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“Fed risks repeating Lehman blunder as US recession storm gathers”

So, die US-Wahl ist hinter uns. Damit rückt der wirklich wichtige Akteur der US-Wirtschaft wieder in den Fokus: die Fed. Wird sie die Zinsen nun erhöhen? Welche Wirkungen wird der Entscheid haben. Kein Geringerer als Alan Greenspan hat festgestellt, dass die Zinsen wieder auf fünf Prozent steigen werden. Nicht schlecht. Es wäre “normal” – doch würde die US-Wirtschaft und Welt-Wirtschaft das überleben? Vom Euro ganz zu schweigen!

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard hat schon vor der Wahl die wirtschaftliche Lage in den USA diskutiert und warnt vor den Folgen einer Zinserhöhung. Dass es jedoch nicht ewig weiter gehen kann, lässt er offen:

  • “Liquidity is suddenly drying up. Early warning indicators from US ‘flow of funds’ data point to an incipent squeeze, the long-feared capitulation after five successive quarters of declining corporate profits. Yet the Fed is methodically draining money through ‘reverse repos’ regardless. It has set the course for a rise in interest rates in December and seems to be on automatic pilot.” – bto: Das ist also eher ein Zeichen für Schwäche.
  • “The growth rate of nominal GDP – a pure measure of the economy – has been in an unbroken fall since the start of the year, falling from 4.2pc to 2.5pc. It is close to stall speed, flirting with levels that have invariably led to recessions in the post-War era.” – bto: Deshalb denke ich, dass es keine Rolle spielt, wer Präsident ist.
  • “If allowed to happen, it will be a deeply frightening experience, rocking the global system to its foundations. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that 60pc of the world economy is locked into the US currency system, and that debts denominated in dollars outside US jurisdiction have ballooned to $9.8 trillion.” – bto: Auch das hatten wir auch schon mehrfach bei bto.
  • “The world has never before been so leveraged to dollar borrowing costs. BIS data show that debt ratios in both rich countries and emerging markets are roughly 35 percentage points of GDP higher than they were at the onset of the Lehman crisis.”
  • “This time China cannot come to the rescue. Beijing has already pushed credit beyond safe limits to almost $30 trillion. Fitch Ratings suspects that bad loans in the Chinese banking system are ten times the official claim.” – bto: ein ganz wichtiger Punkt! China hat uns damals gerettet!
  • “The current arguments over Brexit would seem irrelevant in such circumstances, both because the City would be drawn into the flames and because the eurozone would face its own a shattering ordeal. Even a hint of coming trauma would detonate a crisis in Italy.” – bto: Yep!
  • “To be clear, the eight-year old US cycle has not yet rolled over definitively. The picture remains fluid, hard to read in a world where key signals have been distorted by central bank repression. The third quarter will almost certainly look a little better. (…) it is still possible that US growth will pick up again for another short burst – lifted by a global industrial rebound of sorts – before the storm finally hits.”
  • “The velocity of M1 money in the US has continued to slow, hitting 40-year low of 5.75 over the summer, and markets are only just awakening to the unsettling thought that China’s latest boomlet has already topped out. Beijing is having to hit the brakes again.” – bto: An China hängt bekanntlich alles.
  • “(…) liquidity measure for the US is now at levels comparable to the inflection point a few months before the US recessions of 1990 and 2001, and before the recession starting in November 2007 – and a whole year before Lehman Bank collapsed, nota bene.”
  • “Albert Edwards from Societe Generale says gross domestic income (GDI) was the most accurate gauge of the economy as the pre-Lehman crisis unfolded, and this measure has been flat for the last two quarters. ‚The pronounced weakness of GDI relative to GDP might be an ominous omen, for it may well be indicating that a US recession is already underway – just as it was in 2007‘, he said.”
  • “It is certainly odd that the Fed should tighten into these conditions. (…) The Fed faces horrible choices, of course. The longer it delays rate rises, the longer it perpetuates the deformed asset-bubble economy that so disfigures modern polities, and the louder the rebukes from Congress.”
  • “Critics are quick to note that price pressures are building, or at least appear to be. The Atlanta Fed’s index of 12-month ‚sticky price‘ inflation has reached 2.6pc, higher than nominal GDP growth itself. (…) The truth is that nobody knows whether this is the start of a sustained reflation cycle, or just the last feeble flicker before America, Europe, and East Asia are swallowed into a deflationary vortex, the frozen circle from which there is no easy exit. – bto: Das ist eine wirklich spannende Frage. Gelingt die Inflationierung oder überwiegt der deflationäre Druck?
  • “Stanley Fischer, the Fed’s vice-chairman, conceded in a grim speech this week that the Fed has now run out of ammunition and that this ‚could therefore lead to longer and deeper recessions when the economy is hit by negative shocks.‘“
  • “A President Hillary Clinton could and certainly would flood the economy with fiscal stimulus if need be. Yet this takes time. There are few ‚shovel-ready‘ projects, and Washington is a fractious place. She may face a hostile House. The monetary crunch would have crystallized long before anything fiscal could be done.” – bto: Das stimmt. Trump hätte es vielleicht leichter gehabt.

Fazit AEP: “The world will not end if premature tightening pushes the US into recession next year. But why court fate?”

bto: gute Frage. Inflation wollen wir doch eh.

→ The Telegraph: “Fed risks repeating Lehman blunder as US recession storm gathers”, 20. Oktober 2016