continuing to weaken through, say, November. And we’re starting to see some expectations of dollar strength, not a lot of strength, but marginal dollar strength starting in, say, November. And that could be on, say, ECB deciding to continue to loosen. It could be on China. Adding stimulus. Currency is a relative game. As central banks get more active globally relative to the US, it could really help weaken their currencies on a relative basis.
PS: And let’s talk about oil because I want to get your views on yesterday’s OPEC+ meeting. They are sticking to next month’s oil production increases. What impact will that have on prices in view? There also Hurricane Ida has also hit US or production?
TN: Yeah. Well, he can. It has fit some under sea production, but it’s really hit more refining capacity than really production. So the bigger issue in the US is around gasoline prices and refining, than it is around kind of supply of oil with OPEC+, it’s kind of a status quo. Let’s move ahead as we had expected, which is a really good sign. Look, oil is trading between what, 67 and $75 generally, and that’s kind of their happy. So as long as it stays in that zone, OPEC will continue to move ahead and stay within the agreement. If it goes higher, then they may accelerate the production. If it goes lower, they may pull back a little bit.
WSN: And let’s stay on supply side disruptions. Right. We talked about that just a few minutes ago. But do you think that there are still concerns over this, especially for things like semiconductors and certain commodities?
TN: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So the supply chain issues, we hear a lot about Chinese ports and backups to Chinese ports and these sorts of things. But the Port in Long Beach in the US is backed up, hugely backed up. So the supply chain shocks are not only in China. US ports have their own issues. So when I hear, say, American companies complain about supply chain issues in China, that’s not the only factor. It’s US ports catching up. It’s US ports that are delayed and so on and so forth.
So I don’t think we’re done with this. In fact, it may get a little bit worse because the holiday season is coming up in a few months. And if we think supply chains are backed up now, they may get even worse going into, say, October and November, especially to import into the US.
PS: I mean, some are even saying that this could even go on to, quarter 1, ’22 or even the likes of semi cons.
TN: Oh, absolutely. Semiconductor supply chains are incredibly complex. So for them to get out of these issues, there are multiple layers of issues that have to be reconciled, and it could easily be Q1 ’22 by the time we’re out of this.
WSN: All right. Thank you for your time. There was Tony Nash. CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his views on where world markets are hitting. And I think the interesting point is that, look, the bullish trend is here to stay as long as the Feds just keep rates where they are. Plus, of course, there are expectations with regards to the US stimulus plan on the infrastructure bill. Right. Which I think is now going through the House. And apparently there’s something like 700 amendments that the Republicans want this document through the Max.
PS: I know, but I think they are optimistic. I hope to prove this call in October, but Tony does point relatively bleak picture for the short term. September. October is also seasonally weak in the US and also the stimulus packages or end or swim September. Very interesting. What he’s saying about the Fed is not likely to say much about tapering for the next six months as well.
WSN: Yeah.
I mean, if you look at where markets are right. The S&P 500 is up 20%. The Nasdaq are almost close to 19%. The Dow Jones is 16%. If I was a fund manager, I would do nothing. In fact, I might be tempted to lock in my games. Right. Because the year is almost coming to a close. Do I want to take on more risk for the potential return of two? 3%, maybe not. So we might be heading into quieter months for at least one or two, maybe towards year end, and then we might see some book closing.
But till now, maybe everyone’s just taking a bit of a breather. Look at markets, at what kind of corporate earnings will be coming out, and let’s see where the politicians are up to.
PS: And I wonder whether there’s an opportunity to reallocate to other markets in Europe where you see some value and even Southeast Asia as well in the midterm long term as well, for sure.
WSN: I’m sure Financiers already considering the Strategic allocation for 2022 Actually and rotating into markets that perhaps did not do as well this year. Stay tuned. BFM 89.9.
Part 2 of the Fed and ECB Playbooks discussion is here with Albert Marko and Nick Glinsman. In this second part, the housing and rent market in the US, UK, Australia, etc. was tackled. Also, do we really need a market collapse or correction right now? And discover the “sweet spot” for the Fed to “ping pong” the market. When can we see 95 again? What is the Fed trying to do with the dollar? And what currencies in the world will run pretty well in a time like this?
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on July 29, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this The Fed & ECB Playbooks: What are they thinking right now? (Part 2) QuickHit episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any contents provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TN: Now, with all of that in mind, Nick, you did a piece recently about the Fed and housing and some of the trade offs that they’re looking at with regard to the housing market.
Now, housing is an issue in Australia. It’s an issue in the UK. It’s an issue in the U.S. and other places. Can you walk us through a little bit of your kind of reasoning and what you’re thinking about with regard to the Fed and housing?
NG: Well, I actually think, it was, I was watching Bloomberg TV as they ask after the Fed comments from me, well, you know, maybe the Fed’s right because the lumber has collapsed. Right. Lumber’s in an illiquid market, takes one player and you can move that price 5 to 10 percent. But that was an irrelevance.
I think there’s a couple of things that lead the Fed in the wrong direction. First of all, the mortgage backed securities QE, that really isn’t necessary. That they could definitely tap and that would perhaps quell some of the criticism on you letting inflation on. Know this criticism, by the way, the Fed and the other central banks is all coming from some of the former highest members of those central banks. It seems that once you leave the central bank, you get back to a normal DNA to Mervyn King and the be governor of the Bank of England, hugely critical.
And you have that House of Lords touching on QE. Bill Dudley ran, said New York. That is the second most important position at the Fed. And in fact, my thought process there is the repo problems that we’ve had is because his two market lieutenants of many years experience were let go when Williams took over. Big mistake.
Anyway. So back to the federal housing. I think they focused on cost of new housing. My view is the slowdown that we will get on new homes is purely a function of supply of goods used to make homes, where essential supply. Then tell me is or if it’s not essential supply, it’s become incredibly expensive. Copper wire and so on and so forth. But my fear is that focused on this and the thing that’s going to come and hit them really hard at some point in the future, which is why I think inflation is not going to be transitory. It’s going to be persistent. Rent. Going one way is… I mean, New York rents have picked up dramatically. New York being an exceptional example, but.
TN: Remember a year ago you couldn’t give away an apartment in New York?
NG: So I think in that respect, everybody’s talking about mortgage backed securities and QE. Why are you doing it? Housing market doesn’t need it. Look at the price action. Fine. All valid points. I think the Fed should be more worried ultimately about rent. And the rent.
AM: Rent is a problem. You’re right, Nick. The other thing I want to point out is there’s a disconnect because it’s not just one housing market in the United States. Because of covid, the migration from north to southern states has really jumbled up some of the figures and how they’re going to tackle that is something that it’s above my pay grade right now, but it’s just something I wanted to point out.
NG: Albert’s absolutely right. People have been incentivized to be in real estate. People have been incentivized effectively to be in related markets to the collective real hard assets in this environment. Absolutely.
I mean, I would argue that part of Bitcoin’s rise is because, in fact, it’s a collectible. Limited supply. It’s such a collectible. It’s got no intrinsic value. But it’s a collectible. But I would, I think that’s. Albert’s right to point out the demographic moves in the US. I think there’s a huge pressure. One policy doesn’t fit every market. And I think the red pressure will be reflected in the similar fashion. It’s a huge problem.
TN: So what can the Fed do about it? Is there anything they can do about it?
NG: Become a commercial banker in terms of policy. You know, we’ve I mean, in the U.K., there was certain lending criteria for corporates that were imposed during the crisis that actually did help. But I think also the other thing that seems to be problematic for the commercial banks is Basel III. So, even if the Fed wants to help, how much can they help within that framework? Of course, the US Fed can just say thank you Basel.
TN: Doesn’t apply to us.
AM: They can also raise rates if they want to be cheeky.
TN: Yeah, but then it’s not just real estate that collapses. It’s everything, right?
AM: Maybe it needs to be collapsed, Tony. Maybe it needs to correct a little bit because, what are we buying here? We’re buying stuff, we’re buying equities that are 30, 40 percent above what they were pre-Covid.
It’s just silly at this point. I was talking to one of my clients and this is like we have to look through, we have to sift through US equities, which are probably going to go down to like twenty seven hundred of them right after this shenanigans ends and trying to find a gem in there to invest in. Whereas we can go overseas in emerging markets and look through thirty four thousand of them. Right. So you know, we need a correction.
TN: Famous last words.
The last thing we’d really like to talk about is currencies. So, you know, we’ve seen a lot of interesting things happening with the dollar, with the euro, with the Chinese yen. And so I’d really like to understand the interplay of how you see the Fed and the ECB with the value of the dollar and the euro. Albert, you said, you know, the ECB really has no control or very little control over the euro because of what the Fed does. So what is the Fed trying to do with the dollar?
AM: You know, Tony, Nick and I had wrote a two-page piece on the dollar’s range of ninety one to ninety three. And that seems to be the sweet spot for them, where they can ping pong the markets and drop the Russel a little bit, promote the Nasdaq and then vice versa and go back and forth like that. That is where they’ve been keeping this thing for… How long has that been, Nick? For like six months now, that we keep it in that range?
NG: We wrote eighty nine to ninety three, but really ninety one midpoint should start to be the, the solid support. That’s played out exactly.
This chart of ICE US Dollar Index is generated from CI Futures, an app forecasting nearly a thousand assets across currencies, commodities, market indices, and economics using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Curious how it can you and your business? Book a time with our expert and get free trial.
AM: They’re a bunch of comic jokesters where they go to ninety three point one and three point one five and then they scare people and then they come back down and drop it back to ninety two. I mean it almost with the ninety one today, I believe. You know, so it’s just we’re stuck in that range, Tony, until they want to correct the market after the market corrects, they’ll probably go to ninety five, ninety six.
NG: Our view on that is partly because that the dollar is the ultimate economic weapon of destruction. Not to the US. For other countries. First of foremost emerging markets, but because it’s included in emerging market indices and ETFs as a result, I include China there. And you know, to be honest with you, I not only the geopolitics suggestive and Albert and I tweeted on some of the things that we believe are going to happen. How can the US authorities allow China to wipe out investors the next day after an IPO?
The people forget, it astounds me. Not more is made of this and no more commentary. We’re dealing with a Stalinist bunch of communists led by Xi. They will do anything to retain power, and they certainly don’t care about American and international investors. We’ve just seen that. You seen that with DiDi. You seen that with the education companies that are created in the US. We’ve even seen Tencent down. Tencent is one of the worst performing stocks in the world. It’s a tech stock in China, and look at tech in the US.
AM: Yeah. Let’s not deviate too far into the Chinese thing because we can do a whole hour just on China. When it comes to the currencies, Tony, the dollar being at ninety one, ninety two. The only other currencies that I do love are the Canadian dollar and the Aussie dollar, simply for the fact that they’re a commodity rich nations. And in a time of inflation, there’s no better place to be right now.
This chart of USD to CAD year-to-date forecast is generated from CI Futures, an app forecasting nearly a thousand assets across currencies, commodities, market indices, and economics using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Curious how it can you and your business? Book a time with our expert and get free trial.
This chart of AUD to USD year-to-date forecast is generated from CI Futures, an app forecasting nearly a thousand assets across currencies, commodities, market indices, and economics using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. Curious how it can you and your business? Book a time with our expert and get free trial.
TN: Yeah, I think they’ll run pretty well.
NG: Yeah, I think as a macro trade in the next couple of years is commodities and it doesn’t necessitate economic reflation. You’ve got enough supply chain issues and supply issues and lack of capex and politics with regard to energy that restrict the supply. And the demand is there. Can you imagine, even if we don’t have a fully reflation story from the economy, if Jet Blue has a shortage of jet fuel in the in the US right now, imagine what happens to jet fuel when Europe starts to travel properly, which won’t happen this year, it will be next year.
In fact, the commodity minus the big ones? Have you seen their profits? Huge increase in dividends and share buybacks.
Geopolitics experts Albert Marko and Nick Glinsman are back on QuickHit for a discussion on the Federal Reserve, the ECB, and central banks. What are they thinking right now?
Albert Marko advises financial firms and some high net worth individuals on how politics works in D.C.. He worked with congressional members and their staff for the past 15 to 20 years. In his words, Albert basically is a tour guide for them to figure out how to invest their money.
Nick Glinsman is the co-founder and CIO of EVO Capital LLC. He does a lot of writing and some portfolio management. He was a macro portfolio manager in one of the big micro funds in London for quite a few years. Prior to that, Nick was with Salomon Brothers. Now, he concentrates on providing key intel, both economics and politics on a global level to finance managers and politicos.
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on July 29, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this The Fed & ECB Playbooks: What are they thinking right now? (Part 1) QuickHit episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any contents provided by our guest are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TN: Today we’re talking about central banks and given where we are in “the cycle”, whatever that means at this point, post or late Covid, we’ve had waves of support coming from finance ministries and treasuries and central banks around the world. Central banks seem to be in a very weird position right now. So I’d really love to understand your point of view particularly what the Fed and the ECB thinking about right now and what are some of the biggest dilemmas they have? Nick, if you want to go first and frame that out a little bit and then Albert, will obviously go to you.
NG: Well, given how long I’ve been doing this, I’m more of a traditional, black coated central bank watcher. And I would say a couple of key comments to make right now is I think they’ve lost their independence to a large extent. Harder for the ECB to lose its independence. But with the commission, you have that loss.
I also think that we are, defective monetary financing. And again, I’ll go back to the ECB, who literally for the last month, for everything that was issued in Europe and this reluctance by the Fed to, even they admit talking about talking about tapering, but this reluctance to even consider a pullback on the mortgage-backed securities. The jest, pretty much the same, and it’s very clear with a lot of the actions that I’m in, my interpretation is, one, they’re working in cahoots with the political arm.
So treasury in the US, commission in Europe. Bank of England is a slight exception about to happen, but we can cover that later. So that’s clearly going on. And I think now Albert might do a lot of work together and I think this Albert came out with a comment a while back saying Yellen wants six trillion dollars fiscal. And the excuse that was given, aside from the political bias, was the Treasury market needs it.
And interesting enough, we saw the change to the Repos yesterday. This was after criticism by a committee that was published in the F.T. yesterday. And even Bill Dudley’s commented on Today suggesting that a lot more work needs to be done to ensure that the normal functioning of the plumbing behind the form of safe assets.
So it’s clear to me that things are being worked on in a politically coordinated way that impacts monetary policy. Now, I think they’ve got themselves into an economic or policy black hole. I think the mind set, and it’s been like this since probably ’08, which is they’re not prepared to accept the economic cycle anymore.
So back to one of my previous appearances on on your pod, the Fed not doing anything? Yeah, it seems to me that that’s an acceptable process, regardless of inflation is way above their forecast. And forecasting that’s a whole ‘nother bad area for the… Fed’s forecasts are terribly wrong. The ECB’s forecasts have been wrong for, you know, since time immemorial.
The ECB is more dangerous because they have a bias that keeps them on their policy’s wreck.
TN: So first on forecasts, if any central bankers are watching, I can help you with that. Second, when you say they don’t believe in the business cycle anymore, do you mean the central banks or do you mean the political folks?
NG: The central banks and government. I mean, funnily enough, I’m reading a biography on Jim Baker right now. And when you look at Reagan, when he came in and Volcker, economic data was pretty bad back at the beginning of the 80s. That. No way, no politician is prepared to accept that anymore. To be honest, I think the central bankers are prepared to accept that anymore. Any of the people leading the central banks being political appointees, of course.
TN: So this is kind of beyond a Keynesian point of view, because even Keynesians believed in a business cycle, right?
NG: It’s a traditional Keynesian point of view. The modern day, neo Keynesian, yes, you’re right. Way beyond what they’re thinking.
TN: There’s a lot of detail in that, and I think we could spend an hour talking about every third thing you said there. So I really do appreciate that. Albert. Can you tell us both Fed and ECB, what are they thinking about right now? What are the trade offs? What are the fears they have?
AM: We’ll start with the ECB. The ECB is not even a junior player right now in the central bank world. I know people want to look at the EU and say, oh, it’s a massive trading bloc, so and so. But the fact is, that it’s completely insolvent. Besides the Germans and maybe the French in some sectors, there’s nothing else in Europe that’s even worth looking at at the moment.
As for the ECB’s standpoint, you know, they’re still powerless. I mean, the Federal Reserve makes all the policy. They first will talk to the Anglosphere banks that are on the dollar standard basically. I mean, the Pound and the Australian dollar and whatnot. They’re just Euro Dollar tentacles. But, for the ECB, they’re frustrated right now because they see that the Euro keeps going up and their export driving market is just taking a battering at the moment. But they can’t do anything because the Fed goes and buys Euros on the open market to drop the price of the Dollar to promote the equities in the United States. And that’s just happening right now.
When it comes to the Fed, we have to look at what is the Fed, right? Normally what everyone is taught in school is that they are an independent entity that looks over the market and so on and so forth. Right. But these guys are political appointees. These guys have money and donors. They play with both political parties. Right now, the Democrats have complete control of the Federal Reserve. And everyone wants to look at Jerome Powell as the Fed chair, but I’ve said this multiple times on Twitter, the real Fed chair is Larry Fink. He’s got Powell’s portfolio under management of BlackRock. He’s the one making all the moves on the market, with the market makers and coordinating things behind the scenes. He’s the guy to look at, not Jerome Powell.
I mean, have anyone even watched Jerome Powell’s speech yesterday? It was appalling. He was overly dovish. That’s the script that he was written. He’s not the smart guy in this playing field, in this battleground.
TN: He needs a media training, actually. I think.
AM: He’s being set up to be scapegoated for a crash. He’s just no one to show. He’s a Trump appointee. So next time there’s a crash, whether it’s one week from now or one month from now, it’s going to be pointed on him that, you know, he’s the Fed chair. Look at the Fed chair. Don’t look at everything else that the political guys have made and policies in the past four or five years that have absolutely just decimated the real economy.
TN: This time reminds me, and I’m not a huge historian of the Fed, but it really reminds me of the of the Nixon era Fed where Nixon and his Fed chair had differences and they were known, and then the Fed chair ended up capitulating to do whatever Nixon wanted to get back in his good graces. Does that sound about right?
AM: No, that’s a perfect example. I mean, this idea that’s floated around by economists that economics and politics are separate entities is absolute fantasy. And it just it doesn’t exist in the real world.
NG: Just to pop in on this one because actually there is a new book out which I started three days at Camp David. Because it’s coming up to 50 years since that decision of the gold standard. Now, it’s just interesting you brought it up, because if you think of one of the rationales for coming off the gold standard, there’s several, but one that struck me as I was reading actually the review, the back cover show Percy.
This enables the government to stop printing in terms of fiscal, fiscal, fiscal. That’s what it did in effect. First of all, that’s one of the biggest arguments against people who argue for a return to the gold standard because that would decimate things or cryptos being in a limited supply of crypto as the new reserve currency because the gain that would be pulling against the elastic and you wouldn’t get, the economy would just boom. Right.
So that’s where I think it’s just huge, you know. I’ve always said that actually what we have is what we’re going to ultimately see is exactly the same cost that came with Lyndon Johnson paying for the Vietnam War, Covid. And then the Great Society, which is Joe Biden’s what I call social infrastructure and green ghost plan. So. Going back to that, Nixon was paying part of the price for all of that. With Volcke right. So I actually sit there thinking, well. There are similarities right now, and we’re seeing effectively a central bank and the Treasury, wherever you want to look, untethered from what used to be, well before I started in this business, to be part of the discipline. But even when they came off the gold standard, there was discipline. As you referred earlier, to, traditional Keynesians believed in the economic cycle of boom, bust. You know, boom, you tap the brakes a little bit, take the punch all the way. That’s gone.
That is to me what’s gone on recently, I don’t know whether you would say since the 08 or more recently is the equivalent of that ’73 meeting where they came off the gold standard. People just said no more cycles. Tapping the brakes and now the central banks are in a hole and politicized, they’re not independent because there are no.
AM: Yeah, yeah, that that’s real quick, Tony. That’s exactly right. I mean, even like, you know, I was on Twitter saying we’re going to go to 4400. We’re going to go to 4400 and people are like “No way. We’re in a bear market. This thing’s going back down 37, whatever charts and whatever Bollinger bands they want to look at. But the fact is because of the politics has a necessity to pump the market and then crash it to pass more stimulus packages. The only way was to go up to 4400 plus, right.
TN: Right. OK, now, with all of that in mind, Nick, you did a piece recently about the Fed and housing and some of the trade offs that they’re looking out looking at with regard to the housing market. Now, housing is an issue in Australia. It’s an issue in the UK. It’s an issue in the US and other places. Can you walk us through a little bit of your kind of reasoning and what you were thinking about with regard to the Fed and housing?
Nick Glinsman and Sam Rines are back in this QuickHit episode special Cage Match edition about inflation, part two, where we start looking into things like raw materials cost versus processing and manufacturing bottlenecks. Also discussed are the wage inflation and labor availability and how long these impacts will last. And finally, we start talking about central banks. What will the Fed do? Will it do anything? When will it do it?
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This QuickHit episode was recorded on April 28, 2021.
The views and opinions expressed in this nflation: Buckle up, it may get worse QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.
Show Notes
TN: What the people in the middle. So the manufacturers, what capacity do they have to absorb these price rises? What are you guys seeing when you talk to people when you read? Are you seeing that manufacturers can absorb the lumber prices, the copper prices and other things, or are they passing that directly along?
NG: Sorry, Sam. I’m jumping in here. The beauty of that question right now is there was a major headline, the Financial Times talking about margin compression of how US corporates are going to be increasing prices. It was today. You have the likes of Chipotle. We’ll go on to that. That’s a labor cost issue. But the other company, you know, J&J, various bare necessities manufacturers for nappies for kitchenware also they’re saying they’re going to have to put price pressure through to the consumer and as we were discussing just before we started, there’s the elasticity of price increases is very high.
The elasticity of price decreases is extremely low. And I would contend that this becomes a rolling, snowball effect as these prices get passed through to the consumer. There are other costs that will be passed through to which we can talk about later on labor side. But this clearly, one of the signals that our well worth watching, on the margins in the corporate reporting, and all of them are suggestive of higher prices to the consumer.
Then you look at the ISM prices paid. I have a chart, a model that looks at that versus the CPI. And if that sticks to what it’s done over the last couple of decades, it’s indicative of CPI, actually, the big figure having a getting up to somewhere around four, maybe even higher.
TN: Which was kind of a China 2011 scenario of four to six percent CPI.
NG: Correct. But also also the the process of decoupling, as long as it may be, that process has created a demand because of the supply shock.
There’s a supply shock in the system. The demand is adjusting there, too, so that work as additional demand to fill in the gaps, so if the decoupling replacement process is long standing, the demand is still there, it’s a matter and then catching up. There’s a price disparity caused by that.
TN: Yeah, we definitely have a mismatch, at least in the short term. And will those supply chains catch up? That’s a real question. Sam, what’s your view on that in terms of manufacturers being able to absorb these cost and margin pressures?
SR: So I’ll jump to the housing market as my example, which I think is one of the more interesting ones filtering, filtering through down into lumber.
A very close friend of mine in Houston is delaying the start of one hundred and ninety homes that were supposed to be going into, well… He has the pads laid. He won’t build those homes until lumber prices go down. It’s the largest backlog he’s ever had. And that got us talking and kind of working through the market. And when you look at the market for pine studs in the US, it’s an intriguing look into kind of where the cost pressures are coming through, where mills are making mills that make the two by fours are making an absolute fortune off of the disruption.
But if you own a pine stand of several thousand acres, the tree that you are cutting off of it is the exact same price that it was a year ago. You have seen none of the prices at all.
TN: So there’s not a supply, a raw materials supply issue. It’s a processed materials issue.
SR: Yes. Exactly. So it’s the supply chain breaking down. You didn’t have enough. You didn’t have the mills up and running for a couple of months. You had about 40 percent of the capacity offline. And that created a shock to the system that eventually will be sorted out at some point.
We didn’t destroy any capacity for two by fours. We’re building even at the current rate, we’re building one point seven million homes. That’s nowhere near what we were doing in 2005. And yet lumber is four times where it was. So, yeah.
NG: May I ask a question because you’re obviously in touch with that level on a micro basis? So one of the things that I’ve been told by several different sources is they don’t disagree with your number coming down eventually. The problem the homebuilders now have is labor shortage.
SR: That might be a problem in the northeast. That might be a problem in a kind of coastal problem in the US, where I have fewer contacts in construction. But in the south, there’s no labor shortage. Wages are still very strong. You have some projects that were delayed for large oil which created a supply of able bodied plumbers, electricians, where there’s a shortage elsewhere. So I would say that’s probably very true for parts of the country.
There’s anecdotally, Beth. Beth Iron Works? One of the major boat docks in the north, northeast is driving around an RV trying to recruit people to come, trying to recruit welders. That was a problem before Covid that was and will remain a problem. The trades will be a big issue. Common labor, particularly in the South, does not appear to be an issue. That is an issue in the north.
NG: I’ve heard it’s an issue in Florida, actually, which is back to you point about coasts. Sorry, I interrupt.
TN: We’re in Texas. It’s the Promised Land. I mean, I think you…
NG: Would agree with you on that one.
TN: OK, so we’ve gone long. I know these are very detailed issues, but I’m going to ask another question. I did ask for some questions over Twitter.
So one of them came in from Brent. This was around supply chain disruptions, which we’ve already talked about. There’s another from Jerrett Heath. He says, “Will it be velocity or magnitude that causes the Fed to react to inflationary pressures?”
So what do you guys think? Are we going to see kind of the magnitude inflation push the Fed to react or what’s going to push the Fed to react to start to taper a little bit, if they do at all?
NG: I would say both at the same time. My great fear is that there is, and this was actually covered by the Wall Street Journal, but I’ve written and spoken about this as well. I sit there looking at the Fed becoming reactive rather than proactive, and the punch bowl analogy is gone, and that worries me enormously because they have great confidence in something that they’re forecasting as transitory and we know what their forecast record is, and if you really want a bad forecast record, just go to Frankfurt and see what the ECB is all about.
Now, it’s interesting to me that the conventional wisdom, the consensus forecast is for tapering to the end of this year as opposed to next year. It seems like the more people talk about the inflation pressure, the greater it is. But I wonder whether we will get tapering. That’s what worries me about the Fed.
I’ve been really working hard on looking at what Claudia Sahm has written and said over the last couple of weeks. She wrote an op ed in The New York Times and Bloomberg. She’s said… She’s an ex-economist for the FOMC and the Board of Governors, actually. And you get the feeling that the priorities are unemployment with equity, racial equity as opposed to equality. Furthermore, you get the feeling that financial stability… Both of those more important than inflation.
Now, if that’s the case and we start to see any signs of a taper tantrum, I worry that this Fed is going to do a proactive. Either stop the idea of tapering or do a twist or something that eases this market. I think they’ve got themselves, we have a very political Fed that, if it’s reactive by nature, it could be procyclical by action. And that’s where I find I really worry about it.
Then, we’ve got Powells term expiry February. Well, Lail Brainard is one of Janet Yellen’s favorite people. And if she gets in, we’re going full MMT. So those are my concerns about the tapering, its focus on financial stability and the risk that reactive policy will be procyclical.
TN: Interesting. OK, that’s great. Thank you. Sam. Help me understand, what’s your point of view on this? What gets the Fed to react and how do they react?
SR: Yeah, so I would go with neither of those will get the Fed to react. It’s not a question of should they or, you know, what they think they should do. But it’s a question of will they. And they won’t react to inflation. They do not care about the magnitude. They do not care about the velocity. And they won’t care for at least another nine months because we know the combination that they’re going to look through, the combination of basic facts and supply chain disruptions, at least through the end of the third quarter. They do not care. And then they will start the clock on their four quarters of inflation above or at two percent, and they want full employment before they raise. That’s four percent at least on measured unemployment.
So I would say, it, whatever you want to look at for inflation numbers, they don’t care. And maybe they should, but they don’t.
TN: So they don’t care yet. Or they don’t care period?
SR: They don’t care, period, until it’s been until it’s been a year of around 2 percent in this summer and fall don’t matter to them.
NG: Let me add one or it’s too late.
SR: Yes.
NG: I’m with you. You and I seem to agree. I mean, that is exactly the impression I got from Claudia Sahm’s words. I mean it was just straight up. And that’s where I worry, you know, I have a huge respect for Lail Brainard. She is a very, very accomplished economist. But she’ll go full MMT is what Janet Yellen wants. It’s what the Democrats want and I really worry about that.
Plus, you combine this with here we go back to Larry Summers. You combine this with this fiscal effort and one thing that, so in American terminology, progressive policies typically have historically been inflationary. In English terminology, is what I am, these socialist policies have a history of inflation. More government intervention, more pushing against the string of inefficient allocation of resources. Labor restrictions, minimum wage, universal basic income. It all leads to in one direction.
So I agree with you, Sam. I think the Fed doesn’t care and I think, hence, the reactive. When they react, it’s going to be, in my view, potentially too late. It’s already started.
TN: So I just sent out on Twitter a chart that Sam published about three weeks ago from another source on the negative impact of fiscal stimulus, and as we end up ’21, like in Q3, Q4 of ’21, that fiscal stimulus starts to have a negative impact. And certainly in ’22, the US fiscal stimulus has a negative impact.
So, you know, there are a number of things to worry about, not just with inflation, but with the efficacy of some of this fiscal stimulus that’s going into the market.
So with that, I want to thank both of you guys. Honestly, we could talk about this for hours. I would love to have this discussion with you guys again, you know, even in a couple of weeks to talk about other issues. So let’s see where this goes. But thank you so much. Thank you very much for your time on this. I really appreciate it.
We’ll get this out as quickly as possible. Thanks to everyone who’s watching this. Thanks for everyone who submitted questions. For those who did submit questions, for the questions we used, we’ll give you guys a month of CI Futures and look forward to the next time. Thanks for joining us.
The world faces an unprecedented economic crisis as shops and businesses, factories and entire communities have been put under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Governments are doing their best to cushion the blow and keep their economies intact, but many people say things won’t be going back to normal… even when this pandemic is over. According to them we are in a “new normal.” To see how economies and industries across the world are already shifting to this new reality, we connect with Dr. Larry Samuelson, Professor of Economics at Yale University, Tony NASH, CEO and Founder of Complete Intelligence, and Dr. Graham Ong-Webb who joins us from Singapore’s Nanyang University.
Interview Notes
AN: My first question to Dr. Samuelson, which industries do you think will struggle to recover after this pandemic and even despite the huge sums of money being poured into them right now to try and keep them afloat?
LS: The huge sums of money are designed to get the industries through this initial period when much of the world is locked down and firms’ whole industries have no obvious or no steady source of revenue. Once we are past that, hopefully we see some opening of economies soon, we still have a recession on our hands. And at that point I would say that consumer confidence is the key thing to monitor it’s difficult to recover that under an ordinary recession. Now we’re gonna have to recover that in the midst of still dealing with the coronavirus.
We won’t have the virus behind us until we have a vaccine, which looks like it’s perhaps a year off and so we’re gonna have to try to reopen our economies where people are still worrying about the virus. So now we can ask about industries the ones that will fare best are those that people can reasonably, safely interact with. We expect retail some education to fare better than say mass sporting events and confine travel in that respect.
Can also look at which industries represent activities, purchase is that people ordinarily do that they have deferred and which are discretionary. The deferred ones we might expect to come back fairly quickly. As a frivolous example think of all the haircuts people are going to need when they come out of lockdown. Things like automobile purchases durables home maintenance might be in the same category. More discretionary items like travel are going to take a longer time to come back.
AN: So what you’re saying is that recovery will really depend on consumer sentiment and it looks like the sort of high-touch industries where you know and where it involves travel or social contacts those are going to be a bit slower to recover? Well Dr. Webb the, European Union they’ve agreed on a 500 billion dollar stimulus plan to protect workers businesses and their Nations in light of this pandemic but they haven’t been able to agree on issuing debt to raise long-term financing for the region what do you
make of this still is it really enough for the region?
OW: Well it appears to be clearly insufficient for for the requirements of what stands to be a 19 trillion dollar economy. We think about the European Union. 27 countries as a collective this is second largest economy you know in PPP terms after China. And so you know the amount of – a billion dollars pales in comparison to what other national economies are injecting in terms of stimulus packages to stave off the risk of a severe economic crippling, mass layoffs and so forth.
So I think the ECB was right to to campaign for about 1.5 trillion dollars and clearly we’ve ended up with 500 billion dollars and that’s not going to be near enough to what the region needs. But nevertheless, yes, there is this big issue in the backdrop of who’s gonna finance or finance all of this. And this is clearly a follow-on discussion from the one we had last week about the global debt crisis right. So no basic were looking at trade-offs here, which trade-off are we willing to live with, the one where we deal with or crisis now in terms of mass unemployment, crippling economies, whether we deal with a lengthy debt crisis down the road, you know, sort of alleviating the pain today.
So I think this is an ongoing discussion but clearly the $500 package is a compromise, a severe one. Southern European states have compromised themselves. They’d rather get something rather than nothing. But clearly it’s insufficient in terms of what’s already percolating in terms of small and medium enterprises folding up as we speak, people losing their jobs because of the slump in demand are all around for range of services and inability for those services to to actually meet consumer needs because of the of the lockdown.
AN: So it looks like there may be more coming out of the EU as this pandemic progresses and the economies continue to be hurt. Well Dr. Nash, here in East Asia China has actually restarted its economy factories are back online and lockdowns on cities even Wuhan they’ve been east. But with the rest of the world they closed for business. Many say that China is actually in for a second supply shock. What’s your your take on this?
TN: Sure. Our biggest worry about China, well, we have a number of them but we’re actually worried about the fall in manufacturing. The industrial production collapse in China that we see coming starting in, say, April and then going into third quarter should be unfortunately pretty damaging to China’s economy. We expect to see deflation starting in April, May in China. It’s not like 10 or 20 percent. It’s kind of half a percent, but still once you start to dip your toe into deflation, it can be pretty dangerous, so starting and then stopping.
The thing that we have to remember with all of these economies is that these are government-mandated shutdowns of the economies. These are not market failures. And so the EU issues 500 billion dollars and euros for a fiscal plan. It’s not the small companies, even the large companies’ fault that this is happening. So the governments have and will continue to push money into the economy because they know that this is their fault. It’s their responsibility. The companies aren’t failing. It’s the government that’s failed the companies by not having a plan and not having the resources in place to manage this.
AN: So that’s no need for such huge pessimism, I suppose. So you think that as long as the government’s take the right actions and the full might I mean that the second supply shock or another sort of sort of impact might not be as big. Well Dr. Samuelson some say that China could employ what some call it a trap diplomacy either by seizing other country’s assets or forgiving that to boost its soft power if it does employ this kind of tactic then could we see the world order actually change?
LS: We have to remember that the question of debt-trap diplomacy was here well before the pandemic. Critics of China have been concerned about this for some time. I don’t have a good idea. It’s very hard to say whether the pandemic is going to exacerbate. The concerns people have about debt-trap diplomacy, it might if it puts other countries that China is dealing with in a particularly adverse position. But it might not. It’s having an effect on China. That may make things more difficult for them.
I think more important is to remember that when we talk about debt trap diplomacy, we tend to think of international trade of economic relations between countries as a competitive or an antagonistic activity, where the most important thing to keep in mind is that international trade is at its heart a cooperative activity. We engage in it because countries on both sides gain from international trade.
As China invests in other countries, as it deals in other countries, it acquires some influence in those countries and some people are worried about that. That’s where the term debt trap diplomacy comes from. But it also becomes linked to those countries and has an interest in those countries and that creates a force going the other way. I think on balance it’s important to remember that there are some real gains to our world economy.
Some risk, some supply chain risks, that we have seen. Some political risks that some people worry about. But on that I think there are real gains from having the International economy linked together. We see these gains in terms of our economic well-being. I think we see these gains in terms of our political well-being as well. Countries, as they trade, as they deal with one another, tend to have common interests that in the long run are good for all of us.
AN: Well, so we really need to see more cooperation and continuous trade between nations especially in times of economic crises. Well Dr. Ron Webb, how do you expect this tug of war between the US and China to play out during this pandemic, especially as their bilateral relations worsen because of the COVID-19 pandemic?
OW: Well, you know the future is contingent clearly. But I think in terms of the current trajectory, it looks like this tug of war, this ongoing bilateral trade war between these two economic juggernauts, will continue unabated I mean from the recent news reports of President Trump’s speeches and his articulations on the issue, it’s quite clear that the US administration is doubling down on its protectionist measures against not only China but also even the European Union and also Mexico.
So I think the COVID-19 challenge which is having an impact of across various domains including economics and technology and so forth will continue without much foreseeable change. I think this effects you know the global economy. It has been even pre COVID, but I think it’s not helping the situation whatsoever in the current climate.
AN: Right. So, we expect these technological sort of competition and the sort of trade disputes that we’ve seen in the past, they’re not just going to stop short because of this pandemic that’s going on. They’re going to continue. Nevertheless, well just before we go, Mr. Nash, some say that there could be a rebound in the latter half of the year. When do you think the worst of this pandemic
will be over on the economy?
TN: Yeah, I think it really depends. I think it depends on a country’s ability to issue a fiscal stimulus. I think it depends on the concentration of manufacturing of those economies, and I think it depends on let’s say workforce flexibility. So, with those, I think China is not in a great position. I think China is going to have a very rough year ahead. The official data may not report it, but we envision a very rough year ahead for China.
We think Europe will have a rough third and fourth quarter. Of course, late in the fourth quarter, we see Europe starting to come out of this. But both of those are constrained because they don’t have a U.S. dollar basis to issue fiscal stimulus. Their companies have U.S. dollar debt and their countries are having to borrow US dollars into their Treasuries in order to keep trade and other things going. So they have real problems.
The US has already issued 2.2 trillion fiscal stimuli plus a lot more from the Fed. And so, the US has had the ability to stimulate the economy. It hasn’t really had traction yet. But of the three kinds of general regions, what we’re seeing is the US, although they’re all very difficult situations on a relative basis, we see the US doing much, much better because of the US’s ability to issue fiscal stimulus and to play monetary policy with the US dollar. So the US dollar is a huge asset for the US.
The large millennial bracket is a huge asset for the US. It’s a workforce that’s actually contributing to the overall dependency ratio and then the ability for US companies to pull their manufacturing back to North America, this is not absolute it doesn’t mean a hundred percent, but some manufacturing will certainly be diverted to Mexico for a number of reasons, and we see that taking catching pace in, say, q3 and q4. And that allows the US to do more value-added activities through the course of recovery.
AN: Right. Well, each region is going to have its own challenges and an unprecedented pandemic really does bring unprecedented complexities when it comes to recovery. Well I’m afraid that’s all we have time for today it’s been a very great discussion.
