Tag Archives: Recession

Reality Dawning, by Sven Henrich

Posted on August 15, 2019 | Leave a comment

There are all sorts of indications that a recession is coming. From Sven Henrich at northmantrader.com:

Yesterday’s announcement by the Trump administration to delay some of the new tariffs on China it just announced a few weeks ago was initially greeted with relief by equity markets across the globe. This proved to be mistake as reality is dawning and global stock markets are selling off hard just a day later on ever weakening economic data in Europe and Asia and further yield curve inversions.

Call it a major hangover as the reversal in tariffs was not coming from a position of strength, it was coming as a result of global economic reality sinking in, a reality that is making its way rapidly to US shores as well. The collapse in global yields has been a theme since October of 2018 with the US 10 year dropping to 1.6% from its October 2018 high of 3.25%, but only now that the 2 year/10 year yield curve has inverted are the official recession alarm bells ringing. Why? Because every single recession in the past 45 years has seen a 2 year/10year yield curve inversion preceding it.

To believe no recession is coming is to argue that this inversion is defying history. And indeed let’s look at history, because it is now used to argue that this yield curve inversion leaves room for further market rallies to new highs. Does it?

If history is a guide, then the answer is yes but market relevant timing can vary quite a bit and depending on how the data is framed up you can get different conclusions.

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It IS Different This Time, by Sven Henrich

Posted on June 21, 2019 | 1 comment

The crash is going to be worse than what’s happened in the past, simply because debt levels are higher. From Sven Henrich at northmantrader.com:

They’re right. It IS different this time. It’s worse. Much, much worse. What is? Everything. In terms of preparedness for the next recession that is. Debt is higher than ever, be it corporate debt, government debt, central banks balance sheets, available ammunition to deal with a new recession, wealth inequality, the social divisions and political extremes, and now trillion dollar deficits, everything points to a much more fragile system. Oh yes on paper low rates keep it all afloat, but the context is as ugly as it gets.

Here we are, the great collapse unfolding in front of us. With yesterday’s Fed meeting we witnessed a confirmed breakdown in central bank narratives over last the year, an utter capitulation to market realities that are forcing central banks to commence the new easing cycle. No, this is not a temporary little rate cut event they are promising, it’s a new cycle. The Fed yesterday offered a 3 rate cut outlook, precisely what markets had been pricing in. The Fed bowing before market demands. Give us drugs. Yes, whatever you want, you got it.

The response: An overnight collapse in yields to now below 2% on the 10 year, the lowest reading since the US election in 2016.

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Recession Signs Everywhere, by John Mauldin

Posted on April 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

You don’t have to look very hard for signs of recession. From John Mauldin at mauldineconomics.com:

This month, the Federal Reserve joined its global peers by turning decisively dovish. Jerome Powell and friends haven’t just stopped tightening. Soon they will begin actively easing by reinvesting the Fed’s maturing mortgage bonds into Treasury securities. It’s not exactly “Quantitative Easing I, II, and III,” but it will have some of the same effects.

Why are they doing this? One theory, which I admit possibly plausible, was that Powell simply caved to Wall Street pressure. The rate hikes and QT were hitting asset prices and liquidity, much to the detriment of bankers and others to whom the Fed pays keen attention. But that doesn’t truly square with his 2018 speeches and actions. The Fed’s March 20 announcement suggests more is happening.

I think two other factors are driving the Fed’s thinking. One is increasing recognition of the same slowing global growth that made other central banks turn dovish in recent months. The other is the Fed’s realization that its previous course risked inverting the yield curve, which was violently turning against its fourth-quarter expectations and possibly toward recession (see chart below, courtesy of WSJ’s “Daily Shot”). That would not have looked good in the history books, hence the backtracking.

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As The Economy Teeters On The Brink Of A Recession, U.S. Debt Levels Are Absolutely Exploding, by Michael Snyder

Posted on March 7, 2019 | 3 comments

Loaded with debt is not how an individual, company, government, or economy wants to greet a recession. From Michael Snyder at theeconomiccollapseblog.com:

We now have official confirmation that the U.S. economy has dramatically slowed down.  In recent days I have shared a whole bunch of numbers with my readers that clearly demonstrate that a new economic downturn has begun.  And even though stock prices have been rising, the numbers for the “real economy” have been depressingly bad lately.  But what we didn’t have was official confirmation from the Federal Reserve that the economy is really slowing down, but now we do.  According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, the economy is growing “at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter”…

The U.S. economy is growing at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, based on data on domestic construction spending in December released on Monday, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast model showed.

For years, the goal has been to get U.S. growth above the key 3 percent threshold, but what this forecast is telling us is that economic growth is currently at one-tenth of that level.

That is just barely above recession territory.

So when I say that we are teetering on the brink of a recession, I am not exaggerating.

We also just got some really bad news about construction spending…

Construction spending fell 0.6% in December from November, based on a seasonally adjusted annual rate, released today by the Commerce Department. Compared to December a year earlier, total construction spending inched up only 0.8% (not seasonally adjusted), the lowest growth rate since Oct 2011, coming out of the great recession.

Now we can add that to the list of all the other numbers that are telling us that very rough times are ahead.

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Could Stocks Rally Even as Parts of the Economy Are Recessionary? by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on January 7, 2019 | Leave a comment
SLL’s bet is that the stock market swoon is predictive, but we’re willing to entertain other views. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
It’s not yet clear that the stock market swoon is predictive or merely a panic attack triggered by a loss of meds.
We contrarians can’t help it: when the herd is bullish, we start looking for a reversal. When the herd turns bearish, we also start looking for a reversal.
So now that the herd is skittishly bearish, anticipating a recession, contrarians start wondering if a most hated rally is in the offing, one that would leave most punters off the bus.
The primary theme for 2019 in my view is everything accepted by the mainstream is not as it seems. Everything presented as monolithic and straightforward is fragmented, asymmetric and complex.
Take “recession.” The standard definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. But is this metric useful in such a fragmented, complex economy? What we’re seeing develop is certain sectors are already in recession, others are sliding while others are doing OK.
So the question of stocks rising or falling partly depends on which parts of the economy are most heavily weighted in the stock market. If the sectors most heavily represented by listed stocks are doing OK, then other chunks of the economy can be in freefall and stocks could still rise.

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Recession Incoming or Something Worse? 2/10 Spread Collapses, by Tom Luongo

Posted on December 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

A classic indicator of impending recession is when the yield curve inverts. In other words, short maturity bonds yield more than longer maturity bonds. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:

UPDATE: Now stocks are selling off and the 2/10 spread is less than 10 basis points.  Gold, however, refuses to sell off while the euro pulls back versus the dollar.

Mike Shedlock over at Mishtalk noted yesterday that there have been a couple of troubling inversions in the U.S. yield curve recently.  They happened in the 2/3 and 3/5 year space.

Mike went on to say that the normal recession indicator, the 2/10 spread, may not invert before the economy turns down.

For further discussion, please see First Inversion in Seven Years: Can a Recession be Far Off?

I repeat my assessment:

  • The classic recession signal that most follow is a 2-10 inversion. I doubt we see a 2-10 inversion before recession hits.
  • My call: There will not be the warning nearly everyone is waiting for

I don’t mean to rain on Mike’s parade, because I fundamentally agree with him that the Fed is raising rates into a global slow-down but the 2/10 spread is collapsing this morning pretty quickly.

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The Yield Curve Is The Economy’s Canary In A Coal Mine, by Dave Kranzler

Posted on July 8, 2018 | Leave a comment

Historically, when the yield curve inverts (interest rates are lower for long maturity debt than short maturity debt) it has not been a good omen for the economy. From Dave Krantzler at investmentresearchdynamics.com:

The economy has hit a wall and is now sliding down it. I don’t care what bullish propaganda may or may not be bubbling up in the headlines from the financial media and Wall Street, the hard numbers I look at everyday show accelerating economic weakness. The fact that my view is contrary to mainstream consensus and political propaganda reinforces my conviction that my view about the economy is correct.

As an example of the ongoing underlying systemic decay and collapse conveyed by this week’s title, it was announced that General Electric would be removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average index and replaced by Walgreen’s. GE was an original member of the index starting in 1896 and was a continuous member since  1907.

GE is an original equipment manufacturer and industrial product innovator. It’s products are used in broad array of applications at all levels of the economy globally.  It is considered a “GDP company.” GE was iconic of American innovation and economic dominance. Walgreen’s is a consumer products reseller that sells pharmaceuticals and junk. Emblematic of the entire system, GE has suffocated itself with poor management which guided the company into a cess-pool of financial leverage and hidden derivatives.

As expressed in past issues (the Short Seller’s Journal), I don’t put a lot of stock in the regional Fed economic surveys, which are heavily shaded by “hope” and “expectation” metrics that are used to inflate the overall index level. These are so-called “soft” data reports. But now even the “outlook” and “expectations” measurements are falling quickly (see last week’s Philly Fed report). The Trump “hope premium” that inflated the stock market starting in November 2016 has left the building.

Something wicked this way comes:  Notwithstanding mainstream media rationalizations to the contrary, a flattening of the yield curve always always always precedes a contraction in economic activity (aka “a recession”). Always. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise. An “inverted” yield curve occurs when short term yields exceed long term yields. When the yield curve inverts, it means something wicked is going to hit the financial and economic system.

To continue reading: The Yield Curve Is The Economy’s Canary In A Coal Mine

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The Myth that Central Banks Assure Economic Stability, by Richard M. Ebeling

Posted on June 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

Central banks promote economic instability; just check their record. From Richard M. Ebeling at fff.org:

The world has been plagued with periodic bouts of the economic rollercoaster of booms and busts, inflations and recessions, especially during the last one hundred years. The main culprits responsible for these destabilizing and disruptive episodes have been governments and their central banks. They have monopolized the control of their respective nation’s monetary and banking systems, and mismanaged them. There is really nowhere else to point other than in their direction.

Yet, to listen to some prominent and respected writers on these matters, government has been the stabilizer and free markets have been the disturber of economic order. A recent instance of this line of reasoning is a short article by Robert Skidelsky on “Why Reinvent the Monetary Wheel?” Dr. Skidelsky is the noted author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes and a leading voice on public policy issues in Great Britain.

Skidelsky: Central Banking Equals Stable Prices and Markets

He argues against those who wish to denationalize and privatize money and the monetary system. That is, he criticizes those who want to take control of money and monetary affairs out of the hands of the government, and, instead, put money and the monetary order back into the competitive, private market. He opposes those who wish to separate money from the State.

Skidelsky sees the proponents of Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrences” as “quacks and cranks.” He says that behind any privatization of the monetary system reflected in these potential forms of electronic money may be seen “the more sordid motives” of “Friedrich Hayek’s dream of a free market in money.” The famous Austrian economist had published a monograph in 1976 on theDenationalization of Money, in which Hayek insisted that governments have been the primary cause behind currency debasements and paper money inflations through the centuries up to our own times. And this could not be brought to an end without getting government out of the money controlling and the money-creating business.

In Skidelsky’s view, any such institutional change would be a disaster. As far as he is concerned, “human societies have discovered no better way to keep the value of money roughly constant than by relying on central banks to exercise control of its issue and to act directly or indirectly on the volume of credit created by the commercial banking system.”

To continue reading: The Myth that Central Banks Assure Economic Stability

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The Next Recession Will Be Devastatingly Non-Linear, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on May 23, 2018 | Leave a comment

Some people will be hurt in the next recession, some people will be slaughered, some will be unaffected, and some will be like Michael Lewis’s heroes in The Big Short—laughing all the way to the bank. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

The acceleration of non-linear consequences will surprise the brainwashed, loving-their-servitude mainstream media.
Linear correlations are intuitive: if GDP declines 2% in the next recession, and employment declines 2%, we get it: the scale and size of the decline aligns. In a linear correlation, we’d expect sales to drop by about 2%, businesses closing their doors to increase by about 2%, profits to notch down by about 2%, lending contracts by around 2% and so on.
But the effects of the next recession won’t be linear–they will be non-linear, and far more devastating than whatever modest GDP decline is registered. To paraphrase William Gibson’s insightful observation that “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed”: the recession is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed– and its effects will be enormously asymmetric.
Non-linear effects can be extremely asymmetric. Thus an apparently mild decline of 2% in GDP might trigger a 50% rise in the number of small businesses closing, a 50% collapse in new mortgages issued and a 10% increase in unemployment.
Richard Bonugli of Financial Repression Authority alerted me to the non-linear dynamic of the coming slowdown. I recently recorded a podcast with Richard on one sector that will cascade in a series of non-linear avalanches once the current asset bubbles pop and the current central-bank-created “recovery” falters under its staggering weight of debt, malinvestment and speculative excess.
The Intensifying Pension Crisis (37-minute podcast)
The core dynamic of the next recession is the unwind of all the extremes:extremes in debt expansion, in leverage, in the explosion of debt taken on by marginal borrowers, in malinvestment, in debt-fueled speculation, in emerging market debt denominated in US dollars, in financial repression, in political corruption–the list of extremes that have stretched the system to the breaking point is almost endless.
Public-sector pensions are just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the gains in equities and bonds that have nurtured the illusion that public-sector pension funds are solvent and can be funded by further tax increases reverse into losses?

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Next Stop, Recession: The Financial Meteor Storm Is Headed Our Way, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on August 25, 2017 | 1 comment

Winter is coming (Charles Hugh Smith uses a meteor storm analogy; SLL will go with Game of Thrones). From Smith at oftwominds.com:

Many of those about to be vaporized did not grasp the fragility of the “prosperity” they assumed was both solid and permanent.
Business-cycle recessions are not just inevitable, they are necessary to flush bad debt and marginal investments/projects from the system.
The next recession–which I suggested yesterday has just begun–will be more than a business-cycle downturn; it will be a devastating meteor storm that destroys huge chunks of the economy while leaving other sectors virtually untouched.
The dynamic that’s about to play out is simple: wages for the bottom 95% have gone nowhere for 17 years, while costs have soared far above official inflation for everyone exposed to real-world costs.
We have filled the widening gap between stagnant household income and rising expenses with debt. This stop-gap works for a while, but eventually the cost of servicing debt consumes the entire budget, leaving little to nothing to save or invest.
Absent savings and incentives for productive investment, productivity falters once productivity falters, wealth is no longer being generated or distributed widely.
After eight long years of filling the widening gap with borrowed money, the jig is up: the returns on adding debt have diminished to zero, and the financialization games that were supposed to be temporary emergency measures are now permanent.
Like a field exposed to toxins for 8 long years, all this permanent monetary and fiscal stimulus has weakened the productive economy while causing the most destructive weeds to flourish.
When credit expansion stops, the effect is like a meteor storm: marginal borrowers and lenders crater, and every sector that depends on marginal borrowers and lenders for sales and profits also craters.
Those sectors that are heavily in debt and dependent on marginal borrowers for sales implode once sales slump. As these enterprises default, all the lenders who issued this commercial debt also blow up.
Every node of the economy that is heavily indebted and dependent on marginal borrowers for sales, profits and taxes will be struck by a financial meteor. Every sector that avoided debt and sales funded by debt will escape with only light damage.

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