It’s such a weird, unpredictable market. It’s very hard, if not completely impossible, to have real confidence in either direction where markets could go.
Later Tuesday, we’ll get the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement. While there is no doubt the Fed will hold steady, there is also little doubt the Fed will be deterred from raising its fed-funds rate later this year for the very simple reason U.S. growth, employment and inflation all will rise from current levels.
Of course, the wording of the FOMC statement on the economy and maybe on the dollar (that's the job of the Treasury) could be interesting.
On Tuesday, we got a nice rise in the euro and a limited but nevertheless sell-off of the dollar, which was only part of a series of weird moves we saw on Tuesday.
Talking about the euro, Jan Hatzius, chief economist of Goldman Sachs (who is remembered for his bearish forecasts prior to the financial crisis and who has also been two-time winner of the Lawrence R. Klein Award for the most accurate U.S. economic forecast over the prior four years) told
the German financial daily Handelsblatt he expects the euro/dollar exchange rate to reach parity before year-end and the EUR/USD to fall even below $0.82 per euro in the run-up to 2017 at the latest.
Interestingly, he also doesn’t expect the U.S. monetary authorities to intervene to stem further strengthening of the dollar.
He also warns about Greece leaving the eurozone, notwithstanding there is at present less risk for that to happen than in 2012 and it would be better if Greece could remain in the eurozone. If a "Grexit" should happen, he also warns about very negative spillovers, which at present markets don’t seem to calculate in as a possibility.
Anyway,
the M3 money supply annual growth rate in the Euro area jumped 4.6 percent to its highest level since 2009.
Eurozone bank lending turned positive for the first time since May 2012, but only slightly.
These facts and widespread optimism caused
the euro to rise above the technical resistance $1.10 level per euro.
Coming back for a moment on the dire situation of Greece, it’s interesting to see most market participants don’t even have a clue of the fact the four most important banks of Greece, which account for 87 percent of all Greek bank assets, are all virtually bankrupt and there is no trustworthy rescue plan ready.
The numbers of
Greek bank deposits show further outflows of 2.5 billion euros in March, which brings total deposits at lows we haven’t seen since 2005.
Greek private-sector deposits are about 30 percent below from where they were at the beginning of 2008.
Jens Weidmann the president of the
German Bundesbank said in a prepared speech in Essen, Germany: “Member states must take responsibility for the consequences of their political decisions ... There must be a match between control and liability ... Ultimately, this requires the possibility of a state insolvency, without the financial system collapsing.”
Yes, the chief economist of Goldman Sachs, at least in my opinion, is probably right.
We could see further weakness of the euro during the next 12 to 24 months because there is still no end in sight for the problems of the eurozone.
I wouldn't be surprised at all because a "Black Swan" (which is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise and has a major negative effect) is lurking.
At this moment one of my preferences would be further accumulating dollars at temporary weaknesses.
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