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David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Fixed Income

    Email of the day on Modern Monetary Theory

    Hope you are well in Dallas.

    I have a question: why do you often mention that we have MMT in action right now?

    MMT is not a policy adopted by government or central banks. They don’t “do mmt”

    MMT is a theoretical framework that tries to explain how the monetary system works in a freely convertible and fiat currency system in which we have been living for 50 years now (and it explains it correctly to a large part in my opinion). it’s not the “policy ode making debt”. Isn’t it?

    When you mention “MMT in action” you likely refer to the government demand for goods, services and the grant of subsidies / social securities payment / medicare /unemployment benefit to people etc. along with the debt issuance “to pay for” this spending. Finally the FED buying the government debt to “ease” the monetary conditions (the QE vs tapering).

    But this is not “MMT”. Government spending has always existed and it is the second largest component of a country GDP (after “C” , private consumption). Look at the development of the US federal debt since the early 80es to the almost USD 28tn in 2021 / today. It does not matter who administered the country (super conservative or super liberal), they have all managed to expand the debt. And the market has always absorbed the “debt”. Have they been “doing MMT” for 40 years?

    Thank you for your regular market updates... always appreciated

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    A Momentous Shift Is Taking Shape in the Labor Market

    This article by John Authers from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    For the third month in a row, wages for the low-skilled have risen faster than for the high-skilled. In the previous history of the survey, which now goes back almost 25 years, this had only ever happened in two months, in early 2010. Wage growth for the low-skilled is also exceeding that for the high-skilled by the most on record. 

    In terms of the momentous macroeconomic issues of the moment, this is good for growth, as poorer people are more likely to spend their pay rises than richer people. It’s also potentially bad for inflation. Wage growth for the lowest skilled is the fastest since August 2008 (not coincidentally, the month before the Lehman bankruptcy), and that could easily lead to higher prices. 

    More interestingly still, it does suggest a shift in the balance of power between labor and capital. This isn’t as yet a deep-seated or well-established trend, of course. But if it continues it could rattle a lot of assumptions, and alleviate a lot of social tension.

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    Dispelling Myths In The Value vs. Growth Debate

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from GMO which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Argument 3: Today’s business models have rendered most accounting data irrelevant, so isn’t investing on the basis of obsolete measures like P/E or price/book a fool’s errand?

    Answer: Here at GMO we’ve got a good deal more sympathy for this argument than the first two. The fact that GAAP accounting hasn’t kept up with business models that are more dependent on intellectual property than tangible assets is unquestionably true. While it is worth remembering that book value was a highly imperfect guide to “true” economic capital even in the pre internet (and pre stock buyback) days, it is certainly more flawed now. We think the right response to the problem is not to give up on value as a style but to build better value models. GMO’s Global Equity team spent 4 years painstakingly rebuilding the balance sheets and income statements of over 10,000 companies going back over 40 years, capitalizing expenditures that we believe should have been considered investments and undoing the distortions created by decades of stock buybacks. This has not only given us improved versions of accounting-based valuation models that we believe are far closer to economic reality than what is embodied in the measures used to build style indexes, but we’ve taken advantage of that economically relevant data to build a forward-looking dividend discount model that we believe can also differentiate between companies where it is worth paying up for their future growth potential from those that are merely overvalued.

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    ECB Slows Crisis Stimulus in Shift Lagarde Insists Isn't a Taper

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “This is not a tapering decision, as ECB President Lagarde stressed,” Elga Bartsch, head of macro research at the BlackRock Investment Institute, said in an emailed comment. “Asset purchases look here to stay as the new policy framework paves the way for looser for longer monetary policy in the euro area.”

    Mark Dowding, who oversees $70 billion at BlueBay Asset Management LLP, was less convinced by Lagarde’s protestations. 

    “To me it is just semantics,” he said. “It is a choice of words. It looks like a taper and smells like a taper, so markets will view it as the start of the taper process.”

    With supply-chain disruptions and resurgent virus infections threatening to undermine the recovery and medium-term price pressures likely to remain well below its goal, officials have insisted in recent weeks that the euro-area economy is in a different state than the U.S. and remains reliant on ECB support.

    Yet some governors have started to warn publicly that maintaining an ultra-accommodative stance for too long also carries risks. Austria’s Robert Holzmann and Klaas Knot of the Netherlands both told Bloomberg in separate interviews last week that emergency asset purchases should end in March, hinting at heated discussions about the policy path in the months ahead.

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    Johnson Hands Workers, Firms $17 Billion Annual Health Bill

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is as a section:

    Johnson made a statement to a hushed House of Commons on Tuesday, ahead of a joint press conference with Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

    As he begins his third year in office, 57-year-old Johnson is looking to move beyond the Covid-19 pandemic by delivering on a policy promise that he set out in his first speech as prime minister to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all” -- as well as ensure the NHS can keep functioning under extreme
    pressure.

    But by attempting to meet this pledge, he is tearing up another one: the Conservatives vowed in their manifesto not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. He’s gambling that voters will reward him for finding a solution to social care, a problem that eluded his predecessors.        

    The government broke another pledge on Tuesday, saying it will scrap its “triple lock” commitment to pensioners, albeit for one year only. Pensions will now rise by the greater of inflation or 2.5%, Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey said. Suspended is an average earnings component after distortions caused by the pandemic caused wages to soar almost 9% over the past year.
     

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    Biden administration ramps up antitrust efforts amid worries about high prices

    Thanks to a subscriber for this article from The Washington Post may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    But other troubling signs have emerged in ways that threaten the administration’s political agenda. The price of gasoline rose by 2.5% in June and 2.4% in July — a rate which, if consistent over the course of the year, would amount to a more than 20% annual increase. Gas prices have risen above $3 and are at their highest level since 2014 as part of a broader increase in prices that the administration is eager to reverse. Prices could increase further as Hurricane Ida slams into Louisiana, a key hub for refineries, although that uptick will likely prove temporary.

    Food price hikes also strained family budgets, rising by roughly 3.4% from last year. The Agriculture Department saw faster than expected jumps between June and July in the price of 11 different food categories — including beef and veal; seafood; fish; and dairy products — with pork and chicken prices increasing by about 2% in just one month. USDA projected jumps in poultry prices of as high as 6% over 2021.

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    Powell Says Taper Could Start in 2021, With No Rush on Rate Hike

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Investors took the news of the coming taper in their stride -- avoiding any hint of the so-called 2013 “tantrum” when the Fed surprised markets by unexpectedly announcing it would start to pare back asset purchases. The S&P 500 rose during the much-anticipated address to stand more than 0.6% higher from opening levels. Ten-year Treasury yields nudged slightly lower to around 1.33% and the dollar fell.

    “Chair Powell stuck to the script in his Jackson Hole speech; anyone hoping for a steer on the timing of the taper will have been disappointed, but it was never likely,” said Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

    At the July Federal Open Market Committee meeting, most Fed officials agreed it would probably be appropriate to begin tapering the central bank’s $120-billion-a-month bond-buying program before the end of the year, according to a record of the gathering. Some are pushing for a move as soon as next month.

    Monetary policy makers would like to conclude the purchases before they begin raising interest rates, and several in June saw a possible need for rate increases as early as 2022 amid inflation that is running above the central bank’s 2% target. The Fed cut its benchmark rate to nearly zero and relaunched the crisis-era purchase program last year at the onset of the pandemic.

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    Fearing Inflation, Germans Load Up on Gold Bars

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Demand for physical bullion in Germany, traditionally the biggest coin and bar buyer in Europe, was the highest since at least 2009 in the first half, World Gold Council data show.

    While purchases in other Western markets have also been strong, Germans in particular are pouring into the metal as a hedge against rising inflation -- and dealers say business remains good.

    “We have a long history of inflation fear in our DNA. Now the inflation risk is picking up,” said Raphael Scherer, a managing director at metals dealer Philoro Edelmetalle GmbH, whose gold sales are up 25% on what was already a strong 2020.

    “The outlook for precious metals is very positive.” Germany’s love of gold has its origins in the hyperinflation seen under the Weimar Republic a century ago, which saw consumers’ buying power collapse. Last month, the reopening of the economy helped German inflation jump to the highest in more than a decade. Negative interest rates in Europe are also making non-yielding assets like gold more attractive, Scherer said.

    First-half demand for bar and coins in Germany increased by 35% from the previous six months, compared with 20% in the rest of the world, WGC data show.

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    Bond Math Reveals Secret to Big Tech's Fate in U.S. Stock Market

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    “If rates go up, they will underperform,” Aash Shah, senior portfolio manager with Summit Global Investments, said of the biggest tech stocks. “That’s nothing against their business, just a reality of discounted cash flow.”

    The interplay between technology stocks and Treasury rates is nothing new, of course; the rise in yields over 2018 contributed to an outsize rout in the Nasdaq 100 Index late that year, for example. And other forces, like last year’s shift away from companies hard hit by lockdowns, have also played a major role in driving tech stocks. 

    Chris Murphy, co-head of derivatives strategy at Susquehanna International, said a rise in yields doesn’t necessarily pose a risk to tech stocks if economic growth stays strong. But that could be eclipsed if investors grow fearful about the expected pullback in the Federal Reserve’s bond buying program.

    “If economic growth holds up, 10-year yields and the Nasdaq can rally together,” he said. “If the focus switches to the Fed tapering, then that’ll be bad for the Nasdaq and the relationship starts to become more negative.”

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