저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
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결론: 피터 쉬프는 미국 경기침체가 임박했거나 이미 진행 중이며, 연준은 금리를 인상하지 못하고 결국 0% 이하까지 내리고 양적완화를 재개할 것이라고 주장한다. 고용·경기 판단: 6월 고용에서 55세 이상만 일자리가 늘고 24세 이하 청년층은 대규모 감소했으며, 신규 일자리도 저임금 시간제 서비스업 위주라고 진단한다. 고용 증가 둔화는 경기 둔화의 신호이며, 실업은 후행지표라 기업이 경기 악화를 인지한 뒤 대규모 감원이 뒤따른다고 본다. 이번 침체는 2008년 대침체보다 길고 깊을 것이라고 전망한다. 임금·최저임금: 6월 시간당 평균임금 상승(2센트, 25.61달러)은 미미하며 실질임금은 여전히 오르지 않았다고 본다. 주별 최저임금 인상이 기업의 감원을 부르고, 그 영향이 청년 고용에 집중된다는 입장이다. 연준·금리: 연준이 12월 첫 금리인상 이후 추가 인상을 시도한 것은 실패였으며, 브렉시트 투표와 고용지표를 기다린다는 말은 핑계일 뿐이라고 주장한다. 경기가 너무 약해 인상이 불가능하며, 다음 조치는 제로금리(또는 마이너스)와 양적완화 재개라고 전망한다. 거품이 2008년보다 훨씬 커서 연준은 이를 터뜨릴 수 없다고 본다. 인플레이션: 연준은 신뢰성이 없고 인플레이션을 통제할 수단도 없다고 주장한다. 미국의 부채(특히 단기 연방부채) 규모 때문에 금리를 의미 있게 올리면 국가 부도와 대형은행 붕괴가 일어나므로, 인플레이션이 2.5~5%로 올라도 연준은 제로 근처를 유지할 것이라고 본다. 유럽 은행: 유로존 은행(특히 도이체방크와 이탈리아 은행)의 위기가 실재한다고 본다. 도이체방크 CDS 상승은 파산 자체보다 최악 시나리오 확률이 커졌음을 뜻하며, 소송 및 파생상품 노출 문제가 배경이다. 이탈리아 부실대출 비율은 약 17%로 미국 2008년 수준을 크게 넘는다고 지적하며, 자본 확충이 어려워 민간 자금 없이 bail-in이 불가피하다고 본다. 이탈리아 경기가 유로 도입 이후 극도로 약했다는 점이 원인이라고 설명한다. 언급 자산 전망: 금·달러 등 자산별 구체적 가격 목표나 매수·매도 권고는 없다. 미국 경기침체·연준 제로금리 재개 전망은 미국금리 하락(채권가격 상승) 방향과 연결되나 본문이 이를 명시하지 않아 중립 처리한다. 출연자 전망 요약: 쉬프는 경기침체 장기화, 연준 완화 재개, 유럽 은행 위기 지속을 전망하며 리스크를 강조한다.
다듬은 글
we've started up but also if you look at the demographics, all these jobs went to people 55 and older. Younger workers, 24 and under, net lost a tremendous number of jobs in June. And of course, the jobs that we did create were very low-paying service sector jobs, part-time jobs. We continued to hemorrhage full-time jobs, higher-paying jobs, the kind of jobs that can support a family, and instead we replaced them with these low-paying, part-time service sector jobs. So it is not a good sign for the US economy.
So you're still concerned about the types of jobs that are being added, and you can certainly argue that the pace of job creation has slowed since the winter. I think we've seen a trajectory downward since about February. But is it the kind of pace that really signals a possible recession? Morgan Stanley's chief economist Ellen Zentner told The Wall Street Journal that, to the contrary, this actually looks more like a graceful slowing into a lower channel of job growth, and that this is normal at this late stage of the business expansion. Does she have a point there?
No, I don't think so. Unemployment is not a leading indicator; it's more of a lagging indicator. It's when employers are surprised by a downturn in the economy that they adjust their payrolls. So the fact that so many employers don't perceive just how bad the economy is going to be doesn't invalidate the fact that either we're already in a recession, or a recession is going to be starting very quickly. Once employers figure this out, they're going to be trimming their payrolls, I think rather substantially. As the recession progresses, that's when you're going to start to see big layoffs. In fact, normally layoffs continue even after the recession is over. But this recession is going to last for a long time. I think it's going to be longer-lasting and deeper than the recession we had in 2008-2009, which we call the Great Recession. So again, I'm not really sure what we'll call this one, the greater recession, but it's going to be worse.
Well, what about wage gains? That's been a point of concern over the past year. We want to see those wages go up, but in recent months we have seen them start to move upwards. In fact, in June average hourly wages rose two cents an hour to 25 dollars and 61 cents, and many would argue that indicates employers are finally beginning to compete against each other to attract candidates, that the labor market is tightening. What's your take on why wages have gone up?
Well, first of all, they're not going up very much. That was still below estimates. And prices are also rising, so we do have inflation coming back, and wages are rising as well as prices, but real wages are still not in fact going up. But you do have some mandated minimum wage hikes that have been taking place throughout the country. Since so many Americans now have minimum-wage jobs, those mandatory increases are going to filter through into these numbers. But as employers react to the higher minimum wage by laying workers off, this is going to begin to bite. In fact, I'm sure that's one of the reasons you're seeing massive layoffs for workers 24 and younger, because these are the workers most impacted by a hike in the minimum wage. They have the least amount of skills, and so they're the people who are going to be laid off first as a result of increases in the minimum wage. And of course, it's going to be increasingly more difficult for younger Americans to get their first job, because the government is pricing those jobs out of existence.
Peter, in the last Fed minutes we learned that there were two things the Fed was really waiting on to make their determination to raise rates: the outcome of the Brexit vote and the jobs data. We now have both. So given the full picture, what kind of assessment do you think we will get out of the Fed at the end of this month?
Well, I don't think the Fed is going anywhere. Again, as I've said since the beginning, since the first time the Fed raised rates in December, I believe their next move is to cut rates. And they weren't really waiting on anything; those are just the excuses. The Federal Reserve can't admit that the economy is too weak for an additional rate hike, so they have to keep pretending they're contemplating raising rates, and they have to make up some excuses as to why they're not doing it right now, while they're waiting for some other data to come in. But it doesn't matter what the data is, because it's never going to justify a hike. They're always going to come up with an excuse why they're waiting. Meantime, the next thing they're going to do, I think, is go back to zero. In fact, they may not stop at zero; they may go negative. And I do think they're going to restart quantitative easing, because I think we've got a much bigger bubble on our hands than the one that popped in 2008. I think the Federal Reserve finally notices and recognizes this, and they know this bubble is too big to pop, and they are determined to keep blowing air into it indefinitely.
So you think that at this point the Fed is looking for more reasons not to hike rates rather than to take them?
Oh, absolutely. They tried to hike rates in December, and it was a complete disaster, so they don't want to do that again.
Well, the question is, how does the Fed handle inflation at this point? We know they've said time and time again that they're looking for that target rate of 2%. So how do they back themselves out of that corner? Because we know the Fed has to be concerned about protecting its credibility, right?
Well, they have no credibility, and they can't handle inflation. It's the opposite of Teddy Roosevelt when it comes to inflation: they speak loudly, but they have no stick at all. And because they have no stick, they have to talk so tough. They continue to pretend that if inflation were ever to rear its ugly head, they have the tools to rein it in. But no, they don't, because we have so much debt in the United States, particularly the government and the Fed itself, and the debt is so short-term in nature at the federal level that any meaningful increase in interest rates would bankrupt the country. All the big banks that were bailed out would fail, and the US government would have to default on its Treasury debt. So the Fed can't raise rates, but it can't admit that, so it pretends that if inflation picked up, they would do something about it. But they will do nothing about it. It doesn't matter how high inflation goes: two-and-a-half, three, four, five percent, doesn't matter. The Fed will stay at zero, or practically zero. They will never try to rein it in, because if they ever tried, they would cause a worse financial crisis than 2008.
All right, we're here, we're on there right now. I'm sitting here with Edy Harrison, and we're talking about European banks. As I mentioned, the FTSE 100 is up some 20 percent since February lows, despite the uncertainties surrounding the country's recent decision to exit the EU. But not every sector is winning in that equation. In fact, one of the sectors seeing a lot of pain is financial services, and that's reflected across the board in Europe, where banks are facing huge losses. That's exactly what we're going to talk about right now. I've seen some pretty scary charts from Deutsche Bank regarding stock prices and credit default swaps. Is this whole euro bank crisis a real thing?
I think the answer is probably "maybe" is the best you could say. My mantra is to prepare for the worst but expect something much better than that. Usually I say prepare for the worst, expect the bad, but in this case I don't think they expect the best. What they're pricing in with Deutsche Bank, both the CDS and the share price, is the optionality value. Shares are a residual claim on profits, and CDS is really an option value: if this company goes bankrupt, then we get made whole. So in both cases you're talking about option values, and what's happened is that the bad scenarios have become much more prevalent in terms of people's thinking.
Tell us a little bit more about the CDS. Why is it so significant, and what is Deutsche Bank's CDS saying right now?
Yeah, so I don't think it's really saying that Deutsche Bank is bankrupt or is going to go bankrupt. But when the credit default swap rises, what it means is that more people are concerned that what used to be considered tail risks, things that were likely not to happen, are now going to happen. So when you see it going up, what it says is that bad scenarios have become much more prevalent in terms of the probability of outcomes, and people are afraid of that. Now, you can get these huge spikes up and then they come straight back down, which shows it's really just panic. But what we've seen in the CDS chart for Deutsche Bank is that they've been going up steadily, and that behind the scenes, completely unrelated to Brexit, people are upset about where Deutsche Bank is headed. A lot of it has to do with residual litigation claims against Deutsche Bank, their huge derivatives portfolio book, and their exposure to other banks, like the Italian ones.
I was going to ask you, what about Italy? Because that's what everybody is talking about right now. Isn't that the real problem area?
Yes, that is the real problem area, the Italian banks basically. If you look at the Italian banks, there was a report in the Wall Street Journal last week that said bad loans as a percentage of loans in Italy are 17% of the total. In 2008 it was 5% in the United States, and right now that number, 17%, is almost 10 times the number of bad loans in the United States. So if all those loans actually went bad, there's no way any of those banks would be solvent. So you have solvency concerns about those banks, and then the question becomes how you recapitalize them. And to what extent can we blame Brexit? As you mentioned, we can't really put all that much blame on Brexit, because this has been happening for a very, very long time, and we've seen the markets sort of come back. So it seems like they're even minimizing the tail risk of Brexit. What are your thoughts on that?
So, the markets are totally separate. They're looking at the upside, while the Italian banks are still in the doldrums. What's really going on with the Italian banks is that when Brexit happened, what was a problem that had been festering already became a bigger problem, because there was no ability to go to the private markets and recapitalize these banks. The whole construct in Europe now is that before public money gets used to deal with any problems whatsoever, private money has to be used. That means you have to recapitalize these banks, and then bail in investors, that is, debt holders and potentially deposit holders. These banks have been slipping in terms of their share value, and when Brexit happened, they slipped so much that people now realize the only way out was bail-ins, because there was going to be no private money coming into these banks. That's the exact same thing we saw with Deutsche Bank, which is why it's in trouble as well. So now we have to deal with whether the bail-in mechanism that the EU is so keen on will actually happen. It may have exacerbated some underlying issues.
What's your perspective on why the whole Italian banking system is under fire right now?
I think it's under fire because of the real economy, basically the interaction between the real economy and the capital. Ever since the euro started, the Italian economy has been growing so incredibly weakly that bad loans have been piling up. When you have a capital base that is very minimal and can't be recapitalized in these banks, they're not going to have any loan growth, so they feed upon each other, and they lead to a problem.
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