Will The Increased Offer Of Declining Pound Save British Economy?

Forex news. World economy is under the threat of crisis, which can become the most difficult ever and have more large-scale consequences than the Great Depression in the 20th century. This is how the current situation is viewed by Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England.










The decision to expand the quantitative easing program, which was taken by the Bank of England on Thursday, is predetermined exclusively by the difficult economic situation worldwide, particularly in Britain.

Drawing historical parallels, Mr. King claimed that the current condition of world economy is characterized by the total deficit of money supply. Therefore, Central Bank emission is aimed at solving this problem, and the Bank of England decision to increase money supply is to be regarded exclusively from this point of view.

However, global crisis can only be overcome provided that there is a consensus at the highest level.


It is predicted that the entire sum of emission, ₤75 bln., will be directed at stimulating economy and increasing money offer. At the same time, Mr. King assured that inflation is unlikely to result from held recession. In general, he predicts that inflation will increase up to 5 percent in the nearest future; however, next year it will stop increasing and start declining rapidly.

Meanwhile, the rate of British pound has stopped forming long-term wave А(С) or reduced wave С(С) within long-term bear motion, which will be proved by passing pivot Mf at the point of 1.5665. Experts of the Department of Masterforex-V Trading System claim that subsequent FZR will start long-term correction wave В(С). Passing the bottom line of 1.5271 will continue long-term decline; however, before this happens GBPUSD pair will meet support at the points, where pivots MF are placed, namely, 1.5468 and 1.5296.

Dustbowl Britain: The New Depression

YES, it’s official: this could be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s – men slumped on street corners and kids with bare feet.

Inflation, fascism and economic war in Europe. “This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen at least since the 1930s, if not ever,” says Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England.












Now, I may be missing something, but isn’t this just the kind of alarmist headline-grabbing remark that central bankers are supposed NOT to make in case it spooks the markets? It’s people like me who are usually criticised for resorting to sensational forecasts about Great Depressions and the like. The commentariat is being done out of a job by the godfather of prudence. Whatever happened to “Keep Calm And Carry On”?

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, is said to be livid. Only 24 hours before King forecast the end of civilisation as we know it, Cameron had told the country to “bring on the can-do optimism”. Well, not in the Bank of England, clearly.

It’s hard not to read this as an implicit condemnation of government economic policy. At the very least, the PM and his Chancellor look as out of touch as the Labour PM, Jim Callaghan, when he said “crisis, what crisis”, just as the International Monetary Fund was about to take over the reins of the British economy in 1976.

So what has spooked Mervyn? Well, it’s the Greeks isn’t it, stupid? Actually, it isn’t the Greek default – it’s us. Mervyn’s panic attack coincided with the news that ratings agency Moody’s had downgraded the status of a raft of British banks just as inter-bank lending was seizing up.

Essentially, Moody’s is warning people with money in banks including Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander, Lloyds and so on that they might not get it all back. Why? Because the banks are becoming stressed again, just like 2008, and there is no chance that this time the Government will have the will or the means to bail them out. There’s very little public money left and the economy is slowing to a halt, which will make it hard for the Government to pay its own debts, let alone that of the banks.

The bailout of the UK banks in 2008-09 required £1.3 trillion, according to Mervyn King’s own figures. And what did we get for putting up all that money? Well, Stephen Hester of RBS got £11 million last year. Bank bonuses accounted for another £13 billion. The rest disappeared into the bowels of our rapacious financial institutions.

So what now? Well, if there isn’t any public money, let’s just print some. The last round of quantitative easing – creating more money – placed £200bn in the banks’ accounts in 2009.

What happens is this: the Bank of England electronically creates money, which it uses to buy bonds from the banks. This injects funds directly into the banks’ balance sheets, wiping out their losses and “restoring the health of the financial system”. The money is supposed then to be loaned to small businesses and people wanting mortgages, thus boosting economic growth.

Except that this didn’t happen. The banks hoarded it instead and paid themselves huge bonuses. All QE1 really succeeded in doing was increase inflation to 5%, which is generally what happens when governments print money. This has eroded people’s savings, pensions and salaries, meaning that they haven’t been buying much in the shops. Which in turn is why the economy is sliding back into recession. Britain has one of the lowest growth rates in the OECD and has one of the highest fiscal deficits. Stick that in your budget, Mr Osborne.

So why on earth is the governor printing another £75bn of QE? It looks like the economic equivalent of blood-letting: a pointless medical procedure that only weakens the patient. This is the great unanswered question of the age: why are policy-makers unable to see any solution to economic crisis that doesn’t involve stuffing the mouths of bankers with gold?

When historians look back at this period they will criticise governments for inactivity, short-termism and denial. But they will condemn them utterly for throwing oceans of public money at the very people who caused the crisis and were least to be relied upon to resolve it.

Instead of handing money to banks, in the vain hope that it will boost economic activity, why doesn’t the government hand it to poor people?

I’m not joking. At least lower-income groups can be relied upon to spend the cash in the high streets – in shops like Tesco, which has just announced its worst sales figures for 20 years. Give them VAT rebates, interest-free loans, tax “holidays”, elderly care grants, home improvement loans – anything to get money into the system.

Giving liquidity to people who don’t have it is the surest possible way of boosting economic activity. QE is like trying to get the car started by giving money to oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia.

Of course, the bankers would respond that, yes it’s all very well giving money to people other than us. But if you don’t hand over your cash, we’ll just go bust like Lehman Brothers, and that will cause a global financial and economic collapse. Ha ha.

And of course, they’re right – they are too big to fail. If, say, RBS went under, the shockwaves would be so great that bank lending would halt overnight. This means that companies which depend on short-term loans from banks to manage their accounts would go under too. International trade would freeze because there would be no credit for exporters.

There would also be a run on the banks, as happened in October 2008, when people and businesses withdrew their cash from banks like Northern Rock and HBOS because they didn’t believe their funds were safe. In 2008, according to the then chancellor, Alistair Darling, Britain was 24 hours away from the ATMs closing and people being denied even cash withdrawals.

Could we really be going back to all that? Well, yes – the Belgian-French bank, Dexia, has just gone bust for the second time in three years because people started withdrawing funds at an unsustainable rate and its share price collapsed. It could be the first of many, and governments cannot bail them all out.

Which means that if you are lucky enough to have more than £85,000 in any one bank – the limit of the deposits guaranteed by the government’s deposit insurance scheme – then you’d be well advised to get it out sooner rather than later.

I know that sounds alarmist,

inflammatory, but listen closely, and that’s what the Guv’nor is saying.

But there is an alternative. Instead of pouring more printed money into the banks, why not nationalise them completely? We already own RBS and most of Lloyds. The nationalised banks could be used to set up smaller, more responsible banks with a remit to lend to industry rather than speculate on derivatives and the commodities market, which is what they have been doing since 2009.

If the financial crisis really is as bad as King says it is, and we are about to drown in a hyperinflationary sovereign debt crisis, then the Government would be able to freeze asset deposited in the banks and conduct a kind of debt “triage”.

Those with more than £85,000 in deposits would be required to accept a proportionate reduction in the value of their deposits in order to stabilise the financial system and remove the debt burden on the state. This could be done by converting bank deposits into government bonds, redeemable at a later date. This is rather like QE in reverse. Needless to say, all bank bonuses would be scrapped, and bankers put on civil servants’ salaries.

There would be howls of anguish from the rich at their wealth being hijacked in this way. But they should be told that the alternatives are much worse: a run of bank failures, which means they would lose ALL their funds over £85,000. Bondholders would not just have a haircut – they would be decapitated by default or by hyperinflation.

There is still a great deal of wealth in Britain – £7 trillion in household assets alone, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility – but this is largely held by the very wealthy and “sterilised” in property and other assets. If we are facing the ultimate crash, the Government will have no choice but to commandeer these resources and use them constructively to manage the national finances. President Franklin D Roosevelt did something similar in 1933 when he ordered all the gold held by individuals to be deposited with the government.

I doubt if any politician has the cojones to put this kind of scheme forward right now – most of them are intellectually in hock to the City of London anyway. But what is not in doubt is that the Bank of England is already thinking the unthinkable.

Various schemes for crisis debt restructuring are surely already being run through the Bank of England’s computer models, and though they can’t admit it, this will inevitably involve some control of bank deposits and an orderly run down of debt. The Government will probably opt to raid pension funds first, because they are harder to move offshore. This is what the Argentine government did in 2001 when it defaulted.

What the Bank of England governor is warning of is a truly apocalyptic financial event. The Government has already seized large parts of the banking system and resorted to money printing. It may not be long before it breaks into people’s accounts directly. You have been warned.

UK Inflation Figures Make A Mockery Of The Economic Assumptions Of Old

News emerged last week that during August, UK inflation went up. Again. The consumer price index (CPI) index last month showed that prices were 4.5pc higher than the same month in 2010.












It is noteworthy, also, that UK construction orders plunged 16pc during the second quarter – to their lowest level since 1980. So the outlook for construction is now worse, even, than during the "credit crunch" proper.

Given the growing sense that a tumultuous "euro-quake" end-game may soon be upon us, or at least the still traumatic acknowledgement of an explicit Greek default, the newsflow from Europe last week was almost overwhelming. So there was, perhaps, less comment than there should have been on the fact that UK inflation had just equalled its three-year high.

It used to be reasonable to assume that when the economy slowed, and unemployment rose, then inflation was likely to fall. Well, the UK has just endured its worst recession in more than 60 years. The economy shrank, peak to trough, by more than 6pc. Despite this historic drop, growth has failed to bounce back, remaining as low as 0.2pc during the second quarter.

Yet still, price pressures have been rising. Not so long ago, the publication of data showing that CPI inflation had overshot the Bank of England's 2pc target by more than 1 percentage point would have dominated the news agenda. The Bank's resulting public letter to the Chancellor, triggered by the 3pc breach and designed to explain the divergence, would have been forensically analysed by the commentariat. Such letters are now so common that hardly anyone reads them.

Over the past three years, monthly CPI growth has averaged – yes, averaged – 3.3pc. Those of us who've raised objections, pointing out that this might become a problem, have been dubbed "inflation nutters". It's as if the British economics profession has contracted collective amnesia, immune to the lessons of history, failing to highlight the danger that inflation in the 4pc to 5pc range can very quickly spiral out of control, as high and self-fulfilling inflation expectations become entrenched.

The UK's economic outlook weakened markedly in August. Survey data suggest the risk of the British economy re-entering recession, the dreaded "double-dip", has grown considerably. All three of the main CIPS survey measures fell last month, the main services index dropping at its fastest rate for 10 years.

It is noteworthy, also, that UK construction orders plunged 16pc during the second quarter – to their lowest level since 1980. So the outlook for construction is now worse, even, than during the "credit crunch" proper. This matters not only because the sector accounts for a chunky 7pc of the UK economy and employs millions of people. Construction is also a reliable "bellwether", with trends in the industry often pointing to what the economic future holds.

It looks likely, then, that we'll see virtually no growth in Britain for the rest of this year, even if global financial markets avoid meltdown.

It's also likely, though, that inflation will keep rising from 4.5pc over the coming months, above 5pc and beyond. The old retail prices index (RPI), more realistic than the CPI that replaced it, is already at 5.2pc. Such inflation numbers, amid a ghastly slowdown, make of mockery of the usual economic assumptions.

A big reason still higher UK inflation looks inevitable in the coming months is the price of energy and other commodities. Utility bills are soaring, as are UK food prices – which rose 6.2pc during the year to August. These miserable outcomes have their origins in the fact that global energy prices, to the surprise of many, have remained remarkably firm despite the latest Western slowdown. As such, another economic assumption of old has been upended.

Until recently, a slump in the "advanced countries", most of which are oil importers, was enough to generate a fall – expected, actual or both – in world oil prices, due to the impact of weaker Western energy demand. This was very useful for the developed world because the lower oil prices that resulted when our economies slowed helped to bring about our recovery. Cheaper fuel and heat would cut household and industry costs, boosting disposable incomes, profits and growth itself. Lower oil prices also helped tame inflation, giving our central banks the room to cut rates, so consolidating recovery.

Global oil markets, then, have long provided a crucial "self-correction" mechanism for the Western world. In light of the cardinal importance weaker crude prices have played in bringing about previous Western recoveries, it's worth examining their recent path.

Last month, amid fears relating to Europe's banks and Western sovereign debts, financial markets obviously took a big hit. The S&P 500 index of US stocks gave up all its 2011 gains, ending August 4pc down since the start of the year. Analysts slashed their growth forecasts for the US, the UK and mainland Europe. Yet, incredibly, the price of oil, while it has oscillated, has stayed pretty much where it was. Brent Crude remains up more than 21pc since the start of 2011, averaging no less than $112 (£71)/barrel so far this year.

Why is this happening? Typically, signs that the West is slowing, on cue, bring oil prices down too. But the markets now judge that the fundamentals suggest crude prices should stay roughly where they are, even if the West is struggling, not least because the bulk of oil demand in the world now derives from elsewhere.

The non-Western world today accounts for 55pc of global oil use. The insatiable energy appetite of China, India and the other large emerging economies – most of which are still growing by pc to 8pc – means they now set the tone on world commodity markets. The numbers are truly incredible.

The US Energy Information Agency (EIA )has just released estimates that the world will use 88.2m barrels of oil daily during 2011 – an all-time high, despite sluggish Western growth. As the emerging markets have expanded, engaging in massive infrastructure building, while their huge populations have become richer and adopted more energy-intensive lifestyles, global oil use has risen no less than 15pc over the past 10 years.

The EIA forecasts oil demand of 99m barrels daily by 2015, another 15pc rise from today, but this time in five years. Even in 2009, when the world economy contracted, world oil demand fell just 2pc, then grew 4pc the following year. So the oil market's long-held assumption of "demand destruction" when Europe or America slumps, is now being seriously tested.

The supply-side of the oil market also looks tight. The credit-crunch cut investment in exploration and well-development. The EIA sees a short-term deficit of 1.4m barrels per day in the fourth quarter of this year. Looking forward, oil traders are now showing a lot more interest in rapid depletion and falling yields at Ghawar, Cantarell and the world's other giants fields.

The politics of Opec have also recently been turned upside-down. Just a few years ago, Saudi Arabia made sure the exporters' cartel targeted $25 a barrel, so as to keep the Western world buoyant and oil demand strong. But now the Middle East can sell crude, as fast as it can pump it, to the emerging giants of the East. Meanwhile, the "Arab Spring", and resulting social expenditures to placate restive populations, mean that Saudi, and other oil exporters in the Gulf, need oil above $100 just to balance their budgets.

Like so much in economics these days, our usual assumptions about the oil market, in place for decades and reassuring for the West, are being revised before our eyes. The implications of these revisions we'll ultimately find impossible to ignore, even if so many continue to dismiss the inflationary dangers we face.