US interest rate rise could trigger global debt crisis

Global debt levels are dangerously high and central banks cannot keep the game going indefinitely, warns the high priest of orthodoxy


Debt ratios have reached extreme levels across all major regions of the global economy, leaving the financial system acutely vulnerable to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve, the world's top financial watchdog has warned.


The Bank for International Settlements said the wild market ructions of recent weeks and capital outflows from China are warning signs that the massive build-up in credit is coming back to haunt, compounded by worries that policymakers may be struggling to control events.


"We are not seeing isolated tremors, but the release of pressure that has gradually accumulated over the years along major fault lines," said Claudio Borio, the bank's chief economist.


The Swiss-based BIS said total debt ratios are now significantly higher than they were at the peak of the last credit cycle in 2007, just before the onset of global financial crisis.



Combined public and private debt has jumped by 36 percentage points since then to 265pc of GDP in the the developed economies.

This time emerging markets have been drawn into the credit spree as well. Total debt has spiked 50 points to 167pc, and even higher to 235pc in China, a pace of credit growth that has almost always preceded major financial crises in the past.



Blue is external dollar loans, red is securities

Adding to the toxic mix, off-shore borrowing in US dollars has reached a record $9.6 trillion, chiefly due to leakage effects of zero interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) in the US. This has set the stage for a worldwide dollar squeeze as the Fed reverses course and starts to drain dollar liquidity from global markets.

• US interest rate rises: everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask)

Dollar loans to emerging markets (EM) have doubled since the Lehman crisis to $3 trillion, and much of it has been borrowed at abnormally low real interest rates of 1pc. Roughly 80pc of the dollar debt in China is on short-term maturities.

* The figures are for 2014. The figures for Q1 of 2015 cited are slightly different

These countries are now being forced to repay money, though they do not yet face the sort of 'sudden stop' in funding that typically leads to a violent crisis.

The BIS said cross-border loans fell by $52bn in the first quarter, chiefly due to deleveraging by Chinese companies. It estimated that capital outflows from China reached $109bn in the first quarter, a foretaste of what may have happened in August after the dollar-peg was broken.



Credit in Emerging Asia has jumped fourfold since 2000 to $25 trillion

China and the emerging economies were able to crank up credit after the Lehman crisis and act as a shock absorber, but there is no region left in the world with much scope for stimulus if anything goes wrong now.


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The venerable BIS - the so-called 'bank of central bankers' - was the only global body to warn repeatedly and loudly before the Lehman crisis that the system was becoming dangerously unstable.

It has acquired a magisterial authority, frequently clashing with the International Monetary Fund and the big central banks over the wisdom of super-easy money.

Mr Borio said investors have come to count on central banks to keep the game going but engenders moral hazard and is ultimately wishful thinking. "Financial markets have worryingly come to depend on central banks’ every word and deed,” he said.

A disturbing feature of the latest scare over China is a "shift in perceptions in the power of policy", a polite way of saying that investors have suddenly begun to question whether the emperor is wearing any clothes after all following the botched intervention in the Shanghai stock market and the severing of the dollar exchange peg in August.

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