Tag Archives: Yields

New Age Fiscal Stimulus Is Unprecedented — And Ominous, by John Rubino

Posted on August 4, 2018 | Leave a comment

Governments are running recession-style deficits when their economies are supposedly healthy. What happens when they run into actual recessions? From John Rubino at dollarcollapse.com:

In a normal business cycle, the economy expands for a while and businesses hire lots of new people at somewhat higher wages, generating enough tax revenue to shrink the government’s budget deficit – and in rare cases produce a surplus. So, for a while, the government borrows less money.

Not this time. The current recovery is nearly ten years old and the labor market is so tight that desperate companies are trying all kinds of new tricks to attract workers – including higher wages.

Yet the US just announced its intention to borrow $1.3 trillion in this fiscal year, the most since the depths of the Great Recession.

And this isn’t a one-shot deal. Trillion-dollar deficits are now projected for as far as the eye can see:

US projected budget deficts new age fiscal

What does this mean? The US has decided that since we’ve borrowed a lot of money in the past and are still here, debt must not matter. Voters don’t care, the markets don’t care, so why not spend money we don’t have on cool stuff in the here-and-now. A new generation of super-weapons? Sure. A wall across 3,000 miles of southern border, check. Tax cuts for people who already more than they’re able to spend? Why not?

But here’s the problem – or the short-term one, anyhow: Using debt to push an expansion beyond its natural lifetime (this one is approaching the longest ever) makes the imbalances that normally end expansions much, much worse. The aforementioned labor shortage, for instance, will only become more extreme if the economy keeps growing. Interest rates, already rising, will keep going up.

10-year Treasury note yield new age fiscal

To continue reading: New Age Fiscal Stimulus Is Unprecedented — And Ominous

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Hilarity in NIRP Zone: Italian 2-Year Yield Still Near 0%, as New Government Proposes Haircut for Creditors and Alternate Currency, Markets on “Knife Edge”, by Wolf Richter

Posted on May 21, 2018 | 1 comment

The two parties that have formed a coalition government in Italy have a program that could well blow up Italian debt, and take the ECB and EU with it. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

The ECB’s Negative Interest Rate Policy has been the funniest monetary joke ever.

The distortions in the European bond markets are actually quite hilarious, when you think about them, and it’s hard to keep a straight face.

“Italian assets were pummeled again on mounting concern over the populist coalition’s fiscal plans, with the moves rippling across European debt markets,” Bloomberg wrote this morning, also trying hard to keep a straight face. As Italian bonds took a hit, “bond yields climbed to the highest levels in almost three years, while the premium to cover a default in the nation’s debt was the stiffest since October,” it said. “Investors fret the anti-establishment parties’ proposal to issue short-term credit notes – so-called ‘mini-BOTs’ – will lead to increased borrowing in what is already one of Europe’s most indebted economies.”

This comes on top of a proposal by the new coalition last week that the ECB should forgive and forget €250 billion in Italian bonds that it had foolishly bought.

The proposals by a government for a debt write-off, and the issuance of short-term credit notes as a sort of alternate currency are hallmarks of a looming default and should cause Italian yields to spike into the stratosphere, or at least into the double digits.

And so Italian government bonds fell, and the yield spiked today, adding to the prior four days of spiking. But wait…

Five trading days ago, the Italian two-year yield was still negative -0.12%. In other words, investors were still payingthe Italian government – whose new players are contemplating a form of default – for the privilege of lending it money. And now, the two-year yield has spiked to a positive but still minuscule 0.247% at the moment. By comparison, the US Treasury two-year yield is 2.57% over 10 times higher!

Here is the hilarious chart of the spiking Italian yield from the negative into the positive:

To continue reading: Hilarity in NIRP Zone: Italian 2-Year Yield Still Near 0%, as New Government Proposes Haircut for Creditors and Alternate Currency, Markets on “Knife Edge”

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Here’s Why All Pension Funds Are Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on May 27, 2016 | Leave a comment

The title may seem overly dramatic, but unfortunately it’s not. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

There are limits on what the Fed can do when this bubble bursts, as it inevitably will, as surely as night follows day.

It’s no secret that virtually every pension fund is dead man walking, doomed by central banks’ imposition of low yields on safe investments, i.e. Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP).

Given that both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal have covered the impossibility of pension funds achieving their expected returns, this reality cannot be a surprise to anyone in a leadership role.

Many unhappy returns: Pension funds and endowments are too optimistic

Public Pension Funds Roll Back Return Targets: Few managers count on returns of 8%-plus a year anymore; governments scramble to make up funding

Here’s problem #1 in a nutshell: the average public pension fund still expects to earn an average annual return of 7.69%, year after year, decade after decade.

This is roughly triple the nominal (not adjusted for inflation) yield on a 30-year Treasury bond (about 2.65%). The only way any fund manager can earn 7.7% or more in a low-yield environment is to make extremely high risk bets that consistently pay off.

This is like playing one hand after another in a casino and never losing. Sorry, but high risk gambling doesn’t work that way: the higher the risk, the bigger the gains; but equally important, the bigger the losses when the hot hand turns cold.

Here’s problem #2 in a nutshell: in the good old days before the economy (and pension funds) became dependent on debt-fueled asset bubbles for their survival, pension fund managers expected an average annual return of 3.8%–less than half the current expected returns.

In the good old days, the needed returns could be generated by investing in safe income-producing assets–high-quality corporate bonds, Treasury bonds, etc. The risk of losing any of the fund’s capital was extremely low.

Now that the expected returns have more than doubled while the yield on safe investments has plummeted, fund managers must take risks (i.e. chase yield) that can easily wipe out major chunks of the fund’s capital if the bubble du jour bursts.

Here’s problem #3 in a nutshell: everyone who rode the great bubble of 1994 – 2000 (including pension funds) soon reckoned 10%+ annual returns on equities was The New Normal, so expecting 7.5% – 8% annual returns seemed downright prudent.

When that bubble burst, decimating everyone still holding equities, the Federal Reserve promptly inflated two new bubbles: one in stocks and another in housing. Once again, everyone who rode these two bubbles up (including pension funds) minted hefty profits year after year.

This seemed to confirm that The New Normal included the occasional spot of bother (a.k.a. a severe market crash), but the Federal Reserve would quickly ride to the rescue and inflate a new bubble.

To continue reading: Here’s Why All Pension Funds Are Doomed, Doomed, Doomed

 

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