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Coronavirus und der deflationäre Knall

Gestern hatten wir an dieser Stelle Corona und die Folgen – mit ausführlicher und engagierter Diskussion. Nun ist es leicht, in Panik zu verfallen und immer das noch Schlimmere anzunehmen. Es ist ja nur ein Szenario. Gut möglich, dass uns das Frühjahr rettet. Abgesehen von den Überlegungen bezüglich der Gesundheit der Familie ist es natürlich aus ökonomischer Sicht gefährlich. Das meine ich (schon länger, siehe den diesbezüglichen Podcast), aber eben auch Ambroise Evans-Pritchard vom britischen Telegraph. Wie ich betont er vor allem die Anfälligkeit der Weltwirtschaft für einen solchen Schock. Hoch geleveraged und schon jetzt mit Nullzins:

  • “Virologists and infectious disease experts have known for three weeks that this was highly probable, and certainly not a mere tail-risk as suggested by equity market pricing. We are now there. The global economy may be heading for some sort of ‘sudden stop’ in supply chains, trade flows, and tourism, more akin to the outbreak of the First World War than the Lehman or dotcom crises.” – bto: tiefer, länger, schwerer.
  • “The bond market is already signalling a downward lurch into global deflation. Yields on 10-year US Treasuries have fallen to all-time lows. Evercore ISI says zero yields are coming into ‘plausible’ range.” – bto: Das Eiszeit-Szenario kommt früher als gedacht. Gekommen wäre es so oder so.
  • “The question is whether this will be a short-sharp episode followed by a V-shaped recovery in the second quarter (priced by stocks), or a slower elongated ‘U-shaped’ recovery (priced by the dollar, Swiss franc, and safe-haven bonds), or a Spanish cedilla (priced by almost nobody) as real fear of central bank impotence starts to take hold in the markets for the first time.” – bto: Letzteres könnte es durchaus werden. Noch ist es nicht sehr wahrscheinlich, aber es ist zu wahrscheinlich, um es abzutun.
  • “I just heard on the BBC, which stated that the death rate is comparable to flu. No, it is not. The average morbidity of flu annually is 0.1pc; Covid-19 is an order of far greater magnitude. The latest tracking data as of February 22 (unreliable, but the best we have) is that the mortality rate is 4.0pc in Wuhan, 2.8pc in Hubei, and 0.8pc in other regions of China, though all figures are creeping up as slow deaths hit the data. (…) this is surely more like the Spanish Flu of 1918 than anything we are used to. Chinese data suggests that roughly 14pc of those infected over the age of 80 are dying.” -– bto: Die Zahlen habe ich gestern auch in Deutschland gehört.
  • “Fund managers have become so reflexively certain that there will always be a central bank rescue whatever happens, that they will continue to buy the dips into the teeth of almost any storm. But this is a risky proposition. Monetary stimulus is useless against a genuine supply shock because the transmission channels are blocked and demand for fresh credit collapses. (…) Nor can fiscal expansion do much when chunks of the economy are closed.” – bto: Und dann fallen die Kurse von praktisch allem, einfach weil die Basis – die Erträge – wegfällt.
  • “China’s Baidu migration index shows that 72pc of travellers and migrant workers have not returned to the fifteen largest cities since the Lunar New Year. Nomura says journeys on the Guangzhou metro are still down 85pc. Coal use at six key power plants – a proxy for industry – is down 47pc.” – bto: Klarer kann man nicht illustrieren, dass wir es mit einem massiven Einbruch der wirtschaftlichen Aktivität erleben.
  • “Capital Economics expects the Chinese output to contract by 10pc (annualised) in the first quarter based on proxy measures – not the massaged official data, which will look OK.” – bto: Die Welt spürt aber die echten, nicht die manipulierten Werte.
  • “The danger in any case is that the coronavirus epidemic not only spreads to Europe and the US but also that it lasts long enough to set in motion a contractionary chain-reaction, ending in a worldwide deflationary bust.” – bto: Das halten wir nur auf, wenn wir ein weltweites Schuldenmoratorium für ALLE Schulden verkünden. Kein Schuldner darf gezwungen werden, Zins und Tilgung zu leisten. Wir müssen quasi in einen ökonomischen Winterschlaf verfallen. 
  • “The Fed could do a whole boatload of QE and might just scoot by with enough counter-cyclical punch if it is an average recession, but it would be in deep trouble if it is any worse, like an artillery that has spent its shells before the job is done. The European Central Bank 8…) can do almost nothing to arrest such a process or to escape the trap once it has happened, unless it calls in ‘helicopters’ and prints money to fund public spending, which would violate the Lisbon Treaty and would not happen until matters were already desperate, if at all.” – bto: Das kommt sowieso.

Fazit: Es bleibt zumindest spannend.