Vivek Kaul
The only economic theory that works all the time is that no economic theory works all the time.
Since May 2013, analysts, economists and journalists have fettered over what will happen once the Federal Reserve of the United States, the American central bank, starts to taper.
The Federal Reserve had been printing $85 billion every month to buy bonds. By buying bonds, the Federal Reserve pumped money into the financial system. This was done so as to ensure that there was enough money going around in the financial system leading to low long term interest rates.
Since December 2013, the Federal Reserve has been cutting down on the amount of money that it has been printing to buy bonds. This cut down in the total amount of bonds being bought by the Federal Reserve by printing money, is referred to as tapering.
In a statement released yesterday (i.e. March 19, 2014) the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said that henceforth it would buy bonds worth only $55 billion, every month. At the current pace it is expected that the Federal Reserve will stop printing money to buy bonds by October 2014.
When Ben Bernanke, who was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve till February 3, 2014, had first suggested tapering in May 2013, it spooked financial markets all over the world very badly. Institutional investors had borrowed money at low interest rates prevailing in the United States and invested that money in financial markets all over the world.
This trade referred to as the dollar carry trade wouldn’t be viable any more, if the Federal Reserve started to taper. Tapering would ensure that the amount of money floating around in the financial system would come down and hence, interest rates would start to go up.
And once interest rates started to go up, the dollar carry trade wouldn’t work, that was the fear among institutional investors. This would lead to them selling out of financial markets all over the world and taking their money back to the United States.
In the Indian context it would have meant the foreign institutional investors exiting both the Indian stock and bond market. As they would have converted their rupees into dollars, there would have been pressure on the rupee, and the currency would have depreciated against the dollar.
In fact, between the end of May 2013, when Bernanke suggested tapering for the first time, and August 2013, the rupee fell from 55.5 to a dollar to close to 69 to a dollar. A lot of money was withdrawn from the Indian bond market by foreign institutional investors. Also, between June and August September 2013, the foreign institutional investors sold out stocks worth Rs 19,310.36 crore from the Indian stock market.
But after yesterday’s decision by the FOMC to cut down on bond purchases by $10 billion to $55 billion, the financial markets around the world have barely reacted.
The S&P 500, one of the premier stock market indices in the United States, fell by around 0.61% yesterday. Closer to home, the BSE Sensex, has barely reacted. As I write this it has fallen by around 28 points from yesterday’s closing level and is currently quoting at 21,804.8 points.
So, what has changed between May 2013 and March 2014? Since December 2012, the Federal Reserve had been following the Evans rule (named after Charles Evans, who is the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago). As per this rule, the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low till the rate of unemployment fell below 6.5% or the rate of inflation went above 2.5%.
The rate of unemployment in the United States has been falling for a while and currently stands at 6.7%, very close to the 6.5% mandated by the Evans rule. The trouble here is that the unemployment number has not been falling because more people are finding jobs. It has simply been falling because more people have been dropping out of the workforce. The unemployment rate does not take into account people who have dropped out of the workforce. It only takes into account people who are still in the workforce and are not able to find jobs.
In December 2013, nearly 3,47,000 workers left the labour force because they could not find jobs, and hence, were no longer counted as unemployed. This took the number of Americans not working to a record 102 million. As Peter Ferrara puts it on Forbes.com“In fact, all of the decline in the U3 headline unemployment rate since President Obama entered office has been due to workers leaving the work force, and therefore no longer counted as unemployed, rather than to new jobs created…Those 102 million Americans are the human face of an employment-population ratio stuck at a pitiful 58.6%. In fact, more than 100 million Americans were not working in Obama’s workers’ paradise for all of 2013 and 2012.” Interestingly, the labour force participation rate, which is a measure of the proportion of working age population in the labour force, has slipped to 62.8%. This is the lowest since February 1978.
In it’s latest policy statement issued yesterday, the Federal Reserve seems to have junked the Evans rule. As the statement said “In determining how long to maintain the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial developments.” Federal funds rate is the interest rate that banks charge each other to borrow funds overnight, in order to maintain their reserve requirement at the Federal Reserve. This interest rate acts as a benchmark for business and consumer loans.
What this means is that instead of just looking at the rate of unemployment and the rate of inflation, the Federal Reserve will take a look at other factors as well, before deciding to raise the Federal funds rate. What this tells the financial markets all over the world is that the Federal Reserve will continue to ensure low interest rates in the United States, in the time to come, even though it will most likely stop printing money to buy bonds by October 2014.
In fact, in the press conference that followed the FOMC meeting, Janet Yellen, the Chairperson of the Federal Reserve was asked how long did she think would be the gap between the end of bond buying and the Federal Reserve starting to raise interest rates. “It’s hard to define but, you know, probably means something on the order of around six months,” replied Yellen.
This spooked the financial markets briefly because it meant that the Federal Reserve would start raising interest rates by around April next year. But Yellen quickly clarified that any decision to raise interest rates would depend “on what conditions are like”.
So what this means is that the Federal Reserve will ensure that interest rates in the United States continue to stay low. Hence, the dollar carry trade will continue, much to the relief of global institutional investors.
Peter Schiff the Chief Executive of Euro Pacific Capital explained the situation best when he said “The Fed will keep manufacturing excuses as to why rates can’t be raised. Whether it’s a cold winter or a hot summer, a geopolitical crisis, or an unexpected sell-off in stocks or real estate, the Fed will always find a convenient excuse to postpone tightening. That’s because it has built an economy completely dependent on zero percent interest rates. Even the smallest rate shock could be enough to push us into recession. The Fed knows that, and it is hoping to keep the ugly truth hidden.”
To cut a long story short, the easy money party will continue.
The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on March 20, 2014, with a different headline
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
Tapering
Sensex falls 4% in a week but easy money rally will be back soon
Vivek Kaul
The BSE Sensex has now been falling for close to a week now. As I write this, it’s trading at around 20,000 points, having fallen by nearly 4% since January 27, 2014.
The main cause of this fall has been the decision of the Federal Reserve of the United States, the American central bank, to go slow on printing money. In a meeting on January 29, 2014, the Fed decided to print $65 billion a month, in comparison to $75 billion earlier.
By doing this, the Fed signalled that it would be going slow on the easy money policy that it had unleashed a few years back, in order to revive the stagnating American economy. The money printed by the Federal Reserve was used to buy government bonds and mortgage backed securities, in order to ensure that there enough money going around in the financial system. This led to low interest rates and the hope that people would borrow and spend more money, and thus help in reviving the economy.
Investors had been borrowing at these low interest rates and investing money all over the world. But with the Federal Reserve deciding to go slow on money printing (or what it calls tapering), this game of easy money is likely to come to an end, soon. At least, that is the way the markets seem to be thinking. And that to a large extent explains why the Sensex has fallen by close to 4% in a week’s time.
One of the major reasons behind the Federal Reserve’s decision to print less money has been the falling rate of unemployment. For the month of December 2013, the rate of unemployment was down to 6.7%. In comparison, in December 2012, the rate had stood at 7.9%. This is the lowest unemployment rate that the American economy has seen, since October 2008, which was more or less the time when the financial crisis started. This measure of unemployment is referred to as U3.
A major reason for the fall in the unemployment numbers has been the fact that a lot of people have been dropping out of the workforce. In December 2013, nearly 3,47,000 workers left the labour force because they could not find jobs, and hence, were no longer counted as unemployed. This took the number of Americans not working to a record 102 million. As Peter Ferrara puts it on Forbes.com “In fact, all of the decline in the U3 headline unemployment rate since President Obama entered office has been due to workers leaving the work force, and therefore no longer counted as unemployed, rather than to new jobs created…Those 102 million Americans are the human face of an employment-population ratio stuck at a pitiful 58.6%. In fact, more than 100 million Americans were not working in Obama’s workers’ paradise for all of 2013 and 2012.” Interestingly, the labour force participation rate, which is a measure of the proportion of working age population in the labour force, has slipped to 62.8%. This is the lowest since February 1978. Also, in December 2013, the American economy added only 74,000 jobs. This was lower than the 1,96,000 jobs that Wall Street had been expecting and was the lowest number since January 2011.
What this means is that even though the rate of unemployment is at its lowest level since October 2008, things are not as well as they first seem to be. Interestingly, in December 2013, the U6 “rate of unemployment” which includes individuals who have stopped looking for jobs because they simply can’t find one and individuals working part-time even though they could work full-time, stood at 13.1%. This was about double the official rate of unemployment of 6.7%. Interestingly, through much of 2013, the U6 rate of unemployment was double the official U3 rate of unemployment.
What all this tells us is that the unemployment scenario in the US is much worse than it actually looks like.
In this scenario it is unlikely that the Federal Reserve can keep tapering or reducing the amount of money that it prints every month. Other than the rate of unemployment, the other data point that the Federal Reserve looks at is consumer price inflation as measured by personal consumption expenditure(PCE) deflator. The PCE deflator for the month of December 2013 stood at 1.1%. This is well below the Federal Reserve target of 2%.
If the PCE deflator has to come anywhere near the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, the current easy money policy of the Federal Reserve needs to continue. As Bill Gross, managing director and co-CIO of PIMCO wrote in a recent column “the PCE annualized inflation rate– is released near the 20th of every month but you will not see CNBC or Bloomberg analysts waiting with bated breath for its release. I do. I consider it the critical monthly statistic for analyzing Fed policy in 2014. Why? Bernanke, Yellen and their merry band of Fed governors and regional presidents have told us so. No policy rate hike until both unemployment and inflation thresholds have been breached.”
Given these reasons, it is safe to say that foreign investors will continue to be able to raise money at low interest rates in the United States, in the months to come. Hence, the recent fall in the Sensex is at best a blip. The easy money rally will soon be back.
The article originally appeared on www.firstbiz.com on February 4, 2014
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
Sensex reclaims 21k: Why yen carry trade will ensure ‘easy money’ continues
Vivek Kaul
The Federal Reserve of United States, the American central bank, plans to go slow on money printing starting this month i.e. January 2014. Until the last month the Federal Reserve printed $85 billion every month. It pumped this money into the financial system by buying government bonds and mortgage backed securities.
The idea was to ensure that there is enough money going around in the financial system and, thus, help keep long term interest rates low. This would hopefully encourage people to borrow and spend and, thus, help the American economy to start growing again.
The risk was that all the money being printed would lead to inflation. While the money printing hasn’t led to consumer price inflation, it has led to a rapid rise in the stock market as well as real estate prices in the United States. This is primarily because people (which includes investors) could borrow at very low interest rates and invest that money in stocks as well as buy homes.
“Since the turnaround began on March 9th, 2009, the S&P-500 index has chalked up gains of +175%, – ranking it as the fourth longest bull market of all-time. In cash terms, the US-stock market has generated $13.5-trillion in paper wealth,” writes Gary Dorsch, Editor, Global Money Trends, in his recent column.
The 20 City S&P/ Case- Shiller Home Price Index, the leading measure of U.S. home prices,rose by 13.6% in October 2013, in comparison to a year earlier. This is the highest gain in prices since February 2006, when prices had risen by 13.9% in comparison to the year earlier. Real estate prices in the United States, as measured by the 20 City S&P/Case- Shiller Home Price Index had peaked in April 2006.
So the markets in the United States as well as other parts of the world have done very well over the last few years as the Federal Reserve of United States has printed truck loads of money. The interesting thing is that even with the Federal Reserve deciding to go slow on money printing, the markets haven’t fallen.
It is worth pointing out here that when the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke had first talked about going slow on money printing (or tapering as he called it) in May-June 2013, financial markets (stock, bond and foreign exchange) had reacted very badly to the news.
But when the Federal Reserve has actually gone ahead with “tapering” and decided to print $75 billion per month (instead of the earlier $85 billion) the markets haven’t reacted violently at all. Why is that the case?
One reason is the fact that the Federal Reserve has managed to communicate to the investors that tapering isn’t really tightening. What that means is that even though the Federal Reserve will go slow on money printing and not print as many dollars as it was in the past, it will ensure that short term interest rates will continue to remain low. As Jon Hilsenrath writes in the Wall Street Journal “Most notably, the Fed’s message is sinking in that a wind down of the program won’t mean it’s in a hurry to raise short-term interest rates.”
This means at some level the dollar carry trade can continue. Hence, big institutional investors can continue to borrow in dollars at low interest rates and invest that money in different financial markets all over the world.
It needs to be pointed out that whether the Federal Reserve decides to further cut down on money printing depends on the overall state of the American economy. One particular number that the Federal Reserve likes to look at is the number of jobs created every month. In December 2013, the US economy saw a net increase of 74,000 jobs. As Andre Damon writes onwww.globalresearch.ca “The US economy generated a net increase of only 74,000 jobs in December, about one third the number predicted by economists and less than half the amount needed to keep pace with population growth. The increase in non-farm payrolls was the lowest since January 1, 2011, when the economy added 69,000 jobs. Friday’s number followed two months in which payrolls grew by 200,000 or more, leading to claims that the economy was shifting into high gear.” This implies that it will be difficult for the Federal Reserve to cut down from the $75 billion that it is currently printing in a month. Hence, it is unlikely that the Federal Reserve will stop money printing any time soon.
What has further energised the financial markets is the fact that the Bank of Japan, the Japanese central bank, is also printing money big time. As Dorsch writes “The Bank of Japan(BoJ) has taken a page out of the Fed’s quantitative easing playbook, – but multiplied by 3-times. The BoJ is buying ¥7.5-trillion of government bonds (JGB’s) per month, and intervening directly in the equity market, by purchasing ¥1 trillion of exchange-traded funds linked to the Nikkei-225 each year. The BoJ aims to inject $1.4-trillion into the Tokyo money markets by April ‘15, equal to a third of the size of Japan’s $5-trillion economy.”
The Federal Reserve until last month was printing $85 billion every month. This works out to a around $1.02 trillion every year. The amount of money being printed by the Bank of Japan is more than that. What this means is that interest rates in Japan will remain low. This will encourage the yen carry trade, where an investor can borrow in yen and invest the money in different financial markets around the world.
What will also help is the fact as the Japanese central bank keeps printing money, the yen will depreciate against the dollar and thus spruce up returns. In the last one year the yen has gone from around 89 to a dollar to almost 103-104 to the dollar currently. “With liquidity injections of ¥7-trillion per month, Tokyo has engineered the yen’s -18% devaluation against the US$, -23% against the Euro, -15% against the Korean won, and a -12% slide against the Chinese yuan,” writes Dorsch.
How does this help yen carry trade? Let us understand this through an example. Let’s say an investor borrows 100 million yen and converts them into dollars. Currently one dollar is worth around 104 yen.
Hence, 100 million yen can be converted into around $961,538 (100 million yen/104). This money is invested in financial markets around the world and let’s say at the end of one year has grown by around 8% and is now worth $1.04 million. One dollar by then let us assume is worth 110 yen.
When $1.04 million is converted into yen, the investor gets 114 million yen. This means a return of 14%. Hence, the depreciating yen adds to the overall return for anyone who borrows in dollars.
It also means that financial markets around the world will see foreign investors continuing to bring in more money. India should also benefit from the same over the next one year. Given this, the BSE Sensex should continue to go up till December 2014. CLSA expects the Sensex to touch 23,500 by December 2014. Deutsche Bank Markets Research expects the Sensex to do even better and touch 24,000 by the end of this year. It does not matter that the real economy will continue to be in doldrums.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on January 13, 2014
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
Why the Federal Reserve will be back to full money printing soon
Vivek Kaul
The Federal Reserve of United States led by Chairman Ben Bernanke has decided to start tapering or go slow on its money printing operations in the days to come.
Currently the Fed prints $85 billion every month. Of this $40 billion are used to buy mortgage backed securities and $45 billion are used to buy American government bonds. Come January and the Fed will ‘taper’ these purchases by $5 billion each. It will buy mortgage backed securities worth $35 billion and $40 billion worth American government bonds, every month. The American central bank hopes to end money printing to buy bonds by sometime late next year.
The Federal Reserve started its third round of money printing(technically referred to as Quantitative Easing(QE)- 3) in September 2012. The idea, as before, was to print money and pump it into the financial system, by buying bonds. This would ensure that there would be enough money going around in the financial system, thus keeping interest rates low and encouraging people to borrow and spend money.
This spending would help businesses and in turn lead to economic growth. With businesses doing well, they would recruit more and thus the job market would improve. Higher spending would also hopefully lead to some inflation. And some inflation would ensure that people buy things now rather than postpone their consumption.
Unlike the previous rounds of money printing, the Federal Reserve had kept QE 3 more open ended. As the Federal Open Market Comittee(FOMC) of the Fed had said in a statement issued on September 13, 2012 “ If the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially, the Committee will continue its purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities, undertake additional asset purchases, and employ its other policy tools as appropriate until such improvement is achieved in a context of price stability.”
Now what did this mean in simple English? Neil Irwin translates the above statement in The Alchemists – Inside the Secret World of Central Bankers “We’ll keep pushing money into the system until the job market really starts to improve or inflation starts to become a problem. And we will act on whatever scale we need until we achieve that goal. We’re not going to take the foot off the gas, that is, until some time after the car has reached cruising speed. Markets had been eagerly speculating about the possibility of QE3. Instead, they got something bigger: QE infinity.”
In a statement issued on December 13, 2012, it further clarified that it was targeting an unemployment level of 6.5%, in a period of one to two years. And the hint was that once the level is achieved, the Federal Reserve would start going slow on money printing.
The unemployment rate for November 2013 came in at 7% as employers added nearly 203,000 workers during the course of the month. This is the lowest the unemployment level has been for a while, after achieving a high of 10% in October 2009. The Federal Reserve’s forecast for 2014 is that the rate of unemployment would be anywhere between 6.3 to 6.6%. Given this, it was about time that the Federal Reserve started to go slow on money printing.
History has shown us that continued money printing over a period of time inevitably leads to high inflation and the destruction of the financial system. Hence, going slow on money printing “seems” like a sensible thing to do. But there are several twists in the tail.
The unemployment rate of 7% in November 2013, does not take into account Americans who have dropped out of the workforce, because they could not find a job for a substantial period of time. It also does not take into account people who are working part time even though they have the education and experience to work full time.
Once these factors are taken into account the rate of unemployment shoots up to 13.2%. The labour participation ratio has been shrinking since the start of the finanical crisis. In 2007, 66% of Americans had a job or were looking for one. The number has since shrunk to around 63%. To cut a long story short, all is not well on the employment front.
What about inflation? The measure of inflation that the Federal Reserve likes to look at is the core personal consumption expenditure (CPE). The CPE has been constantly falling since the beginning of 2013. At the beginning of the year it stood at 2%. Since then the number has constantly been falling and for October 2013 stood at 1.11%, having fallen from 1.22% a month earlier. This is well below the Federal Reserve’s target level of 2%. In 2014, the Federal Reserve expects this to be around 1.4-1.6%. And only in 2015 does the Fed expect it touch the target of 2%.
The point is that the Federal Reserve hasn’t been able to create inflation even after all the money that it has printed over the last few years, to keep interest rates low. A possible explanation for this could be the fact that the disposable income has been falling leading to a section of people spending less, and hence, lower inflation. As Gary Dorsch, editor of Global Money Trends newsletter points out in his latest newsletter “For Middle America, real disposable income has declined. The Median household income fell to $51,404 in Feb ‘13, or -5.6% lower than in June ‘09, the month the recovery technically began. The average income of the poorest 20% of households fell -8% to levels last seen in the Reagan era.”
Given this, instead of the inflation going up, it has been falling. The benign inflation might very well be on its way to become a dangerous deflation, feels CLSA strategist Russell Napier.
Deflation is the opposite of inflation, a scenario where prices of goods and services start to fall. And since prices are falling, people postpone their consumption in the hope of getting a better deal at a lower price. This has a huge impact on businesses and hence, the broader economy, with economic growth slowing down.
Deflation also kills stock markets. As Napier wrote in a recent note “Inflation has fallen to 1.1% in the USA and 0.7% in the Eurozone and we are now perilously close to deflation…Investors are cheering the direct impact of QE on their equity valuations, but ignoring its failure to produce sufficient nominal-GDP growth to reduce debt…When US inflation fell below 1% in 1998, 2001-02 and 2008-09, equity investors saw major losses. If a similar deflation shock hits us now, those losses will be exacerbated, since the available monetary responses are much more limited than they were in the past…We are on the eve of a deflationary shock which will likely reduce equity valuations from very high to very low levels.”
Albert Edwards of Societe Generale in a research note dated December 11, 2013, provides further information on why all is not well with the US economy. As he writes “So far, S&P 500 companies have issued negative guidance 103 times and positive guidance only 9 times. The resulting 11.4 negative to positive guidance ratio is the most negative on record by a wide margin. The highest N/P ratio prior to this quarter was Q1 2001, at 6.8…The margin cycle is turning down, profit forecasts over the next few weeks will be eviscerated. To me, this is consistent with recession.”
What these numbers tell us is that all is not well with the American economy. Over the last few years it has become very clear that the only tool that central banks have had to tackle low growth is to print more money.
Given this, it is more than likely that the Federal Reserve will go back to printing as much as it is currently doing or even more, in the days to come. The FOMC has kept this option open. As it said in a statement “However, asset purchases are not on a preset course, and the Committee’s decisions about their pace will remain contingent on the Committee’s outlook for the labor market and inflation as well as its assessment of the likely efficacy and costs of such purchase.”
In simple English, what this means is that if the need be we will go back to doing what we were. As The Economist magazine puts it “It is entirely possible that the tapering decision will prove premature. The Fed terminated two previous rounds of QE, only to restart them when the economy faltered and deflation fears flared. The FOMC’s forecasts have repeatedly proved too optimistic. Two years ago it thought GDP would grow 3.2% in 2013; a year ago, that had dropped to 2.6%, and it now looks to come in around 2.2%..”
We haven’t seen the end of the era of easy money as yet. There is more to come.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on December 19, 2013.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
Rupee at 64: It’s a Swadeshi crisis, not a foreign one
Vivek Kaul
The government of India has tried to blame the recent depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar on everything but the state of the Indian economy. Rupee has fallen because Indians buy too much gold, we have often been told over the last few moths.
Rupee has fallen because foreign investors have been withdrawing money in response to the decision of the Federal Reserve of United States to go slow on money printing in the time to come, is another explanation which is often offered. While there is no denying that these factors have been responsible for the fall of the rupee, but the truth is a little more complicated than just that.
Mark Buchanan uses the term disequilibrium thinking in his new book Forecast – What Physics, Meteorology and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics. As he writes “one of the key concepts of disequilibrium thinking is the notion of ‘metastability’ which explains how a system can seem stable, yet actually be highly unstable, much like the sulfrous coating on a match, ready to explode if it receives the right kind of spark. Inherently unstable and dangerous situations can persist untroubled for very long periods, yet also guarantee eventual disaster.”
The situation in India was precisely like that. The rupee was more or less stable against the dollar between November 2012 and end of May 2013. It moved in the range of Rs 53.5-Rs 55.5 to a dollar. This stability in no way meant that all was well with the Indian economy.
In a discussion yesterday on NDTV, Ruchir Sharma, Head of Emerging Markets Equity and Global Macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, provided a lot of data to show just that. In 2007, the current account deficit of India stood at $8 billion. In technical terms, the current account deficit is the difference between total value of imports and the sum of the total value of its exports and net foreign remittances.
The foreign exchange reserves of India in 2007 stood at $300 billion. So the foreign exchange reserves were 37.5 times the current account deficit. For 2013, the current account deficit is at $90 billion whereas the foreign exchange reserves are down to around $275 billion. So the foreign exchange reserves are now just three times the size of the current account deficit, in comparison to 37.5 times earlier.
Another worrying point is the import cover (foreign exchange reserves/monthly imports). It currently stands at 5.5 months, the lowest in 15 years. This is very low in comparison to other emerging markets (like China has 18 months of import cover, Brazil has 11 months).
Now what does this mean in simple English? It means that the demand for dollars has gone up much faster than their supply. And this did not happen overnight. It did not happen towards the end of May, when the rupee rapidly started losing value against the dollar. The situation has deteriorated over the last five to six years, while the government was busy doing other things.
Sharma gave out some other numbers as well. In 2007,the short term debt (or debt that needs to be repaid during the course of the year) stood at $80 billion. Currently it stands at around $170 billion. As and when this debt matures, it will have to repaid (unless its rolled over) and that would mean more demand for dollars and a greater pressure on the rupee. Given this, its not surprising that analysts are now predicting that the rupee soon touch 70 to a dollar.
What remains to be seen is whether companies which need to repay this debt are allowed to roll it over. The situation is very tricky given that 25% of Indian companies do not have sufficient cash flow to repay interest on their loans. The amount of loans to be repaid by top 10 Indian corporates has gone up from Rs 1000 billion in 2007 to Rs 6000 billion in 2013. This makes the Indian economy very vulnerable.
Politicians like to compare the current situation to 1991 and tell us that the current situation is not a repeat of 1991. In 1991, the import cover was down to less than a month. Currently it is around 5-6 months (depending on whose calculation you refer to). Hence, the situation is not as bad as 1991.
But the import cover is just one parameter that one can look at. The current account deficit in 1991, stood at 2.5% of the gross domestic product. Currently its around 4.8% of the GDP. Hence, the situation is much worse on this front than in 1991.
The government has tried to control the fall of the rupee against the dollar by making it difficult for Indian companies as well as individuals to take dollars abroad. But that was already happening. The amount of money Indian corporates invested abroad in 2008, stood at $21 billion. It has since come down to $7 billion. The amount of money taken abroad by individuals through legal channels remains minuscule.
The point is that the Indian economy has been extremely vulnerable for sometime, “much like the sulfrous coating on a match, ready to explode if it receives the right kind of spark.” It is just that where the spark will come from leading to explosion of the match, is hard to predict in advance.
As Buchnan puts it “the disequilibrium view….explains in simple terms why the moment of collapse is hard to predict: the arrival of the key triggering event is typically a matter of chance.” And this matter of chance in the Indian context came when Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of United States, the American Central Bank, addressed the Joint Economic Committee of the American Congress ,on May 23, 2013.
As he said “if we see continued improvement and we have confidence that that is going to be sustained, then we could in — in the next few meetings — we could take a step down in our pace of purchases.”
Over the last few years, the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the American financial system by printing money and using it to buy bonds. This ensures that there is no shortage of money in the system, which in turn ensures low interest rates. The hope is that at lower interest rates people will borrow and spend more, and this in turn will revive economic growth.
After nearly 5 years, some sort of economic growth has started to comeback in the United States. And given this, the expectation is that the Federal Reserve will start going slow on money printing in the months to come. This has pushed interest rates up in the United States making it more interesting for big international investors to invest their money in the United States than India.
This has led to them withdrawing money from India. Since the end of May nearly $10 billion of foreign money has been withdrawn from the Indian bond market. When these bonds are sold, foreign investors get paid in rupees. They need to convert these rupees into dollars, in order to repatriate their money abroad. This puts pressure on the rupee.
And this is how the decision of the Federal Reserve to go slow on money printing in the days to come has led to the fall of the rupee. This is the story that the government officials and ministers have been trying to sell to us.
But the point to remember is that the decision of the Federal Reserve of United States to go slow on money printing was just the ‘spark’ that was needed to explode the ‘sulfrous coating on the match’ that the Indian economy had become. The spark could have come from somewhere else and the ‘sulfrous coating on the match’ would have still exploded leading to a crash of the rupee. Also, it is important to remember that foreign investors have not abandoned India lock, stock and barrel. When it comes to the bond market they have pulled out money to the tune of $10 billion. But they are still largely invested in the equity market. Since late May around $2 billion has been pulled out of the Indian equity market by the foreign investors. This when they have more than $200 billion invested in it.
Ruchir Sharma’s panelist in the NDTV discussion referred to earlier was Arun Shourie. He called the current rupee crisis a swadeshi crisis. It is time that the government realised this as well because the first step in solving any problem is recognising that it exists.
The article was originally published on www.firstpost.com on August 21, 2013.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)