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Symbols- FXE, FXA, EUO, ULE, UUP, UDN, CNY, CEW, GLD, IAU, DGP, DJP, BZF
“Everything depends on proper listening. Of ten people who
listen to the same speech or story, each person may well understand it
differently. Perhaps, only one of them will understand it correctly.”
How should traders interpret the latest remarks by US Treasury chief Timothy
Geithner, who shocked the currency markets on October 18th, citing
his determination to defend the value of the US-dollar?
Geithner was asked in a question and answer forum, “Are you
concerned with all of the money being printed over the last couple of years?
Are we on our way to debasing the value of the dollar? Geithner surprised his
audience with a passionate defense of the US-dollar. “Not going to
happen in this country. It is very important for people to understand that
the United States of
America and no country around the world can
devalue its way to prosperity and competitiveness,” he said.
“It is not a viable feasible strategy and we will not engage in
it. It is very important that people have confidence in our capacity to meet
our long-term fiscal obligations, to make sure the Federal Reserve does its
job of keeping inflation low and safe over time. And we recognize that the US
plays a particularly important special role in the international financial
system, because the US-dollar serves as the principal reserve asset of the
global financial system. So
we’re going to work very hard to make sure that we preserve confidence
in the strong dollar,” Geithner declared.
Yet just a few days earlier, during a much-anticipated speech on
October 15th, Fed chief Ben
“Bubbles” Bernanke broadly hinted that he favored an early
resumption of “quantitative easing” (QE-2), knocking the
US-dollar into a tailspin. “Inflation is running at
rates that are too low relative to the levels that the Committee judges to be
most consistent with the Fed’s dual mandate in the longer run. There
would appear, all things being equal, to be a case for further action,”
Bernanke declared.
Bernanke took the highly
unusual step of making it clear that the Fed’s policy going forward
would be to raise the rate of inflation to 2% by means of massive money
printing. Bernanke tried to brainwash
the American public into believing that QE-2 will significantly bring down
the jobless rate. Bernanke’s support for QE-2 helped the Dow Jones
Industrials index to soar above 11,100, despite further losses in
US-payrolls, and a jump in the under-employment (U-6) jobless rate to 17.1%.
Bernanke knew that simply hinting at QE-2 would spark a further
sell-off of US-dollars. After Bernanke spoke, the Australian dollar reached
parity against the US-dollar for the first time since it was freely floated
in 1983. The US$ also
fell to parity with the Canadian dollar, and hit new all-time lows against
the Swiss franc, and a 15-year low against Japan’s
yen. Brazil’s real,
Chile’s
peso, the Korean won, and the Indian rupee rose versus the US-dollar. Gold
hit a new record high, and commodities such as crude oil, copper, corn,
cotton, cattle, soybeans, platinum, palladium, rubber, and silver all
continued their upward spiral.
After Geithner’s remarks, the Euro quickly found resistance at
$1.400, and began to sink to $1.3935 within a few minutes. The Aussie dollar
dropped 0.80-cents to 98.50-cents, before getting blasted again, a few hours
later, after China’s central bank shocked the markets, by lifting its
one-year loan rate a quarter-point to 5.56%, its first rate hike in 3-years,
knocking industrial commodities lower. The Aussie plummeted towards
96.50-cents a few hours later, before regaining its footing. The Euro’s
slide came to a halt at $1.3700, where sidelined buyers emerged.
However, 24-hours later, the impact of Geithner’s remarks and China’s
surprise rate hike, had already dissipated into thin air. The Aussie dollar,
- a symbol of risk taking, - rebounded strongly to 98.75-cents, and the Euro
recovered to $1.3950. The US-dollar skidded to 81-yen, despite threats by the
Bank of Japan a few hours earlier to expand its own version of QE-3, beyond
the 5-trillion yen of JGB buying pledged earlier. Once again, traders resumed
their betting on “Bubbles” Bernanke, and a massive tidal wave of
QE-2, starting after Nov 3rd, that would trump the efforts of
other central banks to prevent the US-dollar’s downfall.
A few hours later, Geithner stepped-up his verbal rhetoric, by telling
the Wall Street Journal, on October 20th, there’s no need
for the US-dollar to sink further against the Euro and the yen, saying these
currencies are “roughly in alignment” now. He emphasized that the
US-Treasury isn’t trying to devalue the US-dollar, echoing comments he
made in Palo Alto, California.
Geithner appeared to offer a secret gentleman’s agreement with Beijing,
to stop the currency war, if the pace of the Chinese yuan’s
appreciation against the US-dollar since September is sustained, to correct
its undervaluation. “If China
knew that if it moved more rapidly, other emerging markets would move with
them, it would be easier for them to move.”
Traders can expect greater volatility and turbulence in exchange
rates, with the Group-of-20 nations moving towards the brink of a currency
and trade war that is being driven by high unemployment in the United
States. Faced
with slumping domestic demand, the US-Treasury is trying to boost US-exports
abroad, by cheapening the value of the US-dollar in relation to other
currencies. President Barack Obama is under heavy pressure
from leading Democrats, to declare China
a currency manipulator, and to agree to stiff tariffs against Chinese imports.
The Fed
has engineered the devaluation of the US-dollar, by issuing a steady drumbeat
of threats to unleash QE-2, upon the world money markets. Bond dealers reckon
the Fed could print a minimum of $500-billion in the months ahead, or it
might decide to monetize the entire US-budget deficit for this fiscal year,
projected at $1.2-trillion. Also greasing the skids under the US-dollar has
been the steady slide of US Treasury yields compared to German bund yields.
In early September, the
US Treasury’s 5-year note yielded +25-basis points more than German
5-year yields. Today, the US-Treasury’s 5-year note yields -53-bps
less. The
US-dollar’s allure as a “safe haven” currency has also
crumbled, as tensions surrounding the Greek bond market continue to subside.
Credit default swap (CDS’s) rates, measuring the odds that Athens
would default on its debts, have dropped in half over the past four-months,
to around 650-basis points today.
The US Treasury has
sought to gain extra leverage from the dollar’s slide, by seeking to
corral the support of other G-20 central bankers and finance ministers,
behind its drive to strong-arm China
into more rapidly and sharply rising yuan. With
the dollar down 12% against the Japanese yen since mid-June, compared with
less than 3% versus the Chinese yuan, sparks
began fly. Tokyo denounced Beijing
for bidding up the yen by increasing its purchases of Japanese government
notes.
Since Beijing
scrapped a 23-month-old peg to the dollar on June 19th, and said
it would let the yuan resume a managed “dirty” float, the yuan
has appreciated +2.8% against the US-dollar, but weakened 10% against the
Euro. “It is much worse against the Euro than the US-dollar - this is
not a good situation. It contributes to global imbalances. We want China
to assume its responsibilities as a global player,” said Euro zone
finance chief Jean-Claude Juncker.
US-lawmakers and President Obama have seized upon America’s
widening trade deficit, which reached -$49.7-billion in June 2010, to take
aim against the Chinese yuan. Over
the last 12-months, the US-trade deficit with China
reached $257-billion, and is running 21% above the pace from a year earlier.
The deficit with China
as a share of America’s
balance of payments is now over 40%, compared to just 20% in 2001.
Year-to-date imports from China
are $229-billion, while exports are only $55.8-billion, leaving the ratio of
imports to exports at 4.9. The average for all nations’
imports-to-exports with the United
States is a ratio of 1.6.
Beijing
intervenes regularly in its foreign exchange market to rig the value of the
yuan, and it’s acquired a massive $2.65-trillion in FX reserves, while
keeping the Chinese yuan undervalued by 40% against the US-dollar, on a trade
weighted basis. Democrats and Republicans in
the US-Congress aren’t willing to wait for Beijing
to revalue the yuan at a snail’s pace over the next several years. In
Hong Kong, the 12-month yuan forward contract is trading at 6.4425 /dollar
indicating that traders figure that Beijing would only allow the yuan to rise
by a paltry +3.2% rise against the dollar over the next 12-months.
Instead, US-lawmakers aim to level the playing filed in one fell
swoop. On Sept 29th, the US-House passed legislation by an
overwhelming margin, 348-79, to allow the Commerce department to apply
tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United
States. In the past, the Senate has pushed
for tariffs of 25% on Chinese imports. “There is no question that China
manipulates its currency in order to subsidize Chinese exports,” said
Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.
“The only question is: Why is the administration protecting China
by refusing to designate it as a currency manipulator?” he asked.
On October 16th, Treasury chief Geithner backed away from a
showdown with Beijing over the value of the
yuan, by delaying a much-anticipated decision on whether to label China
as a currency manipulator until after the Group-of-20 summit on November 11th.
“Since September 2, 2010, the pace of the yuan’s appreciation has
accelerated to a rate of more than 1% per month. If sustained over time, this
would correct a significantly undervalued currency,” the Treasury said.
Geithner said on October 18th, the delay in the currency
report was “an acknowledgment of the faster pace of the yuan’s
appreciation and we’d like to see that sustained. What we know now is
that it’s significantly undervalued, which I think they acknowledge and
it’s better for them, and of course, very important for us, that it
move. And I think it’s going to continue to move,” Geithner said.
Bank of England Mervyn King warned that the prospect of a trade war
over global imbalances could spark a 1930’s-style economic
collapse. “The need to act in the collective interest has yet to be
recognized, and, unless it is, it will be only a matter of time before
one or more countries resort to trade protectionism as the only domestic
instrument to support a necessary rebalancing. That could, as it did in the
1930’s, lead to a disastrous collapse in activity around the
world. Every country would suffer ruinous consequences -- including our
own,” King warned.
Chinese – Indian Central banks fear Commodity
Inflation
A stronger yuan is in China’s
best interest, since it can be utilized to shield the world’s biggest
buyer of commodities from the sting of sharply higher import prices. Since
Beijing un-hinged the tightly pegged US$-yuan peg, and the Fed began sending
signals about unleashing of QE-2, the Continuous Commodity Index (CCI)
– an equally weighted index of 17 different commodity futures, has
rallied by 23% to its highest level in two-years. Coffee, cotton, corn,
cattle, gold, silver, platinum, soybeans, and wheat have been the stellar
performers, with crude oil lagging behind. Other key industrial commodities
not included in the index which have skyrocketed are tin, rubber, nickel, and
palladium.
Efforts by Fed to weaken the US-dollar by threatening to unleash QE-2
have led to sharply higher commodity prices, and is pushing-up China’s
inflation rate to +3.5%. There’s also bubbles brewing in Chinese
property prices and renewed interest in Shanghai
red-chips. Against this backdrop, the Fed and the US-Treasury have exerted
considerable pressure on Beijing
to allow the yuan to rise. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) finds it
difficult to lift interest rates to combat inflation, because a widening in
the Chinese yield spread over US Treasuries would only suck in more
“hot-money” into the Chinese yuan.
But on October 19th, the PBoC surprised the markets with
its first interest rate hike in three years, taking one-year lending rates
0.25% higher to 5.56-percent. The rate hike follow on the heels of the PBoC’s decision to
lift reserve requirements by half-point to 17.5% at six Chinese banks last
week, draining 200-billion yuan out of the Shanghai
money markets. Commodity traders are
beginning to wonder if Beijing
has just started to roll-out a longer-term tightening campaign.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also been forced to tighten its
monetary policy to fend off commodity inspired inflation, by lifting its repo
rate on five occasions this year to 6-percent. India’s wholesale inflation rate is +8.5% higher than a year ago,
and is far above the RBI’s perceived tolerance level of around 5%,
keeping the inflation adjusted interest rate stuck in negative territory. India’s economy is on track to grow at 8.5% this year, lagging
only China, so the RBI could be forced to hike its repo rate several more
times, if commodities continue to spiral higher under the magic carpet ride
of the Bernanke’s QE-2.
Soaring Copper, QE-2, Rising Interest rates Lift Chile’s Peso
Chile is among a number of
emerging economies, including Brazil,
India, Thailand,
Korea, and South
Africa, whose currencies have risen sharply
against the Chinese yuan and US-dollar. They’re rising from an influx
of foreign capital seeking higher returns than are available in the England,
Japan, and the US,
where interest rates are hovering near zero-percent. Capital is flooding into
emerging markets and could lead to excessive exchange-rate moves, asset
bubbles and financial instability, warned IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on
October 18th.
Many of these emerging
countries are intervening repeatedly in the currency markets to hold down the
value of their currency against the US-dollar, and by default –the
Chinese yuan. “Near-zero interest rates and rapid monetary expansion are
geared at stimulating domestic demand but also tend to produce a weakening of
their currencies,” warned Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega on
October 9th. “As a result, emerging countries will continue
to build up reserves in foreign currency to avoid volatility and
appreciation.”
Traders are pouring vast sums of capital into the emerging stock
markets, forcing-up the exchange rate of emerging currencies and inflating
asset bubbles. The
MSCI Emerging Markets Index has soared +13% since the start of September. The US-dollar has tumbled -14% against the Chilean
peso since the beginning of July, due to fears of QE-2. Chile’s
peso is also gaining support from soaring copper prices, which reached a
2-year high of $8,400 /ton in London.
Chile
posted economic growth of +6.5% in the second quarter, helped by inflated
copper prices, which are linked to a staggering 40% of the country’s total
economic output.
Banco-de-Chile chief Jose De Gregorio is utilizing the direction of
copper as a real-time indicator to gauge the forward momentum of the local
economy. In sync with higher copper prices, Chile’s
central bank has guided its overnight loan rate higher, by 225-basis points
to 2.75% last week. In turn, the steady increase in Chile’s interest
rates has widened the gap with US-Treasuries, and has attracted foreign
capital, - putting upward pressure on the Chilean peso.
Chile’s
finance chief Felipe Larrain says, “Both China and US are at fault in
the currency war. Although the currency tension seems to be a dispute just
between Washington and Beijing,
its implications go well beyond the two countries. If exchange rate
variability between the yuan and the US-dollar is very little, the
US-currency will likely depreciate against currencies of emerging markets.
Developed but fast-growing economies, like Korea
and Australia,
in turn, will also face great appreciation pressure on their
currencies,” he predicted.
Brazil
Locked in Tough fight with Currency traders
Brazil’s
ministry of finance (MoF) is locked in a bitter struggle with traders over
the value of its currency – the Real, - in a battle that requires
unorthodox techniques. The MoF is desperately
trying to halt the appreciation of the real, which has more than doubled in
value against the US-dollar since President Lula da Silva took office in
2003. It’s now a darling of foreign investors. Yet what was once seen
as a blessing has become a curse. From
January until August, Brazil’s
trade surplus was whittled down to $11.6-billion, or -41% less than in the
same period a year earlier. Finance chief Guido Mantega warned he’ll take whatever measures
are necessary to keep the real from further eroding Brazil’s
trade surplus.
The
Bank of Brazil has resorted to multiple interventions in the currency market
to prevent the real from climbing higher. Brazil’s
foreign exchange stash now exceeds $250-billion, with $165-billion parked in
US-Treasuries. However, the combination of Brazil’s
robust economy and the world’s highest interest rate at 10.75%, has
made the real an irresistible target for foreign traders, at a time when
Japanese and US bonds are saturated with excess liquidity and ultra-low
yields.
Brazil has one of the most
advanced industrial sectors in Latin America,
accounting for roughly one-third of the GDP. It’s also a major supplier of commodities and
natural resources, with significant operations in iron-ore, tin, sugarcane,
coffee, tropical fruits, orange juice, corn, cotton, cocoa, tobacco, and
forest products. Brazil
has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd, and it’s the
world’s #2 grower of soybeans and #1 exporter of ethanol, which are all
soaring thanks to QE-2.
Brazil should begin
to reap bigger trade surpluses in the months ahead, as the latest upward
thrust in global commodity prices filters into its economy. Currency dealers
are tracking commodity prices, lifting the real briefly above 60-US-cents
last week. Finance chief Mantega says Brazil
is engaged in a “currency war” with Bernanke’s Fed, and has
“a lot of ammunition” such as boosting taxes on foreign
investment in Brazilian fixed income. Mantega criticized the Fed for
“considering more quantitative easing. It won’t reactivate the
US-economy, but it will weaken the US-dollar.”
On October 18th, Brazil
hiked taxes on foreign investment in fixed-income bonds to 6%, and also
closed a loophole that allows speculators to avoid the tax on margin deposits
for transactions in futures markets. The higher taxes will only affect new
flows of money into the bond market, not deposits already in Brazil.
“This currency war needs to be deactivated,” Mantega said.
Beijing takes aim at Shanghai Gold
China’s central bank (PBoC) surprised traders on October 19th,
with its first hike in bank deposit rates in three years, reflecting its
concern about rising asset prices and stubbornly high inflation. The PBoC
guided 1-year bank deposit rates higher by 25-basis points, to 2.50%, and
triggered a 3% drop in the Shanghai
gold market. Once a consensus has been
forged in Beijing
to raise or cut rates, past experience shows that the PBoC moves in a series
of adjustments.
To date, the PBoC has relied on slowing down bank lending and lifting
banks’ reserve requirements to keep the growth of the M2 money supply
from boiling over. Still, China’s
Treasury yields rates are too low for an economy that’s growing at a
+10% clip. The real rate of interest on China’s
Treasury notes is buried in negative territory - yielding less than the
official 3.6% rate of inflation. Negative interest rates are whetting the appetite
of Chinese traders in gold, silver, and base metals. The Shanghai
stock index, a laggard this year, has jumped +16% in the past nine trading
days, led by banks and commodity related companies.
The PBoC’s rate hiked jolted the yield
on China’s
5-year T-note out of its summer slumber, lifting it upwards by 30-basis
points to as high as 3.05% on October 19th. In a knee-jerk
reaction, Shanghai
gold fell 3% to as low as 8,850-yuan /oz, where an upward sloping trend-line
resides. Buyers emerged from the sidelines, on ideas that negative interest
rates in China
would continue to fuel gold’s historic rally.
Li Daokui, an adviser to the People’s
Bank of China, said on October 19th, “The interest rate rise
will make people feel safe and prevent them from taking out their money from
bank deposits to invest in stocks or property market.” However, gold
traders and speculators in Shanghai
red-chips disagree. The amount of cash sitting in China’s bank deposits
increased by 1-trillion yuan ($156-billion) in September, to 30-trillion
yuan, and could lend plenty of firepower for the Shanghai
gold market.
However, on October 20th, China’s
central bank continued to exert upward pressure on short-term Treasury
yields, by draining 145-billion yuan ($21.8-billion) from the Shanghai
money markets through 91-day reverse repos. The PBOC also mopped-up
50-billion yuan by selling one-year T-bills.
However, there’s
other channels that can keep the gold market buoyant. The Value Gold ETF is
expected to be launched on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in early November, with the underlying physical gold held at Hong
Kong’s Precious Metals Depository. The Gold ETF could
attract a whole new wave of wealthy investors to the yellow metal, since the
Hong Kong Monetary Authority pegs its overnight loan rate at a miniscule
0.50%, in order to keep the HK-dollar fixed to the US$.
Is Mr Geithner going to make good on his vow
to defend the US-dollar? He’ll need to convince the radical
inflationists at the Bernanke Fed to mend their foolish ways, and follow the blueprints
of the European Central Bank (ECB). Having bought
16.5-billion Euros of Greek, Irish, and Portuguese bonds in the second week
of May, the ECB’s purchases of bonds slowed to a trickle by early
August, winding down its sterilized QE scheme at 63.5-billion Euros. The
three-month Euro Libor rate climbed above 1% this week, a signal that the ECB
is slowly withdrawing liquidity.
By turning off the currency printing presses, the ECB laid the
groundwork for the Euro’s recovery to $1.400 last week. Will Mr
Geithner convince the Bernanke Fed to rescue the US-dollar by nixing QE-2?
Philadelphia Fed chief Charles Plosser opposes the idea of launching QE-2.
“Do we really think that creating another trillion dollars of excess
reserves is going to solve our problems?” he asked. “We need to
make the right decision for the longer horizon. And if the right decision
means we disappoint markets, then that might be short-run painful, but is the
right long-run decision,” Plosser said. However, Bernanke’s
inflationists out-number the Fed hawks, and the world economy should brace
itself for a round of hyper-inflation.
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Gary Dorsch
Editor, Global Money Trends
www.sirchartsalot.com
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