Author Archives: Edward Hugh

About Edward Hugh

Edward 'the bonobo is a Catalan economist of British extraction. After being born, brought-up and educated in the United Kingdom, Edward subsequently settled in Barcelona where he has now lived for over 15 years. As a consequence Edward considers himself to be "Catalan by adoption". He has also to some extent been "adopted by Catalonia", since throughout the current economic crisis he has been a constant voice on TV, radio and in the press arguing in favor of the need for some kind of internal devaluation if Spain wants to stay inside the Euro. By inclination he is a macro economist, but his obsession with trying to understand the economic impact of demographic changes has often taken him far from home, off and away from the more tranquil and placid pastures of the dismal science, into the bracken and thicket of demography, anthropology, biology, sociology and systems theory. All of which has lead him to ask himself whether Thomas Wolfe was not in fact right when he asserted that the fact of the matter is "you can never go home again".

Promises, Promises, But More Than A Technical Detail

Posted on by

Well the eurozone government deficit problem has hit the agenda with a thud again in the last few days. Yesterday the FT ran a story about how the ECB has decided that it will not accept government paper (bonds) in the future from any country which has not maintained at least an A- rating from one or more of the principal debt assesment agencies. (Dave Altig at MacroBlog has also covered the story here, and Nouriel Roubini here). Today the FT has another story about how Trichet has confirmed the policy, and how the Commission too plans to get tough (well they would, wouldn’t they, since this may now become a credibility auction).

This topic must appear appaulingly technical and yawn-provoking to the non-economist. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Let me explain a bit.
Continue reading →

Getting Old Before Getting Rich

Posted on by

This is definitely about to become the new ‘meme’ about China. Actually it is reasonably valid. China’s ‘demographic shocks’ which come principally from the great famine produced at the time of the cultural revolution, and then from the subsequent one-child policy, are undoubtedly going to have significant consequences. Today UK Tory front bench spokesman on Trade and Industry David Willetts has a piece on the topic in the FT (subscription only unfortunately):

One reason for China’s stellar growth is that it is at a demographic sweet-spot. The massive reduction in infant mortality achieved by China’s barefoot doctors in the 1960s and 1970s is now yielding a surge of young workers – an extra 10m working-age adults per year. China’s challenge now is just to absorb them into the labour force. Add to that the massive population flow from the countryside and you can see why wages are low and growth is so fast. There are few pensioners and there are not many children either. The rabbit is indeed in the middle of the python.

If you are frustrated by your inability to read more, and are willing to hack it through a more academic paper on the same theme, then can I recommend “Demographic Dividend and prospects for economic development in China” by Wang Feng, of the University of California Irvine and Andrew Mason, of the University of Hawaii. The paper was presented at the recent (August 2005) UN experts meeting on ageing.

Update: New Economist has a fuller version of the Willets piece online.

Rational Markets?

Posted on by

The general impact of the French riots is, I feel, being ably covered by others here, what I am curious about is how financial markets reach their opinions. According to headlines in many newspapers, the euro is falling aginst the dollar as a result of what is happening in France (or see here). This may or may not be a good reading of why the euro is dropping, but if it was the explanation, I would say it was a far from rational response.
Continue reading →

Portugal’s Deficit Plans

Posted on by

The Portuguese government has announced plans to reduce its fiscal deficit. The aim is to cut the deficit from an expected 6.2 % of GDP this year to below 3% – the theoretical maximum ceiling permitted under the EU’s growth and stability pact – by 2008. Most of the savings will come by addressing the cost of public sector workers – of whom there are some 700,000 in Portugal (total population a little over 10 million). Promotions are to be frozen, salaries pegged to a 2% rise, and retirement ages raised from 60 to 65. All this is provoking a storm of threatened protests, so I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Prodi vs Belusconi

Posted on by

It now seems to be more or less official: after Romano Prodi won a convincing 75 percent support among centre-left voters in what were effectively the first American-style primaries in Italian history, and Marco Follini resigned as leader of the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC) after a failed attempt to persuade his coalition colleagues that Berlusconi should not be their candidate for premier, the stage now looks set for a Berlusconi-Prodi showdown in next years Italian elections.

Currency Volatility and Hungary

Posted on by

As I noted last week, Hungary now seems to have lost the ‘anchor’ of a 2010 eurozone entry expectation. (see also this, and this ). As I am also indicating currency markets may well be driven at the moment by a combination of interest rate yield variations and expectations of future movements, and this may lead to increasing volatility.

Now, if we assume that between the relatively calm waters of ‘eurozone closing’ and the choppy waters of swimming alone in the open sea there must be a break point somewhere, it might not be unreasonable to ask whether Hungary may not be presently in danger of crossing that imaginary thin red line? With Hungarian interest rates currently at 6% clearly growth-needs indicate a measured pace of reductions (particularly with core inflation around 1.5%) , but CA deficits and government funding deficits in the 6% to 7% range anything substantial in the way of rate reductions looks problematic. This is why ‘slipping anchor’ on the euro-docking objective could turn out to be especially problematic in Hungary’s case, in particular given the high levels of non-forint-denominated borrowing, and the potential for secondary ‘balance sheet’ effects.

More On Exchange Rates and Policy Rate Differentials

Posted on by

Morgan Stanley’s Stephen Len is obviously on the same page as I am about how the rising interest rate differential between Europe and the US is likely to drive short term currency movements:

Policy rate differentials are especially important now for the currency markets, and it pays to focus on central banks these days.

Reason 1. Global monetary paths are diverging, not converging. Among the major economies, only the US has an output gap small enough to support tightening. I doubt either the ECB or BOE will be in a position to tighten rates this year. Many now understand quantitative easing must be terminated by early next year, but no one has proposed actually raising interest rates from zero. Therefore, monetary paths are diverging, with the rest of the world having trouble keeping up with the Fed. This makes the Fed much more important for the USD than in ‘normal’ times.

Reason 2. Global equity portfolios are likely to be out of balance. Since 2003, there have been massive equity flows into Euroland and Japan. Since much of these flows occurred when the USD was still in structural decline, and some of the outflows reflected fears of a USD crash, it makes sense to suspect hedge ratios are quite low on these equity outflows. With the rise in the FFR and resilient dollar, the cost of running these currency exposures is increasingly unjustifiable. The equity market cap-weighted short-term interest rate differential between the US and the major markets is now around 180 bp, and still rising. If the Fed takes the FFR to 5.0% by end-2006, the differential will reach levels last seen in 2000.

Issing Gives Inflation Warning

Posted on by

More evidence today of how the Central Bankers and their economic advisers are doing their best to sound the inflation alarm. This time it is ECB Chief Economist Otmar Issing:

European Central Bank Chief Economist Otmar Issing said a surge in oil prices may lead to higher-than- expected inflation in 2006, as the bank edges closer to raising interest rates for the first time in five years.

“Rising oil prices are not only affecting current inflation rates but they’re also overshadowing next year,” Issing said in an interview on Oct. 14 at a banking event in Frankfurt. “It can’t be ruled out that risks for price developments will deteriorate that much over the medium term that we might have to expect the annual inflation rate to slightly exceed 2 percent.”

The comments were the second in three days suggesting the bank may raise its inflation estimate of 1.9 percent for 2006. The bank projects the level this year at about 2.2 percent. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said at a briefing after the annual meeting of the Group of 20 industrial and developing near Beijing yesterday that he can’t exclude inflation being “over and above” the bank’s 2 percent ceiling.

My view: this very much depends on the evolution of oil prices. There is little evidence of any strong impact on ‘core prices’ at this point, there is plenty of evidence of growth weakness. There is thus little justification from a purely eurozone perspective for any short term increase in interest rates, and certainly no justification whatsoever in the case of Germany.

Growth and Inflation in the UK

Posted on by

Following-up on my post earlier this week on interest rate policy I see Graham Searjeant has a piece in the Times today arguing that Mervyn King has the balance wrong between fighting inflation and stimulating growth.

In a sense I think that Searjeant is not entirely fair when he says:

Growth has become even more vital to support an ageing population. The Governor may deny responsibility. The rest of us cannot.

Evidently this is the case, but equally I am sure that Mervyn King is well aware of the fact. However since it is long term *sustainable* growth we are talking about here, and since I don’t doubt this is what he (King) is aiming at, even if his efforts, and the reasoning behind them remain obscure (and here I do think we can blame King) I really don’t think Searjeant’s point sticks in the way he wants. The issue is whether short-term growth is being needlessly sacrificed, and if so, to what?

Short-term growth is being sacrificed IMHO to the god of global imbalances, and the campaign to correct them, and it is these, and not inflation, which are King’s real target. (continued).
Continue reading →