Exceptions To The Rule

While most visitors to this site know of Nouriel Roubini, an economist who has not allowed bogus ivory-tower theories and masturbatory group-think to cloud his judgment about the state of the economy and where things are headed, he is not the only one with interesting things to say.

There are other individuals who practice the “dismal science” who have managed to stay ahead of the curve despite their training and background. The (very short) list includes people like Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and David Rosenberg, Chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch.

Another economist who also seems to belong in the small circle of reality-based analysts is Kenneth Rogoff, who, suprisingly enough, is an academic and former policymaker — a deadly combination if ever there was one. In “Credit Crunch May Take Out Large US Bank Warns Former IMF Chief,” the London Times’ Gary Duncan and Leo Lewis detail the Harvard professor’s latest views on where things may be headed.

The deepening toll from the global financial crisis could trigger the failure of a large US bank within months, a respected former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund claimed today, fuelling another battering for banking shares.

Professor Kenneth Rogoff, a leading academic economist, said there was yet worse news to come from the worldwide credit crunch and financial turmoil, particularly in the United States, and that a high-profile casualty among American banks was highly likely.

“The US is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say the worst is to come,” Prof Rogoff said at a conference in Singapore.

In an ominous warning, he added: “We’re not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we’re going to see a whopper, we’re going to see a big one — one of the big investment banks or big banks,” he said.

In London, the FTSE 100 index extended opening losses as widespread fears over the financial sector’s woes led to another battering for bank stocks. The FTSE fell 105.40 points, or 1.93 per cent at 5,344.80, Germany’s Dax shed 1.87 per cent, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 1.98 per cent.

Professor Rogoff, who was chief economist at the IMF from 2001 to 2004, predicted that the crisis would foster a new wave of consolidation in the US financial sector before it was over, with mergers between large institutions.

He also suggested that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the struggling US secondary mortgage lending giants, were likely to cease to exist in their present form within a few years.

His prediction over the fate of Fannie and Freddie came after investors dumped the two groups’ shares on Monday after reports suggested that the US Treasury may have no choice but to effectively nationalise them.

The professor also sounded a warning over rising US inflation, which rose last month to its highest since 1991, and criticised the Federal Reserve for having cut American interest rates too drastically. “Cutting interest rates is going to lead to a lot of inflation in the next few years in the United States,” he said.

As investors’ edginess over the threat of further financial turbulence sent equity markets into a further spin, bank shares were hit hardest. Among the biggest fallers in London morning trade were HBOS, down almost 6 per cent, Royal Bank of Scotland, whose shares plunged by 4 per cent, while HSBC fell 1.5 per cent. In continental Europe, Spain’s Banco Santander was off 2.5 per cent, and BNP Paribas lost 3.6 per cent.

Persistent worries over the rapidly deteriorating economic outlook in the UK also saw sterling succumb to fresh losses. The pound lost almost a cent against the dollar, dropping back to $1.8565, not far above near-two year lows plumbed on Friday.

Earlier, there were fresh jitters in Asia, with the region’s leading bourses in sharp retreat after a dire overnight performance by Wall Street left the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by more than 180 points. Both Asian markets and Wall Street were unnerved by suggestions over the prospects for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

While Japanese banks have remained relatively under-exposed to sub-prime mortgage products, many fear that they would be heavily exposed to a nationalisation of Fannie and Freddie. The large Japanese financial houses hold around Y9.6 trillion (£47 billion) in bonds and mortgage-backed paper issued by housing finance groups in the US.

“If the recapitalisation talk is realised, there are no assurances that the securities that have been issued [by U.S. mortgage firms] will be 100 per cent guaranteed,” said Yutaka Shiraki, a senior equity strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.

Financial sector shares were particularly badly hit in Tokyo, where they led the Nikkei 225 Index into a 300-point decline. The selling continued throughout the day, and peaked after a declaration by the Bank of Japan that the world’s second largest economy was now looking “sluggish”.

Although the central bank’s downbeat economic report included vague predictions of a return to growth over time, traders said that the comments had shattered any last hope that Asia’s export-led economy might somehow “decouple” from the woes in the US.

The picture was somewhat more stable in Shanghai, which spent a day in relative limbo following Monday’s 5.3 per cent nosedive. With Chinese stocks beating a daily retreat, investors are focused on the 2001 index high of 2,245-points. Some believe that level will hold up as a technical floor on the selling, others believe that it may shortly fail and unleash a much deeper collapse in stock values.

Posted in Categories: Contributor, Economy, Eurozone, External Research, Japan, UK, USA.

Subscribe by RSS Subscribe by Email