Tag Archives: debt

VIX plunges under 14. Mr. Market banishes all thoughts of bear.

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This has been an extremely dramatic decline, from 22 to 13.9 in one trading week.

Previous drops under 14 in recent years have been followed by limited upside in stocks and an increased incidence of significant declines.

This week’s action seems to be based on relief that Congress has come to terms on the budget. Never mind that taxes are going up for everyone (payroll tax “holiday” ends), and that no progress was made on spending, not even so-called “cuts” to the rate of growth.

Side note on the budget:

High inflation remains baked into the cake for the coming years, just as it appeared in the later years of the secular bear markets of the 1910s, 1930s-40s, and 1966-1982. This is not just because the government is running trillion+ deficits without end, because the Fed has tripled its balance sheet and the monetary base in just four years.

When enough bad debt has been written off for lending to start back up in earnest, the upswing of the multi-generational interest rate cycle will have severe repurcussions for the budget. The effects will be greater because the US Treasury is not taking advantage of low long-term rates, but issuing mostly shorter-term notes.

Note that I was a rare bull on Treasuries going into the last debt crisis. That is no longer the case, but I’m not necessarily bearish on them just yet.

Why not sell German bonds?

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The German 30 year bond is yielding 2.8%:

bloomberg.com

The US 30 year bond is yielding the same:

Yahoo Finance

There is no margin of safety in Germany debt against the strong likelihood that the country will be forced (by Merkel and other banker tools) to absorb the losses of the rest of Europe.

Of course, there is no margin in safety in US bonds either at this price, certainly not enough to compensate for the probability of trillion dollar deficits forever. I expect yields to stay low through this cyclical bear market, but not much beyond that. Bonds will continue to be a good short at times when they are overbought, and we may be approaching such a time.

Kyle Bass and Hugh Hendry on shorting Japan

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Two good interviews here with these fund managers.

EDIT: The Bloomberg interview of Kyle Bass is no longer playing, and I can’t find it on youtube, so I’ll just post a couple of other links:
All I could find was this on his new fund:
http://dealbreaker.com/2011/04/want-to-invest-in-japan-kyle-bass-has-a-fund-for-that/
Here he is talking inflation last October:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYIBf4_GMw

Hugh Hendry on the rationale for shorting Japanese corporate credit (extremely low yields, overexpansion, China crash & contagion)

FYI, I think talk of inflation is still premature, since there is still too much credit to be liquidated before currency creation overwealms credit destruction. Significant inflation is more likely to appear towards 2020 than 2012, and we could easily see another episode of deflation in the next year or two.

Inflation, deflation & the dollar – where do we stand?

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We have had inflation since late 2009, using my favored definition of inflation as an increase in money supply and credit from Mish. By the way, commodity prices change with the speculative whims of of the financial markets, and are not a good definition of inflation (commodities fell from 1980 to 2000, as we experienced credit & monetary inflation and the price level doubled).

Since 2007, the monetary base has of course soared (see below), but in 2008 and 2009 its increase was overwhelmed by the decrease in private debt (marked-to-market), and the mood of risk-aversion. Since then defaults have eased and new debt issuance has grown, so we have had significant inflation.

Monetary base:

shadowstats.com

Monetary Aggregates:

shadowstats.com

The world is still laden with too much debt to sustain, so we will likely be back into deflation and de-risking before long. The following debtors in particular have yet to have their come-to-Jesus moments:

  • US cities & states (muni-bonds)
  • Canadian and Australian homeowners (record high prices, prices too high relative to incomes and rents, absurd loan-to-value ratios).
  • Several European nations (Portugal, Spain, Italy, much of Eastern Europe). Actually even Greece and Ireland will have to default before long, since their bailouts were just extensions and added to their debt.

The Kondratieff cycle is not perfect, but its main point is that debt cycles are generational, since they have as much to do with attitudes as with numbers. The deflation/de-leveraging phase (winter) can last over a decade, and this one certainly looks like it will.

Previous recent generations were as follows, off the top of my head:

  • Winter: 1929-1940 (decrease in debt, falling assets, low interest rates, falling to stable prices)
  • Spring: 1940-1966 (early debt growth, rising assets, rising interest rates, moderately rising prices)
  • Summer: 1966-1982 (continued debt growth, falling assets, high interest rates, rapidly rising prices)
  • Autumn: 1982-2007 (rapid debt growth, rapidly rising assets, falling interest rates, slowly rising prices)
  • Winter: 2007- (decrease in debt, falling assets, low interest rates, falling to stable prices)

The dates are approximate – some say that winter began in 2000 when we first faced deflation. Also, all nations are not in sync. Japan went into winter in 1990, and is still in it despite massive and repeated central bank printing.  What clears the way for spring is the reduction in debt, and the west is making the same mistake that we criticised the Japanese for making, propping up failed institutions and not allowing the market to clear.

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Bonus chart: US dollar index since 1985 – in classic form, by the time everyone started worrying about a dollar crash (2007), it had already happened.

shadowstats.com


Despite its central bank’s profligate ways, the Japan’s currency has risen dramatically since the 1990s. Don’t count the dollar out just yet. This chart shows yen per dollar (downward slope = rising yen):

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Taleb video: credit crunch not black swan, moral hazard now worse

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From Bloomberg:

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Some great comments on the OMB (“lying on their forecasts”), Geithner (“who has a mortage on a house not far from mine… who didn’t understand risk and real estate prices”), Summers (“uses wrong mathematics in his papers” and has “systemic arrogance”), and Bernanke (“the one who crashed the plane”).

He has praise for David Cameron, whom he thinks understands how to solve the crisis.

Plenty of fodder for inflationists and bond bears here: Hard assets like metals and agricultural land would be a good way to protect value. Forget the stock market and most real estate.

Does anybody, such as professors, now understand the issues he raises? No. Don’t go to business school, but if you go, don’t take any business class that has equations in it: “it’s all bogus.”

Listen to Mish: Public unions and their pensions have bankrupted your city and state.

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I don’t care where you live, odds are that your local politicians have put you and your fellow taxpayers on the hook for unpayable quantities of debt, mostly to fund government salaries and benefits that are way out of line with the private sector. This is a huge issue, and the only people who cover it in detail are the blogger Mish Shedlock and author Stephen Greenhut.

This is exactly what has happened in Greece and the rest of the GIPSI states in Europe, and for that matter the US Treasury since FDR introduced the Keynesian the welfare/stimulus state to those shores.

The only ethical solution to the problem is a swift, honest default. Public debt is a racket, the advance sale of stolen goods (interest, extorted at gunpoint) and just another capital transfer from producers to lazy government workers, politicians, bankers, government contractors and other moochers. The alternative to default is a slow death by debt slavery, all to prop up a corrupt system that will fail in the end anyway.

As Murray Rothbard responded to the idea that public debt is ok because “we owe it to ourselves,” the problem is “who’s the we, and who’s the ourselves?”

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See more here: Default, Greece, Default

Murray Rothbard on repudiating the public debt (mises.org)

Strikes and nonsense from Greek unions.

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From Bloomberg:

Striking Greek workers shut down transport and tried to storm parliament as lawmakers passed 4.8 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in budget cuts, including wage reductions, needed to trim the region’s biggest budget deficit.

Police with riot shields fired tear gas at demonstrators outside parliament in Athens today as lawmakers approved the measures, which Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said will show European Union allies and investors that Greece is making good on its deficit pledges. Socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou has a 10-seat majority in the legislature.

“We didn’t create this crisis but now we have to pay for it,” said Manthos Adamakis, who was protesting with other catering workers outside the five-star Grande Bretagne Hotel on Syntagma Square in downtown Athens.

Tram, rail, subway and bus services shut in Athens and other cities as employees rallied against cuts to bonuses and holiday payments. A walk out by air-traffic controllers forced the cancellation of all 58 flights to and from Athens International Airport between midday and 4 p.m. and the rescheduling of another 135, according to a spokeswoman.

“We didn’t create this crisis but now we have to pay for it,” the union member says! Of course they created it, by striking and threatening strikes to demand raise after raise with ever greater benefits. Unions are paying for none of it — their fellow citizens are. And how screwy is the Greek economy that the government sets the wages of hotel caterers, if that is indeed the case?

Most Greeks oppose plans to cut wages and increase value- added tax, according to the first opinion poll published since the austerity moves were announced on March 3.

Seventy-two percent of 530 people surveyed by Public Issue for Skai Television said they disagreed with a drop in bonus- vacation payments, while 68 percent opposed a value-added tax increase. Sixty-two percent said Greece will see social unrest in the next year, according to the poll broadcast yesterday.

The additional budget cuts aim to save 1.7 billion euros through a 30 percent reduction to three bonus-salary payments to civil servants, a 7 percent overall decrease in wages at wider public-sector companies and a pension freeze. The reductions are accompanied by an increase to 21 percent from 19 percent in the main VAT tax as well as in alcohol and tobacco duties.

Further Strikes

Teachers are also striking, closing some schools, and workers at the Public Power Corp SA, the country’s biggest electricity company and controlled by the state, have also called a 24-hour strike today.

ADEDY, which has already held two 24-hour strikes this year after the government backtracked on pledges to grant civil servants a wage increase, is considering holding another 24-hour strike next week.

It seems like everyone in Greece is on the dole, but I believe only 20% of employment is government work.

Where are the taxpayer protests telling these extortionists to go to hell and demanding that parliament repudiate the debt? Majority or minority, the victims in this racket sure are silent. It’s as if they think the money grows on trees (or as if Greece still can print Drachmas!).

The “austerity measures” and tax hikes are sure to fail. The debt is simply unpayable, so default is the only option if Germany is not willing to bail out Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and maybe even France. What are the odds of that? What happens in those volitile, socialist, economically ignorant countries if the government gravy train dries up? We haven’t seen anything yet.

Video presentation: Chanos on China’s state-sponsored bubble

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Thanks to Pej for finding this:

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Chanos relays a great quote from Milton Friedman: He was brought to watch the Chinese built a canal, and when he asked why they were using shovels and not bulldozers, he was told that machinery was being eschewed in order to create more jobs. Friedman replied with something like, “Oh, I thought you were building a canal. If it’s jobs you want, why don’t you give them spoons?”

Like the Chicago school that he founded, Friedman was great on most issues except for money. He couldn’t come to terms with the idea that the very existence of a central bank and legal tender laws create insurmountable moral hazard and will always lead to bubbles.

Ok, so how big is China’s commercial real estate bubble? Under construction right now, there are 25 square feet of office space for every person in China.

Family savings are being invested as down-payments for investments in highly-speculative developments. The bust will take care of a lot of the middle class’s much-touted savings.

Census employment nonsense

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Bloomberg is reporting that some lame-brain economists are excited about the employment boost of the 2010 census:

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.

“It’s a short-term stimulus program in which the government’s injecting money into the economy through additional paychecks,” said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, who projects that 2.5 million more Americans will be working at the end of the year. “This will support consumer income during those months.”

(cont…) The stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed in February and additional funding by Congress provided enough money to hire 1.4 million Americans in total for the census, almost three times as many as in 2000. About 160,000 were already employed last year to do preliminary work.

The Census Bureau anticipates hiring about 181,000 workers from January through March and about 971,000 in the following three months.

First Five Months

The economy may add about 700,000 jobs in May alone, mostly because of the census, Gault said. Even Maki’s more optimistic assessment of the employment outlook means the U.S. may take years to recover the 7.2 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.

“The bulk of these employees are from the low end of the income distribution; they are cash-constrained,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York who forecasts the economy will add a little more than 1 million jobs this year. “Having a paycheck is allowing them to spend in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise.”

Hiring for the census may also help lower the unemployment rate early this year, economists said, though the influence will be less than in payrolls. For example, some of the people hired may have other part-time jobs, limiting the impact on joblessness.

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This is typical mainstream Keynesian hogwash, which always supports government spending, no matter how useless or counterproductive. The less a corrupt government knows about the people who live under its rule, the better. Aside from that, in hard times wasteful programs like the Census should be completely dispensed with or postponed. For goodness’ sake, I bet a private firm could assemble better data for 1/100th the cost (if they haven’t already done so and sold it at a profit).

Keynesians never consider where the capital comes from for all of this useless employment. Capital can’t be created at will by bureaucrats. It has to be produced through intelligently orchestrated labor and saved by not consuming the fruits of that labor. This is what is stolen by the government when it taxes, prints money or issues debt to “create jobs.” It drains the economy of the savings needed to create real jobs and keeps us from building up the capital we need to grow out of depressions. This is what put the Great in the depression of the 1930s.

(Edit: checking Mish just now, I see that he posted on this same topic today)