European sovereign debt: how sovereign is it?

By Juan Pablo Painceira

The possibility of a sovereign default in the Eurozone has been worrying not only the countries in question, but also European authorities and the global financial system. CDS spreads (or risk premiums) on European sovereign debt have widened dramatically in the last 6 months. In February, the situation deteriorated further and European sovereign CDS traded higher than companies rated close to the “junk” level! The main suspects for sovereign default would be Ireland and Greece with the risk premium around 250bp (over Germany) and to a lesser degree Spain and Portugal; but, even Germany (the benchmark EU sovereign), Austria and Belgium have suffered from the widening of CDS spreads.

So, what are the main reasons for this dark scenario? The causes, of course, lie in the unfolding of 2007-08 financial crisis and range from current account concerns to government deficit financing, passing on export demand and external finance problems. This year was already a scheduled year with huge sovereign bond issuance in which has been piled up with new finance needs, mainly stemming from banking bailout plans.

However, the role of ECB interventions to shore up the European money market has not been fully highlighted by the media and analysts as one of the main causes of widening on European risk premiums. Since the beginning of crisis, the ECB has decreased the quality of credit collateral in its repo-operations and other lending operations with the banking system. Basically, the banking system has been allowed to access the ECB’s standing facilities using securities with lower ratings or, even worse, with no trading at all. In simple words, the banking system has raised its finance needs through financial operations where they pump their bad assets into ECB’s balance sheet. In the end, it has effectively created an over supply of prime rated securities in the market and mostly important for European countries there has been a kind of crowding out between “toxic” banking securities and sovereign bonds. Financial investors can transform a “frog” into a “princess” through the ECB’s standing facilities so what would be the reason of buying a “princess” if you can buy much cheaper a “frog” and.…..

In the traditional economic theory, the solution to deal with the problem is straight forward, increased labour market flexibility! The relative price of wages would be the only adjustment mechanism in these countries given that devaluation is not possible within a single currency. So, it is clear that we have a great asymmetry between banking and sovereign debt! The result is that European states have to raise funds to cover their banking recapitalisation plans at a much higher fiscal cost and this is partly caused by its own central bank’s interventions!!

George Soros raised a related point in the FT, he claims the creation of Eurozone government bond market would help deal with the government finance problem. The problem is that right now the implementation of a European Treasury would only reinforce the financial interests managing the banking recapitalisation and not meet the needs of European population as might at first appear to be the case. The promises in public social investments coming with this new authority would be only carrots, in the end the sticks would be on our heads!

A definition of financialisation (one among many)

by Duncan Lindo

I wanna tell you a story:
It is a sunny day in early 2007. Robin Banks slips into the hushed corridors of the plush building in mid-town Manhattan that houses his wealth manager. It’s time to try one of these hedge funds.

Robin decides to invest $1milllion and his private bank is willing to lend him $3million more against his stake giving a total investment of $4m. Of course the private bank will charge some interest and a fee for arranging the purchase of the hedge fund stake.

The hedge fund they choose is big on structured credit trades – Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) are the hottest deal in town. First thing, the hedge fund takes its 2% upfront fee. Because they understand the statistical models better than the rating agencies, they decide to go for the riskiest part of the CDO. They buy exposure to the equity tranche of a credit default swap (CDS) Index in derivative format from an investment bank. A fairly standard instrument and therefore one that their investment bank will sell to them for a 5% deposit (initial margin). Robin’s $1m which became $4m becomes $4m ÷ 5% = $80m of equity tranche exposure.

Over at the investment bank they can make money between the price at which they sold the risk and the price at which their models value it - but to capture the profit they need to hedge. Their pricing models tell them that with correlation trading as low as it is their delta hedge is 18.75. So to hedge their exposure to changes in the price of the CDS Index they need 18.75 x 80 = $1.5 billion of the index itself. The investment bank calls their most trusted market maker and starts to work an order for $1.5bn of index – a big order but should be manageable over a day or so. Robin’s 1million became 1.5bn!!

The market maker is more than happy – for such an order he can widen his bid-ask spread and should make 4-5bps running or approx 0.2% of $1,5bn.

Laying off that much risk though moves the market slightly. Across the room the index arbitrage desk notices that the spread between the price of the index and the combined price of the constituents is wide enough for him to put on a trade. It will pay off when the price of the index and the constituents come back into line – even if it’s at maturity. He trades the index and gets to work trading the underlying, single name CDS.

The single name CDS market makers know the index guy and get to work passing the risk to their clients – taking their bid ask. In a few of the less liquid names their hedging trades are enough to move the price of the CDS. Upstairs on the convertibles trading desk, someone notices that the new price for the credit risk (automatically input into their models) tells them that in order to remain hedged they need to trade…so they call their market maker….across the road an equity trader notices the price has changed…time to re-hedge, so they call their market makers…

Economic inequality and asset inflation

by Jan Toporowski

In the discussion about the financial crisis, one important factor has been overlooked, namely the distribution of income and wealth. It is obvious that the social consequences of the financial crisis have been made so much more painful by the growing inequalities of income and wealth in the United States and the United Kingdom. But there are also connections between such inequalities and financial instability. These have been highlighted by many critics of financialised capitalism. For example, John Hobson, most famous for his 1902 classic Imperialism A Study, argued that inequalities of wealth and income gave rise to over-saving, and hence economic stagnation. More recently, the late John Kenneth Galbraith noted the connection between tax cuts for the rich and asset inflation.

Asset inflation and income and economic inequalities are intimately linked. Asset inflation means rising values of financial assets and housing. Such inflation allows owners of such assets to write off debts against capital gains, buying an asset with borrowed money, and then repaying that borrowing together with interest and obtaining a profit when the asset is sold. Hence the proliferation of borrowing by households and consumption ultimately financed by debt. When the asset is housing, its inflation is especially pernicious. The housing market then redistributes income and wealth from young people earning less at the start of their careers and indebting themselves hugely in order to get somewhere decent to live, to people enjoying highest earnings at the end of their careers. But housing inflation is also like a pyramid banking scheme because it requires more and more credit to be put into the housing market in order to allow those profiting from house inflation to be able to realise their profits.

Nevertheless, even those entering the system with large debts hope to be able to profit from it. Such has been the dependence of recent governments and society in general on asset inflation that the political consensus is ‘intensely relaxed’ about such regressive redistribution of income. That consensus has encouraged the belief that the best that young people can do to enhance their prospects is to indebt themselves in order to ‘get on the property ladder’, i.e., enrich themselves (or at least improve their housing) through housing inflation.

Those at the bottom of the income distribution inevitably suffer most from rising house prices because, living in the worst housing, they have the least possibility to accommodate their house purchase to their income by buying cheaper, smaller housing. Having little other option but to over-indebt themselves in order to secure their housing, default rates among households in this social group are also most likely to rise with house price inflation. This inequality lies behind the problems in the sub-prime market in the U.S. and the equivalents of that market in the U.K. and elsewhere. Paradoxically, a more equal distribution of income and wealth is more likely to keep the housing market in equilibrium, because any increase in house prices above the rate of increase in income and wealth is more likely to result in a fall in demand for housing. Where income and wealth are already unequally distributed, and house prices rise faster than incomes, a fall in demand from those who can no longer afford a given class of housing is off-set by the increased demand for that class of housing among households that previously could afford better housing. In this way, the redistribution of income and wealth from those with more modest incomes to those with on higher incomes also facilitates asset inflation in the housing market.

Thus asset inflation has increased inequalities of wealth and income and those inequalities have further fed that inflation. Such inflation is therefore a self-reinforcing pathology of financial markets and society, rather than, as the economics establishment tells us, a temporary disequilibrium (a ‘bubble’) in the markets. Financial stability rests not only on sound banking and financial institutions. It also requires a much more equal distribution of income and wealth.

Bank expropriation is rational, but neither socialist nor sufficient

by Paulo L dos Santos

The chronic banking crisis is flaring up again. Banks in the US and Britain continue to hemorrhage capital as recession and falling asset prices add to their losses. CDS spreads on bank debt are back on the rise. And the only thing propping up bank shares are daily promises of innovative ways to inject billions of fresh public money into the sclerotic veins of privately-run banks.

The latest such cures being prescribed involve either state-backed insurance of bank assets or the establishment of a state-backed ‘bad bank’ that would buy and hold toxic assets. The argument behind them, made most clearly by Paul Myners of the British Treasury, is that if the public takes on the bulk of the asset risks and losses lurking in bank portfolios, banking will become profitable once again, helping their private recapitalisation, and an eventual resumption of normal lending levels.

Why should the public lose its shirt to restore profitability to a sector that has pocketed billions as it created a crisis that will likely cost tens of trillions of dollars? Because, Mr Myners states without the distraction of substantiation, ‘The capacity for soundly managed banks and markets to support the generation of wealth in the economy could never be matched by the public sector’. The same argument has been made recently by The Economist and Alan Greenspan, also on the basis of pure chutzpah.

Yet the evidence supports a much dimmer view on the ‘entrepreneurial’ capacities for ‘wealth creation’ of private banks. Leading private equity boss Guy Hands recently commented to the Financial Times that, to his mind, British banks have lost all capacity to make loans to corporations in the domestic real economy. In my recent study of the activities of top international banks, I have documented what has been keeping them busy and profitable. The picture that emerges is one of remarkably well remunerated parasitism.

Even when they actively made loans, Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, Barclays and RBS centered their lending on mortgages, credit card and other loans to individuals, and loans supporting financial engineering. Lending to individuals has transferred increasing shares of wage income into bank profits, and its high profitability was a central contributor to the current financial crisis. Financial engineering operations aim to capture capital gains that are significantly funded from the mass of retail investors through fees and systematically lower returns on their pension, education and other savings. Lastly, banks have drawn astronomical revenues from card fees and other account service charges paid by clients to access and use their own money and accounts: a total of US$ 50 billion for Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC and Barclays in 2006.

In addition to being remarkably poor value for public money, plans to insure bank assets or create a public ‘bad bank’ are almost guaranteed not to work. They assume it is possible to identify and fence off ‘bad assets’ and quantify associated losses. This is impossible at this early stage of what will likely be a protracted recession. Any such programme would be followed by a steady stream of new losses, triggering new panics, renewed instability, and new cuts in lending. Ask the Japanese.

That takes me to the question of nationalisation, which, for all the recent hand wringing in the financial press, is a monumental non-issue. Bank losses will continue to mount and private appetite for investment in banks is unlikely to improve for many years. Gone are the good old days when Western states could count on their wealthy political clients in the Persian Gulf to pitch in the odd billion to support their private banks. In this setting, states will have little choice but eventually to nationalise weaker banks. That, in turn will likely send remaining private investors in other banks running for the exits, as recently argued in the New York Times.

The question is how banks will be nationalised and run. The Economist demands that any necessary nationalisations be undertaken ‘at market prices’, without seriously considering what those would be had states not supported banks. And both British and US governments have noted their commitment to run their investments on arms-length bases, leaving control to the officers and major shareholders that created the current financial mess.

There is a simple, rational alternative that needs urgent public discussion. Expropriate the banks—or, for those partial to more diplomatic language, nationalise them at the market prices that would prevail had the public not poured hundreds of billions into them. Then run the banks under the sole imperative of stabilising the financial system and paving the way for economic recovery, with no constraints imposed by the need to attract private capital or maintain future private franchise value.

Expropriation would lower the fiscal impact of state intervention. It would also curb the massive hoarding currently taking place as banks try to build up capitalisation levels. State banks could maintain lower capital reserves—after all, the only thing maintaining public confidence in the solvency of banks are state guarantees. This would allow additional room for credit creation, and render recent interest rate cuts effective.

State banks would also be able to provide relief on the debts currently saddling many households, helping provide a welcome boost to aggregate demand. Lastly, state banks could curb the more egregious practices of private banks: exorbitant account, overdraft and transaction fees; interest rates on credit to households; gains made on trading and own accounts at the expense of retail savers; and, of course, bonuses.

These measures are unlikely to be taken by currently dominant political forces, even though such policies are neither socialist nor in themselves steps towards socialism. They are just rational attempts to stop the current economic bloodletting. Economic recovery will require taking on the long-term systemic economic imbalances that conditioned the current meltdown. Those include falling real investment by non-financial corporations, mediocre productivity growth, growing private provision of pensions, health and education, and rising inequality.
Addressing those issues will require significant socialist inroads into the functioning of the economy and dramatic political changes. They also require an integrated, long-term understanding of the current crisis and secular developments in the real economy. Stay tuned.