The nation that’s southeast of France
Seems willing to leap at the chance
Of increasing spending
While also descending
Into a black hole of finance

Today’s markets have been dominated by a renewed fear that Italy may become Quitaly, quitting the euro in an effort to regain control of their finances. This view came about when Claudio Borghi, the chairman of the lower house budget committee (analogous to the House finance committee in the US), said that the euro was “not sufficient” to solve Italy’s fiscal issues. That was seen as an allusion to the idea that if Italy ditched the euro and returned to the lire, they would have more flexibility to implement the fiscal policies they wanted. In this case, flexibility can be understood to mean that Italy would be able to print and spend more money domestically, while allowing the lire to depreciate. The problem with the euro, as Italy sees it, is since they don’t control its creation, they cannot devalue it by themselves. There can be no surprise that the euro declined, falling 0.6% after a 0.3% decline yesterday. Of course, Italian stock and bond markets have also suffered, and there has been a more general feeling of risk aversion across all markets.

In the meantime, the latest Brexit news covers a new plan to allegedly solve the Irish border issue. It seems that PM May is going to offer up the idea that the UK remains in the customs union while allowing new checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the UK mainland. The problem with this idea, at least on the surface, is that it will require the EU to compromise, and that is not something that we have seen much willingness to embrace on their part. Remember, French President Macron has explicitly said that he wants the UK to suffer greatly in order to serve as a warning to any other members from leaving the bloc. (Funnily enough, I don’t think that either Matteo Renzi or Luigi Di Maio, the leaders of the League and Five-Star Movement respectively in Italy, really care about that.)

For now, the market will continue to whipsaw around these events as hopes ebb and flow for a successful Brexit resolution. While it certainly doesn’t seem like anything is going to be agreed at this stage, my suspicion remains that some fudge will be found. The one caveat here is if PM May is ousted at the Conservative Party conference that begins later this week. PM Boris Johnson, for instance, will tell the Europeans to ‘bugger off’ and then no deal will be found. In that case, the pound will fall much further, but that seems a low probability event for right now. With all of that in mind, the pound has fallen 0.6% this morning and is back below 1.30 for the first time in three weeks.

In fact, the dollar is higher virtually across the board this morning, with AUD also lower by 0.6% after the RBA left rates unchanged at 1.50% while describing potential weakening scenarios, including a slowdown in China. Even CAD is lower, albeit only by 0.15%, despite the resolution of the NAFTA replacement talks yesterday.

Emerging markets have fared no better with, for example, IDR having fallen nearly 1.0% through 15,000 for the first time in twenty years, despite the central bank’s efforts to protect the rupiyah through rate hikes and intervention. We have also seen weakness in INR (-0.6%), ZAR (-1.3%), MXN (-0.6%), TRY (-1.9%) and RUB (-0.7%). Stock markets throughout the emerging markets have also been under pressure and government bond yields there are rising. In other words, this is a classic risk-off day.

Yesterday’s ISM data was mildly disappointing (59.8 vs. 60.1 expected) but continues to point to strong US economic growth. Since there are no hard data points released today (although we do see auto sales data) my sense is the market will turn its focus on Chairman Powell at 12:45, when he speaks at the National Association of Business Economics Meeting in Boston. His speech is titled, The Outlook for Employment and Inflation, obviously the exact issues the market cares about. However, keeping in mind the fact that Powell has been consistently bullish on the economy, it seems highly unlikely that he will say anything that could derail the current trend of tighter US monetary policy. Combining this with the renewed concerns over Europe and the UK, and it seems the dollar’s rally may be about to reignite.

Good luck
Adf