De ondragelijke hypocrisie van de Bundesbank
UPDATE: (Dank aan Remco Schrijvers van Monalytics): Het onderstaande verhaal van Erwan Mahe blijkt dus niet juist te zijn. De Bundesbank wordt nooit eigenaar van de obligaties. Weliswaar worden de niet geveilde obligaties op de onderhandse markt verkocht, waar in het engels de term ‘secondary market’ voor wordt gebruikt, maar dus niet op de secundaire markt, i.e. de handel tussen tweede en derde partijen (volgens Wikipedia betekent ‘secondary market’ in het engels overigens exact hetzelfde als in het Nederlands: de markt waar al uitgegeven schulden en waardepapieren worden verhandeld). Anders gesteld (door Remco Schrijvers):
Duitsland werkt met een andere veilingprocedure dan andere Europese (of V.S. etc) landen. Ipv dat ze een bedrag stellen dat ze minimaal willen veilen (“tender” procedure) tegen een door de markt gestelde rente, wordt in Duitsland de maximale rente gesteld en alle biedingen onder deze rente worden geaccepteerd (“tap” procedure):
“The Bund uses a multiple price auction procedure. In other words, bids for Bunds, Bobls and Schaetze accepted by the German Federal Government are allocated at the price quoted in the respective bid and are not settled at a uniform price. Bids priced above the lowest accepted price are allotted in full, while bids priced below the lowest accepted price receive no allotment. Non-competitive bids are allotted at the weighted average price of the accepted price bids. The Federal Government reserves the right to re-allot the bids at the lowest accepted price as well as the non competitive bids, e.g. to allot them only at a certain percentage rate. The same procedure is applied on a yield basis for Bubills.”
http://www.deutsche-finanzagentur.de/en/institutional/primary-market/auction-procedure/
Zie ook: http://www.bundesbank.de/kredit/kredit_tenderverfahren.en.php
Als er te weinig biedingen zijn onder maximaal gestelde rente, dan kan de Finanzagentur beslissen een deel achter te houden (“retention”):
“In addition, the German Federal Government Finance Agency supports the market makers’ presence in the secondary market by helping out in case if needed, e.g. in exceptional cases when the liquidity of a given security should become a little stretched. For these purposes the German Finance Agency retains on its own books a certain portion of the nominal amount tendered at the auction of a new or reopened issue.”
http://www.deutsche-finanzagentur.de/en/institutional/secondary-market/
“At each auction the German Federal Government can retain a portion of securities for secondary market operations which is then sold successively in the market afterwards. The volume of securities retained for market operations varies widely from auction to auction. Since 2005, the amount retained has averaged about 20% of the issuance volume (which also included money market paper and inflation-linked German Government securities).”
Ofwel, deze achtergehouden obligaties worden dan niet geveild op de primaire markt maar later verkocht in de secundaire markt.
Buba treedt slechts op als een agentschap (houdster), en is niet direct financieel oid betrokken.
“The Bundesbank is not financing Germany; it just operates as an agency for Finanzagentur. It is worth repeating that Finanzagentur always retains part of the bonds, so this part of the process is normal.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/11/german-bunds
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Een zwendelaar die wat te verbergen heeft kan, als strategische optie, luidkeels wijzen op de fouten van anderen. Zo ook de Bundesbank. U dacht dat het juist de Duitsers waren die vooraan stonden in de strijd tegen het monetair financieren overheidsschulden? U dacht dat de Bundesbank vanuit een rein geweten protesteerde tegen het opkopen van al uitgegeven obligaties van landen als Spanje en Griekenland door de ECB? Lees mee (een tekst van Erwan Mahe):
In the last two years, we have seen many of our German friends express their dismay at the supposed adventurism of the ECB’s unorthodox measures, like the SMP and the easing of collateral eligibility for the second VLTRO. They have also denounced the supposed desire of certain governments to use the ECB as an instrument of fiscal policy by making it play a role incompatible with its restrictive mandate.
But yesterday we were treated to one more example of the saying, “do as I say and not as I do”, with the very mediocre results of the 10-year Bund auction in Germany when the Bundesbank again intervened to buy a portion of it in order to head of a big, fat flop!
In effect, the German central bank bought €1.13 billion (22.60%) out of the €5 billion in Bunds put on sale! And that came after having served the entirety of non-competitive bids made by banks during the auction process, i.e., €2.257 billion or 55% of total demand!
In reality, competitive bids, totalling €1.852 billion, represented just 37% of the total amount that the German government sought to raise. I don’t think I need to draw a picture of what would have happened if the Buba had not fulfilled its role as “protector” of the image of German debt.
But isn’t this modus operandi a little inconsistent with the budget discipline lectures regularly served up to us by this very same Bundesbank, the same ideological focus that led two of its top officials to resign from the ECB due to its so-called deviation from the aforementioned discipline?
Bear in mind that the such purchases of government debt on the primary market is strictly forbidden to the ECB, and, unless I am mistaken, to all other central banks on the eurozone. Ditto for the Fed.
For those who have the slightest doubt about the fiscal character of such Bundesbank operations, I have kept under my pillow for you a little excerpt from the GIC conference which I had the pleasure of attending three weeks ago: the speech by Mr Weber himself on this matter. His frankness just about knocked me off my chair!
Here is a transcription that I carried out myself, but I strong advise you to go directly to the source in the attached video (from 22nd to the 25th minute):
Excerpts (emphasis mine):
“Central banks fulfill a very core function for policy making by being focus on price stability. State financing on the other hand is not compatible with good monetary policy and we’ve seen that in the past.
(…)
Just to give you an example, when the German debt is issued on the market, the Bundesbank all over the years and still today, has a role in managing those debt issues. So if there is less subscription then is needed, in order to preserve pricing, the Bundesbank take this onto their portfolio, and then sells them in a more opportunistic way later on.
It’s a pure fiscal agent role; it has nothing to do with monetary policy. It is basically related to market marking in the German debt market. And somebody needs to do that, it does not have to be the Central Bank, but if it is the Central Bank it has to be clear: it is a fiscal agent role under the auspices of fiscal policy.”
Incredible but true!
However, don’t believe for a second that yesterday’s Bundesbank intervention was an exception. Not only does it intervene in all debt auctions, regardless of the maturity of the debt issued, but its 22.60% take-up is far from being a record !
After a little digging, I was able to find the amounts involved in each of these operations. I then recalculated the percentage of the primary market debt bought by the Buba for own account.
…
The record high for the Bund is 39.27% in November 2011 and for the Bobl it is 41.51% in 2003.
