The ABCP Matterhorn? Der Asset-Alps? Das Bank-Massiv?
Below is the net foreign asset position of banks in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
The chart uses BIS data and was created by financial consultant Achim Dübel.
Put simply, net asset positions are assets minus liabilities — so you can see that German banks’ accumulation of foreign assets (or decrease in liabilities) has been growing substantially:
Much of that is probably down to developments in Landesbanken — Germany’s public sector banks — in the first half of the last decade. In 2001, the European Commission abolished state guarantees for the Landesbanks, but the institutions were granted a four-year adjustment period.
To counter, or prepare for the loss of the state guarantees, the Landesbanks went on something of a shopping spree — snapping up high-yield assets, the effect of which you can see in the chart.
During the financial crisis, Germany’s mountain of assets seems only to have gotten bigger.
Here’s what Dübel says:
The public Landesbanken must have issued several 100 billions in additional taxpayer debt between 2001-2005 . . . So that added to the ‘natural’ surplus by excess private sector savings an element of publicly sponsored autonomous capital investment . . .
In more detail:
There is ‘endogenous’ capital export stemming from foreign excess demand for German manufacturing goods and our ageing effects leading to higher savings ratios; but there has also been huge ‘autonomous’ capital export, such as the US investments of the Landesbanken with taxpayer money (estimates go to some 400bln . . . but you see the 2001-2005 issuance effect quite clearly in the net position; and there are of course follow-on effects as the ABCP consolidation took place in 2007 and 2008), such as the huge international state and commercial mortgage finance investments of mortgage banks, or ship investments of ship banks, with Pfandbriefe.
Now, autonomous capital exports come back as additional excess demand for German manufacturing goods; however they clearly created a bubble . . . Both Landesbanken and mortgage banks . . . only survive with government guarantees.
This . . . matches the huge German capital account surpluses on record and comes close to the implicit guarantee the German sovereign is shouldering;
Shadow (banking) debt anyone?
For German-speakers, a much longer version of the above here.
Related links:
Green shoots: artificial flowers - FT Alphaville
China and Germany unite to oppose deflation – Martin Wolf, FT
Don’t forget the German banks – FT Alphaville
Denial, coverup, and the blaming of others – International Economy
沒有留言:
張貼留言