Global markets upset not Beijing's fault as central banks do not have all the answers

Shattered beliefs make for brutal market moves. That is even truer when the shattered belief is in the power of central banks to head off financial crises in a world afflicted by a rising burden of debt and where the bill for bad investments funded by ultra-cheap money has yet to be paid. Good, bad and just plain ugly trades all get unwound in markets where prices disappear at the flick of a switch, despite the efforts of policymakers in recent years to design stress tests to bolster robust liquidity. And the catalyst for all this market carnage? Apparently that lies with Beijing's seeming inability to curtail the slide in China's equity markets and continuing evidence that the pace of Chinese economic growth continues to slow is the key. Yet, "China's markets are still pretty much separated from world markets", said US Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew in June. In truth, the global maelstrom in bond, currency and equity markets cannot be laid at Beijing's door. China's problems are instead just a highly visible symptom of a global malaise. The fact is that traders across asset classes have become accustomed over decades to central banks taking successful action when markets sell off precipitately but perhaps are now realising that narrative of central bank omnipotence is deeply flawed. Central banks' policy responses since the global financial crisis of 2008 have understandably included ultra-low interest rates and, when deemed necessary, the printing of money through quantitative easing. To employ more generally a phrase made famous by European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi in 2012, central banks will do "whatever it takes". But suppressing yields, or embarking on quantitative easing, moulds investor and lender behaviour that can come to be regretted. Investors chase yield, selling low-yielding currencies, such as the euro, the yen and the US dollar, for high yielders such as the yuan, and the Australian and New Zealand dollars. The influx of capital drives investments that expand economic capacity to satisfy forecast global demand for goods but which, if the expansion runs ahead of itself, becomes financially unsustainable if the demand for those goods proves illusory. The fall in energy prices perhaps best illustrates that all was not well in the global economy long before China's own problems became front-page news. The drop in the oil price, attributed to Saudi Arabia's increased supply, should, if the world economy was healthy, have prompted greater economic activity. So far it has not. China's economy has continued to slow, Japan's shrank in the second quarter, the euro zone's travails continue, leaving only the United States with reasonable growth. The lower energy price is actually a function of less global demand as well as increased supply, leaving the energy exporters to fight over market share rather than look to optimise the price of a barrel of oil, as they seek to maximise their dollar-income in order to meet their own obligations. Debt servicing is itself a global problem. Total global debt rose to 260 per cent of world gross domestic product at the end of 2014, according to the Bank for International Settlements, up from some 230 per cent in 2008. So when Kazakhstan devalued the tenge by over 25 per cent on August 20, it implicitly recognised that, in the current global situation, the only way Astana could meet its tenge-denominated budgetary requirements, as an exporter of dollar-denominated energy, was via devaluation. How Kazakhstan, or indeed the rest of the world, meets debt requirements denominated in other countries' currencies remains to be seen if their own currencies are falling versus those of their debts. Across the world, cheap money has been borrowed to invest in projects to produce goods for Western consumers who, encumbered with their own household debt, are no longer able or minded to keep consuming at the same rate as before. So capital flows reverse and asset prices adjust, and while that may be painful, it is probably unavoidable. Policymakers seek to limit the damage by easing monetary policy, as China did again on August 25, in the hope of calming investors' nerves. It may work for a time but markets are starting to understand that monetary policy "medicine" can only salve but not cure many of the world's economic ills. Applying more bandages to an open wound cannot disguise the smell of gangrene.

Global markets upset not Beijing's fault as central banks do not have all the answers

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The upset in markets around the world cannot be laid at Beijing's door and perhaps we should look at the shattered faith in the banks' powers

The upset in markets around the world cannot be laid at Beijing's door and perhaps we should look at the shattered faith in the banks' powers