30/5/2014: That State-Sanctioned Inflation Tax...

There is much to be analysed in the Irish Retail Sales figures for January-April 2014, updated by the CSO this week. And I intend to do so on this pages at a later time.

But one thing jumps out: taking data for Q2 2014 to-date (in other words, looking at April performance), and comparing this against all previous Q2 data (monthly averages for April-June) gives a bit of a shocker:

Per chart above, since the onset of the crisis (from the peak) through today, both values of retail sales and volumes of retail sales have declined. With exception of food, these declines have been pretty sharp and despite some improvements in recent months, they remain sharp.

But, in all cases, across all broad categories of goods traded, retail sales have fallen more by value than by volume. This means that retailers have been selling less in terms of actual volumes of goods, but are receiving even less in terms of revenues for these goods sold. Of course this means two things:

1. There is on-going deflation in those sectors where value declines are steeper than volume declines; and more importantly
2. There are lower margins (and lower investment and hiring) in the segments where (1) takes place.

Yet, two segments of goods stand out from this picture: Bars and Automotive Fuel. In both, value of sales declined less than volume. In other words, less is being charged for these goods, but even less is being supplied. That is a signifier of rising cost of provision of same goods at retail level - or in plain terms - real, actual inflation. Now, both sub-categories are witnessing two sub-trends:

1. Inputs costs in both are not rising at any appreciable rate (fuel inflation relating to oil prices is relatively low over time considered, and drink industry is seeing lower factory gate prices, not higher);
2. Taxes on both are rising, at various stages of supply chain.

In other words, the chart above shows that in Irish economy, the inflation tax is being forced through heavily taxed sectors where the State extracts the lion's share of final cost of goods supplied to consumers.

The above also puts under serious questions the bars industry lobby claims that there is a need for high level minimum pricing on alcohol. Their sector, it appears, has been hit by a drop in demand and not by a drop in prices. In fact, if anything, ceteris paribus, their sector might benefit from lower prices - charging punters 7 quid per pint of domestic beer is not a good way to improve your sales, you know...

29/5/2014: Earnings in Ireland: Something's Fishy in that Murky Water?..

Average weekly hours and earnings were released by CSO this week, covering Q1 2014 data. Remember, these are delivered in the context of reportedly growing employment and accelerating economic activity, right?

Ok, top-line observations: y/y average weekly earnings are down 0.4% or EUR2.66/week (EUR138.32 per annum, assuming paid holidays and not adjusting for working hours etc, but you get the point: in 2013 a person earning average weekly earnings level of salary would have had EUR2,346 per month in disposable after-tax income, in 2014 they have EUR2,341 per month).

Worse than that, the decline in weekly earnings was driven by a drop in average hourly earnings (down 0.5% y/y) against flat hours worked (31.2 hours/week on average). In other words, we are creating jobs in tens of thousands, but seemingly there is no pressure on hours worked and there is downward pressure on hourly earnings.

Were these changes down to cuts in bonuses, perhaps?

Well, no: excluding irregular earnings, average hourly earnings fell 0.6% y/y. So if you work in a job where bonuses are not present, congratulations, the economic recovery is biting into your earnings even more. It is worth noting that this trend is not uniform in the economy: private sector hourly earnings rose 0.6% but public sector earnings fell 2.5% year on year. And steepest increases in earnings took place in enterprises with less than 50 employees (+2.3% y/y), while steepest declines took place in enterprises with 50-250 employees (-2.9% y/y). Large enterprises saw average hourly earnings excluding irregular earnings fall 1.6%.

So short term falls in earnings are down to public sector and larger enterprises...

Of course, earnings can be volatile even y/y, so here is a handy comparative for earnings changes on Q1 2010:

Per CSO: "Across the economic sectors average weekly earnings increased in 7 of the 13 sectors in the year to Q1 2014, with the largest percentage increase in the Construction sector (+10.2%) from €639.35 to €704.41.  The largest percentage sectoral decrease in weekly earnings was recorded in the Education sector (-2.7%) from €814.12 to €792.03. Between Q1 2010 and Q1 2014 average weekly earnings across individual sectors show changes ranging between -6.3% for the Education sector from €845.59 to €792.03 and +13.6% for the Information and communication sector from €915.94 to €1,040.10"

Still, Public Admin & Defence are down just 0.1% on Q1 2010... shrinking Industry is doing swimmingly, as does Finance & Insurance & Real Estate...

On last bit: average working hours were unchanged y/y in private sector, but up 2.3% in public sector. Which is worrisome - rising employment in private sector should lift hours ahead of numbers employed, by all possible logic, since hiring more workers is costlier than letting those employed work longer hours for the same or even higher pay. Still, hours are static y/y, and are up by only 0.1 hour on Q1 2010... Puzzling... Worse: working hours are unchanged y/y and down on Q1 2010 for smaller firms, where wages pressures seem to be highest.

This simply does not gel well with the numbers of tens of thousands of new employees, unless, of course, new employees are working fewer and fewer hours...

24/5/2014: UofL Student Wins Worldwide Alltech Young Scientist Competition

Some excellent news from the Irish knowledge 'economy' (society, really) front:

Gillian Johnson, from the University of Limerick, was the winner of the undergraduate competition run by Alltech Young Scientist Program. Johnson’s research work focused on comparative genomic identification and characterisation of a novel β-defensin gene cluster in the equine genome.

Gillian won in the field of more than 8,500 participants, representing the future generation of animal, human and plant health scientists from around the world.

In the graduate category, winner was Lei Wang, originally from China and currently completing her PhD studies in the United States with the University of West Virginia. Wang’s research work focused on novel functional roles of oocyte-specific nuclear transporter (Kpna7) in relation to developmental competency of rainbow trout oocyte and early embryo.


To participate in the program, students wrote a scientific paper that focused on an aspect of animal health and feed technology. The first phase of the program included a competition within each competing country, followed by a zone competition. The winners of each zone moved on to a regional phase and the regional winners competed in the global phase.

The Alltech Young Scientist Program is currently taking applicants for its 2015 competition. To enter, visit www.alltechyoungscientist.com.

22/5/2014: Labor Mobility within Currency Unions & some Implications for Ireland

A very interesting theoretical paper "Labor Mobility within Currency Unions " by Emmanuel Farhi and Iván Werning, April 2014 (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2436714) looks at "the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities."

The departing point for the paper is Mundell (1961) famous dictum that labor mobility must be a precondition for optimal currency areas. In support of this dictum, the U.S. "enjoys relatively high mobility and has proven to be a successful currency union. Mobility is arguably much lower within the Eurozone, which sunk into trouble scarcely ten years after its inauguration." Of course, despite the shallower extent of mobility in Europe, EU policymakers repeatedly cite free mobility regime for labour within the EU as a major cornerstone of the EU and, thus, by corollary - to the functioning or the promise of functioning of the euro zone.

Despite all the intuition behind Mundell's proposition, there is little formal research connecting mobility with macroeconomic adjustments in a currency union setting.

Farhi and Werning "set up a currency union model featuring nominal rigidities and incorporate labor mobility across the different regions (or countries) that compose the currency union." The paper tackles "…two related questions. First, does mobility help stabilize macroeconomic conditions across regions in a union? Second, is equilibrium mobility socially optimal?"

The study does not quite confirm Mundell's proposition, but its findings "…are consistent with a potential important role for mobility. Workers migrating away from depressed regions naturally benefit from the option to pick up and go somewhere better. The interesting and less obvious question is whether their exodus also helps those that stay behind. That is, whether it aids in the macroeconomic adjustment of regions. A major insight of our analysis is that the answer to this question is subtle because workers leaving a region depart not only with their labor, but also with their purchasing power."

This leads to a divergent set of outcomes depending on the source of the original shock to the economy. If the demand shock comes from internal (region-specific) shock (like, for example, in the case of Ireland where property crash led to massive disruptions in domestic demand and where domestic demand continued to shrink every year since 2008, uninterrupted), the authors find that "…migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment." How so? "…we provide a benchmark case where migration has no effect on the per-capita allocations across regions. For this benchmark, the entire demand shortfall in depressed regions is internal, located within the non-tradable sector [again, think Irish construction, property and retail sectors, and associated banking sector bust]. When workers migrate out of a depressed region local labor supply is reduced, but so is the demand non-traded goods, which, in turn, lowers the demand for labor. The two effects cancel, leaving the situation for stayers unchanged."

In contrast, "…when external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of depressed regions may produce a positive spillover for stayers." This, of course, applies to economies like Portugal and Cyprus, where external shocks are the main drivers for the crisis. When depressed regions also suffer from external demand shortfalls, "…migration out of depressed regions may help improve the region’s macroeconomic outcome. For example, at the opposite end of the spectrum, suppose regions only produce traded goods and that there is no home bias in the demand for these goods. The demand for each region’s product is then determined entirely by external demand at the union level, and internal demand plays no special role. In this case, migration out of a depressed region improves the outcome of stayers by increasing their employment, income and consumption."

On a positive side, from Ireland's point of view: "…the degree of economic openness (how much regions trade with one another) turns out to be a key parameter. Openness was proposed by McKinnon (1963) as another precondition for an optimal currency area." Except, of course, as we in Ireland are fully aware, openness can be real (e.g. Swiss exporting indigenous output that is matched by the MNCs exporting out of Switzerland) and accounting (e.g. Irish exports of ICT services or phrama).


Lastly, it is worth noting that the paper does not consider rigidities beyond those present in the pricing mechanisms. Thus, for example, labour laws are not included and neither are hiring practices or promotional practices that can severely skew flows of labour.

23/5/2014: Another 'Big Deal' of the Russian Week

Thought the Russian gas deal with China was a 'biggy'... at USD400-440 billion valuation (over 30 years) it is. And here are some of the details: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2014/05/2152014-russia-china-gas-deal.html

Welcome to the big numbers week for Russia. Today, Lukoil and Total announced a new deal for developing Bazhnov Shale Oil Field: http://www.lukoil.ru/press_6_5div__id_21_1id_24775_.html

The field (dating to Jurassic deposits) was discovered 45 years ago back in 1968 by an accident, the field is currently being developed by a number of companies, including a partnership between Rosneft and ExxonMobil, and Salym Petroleum - a JV between Shell and Gazprom Neft.

So far, reported recoverable reserves are officially booked at 3.5 billion barrels (500 million metric tonnes). Official estimates are for daily yields of 1-2 million barrels per day by the end of this decade. For comparative, US North Dakota aims to reach production levels of 1.2 million barrels per day by 2015 - this is the largest US shale oil play at this time. Its biggest field - Bakken - is small comapred to Bazhenov (see here one older report: http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2012/06/04/bakken-bazhenov-shale-oil/ and an FT report on same: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/17e0e3d0-25c6-11e3-aee8-00144feab7de.html#axzz32YDYxj72).

Overall estimates put Bazhenov reserves at between 20 billion barrels and 950 billion -1 trillion barrels, which runs into recoverable equivalents of up to 160-170 billion barrels. Merill Lynch 2013 assessment estimated reserves at 75 billion barrels (recoverable , EIU estimates from 2013 show Bazhenov recoverable reserves at between 3.7 and 14.8 billion barrels of light crude. At mid-point (excluding outlandishly large 160bn estimate), this implies some 40 billion barrels worth around USD3.3 trillion at past decade averages. Which puts into perspective that USD440 billion gas deal.

At the upper end of this estimate, Bazhnov field pushes to 4 times Saudi Arabia's oil reserves or roughly 30 years of world supply at current demand levels. This is why IEA considers Bazhenov field as the world's largest source of shale. Of course, Russia is already producing more oil than Saudi Arabia with daily production of 10.3 million barrels per day and Russian most productive fields - those of West Siberia, like Salym group, are declining, with production dropping at an average of 2% annually.

Here's the map of Russia's main oil producing regions:

Bazhenov covers roughly 1/3rd of the West Siberian basin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USGS_-_Bazhenov_Formation_Oil_Reservoir.png)

But back to the Russia-China gas deal... there is huge legacy infrastructure network linking Europe with Western Siberian basin, and virtually no networks linking it to the Asia-Pacific. With the gas agreement signed this week, this is about to start changing. Which means that the gas deal will promise to wire shale oil and gas reserves of the entire Siberia into the massive AP markets, providing two key deliverables for Russia:

1. Diversification of demand, linking more closely pricing in the Western European markets (stagnant of economic growth and demographic expansion) to that of dynamic AP. Russia wins in this scenario big time, as it will no longer be held hostage to the declining macroeconomic fortunes of the EU.
2. Head-on competition with North America (where LNG and oil shipments will have to go via sea transport as opposed to pipe in Russian case).

Europe also wins, as the second point above will help contain energy price inflation in the EU as North Sea production declines in decades ahead.

The point that is being missed on the Russia-China deal by many analysts is that, politics aside, Russia will benefit from a massive shifting of economic activity East - to the regions rich in resources and starving of infrastructure to develop them. With this shift, Russian social development also will gain - the sparsely populated expanses of Eastern Siberia can do with the population growth that can happen on foot of large and sustained capex uplift. 

23/5/2014: An Icy Gust from the IBRC's Promo Notes Past...

So Irish Central Bank pre-sold EUR350 million worth of 'Anglo' bonds that were due to be sold under its minimum commitment to sell EUR500 million worth of bonds in 2014. Except it pre-sold them back in 2013... Here is the original Bloomberg report on the matter:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-05-01/irish-central-bank-said-to-mull-faster-2014-bank-aid-bond-sales.html

Why is this important?

Remember, the EUR25 billion worth of 'Anglo' Government bonds held by the Central Bank after the February 2013 'deal' or swap of Promissory Notes for bonds carries with it a commitment to sell minimum required volume of bonds annually to the market.

Here's Minister Noonan on this:

Also, remember, the bonds held on Central Bank balancesheet accrue interest payments from the Government that the Central Bank subsequently 'returns' as divided to the state (having taken its 'cost' margin out to pay for necessary things, like, new HQs building etc).

Once the bonds are sold, however, the interest is paid to their private sector holders.

It is likely that the yield on Government bonds sold was somewhere around 3%, which means that Irish taxpayers just spent EUR10.5 million in interest payments that were, put mildly, unnecessary. We were not required to sell these bonds in 2013 and could have waited until 2014 to do so.

Let's put this into proper perspective: EUR35 million was pledged by the Government this month to help resolve homelessness crisis. Laughably small amount, but still - a necessary gesture from the cash-strapped state. This could have been EUR45 million (or more) should the Central Bank not engage in bonds activism.

So why did Professor Honohan go to the markets to sell the bonds back in 2013? The reason is simple: ECB was never too happy with the 'deal' that pushed Ireland dangerously close to using Central Bank to fund the state (IBRC). Accelerating sales of bonds pro forma accelerates Central Bank exit from such an arrangement.

Alas, happy or not, ECB hardly can do anything about unwinding the 'deal' in practice without doing some serious damage to the euro system. That said, we might see Frankfurt ramping up pressure on CBI to accelerate future sales, once the banks stress tests are fully out of the way - in, say, 2015. That will once again bring to our attention the simple fact that the mess that was IBRC did not go away.

Keep in mind that the Government own estimates of the impact of the promo notes deal on government deficits over the short term was the total 'savings' of EUR2,025 million in 2014-2015. Doubling the rate of disposals from current will see this reduced by EUR30 million in two years.

More problems are ahead relating to the interest rates. The bonds are floating rate notes, with yield tied to  6 months euribor http://www.ntma.ie/news/ntma-issues-eight-new-floating-rate-treasury-bonds-in-exchange-for-promissory-notes/ reset every six months.

The problem is that whilst euribor was running at 0.372% back in February 2013, nowadays it is at 0.410% - a difference of 0.038%, which, over EUR25 billion quantum implies annual interest costs increases of some EUR95 million. Most of this is going to be rebated back to the Government via the Central Bank, but with any acceleration in the sales of bonds, this is also going to get eroded.

All in, we are already running below EUR2 billion 2014-2015 'savings' assessed on the Promo Notes deal, and counting...

22/5/2014: Irish Domestic Energy Prices

As you all know, I have been covering the state of affairs when it comes to the state-sanctioned inflation here in Ireland for some time - including in the pages of my now defunct column at the Sunday Times.

Here is the article from the Irish Independent on energy price inflation in Ireland, comparative to the EU: http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/electricity-prices-fourth-highest-in-eu-after-5pc-rise-30294653.html

And the original EU data: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/8-21052014-AP/EN/8-21052014-AP-EN.PDF

Still believe in the benevolence of the State? Or that Irish Government should be running gas & oil resources of this country? Really?

22/5/2014: Poverty in the US Cities: Regional Comparatives

Bloomberg published a fascinating list of 50 US cities with biggest exposure to poverty amongst their populations. The full list is available here: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-poverty-us-cities

Just to make exercise a little different, I grouped them into four main regions. One would expect the results to show South to have highest poverty exposures, the West showing relatively benign poverty, but due to high ethnic diversity and significant presence of minorities, somewhat higher poverty exposure than, say North-East... alas, here are the numbers in full glory.

Ranking in descending order: West shows lowest poverty exposures, followed by the South excluding Florida (different composition of population by age and ethnicity), and so on, until Mid-West comes out the worst, but only as long as we include the State of Michigan (Detroit and Flit being numbers 1 and 2 worst off cities when it comes to poverty).

22/5/2014: Happy Times Roll: Irish Manufacturing Producer Prices

Deflation keeps hammering Irish Manufacturing sector:

Per CSO: year on year, factory gate prices fell 2.7% in April 2014, compared with a decrease of 3.1% in the year to March 2014, including

• a decrease of 3.1% in the price index for export sales (subject to potential effects of currency fluctuations) and 
• a decrease of 0.6% in respect of the price index for home sales.

Nothing to worry about, folks, this economy is gaining strength and momentum all of the time... PMIs booming and producers confidence is rising (if you ask IBEC).

22/5/2014: Paging Super Mario: Cleanup in the German Isle

Remember the OMT - the ballistic missile Super Mario fired in the direction of the markets to calm the hell out of them and dramatically lower the bond yields for the countries saddled with the likes of the FG/LP/Troika coalitions (known colloquially as 'peripherals')?

Well, those pesky Germans never really liked the idea and as we all know (past history is a good indicator) when Germans don't like something, it is for a long... long... long time...

21/5/2014: Ireland Ranks 14th in Economic Connectedness

McKinsey Global Institute Global Connectedness Index was published in April this year, scoring countries connectedness index and overall flows based on data through 2012.

Rank of participation by flow as measured by flow intensity and share of world total.

Couple of things to notice: Ireland's position is strong at 14th rank, but it is not as strong as one would have expected. And certainly would not be anywhere near the 14th rank were we to consider Ireland's indigenous enterprises, as opposed to MNCs.

Another point: Ireland's strengths are in only one segment: services flows. Which are, of course, skewed very heavily by a handful of MNCs trading out of ICT services and IFSC. In fact, we rank below Russia in Data and Communications flows, despite being a global hub for ICT services MNCs.

Scarier bit: we rank below virtually all our direct competitors in the global markets.

21/5/2014: Few Slides Covering Russian Banks

Few slides from my bigger and newer Russia Deck - these covering Russian banks:

 In the above, note the nonperforming loans... Ugly does not even begin to describe Ukrainian situation. Russia's NPLs, however, are benign by comparative to rest of the FSU...

 Summary as is in both above and below...