Pending home sales index rose by by 8.2% to 97.6 in February after falling down by 7.8% in January. Now it’s 17.3% above the February 2009 level. Forecasts expected no change to this real estate indicator.

ISM services index rose from 53.0% to 55.4% in March, surpassing the forecasts of the Forex traders by 1.4%.

Last Friday a report on the U.S. nonfarm payrolls was released, showing a rather fast growth of 162k. Although it was below the median forecast of 184k, it was a very positive signal for the global economy. Last month’s change was -14k.
(…)
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NY Empire State manufacturing index declined from 24.9 to 22.9 in March, signaling a slightly slower rate of improvement in the sector. The forecast was at 22.0 for this index.

Net foreign purchases of the long-term U.S. securities was at $19.1 billion in January, below $63.3 billion reported for December and below the forecast value of $47.5 billion.

Industrial production rose by 0.1% in February, which was better than the 0% forecast, but worse than 0.9% change in January. Capacity utilization rose from 72.5% to 72.7% but is still 7.9% below the average level of the years 1979–2009. The forecast by the economic analysts was for no change in February.
(…)
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Basic, Forex trading buys one currency and selling another, believing that the market and currency values will change in such a way as to buy the currency will rise in the price higher than the currency is sold. This exchange has an important role in supporting the growth of world trade and global economy. Action major currencies such as the U.S. dollar (known as U.S. Forex) and Euros (EUR) may affect the FX rate of any two currencies being traded, and can mean a lot of profitable capabilities for each player is no matter small or large.

The Forex market is open to all who are willing to learn the skills of FX trading and are prepared to understand the behavior of the market. It is for this reason, the need to develop and protect their secret Forex trading system. Here are some tips:

1. Forex Market is mainly technical in nature. As this small space to emotion based decisions such situations. While the popular film about corporate political deals, said yes, I remember that greed is not good, it never happens. To earn the foreign exchange market, the person needs to have patience and courage to deal with critical decisions.

2. Any action or decision on your part should be based on careful analysis of information from Finance News television, print or the Internet; Board know traders, technical data from graphs Forex, as well as other sources of expert information. Discover every aspect of market trends is essential.

3. Many traders, especially beginners, use automated Forex robot trading system. These computer programs used to monitor the market 24 hours without fail and may even decide for Forex for-sale, subject to the right parameters. Although these expensive systems, they are a very convenient option for merchants, especially in very volatile markets, such as in a recession, where the movement of the currency market is difficult to predict. However, the use of robots is really just an abdication of responsibility solutions that a trader should do himself.

Trading of the so-called secrets or opinions, mostly gambling, and this activity is not really done by a professional. There is no fix limit the amount you can invest in the currency market, but market conditions should be a factor in resolving this. Learning from the past brokering experienced traders Forex, will undoubtedly contribute to the development of your trading skills, but be aware of the previous movements of various currencies, as they affect the current state of exchange markets.

The main rule of Forex trading secret it is that you should not blindly obey the guidelines set by other traders. If you can be courageous in making their decisions independently, then you will thrive in the currency market.

Before you decide to make a forex investment or start forex trading yourself, better find a good forex book and read more about the currency exchange market – this will save you from lots of troubles and traps.

As you can see it’s very hard to gain success in your life if you aren’t a well organized personality. This precious human quality will be especially helpful to succeed in one worthy activity. I hope that Forex trading is familiar to you. You can notice that this financial activity has become quite popular among many young promising people. So there’s no wonder that many of them have already gained success in this field. You can join them.

Forex can bring you an ocean of cash at any time you like. It’s seems to me it’s the only one place in the world to earn money almost instantly. Moreover it’s completely legally. Do you want to divert your probable jobless status? This opportunity is just for this. Of course as a bonus you can become a millionaire.

But at the same don’t be filled with joy because this may be dangerous. Moreover you are to learn tons of various materials in order to gain success in this field. It goes without saying that your personal attitude to this should be very serious if you want to succeed. Forex can’t forgive mistakes to anybody. That’s why there’s a necessity to control emotions in this case.

The essence of Forex trading is selling or buying currencies depending on a particular situation. Being involved into this activity you’ll learn a great number of interesting things about the global economy. In fact your duty is to track the tendency of price fluctuations and execute transactions in conformity with this tendency which is known as trend. If you succeed this you’ll become rich. But if you don’t know how to find a trend you’ll probably lose. Don’t for get that there are no any emotions for successful traders. Emotions should be avoided any way. Try to be reasonable and confident with your potential. Of course don’t forget about knowledge which should be obtained immediately. It’s up to you to decide how to get those skills. In fact there are a lot of way to do this.

As in every other sphere of life Forex needs some education.

Of course, you can start forex trading and be quite successful in it. However sooner or later the losses will come. It is precisely when one might think “Why didn’t I start with a nice forex book?”

This does not imply that after reading even the top forex book you will start making money, but this info will save you from many dangers.

In hindsight, the Central Bank (i.e. state economic planners) of China were probably justified in holding the Yuan in 2008. At a time when forex markets (and other capital markets, for that matter) were behaving erratically, the Yuan was a baston of stability. China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, recently boasted, “Keeping the yuan’s value basically steady is our contribution to the international community at a time when the world’s major currencies have been devalued.” In fact, there is evidence that the Central Bank went against market forces in the opposite direction during the height of the credit crisis, and successfully prevented the Yuan from depreciating, thus proving that a currency peg can work both ways. The result was price stability, and a boost to exporters that had been damaged by the falloff in foreign demand for Chinese goods.

With the global economy emerging from recession, the argument for maintaining the peg is becoming less tenable. China’s economy, itself, grew at an impressive 8.5% in 2009, and is forecast to grow even faster in 2010, by 9.5%. Thanks to a surge in bank lending and the government’s massive economic stimulus program, inflation is also ticking up. It has been approximated at 2.5%, but is contradicted by spikes of 50%+ in the prices of certain staple goods, and certainly doesn’t take into account the rise in asset prices. China’s benchmark stock market index surged 90% in 2009, and property prices increased by 30% in some areas.

The dual concerns, of course, are that the money supply is expanding too fast and that bubbles are forming in certain asset markets. The weak RMB is certainly not helping either. Thanks to relaxed capital market controls and expectations of further appreciation, speculative “hot money” is once again pouring into China. Holding down the Yuan in the face of such pressure is becoming prohibitivel expensive: “China’s foreign-exchange reserves climbed 17 percent in the first nine months of 2009 to $2.27 trillion, the world’s largest holdings.” Some of the demand is naturally being tempered by bubble concerns, but the trend is still money coming into China.

There is also the argument, much mooted in economics circles, that an appreciation of the RMB would be good for the Chinese economy. Because of a perennially weak currency, its economy has become to addicted to exports to drive growth. “As a report from research firm Euromonitor International notes, in U.S. dollar terms, China’s consumer market lags those of the U.S., Japan and much of Europe, with private consumption just over one third of GDP in 2008.” This is probably a product of social and cultural forces, which still emphasize saving. Skeptics of the usefulnes of RMB appreciation point out that rebalancing the Chinese economy would start with changing the culture of saving, but a stronger currency would certainly provide a powerful incentive. Not to mention that a more valuable RMB would give Chinese companies more leverage in consummating outbound corporate M&A deals and natural resource acquisitions that they have been so keen on in recent years.

On the other side of the debate are skeptics of a different sort- those that think RMB appreciation is justified by forward-looking macroeconomic fundamentals. Some fear hyperinflation of the sort that China faced in 2007 and was only brought under control by the global economic recession and concomitant decline in resource prices. “Franklin Allen, a professor of finance at Wharton [University of Pennsylvania], estimates the likelihood of inflation reaching between 10% and 20% to be around one in five.” Any inflation beyond what is experienced in other economies would have to be reflected in the RMB. In a hyperinflation scenario, the Central Bank might even have to deliberately depreciate the currency.

Then there are the skeptics that forecast an economic crash in China. James Chanos, a wealthy hedge fund manager is leading this chorus, “warning that China’s hyperstimulated economy is headed for a crash, rather than the sustained boom that most economists predict. Its surging real estate sector, buoyed by a flood of speculative capital, looks like “Dubai times 1,000 — or worse.’ ”

While this view is gaining some traction, it is still relegated to the minority. Investors and economists are now operating under the firm assumption that China will allow the RMB to resume its appreciation soon. As for when, it could be any day, though probably not for a few months still. As for the questions of how and to what extent, some economists have argued for a one-off appreciation (10% has been suggested) in order to discourage future inflows of speculative capital. Most analysts, though, expect the rise to be gradual. Futures prices currently reflect a 3% rise over the next year, and the consensus among economists is similar. It also depends on how the Dollar performs over the near-term: “If better-than-expected growth in the U.S. helps the greenback recover this year…That would take some of the pressure off Chinese policy makers.”

Personally, I think expectations of a 3-4% rise over the next twelve months are pretty reasonable. The Chinese government doesn’t have much to gain (neither politically nor economically) from a rapid appreciation in the currency, so if/when the RMB rises, it will probably only be in “baby steps.”

For the year of 2010, I continue my forecast tradition and will present not only Forex forecast, but also my projections about gold, oil and interest rates for the year to come. You can also see what the readers of this blog expect from 2010 and you also can offer your vision of 2010 global economy in my forecast poll (voting is open until January 15th).

EUR/USD is ending 2009 in a long-term uptrend but the behavior of the pair in 2010 will be determined by the interest rate decisions of the Fed and ECB. In the bearish scenario we might see a consolidation of EUR/USD between 1.16 and 1.37. A bullish scenario is less probable, in my opinion, but can lead to the growth of the currency pair to 1.65–1.70 levels.

GBP/USD is hard to predict, but the weakness of the economy of U.K. will be doing its cause and we might see a return to 1.36–1.47 range in 2010. A bullish scenario is possible only if the pair is capable of breaking the resistance level formed near 1.68.

USD/JPY ends 2009 in a strong bearish trend, but the controversy is in the dissatisfaction of the Japanese authorities with the strong yen, which hurts their exports. I am quite sure that USD/JPY will be artificially held above 80.00 level, which at some point may generate a carry trade uptrend with the targets near 100.00 or 110.00.

EUR/JPY is consolidating in a rather tight range that may break either up — to near 160, or down — to 110–120.

Oil may become even less important commodity (from the investor’s point of view) in 2010, which will reduce the speculative part in its price, helping it to trade more stably. A broad range between $60-$90 looks to be comfortable both for producers and consumers during the global economy’s moderate growth.

Gold is a hype. In 2010 it still can continue to be a hype, but the recently started correction may hit some huge hedge funds’ stop-losses and then we’ll see $600-$800 per ounce. In case of the continuation of the gold’s crazy rally, I see $1,500 like a rather conservative target for the next year.

Interest rates:

Almost everyone expects some rate hikes from the Federal Reserve starting from June 2010. That looks like a probable scenario, but the housing market is still in a deep pit in the United States. In my opinion, the regulator may decide to postpone the rate increases until September. Anyway, we can end this year with 1%-1.5% federal funds rate.

ECB is usually faster on rate increases as the inflation is its main concern, but the rate for the main refinancing operations may continue to be at 1% for a rather long period of 2010 with the support of the manufacturing lobby from France and Germany. 2% looks to be a probable end-of-the-year value for the Eurozone’s interest rate.

The Bank of England has its current bank rate at a historical minimum of 0.5% and this can’t continue for too long. The financial system of the Great Britain strongly depends on selling the bonds that, to be attractive for the investors, require a lot higher interest rates. BoE may show quite fast rate hike streak, ending the year 2010 close to 3%.

The Bank of Japan has no reason and no excuse to raise the country’s interest rates. The current 0.1% may still look adequate enough even in December 2010.
(…)
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Forex Blog: I’d like to begin by asking if there is any significance to the title of your blog (”Fistful of Euros”), or rather, is it only intended to be playful?

Obviously the title is a reference to the Segio Leone film, but you could read other connotations into it if you want. I would say the idea was basically playful with a serious intent. Personally I agree with Ben Bernanke that the Euro is a “great experiment”, and you could see the blog, and the debates which surround it as one tiny part of that experiment. As they say in Spanish, the future’s not ours to see, que sera, sera. Certainly that “fistful of euros” has now been put firmly on the table, and as we are about to discuss, the consequences are far from clear.

Well, first of all, there is more than one thing happening here, so I would definitely agree from the outset, there are both cyclical and structural elements in play. Structurally, the architecture of Bretton Woods II is creaking round the edges, and in the longer run we are looking at a relative decline in the dollar, but as Keynes reminded us, in the long run we are all dead, while as I noted in the Afoe post, news of the early demise of the dollar is surely vastly overstated.

Put another way, while Bretton Woods II has surely seen its best days, till we have some idea what can replace it it is hard to see a major structural adjustment in the dollar. Europe’s economies are not strong enough for the Euro to simply step into the hole left by the dollar, the Chinese, as we know, are reluctant to see the dollar slide too far due to the losses they would take on dollar denominated instruments, while the Russians seem to constantly talk the USD down, while at the same time borrowing in that very same currency – so read this as you will. Personally, I cannot envisage a long term and durable alternative to the current set-up that doesn’t involve the Rupee and the Real, but these currencies are surely not ready for this kind of role at this point.

So we will stagger on.

On the cyclical side, what I am arguing is that for the time being the US has stepped in where  Japan used to be, as one side of your carry pair of choice, since base money has been pumped up massively while there is little demand from consumers for further indebtedness, so the broader monetary aggregates haven’t risen in tandem, leaving large pools of liquidity which can simply leak out of the back door. That is, it may well be one of the perverse consequences of the Fed monetary easing policy that it finances consumption elsewhere – in Norway, or Australia, or South Africa, or Brazil, or India – but not directly inside the US.

This is something we saw happening during the last Japanese experiment in quantitative easing (from 2002  - 2006) and that it has the consequence, as it did for the Yen from 2005 to 2007, that the USD will have a trading parity which it would be hard to understand if this were not the case. I am also suggesting that this situation will unwind as and when the Federal Reserve start to seriously talk about withdrawing  the emergency measures (both in terms of interest rates and the various forms of quantitative easing), but that this unwinding is unlikely to be extraordinarily violent, since the Japanese Yen can simply step in to plug the gap, as I am sure the Bank of Japan will not be able to raise interest rates anytime soon given the depth of the deflation problem they have. Indeed, investors will once more be able to borrow in Yen to invest in  USD instruments, to the benefit of Japanese exports and the detriment of the US current account deficit, which is why I think we are in a finely balanced situation, with clear limits to movements in one direction or another.

Well, I would want to qualify this a little, becuase things are not that simple. In fact, as Claus Vistesen argues in this post, the ECB has rather “locked itself in” communicationally, and by  talking up the eurozone economies they now have markets expecting clear exit road maps and even pricing in interest rate rises from the third quarter of next year. But if we look at the underlying weaknesses in some of the Eurozone economies – evidently Spain, but Italy is hardly likely to have a strong robust recovery, and the German economy needs exports and hence customers to really return to growth – it is hard to see monetary tightening being applied with any kind of vigour at the ECB, so they may move up somewhat – say  to 2% – and then stop for some time.

I was also suggesting that in the short run they may do this to assist in the process of unwinding the global imbalances, since allowing the Fed to lead the world out of the monetary easing cycle would almost certainly provoke a rebound in USD, and problems for correcting the US current account deficit.

Really none of the developed economies (not even Norway) seem to be looking at the sort of really strong “V” shaped rebound some investors were anticipating, and it is more a question of who is weaker among of the weak. But if we look a little further ahead, at potential growth and inflation dynamics, then it is clear that the deflationary headwinds are stronger in Europe, while headline GDP growth may well turn out to be stronger in the US, and both these factors suggest that the Fed will at sometime be tightening faster than the ECB, in a repetition of what we saw from 2002 to 2005.

Well, actually I wouldn’t say the UK and Japan are in the same fiscal boat. Let me explain. The UK evidently has severe short term problems (as does the US) with its sovereign debt, due to the high cost of resolving the lossses produced by the current crisis. But Japan has still not resolved debt problems which were produced in the crisis of the late 1990s, and indeed both gross and net debt to GDP simply continue to rise there. So I would say – as long as they can weather the present storm – the outlook for US, UK and French sovereign debt is rather more positive than it is for Japan. Indeed in the longer term it is hard to see how Japan can resolve its problems without some kind of sovereign default. This is the problem with deflation, as nominal GDP goes down, debt to GDP simply rises and rises.

But the principal reason I am rather more positive on UK, US and French sovereign debt in the mid term is simply the underlying demographic dynamic. These countries have a lot more young people (proportionately) than the Germany’s, Japan’s and Italy’s of this world, and hence their elderly dependency ratios (which are the important thing when we come to talk about structural deficits into the future) will rise more slowly.

It is also important to realise that the EU – at this point at least – is not a single country in the way the US is, and indeed there is strong resistence among European citizens to the idea that it should be. So it is impossible to talk about the EU as if it were one country. That being said, the lastest forecast from the EU Commission suggests that average sovereign debt to GDP will breach the 100% threshold across  the entire EU by 2014, so I would hardly call the situation promising. Basically some cases are much worse than others. In the East there are countries like Latvia and Hungary which are currently implementing IMF-lead structural transformation programmes, ut it is far from clear that these programmes will work, and sovereign debt to GDP has been rising sharply in both cases. In the South a similar problem exists, with Greek gross sovereign debt to GDP now expected by the Commission to hit 135% by 2011, and Italian debt set to increase significantly over the 110% mark. At the same time the future of government debt in Spain and Portugal is becoming increasingly uncertain. I would also point to the strong gamble Angela Merkel is making in Germany, and indeed ECB President Jean Claude Trichet singled the German case out during the last post rate-decision-meeting press conference for special mention in this regard. The future of German sovereign debt is far from clear, and markets certainly have not taken in this underlying reality.

So basically, and I think I have already explained my thinking on this in earlier questions, we have a structural difficulty, since I am sure the way out of Bretton Woods II will not be found by simply substituting the Euro for the USD. Europe is aging far more rapidly than the US, and the dependency ratio problems are consequently significantly greater.

Forex Blog: Current EU economic policy seems to be favoring government spending and exports, at the expense of investment and domestic consumption. Does this imply that the current EU economic recovery is unsustainable?

I don’t think the current EU expansion is unsustainable as such, but I do think it faces tremendous headwinds. Basically one Eurozone country stands out among the rest, France, since France has a sustainable, internal demand driven, recovery, despite all the longer term issues she faces with the structural fiscal deficit. But the story begins and end there, with France. Most of the rest of the Euro Area 16 have problems, although like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each is problematic in its own special way. Countries like Germany and Finland are heavily export dependent, and thus have had far deeper recessions than many of the rest, while countries in the South, lead by Spain and Greece, have been running sizeable current account deficits. Since financial markets are now longer willing to fund these, and the ECB isn’t prepared to support the unsupportable forever, these economies too are now being steaily pushed towards dependence on exports for growth (and for paying down their debts), and this raises the issue of where the final end demand is going to come from.  France on its own cannot supply the export surplus needs of the other 15, so external customers are needed, and this makes the value of the Euro more of an issue than it was.

Forex Blog: It seems that the reason that the the the Fed’s liquidity injections have not resulted in price inflation is because much of the funds have been plowed back into capital markets, rather than used for consumption. Given that this liquidity must at some point be pumped out by the Fed, does this imply that a “correction” is inevitable?

Yes, this is true, the global capital markets have acted as a kind of “back door” on US monetary policy, and much of the excess liquidy the Fed has been trying to pump in has simply “leaked out” via that channel. Why this should be is an interesting question in its own right, since while initially the “credit crunch” meant that funds were not available to borrow the money is now there but it is the banks who have difficulty identifying creditworthy customers given the prevailing levels of unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy. My feeling is that a sharp correction is not coming, unless there is a large event (Greek sovereign default, for example) in Europe or elsewhere, which leads to a sharp contraction in risk sentiment of the kind we saw after the fall of Lehman Brothers. I wouldn’t like at this point to put a figure on the probability of such an event, but the risk is evidently there.

I don’t think the risk of a correction driven by a rapid withdrawal of US liquidity is that real since I don’t think we are going to see that kind of speedy withdrawal, and even if we did, “ample liquidity” is going to be on offer over at the Bank of Japan until the cows come home. I don’t think we are going to see any precipitate removal of monetary support at the Federal Reserve, since I think exiting this situation is going to be more complicated than many imagine. The tussle which has been going on between the Japanese Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan over many years now may well offer a much better guide to exit issues than anything in recent US history, simply because, at least since the 1930s, the US has not been here before. Essentially it will be difficult to withdraw both fiscal and monetary support at one and the same time, but my feeling is that in the US (unlike Japan)  there may well be consensus that the fiscal issue is the most pressing one, and thus this would suggest the Federal Reserve will keep monetary conditions easier for longer, simply to provide an environment in which fiscal consolidation to take place.

Forex Blog: Given the strong economic and fiscal fundamentals of Norway’s economy, do you think currency traders will begin to pay more attention to the Kroner? Do you think it could be taken up as a reserve currency by Central Banks that have become disenchanted with the Dollar?

Well, I think they already are, and evidently the Kroner has become a favoured carry currency. But equally, I doubt the Norwegian authorities would want their country to go the same way as Iceland in the longer term, so I am not sure they would welcome central banks buying Kroner in any large quantity, since this would obviously unrealistically raise the value of the currency, and lead to serious sustainability issues in the domestic manufacturing sector. Basically, as I suggested in the previous interview, I think dollar disenchantment is now likely to be seriously tempered by concerns about Euro weakness.

Forex Blog: It seems that the financial crisis has exposed some of the problems of a common economic/monetary/currency policy for the EU. What are the implications for the future of the ECB and the Euro?

Most definitely. Following Dubai a lot of attention is now focused on sovereign debt, and on who exactly is responsible for what. We should take note of the fact that the  Greek government had to raise 2 billion euros in debt recently via a private placement with banks, against a backdrop of credit downgrades and steadily rising spreads. The ECB undoubtedly agreed to this move given the degree of policy coordination which must now exist behind the scenes, they are, after all,  the ones who are financing the Greek banks, but it does highlight just how things have moved on in recent months. Only last year it was imagined that the being a member of the Eurozone in and of itself gave protection from the kind of financing crisis Greece increasingly now faces, and this was why only eurozone non-members, like Latvia and Hungary, were sent to the IMF. Now it is clear that the ECB could keep protecting Greece from trouble for ever and ever, but they cannot simply keep financing unsustainable external deficits and continue to retain credibility. In this sense the financial crisis has now “leaked” into the Eurozone itself. And this has implications I would have thought, for countries like Estonia, who see Eurozone membership as a “save all”, whatever the price. The difficulty is that the ECB has the capacity to fund troubled countries, but it does not have the power to enforce changes.

The problem of Europe’s institutional structures was highlighted again this week when the Latvian constitutional court ruled that pension cuts included in the recent IMF-EU package are not legal. Personally I find the decision rather significant since pension reform lies at the heart of the whole structural reform programme currently being demanded of “risky” EU states by the IMF, the EU Commission and the Credit Rating Agencies. Indeed the whole credibility of the EU’s ability to manage it’s own affairs could be called into question in this case. As Angela Merkel recently said:

“If, for example, there are problems with the Stability and Growth Pact in one country and it can only be solved by having social reforms carried out in this country, then of course the question arises, what influence does Europe have on national parliaments to see to it that Europe is not stopped…..This is going to be a very difficult task because of course national parliaments certainly don’t wish to be told what to do. We must be aware of such problems in the next few years.”

So obviously, the EU authorities badly need to plug this hole in their armour, or the entire concept of having a common monetary system can be placed at risk, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (who are ultimately the paymaster generals) need to have the power and authority to see to it that national parliaments do what they need to do in the common interest, and they need to get this power and authority in the coming weeks and months, and not simply in the “next few years”. And Europe’s leaders need to be aware that a crisis of sufficient proportions in any one country can very rapidly become a systemic one for the Euro, in much the same way that a problem in a key bank can lead to a crisis of confidence in a whole banking system. I do not feel a sufficient sense of urgency about this in the recent pronouncements of Europe’s leaders.

Forex Blog: So from what you are saying, there is still a risk of a resurgence in the financial crisis on Europe’s periphery. Would you say another round of financial turmoil is now inevitable?

Well the risk is certainly there, and evidently Europe’s institutional structure is in for a very testing time. But no war is ever lost before the battles are fought, although what we can say is that new and imaginative initiatives are certainly going to be needed. Sovereign risk has now spread from non-Eurozone countries like Latvia and Hungary, straight into the heart of the monetary union in cases like Greece and Spain. Mistakes have been made. As I argued in Let The East Into The Eurozone Now! in February 2009, the decision to let the Latvian authorities go ahead with their internal devaluation programme never made sense, and the three Baltic countries and Bulgaria should have been forced to devalue – and the accompanying writedowns swallowed whole – and then immediately admitted into the Eurozone as part of the emergency crisis measures. Perhaps some would feel that this lowering of the entry criteria would have damaged credibility, but as I am stressing here, leaving so many small loose cannon careering around on the lower decks can cause even more issues if matters get out of hand and contagion sets in. So it is a question of pragmatism, and being able to accept the “lesser evil”.

Unfortunately, the situation has simply been allowed to fester, and in addition the much needed change in the EU institutional structure – to allow Angela Merkel the power she is asking for to intervene in Parliaments like the Latvian, Hungarian, Greek and Spanish ones, as and when the need arises – has not been advanced, with the result that we are increasingly in danger of putting the whole future of monetary union at risk. It is never to late to act, but time is, inexorably running out. As the old English saying goes he (or she) who dithers in such situations is irrevocably lost. Caveat emptor!

1. I’d like to begin by asking if there is any significance to the
title of your blog (”Fistful of Euros”), or rather, is it only
intended to be playful?

Obviously the title is a reference to the Segio Leone film, but you
could read other connotations into it if you want. I would say the
idea was basically playful with a serious intent. Personally I agree
with Ben Bernanke that the Euro is a “great experiment”, and you could
see the blog, and the debates which surround it as one tiny part of
that experiment. As they say in Spanish, the future’s not ours to see,
que sera, sera. Certainly that “fistful of euros” has now been put
firmly on the table, and as we are about to discuss the consequences
are far from clear.

2/  You wrote a recent post outlining the US Dollar carry trade, and
how you believe that the Dollar’s decline is cyclical/temporary rather
than structural/permanent. Can you elaborate on this idea? Do you
think it’s possible that the fervor with which investors have sold off
the Dollar suggests that it could be a little of both?

Well, first of all, there is more than one thing happening here, so I
would definitely agree from the outset, there are both cyclical and
structural elements in play. Structurally, the architecture of Bretton
Woods II is creaking round the edges, and in the longer run we are
looking at a relative decline in the dollar, but as Keynes reminded
us, in the long run we are all dead, while as I noted in the Afoe
post, news of the early demise of the dollar is surely vastly
overstated.

Put another way, while Bretton Woods II has surely seen its best days,
till we have some idea what can replace it it is hard to see a major
structural adjustment in the dollar. Europe’s economies are not strong
enough for the Euro to simply step into the hole left by the dollar,
the Chinese, as we know, are reluctant to see the dollar slide too far
due to the losses they would take on dollar denominated instruments,
while the Russians seem to constantly talk the USD down, while at the
same time borrowing in that very same currency – so read this as you
will. Personally, I cannot envisage a long term and durable
alternative to the current set-up that doesn’t involve the Rupee and
the Real, but these currencies are surely not ready for this kind of
role at this point.

So we will stagger on.

On the cyclical side, what I am arguing is that for the time being the
US has stepped in where  Japan used to be, as one side of your carry
pair of choice, since base money has been pumped up massively while
there is little demand from consumers for further indebtedness, so the
broader monetary aggregates haven’t risen in tandem, leaving large
pools of liquidity which can simply leak out of the back door. That
is, it may well be one of the perverse consequences of the Fed
monetary easing policy that it finances consumption elsewhere – in
Norway, or Australia, or South Africa, or Brazil, or India – but not
directly inside the US.

This is something we saw happening during the last Japanese experiment
in quantitative easing (from 2002  - 2006) and that it has the
consequence, as it did for the Yen from 2005 to 2007, that the USD
will have a trading parity which it would be hard to understand if
this were not the case. I am also suggesting that this situation will
unwind as and when the Federal Reserve start to seriously talk about
withdrawing  the emergency measures (both in terms of interest rates
and the various forms of quantitative easing), but that this unwinding
is unlikely to be extraordinarily violent, since the Japanese Yen can
simply step in to plug the gap, as I am sure the Bank of Japan will
not be able to raise interest rates anytime soon given the depth of
the deflation problem they have. Indeed, investors will once more be
able to borrow in Yen to invest in  USD instruments, to the benefit of
Japanese exports and the detriment of the US current account deficit,
which is why I think we are in a finely balanced situation, with clear
limits to movements in one direction or another.

3. In the same post, you suggested that the Fed will be the first to
raise interest rates. Why do you believe this is the case? How will
this affect the Dollar carry trade?

Well, I would want to qualify this a little, becuase things are not
that simple. In fact, as Claus Vistesen argues in this post

http://clausvistesen.squarespace.com/alphasources-blog/2009/11/13/random-shots.html

the ECB has rather “locked itself in” communicationally, and by
talking up the eurozone economies they now have markets expecting
clear exit road maps and even pricing in interest rate rises from the
third quarter of next year. But if we look at the underlying
weaknesses in some of the Eurozone economies – evidently Spain, but
Italy is hardly likely to have a strong robust recovery, and the
German economy needs exports and hence customers to really return to
growth – it is hard to see monetary tightening being applied with any
kind of vigour at the ECB, so they may move up somewhat – say  to 2% -
and then stop for some time.

I was also suggesting that in the short run they may do this to assist
in the process of unwinding the global imbalances, since allowing the
Fed to lead the world out of the monetary easing cycle would almost
certainly provoke a rebound in USD, and problems for correcting the US
current account deficit.

Really none of the developed economies (not even Norway) seem to be
looking at the sort of really strong “V” shaped rebound some investors
were anticipating, and it is more a question of who is weaker among of
the weak. But if we look a little further ahead, at potential growth
and inflation dynamics, then it is clear that the deflationary
headwinds are stronger in Europe, while headline GDP growth may well
turn out to be stronger in the US, and both these factors suggest that
the Fed will at sometime be tightening faster than the ECB, in a
repetition of what we saw from 2002 to 2005.

4. You have pointed out that fiscal problems are not unique to the
US. While the UK and Japan are certainly in the same fiscal boat,
there seem to be plenty of examples of economies that aren’t, or at
least not to the same extent, such as the EU. Do you think, then, that
the long-term prospects for the Euro (especially as a global reserve
currency) are necessarily brighter than for the Dollar?

Well, actually I wouldn’t say the UK and Japan are in the same fiscal
boat. Let me explain. The UK evidently has severe short term problems
(as does the US) with its sovereign debt, due to the high cost of
resolving the lossses produced by the current crisis. But Japan has
still not resolved debt problems which were produced in the crisis of
the late 1990s, and indeed both gross and net debt to GDP simply
continue to rise there. So I would say – as long as they can weather
the present storm – the outlook for US, UK and French sovereign debt
is rather more positive than it is for Japan. Indeed in the longer
term it is hard to see how Japan can resolve its problems without some
kind of sovereign default. This is the problem with deflation, as
nominal GDP goes down, debt to GDP simply rises and rises.

But the principal reason I am rather more positive on UK, US and
French sovereign debt in the mid term is simply the underlying
demographic dynamic. These countries have a lot more young people
(proportionately) than the Germany’s, Japan’s and Italy’s of this
world, and hence their elderly dependency ratios (which are the
important thing when we come to talk about structural deficits into
the future) will rise more slowly.

It is also important to realise that the EU – at this point at least -
is not a single country in the way the US is, and indeed there is
strong resistence among European citizens to the idea that it should
be. So it is impossible to talk about the EU as if it were one
country. That being said, the lastest forecast from the EU Commission
suggests that average sovereign debt to GDP will breach the 100%
threshold across  the entire EU by 2014, so I would hardly call the
situation promising. Basically some cases are much worse than others.
In the East there are countries like Latvia and Hungary which are
currently implementing IMF-lead structural transformation programmes,
but it is far from clear that these programmes will work, and
sovereign debt to GDP has been rising sharply in both cases. In the
South a similar problem exists, with Greek gross sovereign debt to GDP
now expected by the Commission to hit 135% by 2011, and Italian debt
set to increase significantly over the 110% mark. At the same time
the future of government debt in Spain and Portugal is becoming
increasingly uncertain. I would also point to the strong gamble Angela
Merkel is making in Germany, and indeed ECB President Jean Claude
Trichet singled the German case out during the last post
rate-decision-meeting press conference for special mention in this
regard. The future of German sovereign debt is far from clear, and
markets certainly have not taken in this underlying reality.

So basically, and I think I have already explained my thinking on this
in earlier questions, we have a structural difficulty, since I am sure
the way out of Bretton Woods II will not be found by simply
substituting the Euro for the USD. Europe is aging far more rapidly
than the US, and the dependency ratio problems are consequently
significantly greater.