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After the easy money: a giant stress test for the financial system

John Plender in The FT 

Five weeks after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, there is no consensus on whether the ensuing financial stress in North America and Europe has run its course or is a foretaste of worse to come. 

Equally pressing is the question of whether, against the backdrop of still high inflation, central banks in advanced economies will soon row back from monetary tightening and pivot towards easing. 

These questions, which are of overwhelming importance for investors, savers and mortgage borrowers, are closely related. For if banks and other financial institutions face liquidity crises when inflation is substantially above the central banks’ target, usually of about 2 per cent, acute tension arises between their twin objectives of price stability and financial stability. In the case of the US Federal Reserve, the price stability objective also conflicts with the goal of maximum employment. 

The choices made by central banks will have a far-reaching impact on our personal finances. If inflation stays higher for longer, there will be further pain for those who have invested in supposedly safe bonds for their retirement. If the central banks fail to engineer a soft landing for the economy, investors in risk assets such as equities will be on the rack. And for homeowners looking to refinance their loans over the coming months, any further tightening by the Bank of England will feed into mortgage costs. 

The bubble bursts 

SVB, the 16th largest bank in the US, perfectly illustrates how the central banks’ inflation and financial stability objectives are potentially in conflict. It had been deluged with mainly uninsured deposits — deposits above the official $250,000 insurance ceiling — that far exceeded lending opportunities in its tech industry stamping ground. So it invested the money in medium and long-dated Treasury and agency securities. It did so without hedging against interest rate risk in what was the greatest bond market bubble in history. 

The very sharp rise in policy rates over the past year pricked the bubble, so depressing the value of long-dated bonds. This would not have been a problem if depositors retained confidence in the bank so that it could hold the securities to maturity. Yet, in practice, rich but nervous uninsured depositors worried that SVB was potentially insolvent if the securities were marked to market. 

 An inept speech by chief executive Greg Becker on March 9 quickly spread across the internet, causing a quarter of the bank’s deposit base to flee in less than a day and pushing SVB into forced sales of bonds at huge losses. The collapse of confidence soon extended to Signature Bank in New York, which was overextended in property and increasingly involved in crypto assets. Some 90 per cent of its deposits were uninsured, compared with 88 per cent at SVB. 

Fear spread to Europe, where failures of risk management and a series of scandals at Credit Suisse caused deposits to ebb away. The Swiss authorities quickly brokered a takeover by arch rival UBS, while in the UK the Bank of England secured a takeover of SVB’s troubled UK subsidiary by HSBC for £1. 

These banks do not appear to constitute a homogeneous group. Yet, in their different ways, they demonstrate how the long period of super-low interest rates since the great financial crisis of 2007-09 introduced fragilities into the financial system while creating asset bubbles. As Jon Danielsson and Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics point out, the longer monetary policy stayed lax, the more systemic risk increased, along with a growing dependence on money creation and low rates. 

The ultimate consequence was to undermine financial stability. Putting that right would require an increase in the capital base of the banking system. Yet, as Danielsson and Goodhart indicate, increasing capital requirements when the economy is doing poorly, as it is now, is conducive to recession because it reduces banks’ lending capacity. So we are back to the policy tensions outlined earlier. 

Part of the problem of such protracted lax policy was that it bred complacency. Many banks that are now struggling with rising interest rates had assumed, like SVB, that interest rates would remain low indefinitely and that central banks would always come to the rescue. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates that US banks’ unrealised losses on securities were $620bn at the end of 2022. 

A more direct consequence, noted by academics Raghuram Rajan and Viral Acharya, respectively former governor and deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, is that the central banks’ quantitative easing since the financial crisis, whereby they bought securities in bulk from the markets, drove an expansion of banks’ balance sheets and stuffed them with flighty uninsured deposits. 

Rajan and Acharya add that supervisors in the US did not subject all banks to the same level of scrutiny and stress testing that they applied to the largest institutions. So these differential standards may have caused a migration of risky commercial real estate loans from larger, better-capitalised banks to weakly capitalised small and midsized banks. There are grounds for thinking that this may be less of an issue in the UK, as we shall see. 

A further vulnerability in the system relates to the grotesque misallocation of capital arising not only from the bubble-creating propensity of lax monetary policy but from ultra-low interest rates keeping unprofitable “zombie” companies alive. The extra production capacity that this kept in place exerted downward pressure on prices. 

Today’s tighter policy, the most draconian tightening in four decades in the advanced economies with the notable exception of Japan, will wipe out much of the zombie population, thereby restricting supply and adding to inflationary impetus. Note that the total number of company insolvencies registered in the UK in 2022 was the highest since 2009 and 57 per cent higher than 2021. 

A system under strain  

In effect, the shift from quantitative easing to quantitative tightening and sharply increased interest rates has imposed a gigantic stress test on both the financial system and the wider economy. What makes the test especially stressful is the huge increase in debt that was encouraged by years of easy money. 

William White, former chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements and one of the few premier league economists to foresee the great financial crisis, says ultra easy money “encouraged people to take out debt to do dumb things”. The result is that the combined debt of households, companies and governments in relation to gross domestic product has risen to levels never before seen in peacetime. 

All this suggests a huge increase in the scope for accidents in the financial system. And while the upsets of the past few weeks have raised serious questions about the effectiveness of bank regulation and supervision, there is one respect in which the regulatory response to the great financial crisis has been highly effective. It has caused much traditional banking activity to migrate to the non-bank financial sector, including hedge funds, money market funds, pensions funds and other institutions that are much less transparent than the regulated banking sector and thus capable of springing nasty systemic surprises. 

An illustration of this came in the UK last September following the announcement by Liz Truss’s government of unfunded tax cuts in its “mini” Budget. It sparked a rapid and unprecedented increase in long-dated gilt yields and a consequent fall in prices. This exposed vulnerabilities in liability-driven investment funds in which many pension funds had invested in order to hedge interest rate risk and inflation risk. 

Such LDI funds invested in assets, mainly gilts and derivatives, that generated cash flows that were timed to match the incidence of pension outgoings. Much of the activity was fuelled by borrowing. 

UK defined-benefit pension funds, where pensions are related to final or career average pay, have a near-uniform commitment to liability matching. This led to overconcentration at the long end of both the fixed-interest and index-linked gilt market, thereby exacerbating the severe repricing in gilts after the announcement. There followed a savage spiral of collateral calls and forced gilt sales that destabilised a market at the core of the British financial system, posing a devastating risk to financial stability and the retirement savings of millions. 

This was not entirely unforeseen by the regulators, who had run stress tests to see whether the LDI funds could secure enough liquidity from their pension fund clients to meet margin calls in difficult circumstances. But they did not allow for such an extreme swing in gilt yields. 

Worried that this could lead to an unwarranted tightening of financing conditions and a reduction in the flow of credit to households and businesses, the BoE stepped in to the market with a temporary programme of gilt purchases. The purpose was to give LDI funds time to build their resilience and encourage stronger buffers to cope with future volatility in the gilts market. 

The intervention was highly successful in terms of stabilising the market. Yet, by expanding its balance sheet when it was committed to balance sheet shrinkage in the interest of normalising interest rates and curbing inflation, the BoE planted seeds of doubt in the minds of some market participants. Would financial stability always trump the central bank’s commitment to deliver on price stability? And what further dramatic repricing incidents could prompt dangerous systemic shocks? 

Inflation before all? 

The most obvious scope for sharp repricing relates to market expectations about inflation. In the short term, inflation is set to fall as global price pressures fall back and supply chain disruption is easing, especially now China continues to reopen after Covid-19 lockdowns. The BoE Monetary Policy Committee’s central projection is for consumer price inflation to fall from 9.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 to just under 4 per cent in the fourth quarter. 

The support offered by the Fed and other central banks to ailing financial institutions leaves room for a little more policy tightening and the strong possibility that this will pave the way for disinflation and recession. The point was underlined this week by the IMF, which warned that “the chances of a hard landing” for the global economy had risen sharply if high inflation persists. 

Yet, in addition to the question mark over central banks’ readiness to prioritise fighting inflation over financial stability, there are longer-run concerns about negative supply shocks that could keep upward pressure on inflation beyond current market expectations, according to White. For a start, Covid-19 and geopolitical friction are forcing companies to restructure supply lines, increasing resilience but reducing efficiency. The supply of workers has been hit by deaths and long Covid. 

White expects the production of fossil fuels and metals to suffer from recently low levels of investment, especially given the long lags in bringing new production on stream. He also argues that markets underestimate the inflationary impact of climate change and, most importantly, the global supply of workers is in sharp decline, pushing up wage costs everywhere. 

Where does the UK stand in all this? The resilience of the banking sector has been greatly strengthened since the financial crisis of 2007-08, with the loan-to-deposit ratios of big UK banks falling from 120 per cent in 2008 to 75 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022. Much more of the UK banks’ bond portfolios are marked to market for regulatory and accounting purposes than in the US. 

The strength of sterling since the departure of the Truss government means the UK’s longstanding external balance sheet risk — its dependence on what former BoE governor Mark Carney called “the kindness of strangers” — has diminished somewhat. Yet huge uncertainties remain as interest rates look set to take one last upward step. 

Risks for borrowers and investors 

For mortgage borrowers, the picture is mixed. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee estimates that half the UK’s 4mn owner-occupier mortgages will be exposed to rate rises in 2023. But, in its latest report in March, the BoE’s FPC says its worries about the affordability of mortgage payments have lessened because of falling energy prices and the better outlook for employment. 

The continuing high level of inflation is reducing the real value of mortgage debt. And, if financial stability concerns cause the BoE to stretch out the period over which it brings inflation back to its 2 per cent target, the real burden of debt will be further eroded. 

For investors, the possibility — I would say probability — that inflationary pressures are now greater than they have been for decades raises a red flag, at least over the medium and long term, for fixed-rate bonds. And, for private investors, index-linked bonds offer no protection unless held to maturity. 

That is a huge assumption given the unknown timing of mortality and the possibility of bills for care in old age that may require investments to be liquidated. Note that the return on index-linked gilts in 2022 was minus 38 per cent, according to consultants LCP. When fixed-rate bond yields rise and prices fall, index-linked yields are pulled up by the same powerful tide. 

Of course, in asset allocation there can be no absolute imperatives. It is worth recounting the experience in the 1970s of George Ross Goobey, founder of the so-called “cult of the equity” in the days when most pension funds invested exclusively in gilts. 

While running the Imperial Tobacco pension fund after the war he famously sold all the fund’s fixed-interest securities and invested exclusively in equities — with outstanding results. Yet, in 1974, he put a huge bet on “War Loan” when it was yielding 17 per cent and made a killing. If the price is right, even fixed-interest IOUs can be a bargain in a period of rip-roaring inflation. 

A final question raised by the banking stresses of recent weeks is whether it is ever worth investing in banks. In a recent FT Money article, Terry Smith, chief executive of Fundsmith and a former top-rated bank analyst, says not. He never invests in anything that requires leverage (or borrowing) to make an adequate return, as is true of banks. The returns in banking are poor, anyway. And, even when a bank is well run, it can be destroyed by a systemic panic. 

Smith adds that technology is supplanting traditional banking. And, he asks rhetorically, have you noticed that your local bank branch has become a PizzaExpress, in which role, by the way, it makes more money? 

 A salutary envoi to the tale of the latest spate of bank failures. 

The Future of Pakistan

 

Message from Sri Lanka

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

ONE can see a few instructive lessons from the painful turbulence underway in Sri Lanka. The most crucial of these for neighbours and beyond is the resounding message that there are limits to socially divisive policies any government or state can pursue, particularly to mask the distress brought about by bad economic prescriptions. In other words, sooner or later people catch on.

The jostling is already on between narratives about the crisis. The dominant narrative about an economic collapse as the trigger for mass protests is a tautology. Another perspective, inevitably, is focusing on the ousted Rajapaksa government’s refusal to vote with the US against Russia over Ukraine. The last-minute call to Vladimir Putin for help, chiefly with oil, will be interpreted in myriad ways.

There will be comments also about the need for the IMF to fix things urgently. The problem is this had happened to India when the Gulf War induced economic instability with oil prices nudging a veteran pro-Soviet India into becoming a darling of the West. The prescription the IMF gave Manmohan Singh required secrecy. It had to be kept away from parliamentary scrutiny. The Ayodhya movement of L.K. Advani was activated to occupy the nation’s attention, away from the IMF-induced pain that inevitably comes with its trickle-down economic advisory.

Be that as it may, Ranil Wickremesinghe looks the man of the moment for the US. Never mind that he lost the last election when his party couldn’t win a single seat. He came into parliament through the backdoor, the national list.

Would that work for the purpose of evicting China from its perch in Colombo? If the Western purpose falters, there could be worse awaiting the hapless country. So, here we are. The president who courted China’s economic worldview and refused to vote against Russia has fled. (Remember Kyiv in 2014?) And Wickremesinghe, nephew of Sri Lanka’s first pro-US president J.R. Jayewardene, has taken charge, and is threatening to quell the protests by force if necessary.

There’s always a backup script if things go wrong. The ousted president was a close ally of the Bodu Bala Sena. The Sinhalese chauvinist group has cast itself in the image of India’s RSS, a Muslim and Christian-hating Buddhist clone of the Hindutva order. Other similarities between India and Sri Lanka are eerier. Remember how prime minister Solomon Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk angered by his quest for a friendly pact with the minority Tamils? The murder bore an uncanny resemblance to Gandhi’s assassination by Hindu supremacists hostile to his alleged appeasement of Muslims. 

Certain things about Sri Lanka’s heart-wrenching mess one can do little about, among them being the fact that Covid-19 waylaid the tourism industry, the island nation’s economic backbone. Small-scale entrepreneurs, critically the garment exporters, took a hit. The resultant cap on foreign imports coupled with an outlandish nationwide move to switch to organic farming, (mainly to mask the slashing of fertiliser imports) wrecked the prospects of an early recovery from pandemic-induced setbacks. The horror could strike Sri Lanka whose human development indices are far ahead of its neighbours.

Decades before Gen Musharraf sealed his military support against the Tamil Tigers, India and Sri Lanka bonded as close friends. Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga particularly treasures an old picture of Nehru hoisting her in the air. Later Indira Gandhi stopped Sirimavo Bandaranaike from quitting during a Sinhalese communist insurrection in 1971, the year Mrs Gandhi would go to war with Pakistan. “Indu called me to say under no circumstances was I to resign.” The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna insurrection would have rattled any government. It was the first of two unsuccessful armed revolts conducted by the communist group against the socialist United Front Government of Sri Lanka. The revolt lasted two months before Indian troops helped quell it.

I met Mrs Bandarnaike when she was in the wheelchair with paralysed toes. It was a peep into the India-Sri Lanka backstage. Her son Anura Bandaranaike was a devotee of India’s healer-guru Sai Baba of Pattapurthi. On his advice, the mother flew to Puttaparthi. The Sai Baba promised quick recovery but it was a tall claim. The Buddhist press was up in arms over the leader of their country falling prey to the ‘mumbo jumbo’ of an Indian guru.

It didn’t help that India was firmly in the Soviet camp while its neighbours had cosy ties with China and the US, both allies against Moscow. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka led the movement for Saarc, the South Asian club that met in Dhaka for the first summit in 1985. Gen Ershad, its host, would later tell me that it was a collective effort by India’s neighbours to deal with Delhi jointly. “We were allergic to India,” Ershad told me bluntly in a TV interview. “So we decided to deal with India jointly.”

Sri Lanka is in a serious quandary today and does not have the emotional wherewithal to deal with the IMF’s conditionality that always comes. The protesters represent Sri Lanka’s multicultural bouquet. There’s just no room for dividing them again. Nor is there stomach for more IMF pills.

Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Beijing shared the fears with the Global Times. The patience is running thin.

“In some cases, it’s difficult because the belt is already on the last notch. Sri Lanka has a state-funded healthcare system from birth to death. Some are worried that the IMF might recommend that we tighten the healthcare system. Our education system is also free from grade one to university level. This might be another area that the IMF might recommend pruning. But these may add to the unrest, which is already hampering the recovery of the country and unsettle any government, which takes over in the next few weeks. We have to deal with these issues, and it’s not going to be easy for Sri Lanka.”

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IMF chief: how the world can make the most of new special drawing rights

Kristalina Georgieva  in The FT 

On Monday, IMF member countries start receiving their shares of the new $650bn special drawing rights allocation — the largest in the fund’s history. This injection of fresh international reserve assets marks a milestone in our collective ability to combat an unprecedented crisis. 

In 2009, during the global financial crisis, a $250bn SDR allocation helped to restore market confidence. This time around, as the world continues to grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, SDRs are even more important. The additional liquidity will bolster confidence and global economic resilience. 

SDRs can help countries with weak reserves reduce their reliance on more expensive domestic or external debt. And for states hard pressed to increase social spending, invest in recovery and deal with climate threats, they offer a precious additional resource. 

It is crucial, however, that these SDRs are used as effectively as possible — with accountability and transparency, and with as much as possible going to countries most in need. 

So how can we make the most of the new allocation? 

First, by making SDRs available to member countries quickly. With SDRs distributed in proportion to IMF quota shares, closely related to a country’s economic size, about $275bn is going to emerging and developing countries. Low-income countries are receiving about $21bn — over 6 per cent of gross domestic product in some cases. 

Vulnerable countries will be able to use the new SDRs to support their economies and step up the fight against the virus and its variants. Combined with grants and other essential support from the international community, this will help achieve the goal of vaccinating at least 40 per cent of the population in every country by the end of 2021, and at least 60 per cent by the first half of 2022. 

Second, every effort should be made to ensure SDRs are used for the benefit of member countries and the global economy. The decision on how best to utilise them rests with member countries of the IMF. They can hold them as part of their official reserves, or use them by converting them into US dollars, euros or other reserve currencies. 

But while this is a sovereign decision, it must be prudent and well-informed. The fund will work with its members to help ensure accountability and transparency. 

We are providing a framework for assessing the macroeconomic implications of the new allocation, its statistical treatment and governance, and how it might affect debt sustainability. The fund will provide regular updates on all SDR transactions, plus a follow-up report on their use in two years’ time. 

Third, with increasingly divergent economic fortunes due to the pandemic, we need to go further to ensure more SDRs go to those who need them most. That is why the IMF is encouraging voluntary channelling of SDRs from countries with strong external positions to the poorest and most vulnerable nations. 

By magnifying the impact of the new allocation, redirecting SDRs could help those most in need, while reducing the risk of social and economic instability that could affect us all. 

The good news is that we can build on progress achieved so far. Over the past 16 months, some better off member countries have pledged to lend a total of $24bn, including $15bn from existing SDRs, to the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust, which provides concessional loans to low-income countries. We hope to see further support to the PRGT from the new SDRs. 

The IMF is also engaging with its members on a possible new Resilience and Sustainability Trust that could use SDRs to help poor and vulnerable countries with structural transformation, including climate-related challenges. Another possibility could be channelling SDRs to support lending by multilateral development banks. 

Of course, SDRs are not a silver bullet. They must be part of a broader programme of collective action by countries and international institutions. Since the pandemic began, the IMF has played its part, providing about $117bn in new IMF financing to 85 countries — and debt service relief to 29 low-income nations. The fund also joined forces with the World Bank, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization to promote the urgent task of vaccinating the world. 

The poet Robert Frost wrote of the “road not taken”. We now have a unique opportunity to take the right road as the world strives for a more resilient future. We at the IMF pledge to do our best to ensure that this historic SDR allocation, used wisely, plays its part in promoting a strong and sustainable global recovery.

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China pulls back from the world: rethinking Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative

James Kynge and Jonathan Wheatley in The FT

It has not taken long for the wheels to come off the Belt and Road Initiative. As recently as May 2017, China’s leader Xi Jinping stood in Beijing before a hall of nearly 30 heads of state and delegates from over 130 countries and proclaimed “a project of the century”. 

This was not hyperbole. China has promised to spend about $1tn on building infrastructure in mainly developing countries around the world — and finance almost all of this through its own financial institutions. Adjusted for inflation, this total was roughly seven times what the US spent through the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after the second world war, according to Jonathan Hillman, author of The Emperor’s New Road. 

But according to data published this week, reality is deviating sharply from Mr Xi’s script. What was conceived as the world’s biggest development programme is unravelling into what could become China’s first overseas debt crisis. Lending by the Chinese financial institutions that drive the Belt and Road, along with bilateral support to governments, has fallen off a cliff, and Beijing finds itself mired in debt renegotiations with a host of countries. 

“This is all part of China’s education as a rising power,” says Mr Hillman, a senior fellow at Washington-based think-tank CSIS. “It has taken a flawed model that appeared to work at home, building large infrastructure projects, and hubristically tried to apply that abroad.” 

“Historically, most infrastructure booms have gone bust,” he adds. “Whether China can avert that fate may depend on its ability to renegotiate loans with countries now in urgent need of debt relief. If China is unable or unwilling to provide sufficient relief to its borrowers, it could find itself at the centre of a debt crisis in developing markets.” 

The data that describes China’s predicament comes from researchers at Boston University who maintain an independent database on China’s overseas development finance. They found that lending by the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China collapsed from a peak of $75bn in 2016 to just $4bn last year. 

The context around this is crucial. The two banks fall under the direct control of China’s state council (cabinet), so they function as arms of the state. They provide the overwhelming majority of China’s overseas development lending and the funds they disburse rival in scale those of the World Bank, the world’s largest multilateral lender. 

Between 2008 and 2019, the two Chinese banks lent $462bn, just short of the $467bn extended by the World Bank, according to the Boston University data. In some years, lending by the Chinese policy banks was almost equivalent to that by all six of the world’s multilateral financial institutions — which along with the World Bank include the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the African Development Bank — put together. 

In global development finance, such a sharp scaling back of lending by the Chinese banks amounts to an earthquake. If it persists, it will exacerbate an infrastructure funding gap that in Asia alone already amounts to $907bn a year, according to Asian Development Bank estimates. In Africa and Latin America — where Chinese credit has also formed a big part of infrastructure financing — the gap between what is required and what is available is also expected to yawn wider. 

‘Dual circulation’ 

China’s retreat from overseas development finance derives from structural policy shifts, according to Chinese analysts. “China is consolidating, absorbing and digesting the investments made in the past,” says Wang Huiyao, an adviser to China’s state council and president of the Center for China and Globalisation, a think-tank. 

Chen Zhiwu, a professor of finance at Hong Kong university, says the retrenchment in Chinese banks’ overseas lending is part of a bigger picture of China cutting back on outbound investments and focusing more resources domestically. It is also a response to tensions between the US and China during the presidency of Donald Trump, when Washington used criticisms of the Belt and Road as a justification to contain China, Prof Chen adds. 

“In domestic Chinese media, the frequency of the [Belt and Road] topic occurring has come down a lot in the last few years, partly to downplay China’s overseas expansion ambitions,” says Prof Chen, who is also director of the Asia Global Institute think-tank. “I expect this retrenchment to continue.” 

Yu Jie, senior research fellow on China at Chatham House, a UK think-tank, says Beijing’s recently-adopted “dual circulation” policy represents a step change for China’s relationship with the outside world. The policy, which was first mentioned at a meeting of the politburo in May, places greater emphasis on China’s domestic market — or internal circulation — and less on commerce with the outside world. 

“Volatile Sino-US relations and more restrictive access to overseas markets for Chinese companies have prompted a fundamental rethink of growth drivers by Beijing’s top economic planners,” says Ms Yu. “Naturally, if state-owned enterprises decide to switch back to the domestic market in order to follow the leadership’s wishes, the budgeted financial resource for overseas investments will reduce accordingly.” 

All this is leading to a fundamental rethink by China towards both the Belt and Road and its overseas lending profile, analysts believe. Mr Wang says that one strand of a new approach would be to pursue more lending through multilateral bodies such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In addition, Chinese financial institutions may co-operate more with international lending agencies, he adds. 

Such a change would amount to a fundamental reorientation. The Beijing-based AIIB and another multilateral bank in which China is a stakeholder, the New Development Bank, are very different organisations from the two Chinese policy banks. They have lent out a fraction of the policy banks’ annual average and are not directed by Beijing’s policies but by a board of directors who represent the interests of stakeholder countries. 

Flaws in the initiative 

Overall, though, China’s rethink betrays a tacit recognition that its overseas lending bonanza has been ill-conceived. Photographs from the 2017 Belt and Road Forum for International Co-operation — the venue at which Mr Xi declared his “project of the century” ambition — hint at what would become the programme’s fatal flaw. 

Alongside Mr Xi in successive portraits were the authoritarian leaders of countries with big debts and “junk” credit ratings, such as Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Hun Sen of Cambodia, Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and several others. 

Debt sustainability — or the ability of debtor countries to repay their loans — had to be part of any reassessment of the Belt and Road Initiative, says Kevin Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, which compiled the data on Chinese overseas lending  “This has to be the time for a rethink,” he says. “It’s been such a priority for Xi Jinping, he’s invested so much in it that he’s not going to just turn the lights off. But they need to seriously implement their own debt sustainability analysis and their own social and environmental impact tools.” 

The propensity for China’s credit-fuelled engagement of diplomatic allies to come unstuck is most spectacularly portrayed by Venezuela. Between 2007 and 2013, the China Development Bank lent Venezuela nearly $40bn, cementing a relationship that Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, characterised as “a Great Wall” against US hegemonism. 

Much of the lending to Venezuela was tied to oil resources, but even before Mr Chávez died in 2013 it was clear that things were going awry. Yet Beijing was in so deep that it felt compelled to keep supporting Nicolás Maduro, successor to Mr Chavez, even after evidence of his ineffectual economic management became clear. 

It lent another $20bn between 2013 and 2017 and is now picking through the country’s pile of $150bn in defaulted debt, pushing its claims against rival creditors. The whole episode carries crucial lessons for Beijing, says Matt Ferchen at Merics, a Berlin-based think-tank. 

“Chinese foreign policy and policy bank officials entered into their outsized economic and political relationship with [Venezuela] with a combination of hubris, ambition and naïveté,” Mr Ferchen wrote. “[This] has contributed to the region’s worst economic, humanitarian, and political crisis in decades.” 

Debt renegotiations have proliferated as the pandemic has clobbered emerging economies in Africa and elsewhere. A report by Rhodium Group, a consultancy, says at least 18 processes of debt renegotiation with China have taken place in 2020 and 12 countries were still in talks with Beijing as of the end of September, covering $28bn in Chinese loans. 

So far, Beijing appears keen to pursue a soft touch, deferring interest payments and rescheduling loans. But the experience is reinforcing a growing sense of wariness that now infuses Mr Xi’s big project. 

China is finding out, says Mr Hillman, that “risk runs both ways along the Belt and Road and the damage can return to Beijing”.

Ten years from graduating, I'm still not sure university was a good decision

I studied English, slept a lot and developed an aversion to ‘hard’ books. Was university anything more than an expensive blip? asks Eleanor Margolis in The Guardian


 

‘I suppose I’d say, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’, but I was asleep the week I was supposed to read A Tale of Two Cities.’ Photograph: incamerastock / Alamy/Alamy


Under my bed, in a shoebox covered in dust, lie a disused strap-on and my degree. In a sense, this physical copy of my 2:1 in English literature from a middle-ranking university is the most expensive thing I own. This month marks 10 years since I graduated into a thumping recession and – joke’s on you, Student Loans Company – a whole decade in which I haven’t paid off a single penny of my student debt. A fact that has made me look back on those three years, all that time ago, I spent at uni and wonder – what exactly was that?

Obviously, I was incredibly lucky to go to university. Especially at a time when tuition fees were a third of what they are now. Or – perhaps more pertinently – at a time where a global pandemic wasn’t sending the entire education system into a very real existential crisis. I was lucky that my middle classness made higher education an inevitability. Like growing boobs and starting my period, university was a fact of life. When it came to choosing my degree, I simply went with the subject I’d always done best in at school.

It never occurred to me there was any other way. But this was when I was still a a perpetually horny, semi-closeted lesbian teenager with depression and anxiety up to the eyeballs, and the self-esteem of a naked mole rat that finds itself in a hall of mirrors. I was in no way ready to make a major life decision that would cost me tens of thousands of pounds. I had no idea who I was yet, let alone how I should be spending the next three years of my existence.

I assumed I’d muddle through it – just how I’d muddled through GCSEs and A-levels. You do the reading, you churn out essays, you progress to whatever the next thing is that’s expected of you. Plus, the work side of things was a minor consideration compared to the thought of all the other queer girls I might meet. It was going to be fun, eye-opening, vital.

It was and it wasn’t. Over the next three years I would date boys, become even more anxious and depressed, and cultivate a resentment towards “hard” books. To this day, I suffer from a sort of reading-induced narcolepsy. I’ve always been a painfully slow reader; being given a week to read Ulysses along with fluttering mounds of literary theory so dense you’d think it had escaped from the Cern lab, was not a recipe for happiness. When I’m stressed, I sleep. Even by students’ sleepy reputation, I was practically comatose for three-quarters of the time. On the flipside, I made good friends, learned what “dasein” meant, and came out as gay. I suppose I’d say, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, but I was asleep the week I was supposed to read A Tale of Two Cities.

How much of life do we do simply because it’s the “done thing”? Last month, Euan Blair, the son of that guy who was very into the idea that getting more people into higher education was the best way to even the societal playing field, wrote in the Times that degrees are now “irrelevant.” His argument that we need to “retrain the nation” was especially spammy coming from someone who runs a tech startup specialising in apprenticeships.

Should I really have gone to university? I honestly don’t know. All the jobs I’ve ever applied for have required a degree, but then again no one’s ever asked to see the scrap of paper in the dildo box under my bed. What if I’d said I have a first in sub-linear aquatics from Mary Berry College, Cambridge, and ended up in a better position than I’m in now?

What I do know is that if I had the opportunity to go back to university, now would be the time I could actually make the most out of it. At 31, not only do I have a greater sense of who I am, but I know what fascinates me. I’m infinitely more receptive to learning now than I was at 18; and I wish I hadn’t so brazenly pissed my university experience up the wall. When I think of the seminars I turned up to without having done the reading, I feel queasy. If university has played no definable role in the 10 years since I graduated, and I didn’t have the awareness to milk it for everything it was worth at the time, then I ask – once again – what was it? Other than a very expensive and quite interesting blip.

And all the while, I could have just done a Marcus Rashford and become a world-class footballer, led a successful campaign against child poverty, and got an honorary degree – all without going to university. You know, the easy route.

What would negative interest rates mean for mortgages and savings?

Hilary Osborne in The Guardian 

 

You will need to dig out your paperwork to see how low your mortgage rate could go. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA


The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has paved the way for negative interest rates, saying officials are actively considering all options to prop up the economy.

The Bank’s base rate stands at 0.1%, the lowest level on record, so it would not take much to take it into negative territory. The UK would not be the first country to have a negative rate at its central bank – Japan and Sweden are among those that have done so.

What happens to my mortgage?

If it’s a fixed-rate mortgage, nothing. And most households are on this type of deal – in recent years around nine in 10 new mortgages have been taken on a fixed rate.

If it is a variable-rate mortgage – a tracker, or a mortgage on or linked to a lender’s standard variable rate – the rate could fall a little if the base rate is cut. But the drop is likely to be limited by terms and conditions. David Hollingworth, of the mortgage brokers London & Country, says trackers sold very recently have in some cases had a “collar” that prevents the lender from having to cut the rate at all. Skipton building society, for example, has a tracker at 1.29 percentage points above the base rate that can only go up.

Older mortgages often have a minimum rate specified in the small print. Nationwide building society, for example, will never reduce the rate it tracks below 0% – so if your mortgage is at base rate plus 1 percentage points, it will never fall below 1%. Santander specifies in some mortgages that the lowest rate it will ever charge is 0.0001%.

You will need to dig out your paperwork to see how low your mortgage rate could go.

Will new mortgages be free?

In Denmark, mortgages with negative interest rates went on sale last year. Borrowers with Jyske Bank were lent money at a rate of -0.5%, which meant the sum they owed fell each month by more than the sum they had repaid. There is no reason why UK lenders could not follow suit, although so far there is no sign that any will.

In the meantime, fixed-rate mortgages are getting cheaper and may continue to fall in price. Big lenders including HSBC and Barclays have reduced fixed-rates this week and more may follow. Hollingworth says borrowers now have a choice of five-year fixed rates below 1.5%, with HSBC’s deal now at 1.39%.

Tracker mortgages have been pulled and repriced with larger margins, to cushion lenders against falling rates. If rates are cut again, expect more of that, as well as the collars already seen on some deals.

A negative base rate means banks and building societies have to pay to keep money on deposit, and it is designed to discourage them from doing so and make them keen to lend.

Fears over what might happen to property prices mean they are still likely to lend very carefully, but they should not need to restrict the range and number of mortgages on offer. Some lenders that reduced their maximum mortgages while they were unable to do valuations have started to offer loans on smaller deposits, although the choice of 90% loans is very limited. “Lenders do have appetite to lend,” says Hollingworth.

What happens to my savings?

Savings rates have already been hit by the two base rate cuts in March and most easy-access accounts from high street banks are already paying just 0.1% in interest.

Andrew Hagger, the founder of the financial information website Moneycomms, says he thinks it is unlikely banks will start charging people to hold their everyday savings. “Many would just withdraw cash and possibly keep it in the house, thus opening a can of worms around security and break-ins,” he says. “However, if the Bank of England did introduce negative rates, I’m sure we would see even more savings accounts heading towards zero.”

Rachel Springall, from the data firm Moneyfacts, says: “The most flexible savings accounts could face further cuts should base rate move any lower or if savings providers decide they want to deter deposits.”

She is not ruling out a charge for deposits. “Some savings accounts could go down this path – similar to how some banks charge a fee on a current account,” she says.

Wealthy savers are likely to be the first who would face a charge. Last year UBS started charging its ultra-rich clients a fee for cash savings of more than €500,000 (£449,000), starting at 0.6% a year and rising to 0.75% on larger deposits. And at the Danish Jyske Bank, similar charges apply.

“It could be that super-rich clients in the UK get charged a similar fee as the commercial banks may wish to discourage large cash holdings which they are having to pay for,” says Hagger.

What about loans and credit cards?

Personal loan rates are already low and are usually fixed, so you will not see your monthly repayments fall if rates go down. Credit card rates are usually low for new customers, but rise far above the base rate once introductory periods have ended, so will not be anywhere close to falling into negative territory.

Hagger says he does not expect card or loan rates to plummet in the near future, “as I think banks will continue to tighten their credit underwriting – I think they’ll be more concerned about rising bad debt levels due to a surge in unemployment, for the remainder of 2020 at least.”

This month Virgin Money closed the credit card accounts of 32,000 borrowers after carrying out “routine affordability checks”. It later reversed the decision, but this could be a sign that lenders are reviewing their customer bases and trying to reduce their risk.

Bank of England to directly finance UK government’s extra spending

 Chris Giles and Philip Georgiadis in The FT

The UK has become the first country to embrace the monetary financing of government to fund the immediate cost of fighting coronavirus, with the Bank of England agreeing to a Treasury demand to directly finance the state’s spending needs on a temporary basis.  

The move allows the government to bypass the bond market until the Covid-19 pandemic subsides, financing unexpected costs such as the job retention scheme where bills will fall due at the end of April.  

Although BoE governor Andrew Bailey opposed monetary financing earlier this week, Treasury officials felt it was best to have the insurance of the central bank willing to finance its operations in the short term. 

It highlights the extraordinary demands on cash the government has experienced in recent weeks, which it feels it cannot finance immediately in the gilts market. 

In a statement to financial markets on Thursday, the government announced it would extend the size of the government’s bank account at the central bank, known historically as the “Ways and Means Facility”, which normally stands at just £370m. 

This will rise to an effectively unlimited amount, allowing ministers to spend more in the short term without having to tap the gilts market. In 2008, a similar move saw the facility rise briefly to £20bn. 

The scale is likely to be large. The government has already tripled the amount of debt it wanted to raise in financial markets in April from £15bn announced in the March 11 Budget to £45bn by the start of this month.  

Although the gilts market showed severe stress in the middle of March as the coronavirus crisis deepened, the government has so far had little difficulty raising finance, especially as the BoE had already committed to printing £200bn to pump into the government bond market to ensure there was sufficient demand for gilts and improve market functioning. 

This direct monetary financing of government would be “temporary and short-term”, the Treasury said in its statement. 

“As well as temporarily smoothing government cash flows, the W & M Facility supports market function by minimising the immediate impact of raising additional funding in gilt and sterling money markets,” it added. 

It said any drawings on this facility would be repaid as soon as possible before the end of the year. 

Market reaction was muted. Sterling was trading 0.1 per cent higher against the US dollar at just below $1.24 shortly after the announcement, while the yield on the benchmark 10-year UK gilt was flat at 0.37 per cent.  

But many economists saw the Treasury’s demand to be financed directly as a big step. 

Tony Yates, senior adviser at Fathom Consulting and a former BoE official, said the move was “an indication of the extraordinary pressures on government”. He added, however, that UK monetary financing of government deficits was unlikely to turn Britain into Zimbabwe because, once the crisis was over, the UK’s capacity to raise taxes again remained intact.  

But just as the quantitative easing the BoE has introduced since 2009 has never been repaid, Richard Barwell, head of macro research at BNP Asset Management and also a former BoE official, said temporary moves such as this often became more permanent as time passed. 

“Persistent monetary financing feels inevitable. Central banks just need to figure out a plan for how to best get into it and how they might eventually want to get out of it,” he said. 

The Ways and Means Facility had long been used as a financing means of government for day-to-day spending before the BoE would sell government bonds to the market, but by 2006 it had become an emergency fund with the financing of government undertaken by the Debt Management Office on a scheduled basis. 

Less than a month ago, the BoE said there was little chance there would be any need to use the facility, demonstrating just how much stress government finances have come under in the past few weeks. 

In a call with journalists on March 18, Mr Bailey said the facility was just a “historical feature”.  

“I don’t think at the moment we’re facing an inability of the government to fund itself, so, yes, it’s there, but it’s not a frontline tool,” Mr Bailey said at the time. 

In an opinion column in the Financial Times earlier this week, the BoE governor pledged not to slip into permanent monetary financing of the government. He said the central bank would not engage in permanent monetary financing, but did not rule out temporary operations that he said would not be inflationary. 

“Short-term operations play an important role in stabilising market conditions and counteracting any immediate tightening of monetary conditions,” Mr Bailey wrote.  

Fran Boait, executive director of Positive Money, an advocacy group, said: “This use of direct monetary financing demonstrates once and for all that the government does not depend on the market to finance its spending. Hopefully now we can have an honest debate about how our collective resources should be allocated.” 

Ease of Doing Business - How Dena Bank, CIBIL Harass Ordinary Indians

By Giffenman

India may have climbed the global scale in 'Ease of Doing Business'. But this letter below shows the extent of harassment a small Gujarati businessman, domiciled in India, faced from Dena Bank and CIBIL as he tried to run his business and educate his daughter with a non delivered educational loan.

The case in a nutshell:

Vipul Vora took a business loan from Dena Bank which was repaid in full. However Dena Bank held on to the ownership documents.

Vipul Vora's daughter took an educational loan to be paid directly to the college his daughter was studying in abroad. The loan never reached the daughter's college. Dena Bank insisted that Vipul Vora should repay the non-delivered loan amount. To coerce him to pay up the educational loan Dena Bank impounded the business documents used as collateral in the earlier business loan. 

CIBIL has used the Dena Bank's version of events to lower Vipul Vora's credit rating causing him great monetary and emotional distress.

Vipul Vora has been paralysed as he cannot grow his business without the impounded ownership documents and with no hope of the case being easily resolved.


------ Copy of Legal Notice sent by Vipul Vora to Dena Bank and CIBIL (Sic)

RVD/OG/MD ___October, 2018

To,
1. The Chief Manager,
Dena Bank,
Vashi Sector 19 Branch,
K-34, Masala Market,
APMC Market – II, Vashi,
Navi Mumbai 400705.


2. The Zonal Manager
Dena Bank, Zonal Office,
272 Amrut Industries, Gokhale Road
Opposite Gokul Society Bus Stop,
Gokul Nagar, Thane West 400 602


3. The General Manager
Mr. Sanjeev Dhobal
Dena Bank, 5th Floor,
C-10, Dena Bank Building,
G block, Band BKC, Bandra East,
Mumbai 400 051.


4. TransUnion CIBIL Limited
(Formerly: Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited)
One Indiabulls Centre, Tower 2A, 19th Floor, Senapati Bapat Marg, Elphinstone Road, Mumbai - 400 013.


Dear Sirs,

Sub: Deficiency in service, loss of reputation and claim for damages
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We are concerned for our clients Mrs. Jagruti Vipul Vora and Mr. Vipul Vora and Ms. Shayali Vora, all residing at E-38, 1:2 Shanti Niketan CHS, Sector 4, Nerul – 400 706, who have instructed us to address to you as under:-

1. Our clients state as under:


a. Our client Ms. Shayali Vora was at all material times in or about 2010 to 2016 pursuing her M.B.B.S. course through Crimea State Medical University, Ukraine[Till 2014] and then Federal Medical University, Russia. (“the University”);

b. On account of annexation of Crimea by Russia in or about 2014, Crimea came under the control of Russia and consequently the University was at that material time then on May 2016 is governed by the laws of Russia;

c. Our client Ms. Shayali Vora received an invitation letter from the Crimea State Medical University for completing her 12 semester MBBS course with the Crimea State Medical University on or about September 2010;

d. Our client Ms. Shayali Vora(“the Borrower”) applied to you No. 1 for granting her an Education Loan of Rs.1,95,000/- (Rupees One Lakh Ninety Five Thousand Only)in order to enable her to complete her final semester at the Federal Medical University, Russia which was then governed by the laws of Russia;




e. The Borrower’s application for an Educational Loan was sanctioned by you No. 1 under the DENA VIDYALAXMI LOAN SCHEME. The Borrower had to leave for the University on September 2015 and you No. 1 insisted that in order to pay the amount of the Educational Loan to the University, the Borrower would have to execute a DENA VIDYALAXMI LOAN AGREEMENT (“Loan Agreement”) with you. You handed over a printed standard form of the Loan Agreement to the Borrower, who only signed without filling in the blanks in the Loan Agreement including the date of the Loan Agreement. Our client Mr. Vipul Vora handed over to you the signed copy of the Loan Agreement and your representatives promised Mr. Vipul Vora that they would fill in the blanks in the Loan Agreement in terms of the application of the Borrower and thereafter provide a copy of it to our clients. The Borrower was required to report to the University on or before 15th September 2015 and therefore she left India on 12th September 2015;

f. After constant follow up, your representatives provided to our client Mr. Vipul Vora copy of the Loan Agreement. Our client Mr. Vipul Vora noticed that the date of the Loan Agreement signed by the Borrower was 6th December 2015. Our clients were shocked and surprised to see that your representatives had inserted a sum of Rs.2,35,000/- instead of Rs.1,95,000/- as the amount of loan sought by the Borrower in the Loan Agreement signed by the Borrower. Our client Mr. Vipul Vora immediately brought the above mistake of the amount in the Loan Agreement to the notice of your representatives, however, your representatives informed him that they could not lend a small amount for educational loan to the Borrower as it was not commercially feasible. Our clients required the loan amount and in view thereof did not raise any issue at that time;

g. Our clients submit that while applying for the Education Loan, the Borrower was asked to fill A2 Form, as per Crimea State Medical University as indicated in their invitation letter and the Borrower pointed it out to the representatives of you No. 1., Before filling Form A2, our clients informed the representatives of you No. 1 about the sanctions by the USA against Russia and Crimea territories under the control of Russia which included non-transfer of US dollars to the above mentioned Region. Our clients also informed your representative No. 1 that Crimea, Ukraine where the University was located is under the control of Russia and that payment could not be made in US dollars. In view of the aforesaid our clients requested you No. 1 to transfer the Educational Loan Amount either in Russian currency or Indian currency to the Borrower’s savings account so that the Borrower can withdraw the same from ATM in Russia Main Land and pay her fees;


h. On and after 4th January 2016, our client Mr. Vipul Vora enquired with you No. 1 regarding the status of the transfer of the loan amount to the University. Your representative No. 1 informed him that the loan amount is being processed. Finally, in or about 5th January 2016, your representatives No. 1 informed our client Mr. Vipul Vora that they had Processed the Transfer through their associate Bank Citibank to pay the loan amount to the University in US Dollars through Bank of New York Mellon, New York[ Diversion of Funds other then the intended Purpose as per Indian Law, Clause 9 of Agreement, as loan was applied as per the Indian Laws] and that in terms of the international process of the transfer of US Dollars the loan amount required the License of the OFAC, US Treasury, USA. Bank of New York Mellon had stopped the transfer to the University under the instructions of OFAC Treasury, USA on account of the sanctions by USA against Russia and made Fixed Deposit in the name Of DENA BANK, Sender Bank.;

i. Our client Mr. Vipul Vora was shocked and surprised at the aforesaid grossly negligent conduct of your representative No. 1 (which they termed it as erroneous). He asked your representatives No. 1 about the manner in which you No. 1 intended to get back the loan amount to which you replied that you were considering applying for a license to OFAC Treasury, USA to get the refund of the loan amount. It has been over 2years 9 months since the grossly negligent transfer of public funds of Bank Loan by your representatives No. 1 to the USA, but you have not taken any steps to get the loan amount back, save and except to harass our clients as stated in sub-paragraph k. below;

j. In view of the aforesaid shocking disclosure made by you No. 1 about the non-transfer of the loan amount to the University, our clients had no option but to pay to the University from their own funds after taking a gold loan from Greater Bank;

k. Instead of obtaining refund from the USA of the loan amount negligently transferred by you No. 1, your representatives No. 1 started demanding payment of the loan amount from our client. Our clients informed you No. 1 that they were not liable to pay to you the loan amount, since the Loan Agreement was not honoured by you by paying the loan amount to the University[Agreement Clause No.8B], however, your representatives kept on harassing our clients. Your representatives No. 1 illegally and unauthorized withheld the securities provided in a Term Loan Account granted by you No. 1 to a Partnership Firm “Sai Pharma” (“the Firm”) in which our client Mr. Vipul Vora was a partner even though the Term Loan had been fully paid by the Firm;

l. On account of your illegal tactics aforesaid, the Borrower informed to OFAC Treasury, USA, for the release License[ Application made by Ms. Shayali Vora on 7th January 2016] to release the loan amount along with the Swift Report and also bought to the notice of OFAC Treasury, USA the above facts, which in turn led to conversion of the loan amount into commercial category and the License application was rejected;

m. After constant follow up and requests by our client Mr. Vipul Vora to your representatives, you No.1 informed our clients that you had in June 2018 finally applied to OFAC Treasury, USA, for a License for release of the loan amount from Bank of New York Mellon, USA. You also returned the securities of the Firm to the Firm which had been illegally and unauthorized withheld along with the funds in Sai Pharma and Vipul Vora’s Account, which were closed on 6th June 2017 by you No. 1;

n. Not satisfied with the shocking ordeal you had put our clients to, you No.1informed No.4that our clients were loan defaulters and consequently No. 4 even with the knowledge[By personal Visits to the Office and Mail Communications] of the above events have lowered the credit ratings of our clients. The aforesaid conduct of you No. 1 was malicious and made with the deliberate intention to harm the financial credit worthiness of our clients with No. 4 as also their reputation in society;
o. Our clients state that you No. 1 were grossly negligent in transferring the loan amount by US Dollars. As a banker you were aware or ought to have been aware that US Dollars could not have been transferred to the University on account of the sanctions of the USA against Russia. You were informed by our clients of the fact that US Dollars could not be transferred to the University and yet you did not pay heed to the warning and transferred the loan amount by US Dollars.

p. Our clients state that for about two years you did not take any steps to obtain refund of the loan amount from the USA. Your conduct is blameworthy in the sense that you were unconcerned about the public money of Indian Bank lying in the USA.

q. Our clients state that you illegally and unauthorised withheld the securities of the Firm (in which our client Mr. Vipul Vora is a partner) in spite of the fact that all the payments under the Term Loan granted by you to the Firm had been made to you and the account was clean and clear, in order to pressurise our clients to pay to you the loan amount even though you had not performed your promise under the Loan Agreement.

Our clients state that you No. 1 have defamed them by giving wrong and false information to No. 4 about our clients being loan defaulters and due to which No. 4 has lowered the credit ratings of our clients and Transmitted Electronically wrong information to Various Financial Institutions;

s. Our clients state that you No. 1 are a public sector bank. Public money is parked in your bank. You are required to utilize public money deposited with you for the welfare of society. You are required to act with utmost care and caution in carrying on your duties. Last but not the least, you required to act honestly and with integrity in dealing with your account holders, creditors including your borrowers and other stake holders. Our clients further submit that it has pained them immensely to be associated with you not to mention the losses, mental agony and harassment that have been caused to them.


2. In the circumstances aforesaid:-

(a) Our clients hereby request you No. 4, to remove the information provided to you No. 4 by No. 1 in respect of our clients’ being “loan defaulters” of No. 1, from your website and publish the correct CIBIL ratings of our clients on your website and, if you so desire No. 4, our clients are prepared to provide to you any information or document with regard to the above; and

(b) Call upon you No. 1 to pay to our clients individually and to company a sum of Rs. 5,00,00,000/- for breach of contract, loss, gross negligence, defamation, mental agony and harassment among other things within 15 days from the date of receipt of this notice by you, failing which our clients shall be constrained to adopt such legal proceedings against you as they may be advised at your entire risk as to the costs and consequences, which please note.

Yours faithfully,
Malvi Ranchoddas & Co.
Partner

--------End of letter.

Fatah ka Fatwa - Islamic Banking

George Osborne got away with his Big Lie.

William Keegan in the Guardian

What's now in the box? Osborne outside 11 Downing Street before delivering his last budget speech ahead of May's general election. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The inquest on Labour’s electoral defeat will run and run, and the recriminations will no doubt persist throughout the party’s inordinately long timetable for selecting a new leader. But there is a limit to which candidates should surrender to the Big Lie that George Osborne, more than anyone else, has managed to get away with.

Take a report in the Times’s recent “investigation” into Labour’s “disastrous campaign”. We are told that “as early as 2010, Labour’s pollsters sent a memo saying the party should argue ‘the deficit is the number one challenge facing the country’ and back ‘tough spending cuts’.”

The truth is that the deficit was not the problem: it was the solution. What the much-maligned government of Gordon Brown did was to recognise this, and act accordingly. One of the principal beneficiaries of this sensible Keynesian response was George Osborne, who inherited the economy in which the prospect of a 1930s depression had been warded off. He proceeded to make wholly misleading analogies with the state of the benighted Greek economy and embark on a programme of austerity which Ed Balls rightly warned would stop the recovery in its tracks.

 It is not for me to join the chorus maintaining that Labour should have admitted that all the extra spending on schools and hospitals was a mistake. The most serious mistake was not to get across with sufficient emphasis that by far the biggest contribution to a rise in public sector debt was caused by the banking crisis. Moreover, as my old mentor, the Nobel laureate Professor Amartya Sen, pointed out recently in a lecture reproduced in the New Statesman: “Even if we want to reduce public debt quickly, austerity is not a particularly effective way of achieving this (which the European and British experiences confirm)”.

It is tragic that the Big Lie was not dealt with by Ed Miliband. Apparently he dismissed advice from Alastair Campbell, way back, that he should commission an independent report, by a respected figure, on Labour’s past spending plans – plans that had been supported at the time by Messrs Cameron and Osborne. Even the Times reflects that such a report “would almost certainly have cleared Labour of blame, with a minor dispute around whether the party could have spent less in 2007”.

But the deficit story was allowed to run and run, and poor Miliband failed to scotch it on at least two prominent occasions. Yet, as Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury’s top civil servant, has stated: “The 2008 crisis was a banking crisis pure and simple.”

That crisis was a cataclysm. It demanded a short-term approach to warding off catastrophic consequences, and a long-term approach to reducing a national debt that, notwithstanding the impact of the crisis, remained, as Sen emphasises, remarkably low by historical standards. As he says, put quite simply, for reducing the debt, “we need economic growth; and austerity, as Keynes noted, is essentially anti-growth”.

But such wisdom will cut no ice with a cocky chancellor who can hardly believe his luck at how Labour played into his hands. By winning a mere 37% of votes cast, he thinks he now has the support of the country for a renewal of austerity. He plans a budget which – by not treating capital expenditure as something to be financed over the lifetime of the project, but from a single year’s revenue – is going to place huge burdens on the public services. Just brace yourselves for the real cuts.

Osborne’s first austerity programme brought us reductions in capital expenditure when borrowing costs for much-needed projects were negligible. In the past year or so, he has finally woken up to this country’s infrastructure problems and – who knows? – before long may even find himself reinventing the National Economic Development Office.

As Sen points out, had the British public been frightened after the second world war by the debt ratio, which was more than twice what it has been in recent years, “the NHS would never have been born, and the great experiment of having a welfare state in Europe (from which the whole world from China, Korea and Singapore to Brazil and Mexico would learn) would not have found a foothold”.

We were helped after the war by a loan from the US (mainly) and Canada, which was finally paid off in 2006. And a war loan dating from the first world war was finally redeemed earlier this year!

Osborne has rightly attracted ridicule, even from friendly commentators, for his absurd plan to try to bind all future governments to a law that demands not just budget balance but budget surpluses during “normal times” – a phrase that opens up great scope for debate. Apart from anything else, it is evident from the frequent revisions to statistics, and therefore analysis made by the Office for National Statistics and the Office for Budget Responsibility, that it is often not obvious at the time whether one is indeed living in “normal times”.

Rather like his distinguished predecessor, Lord Lawson, Osborne has become obsessed by “rules”. But as one of Macpherson’s distinguished predecessors, Sir Douglas Allen, used to say, what matters is not budget balance, let alone budget surplus, but a balanced economy. That is not what is on offer from the present chancellor.