ExRussian

Today German industrial production surprised to the downside in September, falling 0.8% over the month on a seasonally-adjusted basis. The contraction brought the annual pace of growth to 7.9% over the year, down from a 10.7% clip in August.

It looks like my data mining is proving to be rather useful. The ratio of the Ifo expectations/current index, which tends to lead German IP growth by about 6 months, turned down in February 2010 – now so has the pace of annual industrial production growth. The implication is that the Q4 2010 rate of domestic activity is likely to be quite weak.
The chart illustrates the 6-month lead of the trend in Ifo expectations index minus the trend in Ifo current index and the annual growth rate of industrial production.

By my count (you’ll have to trust me here), German data has surprised 9 times to the upside and 10 times to the downside this month (October through current). We’ll see; but the scales are tipping to the downside.

Tomorrow Eurostat releases harmonised inflation figures….

This article is crossposted with Angry Bear blog.

A few articles regarding the bond crisis in Ireland:

The Irish Mess (IV)
ECB buying of Irish bonds ‘vital’ support
The world backs away from Ireland, Spain, Portugal
In keeping with Halloween, here’s a scary one
EU leaders trigger another bond market crisis
Ireland fifth best place to live (a separate issue, of course)

Yves Smith’s article (first link) is good, providing a network of associated links including one to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. He states the following:

Yes, Ireland is fully-funded until April – and has another €12bn in pension reserves that could be tapped in extremis – but that is less reassuring than it looks. The spreads over German Bunds are mimicking the action seen in Greece in the final hours before the dam broke.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article is well worth a read; but I’d like to talk about bond markets for just a bit. Yes, the probability of Irish default is increasingly being priced into bond markets; however, Irish bond market conditions have not yet reached those of Greece in May 2010 (the bailout announcement), nor are they really close…yet.

The Irish yield curve (proxied by the 10-year government bond yield minus the 3-year government bond yield, now the 3-10) is still positively sloped. (I choose the 3-10 because of the ESFS that is in place through 2013.)

This is important. See, when there is a binary outcome being priced into a sovereign bond market, default or no default, investors go straight to the long end of the term structure, and the yield curve inverts (negative slope). In a default situation, the longer end of the curve offers a higher expected return where the potential yield compression is much larger. That’s what happened in Greece in May 2010, as the 10-yr bond yield reached 12.4% on May 7.

The two yield curves look “similar”; but Greece’s yield curve turned negative, or near -500 basis points (bps) inverted – a basis point is the % * 100 – preceding the bailout. At the time, Irish spreads (chart above) dropped to 120 bps; but now the yield curve is even steeper, 170 bps as of 6am this morning.

The 3-yr Irish spread over German bunds is certainly coming under pressure, 492 bps (as of 6am today). But the front-end sell-off is nothing compared to that in Greece: spanning the period April 1 to May 1, 2010 (i.e. excluding the surge to 1700 bps), the 3-yr Greek spread over German bunds averaged 711 bps.

Further, the Irish debt profile is longer, on average, than that in Greece. The weighted average maturity on existing Irish debt is 6.1 years (starting in 2011), where that in Greece is a shorter 4.5 years.

The chart above illustrates the share of Irish and Greek debt by maturity date. 36% of Ireland’s sovereign debt expires through 2015, just half the share of Greek sovereign debt maturing by the same year, 70%. Note, too, that Greece has over 2.6 times the debt outstanding of Ireland – a completely different game (for now).

Irish bonds are certainly under pressure. But Ireland being funded until the middle of next year is important, making the timing of its return to market critical.

In my view, though, the quintissential issue is the government’s ability to finance its debt via domestic growth. Here’s a great paragraph from an op-ed in the Irish Independent last week:

While interest rates charged to Ireland have been rising sharply, many large countries can borrow at very low rates, as little as three per cent. Many economists have been arguing recently that these countries should consider a further fiscal stimulus package. Instead most of them are committed to deficit reduction. This debate is one that we cannot join, unfortunately. These countries have a choice since it appears that they could borrow more if they chose to do so.

We cannot do that, nor can we devalue our exchange rate, since we do not have one. It is perfectly reasonable to ask how we got into this mess, to allocate blame and to demand retribution. But no amount of ranting can expand the limited range of choices available to the Government.

Ireland needs revenues to finance their debt. We’ll see if the persistent fiscal austerity leads to growth – I’m totally skeptical.

It’s complicated. The ECB is currently juggling two objectives: perpetually assuaging bond investors in the face of a shaky financial system, and managing policy for an economy with a single currency and sovereign government issuers.

But is it really so complicated?

The chart above illustrates the peak (deemed 2008 Q1 here) to trough and recovery of GDP across the G4 (Eurozone, UK, US, and Japan). None of the G4 have returned to 2008 Q1 levels of production (pre-2008). Ironically, as the US Fed readies itself for QE2, the American economy has returned the farthest back up the “production path”.

The German recession was deeper, but the rebound has been quick. Annual GDP growth in Q2 2010 was well above potential, 3.7% over the year, and the labor market continues to see gains. But German growth has not been sufficient-enough to bring neither its nor the Eurozone’s level of GDP back to pre-2008 levels (as of Q2 2010).

To be sure, 2H 2010 GDP remains to be factored into the recovery in Germany and the Eurozone. Perhaps when all is said and done, Germany will recover smartly in 2H 2010 to generate the final 2.7% bump in GDP to return to pre-2008 levels before the 2011 fiscal austerity measures start to crimp export income. Thus, is the ECB holding pattern correct?

That remains to be seen. If the ECB continues to set policy as it has done so in the past, however, it’ll take an economic slap in the face before the ECB reacts to real economic growth and eases further.

The chart illustrates the refi rate (ECB policy rate) at a 2-quarter lead to the annual pace of GDP growth. The relationship is strong and positive, with a correlation is 82%.

The relationship suggests that the ECB’s reaction function actually follows economic growth trajectories, but at a two-quarter lag (roughly). For example, the ECB was raising rates into the third quarter of 2008 only to see GDP fall 2.1% at an annual clip in the fourth. It dropped the refi rate by 1.75% in Q4 2010.

The ECB targets inflation, not GDP growth; but the reaction function is roughly 2-quarters lagged to the disinflationary pressures that stem from recession (from my simple exercise, of course). In conclusion, if the ECB is going to react to GDP-induced disinflation signals (i.e., negative growth), then it could get a lot worse in the Eurozone before policy eases further: 1H 2011 is my bet.

The coming week is G4 central bank week. The Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) announces its policy decision on November 3; the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) will make policy announcements on November 4; and the Bank of Japan pushed forward its November 15-16 meeting to be held now on November 4-5.

At this juncture, G4 ex Japan monetary policy is likely to diverge sharply: the Fed is expected to announce an extension of its asset purchase program, while the ECB and BoE are not expected to increase theirs. In fact, the policy wedge between the three central banks is already wide. Despite the ECB’s enacting its covered bond purchase program, the amount is small, roughly 1.4% of Eurozone GDP (see chart below), and the central bank is sterilizing the flow – sterilizing the operation means that the ECB performs equal and opposite monetary operations to reduce bank reserves by the amount of the bond purchase program.

The chart above illustrates the size of the bond purchase programs (assets sitting on the central bank balance sheet) as a share of 2010 GDP (IMF forecast). Ostensibly, and from a bank-lending point of view, Eurozone financial conditions appear to be “healthier” than those in the UK or US.

The chart above illustrates total bank lending in the Eurozone, UK, and the US; but this may change as austerity measures in some European countries infect the stronger economies via a tightly integrated trade relationship.

Policy is already much tighter in the ECB compared to its US and UK counterparts. This discrepancy is expected to diverge, as the Fed moves into QE2 mode this week.