Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | This has not been an easy year despite the strong fiscal and monetary support to Covid-struck economies, especially in the Western world. Such support has allowed the North American and European economies to grow above potential amid repeated waves of Covid-19 and related mobility restrictions even if less severe than in 2020. On the other hand, the emerging world has grown below potential this year…
Julian Marx (Flossbach Von Storch) | Almost two years have passed since the outbreak of the pandemic and economic output in the Eurozone is still below pre-crisis levels, unlike in the US.The ECB envisages a more cautious monetary policy than the dollar bloc (Australia, Canada and the US): real economic output in the US in calendar year 2021 should already be a good two percent above that of 2019. In the eurozone, on the other hand, the statistics for 2021 will probably remain in some cases significantly below the pre-crisis level.
Crédito y Caución | In March 2021, Brazil’s central bank started its rate hiking cycle. This has raised investors ́ concerns thatgovernment finances will deteriorate, as they are highly sensitive to shifts in interest rates.•Worries about the credibility of a constitutional spending ceiling, a key fiscal anchor, are adding to those concerns.•The risk of higher fiscal deficits and a depreciating currency have increased inflationary pressures, forcing thecentral bank to lift…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The thesis defended by the US Treasury and the Fed that the upturn in inflation this year will be temporary is losing momentum by the week. The latest data for October brings the year-on-year rate to 6.2%, a figure that has not been seen for the last thirty years. What is more worrying is that core inflation, excluding energy and unprocessed foods, is above 5%. It…
Monex Europe | Today’s announcement by the European Central Bank can be perceived as net dovish in the short-term by markets, as the shift from an asymmetric target to a new symmetric 2% inflation target gives the central bank ample room to run accommodative monetary policy for longer without having to fight markets. Previously, the ECB’s inflation target was set at “below, but close to 2%”, which contributed to the eurozone’s structural issues with low inflation for years. By changing this target to a symmetric target, which means any undershoots and overshoots would be equally undesirable, the central bank moves the bar slightly upwards for inflation before policy is required to tighten.
Pablo Pardo (Washington) | Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Princeton professor and BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award winner, says: “As public debt grows, rates tend to rise, until they are close to those of private debt, which are higher than the rate of GDP growth. The spreads on public and private debt are not immutable over time and, paradoxically, some people seem to think that this is the case, that the coupon on…
Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | In the first quarter of this year, French GDP grew 0.4% quarter- on- quarter, supported by the fact that another nationwide lockdown was held off until April. Growth was mainly driven by investment spending and a modest increase in private consumption. While the growth rate in Q2 will be affected by the comprehensive lockdownmeasures imposed in April, the gradual easing of those restrictions in May…
Bank lending rose by RMB 1.28 trillion, well below consensus expectations of RMB 1.56 trillion, while aggregate financing to the real economy (AFRE), which includes loans and bonds, recorded net growth of RMB 1.85 trillion (against expectations of RMB 2.25 trillion). As a result, China’s M2 money supply declined from +9.4% y-o-y in March to +8.1% y-o-y in April. It has returned to pre-Covid levels in 2018/19.
Felipe Villarroel (TwentyFour AM)| The latest batch of NFP data for April showed the biggest miss we can remember in terms of jobs created (266k versus an expected 1m), and taken at face value muted wage pressures as measured by average hourly earnings (AHE). At the same time, the likes of McDonald’s and Burger King were paying people just to attend interviews as they could not fill the positions they needed to operate their restaurants properly. So is this a case of subdued demand in the labour market with companies not hiring, or subdued supply with workers for whatever reason unwilling to fill vacancies?
JINYUE DONG & LE XIA (BBVA Research) | The PBoC started to exit the above easing measures in May 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic got controlled in mainland China. Historically, the exit of easing monetary measures in the post-crisis time has always been a global challenge to central banks. China is not an exception in this respect. In February 2021, the normalization progress in China led to the gyration of the interbank interest rate in February 2021, just before the Chinese Lunar New Year as the investors’ fear of the authorities’ fast tightening climbed to a new high.