Weak Yen weakens Germany

Investment Notes

Germany, the powerhouse economy of the Eurozone, recently announced 2012 GDP growth of only 0.5%, and that it expected 2013 to deliver only 0.4% growth. At a time when most of rest of the Eurozone is undergoing policies of austerity and reductions in private sector wage costs, they are looking to Germany to be the source of demand for their goods and services, which their own economies are currently unable to provide.

With a balanced budget, near full employment, and a trade surplus of 7% of GDP, Germany is ideally placed to pursue policies designed to boost German consumer incomes and spending, which the rest of the Eurozone could supply. Yet, aside from some very modest pre-election tax cuts, which have already been announced, there is no indication that German politicians wish to go down such a road.

This is for two reasons. Firstly, they take the view that the reason for their economic success is precisely because they have not, historically, pursued such short-term stimulatory policies, but have instead concentrated on ensuring they have globally competitive private-sector industries and a structurally balanced public-sector budget. Secondly, the German Finance Ministry has realised that in the next few years they will need to provide funds to meet their obligations to the EFSF and the ESM, which have been set up to provide the bail-out monies for the weaker countries. They are thus already planning for offsetting public sector spending cuts in 2014 and beyond – in sharp contrast to all other countries, who are hoping further bail-outs won’t be needed, or will seek to borrow the funds from the markets if they are.

So, domestic spending is unlikely to be driving the German economy in the near future. As usual, Germany will be hoping to benefit from global demand for its exports. Here though, the actions of the ECB and Japan may thwart those hopes.

Despite the Eurozone sliding back into recession, at its last two monthly meetings, the ECB has not cut interest rates when many commentators thought that it could and should have done. Indeed after the last meeting, Mr Draghi made clear that the ECB had done as much as it could to promote growth, and it was now the role of governments to produce pro-growth policies. The markets interpreted this as saying that no more rate cuts or easing of monetary policy would be forthcoming, in contrast to the $85bn each month of QE from the Federal Reserve. Since then the euro has been the strongest of the major currencies, making German exports less competitive.

In Japan, the focus of the new government to stimulate the economy by all possible means including weakening the currency has seen the yen fall sharply in recent weeks. Against the euro the yen is 20% weaker over two months and 26% weaker over six months. These are dramatic moves for any major exchange rate, but the euro-yen exchange rate is particularly important for Japan and Germany. This is because their strengths are in very similar industries, and competition is hard-fought in sectors such as automobiles, power plants and high-technology capital goods.

In early 2009, the exchange rate was 140 yen to the euro, and over the next 3 years the yen strengthened to 95 yen to the euro, making Japanese companies very uncompetitive against European (but most importantly, German) companies. German exports performed very well in 2010 and 2011, particularly to China. This was also helped by a diplomatic row between Japan and China about sovereignty rights over some small islands lying between their two countries, sparking popular anti-Japanese sentiments inside China, and consumer boycotts of Japanese goods.

Japan is now deliberately weakening the yen further to stimulate their economy – the recent 20+% fall in the exchange rate will be a particular problem for German competitiveness, and will hold back export demand this year.

The investment implications of this are to remain wary of the European economy and light in European shares, to expect the euro to strengthen , and to be heavy in Japanese shares, but to avoid the yen exposure by, for example, owning currency-hedged share classes of Japanese funds.