LAMENTATIONS OF GREECE

“Frustrated with Greece’s inability to meet two years of targets for cutting the deficit and selling off state assets, donor countries are also insisting on more control over how Greece spends the money” screamed a recent prominent news item in the recent days (source bloomberg.com)

It is a very uneasy feeling when creditors breathe down the neck . In the case of companies, the owners suffer while the employees look for alternatives. If the company is large and/or the owners are smart they stack away most of their wealth beyond the reach of creditors.

But when countries are indebted, then the population suffers. In the case of Greece, the common currency has created a new kind of “financial apartheid”. The steps taken are plunging Greece into further indebtedness & discomfort. In fact the decisions are not taken for the benefit of Greece; but for France. To save French banks, Greeks suffer.

By 2020, the Greece debt/GDP ratio will exceed 135%.

Greece is in permanent recession ever since it declared in 2008 that its debt/GDP ratio is 120%.  Now the headlines say that by 2020 this ratio will be 129%! Greece is the only economy that registered a decline of 7% during 2011, when most other economies recorded better growth rates. By 2020, the Greece debt/GDP ratio will exceed 135%, if the economic decline at 7% continues!! The way the ECB and other fellow Eurozone nations treat Greece, that is bound to happen !!

Coming back, what are the negotiators doing? All the so called cuts are sham. There are reports that ECB bought the Bonds of Greece at deep discounts and now wants the value almost at par! Remember this is the European Central Bank and the equivalent of Fed Reserve. Can you imagine Fed Reserve is trying to make money out of the misfortune of a US State?

Currency Union without Political Union is the Joke of the Century

California was a bankrupt state in the US post 2008 Financial Crisis. Since political union and economic union was same, California got breathing space. However, the smaller and weak country like Greece is being stifled by larger players of Europe.

Taking a bold decision, by 2020, the Greece debt/GDP ratio will drop below 90%.

A better option is to follow Argentina of 2001. Possibly, a default in unavoidable!. But the choice of its former currency ‘drachma’ gives Greece much needed economic freedom to devaluate it to such a level where its exports become cheaper! Tourists will flock into the historic and beautiful country, its exports will shoot up in such a manner that the GDP will grow soon. Like Argentina it will be back to normal - by2020. And it will not be saddled with debt and low growth that will make its debt/GDP ratio 129%.

If Greece gets out of Euro by 2020, its debt/GDP level will much better position to the envy of Spain and other countries who still allow their monetary policy hijacked by those in Brussels, Paris and Berlin.

Greece should take a bold decision – Get out of EURO!

Will 2012 be similar to 1932? Or Japan in 1990s ? - Part 3

During Oct 2010, Financial Thoughts was concerned whether 2012 will be similar to 1932.

Well, what was the situation in 1932? Gloomier than in 1928/29 when the Great Crash happened in the US. In 1932, the stock markets touched the lowest level, below 1928 (or 1929) crash levels. The US economic conditions deteriorated and the unemployment level reached 25% in 1932. We discussed about the parallels between 1929 Crash and 2009 Crash and discussed some of the common reasons behind downturns i.e. - the structural weaknesses, reckless lending, high leverage, speculation, asset bubbles, massive bank failures, stock market crash, etc. were some of them.

We had also discussed about the parallels of 2009 Crash to the Collapse of Japanese economy after their fantastic economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, where Japan witnessed fast rise in real estate, stock market and all asset classes fuelled by cheap credit policy. But mainly due to mismanagement of the interest policy regime, the stock market crashed, debt crisis followed, banks collapsed, triggering bailouts by Japanese Govt, which sound so similar to the US story of 2008 end/early 2009.

As we have just begun 2012, it makes worth a look into the comparison to 1932. . Despite the risks of Euro Crisis, which may lead to Greece default  or some countries quitting Euro can create 'neo-Lehman' situation, as we stand today, it is highly unlikely that 1932 will get repeated in 2012.

Financial thoughts salute Ben Bernanke for taking actions that prevented a repeat of 1932. In USA unemployment has dropped below 9% instead of shooting up to 25% as in 1932. The consumers still spend unlike in 1932, when consumer spending dropped due to deleveraging, unemployment, erosion in networth due to fall in asset values, traceable to the stock market crash / real estate crash of 1928/29. Lower consumer spending meant lower demand for goods and services. Business dropped leading to more shutdowns and more unemployment, which reached 25% in early 1930s. Stock market crashed below 1929 levels.

Clearly, this is avoided.  (Let us take a sigh of relief - for now)

Taking a great risk of fueling asset bubbles, destabilizing prices and eroding the value of the dollar, Bernanke launched a series of Quantitative easing after lowering the fed rates to 0.25%. The risk taking paid off as US avoided another 1932! US was fortunate to have a student of 1928 Crash (Ben took the PhD on this topic) as the Fed governor. Ben fought against the threat of deflation like the Highland Scots in the battle of waterloo!  (It is pertinent to note that linked to gold standard, the dollar printing was restricted and US Govt/Fed did not inject liquidity into the economy in 1930s. International trade had dropped due to protectionism. Overall, the deflation set in causing drop in prices, translating into losses for businesses, that managed to survive the Crash. More unemployment. Fed kept interest rates were high. All of the above ensured the recession continued into a decade.)

Of course, the world also acted together. The world leaders met couple of times and avoided the foolishness of too much protectionism.

So far so good!

However, the risks remain. Risks are quintessential. It never goes away. It regenerates in new forms!

1. US economy has shown improvement, but that it is agreed that the pace is slow. Many critics point out that the US economy is artificially popped up with liquidity. It is like a patient on oxygen.

2. Europe debt crisis has not gone away. Greece is still struggling even after some write offs have been agreed. Euro crisis is a political mess in as much as Germany wants to impose austerity on Greece. The effect is that while German standard of living continues to improve, Greece suffers. Portugal and Italy may re-emerge with more debt surprises.

3. USA's rising debt (nearly USD 16 trillion), which is more than 90% of US GDP is considered by many as a huge risk. Historically, debt level above 90% GDP has been seen as a drag on growth.

4. Huge US deficits are a challenge for any future US government. As critics say, a portion of the recovery was possible because of the borrowing from the future generation.

5. Although unemployment improved, there is still a long way to go before the labour market achieve normalcy. Due to losses suffered from the stock/ real estate market crash, many Americans are still struggling to meet both ends meet. Retirees have come out of retirement and still doing two jobs! Young men get frustrated and start protests such as 'Occupy Wall Street' movement.

What this mean to investors? Well Be on Guard. Your hard earned money could be under attack. Remember the best two principles of Warren Buffet (a) Never lose money in investments/savings (b) Always remember the first rule. It is a tough job; but very little alternatives.

 

Reminiscences

Financial thoughts just completed the performance assessment of 2011. Overall the portfolio went up although both US and Indian markets where we are active went down. Our strategies, including Futures &Options, paid off despite significant market volatility in 2011. Notable volatility was in early 2011 when the markets rushed down. NSE Nifty was about 6000 level during early 2011 but declined rapidly as there were predictions that Indian economy won't do well in 2011, which in fact came true. US markets were grappling with unemployment issues and in Aug 2011 there was a fight between President and the Congress on the debt ceiling. This added to the volatility and George Soros announced semi-retirement and liquidation of most of his funds.

Unlike Soros, Warren Buffet went on to pick stocks leisurely. (Financial thoughts salute him for providing a wonderful example to follow in investing. No wonder he is considered as the Guru of Gurus). Then towards the end of 2011 another round of volatility hit, as Itlay dropped a bombshell and Italian prime minister had to resign. Financial thoughts just wonder how did Italy manage to accumulate the 4th largest debt in the world. Of course, volatility, triggered by Euro zone crisis, hit Indian markets too - aggravated by RBI policies and utterances, which resulted in rupee going for topspin. US markets had offered many metal stocks such as ArecelorMittal, FCX at deep discounts.

The outlook for 2012 seems more positive. Our portfolio is positioned to take advantage of the moderately bullish phase expected in India and US. Overall, the markets are expected to do better than 2011 and our portfolio ought to do better (touch wood). The main risk to this dream is of course Euro and Eurozone.

Naturally, Financial Thoughts got interested to understand how others investing strategies fared in 2011. We turned to FT and ET and similar financial newspapers and got the pleasure to know that our relative performance was impressive.

Let us see the major investment strategic thoughts during the past half a century:

1950s and early 1960s:

During this period, the financial asset class was mainly broken down into Equity and Debt and varying mix was followed by the investment strategists. Options and futures were not very popular. As a young man Warren Buffet got introduced to Ben Graham's style of investing during this period. Ben Graham also advocated a mix of equity and debt as espoused in his published books.

Late 1960s and 1970s

The main idea of diversification of stock portfolio caught fire. The popularity of Modern Portfolio Theory advocated by Markowitz increased and followed religiously by investment community - from retail investors to mega financial institutions. William Sharpe made some additional contributions to theTheory making it more use friendly. However, there were lot of assumptions, which might have worried a scary investor. Basically, the Theory drew lot from mathematics and said combining two negatively correlated stocks eliminate risk - why bother about risk free debt? In 1973 Black Scholes formula provided another break through with the help of mathematics and opened up the glorious era of Options markets.

1980s and 1990s

The theory of diversification and derivatives (options) began to get more popular in credit, commodity, forex, interest rate and debt, besides equity markets. More and more mathematicians and scientists were attracted to the world of finance. The financial innovations that originated in the USA began to spread all over the world.  Hedge funds, private equity and other alternate investments began to get popular. JP Morgan introduced value at risk (Var) concepts while LTCM was created by the Nobel laureates. LTCM had a meteoritic rise and fall, worrying at least some of the discerning investors about the 'assumptions' part of the modern financial theories.

2000s

Everything that happened during this period is eclipsed by the 2008 Financial Crisis. It showed that the diversification does not work always. Even the highly experienced Professional Financial Analysts failed to protect the decline in the value of their investments. The theories they learnt hard seemed no longer valid!. However it is remarkable that Warren Buffet made a few excellent investments at the peak of the crisis. Examples are GS, GE, Wrigley’s, etc.

The crisis showed that the investors diversified into asset classes that fundamentally behave in similar ways. Many thought they are adequately diversified when took exposure to different vehicles such as hedge funds with different specialisations - say in Global Macro, Events, Convertible Arb, etc or private equity or mutual funds, etc. Overall it seems that the only real diversification lies not in negative correlation of different asset classes but in zero correlation where risks must be low.

At the end of the day, risk is more important than return. Warren Buffet's two rules of investing shined through the crisis. The two eternal principles are (1) Never lose money (2) Always remember the first rule.

RBI's 'Smart' Moves Taking India Down & An Arb Opportunity

Financial Thoughts screamed at the top of the voice on 21 Oct 2011 against the indiscriminate monthly rate hikes by RBI. On a blog post on that date Financial Thoughts predicted as follows:

“Those who support further indiscriminate rate hikes must go back to US in 2006 when US Fed was blindly hiking the rates in pursuit of a mirage, which achieved nothing but a fantastic economic collapse in 2008”

Now many economists say that the glory days of India’s near 10% growth is over and may slip back to the Hindu growth rate. If that happens all credit must be given to the (foolish) policies of RBI.

RBI has almost killed the economic growth in India through reducing liquidity and ensuring that no-one can borrow at reasonable costs from banks and do business. As the expansions are put off and the customers decided not to buy as cost effective borrowings are not possible, the business in India got impacted. The recent IIP data tells more about this chilling story – all orchestrated by RBI

RBI is supposed to rescue banks in dire situations. But RBI is now ensuring that many banks in India will face a dire situation with increasing bad and doubtful debts by killing the growth. Many a business in India will struggle to repay as they are unable to generate business volume – again thanks to RBI who has ensured that the interest rates remain high. (Of course this will create more unemployment in an already overpopulated country, giving rise to social tensions!).

But RBI doesn’t care. It goes ahead with its anti-Indian policies with impunity.

Arbitrage Opportunity

After encouraging short sellers (through comments in Nov 2011 that conveyed message that RBI won't intervene.......) to take Indian rupee to record lows, which in turn caused a flight of FII and FDI funds, RBI has decided to attract more dollars by freeing the interest rates on NRE deposits. What a bold idea!!. You got an easy route to get dollars through FII and FDI but you follow own foolish ideas and policies and you get into a situation that resulted in taking such a drastic steps. (India must think of calling back Bimal Jalan or Reddy as RBI Governors)

Such policies provide something great for discerning investors. Well it has a great arbitrage opportunity. But this is limited to Non-Residents. (Don’t know why, usually residents get step motherly treatment in India). Borrow at LIBOR or EIBOR where the 1 year rates are less than 2%. If you borrow from banks, then they will add margins and say you can borrow at 3%. Take the funds to India and park it some of the banks who offer rates as high as 10% (e.g. Karur Vysya Bank) as repatriate-able NRE deposits. Then get into a hedge and cover the position (if you strongly believe India rupee will appreciate, then you can take the risk and leave the position uncovered). Assuming that the cost of the hedge is 1%, your arbitrage gain can be as high as 6%. If you are able to do this on one million dollar, your arb gain is $60k. If you gamble and leave the position open and if the Indian rupee appreciates, the gain could be much more.

(Disclaimer: All investments & arbitrage deals have their own risks. Author does not accept any responsibility or liability for the above mentioned arbitrage opportunity. Above arbitrage opportunity is mentioned for education and discussion purposes only. No investment or arbitrage advice is attempted in this blog, which is just a hobby. Anyone attempting investment or arbitrage must do his/her own study, due diligence, situation analysis and must take the advice of an authorised financial consultant.)

Indian Economy Under Attack & a sleepy leadership

Indian economy’s Achilles’ heal is its foreign currency reserves. However, in the recent years the forex coffers were overflowing thanks to the inflows from IT companies, investments in the growing stock market on the strength of a strong economic growth exceeding 7% while FDI also flowed in to tap the unlimited potential in India. India did not grow much during Nehru’s& Indira’s socialism. Both father and daughter were out of touch with reality and never understood the economics of positive capitalism nor the historical tradition of strong business culture of India. Some of the communities/castes in India are so business oriented that they left their mark all around the world including Europe, Africa, US, etc. (Ask who dominates some of the economies of Africa and who is the richest person in the UK – the answer is Indians)

Well Mr. Narasimgha Rao ended the stupidity of ill-conceived socialism and gave free hand to his then finance minister Dr. Man mohan Singh. Thereafter India boomed as the entrepreneurial spirit was freed from its bondage. India might have got the freedom in 1947, buts its economic freedom was in 1991.

Unless the current government show the will to pursue and do what is good for India, Indians and Indian economy in the long term, India’s growth story may soon be forgotten!. Financial Thoughts is concerned about the following two aspects:

1. Why does the central government hesitate to allow FDI in retail sector? We are not speaking about 100% but 49% or 51% in multi brand type. What would have happened to India if India rolled back its IT initiative just because there was a strong opposition and strike? Hope finance ministry shows some leadership in coming out with feasibility study supported by numbers to show and convince the opposition why the FDI is step in the right direction! (in my current role as Director-Consulting of a multinational consulting firm, I am involved with several feasibility studies.) It is a shame if Indian finance ministry lacks this talent!

2. RBI and its interest rate. Another set of IIP figures were released recently that show the dismal performance. As Financial Thoughts discussed in an earlier blog article, it is the unbearable interest burden RBI puts on the business. Someone was trying to justify higher interest rate saying that that RBI is concerned about India’s poor and it wants to fight food inflation ! What a joke? India’s retail distribution system is among the most inefficient in the world and every year tons & tons of wheat and grains decay in Food Corporation of India’s rat infested godowns! Improve the distribution system with the foreign retail giants and modernize the warehousing, storage and distribution.

Another reason is the corruption. Whatever grain put into the government sponsored subsidized system meant for the poorest of the poor gets diverted into black market by corrupt officials.

Can’t understand when these are the basic causes, how higher interest rates will control the food inflation. RBI is killing the business and economy in India. Finance Ministry is among the worst performer. Both RBI Governor (Subbha Rao) and Finance Minister (Pranab Mukerhjee) must be removed from the position.

It is the time for Annual Performance review for the managers of many companies, banks, etc. If we try to assess the performance, both these guys – RBI Governor and Finance Minister – must get ‘Not Met Expectations’ ‘Marginal/ Poor Performer’ etc. Under Jack Welch kind of management, both must be kicked out! More benevolent management would put them in some kind of performance improvement program, which Dr. Manmohan Singh must consider, if he decides continues with them.

The stupid RBI policies results in a vicious circles (i) Falling economic growth (triggered by the higher interest rates) will cause FII and FDI to fall, creating a vicious circle, resulting in more balance of payment pain because instead of attracting foreign currency, it will cause a flight f foreign investors! Hope India won’t become Argentina of 2001. There are many who are jealous of India and 'neo-George Soroses' could attack the Indian Rupee if they realise that the current trend of flight of FII will continue due to falling economic growth. RBI MUST ACT!! (ii) As mentioned in an earlier blog, falling economic growth will lead to bad debts resulting in reduced risk appetite of banks, further reducing the credit flow into the economy, creating another vicious circle.

Let us hope, some urgent prudent steps will be taken. Prudently, RBI must reduce the interest rates at the earliest to encourage more investment, expansion, CAPEX, etc. so that the economy starts growing above 7% attracting more FII and FDI improving/ stabilizing the exchange rates in India. The will avoid the vicious circles mentioned above.

India's next IT boom! FDI in retail sector

Prime-minister of India has made his stance very clear on FDI on retail sector. No Roll Back. Financial Thoughts salute him; and frown upon other myopic politicians who cry for roll back.

Financial thoughts believe this is one of the boldest decisions in India after the introduction of IT in late 1980s. During those days, I was in higher secondary school and when I used to visit Canara Bank branch where my dad was the branch manager, I had to wade through the protestors sitting with placards saying "Down with Computers! It takes away our Jobs".

This type of protests was common in front of banks, telecommunication offices and several other government offices. Communists and BJP were among the protestors. Congress stood behind the changes as it was introduced by Rajiv Gandhi. There were a few incidents where the protestors even turned violent and smashed computers. 

Now the history is repeating with FDI in retail sector. Let modern retail sector come to India. It will do wonders for Indian farmers. Now most of the perishables like vegetables get lost in transportation because of decay, etc. Hardly you can see a refrigerated truck in India. 

Moreover, the middlemen and traders ensure that the farmers live in poverty and they don't get the reward of labour. About 70%-80% of the value creation is eaten away by the greedy middlemen. It is they who protest! just as the lazy workers in the 1980s!

Did India lose because IT and Computers came to India? Didn't a new middle class of IT professionals boomed in India, fuelling consumption, which augured well for Indian economy and stock markets? Did the computers added jobs or took it away! As you know, it added millions and millions of jobs - the jobs that took India's fame across the world. IBM, Microsoft, CISCO and a lot other multinationals opened shop in India. No one complained?! 

Let us support at this juncture the bold decision of Dr. Manmohan Singh. It will create a sophisticated middle class in Indian rural sector, which will get their better reward for their produce and labour. It will improve India’s farm productivity- which is among the lowest in the world now. Let Walmart, Tesco and others open shop in India just as IBM and Microsoft did. That will propel India's growth to new levels. Of course, there could be some job losses - but like the IT and Computers, new jobs that will be created will be 10 times of what is lost.

Nasty Euro (Part IV) - Will Game Theory help to solve Eurozone crisis?

Just a few weeks back, the media was full of news of energetic Sarkovsky and enigmatic Merkel meeting together couple of times in a month and admonishing Greece. But now, both are at logger heads.

Whilst Germany (Merkel) supports Austerity Measures as the way out of crisis of Italy, Greece and other Eurozone countries, including France, who is most affected by Italy and Greece. France disagrees. They believe ECB must support these countries with European version of Quantitative Easing.

The result is there is stalemate, resulting in strong rumours and speculation that the time of Euro is over -it is just  a matter of time the modern "Continental System" of Euro collapses.

Let us see whether Game theory (a mathematical method for analyzing a person’s success based upon the choices of others) can help to find some solutions. It is reputed that Gordon Brown of UK used Game Theory to solve some of the problems, when he was heading the Finance of UK, during the premier ship of Tony Blair.


For those, who are not familiar with the theory of Game theory, let us explain with an example. One of the canonical examples of Game theory is called “ The prisoner’s dilemma”. This shows why two individuals might not follow the most logical action, even if it appears that it is in their best interest to do so. The example of the prisoner's dilemma is given below:

Problem: Two stupid men are arrested for some crime that will put them in jail for 1 year as maximum prison term. But the police do not possess enough evidence to convict them. After separating two men, the police offer both a similar deal- if one testifies against his partner (assists police), and the other remains silent, the testifier goes free and the other receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each acts stupid, each receives a full 1 year sentence. Each prisoner has following choices (i) either to assist police or (ii) remain silent. What should they do?

The beauty of Game Theory problems are that it is not mathematical. There is no mathematical accuracy in the answer. This is the sort of decisions finance managers and economists face.

Coming back to the problem, each player is concerned with lessening his time in jail. There is a chance that they would want the other to get maximum prison term, both will testify against one another and the result is maximum sentence for both. If they help each other, taking others interest also into account, they will get only one month each, as police don’t have the evidence. In the game, if the sole worry of the prisoners seems to be increasing his own reward (i.e. selfish/egoistic), then they would get one year each. The interesting aspect of this problem is that the logical decision leads both to betray the other resulting in maximum prison terms. While illogical decision not to pursue own interest (of going free) would result in maximum common benefit (both gets just one month prison term) and hence the best choice for both

Applying the above situation to the Eurozone, France and Germany has following options:

Option 1 – Both Germany and France agree to implement some austerity and ECB involvement.

Option 2 – France is forced to go in with German policy

Option 3 – Germany is forced to toe French policy

Option 4 – No agreement between France and Germany. At the time of writing of this article, (21 Nov 2011), both has adopted Option 4.

Using the basics of game theory, the pain of both France and Germany and Eurozone at large will be solved by following the Option 1. All other options involve maximum prison sentences! i.e. Eurozone recession, unemployment, losses for companies and hence to banks, lack of business confidence, lower tax revenues, etc. would be some of the symptoms of this punishment.