With the S&P 500 making a fresh run higher at pixel time, it would be rude not to share the latest thoughts of Albert Edwards, Socgen’s Ice Age bear. Rather than gawping stocks, he reckons we should be mindful of the red metal…
Liquidity and credit are not always best friends — Funding for Lending in the UK and the LTROs spring to mind. However, blaming liquidity alone for the lack of credit out there is obviously [expletives removed].
For one, banks can’t lend if they can’t find borrowers — although it might be unfair to blame borrowers who are seeing unappealing terms — and for two, central banks have poured a fair amount of liquidity out there with more available on tap.
Barclays views it as imperative that the market has access to Benchmarks that are well constructed, transparent and that inspire the confidence of other market participants and regulators…
You can say that again.
Some (more) Libor reading landed this week — the responses from banks, and other cogs and gears of the market, to a recent report by Iosco about reforming financial benchmarks. Everyone from Thomson Reuters to the European Central Bank, Blackrock to Calpers, has weighed in here. Read more
Forget about the $1 trillion coin debate.
The most exciting wonky discussion being had right now is between Steve Randy Waldman and Paul Krugman over whether “base money” and short-term debt are perfectly substitutable or not, and what that may or may not mean for central bank policy.
We confess that we have a bit of a vested interest here because for a long time we’ve been arguing much the same point as Waldman.
That’s not to say that Krugman is necessarily wrong; he may just be taking Waldman slightly too literally. Read more
We’re still getting over Mervyn King saying the following when announcing changes to the liquidity coverage ratio, as Kate reported on Monday (emphasis ours):
Since we attach great importance to try to make sure that banks can indeed finance a recovery, it does not make sense to impose a requirement on banks that might damage the recovery…
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has finalised rules for bank liquidity. Some of the changes had been anticipated in recent weeks, particularly after the US banks ramped up their lobbying efforts. That said, they’re still quite a big departure from the 2010 draft rules, especially on what qualifies as a high quality liquid asset.
The complete set of changes is on the BIS website, but here are some highlights. Read more
Quite the rally in T-bills… continuing apace on Friday, now that the Transaction Account Guarantee has become increasingly, quietly, talked about in the past tense ahead of a year-end renewal deadline.
(Chart of the 1-year T-bill, click to enlarge. The yield on a T-bill maturing in January was close to zero at pixel time) Read more
What matters to an investor when they are choosing assets to invest in? Risk-return is the most obvious trade-off to balance. One can narrow down by asset class and sector, dividing up to achieve diversity (or an illusion thereof).
The memory of the latest crisis still being as fresh as it is, many investors are focused on the liquidity component that sits under the broader category of risk. How fast, and how efficiently, can an asset be cashed in? Read more
The People’s Bank of China helped Asian stocks rally on Tuesday with a reported record liquidity injection via reverse repos. From Bloomberg:
The People’s Bank of China conducted 220 billion yuan ($34.6 billion) of reverse-repurchase operations, the most in a single day, according to a trader at a primary dealer required to bid at the auctions. The government may introduce new policies to boost consumers’ borrowing and spending this year, the Economic Information Daily reported today, citing an unidentified person. Read more
Banks are lending neither to each other, nor to the real economy, in the way they used to. In Europe in particular, loan growth remains subdued. In the UK, there’s a lot of hope riding on the Funding for Lending Scheme to alleviate the situation.
While some of the great deleveraging is a question of reining in past excesses and lax standards, another part of it is regulation-driven. We have no less an authority for that than Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank — in the less-remarked bits of last month’s London speech: Read more
We wade into choppy waters here. But, we couldn’t help ourselves…
Karl Whelan, expert on all matters Target2 and arch nemesis of Hans-Werner Sinn, has encapsulated his views on Target2 a.k.a “why Hans-Werner Sinn is so very wrong about everything” in a 37-page powerpoint presentation on Wednesday. Read more
As flagged earlier – the European Central Bank’s latest loosening of collateral criteria:
ECB takes further measures to increase collateral availability for counterparties Read more
From an engaging speech by Robert Jenkins — former F&C chairman, now a member of the Bank of England’s interim Financial Policy Committee — to the “trillion dollar generation” of hedgies at the Gaim conference in Monaco…
My third and final observation is that the days of instant market pricing and limitless liquidity may be fading. The “great moderation” conditioned many to underestimate credit risk. It also bred a generation of traders, money managers, bankers and risk officers to presume an unfettered flow of capital and instant access to narrow bid/offer spreads. Those of you who operate in less liquid instruments do not need reminding. You deal with it daily. Those of you who traded asset backed securities in 2008 can testify to the speed with which liquidity can disappear. Yet despite these examples, many continue to assume that at the currently liquid end of the trading security spectrum “liquidity” is free and will be freely available. Short term traders count on it; algo-trading depends on it. Long/short strategies presume you can short. Stop-loss disciplines demand you can cover – and cover quickly. Read more
Just when you thought no more could be written about collateral, shadow banking and repo, Manmohan Singh and Peter Stella come together to bring us a new paper on the core essence of money and collateral.
The story so far: the world has been plagued by a shortage of safe collateral and an over-dependence on shadow-bank funding, all of which has led to a breakdown in repo markets and secured funding, which is having more of an effect on financial markets than many first anticipated. Read more
We missed Willem Buiter’s comments on “additional credit claim” ECB collateral when they were published on Monday. But since it’s pretty strong stuff from the Citigroup economist…
(Might need a key. ELA = emergency liquidity assistance. GC = General Council. Rouble zone = background here; byword for monetary disintegration, basically.) Read more
Just as “free lunch” appears in a Bloomberg headline on the ECB’s three-year liquidity…
Here’s a pair of interesting analyst reactions to Friday’s details on eurozone central banks’ rules for accepting additional credit claims. It’s an expansion of eligible ECB collateral. But neither a free lunch – nor a source of easy carry – given the haircuts these assets (bank loans, from French real estate to Spanish public sector to Italian lease finance to Austrian SME, etc) will bear, it seems. Read more
Update — apologies for a rather disorganised (and long) post… but we’ve finally gained information from all seven eurozone central banks who’ll accept additional credit claims under the ECB’s new rules…
Lend to an Italian small business for five years, take the loan to the Bank of Italy for ECB three-year funding… get this kind of haircut: Read more
Greece is not printing its own money already. No drachmas are being issued by Greece, nor is there monetisation of public debt. However….
And with that rather tantalising intro — Stephane Deo of UBS blows the lid off something we’ve been wondering about Greece for a while. Read more
Intesa Sanpaolo’s chief executive says he’ll use ECB funds to buy Italian bonds…
BBVA sells the first senior unsecured bond to be issued by a Spanish bank since October… (like Intesa a few weeks ago. Both with unusually short – 18-month – maturities, however) Read more
Just one name today, but hopefully it rams home why banks are using the ECB’s three-year liquidity. From BBVA’s latest results:
Making use of the new lending facility provided by the European Central Bank (ECB), BBVA took up €11,000m at the extraordinary 36-month auction on December 21. This figure is equivalent to the sum of its wholesale debt redemptions for 2012. It means that the Group has “liquidity coverage” and demonstrates its prudence in liquidity risk management in line with the profile of maturities in upcoming years. However, it does not imply that the Group will not issue debt in 2012 if conditions improve. Read more
There’s no shortage of concerns about the impact that new regulations will have. Basel 2.5 hitting the bond market, the prohibition of ratings under Dodd-Frank hurting the beleaguered mortgage market, and the restrictions on prop trading by the Volcker Rule — which may lead to a giant sucking sound where the liquidity of several markets used to be.
The concern surrounding this last one is so great that the EU is planning to complain to US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about it next month. Read more
Another reason why we don’t like the meme of viewing the ECB’s three-year liquidity as (or in any way analogous to) “quantitative easing” for sovereigns:
Mark-to-market risks remain key Read more
Nice and big table (click to enlarge) from Morgan Stanley analysts, who are very much in the ‘it’s all about refinancing bank debt‘ camp on the purpose of the three year ECB liquidity. More on that in a bit…
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts have taken objection to everyone interpreting high use of the ECB’s overnight deposit facility as an indicator of ‘bank hoarding’.
Remember this?
First, the Eurosystem has abolished the eligibility requirement (Sections 6.2.1.5 and 6.2.1.6) that debt instruments issued by credit institutions, other than covered bank bonds, are only eligible if they are admitted to trading on a regulated market. At the same time, the Eurosystem risk control measures for marketable assets (Section 6.4.2) have been amended. Specifically, the Eurosystem has reduced the limit for the use of unsecured debt instruments issued by a credit institution or by any other entity with which the credit institution has close links. Such assets may only be used as collateral to the extent that the value assigned does not exceed 5% of the total value of collateral submitted (instead of 10%, as previously stipulated). Read more
(Aren’t all the best stories collateral stories nowadays?)
Cast your minds back to December. Borrowing from the ECB Marginal Lending Facility is ballooning past €5bn – and staying there for days on end – despite its penalty rate. Read more
Quote du jour from an excellent IFR article, doubting the Sarko trade:
With bank debts coming due and most firms unable to raise fresh funds in bond markets – which remain largely closed – bankers say it is much more prudent to use ECB loans to pay off their own creditors rather than speculate that European governments pay back all their debt. Read more
Here’s an interesting ripple effect to consider… downgrades of AAA-rated European supranational debt, hitting the Australian bond market.
As Nomura rates analyst Martin Whetton wrote in a Friday note — there aren’t that many Australian government bonds. (In fact it’s led to a quality collateral shortage.) Foreign supranational debt has therefore filled the void for investors who want safe, AAA-rated exposure to Australian dollar assets. Read more
There’s so much to read in the IMF’s latest report into Greece’s bailout, released on Tuesday…
Although firstly we just want to point out what the Fund says about an increasing lack of cash inside the Greek state. It’s in this excerpt of the report (page 8): Read more
Older entries
1Bernanke weighs in on robot wars; brings Keynes for backup
2Secret liquidity and Scottish independence
3Spain's awful unemployment
4S&P 2,100, by Goldman Sachs
5Pump up, debase
Show more6Buyback to enrich
7Collateral crunch-counting gets sophisticated
8Apple Operations International, facts (?) du jour
9In which the FTSE puts the crisis behind it
10Everlasting credit, the long view
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