My main job on these pages is to distil the market Narrative™ for my readers, and recent events have made this week’s missive a layup. The debate on whether to fire, and how to arm, the fiscal bazooka has continued, and now monetary policymakers have joined the party. For a while, it seemed as if the world’s biggest central banks were sleepwalking into coordinated tightening, or in the case of the PBoC, failing altogether in the attempt to counter a sustained cyclical slowdown. To the extent that the Q4 chaos in equities was investors’ vote on this strategy, they should consider their message received. In Japan, signs of wage growth briefly alerted markets to the prospect that the JGB market would be un-frozen by further loosening of the yield-curve-control. But the truth is that Kuroda-san is stuck. With global headline inflation pressures now easing, manufacturing and exports struggling, and the looming consumption tax, the BOJ isn’t going anywhere fast; zero rates and (modest) balance sheet expansion will continue as far as the eye can see. In Frankfurt, the ECB recently downgraded its assessment of the economy—the convoluted shift from “broadly balanced” to “downside” risks—and expectations are building that the TLTROs will be extended, or even renewed and expanded.
Read MoreYou will find no harsher critique of Mr. Trump’s indiscriminate use of social media than yours truly. If it were up to me, the president’s phone would have been deactivated a long time ago. Last week’s performance on economics, however, struck at the heart of a story economists and strategists have been circling for a long time. How far will monetary policy divergence be stretched in this cycle? Mr. Trump first suggested that other major economies—Europe and Asia—are unfairly manipulating their interest rates and currencies, before following up with a swing at Fed for making things worse by hiking rates. In short; the White House is suddenly spooked by the risk to the economy from a stronger dollar and higher rates. This is probably a reasonable political worry ahead of the mid-terms, but it is also sweet irony. If Mr. Trump wants to complain to anyone about the vigour of the dollar, he should start with a look in the mirror. Aggressive tax and short-term inflationary tariffs in an economy with a near record-low unemployment and savings rate could only have one outcome in the end. A more assertive Fed and a stronger dollar always were obvious side-effects of such a policy constellation.
Read MoreAnother start to a new year another bout of anxiety over China, although I concede that the collateral damage on other markets have so far been far modest compared with the panic in Q1 last year. The bogey man is the same as in 2016. Capital outflows are accelerating, currency volatility has surged and the once bulging FX reserve coffers are leaking fast. These are ominous signs in a traditional emerging market macro-style framework, but I am not sure that this is the correct prism through which to look at China.
Read More