New government priorities and an enthusiasm for unconventional monetary policy are changing the way the currency markets work.
新政府的优先任务设定和对非传统货币政策的热情正在改变货币市场的走向。
Oct 6th 2012 | from the print edition
2012年10月6日 | 来自印刷版本
OVER most of history, most countries have wanted a strong currency—or at least a stable one. In the days of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system, governments made great efforts to maintain exchange-rate pegs, even if the interest rates needed to do so prompted economic downturns. Only in exceptional economic circumstances, such as those of the 1930s and the 1970s, were those efforts deemed too painful and the pegs abandoned.
In the wake of the global financial crisis, though, strong and stable are out of fashion. Many countries seem content for their currencies to depreciate. It helps their exporters gain market share and loosens monetary conditions. Rather than taking pleasure from a rise in their currency as a sign of market confidence in their economic policies, countries now react with alarm. A strong currency can not only drive exporters bankrupt—a bourn from which the subsequent lowering of rates can offer no return—it can also, by forcing down import prices, create deflation at home. Falling incomes are bad news in a debt crisis.
Thus when traders piled into the Swiss franc in the early years of the financial crisis, seeing it as a sound alternative to the euro’s travails and America’s money-printing, the Swiss got worried. In the late 1970s a similar episode prompted the Swiss to adopt negative interest rates, charging a fee to those who wanted to open a bank account. This time, the Swiss National Bank has gone even further. It has pledged to cap the value of the currency at SFr1.20 to the euro by creating new francs as and when necessary. Shackling a currency this way is a different sort of endeavour from supporting one. Propping a currency up requires a central bank to use up finite foreign exchange reserves; keeping one down just requires the willingness to issue more of it.
而在金融危机开始的前几年,交易商将瑞士法郎(以下简称瑞法)视作挣扎着的欧元和大量印刷的美元的有效替代品并大量持有,这时瑞士开始担心了。其实1970年代末上演过相似的情节,那时瑞士不得不采用负利息率,任何人想要开设银行账户就得缴纳一定费用。这一次,瑞士央行(Swiss National Bank)的举动更进一步。它承诺,只要有必要就会增印更多的瑞法,以保证将瑞法价值维持在1欧元兑1.2瑞法。像这样束缚货币其实是为支持它而做出的以另一种努力。保持货币坚挺要求一国的中央银行耗尽有限的外汇储备;而压低币值就得下决心发行更多的货币。
When one country cuts off the scope for currency appreciation, traders inevitably look for a new target. Thus policies in one country create ripples that in turn affect other countries and their policies.
当一国切断其货币升值空间时,交易商就不可避免的去寻找新的目标。因此,一国的政策会形成涟漪反应,影响到其他国家以及他们的政策。
The Bank of Japan’s latest programme of quantitative easing (QE) has, like most of the unconventional monetary policy being tried around the world, a number of different objectives. But one is to counteract an unwelcome new appetite for the yen among traders responding to policies which have made other currencies less appealing. Other things being equal, the increase in money supply that a bout of quantitative easing brings should make that currency worth less to other people, and thus lower the exchange rate.
Other things, though, are not always or even often equal, as the history of currencies and unconventional monetary policy over the past few years makes clear. In Japan’s case, a drop in the value of the yen in response to the new round of QE would be against the run of play. Japan has conducted QE programmes at various times since 2001 and the yen is much stronger now than when it started.
Nor has QE’s effect on other currencies been what traders might at first have expected. The first American round was in late 2008; at the time the dollar was rising sharply (see chart). The dollar is regarded as the “safe haven” currency; investors flock to it when they are worried about the outlook for the global economy. Fears were at their greatest in late 2008 and early 2009 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, an investment bank, in September 2008. The dollar then fell again once the worst of the crisis had passed.
The second round of QE had more straightforward effects. It was launched in November 2010 and the dollar had fallen by the time the programme finished in June 2011. But this fall might have been down to investor confidence that the central bank’s actions would revive the economy and that it was safe to buy riskier assets; over the same period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose while Treasury bond prices fell.
After all this, though, the dollar remains higher against both the euro and the pound than it was when Lehman collapsed. This does not mean that the QE was pointless; it achieved the goal of loosening monetary conditions at a time when rate cuts were no longer possible. The fact that it didn’t also lower exchange rates simply shows that no policies act in a vacuum. Any exchange rate is a relative valuation of two currencies. Traders had their doubts about the dollar, but the euro was affected by the fiscal crisis and by doubts over the currency’s very survival. Meanwhile, Britain had also been pursuing QE and was slipping back into recession. David Bloom, a currency strategist at HSBC, a bank, draws a clear lesson from all this. “The implications of QE on currency are not uniform and are based on market perceptions rather than some mechanistic link.”
In part because of the advent of all this unconventional monetary policy, foreign-exchange markets have been changing the way they think and operate. In economic textbooks currency movements counter the differences in nominal interest rates between countries so that investors get the same returns on similarly safe assets whatever the currency. But experience over the past 30 years has shown that this is not reliably the case. Instead short-term nominal interest-rate differentials have persistently reinforced currency movements; traders would borrow money in a currency with low interest rates, and invest the proceeds in a currency with high rates, earning a spread (the carry) in the process. Between 1979 and 2009 this “carry trade” delivered a positive return in every year bar three.
Now that nominal interest rates in most developed markets are close to zero, there is less scope for the carry trade. Even the Australian dollar, one of the more reliable sources of higher income, is losing its appeal. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut rates to 3.25% on October 2nd, in response to weaker growth, and the Aussie dollar’s strength is now subsiding.
So instead of looking at short-term interest rates that are almost identical, investors are paying more attention to yield differentials in the bond markets. David Woo, a currency strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says that markets are now moving on real (after inflation) interest rate differentials rather than the nominal gaps they used to heed. While real rates in America and Britain are negative, deflation in Japan and Switzerland means their real rates are positive—hence the recurring enthusiasm for their currencies.
The existence of the euro has also made a difference to the way markets operate. Europe was dogged by currency instability from the introduction of floating rates in the early 1970s to the creation of the euro in 1999. Various attempts to fix one European currency against each other, such as the Exchange Rate Mechanism, crumbled in the face of divergent economic performances in the countries concerned.
European leaders thought they had outsmarted the markets by creating the single currency. But the divergent economic performances continued, and were eventually made manifest in the bond markets. At the moment, if you want to predict future movements in the euro/dollar rate, the level of Spanish and Italian bond yields is a pretty good indicator; rising yields tend to lead to a falling euro.
The reverse is also true. Unconventional interventions by the European Central Bank (ECB) over the past few years might have been expected to weaken the currency, because the bank was seen as departing from its customary hardline stance. They haven’t because they have normally occurred when the markets were most worried about a break-up of the currency, and thus when the euro was already at its weakest. The launch of the Securities Market Programme in May 2010 (when the ECB started to buy Spanish and Italian bonds), and Mario Draghi’s pledge to “do whatever it takes”, including unlimited bond purchases, in July 2012 were followed by periods of euro strength because they reduced fears that the currency was about to collapse.
这种情况反过来也成立。过去几年中,欧洲央行(European Central Bank)所作出的非传统干扰动作本来旨在打压欧元,因为人们认为该行背离了它一贯的强硬立场。他们之所以没有如愿以偿,是因为当市场最担心欧元有可能会崩溃并且欧元确实处于最脆弱的危机关头时,他们却表现的十分正常。2010年5月证券市场计划( Securities Market Programme)启动,2012年7月马里奥·德拉基(欧洲央行行长)承诺将“做出一切努力”——包括无底线的买入证券——来维护欧元,在这之后欧元开始断续的恢复远期,因为他们的这些举动降低了人们对欧元即将崩溃的恐惧。
Currency war, what is it good for?
货币之战,谁人牟利?
Currency trading is, by its nature, a zero-sum game. For some to fall, others must rise. The various unorthodox policies of developed nations have not caused their currencies to fall relative to one another in the way people might have expected. This could be because all rich-country governments have adopted such policies, at least to some extent. But it would not be surprising if rich-world currencies were to fall against those of developing countries.
In September 2010 Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister, claimed that this was not just happening, but that it was deliberate and unwelcome: a currency war had begun between the North and the South. The implication was that the use of QE was a form of protectionism, aimed at stealing market share from the developing world. The Brazilians followed up his statement with taxes on currency inflows (see Free Exchange).
But the evidence for Mr Mantega’s case is pretty shaky. The Brazilian real is lower than it was when he made his remarks (see chart). The Chinese yuan has been gaining value against the dollar since 2010 while the Korean won rallied once risk appetites recovered in early 2009. But on a trade-weighted basis (which includes many developing currencies in the calculation), the dollar is almost exactly where it was when Lehman Brothers collapsed.
Many developing countries have export-based economic policies. So that their currencies do not rise too quickly against the dollar, thus pricing their exports out of the market, these countries manage their dollar exchange rates, formally or informally. The result is that loose monetary policy in America ends up being transmitted to the developing world, often in the form of lower interest rates. By boosting demand, the effect shows up in higher commodity prices. Gold has more than doubled in price since Lehman collapsed and has recently reached a record high against the euro. Some investors fear that QE is part of a general tendency towards the debasement of rich-world currencies that will eventually stoke inflation.
The odd thing, however, is that the old rule that high inflation leads to weak exchange rates is much less reliable than it used to be. It holds true in extreme cases, such as Zimbabwe during its hyperinflationary period. But a general assumption that countries with high inflation need a lower exchange rate to keep their exports competitive is not well supported by the evidence—indeed the reverse appears to be the case. Elsa Lignos of RBC Capital Markets has found that, over the past 20 years, investing in high-inflation currencies and shorting low-inflation currencies has been a consistently profitable strategy.
The main reason seems to be a version of the carry trade. Countries with higher-than-average inflation rates tend to have higher-than-average nominal interest rates. Another factor is that trade imbalances do not seem to be the influence that once they were. America’s persistent deficit does not seem to have had much of an impact on exchange rates in recent years: nor does Japan’s steadily shrinking surplus, or the euro zone’s generally positive aggregate trade position.
In short, foreign-exchange markets no longer punish things that used to be regarded as bad economic behaviour, like high inflation and poor trade performance. That may help explain why governments are now focusing on other priorities than pleasing the currency markets, such as stabilising their financial sectors and reducing unemployment. Currencies only matter if they get in the way of those goals.
【注1】题目来自代表撒旦教义的《撒旦圣经》,原文如下:
"Blessed are the strong, for they shall possess the earth-Cursed are the weak, for they shall inherit the yoke!
Blessed are the powerful, for they shall be reverenced among men -Cursed are the feeble, for they shall be blotted out!
Blessed are the bold, for they shall be masters of the world-Cursed are the righteously humble, for they shall be trodden under cloven hoofs!
Blessed ate the victorious, for victory is the basis of right Cursed are the vanquished, for they shall be vassals forever!
Blessed are the iron-handed, for the unfit shall flee before them-Cursed are the Poor in spirit, for they shall be spat upon!"
【注8】道琼斯工业指数(Dow Jones Industrial Average,DJIA,简称“道指”)是由华尔街日报和道琼斯公司创建者查尔斯·道创造的几种股票市场指数之一。这个指数作为测量美国股票市场上工业构成的发展,是最悠久的美国市场指数之一。 时至今日,平均指数包括美国30间最大、最知名的上市公司。虽然名称中提及“工业”这两个字,但实际其对历史上的意义可能比对实际上还来得多些——因为今日的30间构成企业里,大部分都已与重工业不再有关。由于补偿股票分割和其它的调整的效果,它当前只是加权平均数,并不代表成分股价值的平均数。