Sí, chicos: esta depresión global termina feo, sobre todo para los masters de las finanzas allá en el norte. ¿Quieren que les diga una cosa? Estar "aislados del mundo" es casi lo mejor que nos puede pasar en esta fase terminal del capitalismo globalizado. La siguiente nota de John Ficenec para
el Telegraph de Londres sugiere que la cuenta regresiva para el gran estallido financiero ya comenzó. Las figuritas son muy interesantes, lástima que un tanto ominosas:
Título: Doomsday
clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks
lose control
Epígrafe: China
currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse
under the weight of impossible expectations
Texto: When the
banking crisis crippled global markets seven years ago, central bankers stepped
in as lenders of last resort. Profligate private-sector loans were moved on to
the public-sector balance sheet and vast money-printing gave the global economy
room to heal.
Time is now
rapidly running out. From China to Brazil, the central banks have lost control
and at the same time the global economy is grinding to a halt. It is only a
matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty
expectations and record valuations.
The FTSE 100 has
now erased its gains for the year, but there are signs things could get a whole
lot worse.
It is only a
matter of time before stock markets collapse under the weight of their lofty
expectations and record valuations.
1 - China
slowdown
China was the
great saviour of the world economy in 2008. The launching of an unprecedented
stimulus package sparked an infrastructure investment boom. The voracious
demand for commodities to fuel its construction boom dragged along oil- and
resource-rich emerging markets.
• Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard: China cannot risk the global chaos of currency devaluation:
• Why China has
devalued the renminbi:
The Chinese
economy has now hit a brick wall. Economic growth has dipped below 7pc for the
first time in a quarter of a century, according to official data. That probably
means the real economy is far weaker.
The People’s Bank
of China has pursued several measures to boost the flagging economy. The rate
of borrowing has been slashed during the past 12 months from 6pc to 4.85pc.
Opting to devalue the currency was a last resort and signalled the great era of
Chinese growth is rapidly approaching its endgame.
Data for exports
showed an 8.9pc slump in July from the same period a year before. Analysts
expected exports to fall only 0.3pc, so this was a huge miss.
The Chinese
housing market is also in a perilous state. House prices have fallen sharply
after decades of steady growth. For the millions who stored their wealth in
property, it makes for unsettling times.
2 - Commodity
collapse
The China
slowdown has sent shock waves through commodity markets. The Bloomberg Global
Commodity index, which tracks the prices of 22 commodity prices, fell to levels
last seen at the beginning of this century.
The oil price is
the purest barometer of world growth as it is the fuel that drives nearly all
industry and production around the globe.
• Andrew
Critchlow: Oil companies travel back to 1986 in search of a future:
Brent crude, the
global benchmark for oil, has begun falling once again after a brief rally
earlier in the year. It is now hovering above multi-year lows at about $50 per
barrel.
Iron ore is an
essential raw material needed to feed China’s steel mills, and as such is a
good gauge of the construction boom.
The benchmark
iron ore price has fallen to $56 per tonne, less than half its $140 per tonne
level in January 2014.
3 - Resource
sector credit crisis
Billions of
dollars in loans were raised on global capital markets to fund new mines and
oil exploration that was only ever profitable at previous elevated prices.
With oil and
metals prices having collapsed, many of these projects are now loss-making. The
loans raised to back the projects are now under water and investors may never
see any returns.
Nowhere has this
been felt more acutely than shale oil and gas drilling in the US. Tumbling oil
prices have squeezed the finances of US drillers. Two of the biggest issuers of
junk bonds in the past five years, Chesapeake and California Resources, have
seen the value of their bonds tumble as panic grips capital markets.
As more debt
needs refinancing in future years, there is a risk the contagion will spread
rapidly.
4 - Dominoes
begin to fall
The great props
to the world economy are now beginning to fall. China is going into reverse.
And the emerging markets that consumed so many of our products are crippled by
currency devaluation. The famed Brics of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa, to whom the West was supposed to pass on the torch of economic growth,
are in varying states of disarray.
• Is the global
economy headed for another crash? Three signs to watch out for:
• Regulators
could be responsible for next financial crash:
• Global stock
markets jolted by China's historic renminbi devaluation:
The central banks
are rapidly losing control. The Chinese stock market has already crashed and
disaster was only averted by the government buying billions of shares. Stock
markets in Greece are in turmoil as the economy grinds to a halt and the
country flirts with ejection from the eurozone.
Earlier this
year, investors flocked to the safe-haven currency of the Swiss franc but as a €1.1
trillion quantitative easing programme devalued the euro, the Swiss central
bank was forced to abandon its four-year peg to the euro.
5 - Credit
markets roll over
As central banks
run out of silver bullets then, credit markets are desperately seeking to
reprice risk. The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a guide to how worried
UK banks are about lending to each other, has been steadily rising during the
past 12 months. Part of this process is a healthy return to normal pricing of
risk after six years of extraordinary monetary stimulus. However, as the
essential transmission systems of lending between banks begin to take the
strain, it is quite possible that six years of reliance on central banks for
funds has left the credit system unable to cope.
Credit investors
are often far better at pricing risk than optimistic equity investors. In the
US while the S&P 500 (orange line) continues to soar, the high yield debt
market has already begun to fall sharply (white line).
6 - Interest rate
shock
Interest rates
have been held at emergency lows in the UK and US for around six years. The US
is expected to move first, with rates starting to rise from today’s 0pc-0.25pc
around the end of the year. Investors have already starting buying dollars in
anticipation of a strengthening US currency. UK rate rises are expected to
follow shortly after (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/11787868/Dovish-tone-but-Carney-is-clear-its-time-to-prepare-for-higher-rates.html).
7 - Bull market
third longest on record
The UK stock
market is in its 77th month of a bull market, which began in March 2009. On
only two other occasions in history has the market risen for longer. One is in
the lead-up to the Great Crash in 1929 and the other before the bursting of the
dotcom bubble in the early 2000s.
UK markets have
been a beneficiary of the huge balance-sheet expansion in the US. US monetary
base, a measure of notes and coins in circulation plus reserves held at the
central bank, has more than quadrupled from around $800m to more than $4
trillion since 2008. The stock market has been a direct beneficiary of this
money and will struggle now that QE3 has ended.
8 - Overvalued US
market
In the US,
Professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price earnings ratio – or
Shiller CAPE – for the S&P 500 stands at 27.2, some 64pc above its historic
average of 16.6. On only three occasions since 1882 has it been higher – in
1929, 2000 and 2007.
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