联储明天会加息吗？

联储（美国央行）今年加息已成定局，最后一次年会下月（12月）举行，肯定会加息0.25%（俗称25个基点）。原来9月的会议，大家公认会加，但联储一中国经济疲弱（股市动荡）进而影响世界和美国经济为理由展缓，大家暗地里大骂联储被（美国）股市绑架，实属为有钱人效命。

现在中国的动荡算是压下去了，美国经济也还不错，除了10月就业火红外，就目前的数据来看，三季消费也很强【4】，所以能有的借口都没了。

利率改变短期内对股市影响甚大，联储明说是为了经济，暗地里整天为股市担心，那地步跟中国政府不相上下，一般的德性，故此，联储一直给大家暗暗（又不能公开，因为公开是违法的）做思想工作，唯恐大家不知道，该打的报告，都打了【2】，基本上是连幼儿园的小朋友都明白了。伯克利的一教授研究说联储的方式完全是有一套固定的模式：

U.S. central bankers not only regularly leak secret information about monetary policy, but the leaks are so predictably timed that a savvy investor without access to the leaked information could make money just by buying stocks in certain weeks

美国主要股指今年表现

美国加息，美元就长：

欧洲巴不得美国加息，出口就更有力了。发展中国家大都反对，有的担心资金外流，资源国担心资源贬值，对自己的经济是个巨大的打击。不过，美国是不会买大家的账的。

蹊跷的是周末联储发消息说明天（周一）会开一次特殊的会议，说是“没什么特别的”。大家反应不大，不过还是有人揣摩【5】是不是明儿就真的给涨了？

 

【1】《路透社》Pssst, want to play the market? Count the Fed leak weeks
【2】Fed Watch: Mission Accomplished
【3】Goldman Sachs: Expect FOMC to Raise Fed Funds Rate 100bp in 2016
【4】Analysts: Q3 GDP to be Revised Up
【5】下周一 美联储可能就开始“加息”？

 

【附录】

《金融时报》2016.01，11

China banks feel the heat of meltdown
Patrick Jenkins

Lenders could require up to $7.7tn of new capital and funding over the next three years

If the US or Europe had experienced the kind of equity market slump that China has suffered of late, its financial institutions would be quaking and leading the list of biggest fallers in Shanghai and Hong Kong trading.

As it is, the big banks have seen their share prices tumble by about 10 per cent over the past two or three weeks, far less than the 15 per cent slump in the Shanghai Composite index. On the face of it, there may be good reason for that. Traditionally China’s large financial institutions are not big stock market players — retail investors make up the bulk of the market.

In reality, the banks are the most exposed to China’s ills.

They are directly bound up in the stock market turmoil and the government’s efforts to shore up sentiment against the flood of selling. Figures relating to the past week or so are not yet available. But during a similar rout in early July last year, 17 banks — including the big five listed but partly state-owned groups — lent more than $200bn to facilitate broker purchases of shares and funds.

Even without the seizure of their balance sheets to prop up the equity market, China’s banks are pretty troubled.

Like banks in the west before the financial crisis, China’s lenders — with government encouragement — have inflated a vast credit bubble, funding the country’s ambitious companies and fast-expanding property market. Chinese banking assets now amount to more than $30tn.

Over the past decade, credit growth has consistently topped 10 per cent a year. (It peaked at close to 35 per cent in 2009.) Even this year, it is expected to be double the 6-7 per cent forecast rate of GDP growth. Last August, JPMorgan estimated China’s non-financial industry private sector debt at 147 per cent, half as much again as in 2007.

The downturn in China’s fortunes — particularly across its heartland heavy industry — is already hitting the banks. Annual non-performing loan rates have been doubling annually since 2012. China Merchants Bank, China Everbright and ICBC are seen as among the most troubled.

China bulls point to the still low level of NPLs — barely 1 per cent at the big lenders, and 1.8 per cent at mid-tier banks this year, according to analyst forecasts. As a gauge, NPLs in Greece have risen to between 30 and 40 per cent amid that country’s crisis.

But China experts at independent research house Autonomous suggest investors are underestimating a spiralling problem. Across the board, loan losses will rise by $845bn this year, Autonomous predicts. That, they think, will be enough to shrink profits by 6 per cent at big banks.

The bearish outlook reflects concern about hidden forbearance policies on outstanding loans and the rapid growth of misleading wealth management products. Some banks have been redefining lending as investments which may not sit on their balance sheets. When a bank loan is turned into an investment product with the assistance of a non-bank — or “shadow bank” — partner, the lender escapes rules on loan loss provisioning and capital. It also swaps a thin lending margin for more highly regarded fee income. Autonomous reckons that in the first half of 2015 alone, this kind of non-loan credit jumped by Rmb1.5tn, or more than a third, across the nine banks it covers.

Some policymakers are privately worried about yet another underestimated issue — whether loan losses, when they materialise, will be recoverable. In western banking markets, so-called loss given default rates can typically range between 30 and 70 per cent. In China, where property accounts for the bulk of collateral used to back loans, LGDs may be far higher. Even if inflated property values do not collapse, collateral values may prove far too optimistic. In China’s nascent property ownership culture, the land on which developments are built is typically state-owned, limiting recovery values.

Investors in China’s banks may well recognise that the lenders cannot be compared with institutions that operate along western lines and will expect hazier disclosures and readier state interference. They are also likely to think that China will not allow its banks to fail. But if analysts, like those at Autonomous are to be believed, China’s banks could require up to $7.7tn of new capital and funding over the next three years. State bailouts could send the government debt to GDP ratio spiralling from 22 per cent to 122 per cent. That kind of shock would be a challenge for any country, even one of China’s vast might.