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[Tuff-Stuff]

AutomaticEarth<>Debt Rattle June 11 2017

Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:30 am



Mondriaan Amaryllis 1910

• US Weeks Away From A Recession According To Latest Loan Data (ZH)

• This Super Bubble Is About to Pop (IM)

• Another Spanish Bank about to Bite the Dust (DQ)

• “Macron Is Shaping Up As Hyper-Presidency” (BBG)

• George Osborne Says Theresa May Is A ‘Dead Woman Walking’ (G.)

• Theresa May’s Premiership In Peril As Loose Alliance Agreed With DUP (G.)

• UK’s May Isolated Ahead Of Brexit Talks As Key Aides Quit (R.)

• The Inconvenient Truth of Consumer Debt (DDMB)

• Tesla’s Market Value Zooms Past Another Car Maker (MW)

• The Actual Lizard People (Connelly)

• Refugee Rescue Ships Not ‘Colluding With People Smugglers’ (Ind.)

• Fractal Planting Patterns Yield Optimal Harvests, No Central Control (PhysOrg)

A huge difference from the overarching narrative.

• US Weeks Away From A Recession According To Latest Loan Data (ZH)

While many “conventional” indicators of US economic vibrancy and strength have lost their informational and predictive value over the past decade (GDP fluctuates erratically especially in Q1, employment is the lowest this century yet real wage growth is non-existent, inflation remains under the Fed’s target despite its $4.5 trillion balance sheet and so on), one indicator has remained a stubbornly fail-safe marker of economic contraction: since the 1960, every time Commercial & Industrial loan balances have declined (or simply stopped growing), whether due to tighter loan supply or declining demand, a recession was already either in progress or would start soon. This can be seen on both the linked chart, and the one zoomed in below, which shows the uncanny correlation between loan growth and economic recession.

And while we have repeatedly documented the sharp decline in US Commercial and Industrial loan growth over the past few months (most recently in “We Now Know “Who Hit The Brakes” As Loan Creation Crashes To Six Year Low“) as US loans have failed to post any material increase in over 30 consecutive weeks, suddenly the US finds itself on the verge of an ominous inflection point. After growing at a 7% Y/Y pace at the start of the year, which declined to 3% at the end of March and 2.6% at the end of April, the latest bank loan update from the Fed showed that the annual rate of increase in C&A loans is now down to just 1.6%, – the lowest since 2011 – after slowing to 2.3% and 1.8% in the previous two weeks.

Should the current rate of loan growth deceleration persist – and there is nothing to suggest otherwise – the US will post its first negative loan growth, or rather loan contraction since the financial crisis, in roughly 4 to 6 weeks. An interesting point on loan dynamics here from Wolf Richter, who recently wrote that a while after the 1990/1991 recession was over, the NBER determined that the recession began in July 1990, eight month after C&I loans began to stall. “As such, the current seven-month stall is a big red flag. These stalling C&I loans don’t fit at all into the rosy credit scenario. Something is seriously wrong.”

However, it wasn’t until loan growth actually contracted, that the 1990 recession was validated. Well, the US economy is almost there again. And this time it’s not just C&I loan growth, or lack thereof, there is troubling. As the chart below shows, after peaking in late 2016, real-estate loan growth has also decelerated by nearly half, to 4.6%.

More troubling still, after flatlining at nearly double digit growth for much of 2016, starting last September there has been a sharp slowdown in commercial auto loans, whose growth is now down to just a third, or 3%, of what it was a year ago.

While it remains to be seen if C&I loans have preserved their uncanny “recession predictiveness” for yet another turn of the business cycle, the charts above confirm that the US economy is rapidly slowing, and validating the poor Q1 GDP print. Furthermore, one thing is clear: absent a substantial rebound in loan growth, whether for commercial, residential or auto loans, there is no reason to expect an imminent uptick in the US economy. We only note this, because next week the Fed plans to hike rates again. If it does so just as US loan growth contracts, it may be doing so smack in the middle of a recession.

It’s more of a series of bubbles. But yes, Germany’s needs and demands are set to prevail over everyone else’s yet again. The EU’s inherent flaws will do it in.

• This Super Bubble Is About to Pop (IM)

Right now, Italy is Europe’s weakest link. Italy has one of the most indebted governments in the world. It’s borrowed over $2.4 trillion. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is north of 130%. (For comparison, the US debt-to-GDP ratio is 104%.) But the situation is actually much worse. GDP measures a country’s economic output. However, it’s highly misleading. Mainstream economists count government spending as a positive when calculating GDP. A more honest approach would count it as a big negative. In Italy, government spending accounts for a whopping 50%-plus of GDP. Remove that from the calculation, and I suspect we’d see how hopelessly insolvent the Italian government truly is. In other words, Italy is flat broke. I don’t see how the Italian government could possibly extract enough in taxes from the productive part of the economy to ever pay back what it’s borrowed.

Meanwhile, Italian government bonds are in a super bubble. They’re currently trading near record-low yields. (When bond prices go up, bond yields do down.) Over $1 trillion worth of Italian bonds actually have negative yields. It’s a bizarre and perverse situation. Lending money to the bankrupt Italian government carries huge risks. So the yields on Italian government bonds should be near record highs, not record lows. Negative yields could not exist in a free market. They’re only possible in the current “Alice in Wonderland” economy created by central bankers. You see, the ECBhas been printing money to buy Italian government bonds hand over fist. Since 2008, the ECB and Italian banks have bought over 88% of Italian government debt, according to a recent study. This is stunning.

It means that Italy’s financial system depends completely on ECB money printing. Italian government bonds are, without a doubt, in super-bubble territory. It won’t be long before a pin pricks this bubble and… pop. That could happen soon. Earlier this month, the credit rating agency Fitch downgraded Italy’s credit rating from BBB+ to BBB. And Mario Draghi, the head of the ECB, recently announced that after five years of manic money printing, he’s finally achieved his wrongheaded goal of 2% inflation. [..] Now that the ECB has reached its 2% inflation target, Germany and other EU countries are pushing the central bank to stop printing so much money. This is the last thing the Italian government wants. Remember, the ECB buys a lot of Italian government bonds with those freshly printed euros.

If the ECB stops buying Italian government bonds, who will step up? The answer is nobody. Italian banks are already completely saturated with government bonds. Germany wants the money printing to stop. Italy wants it to continue. But, since the ECB has reached its stated inflation target and Germany has crucial elections later this year, I think Germany will get its way. This is very bad news for Italy’s government and banking system. Once the ECB—the only large buyer—steps away, Italian government bonds will crash and rates will soar. Soon it will be impossible for the Italian government to finance itself. Italian banks—which are already insolvent—will be decimated. They hold an estimated €235 billion worth of Italian government bonds. So the coming bond crash will pummel their balance sheets.

Read more … briefs or link out for full articles @
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/06/debt-rattle-june-11-2017/