Sept. 21, 2011, 8:53 a.m. EDTBarclays lowers forecast for the euro
By Deborah Levine
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Barclays Capital lowered its forecast for the euro against the dollar EURUSD -0.16% on Wednesday, saying the single currency will fall to $1.33 in the next month from $1.3642 in morning trading. The firm previously expected the currency to rise to $1.42 in a month. "The problems in the euro area have deteriorated significantly and are likely to worsen further before stabilizing," currency strategists led by Paul Robinson wrote in a note. Risks related to the region's sovereign debt crisis, as well as a more dovish tone coming from the European Central Bank and the floor the Swiss National Bank set for the euro against the Swiss franc EURCHF -0.02% are weighing on the currency in the short run, they said. The firm expected the euro to fall to $1.25 in three months.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Barclays Capital lowered its forecast for the euro against the dollar EURUSD -0.16% on Wednesday, saying the single currency will fall to $1.33 in the next month from $1.3642 in morning trading. The firm previously expected the currency to rise to $1.42 in a month. "The problems in the euro area have deteriorated significantly and are likely to worsen further before stabilizing," currency strategists led by Paul Robinson wrote in a note. Risks related to the region's sovereign debt crisis, as well as a more dovish tone coming from the European Central Bank and the floor the Swiss National Bank set for the euro against the Swiss franc EURCHF -0.02% are weighing on the currency in the short run, they said. The firm expected the euro to fall to $1.25 in three months.
| Features and Analysis | Sunday, February 27 2011 |
 | |||||||
| The Economy Why a ‘G-Zero World’ means conflict, protectionism and trade wars
Ian Bremmer and Nouriel Roubini explain their lead article from the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, ‘A G-Zero World’- a world in which "no single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage-or the will-to drive a truly international agenda."
Much of the talk at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos was about the ‘G-Zero’- which the New York Timeshas already called "this year's buzziest buzzword." Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, and Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University, previewed their lead article from the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs, ‘A G-Zero World’- a world in which "no single country or bloc of countries has the political and economic leverage-or the will-to drive a truly international agenda." In the past, the United States has been able to use its military and economic power to force global cooper ation, but today it "lacks the resources to continue as the primary provider of global public goods," say Bremmer and Roubini. And other powers, such as China, have "no interest in accepting the burdens that come with international leadership." Such a vacuum will likely accelerate the rise of currency wars and increase the risk of another global economic meltdown, they warn. Asked at Davos about the notion that in a G-Zero world, the recently created G-20 was already obsolete, French President Nicholas Sarkozy - about to lead the prominent international group - was not amused; Laurence Parisot, head of France's MEDEF business lobby, went so far as to accuse the proponents of G-Zero of calling for "economic war." Il Sakong, chairman of the South Korean presidential committee for the G-20 summit in Seoul, attacked the authors because they put forward no solution to the problems they described. Bremmer's response? "The G-Zero isn't aspirational, it's analytic. Unfortunately, it's also where we are." An advance look at ‘A G-Zero World’ is now available on ForeignAffairs.com. The following are some excerpts: "From 1945 until 1990, the global balance of power was defined primarily by relative differences in military capability. It was not market-moving innovation or cultural dynamism that bolstered the Soviet bloc's prominence within a bipolar international system. It was raw military power. Today, it is the centrality of China and other emerging powers to the future of the global economy, not the numbers of their citizens under arms or the weapons at their disposal that make their choices crucial for the United States' future." "[T]he divergence of economic interests in the wake of the financial crisis has undermined global economic cooperation, throwing a wrench into the gears of globalisation. In the past, the global economy has relied on a hegemon-the United Kingdom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the United States in the twentieth century-to create the security framework necessary for free markets, free trade, and capital mobility." "For the past 20 years, whatever their differences on security issues, governments of the world's major developed and developing states have had common economic goals...But for the next 20 years, negotiations on economic and trade issues are likely to be driven by competition just as much as recent debates over nuclear nonproliferation and climate change have." "Conflicts over trade liberalisation have recently pitted the United States, the European Union, Brazil, China, India, and other emerging economies against one another as each government looks to protect its own workers and industries, often at the expense of outsiders. Officials in many European countries have complained that Ireland's corporate tax rate is too low and last year pushed the Irish government to accept a bailout it needed but did not want. German voters are grousing about the need to bail out poorer European countries, and the citizens of southern European nations are attacking their governments' unwillingness to continue spending beyond their means." |
Print this article
New world order will see farmers and miners in charge
Commodities look set for another bull run this year, driven by fundamental demand from emerging economies – principally China. We list the trends to look out for.
“All these people who got MBAs made a mistake,” according to Jim Rogers, the commodities investor, at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit last month.
“The City of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It’s going to be the people who produce real goods in charge – the farmers and the miners.”
With commodities up 42pc since the beginning of last year, according to a basket tracked by Reuters, his words certainly ring true for 2010. An array of metals from gold to copper have hit record highs, while palladium has doubled and silver is up 83pc.
Coal, potash and other mining companies have also been a key target of merger and acquisition activity.
We believe this isn’t just a short-term rally, and would argue that commodities will have another bull run this year, driven by fundamental demand from emerging economies – principally China.
Among the specific trends to look out for:
Commodities will decouple from the dollar
It’s an old assumption that commodities will do well when the dollar is weak. But this quarter, oil, copper and gold have begun to move in tandem with the US currency.
Investment tends to flow out of commodities when the dollar is doing well. But the new theory is that demand for raw materials from Asia and other emerging markets is so strong that it will override this trend.
Gold and silver will be supported by worries on sovereign debt
It’s not inconceivable that gold could break through $2,000 per ounce within a few years. Gold has proved a safe haven asset class again and again, ending the 12 months up for the tenth year in a row. Meanwhile, silver is not only regarded as a “store of value” investment against inflation but, unlike gold, it also has industrial uses to boost demand.
Corn is top of the crops
Analysts from Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse and Rabobank all choose corn as one of their top commodities for 2011. The drought in Russia, causing crop failure in corn and wheat, supported the price last year. Analysts at Rabobank believe a combination of tightening supply, “heightened political risk amid tightening food supplies” and rising investor interest in agriculturals will continue to boost the price.
“Fundamentals are only part of the story,” they claim. “With agriculture and agricultural futures markets increasingly being viewed as an attractive asset class by investors, the role of outside macro drivers, including currencies, energy correlation and speculative money, are becoming more important in shaping agricultural price movements.”
Cotton is also one to watch, with inventories are likely to fall to a record low at the end of the season in July 2011.
Oil will hit $100
All the signs suggest that oil will break out of the $70-90 trading range seen this year. There is little suggestion that OPEC, the world’s powerful cartel of producing countries, will act swiftly to increase production and dampen prices.
Meanwhile, runaway Asian demand continues apace. Some analysts are worried about the economic consequences of this. Credit Suisse research notes: “If energy prices were also to break significantly higher, we would be concerned about the potentially destabilising consequences for corporate profitability and the recovery trend.”
Chinese will remain hungry for base metals
China may raise interest rates again – and again – in an attempt to halt price inflation. This may cause a correction in industrial metal prices in the first half. But its fundamentally rampant demand for raw materials will continue to fuel the copper, zinc, nickel, tin and aluminium prices. These metals will also be supported by the launch of multiple physically-backed exchange-traded funds by the banks.
However, we’re not convinced about Oleg Deripaska’s plan to launch an aluminium based fund, owing to the cost of storing the light metal and predict that this may not get off the ground in 2011 as planned.
Weather woes will increase volatility
This year has seen a slew of meteorological quirks causing supply problems in the commodities markets. Most recently, floods have forced Australian coal mines to shut, while rains affected production in Indonesia and Colombia. Then there were the Russian crop failures in the summer. And this winter extreme cold across Europe and the US has boosted energy commodities. In Brazil, the world’s top sugar producer, lack of rain has limited cane yields, while orange juice has risen on fears that frost will damage crops.
Amrita Sen, a commodities analyst at Barclays Capital, said: “There have been some very clear weather patterns emerging different to what we’ve seen in the past. It will be an important theme, especially in the first quarter for coal.”
Wednesday 15 December 2010 Economics
Nouriel Roubini: What awaits the US, the eurozone and Asia in 2011
Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists who predicted the scale of the financial crisis, has given his outlook for 2011. Here is a summary.
Roubini expects the US economy to grow by 2.7pc next year, with further concerns in the eurozone and tensions between China and the US to remain focal points in 2011.
The US:
Roubini Global Economics expects gross domestic economic growth of 2.7pc, down from its estimate of 2.8pc for this year. Inflation will remain muted at 1.4pc compared with 1.6pc for this year. The growth, a sharp contrast to the 2.4pc contraction of 2009, won't be enough to bring down unemployment, though. Roubini is forecasting it stays around 9.5pc. Even if the US economy could deliver growth of 4pc, it would still need half a decade of that to cut unemployment closer to 5pc, his firm reckons. Roubini is also not optimistic that there will be any agreement in Congress over the next two years on how to tackle the country's deficit. Unless bond investors force the issue, that will be a job for whoever wins the next presidential election, he says.The Eurozone:
It's in the eurozone that the greatest risks to global growth lie, according to Roubini. What he characterises as a "muddle-through" approach is not sustainable and more countries will eventually have to restructure their debts, he reckons. Despite a forecast that the German economy will slow to growth of 2.2pc in 2011 from an estimated 3.5pc this year, the pressure will grow on Europe's largest economy to adopt a very stimulative fiscal policy to compensate for the weakness of many of its eurozone neighbours. Europe's second-tier of heavyweights - France and Italy - will grow just 1.3pc and 0.8pc respectively, according to Roubini.Asia:
Tensions between the region and the US will remain over currency policy. Roubini doesn't expect any significant devaluation of the yuan by China. That, in turn, will encourage other Asian exporters, such as South Korea, to keep their currencies weak because no one wants to lose market share. Roubini expects Chinese gross domestic product to slow to 8.7pc next year from the 10pc he has pencilled in this year. At 8.8pc India's growth will almost match the 9pc enjoyed this year. However, all the major emerging economies face a tough battle against inflation as a combination of their own internal growth and the liquidity unleashed by the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing drives up prices.China Downgrades US Again, From AA To A+, Outlook Negative, Expects "Long-Term Recession", Blasts QE2, Expects Creditor Retaliation
It's on ladies and gents:
Dagong has downgraded the local and foreign currency long term sovereign credit rating of the United States of America (hereinafter referred to as “United States” ) from “AA” to “A+“, which reflects its deteriorating debt repayment capability and drastic decline of the government’s intention of debt repayment.
The serious defects in the United States economic development and management model will lead to the long-term recession of its national economy, fundamentally lowering the national solvency. The new round of quantitative easing monetary policy adopted by the Federal Reserve has brought about an obvious trend of depreciation of the U.S. dollar, and the continuation and deepening of credit crisis in the U.S. Such a move entirely encroaches on the interests of the creditors, indicating the decline of the U.S. government’s intention of debt repayment. Analysis shows that the crisis confronting the U.S. cannot be ultimately resolved through currency depreciation. On the contrary, it is likely that an overall crisis might be triggered by the U.S. government’s policy to continuously depreciate the U.S. dollar against the will of creditors.
===============================================
By Lorraine Woellert and John Gittelsohn - Jun 13, 2010
The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.
Fannie and Freddie, now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers, already have drawn $145 billion from an unlimited line of government credit granted to ensure that home buyers can get loans while the private housing-finance industry is moribund. That surpasses the amount spent on rescues of American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. or Citigroup Inc., which have begun repaying their debts.
“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry.
Fannie, based in Washington, and Freddie in McLean, Virginia, own or guarantee 53 percent of the nation’s $10.7 trillion in residential mortgages, according to a June 10 Federal Reserve report. Millions of bad loans issued during the housing bubble remain on their books, and delinquencies continue to rise. How deep in the hole Fannie and Freddie go depends on unemployment, interest rates and other drivers of home prices, according to the companies and economists who study them.
‘Worst-Case Scenario’
The Congressional Budget Office calculated in August 2009 that the companies would need $389 billion in federal subsidies through 2019, based on assumptions about delinquency rates of loans in their securities pools. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget estimated in February that aid could total as little as $160 billion if the economy strengthens.
If housing prices drop further, the companies may need more. Barclays Capital Inc. analysts put the price tag as high as $500 billion in a December report on mortgage-backed securities, assuming home prices decline another 20 percent and default rates triple.
Sean Egan, president of Egan-Jones Ratings Co. in Haverford, Pennsylvania, said that a 20 percent loss on the companies’ loans and guarantees, along the lines of other large market players such as Countrywide Financial Corp., now owned by Bank of America Corp., could cause even more damage.
“One trillion dollars is a reasonable worst-case scenario for the companies,” said Egan, whose firm warned customers away from municipal bond insurers in 2002 and downgraded Enron Corp. a month before its 2001 collapse.
Unfinished Business
A 20 percent decline in housing prices is possible, said David Rosenberg, chief economist for Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto. Rosenberg, whose forecasts are more pessimistic than those of other economists, predicts a 15 percent drop.
“Worst case is probably 25 percent,” he said.
The median price of a home in the U.S. was $173,100 in April, down 25 percent from the July 2006 peak, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Fannie and Freddie are deeply wired into the U.S. and global financial systems. Figuring out how to stanch the losses and turn them into sustainable businesses is the biggest piece of unfinished business as Congress negotiates a Wall Street overhaul that could reach President Barack Obama’s desk by July.
Neither political party wants to risk damaging the mortgage market, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and White House economic adviser under President George W. Bush.
“Republicans and Democrats love putting Americans in houses, and there’s no getting around that,” Holtz-Eakin said.
‘Safest Place’
With no solution in sight, the companies may need billions of dollars from the Treasury Department each quarter. The alternative -- cutting the federal lifeline and letting the companies default on their debts -- would produce global economic tremors akin to the U.S. decision to go off the gold standard in the 1930s, said Robert J. Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who helped create the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes of property values.
“People all over the world think, ‘Where is the safest place I could possibly put my money?’ and that’s the U.S.,” Shiller said in an interview. “We can’t let Fannie and Freddie go. We have to stand up for them.”
Congress created the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, in 1938 to expand home ownership by buying mortgages from banks and other lenders and bundling them into bonds for investors. It set up the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., Freddie Mac, in 1970 to compete with Fannie.
Lower Standards
The companies’ liabilities stem in large part from loans and mortgage-backed securities issued between 2005 and 2007. Directed by Congress to encourage lending to minorities and low- income borrowers at the same time private companies were gaining market share by pushing into subprime loans, Fannie and Freddie lowered their standards to take on high-risk mortgages.
Many of those went to borrowers with poor credit or little equity in their homes, according to companyfilings. By early 2008, more than $500 billion of loans guaranteed or held by Fannie and Freddie, about 10 percent of the total, were in subprime mortgages, according to Fed reports.
Fannie and Freddie also raised billions of dollars by selling their own corporate debt to investors around the world. The bonds are seen as safe because of an implicit government guarantee against default. Foreign governments, including China’s and Japan’s, hold $908 billion of such bonds, according to Fed data.
‘Debt Trap’
“Do we really want to go to the central bank of China and say, ‘Tough luck, boys’? That’s part of the problem,” said Karen Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics Inc., a Washington-based research firm.
The terms of the 2008 Treasury bailout create further complications. Fannie and Freddie are required to pay a 10 percent annual dividend on the shares owned by taxpayers. So far, they owe $14.5 billion, more than the companies reported in income in their most profitable years.
“It’s like a debt trap,” said Qumber Hassan, a mortgage strategist at Credit Suisse Group AG in New York. “The more they draw, the more they have to pay.”
Fannie and Freddie also benefited by selling $1.4 trillion in mortgage-backed securities to the Fed and the Treasury since September 2008, bonds that otherwise would have weighed on their balance sheets. While the government bought only the lowest-risk securities, it could incur additional losses.
‘Hard to Judge’
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has vowed to keep Fannie and Freddie operating.
“It’s very hard to judge what the scale of losses is,” Geithner told Congress in March.
One idea being weighed by the Obama administration involves reconstituting Fannie and Freddie into a “good bank” with performing loans and a “bad bank” to absorb the rest. That could cost taxpayers as much as $290 billion because of all the bad loans, according to a May estimate by Credit Suisse analysts.
At the end of March, borrowers were late making payments on $338.4 billion worth of Fannie and Freddie loans, up from $206.1 billion a year earlier, according to the companies’ first- quarter filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The number of loans more than three months past due has risen every quarter for more than a year, hitting 5.5 percent at Fannie as of the end of March and 4.1 percent at Freddie, according to the filings.
Surge in Delinquencies
The composition of the $5.5 trillion of loans guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie suggests that the surge in delinquencies may continue. About $1.98 trillion of the loans were made in states with the nation’s highest foreclosure rates -- California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona -- and $1.13 trillion were issued in 2006 and 2007, when real estate values peaked. Mortgages on which borrowers owe more than 90 percent of a property’s value total $402 billion.
Fannie and Freddie may suffer additional losses as a result of the Treasury’s effort to prevent foreclosures. Under the program, banks with mortgages owned or guaranteed by the companies must rewrite loan terms to make them easier for borrowers to pay.
The Treasury program is budgeted to cost Fannie and Freddie $20 billion. The companies have already modified about 600,000 delinquent loans and refinanced almost 300,000 more, in some cases for an amount greater than the houses are worth.
The government is using Fannie and Freddie “for a public- policy purpose that may well increase the ultimate cost of the taxpayer rescue,” said Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics. “Treasury is rolling the dice.”
Republican Phase-Out
If the plan works and foreclosures fall, that could help stabilize Fannie’s and Freddie’s balance sheets and ultimately protect taxpayers.
“Avoiding foreclosures can be a route to reducing loss severity,” said Sarah Rosen Wartell, executive vice president of the Center for American Progress, a Washington research group with ties to the Obama administration.
Loans issued since 2008, when the companies raised standards for borrowers, should be profitable and help offset prior losses, Wartell said.
Republicans attempted to include a phase-out of the mortgage companies in the financial reform bill. Democratic lawmakers and the Obama administration opted for further study, and the Treasury began soliciting ideas in April.
Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican and co-sponsor of the phase-out amendment, said eliminating Fannie and Freddie would force the government and the housing market to confront the issue.
“It’s somewhat impossible to predict the magnitude of their impact if they continue to be the primary source of lending,” Garrett said in an interview.
Caught in ‘Quandary’
Democrats dismissed the phase-out idea as simplistic.
“We need to have a housing-financing system in place,” Senate Banking Committee ChairmanChristopher Dodd said last month. “If you pull that rug out at this particular juncture, I don’t know what the particular result would be. We’re caught in this quandary.”
By delaying action, the Obama administration keeps losses off the government’s books while building a floor under housing prices during a congressional election year.
Keeping Fannie and Freddie functioning could also support an overall economic recovery. Residential real estate -- the money spent on rent, mortgage payments, construction, remodeling, utilities and brokers’ fees -- accounted for about 17 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
‘Already Lost’
Allowing the companies to go under and hoping that private financing will fill the gap isn’t realistic, analysts say. It would require at least two years of rising property values for private companies to return to the mortgage-securitization market, said Robert Van Order, Freddie’s former chief international economist and a professor of finance at George Washington University in Washington.
The price tag of supporting Fannie and Freddie “needs to be evaluated against the cost of not having a mortgage market,” said Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office.
Whatever the fix, the money spent will not be recovered, said Alex Pollock, a former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago who is now a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.
“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, Fannie and Freddie will cost a lot of money,” Pollock said. “The money is already lost. There’s an attempt to try to avert your eyes.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at [email="lwoellert@bloomberg.net"]lwoellert@bloomberg.net[/email];John Gittelsohn in New York at [email="johngitt@bloomberg.net"]johngitt@bloomberg.net[/email].
