Neil Dwane (Allianz) | The response of central banks to the financial crisis 10 years ago may have saved the world from a devastating depression, but it also created a host of unforeseen effects – from more indebtedness to more economic inequality. Looking back at what we got right – and what went wrong – what lessons can we take away for the future?
Multiple rounds of quantitative easing and liquidity injections resulted in more than a four-fold increase in the aggregate G4 central banks balance sheet in the last decade. This experience has many worried about a “quantitative tightening ” trade. Here analysts at BoAML argue that those worries can be put off for another day.
The message unanimously churned out by politicians, central bankers, and ‘mainstream’ economists is that central banks are there for the ‘greater good’. However, accoding to a market report from Degussa, “unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.”
J.L.M. Campuzano | The ECB calculates that its extreme expansionary monetary measures have contributed nearly two points to European growth since 2014. The question now is whether the benefits of maintaining them outweigh the risks of prolonging excessively lax financial conditions too long.
The biggest economic threat today is not the interest rate, nor the exchange rates, nor the possible trade war fuelled by Trump: it’s the debt accumulated by countries across the world. This has increased 12% of GDP since the crisis, totalling 225% of global GDP. Starting with China, followed by Europe and ending up with the US, the threat from the current and future debt is terrifying.
We need to be aware of the existence of regulations over and above the well-known Taylor Law, starting with this regulation adjusted to establishing a downward limit on rates of 0%, which is very important in the US Fed’s case.
There’s an idea circulating amongst the central banks or, more accurately, amongst pressure groups in the central banks. The crux of this idea is: “the central banks should normalise interest rates”.
As long as there is no perfect equivalence between supply and demand, inflation will form part of our system, according to Robeco.
Pablo García Gómez (Carax Alphavalue) |Sector earnings from Europe for the second half of 2017 have been overall solid, with some positive surprises from “heavy cyclicals” like oil and metals and mining.
Kommer van Trigt (Robeco) | The markets are discounting that in the next few months there will be more certainty surrounding the central banks’ normalisation strategy. In its quarterly outlook, Robeco’s Global Fixed Income Macro team says it makes sense for the central banks to begin to normalise their policies.