Source: China Securities Network
In the last two months, the prices of commodities represented by the black sector have continued to rise, and prices of iron ore, steel, coking coal, coke and some non-ferrous metals have continued to rise. In the current "supply side reform" continues to deepen, and financial funds "off virtual to reality" gradually compacted in the background, rising commodity prices caused widespread concern. Is commodity price inflation sustained for the past two months? The author thinks that we can pay attention to the following aspects.
First, the interest rate policy, as a total policy, can not solve the problem of rising commodity prices. At present, the supply side reforms and economic restructuring initial progress, endogenous growth momentum continues to improve, but the "deleveraging" and "anti bubble" task is still heavy, "deleveraging" target will make economic growth highlights the pressure, increase the probability of regional and industry financial risk, the requirements of monetary policy to prevent the risk neutral. The author believes that relying on tightening interest rates to "curb bubbles" more harm than good. Tightening interest rates may not be effective in suppressing asset price bubbles, because the overall monetary tightening will not solve the structural asset price bubble problem. In addition, under the background of supply side reform, the tightening interest rate policy can easily raise the benchmark cost of the real economy and worsen the financing environment of the real economy.
From the nature of the interest rate policy, the policy as a total, in the rise and fall of the channel, on the real economy and asset prices will show a different regulation effect on the real economy, often poor effect on asset prices is very sensitive. From the characteristics of the financial assets and the real economy, compared with the real economy investment, the financial assets have the following characteristics: first, the liquidity is good. For example, standardized financial products, stocks, commodities, futures and so on. Second, the expected function is obvious, it is easy to form "herd" to follow the trend. Third, compared with the real economy, it does not require too much technological innovation. Since financial assets are closer to money than real economic assets, money is more likely to flow into financial assets. Arguably, the financial asset shall be attached to the real economy, but because of factors to support the real long-term economic growth will take some time, in technological innovation, institutional change, land supply and demand have not fundamentally changed, the currency more easily into the financial characteristics of strong assets, is in the balance of financial assets and real assets risk after the earnings ratio selection results.
Second, strong regulation is a necessary and effective means to curb the rising prices of commodities. There are three causes of inflation: first, demand driven, two is supply driven, and three is expected to promote. In the past two months, there have been both demand pull factors and supply side reform factors in the rising prices of commodity prices, which are more expected to promote. The pull of demand side mainly benefited from the inertia influence of the real estate investment and infrastructure investment, and the supply side mainly benefited from the influence of supply side reform on excess capacity reduction. As the demand side and the supply side continued to test the structural increase production, whether it is the demand side factors or supply side factors can become the reason of rising commodity prices, while the expected factors easily become commodity prices continued to rise in the short-term push. As interest rates rise, it is hard to crack down on commodity speculators in an extensive way in response to the rise in commodity prices. Therefore, the expected price increases, only by relying on strong supervision can receive good results.
At the same time, in the field of financial supervision, financial supervision, which has lasted for several months, has carried out a comprehensive management of market chaos from the perspective of the money supply. At present, the banking financial institutions balance of financial products accumulated reduced by 1 trillion and 900 billion yuan, 6 at the end of financial products balance of 28 trillion and 400 billion yuan. Financial products balance growth fell to single digits, representing a substantial decline of 35 percentage points over the same period last year. In particular, interbank financing decreased by 2 trillion yuan compared with the beginning of the year, with the most obvious reduction in interbank financing. An appropriate reduction in the rate of return of funds and the pace of money flow is conducive to the cooling of commodity speculation.
Third, judging from the experience of past economic cycles, commodity prices are not sustainable. From a historical point of view, the present economic situation is similar to that of China's economy from deflation to slow recovery in 1999 -2002. In the next few years, the pattern of low aggregate demand and overcapacity is unlikely to change fundamentally. Economic growth can not be the same as before. Once it picks up, it will continue to rise and achieve consecutive years of high growth. In the "L" type of economic growth process, the author believes that although there is no lack of CPI rise situation, but as authoritative people said, the economic movement is in the long "L" type under the small "W" type. This trend is mainly due to passive inventory and demand driven active replenishment caused by inventory, coupled with extreme weather impact on agricultural prices. In the long "L" - type background, the upward pressure on prices does exist, but there has been no demand side long-term sustained pull.
Fourth, the global economic environment does not provide the environment in which commodity prices continue to rise. Federal Reserve interest rate conference July summary statement, the U.S. inflation rate is lower than expected, resulting in the Fed interest rate hike is expected to greatly weaken. The European and Japanese central bank's interest rate meeting statement also showed that the contraction was not as optimistic as the market expected. Even in Britain, such as the euro zone inflation expectations in a strong case did not shrink the table to put forward a clear timetable, this shows that the European Central Bank, the Bank of England or to the economic growth as the main target, not the level of inflation as the most important consideration