28/02/2012: Reforms in Ireland - at risk? (Sunday Times 26/02/2012)

My Sunday Times article from 26/02/2012 - unedited version.

So far, the explosive nature of Greece’s crisis has been a boon for Ireland, as international perceptions of our economic and fiscal fortunes have turned more optimistic in some analysts’ and investors’ circles. This shift in the sentiment, however, may be threatening to derail the already fragile momentum for economic reforms here.

Irish budgetary dynamics for 2011 were largely on target, although this achievement conceals significant pressures on the tax receipts side and the lack of real progress in tackling runaway spending in three core current expenditure areas – Social Welfare, Health and Education. In fact, much of the previous deficit adjustments have been based on the Governments picking the low hanging fruit of capital spending cuts, administrative savings, and substantial tax increases, soaking the middle and upper-middle classes. Budget 2012 was pretty much the firs attempt by the Irish Government to rebalance the overall budgetary dynamics that, since 2008, have penalized higher-skilled and entrepreneurs. It is hard to see how this approach of piecemeal changes targeting the path of political least resistance can continue delivering ever-rising levels of fiscal adjustments already pencilled in for 2012-2015, let alone maintain the budgetary discipline thereafter.

Accounting for the delayed December 2011 tax receipts that were incorporated in January 2012 figures, the Exchequer deficit in the first month of 2012 was €160 million ahead of that recorded in January 2011. This gap shows that the pressure on Ireland’s fiscal dynamics has not gone away.

There is a more fundamental problem looming on the horizon – the problem of growth. To deflate the public debt that is now well in excess of 107% of our GDP and climbing, we need some serious economic growth. On average, over the next 10 years, we will need growth of over 3% annually over and above inflation in order to bring our Government debt down to 90% of GDP. To sustain some private sector debts deleveraging will require even higher rate of growth. Compare the current situation with that in the 1980s and the maths required for budgetary and households’ deleveraging become dizzyingly high.

In Q3 2011, Ireland registered the twin contraction in GDP and GNP and majority of the analysts expect the same for Q4 figures. For the year as a whole, we are likely to post approximately 0.9% real GDP expansion. Forecasts revisions for Irish economic growth have been driving us beyond the bounds of the fiscal targets we set out for this year. The Budget 2012 assumed economic growth of 1.3% against the IMF, Central Bank, EU Commission, and ESRI forecasts of 0.9-1.1% growth. More recent February forecasts by the markets analysts and ESRI put the range for 2012 growth at -0.5% to 0.9%. Much the same is true for forecasts out to 2015, with Government growth prognoses coming in at a rather optimistic 2.43% annual average against IMF November 2011 projection of 2.25%. Taking the lower range of most current forecasts, the shortfall on Government current assumptions for growth can be as high at €5 billion – a sizeable chunk of change. Under the adverse shock scenario by the IMF, if average growth were to decline to 1% of GDP – a statistically plausible assumption – the shortfall will be close to €10 billion.

This means that the pressure is still very much on to deliver on 2012-2013 fiscal deficit targets of 8.6% and 7.5% respectively. More importantly, the entire recovery framework for Ireland is clearly misaligned. Instead of focusing on the simple short-term targets for fiscal deficits, Irish Government must focus on long-term growth environment. Putting the patient – the Irish economy – ahead of the disease – the fiscal and household debts overhang – is a must.

This puts into the context the events of the last two weeks. Specifically, it highlights the levels of unease with Irish Government plans being expressed, for now rather quietly, by some markets participants. It also underpins the subtle change in the Government own signals to the Troika. And, it is simultaneously contrasted by the Government public rhetoric that has been stressing the PR spin over sombre determination to act. Virtually all recent actions suggest that the Government is hoping that something will happen between now and 2013 to miraculously restore growth, thus alleviating the need for serious corrective measures on the current expenditure side.

First, take the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Last week, the Government review of budgetary adjustments targets stated that 2013 fiscal savings will be “at least €3.5 billion” (page 14 of the MOU). The subtle change of language from the November 2011 version of the MOU which did not include the words ‘at least’ in relation to 2013 target might be a sign that the Government is being forced to accept the reality of its multiannual growth projections being overly optimistic in the current global and domestic growth environments.

Yet, when it comes to outlining reforms agenda, the MOU contains nothing new compared to its previous versions. The already inadequate set of measures on dealing with personal debt announced last night is presented as the end-all reform. Dysfunctional energy and utilities sectors are barely covered with exception for one specific measure – creation of the unified water management bureaucracy. Inefficiencies in the domestic services sectors, poor institutions relating to supporting competitive markets in these sectors and labour markets reforms are treated with generalities in place of tangible proposals. Vague promises of reforms of social welfare system and structural reforms in the state enterprises sector and financial services unveiled and partially actioned in the past are simply repeated once again in the current MOU.

In contrast, the Government has claimed this week that it has rather specific targets for yet another spending project – the ‘jobs creation’ efforts to be financed via privatizations returns. In other words, unlike Charlie McCreevy who spent the money he had, Minister Noonan is eager to spend what he hopes to have. To-date, Minister Noonan has managed to spend quite substantial funds on ‘jobs creation’ with various announcements taking potential total bill for these initiatives to well over €1 billion annually. Outcomes? Well, none, judging by the QNHS and Live Register data. The JobBridge programme is a resounding failure with the vast majority of ‘apprenticeships’ in effect displacing real jobs that would have been created through the normal course of business growth. The ‘Vat stimulus’ to tourism and hospitality sector is another failure. Fas restructuring is shambles.

The privatization plans, supported by the ESB and other state monopolies, are clearly designed to minimize any potential disruptions in the status quo of the semi-states-dominated sectors. Thus, privatization-induced changes in the energy and transport sectors will be purely cosmetic, the structure of the regulated markets will remain as anti-consumer as ever. Vast swathes of the domestic economy will remain protected from private investment and enterprises as ever.

Despite major risks present in the global and domestic economic environments, the Irish Government is slipping into the comfort zone of PR exercises, photo opps, and foreign ‘investment missions’.

By postponing the reforms necessary to boost our economic growth potential, the Government currently is putting an undue amount of risk onto the Irish economy. Its gamble is that sometime over the next 9-12 months Irish economy will be propelled to a miraculously higher growth plane and that this growth will be sustained through 2015 and thereafter. In the mean time, the Government will spend its way into jobs creation, while protecting its vested interests of the shielded sectors and avoiding any real structural reforms.

Chart:

Sources: IMF WEO database and country updates

Box-out:

Much of the latest attention paid to the external trade data has been devoted this month to the sudden and rapid slowdown in exports over the recent months. And this analysis is very much correct: in H1 2011, Irish goods exports and trade surplus grew by 6% and 2.5% respectively. In H2 2011, the same rates of growth were 1.9% and 1.5%. However, there are some very interesting trends emerging from the trade statistics by geographical distribution. Using eleven months data for 2011, annual rate of growth in Irish trade surplus vis-a-vis the EU is likely to come in at -1.7%, against the overall annual rate of growth of 1.5%. In contrast, Irish trade balance with Russia is likely to rise a massive 92% in 2011 compared to 2010. Our trade deficit with China is likely to decline by 9%. Although our trade deficit with India is expected to widen by almost 11%, our trade surplus with Brazil is on track to increase by almost 32%. Courtesy of Brazil and Russia, Irish trade surplus with BRICs in 2011 is likely to have reached close to €238 million, first year surplus on record.

28/02/2012: The truth behind the ELA

We are made actors in the theater of absurd, folks.

Anglo & INBS are now fake banks with their banking licenses retained solely to prop up their ability to borrow from the euro system and for no other reason.

These 'banks' are made up to look like some quasi real entities by a fake lending scheme (ELA) which was conceived by the complacent Government and Central Bank with a nod of the conveniently 'see no evil' ECB.

The sole objective of this scheme is to continue faking the system stability of the Euro area banks many of which are now barely alive themselves. The scheme operates like some Madoffian Dream with banks pretending to use collateral (which in effect is rather dodgy in many cases and assumes that Spanish Government bonds are as risk free as German Government bonds) to borrow money they can't really be expected to repay (does anyone really think LTROs 1 & 2 can be unwound by calling in the loans or liquidating the 'assets' repoed?) so they can buy more Government bonds and put borrowed money on deposits, thereby creating fake demand for Government bonds (lower yields lead to a pack of idiots claiming that Government debt is now sustainable as its cost 'came down') and increasing headline 'deposits' figure for ECB (pretending there is no liquidity shortage in the system).

Of course, the very reason for this ever-growing pyramid of deception is the very same as the underlying cause of this mess - a currency union conceived solely to promote political objectives of the ever-expanding EU. Nothing else.

The only real thing about this mess is the money Irish Government takes out of the pockets of its residents to dump into this pyramid. Nothing else.

To use a literary analogy, it's not that we are about to hear a child scream 'The King Has No Clothes' that is the most apparent feature of this circus. It's that we have NCB, ECB, National Government, EU Commission and Parliament and courts all acting up in collusion to deport all children from the town, lest they might see that the king is, indeed, naked.

26/02/2012: What happens when debt is too high and taxes are distortionary?

An interesting paper: Public Debt, Distortionary Taxation, and Monetary Policy by Alessandro Piergallini and Giorgio Rodano from February 7, 2012 (CEIS WorkingPaper No. 220 ).

In traditional literature, starting with Leeper’s (1991):

• if fiscal policy is passive (so that it simply focuses on a guaranteed / constitutionally or legislatively mandated public debt stabilization irrespectively of the inflation path), 
• then monetary policy can independently be set to focus solely on inflation targeting (ECB) ignoring real economy objectives, such as, for example, unemployment and growth targeting. 

The twin separate objectives of fiscal and monetary policy can be delivered by following the Taylor principle. This means if the monetary authorities observe an upward rise in inflation, they can hike nominal interest rates by greater proportion than the rise in inflation. This is feasible, because in the traditional setting, fiscal policy objective of sustaining public debt at stable levels can be achieved - in theory - by raising non-distortionary taxes that are not linked to inflation (for example, distortionary VAT and sales taxes yield revenues that are linked to inflation, so monetary policy to reduce inflation will lead to reduced economic activity and reduced revenues for the Government at the same time; in contrast, non-distortionary lump sum taxes yield fixed revenue no matter what income or price level applies, so that anti-inflationary increase in the interest rates is not going to have any impact on tax revenue).

Of course, if fiscal policy is active (does not focus on debt stabilization), monetary policy under Taylor rule should be passive (so interest rates hikes should of smaller percentage than inflationary spike). Such passive monetary policy will allow Governments to inflate their tax revenues without raising rates of distortionary taxation and

In many real world environments Governments, however, can only finance public expenditures by levying distortionary taxes (progressive taxation). So in this environment, the question is - what happens to the 'passive fiscal - active monetary' policies mix? According to Piergallini and Rodano, "It is demonstrated that households’ market participation constraints and Laffer-type effects can render passive fiscal policies unfeasible. For any given target inflation rate, there exists a threshold level of public debt beyond which monetary policy independence is no longer possible. In such circumstances, the dynamics of public debt can be controlled only by means of higher inflation tax revenues: inflation dynamics in line with the fiscal theory of the price level must take place in order for macroeconomic stability to be guaranteed. Otherwise, to preserve inflation control around the steady state by following the Taylor principle, monetary policy must target a higher inflation rate."

Ok, what does this mean? It means that if you want passive rules (public debt targeting - e.g. fiscal compact EU is trying to legislate) you need inflation (to transfer funds to the Government from the private individuals and companies).

Per authors: "The analytical results derived in this paper give theoretical support to the argument recently advanced by Cochrane (2011) and Davig, Leeper and Walker (2011) that the large fiscal deficits decided by governments to offset the crisis can lead to the “Laffer limit” beyond which inflation must endogenously jump up according to the fiscal theory of the price level."

Now, we often hear the arguments that in the near term there will be no inflation as slow growth will prevent prices from rising. Sure, folks. Good luck with that.

26/02/2012: Some numbers on Greek Deals 1 and 2

So the number for Greece Deals 1 & 2 are finally emerging and it's a massive one. Here's the tally to-date:

• Deal 1 = €110 billion extended May 2010
• Deal 2 Loans package = €130 billion (though Troika report implies €145 billion requirement)
• Deal 2 PSI package = €107 billion bonds swap
• Deal 2 ECB package = no writedown, but a rebate of profits to NCBs - current level of profits estimated at €11 billion (€50 billion face value of bonds against €39 billion purchase value of bonds)
• Deal 2 Banks support package = the stand by arrangement for Euro area banks €30 billion

Grand total so far: €388 billion (although if NCBs rebate under ECB package above were to go to funding €130 billion Loans package, and if there is no call on Banks support package, this number falls to €347 billion). For comparison, Greek current prices GDP stood at (estimated) €163 billion at the end of 2011 or 42% of the Deals 1 & 2 combined worth.

25/02/2012: Poster-boys of Recovery?

So does this really, I mean really, look like a recovery to any one of you?

The chart above plots evolution of nominal GDP in current US dollars from the pre-crisis peak (set = 100 for every country) through years following the beginning of the crisis (t=0). All data - IMF WEO and September 2011-February 2012 country-specific updates.

25/02/2012: Some interesting recent points on Gold

GoldCore guys have an excellent visualisation of some core facts about gold as a vehicle for store of value - a short video certainly worth watching.

You know I am a fan of good visualization as a tool to deliver information. And you know my position that gold is a unique diversifier of some core financial risks (based on my academic work available on my ssrn.com page) when held not for speculative or capital gains purposes and accumulated over time allowing for price-peaks averaging.

You can find much more detailed data on gold demand at the World Gold Council site (here), but it's worth posting few charts that illustrate higher frequency data supportive of the aforementioned trends and also trends highlighted in the video link. All are from Q4 2011 World Gold Council report:

First chart to show the relationship between spot price and volatility for gold - while volatility of gold prices is relatively high, it is clearly consistent with changes in fundamentals (news flows and global liquidity shifts, that largely are indicative of future inflation expectations changes):

The 'China' v 'India' effects are strongly pronounced, with the recent economic growth slowdown in India and the talk of hiking import duties on physical gold there clearly leading to slower demand. What is remarkable, in my view, is that both China and India demand appears to have largely converged in Q3-Q4 2011 to the average levels ahead of 2009, but below the peaks. This, in my view, can lead to further moderation in the volatility of the global gold prices, while providing support for gold price levels.

The third chart illustrates the dramatic turnaround in the Central Banks' and Treasuries' propensity to hold gold since Q1 2011. And the dramatic tie-in between the official sector demand for gold and the news flow. They wouldn't tell us this much directly, but it does appear that Governments around the world are hedging against the Euro crisis risks by going into gold.

Lastly, an interesting chart on private sector demand drivers for gold as investment vehicle. Good news ETFs are buying less (though bad news here is that this means more ETFs out in the markets are now synthetic gold holders - see a note here on the dangers of that asset class). Other good news is that OTC gold instruments are on a shallow decline (suggesting no derivatives panic, but some welcome reduction in derivatives risks exposure for gold, with core risk of sudden position reversals).

As a disclosure - I am on GoldCore's Investment Committee as a non-executive member. In this role I do not contribute to public communications by the firm or to the GoldCore's marketing. I receive no compensation for this or any other post on my blog and, as you can see, my blog bears no advertising (although the latter can change at some point in time, the former will not). I am also long gold in long-term, non-speculative stable allocation that remains unchanged over a number of years. I hold no other gold-related assets, ETFs or gold-related stocks. Furthermore, my posting of this link should not be considered as an endorsement of any product or investment vehicle, as per usual.