Economic woes in Europe and U.S.

Economic woes in Europe and U.S. have undermined market confidence in the dollar and euro, but investors looking for a safe place to store their money have few other currency options. Those discussions have largely been theoretical. But during a visit to China by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which ended on Monday, China and Japan announced a series of deals that promote the use of the yuan in trade and investment between the world's second- and third-largest economies, which would limit somewhat the use of the dollar in Asia, the world's fastest growing region. Specifically, the two countries agreed to promote direct yuan-yen trade, rather than converting their currencies first to dollars, and also for Japan to hold yuan in its foreign-exchange reserves, which are now largely denominated in dollars. Japan "seems to be acknowledging implicitly that there will be a single dominant Asian currency in the future and it won't be the yen," said Barry Eichengreen, a University of California at Berkeley economic historian. Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel said that "this hastens a multicurrency world, but this is just one of 100 steps along the way." A Japanese government official said that in the future, Asian currencies "may become more important than they currently are". But Japan hasn't necessarily decided to buy Chinese government debt based on the view that the yuan is likely to become more popular and dominant than the yen. The pact comes at a time when the yuan has faced downward pressure as investors and businesses have lowered their expectations for a continued rise in the currency. The accords suggest that China is looking to speed up its efforts to raise the yuan's profile overseas. That's especially evident in Tokyo's decision to buy up to $10 billion worth of Chinese government debt for its reserves. Though that represents only about 1% of Japan's $1.3 trillion foreign-exchange reserves—the world's second-largest after China— it's important symbolically as a sign that Japan will diversity away from the dollar in the future. Even so, the move is likely to be quietly welcomed by the U.S. government, which has encouraged China to seek a bigger role for the yuan. That's because U.S. government officials realize—as do Chinese reformers—that for the yuan to play a much bigger role, China needs to broadly revamp its financial-sector policies. Morris Goldstein, an economist at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington D.C. said those policies would include sharply reducing its exchange-rate intervention, liberalizing interest rates, reducing restrictions on capital flows and putting its banking system "on a more market-oriented basis," so the yuan can trade freely. Such policies are likely to put upward pressure on the yuan versus the dollar, which has long been U.S. policy. According to Chinese state television, Japanese officials notified Washington of the agreement ahead of the announcement and reiterated Japan's confidence in the long-term prospects for the dollar. A U.S. Treasury spokesman didn't comment. But the agreements are unlikely to have any significant effect on the yuan's global role anytime soon. Neither China nor Japan has announced any timetable for implementing the plans. Authorities in both countries have agreed to set up a working group to discuss how to put the measures to work. Hong Kong, the only place outside mainland China where the yuan can trade freely, has become the world's fastest-growing currency market in the world. The new agreements with Japan include measures aimed at making it easier for companies to convert the Chinese and Japanese currencies directly into the other, without requiring an intermediate conversion into dollars, the current common practice. The change should reduce costs for the companies involved. About 60% of all Japan-China trade is currently settled in the dollars. The package also includes "pilot program" to allow the government-affiliated Japan Bank of International Cooperation to sell yuan-denominated bonds on the mainland market. No detail on the size or timing of any JBIC offering has been disclosed. [YUAN] JBIC, a lender charged with helping Japanese firms doing business abroad, would be the first foreign-government entity to take such a step, as China's domestic bond market—totaling more than 20.1 trillion yuan in debt outstanding ($3.2 trillion), has largely been off-limits to foreign issuers. Thus far, the Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corp., the financing arm of the World Bank, so far have been the only foreign issuers of yuan bonds in China. Neither is affiliated with any foreign government. Choosing mainland China to issue bonds, rather than Hong Kong, where interest rates on yuan bonds are generally lower, "shows the commitment from the Japanese side to promote the yuan," said Woon Khien Chia, an Asian analysts at the Royal Bank of Scotland. In recent weeks, Beijing has unveiled a number of steps to promote the use of the yuan overseas, including starting to allow foreign firms to invest yuan accumulated overseas in mainland China. The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, has also been using so-called currency swap deals with other central banks so that foreign banks could supply more yuan to their customers. Currently, the PBOC has such deals with a dozen foreign central banks including Thailand, South Korea and New Zealand, totaling 1.2 trillion yuan. The most significant measure China has taken so far is allowing cross-border trade to be invoiced and paid in its currency. Yuan-settled trade now accounts for about 10% of China's total trade, compared with less than 1% a year ago. Analysts at Deutsche Bank AG predict that yuan-settled trade would amount to 3.7 trillion yuan next year, or 15% of China's total trade.

Italian Confidence

Italian business confidence probably dropped to 93.7 this month from 94.4 in November, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the figures are released tomorrow. That would be the least since January 2010. Consumers in the euro area’s third-biggest economy spent 48 euros less per person this holiday season than the average of the past five years, Rome-based consumer group Codacons said in a statement on its website. A gauge of confidence among consumers in the U.S. increased to 64.5 this month from a revised 55.2 reading in November, according to data yesterday from the Conference Board, a New York-based private research group. The figure exceeded all estimates in a Bloomberg poll and was the highest since April.

The euro continues to face downward pressure.

The euro weakened against most of its major counterparts amid concern Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis will push up borrowing costs and damp economic growth for the nations in the region. The 17-nation currency is set to drop against 15 of its 16 most-traded peers this month before Italy auctions securities today. A report tomorrow may show business confidence in the nation dipped to the lowest in almost two years. Demand for the dollar and yen as a refuge was limited as U.S. data signaled a recovery in the world’s biggest economy is gaining momentum. You can’t be optimistic about the Italian debt sales and I don’t expect very good results to come out,” said Toshiya Yamauchi, a senior currency analyst in Tokyo at Ueda Harlow Ltd., which provides foreign-exchange margin-trading services. “The euro continues to face downward pressure.” The euro was at $1.3067 at 8:24 a.m. in Tokyo from $1.3071 yesterday in New York. The currency bought 101.78 yen from 101.80 yen. The dollar fetched 77.89 yen from 77.88. Italy is scheduled to sell 9 billion euros ($11.8 billion) of 179-day bills and as much as 2.5 billion euros of zero-coupon 2013 securities today. The nation’s 10-year bond yields climbed two basis points yesterday to 7 percent, the level that spurred Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts.

The markets are looking to get back

Welcome back from the holiday weekend! The markets are looking to get back on track this morning but have started rather slowly but there is little event risk on the docket by way of fundamental data reports. This is set up to be a light volume week, which sometimes can mean volatility. Many in the market are looking to put 2011 in the rearview mirror and start fresh in 2012. The big news today is actually due out later this morning in the US as we are waiting for consumer confidence figures and the Case/Shiller home price index. By and large, home prices have been declining at a lower rate so it looks like the market is in a bottoming out process—for now. One of the biggest threats to home prices is rising interest rates, but we are not seeing rising rates, the Fed appears to be ready to leave rates low for an extended period of time, and recent data showed that demand for US debt is near all-time highs despite the ridiculously low interest rate we offer. Consumer confidence has been riding high of late and the spending over the holidays was some 5% higher than recent years, which indicates that perhaps the US consumer is beginning to get healthy again. As confidence rises, more economic participation takes place which helps grease the skids for the economy to get moving again. While there are many headwinds that should affect the consumer like high unemployment, uncertain tax policies, and dysfunction in government, if confidence returns it could actually be stronger than most realize. The only other real news out of the US this week is on Thursday with initial jobless claims and pending home sales figures. The initial jobless claims figures have been moving in the right direction and are now firmly out of the 400Ks and in the high 300Ks. This is good news for employment and next week’s Non-Farm Payrolls report should give us a god idea of whether this is because the job market is really improving.  Other news out this week is coming tomorrow in Japan, with the release of CPI data, the jobless rate, retail trade, and industrial production figures. While Japanese data typically doesn’t move the market in a material way unless the number are totally divergent from the expectation, there is a wild-card in the mix and that is the BOJ. As we approach year-end, the Yen was one of the top-performing major currencies this year and is currently up some 4% vs. USD despite all of the threats of intervention from the Central bank. This comes in addition to two actual interventions at which time the BOJ sold Yen to weaken the currency. Where do you think the Yen would be without he interventions? Exactly, probably a lot higher. So it will be interesting to see what the BOJ does going forward and tomorrow’s data points could be indicative of further action. And of course we can’t forget Europe and we’re waiting to see the results of Italy’s bond auctions that are set to take place over the next two days. Italy is looking to issue some 20 billion euros and yields are back up over 7% as of this morning. On Friday, German CPI data and retail sales figures will show how Europe’s strongest economy is faring and as long as Germany continues to thrive, their politicians may be more apt to be agreeable.