One positive side effect of the UK vote for Brexit appears to be a policy shift away from austerity towards an embrace of reflationary fiscal policy. This has the potential to meaningfully change the UK’s economic growth outlook. Moreover, the expected UK policy shift is part of an evolving global theme whereby more policy-makers are starting to address one of the key factors behind the slow-burning global growth crisis – a lack of policy coordination between reflationary levers. The US presidential candidates each propose a more activist fiscal policy, Canada’s government is enacting its election pledge of fiscal stimulus, while Japan may soon combine fresh fiscal stimulus with QQE3 and potentially the “Hail Mary” opinion of Helicopter money. These are encouraging signs, and may offer some hope that the world economy may not reach the deflationary end-state that appears to be it’s current destination. However, optimism needs to be tempered. Any fiscal easing in the UK will be aimed at avoiding recession rather than accelerating recovery, and may fall far short of the 2% of GDP we feel is required over the next 12 months. The UK policy change reduces severe left-tail risk with respect to the GBP rather than comprising a bullish scenario: GBP/USD is still expected to move below 1.20. Globally, with a few exceptions, progress towards sufficiently aggressive and broad-based policy reflation remains patchy, and geographic coordination remains poor as policy-makers still address multi-lateral problems with bi-lateral solutions. Nonetheless, that more policy-makers are embracing more economically optimal policy options can only be a positive trend for global growth. In terms of Japan, which is closer to the point of radical policy coordination and where policy mis-steps of the past 12 months require bold action from the government and Bank of Japan, we see value in owning deep out of the money upside in USD/JPY while CAD/JPY could be an interesting play on relative policy dynamics. Meanwhile, stay receved JPY IRS.
The BOJ’s soon to be majority ownership of the JGB market blurs the line between QQE and helicopter money
Source: CEIC
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