Credit Deflation Lands in Britain

by Adrian Ash.

Credit deflation just hit the UK for the first time on post-war records…

HMMMM… This looks telling.

UK banks will soon be able to post raw loans – rather than securitized loans that have been bundled into asset-backed bonds – as collateral against short-term liquidity aid from the Bank of England.

This will mean lending central-bank cash against the commercial banks’ major assets, as the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street puts it, rather than against that sliver of their balance-sheets held as securitized loans. Which seems prescient, for two reasons.

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First, securitization of UK consumer, mortgage and business debt has all but collapsed. Net-net, there haven’t been any sizeable securitizations of UK bank lending for six months running – the longest period since 1998.

The two months before that actually saw securitizations paid back, and at the fastest pace on record, down by £26 billion. Which is a pity for the UK’s formerly go-go-crazy-bones credit bonanza.

In the 10 years ending Dec. 2009, securitization added £325 billion to the growth in UK bank lending, expanding new credit by more than 20%. And why not? Securitizing bank loans, by parceling them up and then selling the debt to investors both foreign and domestic, gave banks the chance to lend the same Pound twice, skimming a profit both times. It also gave insurance and pension funds the chance to invest in Britain’s record debt bubble…a boom which ended with more people working more hours to service more debt than ever before in history.

That bout of collective insanity has now got the DTs. Because second, and as a result of securitization’s collapse (or so we guess here at BullionVault), private-sector UK loan growth overall last quarter did what it’s never done before (not since records began in June 1963, at least) and actually turned negative.

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The Bank of England’s decision thus looks timely, if ineffective against the credit deflation already underway.

To repeat: UK bank lending to the private sector has never previously shrunk, not in the 47 years of available data. And lending cash to commercial banks Walter Bagehot-style – albeit by accepting their debtors in turn as collateral, and not charging that “high rate” the 19th-century economist recommended either – is what central bankers are for, after all.

Concluding her 3-month consultation with the banking sector, the Old Lady said Monday that she’ll start accepting “raw loans” as collateral for short-term liquidity, dispensed via the Discount Window Facility, in 2011. That expands the list of eligible collateral which banks can post from securitized debt (those asset-backed bonds accepted since Dec. 2007 on top of government gilts), just so long as the loans are residential or commercial real-estate mortgages, consumer loans (but not including credit cards), or corporate loans to non-bank borrowers.

Unlike the Bank’s failed attempt to inject cash into the UK economy via Quantitative Easing, this latest wheeze to underwrite the credit-supply will at least keep the Old Lady’s cash onshore. Because the raw loan’s end-borrower “must be UK-based.” Which should stop the tabloids screaming about “foreigners stealing” this particular chunk of Britain’s monetary easing when it begins.

Whether it stems the UK’s credit deflation remains to be seen. And whether that deflation ever gets to stem the ongoing inflation in prices still awaits history’s verdict, too. Because while private net lending shrank between April and July, quarterly consumer-price inflation meantime rose to 1.3%, knocking 3.3 pence off the purchasing power of each Pound Sterling compared with 12 months prior.

Deflation in credit but inflation in prices? With the fastest GDP growth in four years coming in at 1.1% at market (i.e. unadjusted) prices across the quarter? Economists from Mervyn “monetarist” King to Paul “Keynes re-born” Krugman say this confluence of pain can never happen. So best wheel out the Bank of England’s printing press yet again, just to get reality back on track with theory.

Adrian Ash
for The Daily Reckoning

Formerly the City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and head of editorial at Fleet Street Publications Ltd, the U.K.'s leading financial advisory for private investors. Adrian Ash is also the editor of Gold News and head of research at BullionVault. SPECIAL REPORT- The Endless PAYCHECK PORTFOLIO: In three simple steps, unleash a steady flow of work-free income... starting with up to 75 automatic "paychecks" deposited directly into your account.

  • JMR bayou bobby

    and yet the pound is up about 10% in FOREX markets

    as if that helps the poor consumer

    maybe this is their plan, and all is well

    good article!

  • a devils advocate

    I read something like this 6 months ago in the Asia Times. “Debt capitalism self destructs.”

  • Don

    Was that Raw or Straw loans?

  • http://no simon68

    UK trade deficits is widening with balance of payment deteriorating. BOE is expanding quantitative easing to support government spending and social security/health expenditures, causing sterling pounds to collapse. International energy price is rising. UK’s foreign direct investment plunged by 49% this year. There shouldn’t be any surprise if UK inflation is surging.

    This is the bad part for the UK because our inflation rate is higher than that of our trading partners. Japan is mired in disinflation where her prices are falling, Europe’s last Consumer Price Index measure was at 1.0% and ours is at 3.5%. So we are in danger of eroding the competitive advantage that we gained from our depreciation particularly as it is not clear how far our inflation will rise and for how long. By comparison many European economists feel that Euro zone inflation will fall back towards zero this year.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/22/uk-foreign-investment-falls

  • planning4acrash

    Loans should be treated as liabilities on the balance sheet but have, fraudulently, been treated as assets with government blessing. This type of accounting fraud is a major cause of most bubbles in history. A loan as a liability reduces available credit, a loan as an asset exponentially increases available credit, creating a crack up boom. And govt say regulate the banks. But we should never regulate fraud, because it is a form of theft. Simply force banks to treat loans as liabilities, have the depression over with in a year and we’ll be back to happy days. More quantitative easing and regulation to put off the inevitable will only cause decades of pain.

  • a devils advocate

    planning4acrash. Simple and very true. Good thinking.

  • patrick

    but loans are assets because on a balance sheet they represent funds due to the lender. Deposits are a liability on a bank’s balance sheet because the bank owes that money to depositors. This is not fraud it is common sense. If you deposit £1m with a bank, it is the bank’s liability. It lends out that money and the £1m loan is the bank’s asset. The real problem is actually undercapitalisation of the banks which has been happening over a long period and reached a real low. Banks have been able to grow themselves by borrowing huge amounts of money in the bond markets. An easy way to solve the banking crisis would be an enforced debt for equity swap, whereby the bond holders would swap a portion of their debt holding at todays prices for newly issued shares at todays prices. The result would be stronger and better capitalised banks, and the bondholders wouldn’t lose because the share price of the stronger bank would likely rise afterwards. The existing shareholders may get partly diluted but they will also offset that with the likely rise in share price after the swap.

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