Global Money Notes #8: From Exorbitant Privilege To Existential Trilemma
Global Money Notes #8: From Exorbitant Privilege To Existential Trilemma
Global Money Notes #8: From Exorbitant Privilege To Existential Trilemma
Global
Fixed Income Research
Global Strategy
DISCLOSURE APPENDIX AT THE BACK OF THIS REPORT CONTAINS IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES, LEGAL ENTITY
DISCLOSURE AND ANALYST CERTIFICATIONS.
18 November 2016
1 The SEC’s new rules require prime money funds to hold at least 30% of their AuM in liquid assets such as U.S. Treasuries. But
since reaching the 30% minimum would require the imposition of liquidity gates and fees, prime money funds are implementing
the new rules with a considerable margin of safety, running their liquidity buffers at close to 50% of their AuM on average.
1.40 1.40
1.20 1.20
1.00 1.00
0.80 0.80
0.60 0.60
0.40 0.40
Jan-16 Apr-16 Jul-16 Oct-16
Implied funding cost JPY Iimplied funding cost GBP Implied funding cost EUR Implied funding cost CAD Implied funding cost CHF
Pre-reform average (Q1) Pre-reform average (Q1) Pre-reform average (Q1) Pre-reform average (Q1) Pre-reform average (Q1)
1.75 1.75
1.50 1.50
1.25 1.25
1.00 1.00
0.75 0.75
0.50 0.50
0.25 0.25
0.00 0.00
o/n 1-week 1-month 3-month 6-month 1-year 2-year
U.S. dollar Libor 3-month FX swap rate (average) 2-year term bank debt (fixed rate) 2-year one month ago 3-month one month ago
Second, reforms will also limit treasurers’ demand for yield and hence prime money funds.
When regulatory reforms are turning prime funds from a liquidity vehicle to a credit vehicle,
effectively cutting the system’s menu of options for safe, par on demand vehicles from
three (demand deposits, government funds and prime funds) to two (demand deposits and
government funds), the natural response of investors is to gravitate toward safety (that is
government funds), not yield (that is, prime funds). This, combined with prime funds’
constraints to generate yield going forward, will severely limit flows back into prime funds.
Third, if there is neither yield pickup, nor reach for yield, the future of what is left of
institutional-class prime funds looks rather bleak. Institutional prime funds lost $800 billion
in AuM since 2015, leaving only $100 billion in assets to look after (see Figure 3). Whether
such a small asset-base can support overheads that were scaled to manage trillions, not
billions is yet to be seen. Economies of scale matter and are make or break.
Fourth, the future of retail prime funds also looks bleak due to the gravitational pull of Basel
III. Retail prime funds lost $250 billion in AuM since 2015, with only $250 billion left. Retail
deposits are "gold" for large American banks as they require no HQLA and count as NSFR
at face value. In an era when banks like Goldman Sachs are paying over 100 bps for
checking accounts, funds will continue to migrate out of prime funds paying only 25 bps.
If we are right that prime funds will shrink further from here, the steepening of the Libor
curve, the widening of Libor-OIS spreads and the increase in offshore dollar funding costs
we have witnessed to date are all structural, not cyclical. At best we are looking at funding
markets to stabilize at current levels, and at worst we are looking for the curve to steepen,
spreads to widen and cross-currency bases to sink much deeper into negative territory as
prime money market funds fail to attract cash back and continue to bleed assets over time.
The end-state of the system is one where foreign banks raise their marginal dollars mostly
in the FX swap market (from American banks) or the capital market (from asset managers).
The end-state is dominated by American banks because post-reform, they are the only
ones left with access to cheap retail dollars onshore to lend offshore via FX swaps – all
foreign banks that used to lend via FX swaps raised dollars wholesale from prime funds
(for a review of the impact of money fund reform on the FX swap market see Appendix 1).
As large American banks grow to dominate the FX swap market, they will inevitably
become the marginal price setters in the system. Going forward, the key questions from a
pricing perspective will be how American banks’ growing FX swap books will push up
against their balance sheet constraints: (1) how much balance sheet they will have to
onboard these trades from an SLR perspective; (2) what will these trades do to their LCR;
(3) what will the looming requirement to currency-match HQLA portfolios mean for their
appetite to do these trades; and (4) will the Volcker Rule let them run speculative books?
None of these constraints mean anything good for the marginal cost of Eurodollar funding
going forward, which means that what’s referred to as a “global dollar shortage” is bound
to get worse in the future. But in light of the points raised above, none of this is about a
shortage of dollars per se, but rather a shortage of balance sheet to intermediate dollars
(please, let’s forget the whole “shortage versus scarcity” debate and call a spade a spade).
Effectively, what we have here is a case where money fund reform amounts to the
clamping of a major global funding “artery” and a redirection of flows through a smaller and
increasingly tight "vein" that is the balance sheet of American global banks under Basel III.
For a sense of scale, consider that over $1 trillion has left prime funds. Now consider the
image of American banks absorbing these flows through hamstrung balance sheets…
…what you see is an elephant inside a snake (see Figure 4), and a global dollar funding
market structurally more expensive and less liquid and dominant than it used to be.
600 600
400 400
200 200
0 0
-200 -200
-400 -400
-600 -600
-800 -800
14 15 16
Outflows from institutional prime funds Inflows into institutional government funds
2 This is because institutional-class prime money funds were the single biggest lenders of o/n Eurodollars in the Caribbean-based
segment of the Eurodollar market as measured by the Federal Reserve’s new overnight bank funding rate (OBFR).
3 Banks arbitrage differences between onshore and offshore funding rates by borrowing onshore in the CD and CP market from
prime money funds and lending the proceeds in the FX swap market. Such arbitrage trades inflate banks’ balance sheets.
Either way we look at it, cross-currency bases are bound to get more negative, with no
private mechanism in place to check three-month points from sinking as low as -150 bps.
The limit to this will be the extent to which the rest of the world will be able to cope with
higher dollar funding costs and how these will feed back to the Fed’s reaction function.
There are at least three feedback channels.
First, an ongoing increase in the FX swap-implied cost of dollar funding and increasingly
negative cross-currency bases mean tighter financial conditions for the rest of the world. In
turn, tighter financial conditions point to slower, not faster global growth as foreign banks
pass on higher costs to their customers or worse: de-lever their books. These dynamics
are disinflationary on the margin and don’t help interest rate normalization back in the U.S.
Second, increasingly negative cross-currency bases mean rising hedging costs for foreign
investors on their U.S. dollar assets, which force them out the duration curve and down the
credit spectrum. In turn, this tends to ease financial conditions, raise financial stability risks,
and also blunt the traditional channels of monetary policy transmission back in the U.S.
Chairman Greenspan’s conundrum is back and spreading to mortgage and credit curves.
Third, everything described above goes hand-in-hand with a further strengthening of the
dollar (see Figure 6) – this is because increasing hedging costs are prompting foreign
investors to reduce their hedge ratios or take on naked exposures, both of which tend to
drive the appreciation of the dollar. If the Fed leaves the intermediation of all of the rest of
the world’s marginal dollar needs to American banks' constrained balance sheets, offshore
financial conditions may tighten and the dollar may strengthen to the point where they are
no longer consistent with the path the Fed envisioned for the funds rate (see Shin, 2016):
rounds of RMB devaluation would follow which also won’t help interest rate normalization.
250 250
227
150 150
131
112 113
100 100
70
50 50 50
44 46
0 0
15 16
o/n FF volume (reported) o/n FF volume (ex month ends) o/n ED volume (reported) o/n ED volume (ex month ends)
Source: BIS
It seems like balance sheet constraints are in conflict with monetary policy objectives…
Balance sheet constraints are driving prices in a way where financial conditions abroad
are tighter than financial conditions in the U.S. Where borrowing a Eurodollar is more
expensive than borrowing an onshore dollar. The feedback of this on the U.S. dollar and
financial stability risks are making interest rate hikes less possible and also less effective.
What to do?
In this environment, the only bank that could counter the tendency of cross-currency bases
to sink deeper and deeper into negative territory is none other than the New York Fed.
It could do so by scrapping its philosophy that it should primarily serve the system as a
Lender of Last Resort – providing a liquidity backstop when no one wants to lend – and
become a Dealer of Last Resort – providing a backstop to prices when dealers hit their
balance sheet constraints and have no room left to make markets at reasonable spreads.
The tool to use is the Fed's dollar swap lines but the aim would no longer be to backstop
funding markets, but to police the range within which various cross currency bases trade.
Just as the reasons why various cross currency bases spiked during 2008 and 2011
(credit and sovereign risks) were different from the reasons why they have been widening
since 2014 (Basel III and money fund reform), the mindset with which the dollar swap lines
should be deployed today should also be different – not to provide a liquidity backstop
because prime funds won’t lend to banks, but to provide a balance sheet backstop
because private market makers are pushing up against their balance sheet constraints,
and are giving quotes that are strengthening the dollar and forcing the Fed to stay on hold.
Of course, if the Fed were to switch from treating the swap lines as a funding backstop to
a pricing backstop, its attitude toward being tapped would have to be relaxed. In English,
this means that long held notions of stigma would have to be expunged from the market’s
conscience and everyone would have to adopt a mindset where if banks’ quotes are more
expensive than the quotes of the Fed, everyone would default to trading with the Fed with
no further thought, period – much like the ECB’s repo facilities are routinely tapped.
Will this really happen?
It’s not unlikely. We know from the July FOMC minutes that the Fed is actively looking into
"approaches to reducing perceived stigma associated with borrowing at the discount
window" and is conscious that "the dollar is the principal reserve currency and that
monetary transmission in the U.S. occurs through globally connected funding markets".
The Fed’s ongoing review of its Long-Run Monetary Policy Implementation Framework
(to be published in January) may conclude the Fed should become a Dealer of Last Resort
and be willing to make markets once spreads hit certain levels (the “outside” spread). Not
doing so would have unwanted feedbacks on the dollar, the RMB’s peg to the dollar, and
the Fed’s ability to raise rates. Were the Fed to turn into a Dealer of Last Resort, it would
give up control over its balance sheet and so should charge more for the dollar swap lines.
Recognize that the theme we’ve been emphasizing about the U.S. money market (see here)
– that the sovereign has effectively crowded out private banks in money markets onshore4
– is also inevitable in money markets offshore. The Eurodollar market is a private system
and the historically tight relationship between onshore and offshore funding curves implied
a “par exchange rate” between onshore dollars and Eurodollars – OIS, Libor and FX swap
curves were all on top of each other. The widening spreads between Libor and OIS, and
Libor and FX swap-implied dollar funding rates (that is, the cross-currency basis) reflect a
structural breakdown of the par exchange rate between onshore dollars and Eurodollars –
just as the crisis of 2008 marked a similar breakdown. But 2008 was a panic. It was
temporary. Today is structural. It feels more persistent than temporary. It is driven by
balance sheet constraints due to Basel III which limit American banks’ ability to serve as
private dealers of dollars from onshore to offshore. It also means that a dollar abroad is
more expensive than a dollar at home, which will continue to push the spot value of the
dollar higher and higher unless the Fed decides to give up control over its balance sheet
and ease the shortage of offshore dollars by becoming a public dealer of Eurodollars.
Regulatory reforms turned the exorbitant privilege into an existential trilemma typically
associated with emerging market economies with fixed exchange rates to the U.S. dollar.
According to the impossible trinity of yore it is only possible to have two of three goals:
free capital mobility, a fixed FX rate and monetary policy oriented toward domestic goals.
The Fed now faces the impossible trinity in a new form: it’s impossible to have constraints
on bank balance sheets (restraining free capital mobility in global money markets), a par
exchange rate between onshore and offshore dollars across the term structure, and a
monetary policy oriented toward domestic goals. Either way, something will have to give:
(1) Reforms – the domain of Governor Tarullo – are limiting balance sheet quantities
and driving a wedge between the price of onshore and offshore dollars as evident
in more negative cross-currency bases. This contributes to the dollar’s strength.
(2) Monetary policy independence – the domain of Chair Yellen – is under threat, as
a stronger dollar increases the chance of further RMB devaluation by the PBoC.
The deflationary risks inherent in RMB devaluation limit the Fed’s ability to hike.
(3) Quantitative Eurodollar easing (“QEE”) for the rest of the world is the solution,
which is President Dudley’s domain. If the increasing cost of Eurodollars is what’s
driving the appreciation of the dollar, and the appreciation of the dollar is what
stands in the way of the Fed’s hiking cycle, it appears that the right thing to do is
to break the impasse and give the rest of the world what it needs through the
swap lines so as to relieve the pressure on the dollar so that the FOMC can hike.
It’s either quantities or prices…
Monetary policy divergence is not a new phenomenon – we’ve seen it in the past. But in
the past, unconstrained balance sheets ensured that cross currency bases were minimal
(or in other words, deviations from covered interest parity weren’t large or persistent).
4 Look no further than the demise of prime funds and rise of government-only funds, the increased volume of bills issued by the
U.S. Treasury, the increased volume of floaters issued by by the FHLBs and the increased size of the Fed’s foreign repo pool
and o/n RRP facility as counterparts to less short-term funding raised by banks and primary dealers’ diminished repo books.
Under the old regime, the focus was on prices and tight spreads – or in the present
context a “par exchange rate” between onshore and offshore dollar funding curves.
Quantities (balance sheet) were endless, and the volume of matched money market books
that accumulated through global banks’ money dealing activities – borrowing in onshore
segments of the money market in order to lend offshore – were massive indeed. No longer.
Basel III restricting quantities and money fund reform clamping a main funding artery is
turning the Fed’s world on its head. Quantity constraints will have to be relaxed if the Fed
wants to have monetary independence and parity between onshore and offshore dollars.
Barring the scrapping of Basel III or the blanket exemption of reserves from the SLR,
quantitative Eurodollar easing (“QEE”) for the world – the fixed-price, full-allotment
broadcast of Eurodollars globally through the dollar swap lines – is the solution we need.
In a way, QEE is the missing piece in a mosaic where the ECB and BoJ continue with QE
and investors in their jurisdictions are looking to fill their duration gaps with higher-yielding
dollar assets on a hedged basis. But the private provision of FX swaps to hedge these
flows cannot possibly keep pace with the public creation of euros and yen on mass scale.
Conclusions
Elephant-size €QEs and QQEs can only be countered by elephant-size QEEs by the Fed:
the Fed needs to lend banks a hand and provide Eurodollars more cheaply to the world…
It’s either regulatory and monetary objectives or the Fed’s balance sheet size.
It’s either the cross-currency basis, the dollar or the next hike.
It’s either Lender of Last Resort or Dealer of Last Resort.
Take your pick…
Second, just as Japanese banks will be shifting toward FX swaps for funding, the size of
non-American speculative books in the market will be shrinking. This is because the cheap
source of CD and CP funding from prime funds to non-American global banks that are
active arbitrageurs of the difference between offshore and onshore rates will be gone.
Enter the American bank, which, as noted above, has a funding advantage over everyone
else and hence is uniquely positioned to dominate the FX swap market going forward.
As large American banks grow to dominate the FX swap market, they will inevitably
become the marginal price setters in in the system. The key questions from a pricing
perspective will be how an increased volume of speculative FX swaps positions will
interact with American banks’ regulatory constraints – how much balance sheet will they
have to onboard these trades from an SLR perspective; what will these trades do to their
LCR; what will the looming requirement to currency-match HQLA portfolios mean for their
overall appetite to do these trades; will the Volcker Rule let them run speculative books?
Figure out these questions and you will find the ‘keys to the kingdom’. And remember this:
under Basel III, the more dollars American banks intermediate via FX swaps, the less
balance sheet they will have left over for everything else, and the higher the price of the
marginal FX trade will have to be. Standard logics of arbitrage do not hold under Basel III:
with balance sheets no longer unlimited, the more you arb the higher the marginal price.5
Either way we look at it, cross-currency bases are bound to get more negative, with no
private mechanism in place to check three-month points from sinking as low as -150 bps.
The limit to this will be the extent to which the rest of the world will be able to cope with
higher dollar funding costs and how these costs will feed back to the Fed’s reaction function
In this environment, the only bank that can counter the tendency of cross-currency bases
to sink deeper and deeper into negative territory is none other than FRBNY (see above).
Other than money fund reform in the U.S., there are at least three risks on the horizon
which point to a further increase in American banks’ dominance in the FX swap market.
First, money fund reform in the EU. Investors should know that about half of money funds
in the EU are U.S. dollar-denominated. If the EU reforms follow the spirit of U.S. reforms,
we can expect a further steepening of the U.S. dollar Libor curve, a further migration of
funding from Eurodollar CD and CP markets to FX swaps, a further reduction in funding for
non-American global banks for arbitrage, and more on the plate of American global banks.
If institutional-class prime outflows were the first wave to push the Libor curve steeper and
cross-currency bases more negative, and retail-class prime fund outflows are the second,
then EU money fund reform will be the third. We should forget about Libor normalization…
Second, shortages of JGB bills are making it increasingly difficult for hedge funds and
asset managers to find assets to invest yen collateral when lending dollars via FX swaps.
This will naturally impede the volume of FX swaps intermediated through matched books,
and will pressure large American banks to increase their speculative books further. This
will exacerbate balance sheet pressures and push cross-currency bases more negative
(note that unlike hedge funds and asset managers, large American banks can deposit yen
at the BoJ via their Tokyo branches and so aren’t limited by the shortage of JGB bills).
Third, the reform of the U.S. corporate tax code and the potential re-patriation of hundreds
of billions of cash currently parked abroad. These offshore cash balances form an integral
part of the funding base of Eurodollar loan books across the globe. Were these cash
balances to flow back into the U.S., then even more of the funding of Eurodollar assets
would have to come from large American banks through FX swaps. The impact of this on
cross-currency bases would make money fund reform look like baby stuff (see Figure A-5).
5 Banks arbitrage differences between onshore and offshore funding rates by borrowing onshore in the CD and CP market from
prime money funds and lending the proceeds in the FX swap market. Such arbitrage trades inflate banks’ balance sheets.
¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ € €
(cash) (deposit) (cash) (alpha) (cash) (bond)
[2] Exchange ¥ for $ spot (buy $). $ $ $ Exchange € for $ spot (buy $). [2]
[2] (currency risk) (cash) (cash) (cash) (currency risk) [2]
Time: t (spot) Time: t (spot)
¥ ¥ ¥ ¥ € €
(cash) (deposit) (cash) (alpha) (cash) (bond)
spot
spot
$ $ $
(loan) (bond) (spend)
[4] Hedge by selling $ from quarterly interest flow s ¥ $ ¥ $ € $ Hedge by selling $ from cash inflow s from sales [4]
FW
FW
[4] forw ard for ¥ at today's forw ard FX rate. (buy FW) (sell FW) (buy FW) (sell FW) (buy FW) (sell FW) forw ard for € at today's forw ard FX rate. [4]
[4] (duration and credit risk, no more FX risk)
Time: t + 90 days (FW) Time: t + 90 days (FW)
$ ¥ $ ¥ $ €
spot
spot
¥ $ ¥ $ € $
FW
FW
↓ ↓ ↓
Use ¥ to pay back original ¥ deposit if it is not rolled over. Use ¥ to pay a return in ¥ to Japanese pensioners. Use € to service debt denominated in €.
FXS FXS
←cash pool to real money ←
(indirectly via FX swap market makers)
Market Makers
CD CD
FXS FXS
(3-mo.) ←cash pool to real money ← (3-mo.)
(indirectly via FX swap market makers)
Market Makers
matched book →
FXS FXS
(3-mo.) (3-mo.)
FXS CD
speculative book →
(3-mo.) (1-mo.)
CD
CD
(3-mo.)
← prime fund to bank ←
(directly)
FXS FXS
(3-mo.) ←cash pool to real money ← (3-mo.)
(indirectly via FX swap market makers)
Market Makers
matched book →
FXS FXS
(3-mo.) (3-mo.)
FXS Deposits
spec. book →
(3-mo.) (retail)
Banks
References:
Pozsar, Zoltan, “The Rise and Fall of the Shadow Banking System,”
Moody’s Economy.com (July, 2008)
Wilmot, Jonathan, Sweeney, James, Klein, Matthias and Lantz, Carl, “Long Shadows,”
Credit Suisse (May, 2009)
Pozsar, Zoltan, Adrian, Tobias, Ashcraft Adam and Boesky, Hayley, “Shadow Banking,”
FRBNY (July, 2010)
Pozsar, Zoltan
“Institutional Cash Pools and the Triffin Dilemma of the US Banking System,”
IMF (August, 2011)
Sweeney, James and Wilmot, Jonathan, “When Collateral Is King,”
Credit Suisse (March, 2012)
Mehrling, Perry, Pozsar, Zoltan, Sweeney, James and Neilson, Dan
“Bagehot Was a Shadow Banker,”
INET (November, 2013)
Sweeney, James, “Liquidity Required: Reshaping the Financial System,”
Credit Suisse (November, 2013)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “Shadow Banking: The Money View,”
US Treasury (July, 2014)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “How the Financial System Works,”
US Treasury (July, 2014)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “A Macro View of Shadow Banking,”
INET Working Paper (January, 2015)
Di Iasio, Giovanni, and Pozsar, Zoltan,
“A Model of Shadow Banking: Crises, Central Banks and Regulation,”
Banca d’Italia (May, 2015)
Pozsar, Zoltan and Sweeney, James,
“Global Money Notes #1: The Money Market Under Government Control,”
Credit Suisse (May, 2015)
Pozsar, Zoltan and Sweeney, James, “Global Money Notes #2: A Turbulent Exit,”
Credit Suisse (August, 2015)
Pozsar, Zoltan and Sweeney, James, “Global Money Notes #3: Flying Blind,”
Credit Suisse (December, 2015)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “Global Money Notes #4: A Tool of Their Own – The Foreign RRP Facility,”
Credit Suisse (February, 2016)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “Global Money Notes #5: What Excess Reserves,”
Credit Suisse (April, 2016)
Pozsar, Zoltan, “Global Money Notes #6: QE, Basel III and the Fed’s New Target Rate,”
Credit Suisse (June, 2016)
Pozsar, Zoltan “Global Money Notes #7: Japanese Banks, LIBOR and the FX Swap Lines,”
Credit Suisse (August, 2016)
JAPAN ECONOMICS
Hiromichi Shirakawa
Head of Japan Economics Takashi Shiono
+81 3 4550 7117 +81 3 4550 7189
hiromichi.shirakawa@credit-suisse.com takashi.shiono@credit-suisse.com
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