Interest rates are collapsing in the bond market, which is a sign that investors are very worried.
And this snippet from FT.com. September doesn't have a good history for stocks, so this could be an interesting month.
Friday 21.15 BST. News of the resignation of a top European central banker sent global markets sharply lower, as fears rise that efforts to aid Greece and other struggling continental economies may unravel.
The FTSE All-World equity index is down 3 per cent following a 2.5 per cent drop in the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index, as markets in Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain fell more than 6 per cent.
"I think it's going to take a major dislocation in the bond market, a real conflagration on the part of the people who have to buy this debt, before the country wakes up."-- David Stockman, Budget Director, Reagan White House
When discussing central planning, as manifested by the policies of the world's central banks, a recurring theme is the upcoming reversion to the mean: whether in economic data, in financial statistics, or, as Dylan Grice points out in his latest piece, in luck. While the mandate of every institution, whose existence depends on the perpetuation of the status quo, is to extend the amplitude of all such deviations from the trendline median, there is only so much that hope, myth and endless paper dilution can achieve. And alas for the US, whose 3.5% bond yields are, according to Grice, primarily due to "150% luck", the mean reversion is about to come crashing down with a vengeance after 30 years of rubber band stretching. The primary reason is that while the official percentage of interest expenditures as a portion of total government revenues is roughly 10% based on official propaganda data, the real number, factoring in gross interest expense, and assuming a reversion to the historic average debt yield of 5.8%, means that right now, the US government is already spending 30% of its revenues on gross interest payments! And what is worse, is that the chart has entered the parabolic phase. Once the convergence of theoretical and real rates happens, and all those who wonder who will buy US debt get their answer (which will happen once the 10 Year is trading at 6% or more), the inevitability of the US transition into the next phase of the "Weimar" experiment will become all too obvious. Because once the abovementioned percentage hits 50%, it is game over.
Below Grice lays out the framework for the disinflation delusion that has permeated the minds of all economists to the point where divergence from the mean is now taken as gospel:
What drove the disinflation of the last thirty years? Politicians would say it was because they granted their central banks independence. But the pioneering experiment here didn’t take place until ten years into the disinflation, when the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989 gave that central bank the sole mandate to pursue price stability. Macroeconomists would site breakthroughs in our understanding. Except there haven’t been any. Today’s hard money/soft money debate is identical to the Monetarist/Keynesian debate of the 1970s, the US bimetallism agitation of the late 19th century, and the Currency vs Banking School controversy in the UK during the 1840s.Ireland is probably the best example of an entity for which the cognitive dissonance between an imaginary desired universe and a violent snapback to reality has finally manifested itself after a 30 year absence:
Was it the de-unionisation of the workforce? The quiescence of oil markets since the two extreme shocks of the 70s? The dumping of cheap labour from Eastern Europe, China and India onto the global labour market? Technology enhanced productivity growth? Or maybe it was just because the CPI numbers are so heavily manipulated?
Maybe it was all of these things. Maybe it was none of these things … for the little that it’s worth, my theory is that no-one has an adequate theory, other than it being down to the usual combination of luck and judgment on the part of policymakers … or about 150% luck. The problem is luck mean-reverts. The mammoth fiscal challenges (see chart below) currently being shirked by the US political class suggest that mean-reversion is imminent.
Ireland provides a good illustration. Today it’s going through a real and wrenching depression - there is no other word for it and it is heartbreaking to watch – partly because the terms of its bailout are so onerous. And what may well be the seeds of a future popular backlash against the euro can be detected in the election of Fine Gael on a ticket of renegotiating the bailout terms, which currently require them to pay a 5.8% rate of interest.Unlike Ireland, the US still has the luxury of being able to stick its head deep in the sand of denial.
Look at the following chart showing two hundred years or so of US government borrowing costs. Two hundred years is a lengthy period of time. There have been economic booms and financial panics, localized wars and world wars, empires have risen and empires have fallen, technological change has made each successive generation’s world unrecognizable from that which preceded it. Yet government yields have remained broadly mean-reverting (and the US has been one of the best run economies over that time – other governments’ bond yields demonstrate an unpleasant historic skew towards large numbers). Coincidentally enough, the average rate of interest over that period has been around 5.8%, the rate which the new Irish government today says is ‘crippling.’And here is the math that nobody in D.C. will ever dare touch with a ten foot pole as it will confirm beyond a reasonable doubt that the US is now well on its way to monetizing its future (read: not winning)
In other words, Ireland is so indebted that it is struggling to pay a rate of interest posterity would barely yawn at. But Ireland isn’t the only one.Take the US government, for example, which currently pays around 10% of its revenues on interest payments. This doesn’t sound too bad. The problem is that those federal government interest payments are calculated net of the coupons paid into federally run programs (e.g. social security) as these are deemed ‘intragovernment transfers.’ Yet those coupons to social security are made to fund a real obligation to American citizens and as such, represent payments on a real liability. On a gross basis the US government pays out 15% of its revenues on interest payments, which makes for less comfortable reading. So the net numbers remain the most widely quoted.And where the figure gets downright ugly is if one assumes that in order to find buyers for the $4 trillion in debt over the next two years (once the Fed supposedly is out of the picture after June 30), rates revert to the mean. Which they will. What happens next is a cointoss on whether or not we enter a Weimar-style debt crunch.
Suppose the US government had to pay the 5.8% yield it has paid on average over the last two hundred years? The share of revenues spent on gross interest payments would be a staggering 30% (see chart above). If it had to pay the 6.9% it’s paid on average since WW2, those gross interest payments would account for 37% of revenues. So it’s not difficult to see the potential for a dangerously self-reinforcing spiral of higher yields straining public finances, hurting confidence in the US governments’ ability to repay without inflating, leading to higher yields, etc.Lastly, Grice makes it all too clear why we are now all screwed, and no matter how many Bernanke dog and pony shows we have, the final outcome is not a matter of if but when.
America’s political class might arrest the trend which threatens their government’s solvency (chart below). They might find a palatable solution to the healthcare system’s chronic underfunding. They might defy Churchill’s quip, and skip straight to doing the right thing. But if they don’t, such a spiral becomes a question of when and not if. And what would the Fed do then? Bernanke says the Fed “will not allow inflation to get above low and stable levels.” He says it has learned the lessons of the 1970s. He’s read the books. He can recite the theory. Yet a lifetime reading books about the Great Depression (and writing a few) didn’t help him spot the greatest credit inflation since that catastrophe any more than reading “The Ten Habits of Highly Successful People” would make him successful. It’s the doing that counts. So before lending to the US government for 3.5% over ten years, bear in mind that when it comes to a real inflation fight, not one of the Fed economists you’re betting on has ever been in one.Our advice to the good doctor and his minions (not to mention all readers), is instead of reading multitudes of history books on the depression, on Japan, or on midget tossing (for those from the SEC), is to read one book. Just one. Link here.
from NYT:
The State of Illinois is still paying off billions in bills that it got from schools and social service providers last year. Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program. States are releasing prisoners early, more to cut expenses than to reward good behavior. And in Newark, the city laid off 13 percent of its police officers last week.
While next year could be even worse, there are bigger, longer-term risks, financial analysts say. Their fear is that even when the economy recovers, the shortfalls will not disappear, because many state and local governments have so much debt — several trillion dollars’ worth, with much of it off the books and largely hidden from view — that it could overwhelm them in the next few years.
“It seems to me that crying wolf is probably a good thing to do at this point,” said Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped save New York City from bankruptcy in the 1970s.
Some of the same people who warned of the looming subprime crisis two years ago are ringing alarm bells again. Their message: Not just small towns or dying Rust Belt cities, but also large states like Illinois and California are increasingly at risk.
Municipal bankruptcies or defaults have been extremely rare — no state has defaulted since the Great Depression, and only a handful of cities have declared bankruptcy or are considering doing so.
But the finances of some state and local governments are so distressed that some analysts say they are reminded of the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown or of the debt crisis hitting nations in Europe.
Analysts fear that at some point — no one knows when — investors could balk at lending to the weakest states, setting off a crisis that could spread to the stronger ones, much as the turmoil in Europe has spread from country to country.
Mr. Rohatyn warned that while municipal bankruptcies were rare, they appeared increasingly possible. And the imbalances are so large in some places that the federal government will probably have to step in at some point, he said, even if that seems unlikely in the current political climate.
“I don’t like to play the scared rabbit, but I just don’t see where the end of this is,” he added.
Resorting to Fiscal Tricks
As the downturn has ground on, some of the worst-hit cities and states have resorted to fiscal sleight of hand to stay afloat, helping them close yawning budget gaps each year, but often at great future cost.
Few workers with neglected 401(k) retirement accounts would risk taking out second mortgages to invest in stocks, gambling that the investment gains would be enough to build bigger nest eggs and repay the loans.
But that is just what Illinois, which has been failing to make the required annual payments to its pension funds for years, is doing. It borrowed $10 billion in 2003 and used the money to invest in its pension funds. The recession sent their investment returns below their target, but the state must repay the bonds, with interest. The solution? Illinois sold an additional $3.5 billion worth of pension bonds this year and is planning to borrow $3.7 billion more for its pension funds.
It is the long-term problems of a handful of states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, that financial analysts worry about most, fearing that their problems might precipitate a crisis that could hurt other states by driving up their borrowing costs.
But it is the short-term budget woes that nearly all states are facing that are preoccupying elected officials.
Illinois is not the only state behind on its bills. Many states, including New York, have delayed payments to vendors and local governments because they had too little cash on hand to make them. California paid vendors with i.o.u.’s last year. A handful of other states, worried about their cash flow, delayed paying tax refunds last spring.
Now, just as the downturn has driven up demand for state assistance, many states are cutting back.
The demand for food stamps has been rising significantly in Idaho, but tight budgets led the state to close nearly a third of the field offices of the state’s Department of Health and Welfare, which take applications for them. As states have cut aid to cities, many have resorted to previously unthinkable cuts, laying off police officers and closing firehouses.
Those cuts in aid to cities and counties, which are expected to continue, are one reason some analysts say cities are at greater risk of bankruptcy or are being placed under outside oversight.
Next year is unlikely to bring better news. States and cities typically face their biggest deficits after recessions officially end, as rainy-day funds are depleted and easy measures are exhausted.
This time is expected to be no different. The federal stimulus money increased the federal share of state budgets to over a third last year, from just over a quarter in 2008, according to a report issued last week by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. That money is set to run out next summer. Tax collections, meanwhile, are not expected to return to their pre-recession levels for another year or two, given that the housing market and broader economy remain weak and that unemployment remains high.
Scott D. Pattison, the budget association’s director, said that for states, next year could be “the worst year of this four- or five-year downturn period.”
And few expect the federal government to offer more direct aid to states, at least in the short term. Many members of the new Republican majority in the House campaigned against the stimulus, and Washington is debating the recommendations of a debt-reduction commission.
So some states are essentially borrowing to pay their operating costs, adding new debts that are not always clearly disclosed.
Arizona, hobbled by the bursting housing bubble, turned to a real estate deal for relief, essentially selling off several state buildings — including the tower where the governor has her office — for a $735 million upfront payment. But leasing back the buildings over the next 20 years will ultimately cost taxpayers an extra $400 million in interest.
Many governments are delaying payments to their pension funds, which will eventually need to be made, along with the high interest — usually around 8 percent — that the funds are expected to earn each year.
New York balanced its budget this year by shortchanging its pension fund. And in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie deferred paying the $3.1 billion that was due to the pension funds this year.
It is these growing hidden debts that make many analysts nervous. States and municipalities currently have around $2.8 trillion worth of outstanding bonds, but that number is dwarfed by the debts that many are carrying off their books.
State and local pensions — another form of promised debt, guaranteed in some states by their constitutions — face hidden shortfalls of as much as $3.5 trillion by some calculations. And the health benefits that state and large local governments have promised their retirees going forward could cost more than $530 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office.
“Most financial crises happen in unpredictable ways, and they hit you when you’re not looking,” said Jerome H. Powell, a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center who was an under secretary of the Treasury for finance during the bailout of the savings and loan industry in the early 1990s. “This one isn’t like that. You can see it coming. It would be sinful not to do something about this while there’s a chance.”
So far, investors have bought states’ bonds eagerly, on the widespread understanding that states and cities almost never default. But in recent weeks the demand has diminished sharply. Last month, mutual funds that invest in municipal bonds reported a big sell-off — a bigger one-week sell-off, in fact, than they had when the financial markets melted down in 2008. And hedge funds are already seeking out ways to place bets against the debts of some states, with the help of their investment banks.
Of course, not all states are in as dire straits as Illinois or California. And the credit-rating agencies say that the risk of default is small. States and cities typically make a priority of repaying their bond holders, even before paying for essential services. Standard & Poor’s issued a report this month saying that the crises that states and municipalities were facing were “more about tough decisions than potential defaults.”
Change in Ratings
The credit ratings of a number of local governments have improved this year, not because their finances have strengthened somewhat, but because the ratings agencies have changed the way they analyze governments.
The new higher ratings, which lower the cost of borrowing, emphasize the fact that municipal defaults have been much rarer than corporate defaults.
This October, Moody’s issued a report explaining why it now rates all 50 states, even Illinois, as better credit risks than a vast majority of American non-financial companies.
One reason: the belief that the federal government is more likely to bail out a teetering state than a bankrupt company.
“The federal government has broadly channeled cash to all state governments during recent recessions and provided support to individual states following natural disasters,” Moody’s explained, adding that there was no way of being sure how Washington would respond to a bond default by a state, since it had not happened since the 1930s.
But some analysts fear the ratings are too sanguine, recalling that the ratings agencies also dismissed the possibility that a subprime crisis was brewing. While most agree that defaults are unlikely, they fear that as states struggle with their growing debts, investors could decide not to buy the debt of the weakest state or local governments.
That would force a crisis, since states cannot operate if they cannot borrow. Such a crisis could then spread to healthier states, making it more expensive for them to borrow, if Europe is an example.
Meredith Whitney, a bank analyst who was among the first to warn of the impact the subprime mortgage meltdown would have on banks, is warning that she sees similar problems with state and local government finances.
“The state situation reminded me so much of the banks, pre-crisis,” she said this fall on CNBC.
There are eerie similarities between the subprime debt crisis and the looming municipal debt woes. Among them:
¶Just as housing was once considered a sure bet — prices would never fall all across the country at the same time, conventional wisdom suggested — municipal bonds have long been considered an investment safe enough for grandmothers, because states could always raise taxes to pay their bondholders. Now that proposition is being tested. Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, considered bankruptcy this year because it faced $68 million in debt payments related to a failed incinerator, which is more than the city’s entire annual budget. But officials there have resisted raising taxes.
¶Much of the debt of states and cities is hidden, since it is off the books, just as the amount of mortgage-related debt turned out to be underestimated. States and municipalities often understate their pension liabilities, in part by using accounting methods that would not be allowed in the private sector. Joshua D. Rauh, an associate professor of finance at Northwestern University, and Robert Novy-Marx, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Rochester, calculated that the true unfunded liability for state and local pension plans is roughly $3.5 trillion.
¶The states and many cities still carry good ratings, and those issuing warnings are dismissed as alarmists, reminding some analysts of the lead up to the subprime crisis.
Now states are bracing for more painful cuts, more layoffs, more tax increases, more battles with public employee unions, more requests to bail out cities. And in the long term, as cities and states try to keep up on their debts, the very nature of government could change as they have less money left over to pay for the services they have long provided.
Richard Ravitch, the lieutenant governor of New York, is among those warning that states are on an unsustainable path, and that their disclosures of pension and health care obligations are often misleading. And he worries how long it can last.
“They didn’t do it with bad motives,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of them didn’t understand what they were doing. They did it because it was easier than taxing people or cutting benefits. We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we can’t do that anymore. I don’t know where that is, but I know we’re close.”
from Bloomberg:
Bond mutual funds had the biggest client withdrawals in more than two years last week as a flight from fixed-income investments accelerated.
U.S. bond funds experienced withdrawals of $8.62 billion in the week ended Dec. 15, up from $1.66 billion the week before, according to a release from the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade group. Last week's withdrawals were the largest since the week ended Oct. 15, 2008, when investors yanked $17.6 billion from bond funds.
Investors are retreating from bond funds after signs of an economic recovery and a stock market rally increased speculation that interest rates may rise. The selloff in Treasurys accelerated after the Federal Reserve last month pledged to buy $600 billion in assets to revive the economy. The 10-year note yields 3.35 percent, up from 2.49 percent Nov. 4, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Most of the money was probably pulled by institutional investors looking to lock in higher yields by buying bonds directly, rather than through funds, said Geoff Bobroff, a consultant based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.
"I would guess most retail investors are staying put because you aren't seeing the money go anywhere else," he said in a telephone interview.
Vanguard, Pimco
Removals included $3.77 billion from taxable bond funds and $4.85 billion from municipal bond funds. U.S. stock funds had withdrawals of $2.4 billion while foreign equity funds attracted $2.24 billion in the week, ICI said.
Investors put $245 billion into bond mutual funds this year through November, bringing net deposits since the end of 2007 to $636 billion, according to data from Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. Vanguard Group Inc., based in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, had deposits of $33.4 billion into its bond funds through November while Franklin Resources Inc. of San Mateo, California got $23.7 billion, Morningstar data show.
Pacific Investment Management Co., the Newport Beach, California-based firm that runs the world's biggest mutual fund, attracted $57 billion to its bond funds in the first 11 months of the year.
The $250 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, managed by Bill Gross, had its first net withdrawals in two years in November as investors pulled $1.9 billion, Morningstar reported. Pimco Total Return this month said it is expanding its policy to allow investments in equity-linked securities for the first time since 2003.
"Fixed-income has been the lifeline for a lot of these firms," Douglas Sipkin, an analyst with Ticonderoga Securities in New York, said in an interview earlier this month.
Pimco this month raised its forecast for U.S. economic growth next year as policy makers pump a "massive amount" of stimulus into the economy, Chief Executive Officer Mohamed El-Erian said.
from UK Telegraph:
from Financial Times:
The US state of California on Wednesday said it would restructure upcoming bond issues as it tries to raise $14 billion in the middle of a sell-off in the municipal bond market.
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