Asian markets showed a few signs of life on Tuesday but analysts fear deflation, recession and depression. Still the day ended in small losses compared to yesterday’s, which some have started to call Black Monday.
Main indices in South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan all edged higher after the Reserve Bank of Australia slashed its key rate to 6 per cent. Sydney’s index gained 1.7 per cent. Japan's Nikkei 225 index erased some of its early losses to close down by 3 per cent after plunging over 5 per cent to below 10,000 for the first time in almost five years.
Earlier in the day the Bank of Japan injected another trillion yen (S$14.5 billion) into the money market to stabilise lending among banks
Investors remain jittery that sinking banks might cut into growth and drag down prices.
Many prices have already dropped.
Oil, copper and wheat have seen the largest decline in 56 years. Copper lost 4.7 per cent yesterday. A barrel of crude oil is now under US$ 90 for the first time since February.
The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials tumbled 10.4 per cent, that of 19 commodities fell 43 per cent from its July 3 peak, a loss larger than their total worth two years ago.
The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity shipping costs, has dropped 75 percent since May.
Randall W. Forsyth writes in Barron's:
The Fed's current effort to stave off debt deflation is a mirror image to its inflation fight started 29 years ago.
ON OCT. 6, 1979, THE FEDERAL RESERVE made the biggest change in a generation in its monetary policy.
Twenty-nine years later to the day, the U.S. central bank announced the latest in the radical revamping in how it conducts policy.
Both changes were born in crises. And the latest shift marks a near-complete reversal from 1979.
Back then, under the chairmanship of Paul Volcker, the Fed said it would henceforth target the money supply and let the federal-funds rate settle where it may. The monetarist approach, as espoused by the late Milton Friedman, was adopted in an all-out effort to bring down the double-digit inflation raging then.
Monday, the Fed announced the latest in its series of changes in its policy procedures, which are of more than academic interest. Between what has been publicly disclosed and what's reportedly in the works, the latest changes would be radical actions to thaw the deep freeze in the global money markets.
But the most dramatic actions may be coming, perhaps as early as Tuesday. According to various published reports, the Fed, in conjunction with the Treasury, are working more radical measures to get credit moving, including making unsecured loans, an almost heretical notion.
Now there may be a big expansion to unsecured lending, according to various reports. The Fed's press release on paying interest on reserves noted the central bank is mulling "ways to provide additional support for term unsecured markets." That would include the commercial paper and interbank loan markets, both of which have virtually locked up in the past week or so. The President's Working Group on Financial Markets echoed that in a statement Monday, so it's fair to assume something along those lines is in the works.
Unlike collateralized lending, unsecured loans would pose credit risks to the Fed, which might absorbed via a backup from the Treasury. Goldman Sachs economists point out that, while collateralized lending limits risk to the Fed, but also limits the amount of aid the central bank can provide a troubled institution.
From the standpoint of economic history, the current proposals provide an interesting symmetry to the historic changes of October, 1979.
Then, in theory, the supply of money was to be rigidly controlled, which meant interest rates fluctuating widely, in order to bring inflation under control.
Now, the supply of money and credit is, in theory, being made highly elastic, with short-term interest rates held within prescribed bounds, in order to stave off a worsening debt deflation.
What's likely to be similar this time is that the policies will take time to bear fruit. In the meantime, there was a nasty bear market. History does indeed rhyme.
Joseph Lazzaro writes in BloggingStocks:
Most investors / readers know about inflation -- an increase in the price of a good or service not connected to an improvement.
But fewer know about its flipside -- deflation -- a decline in prices.
Moreover, while inflation is a serious problem -- it erodes purchasing power and makes it hard for businesses to project and plan for costs, moving forward- - deflation is an even bigger menace.
That's because deflation decreases the amount of money flowing to businesses for their products/services, reducing the money needed to keep commercial activity alive and the economy growing.
With the financial crisis that's squeezed credit in the U.S. now beginning to affect Europe, Bloomberg News reported Monday, are we approaching the danger of deflation? Economist David H. Wang says all of the symptoms are there. "We have falling commodity and raw materials prices, falling home prices, a pull-back in consumer spending, slowing GDP growth just about everywhere, and the worst credit conditions in several generations. These are all characteristic of a deflationary cycle," Wang said.
If commodity prices continue to decline and consumer prices do as well, "the Fed will have to cut rates, so will Europe and other central banks" to prevent the aforementioned deflation spiral, Wang said.
"On the fiscal side, increased government borrowing risks the danger of rising inflation. But that increase in spending has to be seen against a backdrop of a U.S. and now a global de-leveraging that's putting a downward pressure on prices," Wang said. "It's clear now the greater risk and danger is deflation, and that's what the Fed and other central banks should be fighting."
Monetary / Economic Analysis
What the U.S. -- and the world -- wants to avoid is a protracted period of declining prices. There always the risk that long-term inflation will rise, but policy makers must focus on preventing deflation, even it means higher inflation later, in order to prevent the serious damage that deflation would cause to the economy.
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