Why The (Collapsing) Global Credit Impulse Is All That Matters: Citi Explains
But why is the credit impulse so critical?
To answer this question Citi’s Matt King has published a slideshow titled, appropriately enough, “Why buying on impulse is soon regretted”, in which he explains why this largely ignored second derivative of global credit growth is really all that matters for the global economy (as well as markets, as we will explain in a follow up post).
King first focuses on the one thing that is “wrong” with this recovery: the pervasive lack of global inflation, so desired by DM central banks.
As he notes in the first slide below, “the inflation shortfall isn’t new” and yet the current “level of credit growth would traditionally have seen inflation >5%”
To be sure central banks always respond to this lack of inflation by injecting massive ammounts of liquidity, i.e., credit, in the system: according to Citi, the credit addiction started in 1982 in the UK, while in 2009 it was in China. However, there was a difference: while in the 1982 episode, it took 3 credit units to grow GDP by 1 unit, by 2009 this rate had grown to 6 to 1. Meanwhile, central bankers “simply stopped worrying about credit.” That also explains the chronic collapse in interest rates starting in 1980 with the “Great Moderation” and their recent record lows: the world simply can not tolerate higher rates.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
