Tag Archives: karen maley

Cracks Multiply In Europe

7 May

From Business Spectator:

Global share markets plunged overnight as panicked investors worried that the eurozone could fragment as a result of the escalating European financial crisis.

The European banking system is under huge strain* as banks are increasingly reluctant to lend to each other. The European banks are worried about how much other banks have lent to the weaker eurozone countries – the so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) – and the catastrophic losses that could ensue if any of these countries defaulted on their debt.

At the same time, there’s been a flight of capital out of the eurozone as investors have worried the common currency might crumble as a result of the problems in the vulnerable economies of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain).

…

The huge question mark over the eurozone’s survival is causing the euro to plummet. Increasingly, market analysts are predicting that the currency, which broke through the $US1.30 earlier this week for the first tine since April 2009, is set to hit parity with the US dollar.

There is an increasing consensus that the $US145 billion European Union-IMF rescue package for Greece is not sufficient to solve Greece’s basic problem – that it is simply unable to service its colossal debts. There are also questions as to whether Greece will be able to implement the punitive austerity measures it is being forced to adopt in exchange for the bailout.

At the same time, there are increasing signs that even if it bails out Greece, Germany will not be prepared to write the huge cheques required to help other vulnerable PIIGS.

German taxpayers are already outraged at having to pick up a large chunk of the cost of the Greek bail-out, and Germany’s largest opposition party, the centre-left SPD, has said that it will not vote in favour of the bill.

Predictions that the cascading PIIGS debt crisis will cause the eurozone to collapse are becoming more widespread.

* That the European banking system is “under huge strain” and is beginning to freeze up (again) has profound implications for our economy. Why?

As explained in this post a few days ago, even the heads of our major banks quietly admit that our banking system has an “achilles heel” – it is desperately dependent on the international wholesale capital markets for funding.  If/when the banking system abroad seizes up again, our banks will be in deep trouble.

Watch out for the emergency reinstalment of the government’s Bank Guarantee, hoping to again prop up international confidence in our banks so that they can continue to attract funding in a second credit crunch.

Watch out also for higher interest rates charged by the banks – irrespective of the RBA cash rate – due to their having to pay ever higher interest rates in order to get that international funding in the first place.

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Don’t Bet The House On China

4 May

An excellent and timely article by Karen Maley in today’s Business Spectator (reproduced here in full):

Kevin Rudd’s resource super profits tax has one massive risk – that commodity prices collapse before he gets to collect one cent of it.

Yesterday, the influential forecaster, Marc Faber joined those warning of problems ahead in China. “The market is telling you that something is not quite right”, he said in an interview on Bloomberg television. “The Chinese economy is going to slow down regardless. It is more likely that we will even have a crash sometime in the next nine to 12 months.”

On Sunday – as Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were announcing their new resources tax – China’s central bank made another attempt to dampen property market speculation. It lifted its reserve requirement ratio by a further half a percentage point, so that most Chinese banks will now have to hold 17 per cent of their deposits on reserve.

But this latest increase in the reserve ratio will likely prove as ineffective as the two previous rises in January and February this year. Many believe the Chinese property bubble will continue to expand for as long as the Chinese government maintains interest rates below the rate of inflation.

And that’s the core of the problem. The Chinese government is reluctant to increase interest rates because it risks exposing the huge fault lines that exist in the economy.

Over the past decade, China has built factories and expanded its manufacturing capacity in the expectation that the United States and Europe would continue to demonstrate a robust appetite for Chinese-produced goods. But western demand for Chinese products slowed in the wake of the financial crisis, leaving the Chinese economy with substantial overcapacity in manufacturing.

The problem was exacerbated during the financial crisis. With Chinese exports plunging, the Chinese government launched a massive economic stimulus program, equivalent to around 14 per cent of the country’s GDP. It also ordered Chinese banks to lend, and instructed Chinese state-owned companies to borrow.

The program had the desired result. The Chinese economy grew at an 11.9 per cent annual clip in the first three months of the year, the fastest pace since 2007. And we benefited too, because this strong Chinese growth pushed up the prices of our commodity exports, such as iron ore and coal.

But there are huge concerns over how the Chinese stimulus money was spent. Provincial governments, under instructions from Beijing to reach specified growth targets, undertook massive construction projects that have resulted in a glut of commercial office space, and huge shopping malls that are near-vacant. And much of the increase in bank lending was funnelled into property market speculation, pushing up housing prices to astronomic levels.

The Chinese government has tinkered with various measures to contain its property bubble – increasing the reserve requirement, lifting the minimum deposit that home buyers must have before they’re allowed to borrow, and urging banks to monitor their risks.

But it is loathe to raise interest rates for fear that it will cause mass defaults among manufacturers and property developers, leading to huge problem loans in the banking system.

Eventually, however, an end-point will be reached. Either the Chinese government will raise interest rates, or the property market bubble will collapse under its own weight. At that point, commodity prices will plummet, slashing the profits of the big mining companies.

And if this happens before 1 July 2012 when the new tax regime for the miners comes into effect, Rudd is unlikely to ever see a cent of his new resource super profits tax.

Betting the house on China is exactly what the numbskulls in the Rudd Labor government, the Treasury, and the RBA are doing.

Please take some time to review some of the many earlier articles in this blog, showing how the likes of Treasury secretary Ken Henry and RBA Governor Glenn Stevens have declared that the GFC is ‘over’, and forecast that (thanks to China) we are all set for a ‘period of unprecedented prosperity’ lasting until 2050.

What is vital to bear in mind always, is that these are the very same incompetents who all completely and utterly failed to foresee the onrushing Global Financial Crisis in 2008… even though its first wave had already broken in the USA and on global share markets during 2007!

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