Ci potranno salvare le Banche Centrali? (parte 2)
La domanda del nostro titolo avrebbe già una risposta, se guardassimo solo ai titoli della stampa specializzata: pochi giorni fa, infatti, abbiamo letto su Bloomberg un articolo dal titolo "Have Central Banks Lost Credibility?" e poi sul Wall Street Journal un altro articolo intitolato "Is this the week central banks lost their market credibility? The Yellen put might have expired".
I giochi sono fati, dunque? Noi in Recce'd diffidiamo sempre delle spiegazioni troppo semplici. Come abbiamo scritto nel primo Post di questa serie, di sicuro c'è solo che un certo tipo di central banking, che dominò tra il 2009 ed il 2014, adesso è fuori gioco, finito e cancellato.
Scrive il WSJ:
The ability of central banks to steer the market—or vice versa—was first dubbed the “Greenspan put,” then renamed the “Bernanke put,” and, finally, the “Yellen put.” A put option gives an investor the right to sell the underlying security at a preset strike price. In other words, bullish stock investors could count on central bankers to keep a floor under the market. That’s what some think is finally coming to an end.
Scrive Societé Generale:
“We have relied on central bankers to fix the world’s economic woes, when all they could really do was to get the global financial system back on an even keel. Keeping policy too easy, for too long and boosting asset markets in the vain hope that this would deliver a sustainable pickup in demand has meant that even a timid attempt at normalizing Fed policy has caused two months of mayhem.”
Avete letto queste stesse cose, più o meno con le medesime parole, scritte in questo Blog, e negli altri documenti di Recce'd, più volte da 18 mesi a questa parte. Ben arrivati a tutti i ritardatari. Il problema adesso è guardare avanti:
"The markets are wondering, well, we’ve had these non-conventional monetary policy experiments for the last six or seven years and they haven’t caused a sustainable boost to global growth, so what will the latest moves do. It’s a reasonable question to ask given the events of the last few weeks.”
Il modo in cui Recce'd vede i prossimi mesi è chiaro e ve lo offriamo: sarebbe un errore (tragico) insistere su politiche e strumenti che hanno fallito. Primo fra tutti, il QE, ma pure i tassi negativi di interesse sono uno strumento che rischia di trasformarsi in boomerang. A noi di Recce'd la richiesta, fatta da alcune grandi banche globali, di tassi ufficiali "ancora più negativi" sembra essere una vera e propria "mossa della disperazione. Ad esempio, JP Morgan:
While Barr, Mackie and Kasman still expect policy makers to tread carefully, such analysis may temper the recent fear of investors that after seven years of interest rates around zero and bumper bond-buying, central banks are now out of ammunition. Indeed, a fuller embrace of negative rates could “produce significant reductions in market rates,” said the economists. “It appears to us there is a lot of room for central banks to probe how low rates can go,” they said. “While there are substantial constraints on policymakers, we believe it would be a mistake to underestimate their capacity to act and innovate.”
Questo è l'identico modo di affrontare i problemi che ci ha portato all'attuale disastro senza uscita: ovvero "mettiamoci una pezza, ed intanto facciamo quello che serve alle grandi banche per mantenere la posizione dominante e di cartello; teniamo tutto così com'è".
La soluzione che Recce'd vede come più efficace passa proprio dal fatto che le Banche Centrali non ascoltino i suggerimenti (interessati) delle banche d'affari, ed anzi vadano esattamente nella direzione opposta: spezzando quel cerchio, e guardando invece in modo diretto agli interessi dell'economia reale, le Banche Centrali potrebbero forse ancora prevenire un caos altrimenti inevitabile. Se poi qualche grande banca dovesse essere costretta a farsi da parte, a chiudere, non non vediamo che male ci sarebbe. Accade in tutti i settore, perché non tra le banche?
Sempre a proposito di "mossa della disperazione", chiudiamo con alcuni commenti del New York Times sulle politiche di tassi ufficiali di interesse negativi, con un titolo molto efficace "Negative 0.5% Interest Rate: Why People Are Paying to Save":
(...) as negative rates — in which depositors pay to hold money in bank accounts — become a more common fixture, there are many unknowns about what these policies mean for finance, for the economy and even for the definition of money.
(...) it looks as if the convenience of keeping money in a bank account is worth a small negative interest rate or fees for most consumers and businesses, at least at the only slightly negative rates currently in place. Storing and providing security for cash may be more expensive than a small bank charge.
When initial experiments in Switzerland and Sweden didn’t result in mass withdrawals from the banking system, larger central banks in need of easier money moved gingerly in the same direction. They’ll stop when either their economies start to grow or they see more concrete evidence that negative rates are doing more harm than good.
The global financial system is built on an assumption of above-zero interest rates. Going below zero could cause damage to the very architecture by which money and credit zoom through the economy, and in turn inhibit growth.
Banks could cease to be viable businesses, eliminating a key way that money is channeled from savers to productive investments. Money market mutual funds, widely used in the United States, could well cease to exist. Insurance companies and pension funds could face their own major strains.
In a speech last year, Hervé Hannoun, then the deputy general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, even argued that this could “over time encourage the use of alternative virtual currencies, undermining the foundations of the financial system as we know it today.”
For example, would people start prepaying years’ worth of cable bills to avoid having money tied up in a money-losing bank account? How about property taxes? Would companies and governments put in place new policies prohibiting people from paying their bills too early?
Or consider this: Many commercial transactions now take place with some short-term credit attached — for example, a company that gets a 60-day grace period to pay bills from its suppliers. Would that flip, and suddenly suppliers would prohibit upfront payment and insist that their customers wait 60 days to pay?
Might new businesses sprout up that allow people to securely store thousands of dollars in bundles of $100 bills, or could people buy physical objects as stores of value that the banks can’t charge a negative interest rate on?