James Alexander via Historinhas | Of course we welcomed Mr Draghi’s willingness to ease monetary policy announced with at the January ECB meeting last week. And we recognised the positve impact on markets and therefore on NGDP expectations. But was this just a stopgap response to a poorer negative trend?
The FOMC statement after yesterday’s meeting failed to boost investors’ spirits. While acknowledging the US economy had faltered in the last quarter, the Fed showed no intention of switching from its current stance for the time being.
The collapse of the global stockmarkets, with European bourses falling 10 percent or more over the past month, is a cry for help to the central banks to ‘do something’, namely provide more stimulus to the economy. One of these voices is Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund Bridgewater, who said that the Federal Reserve needs to start printing money again to boost markets.
Key economic data disclosed Tuesday by Beijing seems tailored to the official mantra that matters are firmly under control. So GDP supposedly showing a 6.9% increase in 2015 only marginally trims the 7% forecast given in January last year. Quite an amazing result which is in open contradiction to the rather stern measures introduced to stave off a slowdown.
The markets are connected via expectations. If there is a price change in one market, then this information is transmitted to other markets pricing in easily assimilated expectations within a similar time horizon. All consumer durables markets have an eye on the future. In other words, they have a financial component although the product which is trading on the market has an industrial use. For example, the oil and bond markets.
KnowledgeWharton | For Europe, there were a few topics dominating headlines in 2015, notably the migrant crisis, Islamic State terrorist attacks and threats, and anti-austerity movements. These tensions will continue to have a big effect on the European economic outlook in 2016, and together are even raising the question in some quarters of whether the European Union (EU) might disintegrate before long.
UBS | 2015 saw China’s growth slowing further but the government’s intensified policy support helped to prevent a hard landing. The equity market was very volatile and the world was surprised by China’s modest but perhaps ill – timed currency move. For 2016, we expect growth to grind lower with further policy easing, corporate restructuring to accelerate, and RMB to depreciate by another 5%. However, there could be some big surprises too on property destocking, SOE reform, RMB exchange rate and financial markets.
James Alexander via Historinhas | In a “currency war” it pays to be the loser. If you need an expansionary monetary policy, like most currency blocs today, don’t let anyone undercut with dirty devaluations. So, when a big baby like China decides to lower the value of its currency versus the biggest baby of all, the USD, make sure you are not caught in the cross fire.
The UK’s seven biggest banks which participated in the Bank of England (B0E)’s stress tests not only passed them, but were graded for their resilience to a range of adverse shocks, including a strong slowdown in growth in China and sharp falls in oil and raw material prices. Santander’s performance in the tests stood out, demonstrating that it is one of the lenders which is in best shape.
James Alexander via Historinhas| The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament recently held a session on NGDP Targeting. The French paper starts with a review of the literature on Inflation Targeting and says things went well until the crisis. A caveat they mention is that since both IT regimes and non-IT regimes did well in bringing down inflation it is really too hard to tell if IT was all that superior.