Showing posts with label Public Debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Public Debt. Show all posts

Sunday, May 3, 2020

3/5/20: Financial Strength Across Emerging Markets


A somewhat simplified, but nonetheless telling heat map of financial strengths and vulnerabilities across emerging market/middle income economies via the Economist:


I have outlined European economies included (for some strange reason, the Baltics are not in the assessment, neither are Bulgaria, Moldova, etc). The top 9 as well as those ranked 11th, 12th and 15th are economies with no risk category at or below 'moderate'.  The bottom 15 have no risk category within a 'safety' zone.

Have fun with these...

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

17/1/17: Government Debt in the Age of Austerity


The fact that the world is awash with debt is hard to dispute (see data here and here), but it is quite commonly argued that the aggressive re-leveraging happening in the corporate and household sectors runs contrary to the austerity trends in the public debt segment of the total economic debt. The paradox of the austerity arguments is, of course, that whilst debt is rising, public investment is falling and public consumption remains either stagnant of rising slowly. This should see public debt either declining or remaining static. Of course, banks bailouts in a number of advanced economies would have resulted in an uplift in public debt during the early years of the Global Financial Crisis and the Great Recession, but these years behind us, we should have witnessed the austerity translating into moderating debt levels in the global economy when it comes to public debt.

Alas, this is not the case, as illustrated in the chart below:


Here's a tricky bit:

  • In the 5 years 2012-2016 (post-onset of the recovery) Government debt around the world rose 11.4% in level terms (USD), and 14.51 percentage points as a share of GDP per capita. During the crisis years of 2007-2011, Government debt rose 72.7% in dollar terms and was down 4.39 percentage points as a share of GDP.
  • In the advanced economies, Government debt rose 67.6% in dollar terms in 2007-2011 period, up 4.7 percentage points, before rising 5.44% in dollar terms over subsequent 5 years (up 26.65 percentage points in terms of debt to GDP ratio). 
  • In the euro area, Government debt was up 57.4% in dollar terms and up 0.51 percentage points in GDP ratio terms over the period of 2007-2011, before falling 6.9 percent in dollar terms but rising 24.8 percentage points relative to GDP in 2012-2016 period.
  • And so on...
As the above chart shows, globally, total volume of Government debt was estimated to be USD63.2 trillion at the end of 2016, up USD6.46 trillion on the end of 2011. That is almost 84.1% of the world GDP today, as opposed to 78% of GDP at the end of 2011. More than half of this increase (USD3.91 trillion) came from the Emerging and Developing Economies, and USD2.3 trillion came from G7 economies. Meanwhile, euro area Government Debt levels declined USD815 billion, all of which was due solely to changes in the exchange rate and the rollover of some debt into multinational organisations' (e.g. ESM) and quasi-governmental (e.g. promissory notes) debt. Worse, over the said period of time, only one euro area country saw reduction in the levels of debt: Greece (down EUR34.46 billion due to restructuring of debt). In fact, in Euro terms, total euro area government debt rose some EUR1.36 trillion over the span of the 2011-2016 period.

All in, global pile of Government debt is now USD27.84 trillion (or 78.7%) up on where it was at the end of 2007 and the start of the Global Financial Crisis.

So may be, just may be, the real economy woe is that most of the new debt accumulated by the Governments in recent years has flown into waste (supporting banks, financial markets valuations, doling out subsidies to politically favoured sectors etc), instead of going to fund productive public investments, including education, skills training, apprenticeships and so on. Who knows?..

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

10/5/16: Debt, Government Debt, Glorious Debt


It's a simple headline, really, for a single chart:
But it says so much... peace time and monetary financing and printing presses and private sector QEs and on and on... as the 'economic recovery measures' roll out, the old staple of Government debt is going up. Austerity or none, growth is weak. Yet, Governments are borrowing at rates that are simply beyond control.

In simple terms: we have deteriorating fundamentals (interest rates at nil or negative, but growth nowhere to be seen) and we have continuously mispriced risk. If this ain't a bubble, what is?..

Sunday, May 17, 2015

17/5/15: Public Debt, Private Debt… Someone Thinks There Might Be Consequences


Remember last year vigorous debate about whether debt (in particular real economic debt - as I call it, or non-financial debt - as officialdom calls it) matters when it comes to growth? Well, the debate hasn't die out… at least not yet. And some heavy hitters are getting into the fight. Òscar Jordà, Moritz HP. Schularick and Alan M. Taylor paper, "Sovereigns versus Banks: Credit, Crises and Consequences", Working Paper No. 3: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2585696

Ok, so some key preliminaries: "Two separate narratives have emerged in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. One interpretation speaks of private financial excess and the key role of the banking system in leveraging and deleveraging the economy. The other emphasizes the public sector balance sheet over the private and worries about the risks of lax fiscal policies." The problem is that the two 'narratives' "…may interact in important and understudied ways", most notably via debt and debt overhangs.

The authors examine "the co-evolution of public and private sector debt in advanced countries since 1870. We find that in advanced economies significant financial stability risks have mostly come from private sector credit booms rather than from the expansion of public debt."

Time for Krugmanites to pop some champagne? Err, not too fast: "However, we find evidence that high levels of public debt have tended to exacerbate the effects of private sector deleveraging after crises, leading to more prolonged periods of economic depression."

Wait, what? A state indebted to the point of losing its shirt (or rather default on pay awards to trade unionised workers and retirees) imposes cost on private sector that can be detrimental during private sector own deleveraging? Yeah, you betcha. It is called power of taxation. Just as during the current crisis the Governments world wide gave no damn as to whether you and I can pay kids schools fees, health insurance and mortgages, so it was thus before.

"We uncover three key facts based on our analysis of around 150 recessions and recoveries since 1870:

  1. in a normal recession and recovery real GDP per capita falls by 1.5 percent and takes only 2 years to regain its previous peak, but in a financial crisis recession the drop is typically 5 percent and it takes over 5 years to regain the previous peak; 
  2. the output drop is even worse and recovery even slower when the crisis is preceded by a credit boom; and 
  3. the path of recovery is worse still when a credit-fuelled crisis coincides with elevated public debt levels. Recent experience in the advanced economies provides a useful out-of-sample comparison, and meshes closely with these historical patterns. Fiscal space appears to be a constraint in the aftermath of a crisis, then and now."


Now, take a more in-depth tour of the changes in fiscal and private non-financial debt across 17 advanced economies since 1870s:


Oh, yeah… 1950s and 1960s public deleveraging was done by leveraging up the real economy. And it didn't stop there. It got much much worse… instead of deleveraging one side of the economy, both public and private sides continued to binge on debt. Through the present crisis.

So "what does the long-run historical evidence say about the prevalence and effects of private and public debt booms and overhangs? Do high levels of public debt affect business cycle dynamics, as the public debt overhang literature argues? Are the effects of either variety of debt overhang more pronounced after financial crisis recessions?"

So here are the results:



So the results provide "…a first look at over 100 years of the inter-relationships of private credit and sovereign debt. We end with five main conclusions":

  1. "…while public debt has grown in most countries in recent decades, the extraordinary growth of private sector debt (bank loans) is chiefly responsible for the strong increase of total liabilities in Western economies. About two thirds of the increase in total economy debt originated in the private sector. ...Sovereign and bank debts have generally been inversely correlated over the long run, but have increased jointly since the 1970s. In modern times, the Bretton-Woods period stands out as the only period of sustained public debt reduction, both in expansions and recessions."
  2. "…in advanced economies financial stability risks originate primarily in the private sector rather than in the public sector. To understand the driving forces of financial crises one has to study private borrowing and its problems. In the very long run, if we run a horse race between the impact of changes or run-ups in private credit (bank loans) and sovereign debt as a predictor of financial crisis and its associated distress, private credit is the more significant predictor; sovereign debt adds little predictive information. This fits with the events of 2008 well: with the exception of fiscal malfeasance in Greece most other advanced countries did not have obvious public debt problems ex ante. Of course, ex post, the fierce financial crisis recession would wreak havoc on public finances via crashing revenues and rising cyclical expenditures."
  3. "…with a broader and longer sample we confirm that private debt overhangs are a regular feature of the modern business cycle. We find that once a country does enter a recession, whether it is an ordinary type or a financial-crisis type of recession, if it carries the legacy of a large private credit boom then the post-recession output path of the economy is typically adversely affected with slower growth."
  4. "…our new data also allow us to see the distinct contribution of public debt overhangs. We find evidence that high levels of public debt matter for the path of economies out of recessions, confirming the results of Reinhart et al. (2012). But the negative effects of high public debt on the performance of the economy arise specifically after financial crises and in particular when private borrowing also ran high. While high levels of public debt make little difference in normal times, entering a financial crisis recession with an elevated level of public debt exacerbates the effects of private sector deleveraging and typically leads to a prolonged period of sub-par economic performance." In other words, not too fast on that champagne, Krugmanites… 
  5. "…from a macroeconomic policy standpoint these findings could inform ongoing efforts to devise better guides to monetary, fiscal, and financial policies going forward…" blah… blah… blah… we can stop here.

Funny how no one can get the right idea, though - the reason public debt matters is because the state always has a first call on all resources. As the result, the state faces a choice at any point of deleveraging cycle:

  • (A) leverage up the State to allow deleveraging of the real economy; or
  • (B) tax there real economy to deleverage the State.

In the US, the choice has been (A) in 2008-2014. In Europe, it has been (B). The thing is: both Europe and US are soon going to face another set of fine choices:

  • (Y) reduce profligacy in the long run to deleverage the State; or
  • (Z) get the feeding trough of pork barrel politics rocking again.

No prizes for guessing which one they both will make… after all, they did so from 1970s on, and there are elections to win and seats to occupy...

Friday, December 26, 2014

26/12/2014: Advanced Economies: Public Debt Explosion 2008-2014


Some interesting insight into the legacy of the Great Recession that we are carrying over into 2015. From the start of 2008 through 2014:

  • Average increase in gross debt of all advanced economies was 27.2 percentage points of GDP, with a range from a decrease of 21 percentage points for Norway and an increase of 88.5 percentage points for Ireland. Thus, the average annualised rate of increase in government debt over the period was around 3.47 percentage points of GDP with a range of -2.76 percentage points annualised decline for Norway and a 9.48 percentage points annualised increase in Ireland.
  • Average change in the gross government debt of the group of countries where debt declined over the crisis was -12.0 percentage points of GDP. There were only 3 countries in this group.
  • Average increase in gross government debt of the group of countries with benign levels of increase (levels of increase consistent roughly with offsetting GDP contraction over the crisis period) was 4.8 percentage points of GDP. There were only 5 countries in this group and only two of these were in Europe, with none (at the time of the crisis onset) being members of the euro area.
  • Average increase in gross government debt within the group of countries where debt rises were moderately in excess of contraction in the economy was 16.4 percentage points of GDP.
  • Average increase in gross government debt within the group of countries with debt increases significantly in excess of economic contraction was 26.6 percent of GDP.
  • Average increase in the government debt within the group of countries with severe debt overhang was 60.4 percentage points of GDP, with a range of increases in this group between 41.6% for the U.S. at the lower end and 88.5% of GDP for Ireland at a higher end.



Chart above summarises these facts and also highlights the extent to which Ireland's government debt increases were out of line with experience in all other countries, including Greece and all other 'peripheral' economies.

The average rise in gross government debt across all peripheral economies 2008-2014 was 56.5 percentage points of GDP (excluding Ireland), which is more than 1/3 lower than that for Ireland. Our closest competitor to the dubious title of worst performing sovereign in terms of debt accumulation is Greece, which experienced a debt/GDP ratio increase almost 1/4 lower than Ireland.

And in case you wonder, our Government's net debt position is not much better:


Monday, May 19, 2014

17/5/2014: Debt, Equity & Global Financial Assets Stocks


An amazing chart via McKinsey and BIS showing the distribution of financial assets by class and overall stocks of financial assets. These are covering the period through Q3 2013.


What we can learn from this?

  1. Stock of financial assets might seem absurdly high compared to overall economic activity, but it is not that much out of line with longer term growth trends. Between 2000 and 2014 the world GDP is expected to grow from USD32,731.439 billion to USD76,776.008 billion, a rise of 135%. Over 2000-2013, stock of financial assets rose at least 124%.
  2. However, in composition terms, the assets are geared toward debt and especially sovereign debt. Public Debt securities are up in volumes 243% - almost double the rate of economic growth. Financial institutions bonds are up 144% - faster than economic growth. Private non-financial sectors debt is up from USD43 trillion to USD 91 trillion - a rise of 112%. Total debt is up from USD73 trillion to USD178 trillion or 144% so within debt group of assets, public debt is off the charts in growth terms.


There is much deleveraging that took place in the global economy over the recent years. All of it was painful. But there is no way current levels of debt, globally, can be sustained. 

Sunday, March 9, 2014

9/3/2014: Financial Repression, Debt Crises & Debt Restructuring: R&R Strike Again


According to Reinhart and Rogoff recent (December 2013) paper "Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Those Forgotten" (by Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, IMF Working Paper WP/13/266, December 2013 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp13266.pdf) many economies in the advanced world will require defaults, as well as drastic measures of Financial Repression, including savings taxes and higher inflation as debt levels reach a 200-year high.

You can read the entire paper, so I am just going to summarise some core points, albeit at length.


R&R open up with a statement that is more of a warning against our complacency than a claim of our arrogance: "Even after one of the most severe crises on record (in its fifth year as of 2012) in the advanced world, the received wisdom in policy circles clings to the notion that advanced, wealthy economies are completely different animals from their emerging market counterparts. Until 2007–08, the presumption was that they were not nearly as vulnerable to financial crises. When events disabused the world of that notion, the idea still persisted that if a financial crisis does occur, advanced countries are much better at managing the aftermath..."

This worldview is also not holding, according to R&R: "Even as the recovery consistently proved to be far weaker than most forecasters were expecting, policymakers continued to underestimate the depth and duration of the downturn."

The focal point of this delusional thinking is Europe, "…where the financial crisis transformed into sovereign debt crises in several countries, the current phase of the denial cycle is marked by an official policy approach predicated on the assumption that normal growth can be restored through a mix of austerity, forbearance, and growth."

The point is that European (and other advanced economies' policymakers are deceiving the public (and themselves), believing that they "…do not need to apply the standard toolkit used by emerging markets, including debt restructurings, higher inflation, capital controls, and significant financial repression. Advanced countries do not resort to such gimmicks, policymakers say. To do so would be to give up hard-earned credibility, thereby destabilizing expectations and throwing the economy into a vicious circle."

Note: per R&R "“Financial repression” includes directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulation of cross-border capital movements, and generally a tighter connection between government and banks. It often masks a subtle type of debt restructuring."

The warning that stems from the above is that "It is certainly true that policymakers need to manage public expectations. However, by consistently choosing instruments and calibrating responses based on overly optimistic medium-term scenarios, they risk ultimately losing credibility and destabilizing expectations rather than the reverse."

It is worth noting as a separate point in addition to the above issues that:

  1. Financial repression in its traditional means (forcing public debt into investment portfolio of captive funds, such as pension funds, reducing real returns on savings, tax on savings, bail-ins of private investors etc) in the case of the advanced economies are running against demographic changes, such as ageing of these societies. Just as the economies reliance on savings and pensions rises, financial repression is cutting into the economies savings and pensions.
  2. Higher inflation is associated with higher interest rates in the longer term, which can have a devastating impact on debt-burdened households. Hence, deleveraging of the sovereigns cuts against the objective of deleveraging the real economy (households and companies). This is most pronounced in the case of countries like Ireland.
  3. Strong point from R&R on austerity. In many cases, advanced economies debate about austerity is 0:1 - either 'do austerity' or 'do expansionary fiscal policy'. This is superficial. Per R&R: "Although austerity in varying degrees is necessary, in many cases it is not sufficient to cope with the sheer magnitude of public and private debt overhangs."


So the key lessons from the past are as follows.

Lesson 1: "On prevention versus crisis management. We have done better at the latter than the former. It is doubtful that this will change as memories of the crisis fade and financial market participants and their regulators become complacent."

Figure 1. Varieties of Crises: World Aggregate, 1900–2010
A composite index of banking, currency, sovereign default, and inflation crises (BCDI), and stock market crashes (BCDI+stock) (weighted by their share of world income)


Lesson 2: "On diagnosing and understanding the scope and depth of the risks and magnitudes of the debt. What is public and what is private? Domestic and external debt are not created equal. And debt is usually MUCH bigger than what meets the eye."

R&R are not shying away from the bold statements (in my view - completely warranted): "The magnitude of the overall debt problem facing advanced economies today is difficult to overstate. The mix of an aging society, an expanding social welfare state, and stagnant population growth would be difficult in the best of circumstances. This burden has been significantly compounded by huge increases in government debt in the wake of the crisis, illustrated in Figure 2. …As the figure illustrates, the emerging markets actually deleveraged in the decade before the financial crisis, whereas advanced economies hit a peak not seen since the end of World War II. In fact, going back to 1800, the current level of central government debt in advanced economies is approaching a two-century high-water mark."

Figure 2. Gross Central Government Debt as a Percentage of GDP: Advanced and Emerging Market Economies, 1900–2011 (unweighted average)

Things are even worse when it comes to external debt, as Figure 3 illustrates.

Figure 3. Gross Total (Public plus Private) External Debt as a Percentage of GDP: 22 advanced and 25 Emerging Market Economies, 1970–2011

Note the 'exponential' trend on the chart above since the 1990s...

This is non-trivial (as per Figure 2 conclusions). "The distinction between external debt and domestic debt can be quite important. Domestic debt issued in domestic currency typically offers a far wider range of partial default options than does foreign currency–denominated external debt. Financial repression has already been mentioned; governments can stuff debt into local pension funds and insurance companies, forcing them through regulation to accept far lower rates of return than they might otherwise demand. But domestic debt can also be reduced through inflation."

And, as Figure 4 illustrates, public and external debts overhang are just the beginning of the troubles: "the explosion of private sector debt before the financial crisis. Unlike central government debt, for which the series are remarkably stationary over a two-century period, private sector debt shows a marked upward trend due to financial innovation and globalization, punctuated by volatility caused by periods of financial repression and financial liberalization."

Figure 4. Private Domestic Credit as a Percentage of GDP, 1950–2011 (22 Advanced and 28 Emerging Market Economies)


Lesson 3: "Crisis resolution. How different are advanced economies and emerging markets? Not as different as is widely believed."

R&R (2013) show "five ways to reduce large debt-to-GDP ratios (Box1). Most historical episodes have involved some combination of these."



As R&R note, "the first on the list is relatively rare and the rest are difficult and unpopular." But more ominously, "recent policy discussion has tended to forget options (3) and (5), arguing that advanced countries do not behave that way. In fact, option (5) was used extensively by advanced countries to deal with post–World War II debt (Reinhart and Sbrancia, 2011) and option (3) was common enough before World War II."

Beyond the fact that the two measures have precedent in modern history of the advanced economies, there is also the issue of the current crisis being of greater magnitude than previous ones.

"Given the magnitude of today’s debt and the likelihood of a sustained period of sub-par average growth, it is doubtful that fiscal austerity will be sufficient, even combined with financial repression. Rather, the size of the problem suggests that restructurings will be needed, particularly, for example, in the periphery of Europe, far beyond anything discussed in public to this point. Of course, mutualization of euro country debt effectively uses northern country taxpayer resources to bail out the periphery and reduces the need for restructuring. But the size of the overall problem is such that mutualization could potentially result in continuing slow growth or even recession in the core countries, magnifying their own already challenging sustainability problems for debt and old age benefit programs."


The authors conclude that "…if policymakers are fortunate, economic growth will provide a soft exit, reducing or eliminating the need for painful restructuring, repression, or inflation. But the evidence on debt overhangs is not heartening. Looking just at the public debt overhang, and not
taking into account old-age support programs, the picture is not encouraging. Reinhart, Reinhart, and Rogoff (2012) consider 26 episodes in which advanced country debt exceeded 90 percent of GDP, encompassing most or all of the episodes since World War II. (They tabulate the small number of cases in which the debt overhang lasted less than five years, but do not include these in their overhang calculations.) They find that debt overhang episodes averaged 1.2 percent lower growth than individual country averages for non-overhang periods. Moreover, the average duration of the overhang episodes is 23 years. Of course, there are many other factors that determine longer-term GDP growth, including especially the rate of productivity growth. But given that official public debt is only one piece of the larger debt overhang issue, it is clear that governments should be careful in their assumption that growth alone will be able to end the crisis. Instead, today’s advanced country governments may have to look increasingly to the approaches that have long been associated with emerging markets, and that advanced countries themselves once practiced not so long ago."


What R&R are showing in their paper is that Financial Repression already underway is hardly inconsistent with the potential for further restructuring and repression. They also show that the current crisis is still unresolved and ongoing and that the current de-acceleration in crisis dynamics is not necessarily a sign of sustained recovery: things are much longer term than 1-2 years of growth can correct for. In the mean time, as we know, the EU continues on the path of shifting more and more future crisis liabilities onto the shoulders of savers and investors, while offloading more and more public debt overhang costs onto the shoulders of taxpayers. All along, the media and our politicians keep talking down the risks of future bailouts, bail-ins and structural pain (lower growth rates, higher interest rates, higher rates of private insolvencies).


Note: You can read more on the rather lively debate about the effects of debt on growth by searching this blog for "Reinhart & Rogoff" Some of the links are here:


Friday, January 10, 2014

10/1/2014: Top 5 Global Economic Risks of 2014: Sunday Times, January 5

This is an unedited version of my Sunday Times column for January 5, 2013.


2014 is the year of hope, arriving on foot of a renewed momentum in the economies of the U.S., U.K. and, since the beginning of the last quarter, the euro area. As welcome as these positive developments might be, any serious case for the economic fortunes revival in 2014 will have to stand against a rigorous analysis of risks and opportunities that are likely to emerge this year. Some are short-term; others are longer running themes signifying profound evolutionary transformations in the world of advanced economies.

Here are my top five picks for the economic risks and opportunities that are likely to mark 2014 the Year of Change.


1. Growth Challenge in Advanced Economies:

Core challenge faced by Ireland over 2014 and beyond is delivering sustainable rates of growth in excess of those recorded over the last decade.

Looking at growth in the GDP per capita reveals several worrisome trends.

Irish growth rates from 2005-through 2013 are running below the levels observed during 1980-1994. With a period of structural catching up with the euro area standard of living well behind us, the task ahead for Ireland is finding new sources for long-term growth.

The above challenges are compounded by the fact that our core trading partners are experiencing structural slowdown in their own economies. We are witnessing continued structural decline in the longer-term rates of growth in real GDP per capita across the advanced economies of the euro area that started in 1995. More immediately, the US and UK economies' recovery in the wake of the latest recession is slow, compared to the recessions experienced in the early 1990s and 1980s. Thus, Ireland is also facing the challenges of opening up new geographies, beyond our traditional trading partners in advanced economies, for exports and shifting more indigenous firms to exporting.

Currently, Irish medium-term growth outlook (2014-2018) implies growth rates that are some 3 times lower than those recorded in 1990s. A sustainable recovery from the crisis will require us delivering economic growth rates closer to those attained in the 1990s. Meanwhile, we are struggling to reach growth levels of the 1980s.



2. Medium-term Changes in Employment and Skills Demand

Significant reshaping of the advanced economies' labour force expected in 2012-2022 reflects the shifts in growth toward more human capital-intensive growth.

Increasing specialisation is changing Manufacturing and challenging both the U.S. companies operating in Ireland and Irish indigenous producers. In addition, the ICT Services sector is increasing demand for narrowly-defined specialist capabilities, leading to accelerating depreciation of the ICT sector skills and potential for reduction in overall levels of employment in the sector. The resulting contraction in demand for older skills will be magnified by the widening gap between in-demand new workers and legacy ICT employees.

The downsizing of the state sector will continue. The first wave of reductions during the Great Recession was driven by organic attrition, implying little improvement in productivity amidst staff losses. In the December Gallup poll, 72 percent of U.S. respondents identified 'Big Government' as the biggest threat to the country future, up from 52 percent in 2009. In Ireland, per Edelman Trust Barometer, trust in Government has remained at 15 percent in 2012-2013, ranking the Government alongside the banks as the least trusted institutions. The next wave will see a push for improved productivity, resulting in gradual reduction in employment levels in the sector and simultaneous shift in demand toward higher-skilled public sector workers.

On the other hand, Ireland is likely to gain from the Leisure and Hospitality, and Healthcare sectors growth on foot of ageing population across the major economies. The latter presents both a challenge and a major opportunity. Capturing global demand growth for Healthcare and Social Assistance services will require greater deployment of e-Health, remote health and other data-intensive, ICT-reliant healthcare tools. We are also likely to gain from renewed capital investment in the wake of strengthening global economic recovery. Financial services (chiefly IFSC), and Professional and Business services (especially innovation-focused internationally traded services), will gear up for rising demand. Education will remain a core driver for skills development and human capital investment.



3. Governments' Leverage Up, Banks Leverage Down

With its banking sector deleveraging largely completed, the U.S. economy is enjoying a credit-driven recovery. Both, the U.S. banks and the Federal Government are also increasing their access to global funding markets.

In contrast to the U.S., euro area banks are continuing deleveraging, while financial fragmentation is pushing national banks into greater isolation. With credit on decline for nineteen consecutive months, euro area economies remain starved of working and investment capital and capital markets integration is rapidly collapsing.

All along, buildup in public debt continues unabated without delivering a meaningful uplift in domestic investment activities. While in the U.S. public debt increases are supporting public investment and private consumption, euro area government leveraging up is primarily funding unemployment supports, public pensions and banks, with share of investment spending in total Government expenditure declining. As the result, euro area gross investment as percentage of GDP has declined from 21 percent over 2000-2002 to less than 18 percent in 2013. In the advanced economies ex-euro area gross investment slightly rose from just under 24 percent of GDP in 2000-2002 to 24.2 percent in 2013.

These trends act to reduce Irish exports of capital goods and investment-related services and undercut availability of credit in the domestic economy. The risk for 2014 is that the forces of financial fragmentation will remain at play across the euro area. The opportunity is the market readiness for entry of new investment and lending intermediaries.



4. Irish Labour Income Trends

Between 2008 and 2013, labour income share of Irish GDP has declined from 48 percent to 41 percent, implying a loss of roughly EUR3.3 billion in the domestic economy. This decline was driven primarily by re-orientation of GDP growth away from labour-intensive domestic sectors to MNCs-led exports of ICT and financial services.

As the result, declines in labour income have outpaced declines in value added in the economy, implying a transfer of income from the employees to the corporate and state sectors.

Taxes increases have compounded this effect, leading to a significant decline in household investment and consumption.

Over 2014-2016, Ireland faces a major challenge in rebuilding household financial positions and income to achieve sustainable levels of household debt, private investment and consumption. This can only be delivered by reducing the burden of taxation faced by the households, which puts us straight on the collision path between our corporate and wealth taxation policies, and the income tax policies reforms needed to restart the domestic economy.

Good news: by taking radical approach to rebalancing our tax system, we can do both – deliver sustainability-focused reforms and reboot the domestic economy. Bad news: our political and economic elites are too reliant on the status quo to secure their power to be able to structure and implement such reforms.



5. Monetary Policy Unraveling

2014 will mark the beginning of the end to unorthodox monetary policies deployed during the crisis.

This month, the U.S. Fed will begin gradual tapering of its purchases of the Government bonds. In advance of this, futures on 3 months Treasuries have been losing value since November. Meanwhile, euribor - the interest rate charged by top euro area banks for loans to each other - has been moving up relative to the ECB policy rate.

The ECB rates have now been in divergence from their historical mean for record 60 months. For now, Frankfurt is concerned with deflationary risks in the economy. Short-term eurodollar 3 month forward curve is pricing in euro devaluation in the short term and higher yields in the U.S. However, the return to historical norms for the ECB is only a matter of time. This will see rates rising over time toward the pre-crisis average of 3 percent from the current 0.25 percent.

For Ireland, normalisation of monetary policies presents significant risks. Rising interest rates, especially if compounded by the banks' drive to increase their lending margins, can derail nascent recovery, depress investment and destabilise once again the residential mortgages, including many that are deemed to have been ‘sustainably restructured’ prior to interest rates rises. In addition, higher yields on Government bonds will take a huge toll on Exchequer finances.

Unless this re-pricing in the bonds markets comes at the time of high growth in the Irish economy, the process of unwinding of global accommodative monetary policies can put us through a severe test, possibly as early as late 2014.


Monday, January 21, 2013

21/1/2013: Fitch: Ageing Costs: The Second Fiscal Crisis


One theme I've been tracking over some time now is the longer-term state liabilities.

Here's a note from Fitch on the matter:

"Without the implementation of mitigating reforms the median country analysed in our new report today is projected to see its budget worsen by 0.6% of GDP by 2020 and 4.9% of GDP by 2050. Consequently, many of these countries would experience escalating government debt-to-GDP ratios, with the average EU27 debt-to-GDP projected by Fitch to rise by 6.9% by 2020 and 119.4% by 2050."

and...

"According to the model, Japan, Ireland and Cyprus face the largest jump in ageing costs over the next decade..."

 http://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/detail.cfm?pr_id=780121&cm_mmc=Twitter-_-AgeingCosts-_-NRAC-_-20130121

Here's a summary table:

And a chart summarising policy pressures:

Guess how we are doing in terms of mitigating pensions pressures? Oh, not too well to begin with and are getting worse:

So what measures does Fitch list as Ireland's mitigation means so far planned?

"Tax relief on private pension contributions; Abolition of exemption from contribution to public pension scheme for low-wage earners; Pension levy on public sector wages; Reduction in pension tax privileges. Eligibility age for various pension schemes increased."