Author: Karl Whelan

Shorter-Term Bond Yields

There is a lot of focus every day on this site and in the media on the ten-year bond rate rate and Bloomberg’s web page showing the yield on this bond is regularly linked to. However, the movements in the ten-year bond only tell part of the story of the past couple of weeks. There have also been dramatic movements in the shorter-term bond yields.

Here‘s the Bloomberg page for the two-year bond yield and here‘s the page for the four-year bond yield. Also, here‘s NTMA’s daily bond report.

The four-year bond yield, which had been about 3% in early June, reached 5% in late October and, as I write, stands at 8.34%, not so far short of the 8.92% prevailing on the ten-year bond. This suggests that the market is pricing in a debt restructuring in the next few years. (See this earlier post for a discussion of the relationship between bond yields and default probabilities.)

Even more disturbing have been the movements in the two-year bond. The yield on this bond had been about 2% as recently as June. It started November at 4% and, as I write, has now soared to 6.66%. Given that pessimists are likely to be assuming that Ireland will be borrowing from the EFSF in two years time, the implicit pricing in of a high probability of a debt default\restructuring as early as 2012 strikes me as unwarranted. But it illustrates the scale of the current negative sentiment towards Ireland in the bond market.

As of yet, the government has not been able to turn this sentiment around. An optimist might argue that passing the budget, resolving the political uncertainty via a general election and the emergence of solid evidence of a return to sustained growth might, together, achieve the required improvement in sentiment. A pessimist would argue that it’s too late.

Whoever’s right, the government needs to at least play it’s role in providing the first step in attempting to make the optimistic scenario come about by passing the upcoming tough budget.  If it could achieve that goal, then after that point, there’s a strong argument that the best thing the government can do is deal with the second element of the optimistic scenario by resolving the political uncertainty as early as possible with a January general election. As to whether the third element of the optimistic scenario—the emergence of growth—occurs, one could argue that this is largely out of the government’s hands at this point

EFSF Borrowing Rate

Calculated Risk is one of the best economics and finance blogs out there. It’s a fantastic free resource for analysis of the US macroeconomy, financial markets, housing markets and other issues. Ireland has hit CR’s radar in the past week or so and in a number of posts he has written that the likely borrowing rate from the EFSF will be 8%.

I believe the source for this figure is an article by Wolfgang Munchau (who in turn perhaps based it on a Barclay’s Capital research note that was subsequently corrected). I discussed this issue here: I believe the correct rate will be lower than 6%. This is still very high but it is worth clarifying that the 8% figure just seems to be based on flawed calculations.

CR must get a million emails and comments a day, so I thought I’d use the blogosphere to hopefully clarify this issue.

Government Plans €6 Billion Adjustment in 2011

The government have released a ten-page document outlining its plans for the level of adjustment in the upcoming budget and also some details on growth projections and adjustments planned for future years. Here‘s the press statement.

The summary:

The Government has agreed on an adjustment of €6 billion for 2011 and this will reduce the General Government deficit to around 9¼ to 9½% of GDP next year. Taking account of the €15 billion consolidation package, my Department now expects annual average real GDP growth to be 2¾% over the 2011 to 2014 period.

The government have also released a note on the accounting treatment of the promissory notes. The key point:

the terms of the promissory notes will provide that no interest will be chargeable in 2011 and 2012.

I’m guessing these are newly-negotiated terms, though I’m happy to be shown that this is not the case.

In any case, the bottom line is that this €6 billion of adjustment will have slightly more effect on the GGD than the approach I had been recommending. I had been recommending €7 billion but that figure included €1.5 bilion for the promissory note interest, which does not apply now.

There is lots to absorb in this plan but, for now, let me say that I think the govenment have taken the right decision in relation to the size of the planned adjustment. Now we just have to see if they can get it passed.

October Unemployment and Exchequer Returns

Two pieces of moderately good economic news. The Live Register declined by 6,600 on a seasonally adjusted basis in October and the standardised unemployment rate fell by a tenth of a percent to 13.6%.  Also the October exchequer returns show that tax receipts, which had been falling behind target for a while earlier this year, are now slightly above target. Overall, the non-banking component of the deficit for 2010 appears set to not be too far off the target set last December.

Pension Reserve Fund Set to Make €1.8 billion Loss on AIB Shares

NAMAWineLake blog performs yet another valuable public service and points out that Brian Lenihan’s statement of October 30 told us that “AIB’s upcoming €5.4 billion will be fully underwritten by the National Pension Reserve Fund Commission (NPRFC) at a fixed price of €0.50 per share.”  Unfortunately, the shares closed on Friday at €0.337.

This means the Pension Reserve Fund looks set to make an instant loss of €1.8 billion when it purchases these shares. There is, of course, an alternative. Cancel the underwriting, nationalise the bank and appoint an assessor to value the shares. If, for instance, the shares were valued at their closing price on Friday, this would cost us €364 million. Which sounds better? Losing €1.8 billion or losing €364 million. Is it worth €1.4 billion to retain a tiny private ownership share?

It is also worth raising the question of whether the current process we are going through with AIB is the right one. Rather than being so sure that the bank just needs another €5.4 billion to fix it, why not remove the current upper management immediately, introduce new management charged with fully assessing the bank’s loan book and then decide what to do with it?

If AIB is deemed to be deeply insolvent at that point, we are already (albeit slowly) developing a template for dealing with banks of this kind. This would involve splitting AIB into a good bank and a bad bank, leaving the €4.5 billion in subordinated debt in the bad bank and perhaps negotiating with with the holders of these securities to reduce the amount of public funds required to cover the losses.

If the losses at AIB are larger than the authorities currently envisage, then there are strong arguments against continually putting taxpayers money in to protect other providers of risk capital.