Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Confusion of central banks amusing. Good for India?

Last year one man, Steven Major in the US, was convinced that yields on 10 year US Treasuries will drop to 2.1%. Since yield is inversely related to the price he was betting that prices of bonds will go up. So, when others were selling he was buying. Bond prices tend to drop when interest rates go up so that yields are in line with the interest at which the Fed is raising money. So, what Mr Major was betting on was that the Fed will not be raising interest rates any time soon and says that yields could drop to 1.5%. One or two people even think that the Federal Reserve may have to restart bond buying, also called Quantitative Easing, in late 2015 as the weak global economy impacts the US and the strong dollar cuts exports. Major says that the weakness in the global economy is similar to that after World War II and it will take a long time to start growing again which means that inflation will stay low, thus obviating the need to raise interest rates. Public debt globally reached 108% of GDP in 2012 and will be around 106% this year. The global bond market has soared 40% to $100 trillion as governments have borrowed to support banks and the fall in tax receipts, because of the slowdown, means that governments are sitting on big debts and a higher interest rate will increase the amounts of interest the governments will have to pay. In Britain inflation rate has fallen to 0.5%, raising the fear of deflation, wherein prices keep falling as people postpone big purchases hoping for prices to fall still further. Sterling has fallen to its lowest level in 18 months against the dollar. In the Eurozone inflation rate is even lower at 0.3% and the European Central Bank wants to buy back bonds worth $593 billion to encourage some inflation. But Germany is against any quantitative easing because they think that buying Greek sovereign bonds means rewarding irresponsible spending and will encourage bad behavior in the future. The German Constitutional Court has referred the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to decide whether the constitution of the ECB allows it to buy bonds. Japan has revealed a record budget to beat recession. After suffering a decade of deflation the government is determined to raise inflation rate so that wages start rising and people start spending again. Government debt of Japan is at a record 227% of GDP and the government wants to raise tax revenues to cut its debt. But when it raised the sales tax to 8% from 5% in April of last year public spending fell and the country went back into recession. China is trying to maintain its high growth rate by infrastructure spending and increasing bank lending. It may be forced to devalue the Yuan to stimulate growth. All central banks in a state of confusion. Amusing.

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