John Mauldin's Outside the Box : The Fed

Quarterly Review and Outlook - Third Quarter 2009

John Mauldin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:32:18 GMT

I look forward at the beginning of every quarter to receiving the Quarterly Outlook from Hoisington Investment Management. They have been prominent proponents of the view that deflation is the problem, stemming from a variety of factors, and write about their views in a very clear and concise manner. This quarter's letter is no exception, where they once again delve into the history books to bring up fresh and relevant lessons for today. This is a must read piece.

Hoisington Investment Management Company (www.hoisingtonmgt.com) is a registered investment advisor specializing in fixed income portfolios for large institutional clients. Located in Austin, Texas, the firm has over $4-billion under management, composed of corporate and public funds, foundations, endowments, Taft-Hartley funds, and insurance companies. And now let's jump right in to the essay.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Quarterly Review and Outlook - Third Quarter 2009

Ponzi Finance

The Federal Reserve reported that as of June 30, 2009 total U.S. debt was $52.8 trillion. Total U.S. debt includes government, corporate and consumer debt. Importantly, however, it does not include a few trillion in "off balance sheet" financing, contingent unfunded pension plans for corporate and state and local governments, or unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government for such items as Medicare, Social Security and other programs. Currently GDP stands at $14.2 trillion, so there is approximately $3.73 in debt for every dollar of output in the United States, a level unprecedented in our history (Chart 1). Normally, debt levels as a percent of GDP would be uninteresting and immaterial; however, the current level of debt is unique in two ways. First, the asset side of the balance sheet purchased by the debt is falling in price. Second, the money that was borrowed to purchase those assets was often fraudulently expended. Neither the borrower nor the lender really expected the debt to be serviced. Rather, each party expected the asset price to rise extinguishing the debt.

This type of financial arrangement was correctly analyzed by the famous American economist Hyman Minsky in his paper, "Financial Instability Hypothesis", in which he described three phases of debt financing. The first is "hedge finance", where the lender expects a return on both principal and interest. The second is "speculative finance" where the lender expects to get interest on the loan but perhaps not the principal. The third case, where the lender expects neither the principal nor interest to be returned, is referred to as "ponzi finance". This was typified in the last business cycle by loans issued without documentation, no down payment home loans, extremely low cap rates on commercial real estate, and the high leverage borrowing ratio of private equity funds. Even ponzi finance works as long as asset prices are rising. But once the bubble is pricked, the debtor is left with declining asset values that preclude the rollover of their obligations.

Presently, in this worst of all post-war recessions we are witnessing the collapse of asset prices that were inflated by the speculation of earlier years. The aftermath of that speculation and its impact on the economy has been thoroughly studied prior to our present business cycle by the economists of yesteryear who marveled at the mania in the collective mindset of private citizens and their elected representatives who produced such bubbles. The most famous of these economists was Irving Fisher (1867-1947), who in 1933 wrote about this problem of over-indebtedness (Irving Fisher, 1933, Econometrica, "The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions"). He stated flatly that over-indebtedness was the difference between normal business cycles (recessions), which occur frequently through "over-production, inventory misjudgment, or commodity price fluctuations" and extreme business cycle fluctuations (depressions). Based on his analysis of the great depressions of 1837, 1873, and 1929 he outlined a pattern of economic developments that will take place when the debt cycle is broken. Seemingly old news, but it is interesting to apply his sequence of events to today's economic developments as there are disturbing similarities.

A Downward Spiral

Fisher posited that debt liquidation leads to distress selling, contracting bank deposits and declining velocity of money, all of which contribute to the fall in price levels. This accurately describes today's circumstances. Distress selling is rampant, with home foreclosures reaching all-time highs. Additionally, rapidly rising foreclosures in commercial real estate are causing the closing of financial institutions and the liquidation of their portfolios. Money supply (M2), an imperfect measure of bank deposits, is essentially flat over the last six months even though the monetary base is 100% higher than it was a year ago (Chart 2). Further, the velocity of M2 has contracted at a 12.7% rate over the past two years. The Personal Consumption Expenditure Deflator (goods purchased by consumers) has fallen from a 2.7% growth rate 12 months ago to a yearly increase of only 1.3% presently, and appears to be heading for a zero reading in 2010. GDP has recorded its greatest contraction since the 1930's, and probably is not yet at its lowest level for this cycle.

Fisher then noticed that this distress selling would lead to a fall in the net worth of businesses, a decline in profits, and a reduction in employment. Fisher may have been talking about 1929 and the 1800's, but that is precisely our present situation. Despite a 19% gain in stock prices this year, the S&P 500 has declined about 30% from its peak and stands lower than it was a decade earlier. Corporate profits are down approximately 13% on a year over year basis, and in 2008 S&P 500 profits fell for the first time since 1933. The net worth of hundreds of banks and other large corporations has fallen below zero, with some surviving only because of a massive rescue effort by the federal government. Despite these efforts, consumer net worth has fallen, price levels of homes are down about 30% from their peak levels, and business net worth has been impaired by an almost 39% decline in commercial real estate from its peak levels. Industrial production is down 13.3% since its peak, the largest 20 month decline in the post war period (Chart 3). Including potential revisions, the U.S. has lost eight million jobs in this recession, and currently 17% of the labor force is either underemployed, partially employed, or out of work seeking employment.

Fisher seems to be not so historical as prescient. He states that all the above problems create disturbances in the rate of interest, particularly the fall of nominal money rates and the rise of real interest rates. The federal funds rate is now effectively zero, and yet with the steady downward movement in price indices, real interest rates are rising. This, of course, is of concern to debtors.

The uncomfortable conclusion of Fisher's analysis is that major business cycle fluctuations are, in fact, caused by over-indebtedness and the fall in asset prices. Our present situation appears to mirror the exact sequence of events that have occurred in previous depressions. This suggests that our current "great recession" may morph into a more serious and elongated downward business cycle.

The Impossible Promise

The federal government's promise to extricate the U.S. economy from this recession involves more spending (increasing public debt) and more subsidies for consumers, such as car rebates and home buying incentives (more private debt). In other words, more debt is supposed to solve the problem of over-indebtedness. The truth is that this policy merely indentures its citizens further without providing any income for repayment of debt. In previous letters we have discussed the fact that the government spending multiplier is zero (read Professor Robert Barro's book, Macroeconomics - a Modern Approach, p. 370). This means there is no long term income benefit from stimulus programs. According to the latest academic research, the most recent $800 billion stimulus plan will boost economic activity in the short run, but will surely depress economic activity over time. The government problem is complicated by the fact that the tax multiplier is 3, meaning that a 1% change in taxes will change GDP by about 3% over time. More recent research (Barro & Redlick, September 2009, "NBER Working Paper 15369") suggests that a 1% cut in the marginal tax rate would raise GDP in the ensuing year by 0.6%. With the deficit rising due to a zero spending multiplier, the tendency will be to try to raise taxes to pay for this higher level of expenditures, which will further depress aggregate spending and output.

From a fiscal policy perspective the outlook for economic growth appears to be one of stagnation for several years due to the size of the federal debt, which is expected to rise 35.7% from 2008 levels to 76.5% of GDP over the next ten years according to the Office of Management and Budget (Chart 4). This exercise in government spending is, of course, an exact replica of the Japanese experience from 1989 to the present. Their debt to GDP ratios have gone from about 50% in 1988 to about 178% today, and yet their nominal GDP is no higher than it was 17 years ago, and their employment stands at twenty year ago levels. It is somewhat unsettling that as of the last employment report the United States employed 131 million people, a level that was first reached in 2000, which means the United States has had no net job gains for almost ten years. Indeed, it appears that the fiscal chain around the free market neck is sufficiently onerous to restrain growth for several years. The promise of the government to revive growth through increased indebtedness is, indeed, an impossible promise.

The Hesitant Fed

As Fisher stated, the write-down of debt and distress selling tends to destroy money deposits and lower the velocity of money. Despite the historical evidence of that fact, our current Fed authorities appear to be oblivious to the lessons of the past. Their initial reaction to the liquidity crisis has to be applauded for their heavy work in insuring the liquidity of the financial system. Similarly, the expansion of their bank balance sheet to $2.1 trillion from $1 trillion was the precise reaction needed to counter the emerging deflation of asset prices. However, their actions increased inflationary expectations, and they have encountered a plethora of critics. In responding to this criticism the most recent statistics suggests they are beginning to lose the fight against the deflationary impulses. Consider that the monetary base rose 1000% in the three months ending December 2008, but has been held essentially flat since then (Chart 5).

The Fed's purchases of assets to increase this base automatically created deposits that positively charged the money supply growth to a 15.2% six-month growth rate (Chart 2). If the economy were operating near full capacity, a healthy banking system would take these deposits and multiply them roughly nine times; that circumstance could be inflationary. Unfortunately the banking system is not healthy, as evidenced by the fact that we have closed 95 banks this year, more than the cumulative total of the past 15 years, and another 416 banks are on a list destined to become extinct. With consumers' asset prices falling so rapidly and banks increasingly afraid of failure, banks are more interested in collecting loans than in lending. So with fewer consumers now credit worthy, loan volumes are collapsing. As loans are paid off, deposits are destroyed, and the money multiplier that should stand at nine has gone to zero. This is evidenced by the fact that the six-month change in M2 has fallen to a 1% growth rate, meaning that monetary stimulus is on hold. Get set for negative GDP in 2010.

Dollar Weakness

The inflation outlook from the monetary and fiscal standpoint looks truly deflationary, yet some believe that dollar weakness will reverse this circumstance and create inflation. This is unlikely. First, our imports are about 13% of GDP, and even if the dollar were to halve in value, the price of imported goods would not only have to compete with U.S. producers, but also their price adjustment would have to offset the other 87% of factors included in the pricing indices. Second, unlike the 1930's a 50% decline in the dollar would be difficult to engineer. Fisher recommended to Roosevelt that the U.S. should exit the gold standard, which he did in April of 1933. That was a fixed exchange rate system, and within three months the dollar lost more than 30% against the gold block countries and fell to 60% of its former value within the next five months. This spurred our exports and provided some price inflation (2.9% per year, GDP deflator) for the next four years. Then, in 1937 the tax increases (the next policy mistake) reversed the positive growth rate of the economy and drove price levels and economic activity downward again. However, even with that small period of price increases the overall price level never recovered from the 25% decline that occurred from 1929 to 1933, and thus deflation reigned. Today the declining dollar is a good thing in terms of our trade balance, but the modest change will be insufficient to offset the negative forces of insufficient domestic demand.

Next year the core GDP deflator will fall to zero, with the possibility of negative levels. Likewise, long-term interest rates, which are highly sensitive to inflation, will continue to move toward lower levels. As stated in previous letters, we see no reason why longer dated Treasury interest rates will not mirror those of Japan, which provides a modern signpost for a deflationary environment. Currently the Japanese ten-year note stands at 1.3% with their thirty-year bond yielding 2.1%.

Van R. Hoisington
Lacy H. Hunt, Ph.D.

The Thinking Behind the Stimulus and Bailout Programs

John Mauldin — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 22:03:24 GMT

It is important to understand the thinking of those who are in fact making the decisions at the Fed and Treasury. In today's Outside the Box, Paul McCulley, Managing Director at PIMCO, gives us some insight into the thinking that is driving the massive stimulus and bailout programs. Whether or not you agree, it is important to have a handle on what is actually happening and the thinking behind it.

As a bonus, let me give you a link to David Kotok's excellent and very clear analysis of the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP). The PIPP is basically a call option financed by the US tax-payer. David shows us why as tax-payers we should be concerned. You can read it for your self http://www.cumber.com/commentary.aspx?file=032909.asp&n=l_mc. Have a great week!

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Comments Before the Money Marketeers Club
Playing Solitaire with a Deck of 51, with Number 52 on Offer

New York City - March 19, 2009

Thank you, Dana, for that wonderfully kind introduction. It is a deep honor to be speaking before this august club for the fourth time. When I look at the list of speakers over the last 50 years, I am very humbled.

As I've mentioned before when here, this forum is one of the very few for which I actually write a speech. Not that I actually deliver it the way I write it – that might be congenitally impossible for me! – but because I want to be held accountable, to be forced to both own and eat my own words. And to re-read them again and again, before speaking yet again.

Looking Backward
In May 2004,¹ just before the Fed embarked on a tightening process from 1% Fed funds, my axe to grind was that the conventional wisdom of a constant neutral real Fed funds rate was wrong. Put more wonkishly, as I'm wont to do, I challenged the notion of a constant constant in the Taylor Rule.

As all in our profession know, John Taylor conveniently assumed that if the active cyclical terms in his Rule – (1) the gap between actual inflation and targeted inflation and (2) the gap between actual and potential GDP (Gross Domestic Product) – drop out, because inflation is at target and GDP is at potential,² then the real Fed funds rate should approximate the potential real growth rate of the economy, determined by demographically-driven labor force growth and productivity growth. That's the constant term in the Taylor Rule, and John assumed it to be constant.

I took issue with this concept of the constant in Taylor being constant on two key fronts, one a matter of theory and the other a matter of practicality.

On the theoretical front, I have always made a distinction between cash and capital or, in the words of today, the difference between capital and liquidity. I've always believed in the capitalist notion of no risk, no reward. Thus, I've always struggled with the notion that government-guaranteed cash, or liquidity, if you prefer, should pay a positive after-tax real rate of return.

Yes, I believe nominal cash yields should be high enough to offset the inflation rate, which is an implicit tax. And since we tax nominal returns, I have also always believed that the nominal cash yield should be high enough to not only offset the implicit inflation tax, but also the explicit tax on the inflation tax. But I've never believed that cash should generate a real after-tax return. Again, no risk, no reward.

Cash always trades at par, at least in nominal terms, and that's a very precious attribute. You can have it if you want it. But if you do, you should not get paid for it, but rather pay for it, in the form of forgoing any after-tax real return. If you want a positive after-tax real return, you gotta take some risk, summarized best, perhaps, by the possibility of your investment trading south of par.

Which means that I did and do believe that a positive neutral after-tax real rate of interest does exist, even if it is not constant. But for me, unlike John, it's the after-tax real rate of interest on high grade, long-term, private sector debt obligations.

Back in May 2004, I posited that we should use the long-term swap rates as a proxy – the credit risk of the AA global banking system. (Note I said system, not any individual bank.) That after-tax real rate of return should, I argued, be consistent with John Taylor's assumption – widely embraced in our profession – that there is a functional connection between potential real growth rates and real interest rates. Thus, John and I were actually in the same analytical church, but we were sitting in very different pews, singing from a different hymn book.

We both wanted to tie the neutral real rate to the potential real growth rate of the economy. But he focused on the overnight risk-free rate, which the Fed directly controls, while I focused on the long-term private sector rate, determined by the market. Translated, John was and is a Fed funds man while I was and am a financial conditions man.

Which brings me to my practical beef with John: I don't believe that the neutral rate – whichever one you choose – is constant, but rather time-varying, a function of changes in broad financial conditions. With my colleague, and good friend, Ramin Toloui, I wrote a lengthy essay on this issue this past February.³ No need to replow that plowed ground again tonight, except to say that the financial crisis over the last year proves my point in spades.

Be that as it may, most of you thought I was singing way off key back in 2004. And truth be told, I felt that at the margin too, as I recognized my theoretical construct implied a very steep yield curve, an open invitation for entrepreneurial financial operators to lever to the eyeballs into the carry trade.

Thus, I openly acknowledged that if the Fed were to embrace my notion of a neutral zero after-tax real rate on cash, then it would be necessary to put regulatory limits on the use of leverage by financial intermediaries. At that time, policy makers were doing just that with the GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises), putting limits on growth of their balance sheets. I was encouraged by this.

But falsely so, as the next several years demonstrated painfully, with unbridled growth in the Shadow Banking System, a term I coined in August 2007 at Jackson Hole. Recall, Shadow Banks are levered-up intermediaries without access to either FDIC deposit insurance or the Fed's discount window to protect against runs or stop runs. But since they don't have access to those governmental safety nets, Shadow Banks do not have to operate under meaningful regulatory constraints, notably for leverage, only the friendly eyes of the ratings agencies.

The bottom line is that the Shadow Banking System created explosive growth in leverage and liquidity risk outside the purview of the Fed. Or, as I said here last time in November 2007, again playing the wonk, Shadow Banking both (1) shifted the IS Curve to the right and also (2) made it steeper, or less elastic, if you will. In such a world, Fed rate hikes had little tempering effect on the demand for credit, or if you prefer, little tightening effect on financial conditions.

And so it came to pass with the Fed hiking the nominal Fed funds rate to 5¼%, double that which I had forecast in May 2004, as financial conditions refused to tighten in sympathy with the Fed's desire. I was proven spectacularly wrong.

It was the Forward Minsky Journey, as I lectured here last time. And it ended in the Minsky Moment, defined as the moment when bubbly asset prices – made so by the application of ever-greater leverage – crack, kicking off the imperative for deleveraging, notably by the Shadow Banking System. We can quibble about the precise month of the Moment. I pick August 2007, but would not argue strenuously with you about three months either side of that date.

Whatever moment you pick for the Moment, we have, ever since, been traveling the Reverse Minsky Journey, violently shifting the IS Curve back to the left, with an even steeper slope. This prospect implied, I argued 16 months ago, that the Fed would inevitably cut the Fed funds rate dramatically, in more-than-mirror image of the hiking process, as financial conditions would refuse to ease in sympathy with the Fed's intentions.

In turn, I forecast that by the next time you invited me here again, the Fed funds rate would likely be at or below the 2½% level that I had so petulantly forecast back in May 2004. I also forecast that I might be contemplating buying a second home, after never having owned more than one.

Looking Forward
Which brings us to today, with the nominal Fed funds rate pinched against zero. I simply wasn't bold enough in my forecast last time here. And while I haven't bought a second home, I am indeed contemplating buying one. I'd like for it to be in a certain city a few hundred miles south of here, but that's a decision above my power grade, even if below my pay grade. But I digress.

What I want to discuss with you tonight is just how simple the solution to our current global economic and financial crisis is on paper, contrasting that to just how difficult and complex the solution is in reality.

The present crisis, in textbook terms, is a case of the dual, mutually reinforcing maladies of the Paradox of Thrift and the Paradox of Leverage. In many respects, they are the same disease: what is rational at the individual citizen or firm level, notably to increase savings out of income or to delever balance sheets, becomes irrational at the community level.

If everybody seeks to increase their savings by consuming less of their incomes, they will collectively fail, because consumption drives production which drives income, the fountain from which savings flow. Likewise, if everybody seeks to delever by selling assets and paying down debt, or by selling equity in themselves, they can't, as the market for both assets and equity will go offer-only, no bid.

Both of these maladies require that the sovereign go the other way, (1) dis-saving with even more passion than the private sector is attempting to increase savings, thereby maintaining nominal aggregate demand and thus, nominal national income; and (2) becoming the bid side for the levered private sector's offer-only markets for assets and equity. It really is that simple, at least on paper, as Keynes and Minsky wisely taught.

The problem with the desirable textbook solution is that it suffers from constrained political feasibility. Actually, dealing with the Paradox of Thrift is practically much easier, even if less critically important, than dealing with the Paradox of Deleveraging. While Congress may belly-ache and wrangle incessantly about the precise size and composition of fiscal stimulus packages, it is safe to say that but for a few wing nuts, we are all Keynesians now in the matter of cracking the Paradox of Thrift.

In contrast there is limited political consensus for using the sovereign's balance sheet and good credit to break the Paradox of Deleveraging. Put differently, while we may all now be Keynesians, we are not all Minskyians. What is ineluctably needed involves socializing the losses of a banking system – both conventional banking and shadow banking – after the spectacular winnings of the Forward Minsky Journey were privatized. It simply doesn't sit well politically. In fact, it stinks to high heaven.

Thus, to quote my partner Mohamed El-Erian, we must contemplate a scenario in which the economically desirable solution is not politically feasible, while that which is politically feasible may not necessarily be economically desirable. Last Sunday, on 60 Minutes, Ben Bernanke addressed this nasty reality directly when he said that perhaps the most severe risk we face is the lack of political will.

I applaud him, both for doing the interview, speaking directly to the American people, and for speaking the truth. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the truth will set us free. As Kris Kristofferson wrote long ago, and Janis Joplin made famous, we cannot dismiss out of hand the proposition that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

I trust not. But the honest answer is that we honestly don't know. We are living in a world of hysteresis, in which outcomes become path-dependent, where multiple outcomes are possible, where both policy input and economic/financial outcomes become hostage to serial correlation. How's that for talking wonkish?

Concluding Comment
Seriously, let me conclude by once and again quoting Mohamed, who observes that what we are experiencing is not a crisis within the market-driven, democratic capitalist system of most of our careers, but rather a crisis of the system itself. This is not a spat within a marriage, but rather a test of the sustainability of the marriage itself. It's playing solitaire with a deck of 51.

Fortunately, the 52^nd card is now on offer, if only policy makers are willing to seize it and play it: Competitive Quantitative Easing (mixed with Credit Easing, in some cases). Usually, when we think of competitive global policies, we think of them in a negative way, as in competitive hiking of tariffs or competitive currency depreciation. While different in execution, these two forms of competition are economically very similar, a competitive attempt to secure a larger piece of a too-small global aggregate nominal demand pie.

In contrast, Competitive Quantitative Easing (QE) offers scope for growing the global aggregate demand pie, with an endogenous enforcement mechanism.

How so? First, let's consider what QE is all about. In an oversimplified nutshell, it involves a central bank voluntarily surrendering for a time its independence from the fiscal authority, taking the short-term policy rate to the zero neighborhood, thereby obviating any need to control growth in its balance sheet. For those of us in the room old enough to remember the jargon -- and there are more than a few! -- QE obviates any need for the central bank to keep "pressure on bank reserve positions," so as to hit a positive target for its policy rate.

It's not quite that simple, I recognize, for central banks that are allowed to pay interest on excess reserves, as is now the case with the Fed. Conceptually, with the ability to pay interest on excess reserves, a central bank could "go QE" and still peg a positive policy rate.

But that's a technicality without great substance at the moment, notably with the Fed, whose target range for the Fed funds rate is 0–.25%. Close enough to zero for me! Thus, the Fed is practically unconstrained in how big it can grow its balance sheet.

Which, in turn, sets the stage for the Fed to voluntarily work corporately with the fiscal authority -- Congress and the Treasury -- to monetize longer-dated Treasury securities, facilitating a huge expansion in Treasury debt issues at exceedingly low interest rates. Ordinarily, we would be aghast at such a prospect, as every bone in our bodies would scream that such an operation would, in the long run, be inflationary.

And our bones would be right. The very reason for central bank independence within the government – but not of the government – is precisely to prevent the central bank from being the handmaiden of the fiscal authority, who inherently wants to spend more than it taxes, running deficits, overheating the economy in an inflationary way.

But if and when the dominant macroeconomic problem is a huge output gap, borne of deficient aggregate demand, fattening the fat tail of deflation risk, the argument for strict central bank independence goes into temporary submission. Note, I said temporary, not permanent. There is no more sure way, in the proverbial long run, to destroy the purchasing power of a currency than to let vote-seeking politicians have the keys to the fiat-money printing press.

But there can be extraordinary and exigent circumstances when it does make sense for a central bank to work cooperatively, if not subordinately, with the fiscal authority to break capitalism's inherent debt-deflation pathologies. Indeed, none other than Chairman Bernanke made the case forcefully in May 2003, speaking in Japan about Japan (my emphasis, not his):

The Bank of Japan became fully independent only in 1998, and it has guarded its independence carefully, as is appropriate. Economically, however, it is important to recognize that the role of an independent central bank is different in inflationary and deflationary environments. In the face of inflation, which is often associated with excessive monetization of government debt, the virtue of an independent central bank is its ability to say "no" to the government. With protracted deflation, however, excessive money creation is unlikely to be the problem, and a more cooperative stance on the part of the central bank may be called for. Under the current circumstances, greater cooperation for a time between the Bank of Japan and the fiscal authorities is in no way inconsistent with the independence of the central bank, any more than cooperation between two independent nations in pursuit of a common objective is inconsistent with the principle of national sovereignty.

Thus, the Fed's announcement just yesterday that the central bank would be buying up to $300 billion of Treasuries, primarily in the two- to ten-year maturity range, is fully consistent with both what Mr. Bernanke said six years ago and with evident debt-deflationary pathologies, both here in the United States and around the world.

Indeed, what intrigues me the most right now is the concept of global Competitive QE, rather than competitive tariff hiking or competitive currency depreciation. If all countries, or most major countries anyway, "go QE," then the global game changes from fighting for bigger slices of a too-small global nominal aggregate demand pie to actually correlated efforts to enlarge the nominal pie.

Note I said "correlated" not "coordinated." There need not necessarily be any explicit coordination between countries, because those that choose not to play will likely experience a rise in their real effective exchange rate, a deflationary impulse to their underutilized economies.

Thus, there need not be an explicit enforcement mechanism to propel Competitive QE, merely individual countries acting in their own best interest. This is the best kind of cooperative behavior, explicitly because it need not be coordinated, but rather brought about by, you guessed it, Adam Smith's invisible hand!

To be sure, the ECB (European Central Bank) has difficulty with the concept of QE, in part because Euroland represents monetary union without political union and, thus, fiscal policy union. Put differently, if the ECB wants to be accommodative of more Keynesian fiscal policy stimulus, de facto monetizing it, what fiscal authority does the ECB call to cut the deal?

It's an open question, but my sense is that about ten big figures higher from here for the Euro, the ECB would find the answer!

Thank you, again, for the great honor of being here tonight.

Paul McCulley
Managing Director

¹ "Comments Before The Money Marketeers Club: A Brave New World," Global Central Bank Focus, May 2004
² Or if you prefer, unemployment is at its full employment level.
³ "Chasing the Neutral Rate Down: Financial Conditions, Monetary Policy, and the Taylor Rule," Global Central Bank Focus, February 2008

Saving Capitalist Banking and a Speech by Paul Volker

John Mauldin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:35:45 GMT

This week I came across two items that I think are worthy of being in Outside the Box, so I am going to give you both. The first is an essay by good friend Paul McCulley, Managing Director of PIMCO, called "Saving Capitalist Banking from Itself." The second is a recent speech by Paul Volker, former Fed Chairman and a (hopefully very) influential member of President Obama's economic advisory team. This speech is a must read. Taken together they provide a cautionary tale of what the world of banking will need to look like when we get to the end of the process. This OTB is a little longer than most, but I think it is important reading. If you don't know where we are headed, it is hard to imagine the journey.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Saving Capitalist Banking from Itself

By Paul McCulley

At its core, capitalism is all about risk taking. One form of risk taking is leverage. Indeed, without leverage, capitalism could not prosper. Usually, we think of this imperative in terms of entrepreneurs being able to lever their equity so as to grow. And indeed, this is the case.

But more elementally, economies – both capitalist and socialist – require leverage because savers for very logical reasons do not want to have one hundred percent of their stock of wealth in equity investments. Rather, they logically want a portion of their portfolios in a fixed-commitment instrument that is senior to equity.

And savers want some portion of that fixed-commitment allocation in literal money, defined as a government-guaranteed obligation that always trades at par. If you have any doubt about this, put your hands into your pockets and you will find just such an instrument. It's called currency, a zero-interest, perpetual liability of the Federal Reserve, itself a levered entity, capitalized by its Congressionally-legislated monopoly over the creation of money.

As a practical matter, of course, you don't hold all of your always-trades-at-par liquidity in currency. You most likely have a demand deposit, also known as a checking account, as well as shares in a money market mutual fund, which is putatively supposed to always trade "at the buck." You probably also have some longer-dated bank deposits, such as certificates of deposits, or CDs, which don't necessarily trade at par in real time, but are guaranteed to do so at maturity.

The Nature of Fractional Reserve Banking

The public's demand for at-par liquidity inherently creates the raw material for leverage in the economy. Indeed, from time immemorial, fractional reserve banking has been built on the simple proposition that the public's collective ex ante demand for at-par liquidity is greater than the public's collective ex post demand for such liquidity.

Accordingly, the genius of banking¹, if you want to call it that, has always been simple: A bank can take more risk on the asset side of its balance sheet than the liability side can notionally support, because a goodly portion of the liability side, notably deposits, is de facto of perpetual maturity, although it is de jure of finite maturity, as short as one day in the case of demand deposits.

Thus, the business of banking is inherently about maturity and credit quality transformation: banks can hold assets that are longer and riskier than their liabilities, because their deposit liabilities are sticky. Depositors sleep well knowing that they can always get their money at par, but because they do, they don't actually ask for their money, affording bankers the opportunity to redeploy that money into longer, riskier, higher-yielding assets that don't have to trade at par.

Enter the Government

A key reason that depositors sleep well at night is the fact that since 1913 here in the United States, banks have had access to the Federal Reserve's discount window, where assets can be posted for loans to redeem flighty depositors. A second sleep-well governmental safety net was introduced in 1933: deposit insurance, in which the federal government insures that deposits – up to a limit – will always trade at par, regardless of how foolish bankers may be on the other side of their balance sheets.

Thus, the genius of modern day banking, again if you want to call it that, has always been about exploiting the positive spread between the public's ex ante and ex post demand for liquidity at par, in the context of levering the two safety nets – the central bank's discount window and deposit insurance underwritten by taxpayers – which provide comfort to depositors that they can always get their money at par, even if their bankers are foolish lenders and investors.

Yes, I know that sounds harsh. But it really is how the banking world works. In turn, banks can be very profitable enterprises, because the yield on their risky assets is greater than the yield on their less-risky liabilities. And that net interest margin can be particularly sweet when recomputed as a return on equity, given that banks are very levered institutions (recall, banks must hold only 8% of liabilities in the form of Tier 1 capital).

Put differently, equity investors in banks can lose only 8% of a bank's footings, but they earn the net interest margin on 100% of those footings, so long as they don't make so many dodgy loans and investments, destroying capital, that the providers of the two government safety nets cut them off.

Thus, it has always been somewhat of an oxymoron, at least to me, to think of banks as strictly private sector enterprises. To be sure, they have private shareholders. And, yes, those shareholders get all the upside of the net interest margin intrinsic to the alchemy of maturity and risk transformation. But the whole enterprise itself depends on the governmental safety nets. That's why banks are regulated.

Conceptually, as is the case in socialist countries, banks could be – and usually are – simply owned by the government, the ultimate form of regulation. Such an arrangement has the benefit of the taxpayer sharing in the upside, not just the downside. Such an arrangement also has the cost of putting the government in the lending and investing business, with little regard for the pursuit of profit, picking winners and losers on the basis of political clout.

Thus, capitalist economies usually want their banking systems owned by the private sector, where loans and investments are made on commercial terms, in the pursuit of profit. But also in the context of prudential regulation, so as to minimize the downside to taxpayers of the moral hazard inherent in the two safety nets for depositors.

The Mae West Doctrine

But as is the wont of capitalists, they love levering the sovereign's safety nets with minimal prudential regulation. This does not make them immoral, merely capitalists. And over the last decade or so, the way for bankers to maximally lever the inherent banking model has been to become non-bank bankers, or as I dubbed them a couple years ago, shadow bankers.

The way to do this has been to run levered-up lending and investment institutions – be they investment banks, conduits, structured investment vehicles, hedge funds, et al – by raising funding in the non-deposit markets, notably: unsecured debt, especially interbank borrowings and commercial paper; and secured borrowings, notably reverse repo and asset-backed commercial paper. And usually – but not always! – such shadow banks relied on conventional banks with access to the central bank's discount window as backstop liquidity providers.

Structured accordingly, without explicit access or use of the government's safety nets, shadow banks essentially avoided regulation, notably on the amount of leverage they could use, the size of their liquidity buffers and the type of lending and investing they could do.

To be sure, Shadow Banking needed some seal of approval, so that providers of short-dated funding could convince themselves that their claims were de facto "just as good" as deposits at banks with access to the government's liquidity safety nets. Conveniently, the rating agencies, paid by the shadow bankers, stood at the ready to provide such seals of approval.

And it was all grand while ever-larger application of leverage put upward pressure on asset prices. There is nothing like a bull market to make geniuses out of levered dunces. Call it the Mae West Doctrine, where if a little fun is good and more is better, then way too much is just about right.

Also call it the Forward Minsky Journey,² where stability begets ever riskier debt arrangements, until they have produced a bubble in asset prices. And then the bubble bursts, in something called a Minsky Moment, followed by a Reverse Minsky Journey, characterized by ever-tighter terms and conditions on the availability of credit, inducing asset price deflation and its fellow traveler, debt price deflation.

This dynamic is inherently self-feeding, begetting the Paradox of Deleveraging,³ where private sector bankers – conventional bankers and shadow bankers alike – all move to the offer side of both asset markets and bank capital markets, trying to reduce their leverage ratios by selling assets and paying off debt, and/or issuing more equity. But by definition, if everybody tries to do it at the same time, as has been the case over the last 18 months or so, it simply can't be done.

What is needed is for the government to take the other side of the trade, effectively becoming the bid side, (1) buying assets, (2) guaranteeing assets, (3) providing cheap funding for assets, and (4) buying bank equity securities (of both conventional banks and shadow banks that are permitted to become conventional banks after the fact).

Government Goes All In⁴

And indeed, all four of these techniques have been put into play since the fateful decision to let Lehman Brothers fall into disorderly bankruptcy. Put more bluntly, the hybrid character of banking – always a joint venture between private capital and governmental liquidity safety nets – is morphing more and more towards government-sponsored banking. Yes, I know that is harsh, but sometimes the truth is harsh. Capitalism and banking may not be divorced, but certainly are engaged in some form of trial separation.

The Treasury, the FDIC and the Fed – the big three – are caught in the middle, serving both as mediators as well as deep pockets to the estranged parties. It's not wholesale nationalization. And it's not likely to become that. But only because the big three are committed to doing whatever it takes to prevent that outcome. Along the way, the big three would also like – need! – to restart the engines of credit creation, so as to pull the economy out of its gaping hole of insufficient aggregate demand for goods and services, also known as a recession.

Will it work? Judging from the markets' collective reaction to Treasury Secretary Geithner's announcement last week of the new administration triage plans, there is room for doubt. I do not, however, take one-week swings in the markets as indicative as to where this game will end. And a key reason is actually the special powers of the Fed and the FDIC, which can lever the taxpayer monies that Congress provides for the Treasury.

As evidenced in recent months, the Fed has two incredibly powerful tools:

Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act of 1932, which permits the Fed, upon declaration of "unusual and exigent circumstances" to lend to anybody against collateral it deems adequate, and
Total freedom to expand its balance sheet, essentially creating liabilities against itself that trade at par – also called printing money – so long as the Fed is willing to surrender control over the Fed funds rate, letting it trade at zero, or thereabouts.

The Fed has used both of these tools vigorously in recent months, expanding its lending programs mightily, to both conventional banks and shadow banks (i.e., investment banks who have re-chartered as banks, as well as primary dealers), while also doubling the size of its balance sheet, as it let the Fed funds rate fall to effectively zero.

The FDIC also has an incredibly powerful tool: the so-called Systemic Risk Exception under the FDIC Improvement Act of 1991, which allows the FDIC to forgo using the "lowest cost" solution to dealing with troubled banks if using such a solution "would have serious adverse effects on economic conditions or financial stability" and if bypassing the least cost method would "avoid or mitigate such adverse effects."

It's actually not an easy clause for the FDIC to invoke, unlike Section 13(3) for the Fed, which can be invoked simply by a supermajority of the Board of Governors. For the FDIC, the Systemic Risk Exception must be deemed necessary by two-thirds of both the Board of Directors of the FDIC and the Fed's Board of Governors, as well as by the Secretary of the Treasury, who must first consult and get agreement from the President of the United States.

But where there is a will, there is a way, and the FDIC is now living firmly in the land of the Systemic Risk Exception, legally allowed to guarantee unsecured debt of banks as well as to put itself at risk in guaranteeing banks' dodgy assets.

Bottom Line

The United States government now has both the tools and the will to save the private banking system, and more importantly, the real economy, from its own debt-deflationary pathologies. Not that it will be easy. But it can be done, notwithstanding the catcalls that greeted Secretary Geithner last week.

And the essential game plan is clear: use the power of the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury to create government-sponsored shadow banks, such as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Lending Facility (the TALF) and the Public-Private Investment Fund (the P-PIF).

The formula? Take a small dollop of the Treasury's free-to-spend taxpayer money (there is still $350 billion left) to serve as the equity in a government sponsored shadow bank, and then lever the daylights out of it with loans from the Federal Reserve, funded with the printing press. That's the formula for the TALF, to provide leverage, with no recourse after a haircut, to restart the securitization markets.

The same formula applies for the P-PIF, with the addition of FDIC stop out loss protection for dodgy bank assets that private sector players might buy. With such goodies, such players, it is hoped, will be able to pay a sufficiently high price for those assets to avoid bankrupting the seller bank.

Unfortunately, Secretary Geithner hasn't laid out the precise parameters of how to mix these three ingredients, which is driving the markets up the wall. But make no mistake, these are the ingredients, along with continued direct capital infusions into banks where necessary.

Uncle Sam has the ability to substitute itself – not himself or herself! – for the broken conventional bank system, levering up and risking up as the conventional banking system does the exact opposite.

Yes, there will be subsidies involved, sometimes huge ones. And yes, the process will seem arbitrary and capricious at times, reeking of inequities. Such is the nature of government rescue schemes for broken banking systems, while maintaining them as privately owned.

You might not like it. I don't like it, because regulators should never have let bankers, both conventional bankers and shadow bankers, run amok. But they did.

So it's now time to hold the nose and do what must be done, however stinky it smells, not because it's pleasant but because it is necessary.

Only with the full force of the sovereign's balance sheet can the Paradox of Deleveraging be broken.

Paul McCulley
Managing Director

¹ "The Paradox of Deleveraging Will Be Broken," Global Central Bank Focus, November 2008. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/Global+Central+Bank+Focus+11-08+McCulley+Paradox+of+Deleveraging+Will+Be+Broken.htm

² "Comments Before the Money Marketeers Club, Minsky and Neutral:Forward and in Reverse," Global Central Bank Focus, December 2007. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2007/GCBF+Dec+2007.htm

³ "The Paradox of Deleveraging," Global Central Bank Focus, July 2008. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/GCBF+July+2008.htm

⁴ "All In," Global Central Bank Focus, December 2008/January 2009. http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/FF/2008/GCB+December+2008+McCulley+All+In.htm

And now to Paul Volker's speech:

Paul Volcker is the former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman, and is now a member of President Barack Obama's advisory team on the economy. He recently gave a speech in Toronto on the extent of the U.S. economic crisis.

Here is the speech in full:

I really feel a sense of profound disappointment coming up here. We are having a great financial problem around the world. And finance doesn't work without some sense of trust and confidence and people meaning what they say. You take their oral word and their written word as a sign that their intentions will be carried out.

The letter of invitation I had to this affair indicated that there would be about 40 people here, people with whom I could have an intimate conversation. So I feel a bit betrayed this evening. Forty has swelled to I don't know how many, and I don't know how intimate our conversation can be. But I will, at the very least, be informal.

There is a certain interest in what's going on in the financial world. And I will disappoint you by saying I don't know all the answers. But I know something about the problem. Let me just sketch it out a little bit and suggest where we may be going. There is a lot of talk about how we get out of this, but I think it's worth remembering, or analyzing, how this all started.

This is not an ordinary recession. I have never, in my lifetime, seen a financial problem of this sort. It has the makings of something much more serious than an ordinary recession where you go down for a while and then you bounce up and it's partly a monetary – but a self-correcting – phenomenon. The ordinary recession does not bring into question the stability and the solidity of the whole financial system. Why is it that this is so much more profound a crisis? I'm not saying it's going to get anywhere as serious as the Great Depression, but that was not an ordinary business cycle either.

This phenomenon can be traced back at least five or six years. We had, at that time, a major underlying imbalance in the world economy. The American proclivity to consume was in full force. Our consumption rate was about 5% higher, relative to our GNP or what our production normally is. Our spending – consumption, investment, government — was running about 5% or more above our production, even though we were more or less at full employment.

You had the opposite in China and Asia, generally, where the Chinese were consuming maybe 40% of their GNP – we consumed 70% of our GNP. They had a lot of surplus dollars because they had a lot of exports. Their exports were feeding our consumption and they were financing it very nicely with very cheap money. That was a very convenient but unsustainable situation. The money was so easy, funds were so easily available that there was, in effect, a kind of incentive to finding ways to spend it.

When we finished with the ordinary ways of spending it – with the help of our new profession of financial engineering – we developed ways of making weaker and weaker mortgages. The biggest investment in the economy was residential housing. And we developed a technique of manufacturing class D mortgages but putting them in packages which the financial engineers said were class A.

So there was an enormous incentive to take advantage of this bit of arbitrage – cheap money, poor mortgages but saleable mortgages. A lot of people made money through this process. I won't go over all the details, but you had then a normal business cycle on top of it. It was a period of enthusiasm. Everybody was feeling exuberant. They wanted to invest and spend.

You had a bubble first in the stock market and then in the housing market. You had a big increase in housing prices in the United States, held up by these new mortgages. It was true in other countries as well, but particularly in the United States. It was all fine for a while, but of course, eventually, the house prices levelled off and began going down. At some point people began getting nervous and the whole process stopped because they realized these mortgages were no good.

You might ask how it went on as long as it did. The grading agencies didn't do their job and the banks didn't do their job and the accountants went haywire. I have my own take on this. There were two things that were particularly contributory and very simple. Compensation practices had gotten totally out of hand and spurred financial people to aim for a lot of short-term money without worrying about the eventual consequences. And then there was this obscure financial engineering that none of them understood, but all their mathematical experts were telling them to trust. These two things carried us over the brink.

One of the saddest days of my life was when my grandson – and he's a particularly brilliant grandson – went to college. He was good at mathematics. And after he had been at college for a year or two I asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a financial engineer." My heart sank. Why was he going to waste his life on this profession?

A year or so ago, my daughter had seen something in the paper, some disparaging remarks I had made about financial engineering. She sent it to my grandson, who normally didn't communicate with me very much. He sent me an email, "Grandpa, don't blame it on us! We were just following the orders we were getting from our bosses." The only thing I could do was send him back an email, "I will not accept the Nuremberg excuse."

There was so much opaqueness, so many complications and misunderstandings involved in very complex financial engineering by people who, in my opinion, did not know financial markets. They knew mathematics. They thought financial markets obeyed mathematical laws. They have found out differently now. You know, they all said these events only happen once every hundred years. But we have "once every hundred years" events happening every year or two, which tells me something is the matter with the analysis.

So I think we have a problem which is not an ordinary business cycle problem. It is much more difficult to get out of and it has shaken the foundations of our financial institutions. The system is broken. I'm not going to linger over what to do about it. It is very difficult. It is going to take a lot of money and a lot of losses in the banking system. It is not unique to the United States. It is probably worse in the UK and it is just about as bad in Europe and it has infected other economies as well. Canada is relatively less infected, for reasons that are consistent with the direction in which I think the financial markets and financial institutions should go.

So I'll jump over the short-term process, which is how we get out of the mess, and consider what we should be aiming for when we get out of the mess. That, in turn, might help instruct the kind of action we should be taking in the interim to get out of it.

In the United States, in the UK, as well – and potentially elsewhere – things are partly being held together by totally extraordinary actions by a central bank. In the United States, it's the Federal Reserve, in London, the Bank of England. They are providing direct credit to markets in massive volume, in a way that contradicts all the traditions and laws that have governed central banking behaviour for a hundred years.

So what are we aiming for? I mention this because I recently chaired a report on this. It was part of the so-called Group of 30, which has got some attention. It's a long and rather turgid report but let me simplify what the conclusion is, which I will state more boldly than the report itself does.

In the future, we are going to need a financial system which is not going to be so prone to crisis and certainly will not be prone to the severity of a crisis of this sort. Financial systems always fluctuate and go up and down and have crises, but let's not have a big crisis that undermines the whole economy. And if that's the kind of financial system we want and should have, it's going to be different from the financial system that has developed in the last 20 years.

What do I mean by different? I think a primary characteristic of the system ought to be a strong, traditional, commercial banking-type system. Probably we ought to have some very large institutions – or at least that's the way the market is going – whose primary purpose is a kind of fiduciary responsibility to service consumers, individuals, businesses and governments by providing outlets for their money and by providing credit. They ought to be the core of the credit and financial system.

This kind of system was in place in the United States thirty years ago and is still in place in Canada, and may have provided support for the Canadian system during this particularly difficult time. I'm not arguing that you need an oligopoly to the extent you have one in Canada, but you do know by experience that these big commercial banking institutions will be protected by the government, de facto. No government has been willing to permit these institutions, or the creditors and depositors to these institutions, to be damaged. They recognize that the damage to the economy would be too great.

What has happened recently just underscores that. And I think we're at the point where we can no longer fool ourselves by saying that is not the case. The government will support these institutions, which in turn implies a closer supervision and regulation of those institutions, a more effective regulation than we've had, at least in the United States, in the recent past. And that may involve a lot of different agencies and so forth. I won't get into that.

But I think it does say that those institutions should not engage in highly risky entrepreneurial activity. That's not their job because it brings into question the stability of the institution. They may make a lot of money and they may have a lot of fun, in the short run. It may encourage pursuit of a profit in the short run. But it is not consistent with the stability that those institutions should be about. It's not consistent at all with avoiding conflict of interest.

These institutions that have arisen in the United States and the UK that combine hedge funds, equity funds, large proprietary trading with commercial banks, have enormous conflicts of interest. And I think the conflicts of interest contribute to their instability. So I would say let's get rid of that. Let's have big and small commercial banks and protect them – it's the service part of the financial system.

And then we have the other part, which I'll call the capital market system, which by and large isn't directly dealing with customers. They're dealing with each other. They're trading. They're about hedge funds and equity funds. And they have a function in providing fluid markets and innovating and providing some flexibility, and I don't think they need to be so highly regulated. They're not at the core of the system, unless they get really big. If they get really big then you have to regulate them, too. But I don't think we need to have close regulation of every peewee hedge fund in the world.

So you have this bifurcated – in a sense – financial system that implies a lot about regulation and national governments. If you're going to have an open system, you have got to get much more cooperation and coordination from different countries. I think that's possible, given what we're going through. You've got to do something about the infrastructure of the system and you have to worry about the credit rating agencies.

These banks were relying on credit rating agencies while putting these big packages of securities together and selling them. They had practically – they would never admit this – given up credit departments in their own institutions that were sophisticated and well-developed. That was a cost centre – why do we need it, they thought. Obviously that hasn't worked out very well.

We have to look at the accounting system. We have to look at the system for dealing with derivatives and how they're settled. So there are a lot of systemic issues. The main point I'm making is that we want to emerge from this with a more stable system. It will be less exciting for many people, but it will not warrant – I don't think the present system does, either — $50 million dollar paydays in that central part of the system. Or even $25 or $100 million dollar paydays. If somebody can go out and gamble and make that money, okay. But don't gamble with the public's money. And that's an important distinction.

It's interesting that what I'm arguing for looks more like the Canadian system than the American system. When we delivered this report in a press conference, people said, "Oh you mean, banks won't be able to have hedge funds? What are you talking about?" That same day, Citigroup announced, "We want to get rid of all that stuff. We now realize it was a mistake. We want to go back to our roots and be a real commercial bank." I don't know whether they'll do that or not. But the fact that one of the leading proponents of the other system basically said, "We give up. It's not the right system," is interesting.

So let me just leave it at that. We've got more than 40 people here but they're permitted to ask questions, is that the deal?

I have a few questions, Mr. Volker, and wish I was there to ask them. And I hope you are really getting some input into the government policy.

Your wishing they would make their policies clear and go ahead and kill the zombie banks analyst,

John Mauldin

The Great Experiment

John Mauldin — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:20:15 GMT

There is a reason I call this column Outside the Box. I try to get material that forces us to think outside our normal comfort zones and challenges our common assumptions. And this week's letter from Hoisington Investment Management Company does just that.

Let me give you two quotes to pique your interest: "Monetary policy works by creating the environment for a renewed borrowing and lending cycle. This cycle would require that the debt to GDP ratio, which is already at a record level, grow even higher. Would such an outcome really be that desirable when the controlling problem of the U.S. economy is too much improperly financed debt? If the Fed were able to engender an increase in the debt to GDP ratio, this might merely serve to postpone the reckoning of the current debt levels while laying the foundation for an even more vicious unwinding down the road."

And: "The only really viable option for federal stimulus is a permanent reduction in the marginal tax rates, as highlighted in the research of Christina Romer, incoming Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. This would have the benefit of raising after tax rates of return, but the drawback in the short run of still having to be financed by an increased budget deficit. Over time, a massive reduction in marginal tax rates would be beneficial, but the operative word is time. Refunds, or transitory tax relief, will have no better results in stemming the recessionary tide in 2009 and 2010 than it did in the spring of 2008."

Van Hoisington and Dr. Lacy Hunt give us a seminar on the current bailout programs that is not the usual analysis we see in mainstream media. This week's letter requires you to think, but it will be worth the effort.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

Quarterly Review and Outlook -- Fourth Quarter 2008
Hoisington Investment Management Company

The late Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman, noted in his 1963 book, Monetary History of the United States (coauthored with Anna Swartz), that the money stock decreased by a massive 31% in the Great Depression. The turnover of that money, called velocity, fell 21%. Nominal GDP equals money multiplied by velocity. Consequently, from 1929 to 1933 the breakdown of both measures resulted in a contraction in nominal GDP of approximately 50%. However, Friedman postulated that if the Fed had not let money shrink, velocity would have been steady and the Great Depression would have been averted, i.e., nominal GDP would not have collapsed. Our current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is an expert on the Great Depression, and he has, in fact, adopted Friedman's strategy to greatly expand the money supply. Whether this prescription for economic stability will work in a period of over indebtedness, such as now exists in the U.S., is most uncertain. Indeed, this could be called the "great experiment" since this economic theory has yet to be thoroughly tested in the real world.

Presently, major sectors of the U.S. economy are experiencing a debt deflation that is causing a massive destruction of wealth, thereby curtailing jobs, income and spending. Irving Fisher who, according to Friedman, was the most brilliant of all U.S. economists has noted that when the economy enters a period of "debt and price disturbances", those forces will eventually engulf the economy. Fisher developed that concept by examining the 1929-33 depressionary period, as well as the depressions of 1837 and 1873, as examples of when excessive debt and subsequent price declines controlled "all or nearly all" other economic variables. This theory of excessive debt and its pernicious and unrelenting deflationary impulse to the economy has been best chronicled by other notable economists: Charles P. Kindleberger (1910-2003), Hyman Minsky (1919-1996), Nikolai Kondratieff (1892-1938) and Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950). Fisher contends that once extreme over indebtedness occurs, fiscal and monetary policy become impotent in spurring economic growth because money velocity will decline -- something that is currently happening. Individuals and businesses struggle to repay debt with harder dollars, and saving begins to rise as caution prevails.

The debt level of the U.S. has reached unprecedented proportions (Chart 1). More important than the level, however, is the fact that for the last few years the debt was improperly loaned and financed. In the words of the late economists Minsky and Kindelberger, this type of lending activity implies there is little likelihood of repayment of principal and interest. Stock prices have plunged, and with home prices plummeting, and commercial and industrial properties losing value, a deflation of assets has clearly begun while the underlying debt remains constant. Will this deflation overwhelm the best efforts of the Federal Reserve, invalidate Friedman's theory and prove Fisher correct? Most naturally feel and hope that the superiority of unbridled monetary and fiscal stimulus will overwhelm incipient price declines and stem the expanding cyclical downturn in economic growth. Our judgment is that the power of monetary policy revolves around the ability to initiate a new borrowing and lending cycle. This can only happen if lenders are willing to lend and borrowers are wanting and able to borrow. Presently, neither are so inclined (Chart 2). If price declines in assets continue, then Shakespeare's admonition of "neither a borrower nor a lender be" will become the economic mantra, meaning that a period of very low nominal growth will likely extend for a decade. Moreover, fiscal policy actions may not be helpful either and could produce unintended negative consequences. Conventional wisdom is that the current economic contraction is nothing more than a typical post war recession. In the ensuing paragraphs we intend to frame an argument that is contrary to this conventional wisdom.

Chart 1

Chart 2

CAN FED POLICY CONTROL ECONOMIC DESTINY?

To respond to the country's severe economic problems the Fed has invented many new vehicles for injecting liquidity into the economy, but few outward signs suggest that these actions are engendering a recovery. Total reserves in the latest twelve months increased a record 1,897%. In the latest three months the M2 money stock jumped at an 18.2% annual rate, one of the largest quarterly increases on record. Many feel this is tantamount to the Fed printing money. However, nominal GDP is not equal to the stock of money but, as noted above, it is equal to the stock of money multiplied by its turnover, or velocity.

Friedman and Bernanke both believe that if the money supply is increased sufficiently velocity will stabilize and Fed actions will at least be able to keep nominal GDP stable or growing slightly. Fisher, on the other hand, argues that if a generalized debt deflation takes hold, velocity will decline, just as it did during the Great Depression.

Our analysis suggests that the Fed will not achieve the desired results of stable velocity. Velocity is a function of financial innovation, rising during periods of new innovations and falling when these innovations are reversed or unchanging. Fisher also suggested that velocity rises when leverage increases and falls when leverage abates. So far the evidence at hand suggests that velocity is thwarting the efforts of the Fed. In the fourth quarter velocity plummeted, completely offsetting the increase in M2. Thus, nominal GDP declined at a very rapid rate.

Monetary policy works by creating the environment for a renewed borrowing and lending cycle. This cycle would require that the debt to GDP ratio, which is already at a record level, grow even higher. Would such an outcome really be that desirable when the controlling problem of the U.S. economy is too much improperly financed debt? If the Fed were able to engender an increase in the debt to GDP ratio, this might merely serve to postpone the reckoning of the current debt levels while laying the foundation for an even more vicious unwinding down the road.

ARE MASSIVE FISCAL DEFICITS A CURE?

The major debate in Washington surrounds the issue of how large the fiscal stimulus should be. In this case, as in many such debates, the question being raised is probably not the right one. In 2008, the consensus opinion was that a stimulus program based on tax rebates and one time transitory payments would be sufficient to halt the recession. Discussions were based on the need to make such payments timely and targeted. Hardly any discussions were held in either official or non-official circles as to whether such a program was desirable. Had there been such discussions, the funds might not have been so badly wasted. Numerous studies had shown that consumers have a very limited tendency to spend transitory income, and that prior efforts to stimulate the economy through tax rebates had failed. Nevertheless, the political process barreled through with a program with no reasonable expectation that it would work. Now the economy is even deeper in recession and the country has an additional $177 billion in debt on which the taxpayers will pay interest in perpetuity. About 17% of the rebates were spent, a tad less than during the rebate program of 2001. The minimal spending response was exactly in line with the consumption functions under Friedman's permanent income hypothesis, as well as the equivalent Modigliani's life cycle hypothesis. These pioneering works demonstrated conclusively that consumers have a far greater tendency to spend permanent rather than transitory income.

Fiscal stimulus will not work well, and may even be counterproductive, and this applies to both spending programs and to certain tax programs as well. One of the major problems on the expenditure side is that the government sector is smaller than the private sector. In the third quarter, real government spending, including the federal defense and non-defense sectors, as well as the state and local sectors, totaled $2.1 trillion, comprising 17.8% of real GDP (Chart 3).

Chart 3

If there is a desire to increase government spending, the federal government must either increase taxes on the far larger private sector, an option that would presumably be precluded under the present circumstances, or borrow funds in the financial markets that would have gone to the private sector. At this point we have to ask which sector has the better track record of growing the economic pie—private or government expenditures? The private sector has demonstrated the greater flexibility and creativity to expand the economic pie, increasing productivity and thereby improving living standards for all. The risk is that increased federal borrowing will stunt the private sector's ability to grow.

The only really viable option for federal stimulus is a permanent reduction in the marginal tax rates, as highlighted in the research of Christina Romer, incoming Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. This would have the benefit of raising after tax rates of return, but the drawback in the short run of still having to be financed by an increased budget deficit. Over time, a massive reduction in marginal tax rates would be beneficial, but the operative word is time. Refunds, or transitory tax relief, will have no better results in stemming the recessionary tide in 2009 and 2010 than it did in the spring of 2008.

An important offset to the increased spending by the federal sector is a massive cutback in state and local expenditures. If transfer payments are excluded from federal expenditures, the spending of state and local governments totaled $1.9 trillion in the third quarter, much greater than the $1.1 trillion spent by the federal government. Further, state and local governments employed 19.8 million workers versus 2.8 million for the federal sector. J.P. Morgan estimates that state and local governments will have a $400 billion shortfall in funding this year, an economic drag since balanced budgets are required in all but one of the fifty states. Thus, spending will be curtailed or taxes will rise.

MAJOR HEADWINDS FOR CONSUMER SPENDING

Consumer spending is contracting at a near record pace despite: (a) a strenuous effort by the Fed to loosen monetary conditions; (b) a $170 billion fiscal stimulus package that occurred in the second quarter of 2008; (c) the enactment of a troubled asset recovery program totaling $750 billion, and (d) promises for a major additional fiscal stimulus in 2009. These monetary and fiscal actions were overwhelmed primarily by an unprecedented decline in household wealth (Chart 4). Moreover, the wealth loss is now being augmented by significant job losses and a shorter work week.

Chart 4

From the final quarter of 2006 through the third quarter of 2008, the real value of homes fell $3.5 trillion, while households' real holdings of stocks fell $2.1 trillion, resulting in a $5.6 trillion loss in total household wealth (Table 1). The wealth loss may exceed $10 trillion when the fourth quarter figures are tabulated. The Fed's econometric model indicates that a one dollar decline in real wealth will reduce total expenditures by 7.5 cents over three years. This means that the drag on consumer spending from declining wealth will be 3.4% per annum this year and for the next two years. By comparison, from 2000 to 2007 the annual increase in consumer spending was 2.9%. Additional losses in household income and wealth are likely in 2009.

Table 1

With consumers confronting such hostile wealth and income prospects, the saving rate is likely to rise sharply as it did after the Great Depression and, excluding the distortions created by World War II, continued to do for a half century. If the deflation now apparent in specific sectors of the economy spreads, the rise in the saving rate is likely to continue for a very long time. In the past, debt deflations have caused consumers to avoid at all cost the pattern of living beyond their means. Thus, the rising saving rate will constitute a major headwind for the U.S. economy.

GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

As a percent of GDP, the trade deficit has fallen from 6% to 4.9% in nominal terms and 5.5% to 3% in real terms over the past two years. Real imports in constant dollars have declined by 3.5% in the latest four quarters, a dramatic reversal from the sharp increases of recent years. This drop in imports reflects the loss of consumer wealth and income, creating lower spending for imports, and this drag will persist for at least three more years. Therefore, further and even sharper declines in imports are likely. This will continue to transmit U.S. economic weakness to the rest of the world, while at the same time gradually and irregularly reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

Although the current account will narrow and fewer funds will recycle into the U.S., it is important to review the portfolios of foreign investors. Based on the latest available figures, the foreign sector held $9.1 trillion of long-term securities (Table 2). The Treasury department considers long term securities to be those with an original maturity of more than one year. As this table indicates, equities comprise 34% of foreign holdings, the highest for any category, followed by 30% in corporate bonds, 22% in Treasury securities and 14% in Federal Agency securities. The holdings of U.S. Treasury securities are primarily in the short end, with 70% held in 5 year or less maturities, 23% in 5 -10 year maturities, and just 7% in greater than 10 year securities. Thus, the shrinking U.S. capital account surplus is likely to have its greatest funding impact on the corporate bond and equity markets. The short-term Treasury market could be adversely affected, but the Fed is able to control the short-term rates.

Table 2

HISTORY OF DEBT BUBBLES AND LONG-TERM INTEREST RATES

In the world's three most recent debt deflations – the U.S. from the 1870s to the 1890s, the U.S. from the 1920s to 1940s, and Japan from the 1980s to the very present – the low in long term interest rates occurred about 15 years after the end of the debt mania (Chart 5). Even 20 years after the end of the debt boom, interest rates were not much above their yearly average lows. Using this history as a guide, it would not be surprising to experience a decade of low and declining interest rates

Chart 5

During 2008, long term Treasury bond yields fell from 4.5% to 2.7%, producing an extremely strong total return for such investments, as typified by the Wasatch-Hoisington Treasury Bond Fund (WHOSX), which returned 37.7%. Credit problems affected returns elsewhere in debt markets, limiting returns on the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (formerly the Lehman Index) to 5.2%. The decline in long Treasury yields reflected the intensification of recessionary forces as well as a collapse in inflationary expectations.

While the historical record indicates that the ultimate low in Treasury yields lies years away, the path to the ultimate low will be anything but smooth or linear as significant volatility continues. As the experience from U.S. and Japanese history indicates, many "false dawns" will occur, with investors assuming that the long-delayed cyclical recovery in economic activity is at hand. During these pleasant but relatively short interludes, stock prices will probably rise dramatically and bond yields will increase. If history is a guide, however, these episodes will further drain wealth and will be thwarted by the persistent forces of the debt deflation. With yields in the long Treasury market very low in nominal terms, the real return will be greater if deflation sets in. Moreover, in Japan from 1988 to the present, as well as in the U.S. from 1872 to 1892 and 1928 to 1948, the total return on Treasury bonds exceeded the total return on stocks. Such a condition cannot happen for the long run, but it did happen in these three instances spanning two decades. As a hedge against a recurrence of a prolonged debt deflation, some investors may want to consider even larger positions in high quality, long term Treasury securities.

Van R. Hoisington
Lacy H. Hunt, Ph.D.

Setting the Bull Trap

John Mauldin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:00:48 GMT

Yesterday I sent you an Outside the Box from Paul McCulley who supports the government and Fed activity (in general) in the current economic crisis. Today we look at an opposing view from Bennet Sedacca of Atlantic Advisors. He asks some very interesting questions like:

Shouldn't the consumer, after decades of over-consumption, be allowed to digest the over-indebtedness and save, rather than be encouraged to take risk?
Shouldn't companies, no matter what of view, if run poorly, be allowed to fail or forced to restructure?
Should taxpayer money be used to make up for the mishaps at financial institutions or should we allow them to wallow in their own mistakes?

I think you will find this a very thought-provoking Outside the Box.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Setting the Bull Trap

by Bennet Sedacca

Bull Trap: A false signal indicating that a declining trend in a stock or index has reversed and is heading upwards when, in fact, the security will continue to decline.

You got to know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
and know when to run.
You never count your money
when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin'
when the dealings done

–Kenny Rogers, The Gambler.

Is the Ultimate Bull Trap Being Set?

Long time students of the market will tell you that "the crowd is usually wrong at the extremes". Judging by what I see, hear and read in the media, the current consensus is that stocks bottomed on November 20^th-21^st, an economic recovery will begin in the second half of 2009, corporate bonds are a buy, stocks are cheap and the stock market is now discounting all the bad news. This is surely a sign that the worst is likely behind us.

Even though I was looking for a low in the S&P 500 around 750 (it bottomed around 740 on November 21^st only to close at 800 the same day), I continue to believe that was a low point, but not THE low point for this bear market. We were large buyers of Mortgage Backed Securities during the Wall Street de-leveraging and have been rewarded with handsome gains, although we began to take some profits on Friday where appropriate.

Corporate bond spreads have tightened during a slow holiday season as well as spreads in CMBS (Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities). Corporate spreads may or may not tighten further as I believe there will be a wave of issuance at every level - Government, Emerging Markets, Corporations, Municipalities, etc. Treasury yields have crashed as the Fed has taken the Federal Funds Target Rate to a range of 0-0.25%.

Stocks have rallied even more to S&P 931 and could possibly make a run at 1,000- 1,100 if "performance anxiety" sets in among those portfolio managers that are afraid to miss the rally. We are not afraid of missing the rally because we are absolute return investors and have the luxury of having missed the big down move from nearly 1,600. The managers that are subject to performance anxiety are the same group that managed to a market benchmark only to get tattooed during the downturn.

The Fed is punishing savers and the Prudent Man by manipulating interest rates to zero. You can sit in cash and earn zero or you can be forced out on the risk spectrum just so you can keep up with inflation or your benchmark.

Forcing money into risky assets is perhaps the most dangerous experiment ever done, and is so large in scale and so unprecedented that we have no idea how it will end. I expect it to end poorly and with hyper-inflation. The funneling of assets into risk is masking the deteriorating fundamentals and giving the appearance of a market that has bottomed. But this is sleight of hand, an illusion

The Fed has declared a war on savers, a war on prudence and provided the ultimate Moral Hazard Card-and with our money no less. They are also setting up the ULTIMATE BULL TRAP-a trap so large that when it is sprung, perhaps as early as the end of the first quarter/beginning of second quarter that there will only be sellers left.

Why is the Federal Reserve Punishing Prudence?

Prudent—Wise in handling practical matters; exercising good judgment of common sense. Careful in regard to owns own interests; provident. Careful about one's conduct; circumspect.

-Webster's Dictionary.

Prudent Man Rule—an investment standard adopted by some U.S. states to govern the action of those responsible for investing money for other people. The fiduciary is required to act as a prudent man or woman would in regards to investing monies of others.

-Bloomberg Financial Definition.

Ever since 1995, the Federal Reserve and other authorities have been assisting in the birth of the largest debt bubble in our nation's history. Money supply has grown exponentially, weak businesses have been formed and failed, the consumer is leveraged up to their eyeballs, regulation is poor, and savings have dried up. Further, the brokerage/investment banking industry has been pummeled beyond recognition; lifelines have been given to everyone from poorly run banks to poorly run auto manufacturers. Esoteric securities have been relocated from the balance sheets of reckless banks and brokers to the U.S. Treasury, FDIC and Federal Reserve. Investors worldwide watched $30 trillion of stock market equity disappear in the past year while home prices have cratered by better than 25%. What other goodies do we have?

Unemployment on every front is rising. market that has bottomed.
Tax receipts are down and State Governments are suffering.
The debt market, except that artificially supported by the Government is closed.
Earnings estimates for the S&P 500 are down 60% year-over-year.
Stocks (using the Dow as a proxy) are at the same level they were 10 years ago.
Industrial Production around the globe is imploding.

I could go on and on and on and on, but there really is no point. I could show 25 graphs or more of what is wrong with America's economy and for that matter, much of the rest of the global economy and global markets.

Here is the magical question: "why is there is so much bad news, and is it fully discounted in prices?" If so, "why are the Fed, FDIC and Treasury Department so desperate to drive down interest rates to zero, buy troubled assets, ruin what used to be an efficient debt market in Mortgage Backed Securities, Corporate Bonds and Preferred Stock?"

There seems to be two distinct markets that have developed for debt—one that the U.S. Government stands behind with all of OUR money and the one that exists in the "free market".

Before I show a few examples of why prudence is being penalized and why I believe it will be a deadly trap for those that fall in it, allow me to share with you the most recent release from the Federal Open Market Committee to give you a sense of their desperation.

FOMC Statement December 16, 2008

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to establish a target range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent.

Since the Committee's last meeting, labor market conditions have deteriorated, and the available data indicate that consumer spending, business investment, and industrial production have declined. Financial markets remain quite strained and credit conditions tight. Overall, the outlook for economic activity has weakened further.

Meanwhile, inflationary pressures have diminished appreciably. In light of the declines in the prices of energy and other commodities and the weaker prospects for economic activity, the Committee expects inflation to moderate further in coming quarters.

The Federal Reserve will employ all available tools to promote the resumption of sustainable economic growth and to preserve price stability. In particular, the Committee anticipates that weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time.

The focus of the Committee's policy going forward will be to support the functioning of financial markets and stimulate the economy through open market operations and other measures that sustain the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet at a high level. As previously announced, over the next few quarters the Federal Reserve will purchase large quantities of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities to provide support to the mortgage and housing markets, and it stands ready to expand its purchases of agency debt and mortgage-backed securities as conditions warrant. The Committee is also evaluating the potential benefits of purchasing longer-term Treasury securities. Early next year, the Federal Reserve will also implement the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to facilitate the extension of credit to households and small businesses. The Federal Reserve will continue to consider ways of using its balance sheet to further support credit markets and economic activity.

I find it slightly ironic that I chose red, white and blue to highlight the text of the FOMC release as I do not believe what I am witnessing in the financial markets is anything close to patriotic. In fact, I find it distasteful, dangerous and Socialistic. Think for a moment about where the Fed is heading with their policies. It is the opposite of a free market, absent of "Laissez faire" and one right out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Laissez faire—the theory or system of government that upholds the autonomous character of the economic order, believing that government should intervene as little as possible in the direction of economic affairs.

If you read the paragraph from the FOMC statement highlighted in red and add to that all of the new programs and bailouts paid for by "We the People", it leads me to the following questions.

Shouldn't the consumer, after decades of over-consumption, be allowed to digest the over-indebtedness and save, rather than be encouraged to take risk?
Shouldn't companies, no matter what state they reside in from a political point of view, if run poorly, be allowed to fail or forced to restructure?
Should taxpayer money be used to make up for the mishaps at financial institutions or should we allow them to wallow in their own mistakes?
Shouldn't free markets be free?
When did Socialism make its way to our shores?
How do we choose who is bailed out and who loses?
Shouldn't we place blame on the politicians, bureaucrats and other "decision makers" and put skilled people in place that know how to run the businesses?
Shouldn't investors, led blindly down the primrose path of "buy and hold, diversify and don't open your brokerage statement except once every 10 years" be allowed to follow the Prudent Man Rule?

Again, there are many questions to be asked, many with answers that no one wants to put in print. When will people stand up like in the movie Network when Howard Beale, played by Peter Finch, screams, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!!!"

I have a feeling that once the rally in equities and credit (no matter how long it plays out) ends, we will realize that the patient has only been shot up with adrenaline as opposed to good old-fashioned bed rest.

Risk taking, in a laissez faire world should be replaced with risk aversion for a period of time. Consumers that over-consumed should be allowed to strengthen their balance sheets for the next cycle and increase their savings. Companies that have been kept afloat, bailed out, nationalized, stuck in conservatorship, have become part of my national portfolio whether I like it or not, unless it actually poses systemic risk (which I am not at all in favor of), should fail. Period. After all, where is MY bailout?

A Few Examples of the "Not-So-Free-Market"

The picture above is of 30 year Fannie Mae 4 ½% mortgage pools. Note the recent 13% spike as the Fed announced that they would be buying Mortgage Backed Securities in order to stabilize the mortgage market. In a free market, these securities would be many points lower, but because there is an artificial bid (yep, with our money) investors are forced to look elsewhere toward risky assets.

The chart above may be confusing, but it is actually rather simple—it is the screen that our Head Trader and I look at all day in the land of Mortgage Backed Securities. If you focus on the middle row section, you will note that 7% Freddie Mac (FGLMC) pools trade at the same price as Freddie Mac 6% pools and lower in price than 6 ½% pools. This is yet another example of how the markets have become so disorderly and difficult to trade. But for the icing on the cake, feast your eyes on what the Prudent man would invest in during times of rebuilding one's balance sheets, Treasury Bills.

Yes folks, cash is now officially trash. If you buy 1 month Treasury Bills, you are rewarded with a yield of a gigantic 0.02% per year. That's right, 2 basis points per year. I suppose people with more than enough money can keep it invested for an entire year and make nothing or they can succumb to the pressure of, "I can't make zero forever if I want to retire."

Now, imagine that you are a professional money manager that is paid 1% a year to invest other people's money. If you feel that being prudent is to sit in cash, and attempt to charge a fee, the math is simple—0.02% per year minus any reasonable fee is a negative return. This is forcing many people out on the risk spectrum at precisely the wrong moment, when risks are the highest ever.

While we have taken some profits as mentioned earlier on, we remain rather fully invested in higher coupon mortgage backed securities that we feel have a low chance of being refinanced and will provide an adequate (4-6%) return while we wait for the dust to settle.

Summary—Why Will the Bull Trap Hurt so Many Investors???

As I have mentioned many times, markets are clearly driven by fear and greed. At Atlantic Advisors we operate without regard to market benchmarks. To guide our investing, we don't begin by looking at the construction of market benchmarks, instead we ask ourselves, "in the absence of a benchmark, what would you buy?" This leads into buying only securities that we believe have the best risk/reward profile and away from those that are not attractive, even if they are part of the benchmark.

Most money managers are driven by "beating the benchmark"; no matter how imprudent it may be to do so. Like Kenny Rogers sang in "The Gambler", "you have to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em." Knowing when to fold 'em or play it close to the vest, while everyone around you is partying is perhaps the most difficult task we face as investors. I am fully aware of the Fed's goal to both "save the system" and "force everyone out on the risk spectrum", but I have seen this play before.

I believe very strongly that investors who believe that they must be invested in risky assets at the expense of prudence will rue the day that they did so. As it relates to stocks, when I consider the risk/reward ratio with equities at 22 times earnings (using 931 S&P 500 and $42 in earnings in 2009), I cringe when I hear people say that stocks are cheap.

What about municipal bonds? Pundits are declaring municipals cheap relative to Treasury bonds. Treasuries are not a good barometer as they are being manipulated lower in yield. With the insurers like MBIA and AMBAC gone, and little if any research available on the nearly 50,000 issuers out there, and downgrades coming like Noah's Flood, I cringe to think that they are attractive as well.

When I consider junk bonds, with new issuance at zero (a whopping one new issue was completed in the 4^th quarter of 2008), they may seem cheap relative to Treasuries, but with the window for new money issuance closed, and money scarce, who will the buyers be? Expect a record high default rate in junk bonds in 2009-2010.

As for preferred stocks, I am cautious there as well as I wouldn't be surprised to see Uncle Sam exercise his muscle and step in to tell banks that they CANNOT pay common OR preferred dividends. Such is the life of Socialism.

In sum, I think many investors are being forced into taking risk so as to avoid a zero return when they actually would rather play it safe.

Again, we remain conservatively invested with a trading attitude towards the best of breed companies and sectors, those that do not need Federal assistance to stay in existence.

Once last thing - please check out the chart below to see what the government has purchased for our national portfolio. Lovely. Just Lovely.

All In

John Mauldin — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:34:42 GMT

There is an ongoing debate on the current nature of the economic environment and what should the response be by government. Today's Outside the Box by Paul McCulley takes up one view, arguing that we need a federal response and stimulus package to protect the overall economy and save capitalism from itself. Tomorrow, I am going to send yet another view arguing that by doing so we are hurting the prudent investor and businesses that did not over-leverage and behaved responsibly. Both are important to understand. And as I will argue on Friday in my 2009 Forecast Issue, both are right. And that is one of the great economic paradoxes that we are faced with today. Navigating through this period is particularly challenging, but I think it is critical that you understand what Paul says today and what Bennet Sedacca will say tomorrow. Understanding what is going to happen, whether or not we agree with the philosophy behind it should be our goal, as it will make us better able to respond with our own portfolio and business decisions.

By the way, Paul McCulley, the Managing Director of Pimco, always features a "conversation" he has with his pet rabbit at the end of each year. Not only is it instructive, but it can also be downright funny. I think you will enjoy this letter a lot. And sorry about the Outside the Box coming later this week. We lost power for the day yesterday due to a mild ice storm here in Dallas.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

All In

Global Central Bank Focus
Paul McCulley | December 2008/January 2009

(A conversation with Bun Bun, the author's Netherlands Dwarf pet bunny
and early-morning debating partner.)

PMc: Good morning, Bun Bun. Ready for our end of year chin wag?

BB: Again? And the question is not whether I'm ready, but whether you're ready. You're looking haggard, man, like a horse rode hard and put up wet. I never see you anymore, where you been?

PMc: First off, I ain't a horse. But I do catch your drift. As to where I've been, I've told you before: either at work or at my little rental cottage down on the water. I rented it for a weekend getaway, and found the water so soothing to my soul that I essentially live there now. So you got this big house all to yourself, Precious.

Except when my son, Jonnie is home from college, of course. He likes this space more than down on the water, not the least because I'm rarely here, I suspect. But that's only a suspicion. You know anything about that?

BB: Don't act dumb, Mac. He's 19 years old and has more girlfriends than the Fed has special liquidity facilities. Enough said, except that I think he ought to be taxed one fresh head of romaine lettuce for me every time he shows me off to a date. Remember, I just get to live here in your study, while he has roam of the whole house.

PMc: Okay, Okay. I'll work on that for you. Meanwhile, how do you know about all the Fed's liquidity facilities?

BB: Simple. Jonnie explained them to me, telling me the Bank of Ben is now doing for the capital markets what the Bank of Dad does for him: liberal liquidity provisions against all sorts of collateral, including the mere promise to behave in a more socially acceptable and responsible way in the future.

PMc: That's not exactly right, Bun Bun. Well maybe it is with respect to the Bank of Dad, but it is not the case with the Bank of Ben. As a general rule, also called the law of the land, the Federal Reserve is not in the business of lending on a wing and a prayer, but rather good collateral.

BB: You mean like you giving money to Jonnie but taking his iPod and putting it in the desk drawer until he pays you back?

PMc: Sorta like that, but in the case of the Fed, they wouldn't give Jonnie the purchase price of his iPod, but some lesser amount against the re-sale value of his iPod, minus a haircut.

BB: You mean that Ben would make him get a haircut, maybe even a shave, before taking in his iPod as collateral against a loan?

PMc: No, even though that's not a bad idea. In the collateralized lending business, in which the Federal Reserve traffics, a haircut is the margin of safety the lender demands for a loan against the re-sale value of the collateral. In your example, if an iPod cost $200 new and has a secondary market value of $100, the Fed would not even lend $100 against it, but rather some haircutted amount, say $75.

BB: So Ben would take Jon's iPod and put it the drawer, give him 75 bucks, and if he didn't pay off the loan, Ben would sell it for anything greater than 75 bucks, even if it's quoted at 100 bucks today?

PMc: Yep, that's more or less the mechanics of the matter, though to the best of my knowledge, the Federal Reserve has never taken in iPods at its various lending facilities. Very much unlike the Bank of Dad, who is not really in the banking business but the welfare business.

BB: But Jonnie told me that the Fed really can be like you, Mac, lending to anybody against anything with no-recourse, if the Board of Governors declares an emergency. He said something about a section 33. Was Jonnie wrong? You are paying way too much tuition for that fancy college he goes to if they are teaching him stuff that is wrong.

PMc: Jon's answer is not so much wrong as incomplete, similar to his efforts to clean up his room. And it's not section 33; it's section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act of 1934 which allows the Fed to lend to anybody, but not against anything.

The Fed can do so only if (1) a super majority of the Board of Governors - not the Federal Open Market Committee, known as the FOMC - declares the need for such lending to be the consequence of "unusual and exigent" circumstances, and (2) such lending is done against collateral that is "indorsed or otherwise secured to the satisfaction" of the Fed's lending officers.

BB: Technical details, I say, Mac. Jonnie was essentially right: if the Fed declares that the stuff is hitting the oscillator, the law allows for the Fed to unplug the oscillator, just so long as it dutifully declares that said oscillator is indeed an oscillator that needs to be unplugged. Jonnie said that's what the Fed has been doing ever since some stern dude named Bear needed a loan against a bunch of iPods with the batteries stripped out of them. Is that true?

PMc: I think perhaps I need to have a conversation with Jon's economics professor, who needs to remember that you are supposed to teach students textbook economics before teaching them real-world economics. But yes, back in March, the Fed invoked Section 13(3), for the first time since it was passed into law in 1934, to make a big loan that it otherwise wouldn't have been permitted legally to make.

But it wasn't to a stern dude named Bear, but rather to a special purpose vehicle, known as an SPV and named Maiden Lane LLC, which was set up to lend against dodgy mortgages previously held by the investment bank named Bear Stearns. The Fed made this loan to facilitate the merger of Bear into a bank named JP Morgan, so that Bear Stearns didn't go bankrupt, blowing the financial system sky high.

BB: All technical details, no? Your boss Mr. Gross is right, you are far too wonkish sometimes. Jonnie had the essence of the transaction down, no? In that case, the Fed's lending principles were similar to those of the Bank of Dad, no?

PMc: What's with all the no's, Bun Bun? You are starting to sound like a lawyer, leading the witness. Jonnie hasn't started dating girls in law school has he?

BB: Not that I know of; he's only a sophomore in college, for goodness sake. Just yanking your chain, Mac. But the way Jonnie explained it to me, the Fed really did do something very novel when it dealt with that Bear oscillator. It put some $30 billion of Bear's dodgy assets into that Maiden Lane thingamabob, telling JP Morgan that it had to stand up for the first $1 billion of losses and that the Fed would stand up for the remaining $29 billion, no recourse to JP Morgan. Is that right?

PMc: Yes, that's right, it was indeed an unusual Fed loan, and the Fed declared that it was, so as to legally be able to make it.

BB: But didn't you say that the Fed must be "secured"? How could making JP Morgan stand up only for the first $1 billion of losses against a $30 billion portfolio of iPods without batteries be deemed a secure loan?

PMc: Enough, Bun Bun, enough. I like your inquisitiveness, but sometimes some things are just best accepted as the way the world works, not how some textbook says it is supposed to work.

You're triggering a memory that goes back some twenty-five years ago, when Paul Volcker was chairman of the Federal Reserve. That was before CNBC, so guys who do what I do, called Fedwatchers back then, had to literally travel to Washington, DC to hear Mr. Volcker deliver the Fed's semi-annual report to Congress.

Some Congressman, whose name I've long since forgotten, was really getting after Mr. Volcker, demanding that he detail something that Mr. Volcker didn't want to detail. So Mr. Volcker took a long draw on his cigar and blew a big fog of smoke and said: "Congressman, we did what we did and we didn't do what we didn't do." And that was that, no more explanation needed.

BB: Hold on here. This Volcker dude was smoking a cigar while testifying before Congress? Was the session held outside?

PMc: No, Princess, it was held in a stately Congressional hearing room. And I was sitting right behind him. Back then, it was not against the law to smoke a cigar indoors, though most considered it impolite.

Even I did, and I rarely begrudge a man a good smoke, because Mr. Volcker's cigars were so cheap that they smelled like burning car seats when he puffed them. But he didn't care. At least not back then. A few years later, he gave up cigars.

But that wasn't my point. While Congress is the legal boss of the Federal Reserve, Congress is a boss with 535 heads, and sometimes the Fed boss simply has to do what he has to do, blowing smoke, literally or metaphysically, after the fact.

BB: So is this what the Fed did in making that funky loan against Bear Stearns' funky assets?

PMc: No, Bun Bun. Well maybe, as the Fed didn't and hasn't disclosed all the details of just how funky the funky stuff was. But the Fed, and especially Chairman Ben Bernanke, made clear to everybody that would - or wouldn't - listen that the Fed was not happy about making that loan, and didn't want to have to ever make such a loan again.

Not that the Maiden Lane loan didn't need to be made at the time, to save the capitalist financial system from its debt-deflationary pathologies. But the loan should have been made by the fiscal authority, not the monetary authority, with express blessing from Congress, who have express blessing from the electorate to do such things. For you see, Bun Bun, if there is the equivalent of the Bank of Dad in Washington, DC, it is supposed to be the Treasury, not the central bank.

BB: All very interesting, very interesting. Is this why the Fed refused to make a loan to that Lee Man chap when he was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, feeling remorse for having made a loan against that Bear dude's stinky stuff?

PMc: It's Lehman, not Lee Man. And I don't know about any remorse for the Bear loan, Princess. All I know is that the Fed was not happy about it. Thus, when it came time to decide whether to lend against Lehman's stinky stuff, the question became just how stinky it was versus the Bear dude's stuff. Ben and the NY Fed Chief Tim Geithner decided it was just too stinky and took a pass. Or, as Mr. Volcker might have said, they didn't do what they didn't do.

BB: In which case, why didn't the Treasury step up and make the loan? After all, you said the fiscal authority can legally do what the monetary authority can't. Why didn't the Treasury unplug the oscillator, rather than let Lehman go down, effectively turning the oscillator on high?

PMc: Again, we'll never know precisely, Bun. But most fundamentally, the Treasury didn't have the express authority from Congress to do so. At least that is what Treasury Secretary Paulson says, while pounding the table with his shoe, Khrushchev style.

Could he have found some way, say using the Foreign Exchange Stabilization Fund? It's a fund of near $50 billion that the Treasury has Congressional approval to spend, if such spending is deemed necessary to keep the dollar from going wonky. Mr. Paulson later used it to establish a guarantee program for Money Market Mutual Funds. So conceptually, he could have used it to keep Lehman out of bankruptcy. I wasn't there, so I don't know. I certainly would have, but that assertion ain't worth a cup of coffee unless you have 4 bucks to go with it.

BB: So Lehman went down, and as was feared when the decision was made to prevent Bear from going down, the financial system blew sky high?

PMc: I might have been using a bit of hyperbole earlier when I said that, Bun Bun. But your Ockham's Razor conclusion is essentially correct.

BB: Never heard of such a razor, Mac. I think Jonnie uses something called a Gillette when he shaves that scruffy beard off every six weeks. What's an Ockham's Razor and what does it have to do with you becoming a much older man in the 100 days or so since Lehman was consumed by the oscillator?

PMc: Ockham's Razor is not a device for removing whiskers, but rather a mode of logic from the 14th century, defined loosely as cutting away all non-essential arguments when trying to answer a question or solve a problem. Which you just did, wonderfully, Bun Bun, when you asserted that what happened after Lehman went down was exactly what policy makers feared when they prevented bankruptcy for Bear: a systemic lock up of the global financial system.

BB: And out of that lacuna was born the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program), which explicitly gives the Treasury the authority and the money to unplug oscillators that need to be unplugged, when the Fed lacks the power to do so?

PMc: Yea verily, I say unto thee, Princess. You are a rather smart rabbit. Lacuna, that's a nice word. I don't recall saying it in front of you before. Where did you learn it?

BB: Looked it up on the web myself, and it precisely defines living in this place, while you live in the cottage. Take a hint, dude.

PMc: Taken. Now back to the matter at hand. The TARP, which Congress fought intensely about, and is still fighting about, given how the Treasury has used it to date, does indeed fill a gap in the federal safety net against systemic risk. It allows the Treasury to go where the Fed can't, literally lending to anybody against anything, or simply injecting equity into anybody against nothing, if necessary to maintain the capitalist financial system as a going concern.

BB: So is it 21st century socialism or welfare? Or is that a difference without a distinction?

PM: Bun, how am I to answer your machine gun questions if you keep answering them yourself? But yes, you've called it what it is. For my taste, I prefer the word socialism, but it does have a kernel of welfare in it, too. Whatever you call it, the TARP is a huge new tool for the visible fist of Treasury to support the invisible hand of capitalism.

BB: A fist, you say? How about calling it the taxpayers providing a hand out?

PMc: Ain't going there, Bun. Wouldn't be prudent, as the current President's father used to say. It is what it is, as everybody seems to say these days, in defense of what is unpalatable, but also necessary.

BB: So, if there was a positive externality of Lehman's demise, it is that policymakers finally found their socialist mojo, putting in place the necessary laws for the government to lever up and risk up its balance sheet more than proportionate to the private sector's new-found proclivity to do just the opposite?

PMc: Nice way to put it, Bun, with the operative phrase being "more than proportionate". That is indeed what is needed to save capitalism from its inherent debt-deflation pathologies. The paradox of deleveraging and the paradox of thrift are beasts of burden that capitalism simply can't bear alone. Only the Minsky Solution can lift that load.

BB: Ah, Minsky. I knew you would get ‘round to him, it was only a question of how long you could restrain yourself. You and I recently talked a lot about Professor Minsky, complete with his Forward Journey, followed by his famous or infamous Moment, followed by his Reverse Journey. But I don't recall talking about his Solution. I know I'm going to regret this, but could you refresh my memory?

PMc: Thank you, Princess, for asking. I'm quite sure a number of those listening in on this conversation similarly share your reservation about letting me loose to pontificate on Minsky. So out of respect for both you and them, I'm going to act on the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words, maybe more. Here's a stylized graph, created by my colleague and friend Ramin Toloui, that captures all you need to know about Minsky right now.

BB: You are a kind man, Mac, spoiling me relentlessly. Looking at the graph, which I see starts in 2003, you have the Forward Minsky Journey unfolding, complete with the ever-risky steps from Hedge to Speculative to Ponzi Finance. The Shadow Banking System expands explosively. And then, you have the Minsky Moment in August 2007.

And then you have the Reverse Minsky Journey, as Ponzi Units evaporate, Speculative Units morph after the fact into Ponzi Units, and even Hedge Units take a beating, as the Shadow Banking System contracts implosively. And then the pain stops with this new thing called the Minsky Solution, followed by something called Reflation.

But I don't see a precise date on the graph for when this happens. Are we there yet? Is the pain going to stop? Like, now?

PMc: Nice framing and clearing of the graphic, Bun Bun. Have you been taking an on-line course from Communispond while I haven't been looking?

BB: Nope, I just look up cool words on the computer. You never take me out on the speaking circuit, so I don't need to learn how to dance the Communispond dance steps.

Stop dodging the question, Mac. I presume this Minsky Solution thing is that "more than proportionate" socialist response that we were talking about just a moment ago?

PMc: Precisely - if you weren't a bunny, Bun, I'd call you grasshopper! That is precisely the Minsky Solution: the government not only steps up to the risk-taking and spending that the private sector is shirking, but goes further, stepping up with even more vigor, providing a meaningful reflationary thrust to both private sector risk assets and aggregate demand for goods and services.

BB: Okay, I got it even though I hate the notion of being called a grasshopper. So answer my question, master: Are we there yet? And if so, doesn't that mean that it's now time for all good peoples, and bunnies, to sell their T-bills and canned green peas into cheap corporate bonds and stocks?

PMc: I didn't put a date on that box, Bun, precisely to avoid answering the question as to precise timing. All I can say is that the timing is ripening, with the Fed now committed to an all-in reflationary campaign. This includes not just expanding its lending facilities, but doing so in joint ventures with the Treasury, now armed with TARP money, which can serve as the equity in new SPVs that are essentially government-sponsored Shadow Banks.

The recently announced Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, known as the TALF, and scheduled to come on in February, is a perfect example of just such a joint venture, with the Treasury putting up $20 billion of equity and the Fed putting up $180 billion of loans senior to the Treasury.

The TALF will effectively step around the risk-adverse commercial banking system and provide warehouse financing directly for securitization of new consumer and business loans to Main Street. It's a really cool innovation, which is likely to be expanded or replicated. And most important, it is likely to get reflationary traction.

The Fed also stands ready to print $600 billion of money to buy directly $500 billion of Agency MBS (Mortgage-backed Securities) and $100 billion of Agency debentures, so as to pull down and hold down long-term mortgage rates. The buying of the debentures is already under way, and the buying of MBS is likely to start in a matter of weeks.

And if necessary, the Fed is openly willing to print money to buy longer dated Treasuries, providing a further downward gravitational force for long-term interest rates. As my friend Colin Negrych argues, and indeed forecast when the rest of the world thought he was nuts, there is nothing like a 2% handle on longer-term Treasuries yields - the credit risk-free benchmark - to make private sector assets more valuable.

BB: But where are Ben's helicopters tossing out money?

PMc: Bun, you know that I don't like references to Helicopter Ben. It's a cheap shot, absolutely a cheap shot, fired by people who haven't bothered to actually read his famous November 2002 speech, when he discussed an anti-deflation technique conceived by the great Milton Friedman - a money-financed tax cut.

That said, it is indeed a fact, a glorious fact, in my view, that the Fed does presently stand ready to print as much money as necessary to accommodate the financing of an all-in reflationary fiscal policy thrust, as promised by President-elect Obama. Through holes in the floor of heaven, Hyman Minsky weeps tears of joy.

Call it good, very good: the monetary and fiscal authorities, separately yet together, going all in. And call me cautiously optimistic that Reflation will get traction.

BB: I hate that phrase, Mac, absolutely hate it. And you're the one that taught me to hate it. What is cautiously optimistic? Either you are or you aren't, no?

PMc: Touché, Bun, touché. With respect to the willingness of policy makers to do the right reflationary thing, we can drop the adverb cautiously. I'm flat out optimistic. But prudence demands that I at least acknowledge that even the best laid reflationary plans might go awry, at least in the short run.

BB: Well if that might happen, how can you call them the "right reflationary thing"? All in means all in, no?

PMc: Yes it does, Bun Bun. But it doesn't mean that all sectors and all companies have to flourish in response. The "right reflationary thing" is a macro concept, not necessarily a micro concept. It doesn't mean extending the soothing socialist hand to every square inch of the capitalist landscape.

The right reflationary thing to do is to systemically save capitalism from its inherent debt-deflationary pathologies, not to eliminate capitalism. Recall, capitalism at its micro core is a process called creative destruction, churning resources from yesterday's technologies and work methods to the more productive ones of tomorrow.

BB: Ok, that makes some sense. In my world, that's called the survival of the fittest. Wouldn't make sense for government to try to overrule that force of nature, I agree. But it would make sense for the government to put out a forest fire that threatened to consume all us creatures, right?

PMc: Nice way to put it, Princess. Very nice! It's a delicate balance.

BB: Thank you. In your world of investing, it seems the analog would be to go long the forest, because the government is going to keep the flames of deflation from burning it down, while taking a selective approach to going long particular creatures. Is that about right?

PMc: Yea verily, I say unto thee again. But with just a slightly finer point on the matter: In order to save the capitalist economic forest, there are certain creatures that the government must necessarily also save. The right investment strategy is to go long both the forest and those creatures.

BB: Fair enough. Now name them!

PMc: We have been publicly naming them for months here at PIMCO, Bun Bun. Well maybe not always particular names, but rather the attributes of those names. The most important is explicit government support, which is most notably the case with the debt issued by banks that get to drink a triple-thick socialist shake: Equity injections from the Treasury, debt guarantees from the FDIC, and access to the munificent liquidity facilities of the Federal Reserve.

BB: But isn't it time to get a little more daring than that? What would be wrong with starting to average into some funds in the major stock and bond indexes, as a play on your thesis that the American capitalist economy is a going concern? Yes, I know that means you would be indirectly going long some individual names that will be on the fatal end of the creative destruction process, but isn't that always the case?

PMc: I can't argue with you, Princess. Your suggested strategy is consistent with the all-in reflationary policy responses. Yet caution is still warranted. I'd tilt it toward corporate bonds over corporate stocks, however, as seemingly little known in the popular press, high grade corporate bonds have, on a risk- and volatility-adjusted basis, been beaten up even more than blue chips stocks this year.

BB: I'm glad you are finally seeing it my way, Mac. Sometimes, you can be so thick, letting the pursuit of the perfect become the enemy of grasping the good. Do some of my trade for the Morgan Le Fay Dreams Foundation portfolio, okay?

PMc: As you wish, Bun. And thank you for honoring her memory and wanting her portfolio to do well. Because by doing well, she can continue to do good, lots of good. With that lovely thought, let's end this chin wag with Morgan's favorite prayer of the season. You have the honors.

BB: Thank you, Paul.

May God bless you and keep you,
May God's face shine upon you
and be gracious to you,
May God lift up his countenance
upon you,
And give you peace.

Paul A. McCulley
Managing Director
December 23, 2008

Semi-Annual U.S. Economic Outlook: Collapsing On Schedule

John Mauldin — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:31:03 GMT

This week I am really delighted to be able to give you a condensed version of Gary Shilling's latest INSIGHT newsletter for your Outside the Box. Each month I really look forward to getting Gary's latest thoughts on the economy and investing. Last year in his forecast issue he suggested 13 investment ideas, all of which were profitable by the end of the year. It is not unusual for Gary to give us over 75 charts and tables in his monthly letters along with his commentary, which makes his thinking unusually clear and accessible.

Gary was among the first to point out the problems with the subprime market and predict the housing and credit crises. You can learn more about his letter at http://www.agaryshilling.com. If you want to subscribe, you can call 888-346-7444. Tell them that you read about it in Outside the Box and you will get not only his 2009 forecast issue but an extra issue with his 2010 forecast (of course, that one will not come out for a year. Gary is good but not that good!)

I trust you are enjoying the holidays. And enjoy this week's Outside the Box.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Semi-Annual U.S. Economic Outlook: Collapsing On Schedule

(excerpted from the December 2008 edition of A. Gary Shilling's INSIGHT)

The recession is now running on all four cylinders. We're referring to the four phases of the downturn that we identified much earlier and discussed in numerous Insights.

Phase 1, the collapse of the housing sector, touched off by the subprime slime, as we dubbed it, and measured by the ABX BBBindex, started early last year with the $1.8 billion writedown of subprime mortgage securities by big U.K. bank HSBC in February. Phase 2, the spreading of the woes to Wall Street, commenced with the implosion of two big Bear Stearns hedge funds in June 2007. These first two phases are largely financial, and persist today.

Housing Horrors

Housing starts have nosedived from 2.3 million, seasonally adjusted at annual rates, in January 2006 to 791,000 in October, a post-World War II low (Chart 1). Meanwhile, homebuilder sentiment is now at record lows. Leaping foreclosures, among other forces, have pushed up the homeowner vacancy rate. Some of the victims of declining homeowner rates are moving into rental apartments as the bubble years' lure of homeownership fades or they lose their houses. But others are doubling up with friends and family, thereby adding to empty house inventories.

Foreclosure Sales

As lenders spilled foreclosed houses on the market, they were sold for only 70% of the unpaid loan balance in the third quarter compared with 78% in 2007, and losses averaged 44% of the loan balance compared with 29% a year earlier. With about 40% of existing home sales coming from foreclosures, or "short sales" in which the mortgage amount exceeds the house's value, the prices for selling homeowners and builders are forced to decline to compete.

25% More

Existing home prices are down in October 20% from their peak in October 2005 as measured by the National Association of Realtors, and 21% from their second quarter 2006 peak according to the less-upward biased Case-Shiller index (Chart 2). Curiously, a survey found that in the second quarter, 62% of homeowners believed their houses had appreciated in the last year even though 77% had fallen over that time and only 19% had risen, according to Zillow. Another survey found that 91% believe that a house is the best long-term investment. A third poll revealed that 32% think this is a good time to buy stocks, but 51% believe it's a good time to invest in a home. We wonder if that optimism will persist if our long-held forecast of a 37% peak-totrough decline holds.

Underwater

At present around 12 million homeowners, a quarter of those with mortgages, are underwater with their houses worth less than their mortgages. Among those who bought their homes in the past five years, 29% are underwater. If our forecast of a 37% house price fall is reached, about 25 million, or almost half the 51 million with mortgages, will be underwater. Adding in the 24 million who own their houses free and clear, and one-third of the total will be in trouble. The destruction of the American Dream of homeownership for so many people will force a political response, even though the cost of subsidizing their mortgages down to their house values would be about $1 trillion.

Financial Problems

The woes of financial institutions also persist, fed by bad mortgages and increasingly by other troubled assets. The extreme stress on the financial system here and abroad is manifested in two clear ways: first, the consolidation and disappearance of many previously impregnable financial institutions and second, by the need for huge and continuing government bailout in order to preserve the integrity of the financial structure and, hence, the world's economies.

The list of the departed is well known: Bear Stearns, WaMu, Lehman and Wachovia disappeared while Merrill Lynch arranged a shotgun marriage with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs converted to the safety of bank holding companies.

The FDIC recently announced that the institutions it insures had only $1.7 billion in earnings in the third quarter, down from $28.7 billion a year earlier. And financial troubles aren't confined to banks. Many hedge funds have suffered huge losses on their highly leveraged positions this year. And their sales of securities to limit further losses and to meet investor redemptions are adding downward pressure on many markets. In some, assets are down 50% while others are folding their tents and still others are limiting redemptions, only adding to investor restiveness. Redemptions are expected to jump early next year.

Diversification

Many endowment and pension funds have been hard hit, especially those with heavy alternative investments in hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital, commodities, currencies, emerging market stocks and bonds, real estate, junk securities, etc. Diversification is a great idea -- if it works! But as we've noted continually in Insights for more than 10 years, there are tremendous amounts of hot money flowing around the world. And whether it's managed on the basis of fundamental factors, momentum, technical analysis, etc., it all tends to end up on the same side of the same trade at the same time.

So when stocks get clobbered, as they have since October 2007 (Chart 3), and force out hot money, it will also retreat from otherwise unrelated long positions in, say, grains, to conserve capital. Many institutional investors believe in the Modern Portfolio Theory of diversification, but erroneously thought that alternative investments would have zero or better still, negative correlation with their basic equity holdings. They also became convinced that commodities and foreign currencies were asset classes like equities and bonds, and merited 5%, 10% or 15% of their portfolios. They're learning the hard way that all those correlations have proved to be close to 100% and that commodities and currencies aren't asset classes but speculations.

The Overarching Reality

Washington policymakers do not appear to have understood the overarching reality -- the massive and painful deleveraging of the immense leverage accumulated by the household and private financial sectors over the last three decades (Chart 4). They were also initially preoccupied with a philosophy of non-intervention in the private sector and with concerns with creating moral hazard if they bailed out troubled financial institutions. Furthermore, they've been making up the game plan as they go along. Last summer, Secretary Paulson told Congress that the $700 billion bailout money would be used primarily to buy troubled mortgages and mortgage-related securities from banks. Somehow, that would encourage banks to resume lending, but we never understood how.

A TARP For All

Even though the majority of the $700 billion TARP money is yet to be committed, that total is only a small piece of the $4 trillion-and-counting sum the federal government has made to bail out the financial sector.

Included in that total beyond the $700 billion TARP program is $350 billion in FDIC guarantees on bank-issued debt, and Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America quickly raised $26 billion with Citigroup and Wells Fargo planning to follow. Then there's an estimated $1.3 trillion from the Fed to buy frozen commercial paper, $540 billion to buy commercial paper and other short-term debt from money market funds to stop the run on them, the new $200 billion Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) to back credit card, auto, student aid and small business loans and the $600 billion to buy mortgage-backed securities and GSE debt.

Worst Since The 1930s

Of course, in what will probably be the worst financial crisis and deepest recession since the 1930s, it's not surprising that Depression-era bailout structures are being copied. The Reconstruction Finance Corp., instituted by President Hoover in 1932, bought positions in over 6,000 financial institutions to the tune of $50 billion, not adjusted for inflation or the growth of the economy since then. The government got senior voting rights to control these firms and barred dividend payments to shareholders until the government was repaid.

The worldwide recession is redirecting sovereign wealth money homeward. For instance, seven sovereign wealth funds in the Persian Gulf region are expected to lose 15% of their value, or $190 billion, this year, cancelling the likely $198 billion growth in crude oil revenues.

It's interesting that the Fed, with its new commercial paper program, is lending directly to nonbank corporations for the first time since the 1930s. But then the Fed can lend to anyone, you included, under "unusual and exigent" circumstances. The Fed is, after all, the nation's lender of last resort.

And don't worry about the remaining $370 billion in TARP money being committed. Detroit automakers want $25 billion. Homebuilders want money from somewhere for their $250 billion bailout, mentioned earlier. Banks not included in the initial nine to receive TARP money in the form of preferred stock purchases worry that if they don't ask to be included, they'll appear too weak to qualify. Many of the nation's 6,000 small, non-publicly traded banks want their share of the government goodies even though they can't issue preferred shares and warrants.

Spreading Financial Woes

As consumers retrench and eliminate discretionary spending, they are increasingly regarding monthly payments on credit cards, auto, student and home equity loans as discretionary. When it's a choice between putting food on the table or making a credit card payment, financial responsibility is suffering. Delinquencies and charge-offs in these consumer loan categories are mounting with a 9% increase in auto loans 30 days past due in the second quarter vs. a year earlier and an 11% rise in those 60 days overdue.

Even upscale-oriented American Express, where over half its revenues come from fees paid by merchants, is suffering as charge volume falls and delinquencies and charge-offs on its credit cards rise, leaping 6.7% in September from 3.6% a year earlier. Consequently, the firm recently became a bank holding company so it could qualify for TARP money and hopes to get a $3.5 billion infusion. Credit card issuer Capital One has received preliminary approval for $3.55 billion in TARP money. Credit card issuers are also reacting to weakening volume and jumping charge-offs by raising interest rates and fees.

Student loans more than doubled from $41 billion in school year 1997- 1998 to $85 billion in 2007-2008, but almost all of the growth was in private loans, with subsidized federal aid relatively flat. And delinquencies are jumping in that segment. SLM, or Sallie Mae, the largest private student lender, reported a delinquency rate of 9.4% in September vs. 8.5% a year earlier. Parents, suffering from stock losses and the disappearance of home equity, are no longer able to bail out their debt-swamped offspring. Meanwhile, SUV and other vehicle owners who are now upside down on their auto loans due to weak used vehicle prices have limited zeal to keep up on loan payments.

TALF

Adding the general freezing of credit markets to these conditions and it's not surprising that investor buying of securitized consumer loans, which normally provide the funds to make fresh loans, has dried up. In October, there was only one $500 million deal compared to $50.7 billion a year earlier. And the interest cost has leaped. From June to October, the risk premium on a triple A credit card deal jumped from 3.2 percentage points over 2-year Treasurys to 4.67. Treasury Secretary Paulson recently said that that market "is currently in distress, costs of funding have skyrocketed and new issue activity has come to a halt."

So the government bailouts that we predicted in our October Insight have commenced. The Department of Education is buying $6.5 billion in federally-guaranteed loans, which doesn't affect troubled private student loans directly but does bolster the student loan market overall.

Much more importantly, the government in late November initiated the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) under which the New York Fed will extend up to $200 billion in nonrecourse loans to holders of asset-backed securities backed by highly-rated auto, student, credit card and small business loans. The program may be expanded later to include commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities. The Treasury is kicking in $20 billion from TARP to absorb any losses, as noted earlier.

The hope is that this $200 billion infusion will re-ignite consumer loans. But, as discussed in our October report, leaping delinquencies and the eventual huge writedowns by financial institutional holders of bad consumer loan-related securities suggest that the zeal for consumer loans on the part of lenders or investors will remain subdued. Like TARP, TALF is likely to be no more than a bailout for distressed lenders who made a lot of bad loans. Since the Nov. 25 announcement of TALF, yields on bonds backed by credit card and auto loans remain at record levels.

Foreign Financial Woes

Phase 2 of the recession, financial woes, are, of course, a global phenomenon. And so are the responses. The U.K. initiated the direct injection of government money into banks to buy preferred stocks. The British government had hoped to attract some private capital into HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland, but collapsed share prices left the government with most of the new stock. Barclay's avoided government help, but with its stock down 70% this year, it may ultimately end up with a third of the bank owned by Middle East investors as it raises $10 billion. The Bank of Japan is injecting another $32 billion into the financial system by expanding lending and easing collateral requirements.

Switzerland depends heavily on her reputation as a super-safe haven for international money, and her financial services industry contributes 11.4% to GDP and employs 5.9% of her workforce. Yet the condition of her banks has deteriorated to the point that in October, her Economics Minister had to state publicly that the government would not allow big banks UBS and Credit Suisse to fail. The government is injecting $5 billion into UBS to back $50 billion in illiquid UBS assets. That bank has suffered over $40 billion in losses due to bad mortgage-related securities.

Credit Suisse is in better shape but suffered a $2 billion third quarter loss due to writedowns on mortgage securities and unsold buyout loans as well as currency trading losses. The bank still holds $26 billion in leveraged loans and conventional mortgagerelated securities. Both banks are closing their bond funds for outside investors due to huge withdrawals following losses.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands agreed to inject $13 billion into the banking and insurance giant ING. In 2000, the Spanish central bank introduced its "dynamic provisioning" system that required Spanish banks to build up considerable reserves against potential future losses. As a result, Spanish banks began this year with 200% coverage of nonperforming loans compared with 59% for the average EU bank in 2006. Still, Spain recently set aside $41 billion to fund illiquid assets of her banks. And turbulent market conditions prompted Banco Santander, Spain's largest bank, to unexpectedly announce last month a $9 billion rights issue.

Russia has been floating on a sea of crude oil, but has sunk along with oil prices. Russians are fleeing the ruble for dollars and $83 billion left the country from August to October. The government has raised interest rates and spent heavily to cushion the currency's descent and avoid a repeat of its 1998 collapse. Still, the ruble is down 5% from its August high, and a halving of its current value is forecast. Meanwhile, plunging crop prices and a lack of credit is curtailing Brazil's soaring farm sector.

In Asia, Pakistan, which reluctantly sought a $7.6 billion IMF loan, really needs $10 billion to $15 billion to prevent economic collapse, government officials say. Dubai's pell-mell economic growth has been heavily financed by international debt that may be hard to refinance. South Korea, responding to shortages of foreign currency for her banks and businesses, in October announced a $100 billion government guarantee on foreign currency loans and a $30 billion infusion of dollars into her banks. More recently, that country has problems with high household debt, which leaped from 38% of GDP in 1997 to 66% last year and is probably higher today. And rising credit costs and falling stock and corporate bond prices are slashing the profits of Japanese banks and their ability to provide capital to the international financial system.

Central Bank Responses

Central banks have responded to the global financial crisis in three ways. First, the Fed cut the discount rate and then the federal funds rare repeatedly, starting in August 2007. The Fed has continued this traditional easing approach and other central banks have followed more recently and aggressively, including the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the central banks of India, China, Australia, Norway, Sweden South Korea, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Japan and even Indonesia.

Nevertheless, it became clear early on that rate cuts were of limited value since banks were so scared that they didn't want to tend to each other much less customers. The spread between the London Interbank Lending rate on U.S. interbank loans and Treasury bills, which leaped in the summer of 2007, remains wide. Furthermore, central bank rates are approaching zero at which point, as we understand it, they'll stop falling. So the ammunition of rate cuts is almost all shot off. The horse didn't want to voluntarily walk to the water and, besides, the pond is almost empty. Fed Chairman Bernanke recently said, "The scope for using conventional interest rate policies to support the economy is obviously limited."

So the Fed moved quickly to step 2, leading the horse to the water. It introduced a succession of facilities to auction money to member banks, make it available to nonbank government security dealers, etc. The ECB and the Bank of England introduced similar facilities. Last August, the People's Bank of China, her central bank, relaxed credit quotas so most banks can lend 5% more this year and, more recently, allowed local companies to easily sell yuan-denominated debt of three-to-five years' duration. Then China, it increased quotes for state-controlled lenders by $14.5 billion this year, encouraged local governments to support credit guarantee firms and opened new financing channels including loans for mergers and acquisitions and for consumer finance.

India's central bank has repeatedly reduced bank reserve requirements as has China's. And the Fed has attempted to satisfy foreign banks' gigantic demand for Treasurys by mushrooming its currency swap agreements with foreign central banks and then providing unlimited dollars to the ECB, Bank of England and Swiss National Bank for lending to local banks. The top policymakers of the cautious ECB recently called for an "abundant and generalized" capital infusion into banks. But all these central bank efforts resulted in the proverbial pushing on a string. The funds have stayed in the banks and haven't been lent out and entered the money supply to any meaningful degree as banks want nothing but Treasurys. The central banks led the commercial bank horse to water, but he wouldn't drink.

So it's on to step 3 with the Fed and other central banks, as well as governments, investing directly in Fannie and Freddie, AIG, banks, credit card issuers, insurers, etc. here and abroad, buying commercial paper and, most recently, purchasing indirectly credit card, auto, student and small business loan-backed securities and maybe extending later to commercial and residential mortgagebacked securities as well as subsidizing mortgage rates, as noted earlier.

Washington officials cringe at the suggestion that these measures amount to "quantitative easing," the Japanese policy initiated in 2001, because it failed to rapidly spur Japanese bank lending and the economy and arrest deflation. The Bank of Japan drove its target rate to zero with no effect and then tried to hype the quantity of money by buying government bonds, asset-backed securities and even stocks.

Current quantitative easing by the Fed may not be any more successful than it was in Japan since the global financial system is in a classic liquidity trap, as in the 1930s when bankers were defined as people who wanted to lend to those who didn't need to borrow and didn't want to lend to those who did. Today, banks don't want to lend to anyone but the U.S. Treasury.

Consumer Retrenchment

The financial crisis spawned by the collapse of the residential mortgage market and the follow-on Wall Street woes obviously just had to depress the goods and services economy, and it has in Phases 3 and 4 of the unfolding recession. With the collapse in stock prices and evaporation of home equity, consumers have no other meaningful source of borrowing to fund their spending growth in excess of their after-tax income gains. Notice that home equity withdrawals through cash-out mortgage refinancing and home equity loans reached about $900 billion at annual rates, or around 10% of consumer spending. Now it's negative as principal repayment exceeds home equity withdrawals. So consumers' 25-year borrowing and spending binge, as witnessed by their quarter-century saving rate decline (Chart 5) and borrowing rate surge (Chart 6), is over.

In addition, Americans, especially postwar babies, have saved little for retirement as they concentrated instead on spending. The nosedive in stocks has only made retirement prospects more bleak. In the last 15 months, $2 trillion has disappeared from workplace retirement accounts, including 401(k)s, which now are the primary saving vehicle for 60% of employees.

Jobs

As the housing and financial sectors continue to drop and U.S. consumers retrench, layoffs and unemployment will continue to mount. Payroll employment, which fell 533,000 in November (Chart 7), will probably continue to see monthly declines of 500,000 and the unemployment rate will likely exceed 8% by the end of 2009.

Housing and financial services job cuts are already large and more are coming. But job losses have spread well beyond housing and finance. Manufacturing jobs will continue to be lost as consumers buy fewer domestic goods and foreigners buy fewer American-made products. Retail jobs, normally the employment of last resort for the newly unemployed, are shrinking rapidly. Retail trade employs 10% of the total, but since November 2007, accounted for a quarter of jobs lost, or 320,000, as consumers cut their spending. And another 209,000 retail employees had their full-time hours cut to part-time. Estimates are that 6,100 U.S. stores -- ranging from mom-and-pops to major chains -- will fold this year, up 25% from 2007, and followed by 14,000 stores in 2009.

Impotent Monetary Policy

Conventional monetary policy ease through central bank target interest rate cuts at present is nearly useless, i.e., pushing on a string. Qualitative easing, now actively pursued by the Fed and the Treasury and by central banks and governments abroad, will probably at best only stabilize demoralized financial structures by substituting government securities for questionable assets with little near-term rejuvenation of lending and economic activity.

Also, bear in mind that in democracies, governments are almost guaranteed to be behind the curve in dealing with financial and economic crises. That's because voters elect them to respond to their concerns, not to act in anticipation of yet-unseen problems. Politicians are responders, not planners. In 2006, neither voters nor politicians wanted to prepare for a mortgage market collapse, but voters demanded and got swift action after the crisis unfolded in 2007 and this year.

This means that any resuscitation of the global economies falls on fiscal policy and, as usual, the effects will be delayed, influencing the recovery after the recession rather than shortening its normal course. The incoming Obama Administration is, of course, talking about a sizable fiscal package, perhaps $500 billion to $700 billion, or 3.5% to 5% of GDP.

$700 Billion In Perspective

That's a lot compared to the size of post- World War II recessions (Chart 8). Notice that the 1957-1958 recession, the most severe so far, has a peak to trough decline in real GDP of 3.7%, and the long and deep 1973-1975 downturn saw a 3.1% decline. We're forecasting the most severe recession since the 1930s with a 5.0% decline. You may think that a 5% decline is not a lot, but bear in mind that recessions are more interruptions in growth than economic collapses -- growth that business, consumers, employees and government assume will continue without interruption. Similarly, the 21% decline in the Case-Shiller house price index so far (Chart 2) is small compared with the more-than-doubling during the bubble years. Still, it's very painful for those who made small downpayments at the top and those who extracted their equity when prices were still high.

Even a $700 billion fiscal package would probably have limited impact on the recession, and not start to be effective until the end of 2009. And even then, the effects will probably barely offset the negative cumulative recessionary forces. Obama says his proposal will create 2.5 million jobs over two years. But as discussed earlier, payroll declines are likely to continue to run 500,000 per month, so his program would only offset five months of recessionary losses.

Phase 4

Phase 4 of the recession, its globalization, is clearly underway with almost every major country's economy falling whether or not the official recession label has yet been applied. One indicator of weakness is the 2.4% decline in global semiconductor sales in October after a 2.1% fall in September from a year earlier, reflecting softness in computer and cell phone sales. The worldwide turndown is driven by housing slumps, notably in Ireland, the U.K., Spain, Australia and China. U.S. financial woes have spread to almost all major financial institutions worldwide. And consumer spending has been weak in Europe and Japan. U.S. consumer spending accounts for 71% of GDP but less than 60% in all other G-7 countries except the U.K. Sure, much more of healthcare and education expenditures tend to come from government, not consumer pockets in those lands, but households have traditionally been more cautious spenders than Americans, especially in recent years.

And this introduces another key reason for global recession -- retrenchment of U.S. consumers, which depresses U.S. imports on which the rest of the world depends for growth. The huge U.S. trade deficit is the counterpart of the rest of the world's huge surplus.

Commodities

Obviously, the commodities boom is over (Chart 9). Prices of energy, base and precious metals and agricultural products are all down significantly from peak prices. The global recession has reversed the earlier excess of demand over supply.

Also, institutional and individual investors who earlier rushed into commodities under the belief that they are a legitimate asset class like stocks and bonds are stampeding out even faster. The financial crisis has also made investors wary of structured notes and other commoditylinked instruments -- and of the firms espousing them.

Tsunami In The Swimming Pool

As noted at the outset, the first two phases of the recession were largely financial, the residential mortgage collapse and the following Wall Street woes. Then, like a tsunami in a swimming pool, that financial tidal wave rolled to the other side and inundated the goods and services economy, with Phase 3, consumer retrenchment, and Phase 4, global slump. Now the tsunami is being reflected back to the financial side of the pool in three ways.

First, retrenching consumers will keep pushing up delinquencies on credit cards, home equity, auto and student loan debt, which will result in big writedowns for their many institutional holders. Collectively, these four categories amount to $4.4 trillion, dwarfing the $0.7 trillion in subprime loans.

Commercial real estate debt is the second problem area, and of the $3.5 trillion outstanding, $800 billion is in commercial mortgage- backed securities and $2 trillion in commercial mortgages held in regional and community banks. As vacancies rise, big writedowns will follow.

Third is nonfinancial leveraged loans and junk binds. Delinquencies have barely risen from rock bottom levels, but will as anticipated by yield spreads and 20% junk bond yields. Recession-depressed revenues here and abroad, collapsing commodity prices (Chart 9) and the leaping dollar that will turn earlier currency translation gains to losses, will all slaughter the corporate earnings of nonfinancial corporations, so far relatively untouched by the financial recession. So delinquencies and charge-offs of junk securities will leap and many investment-grade debts will be pushed into junk territory. Junk bond spreads vs. Treasurys now imply a 21% default rate, higher than in 1933 at the bottom of the Depression. Financial institutions also own a lot of the $3.7 trillion in leveraged loans and junk bonds.

If the tsunami moving from the goods and services side of the pool does considerably more damage to the financial side, it will again be reflected back and even tighter financing will devastate the real economy. Policymakers here and abroad, of course, are trying to erect baffles in the form of bailouts in the middle of the pool to dampen the waves. They are learning that they have to build those baffles bigger and stronger to prevent the waves washing over them. Their moves from Fed interest rate cuts to massive quantitative easing, described earlier, shows they're making progress.

Recession Ends When?

If policymakers succeed in containing the mortgage mess and bailing out financial crises related to consumer borrowing, commercial real estate and junk securities -- and other financial problems we haven't explained in detail -- then the recession may well end at the end of 2009 as massive fiscal stimulus begins to take hold. If not, it probably will extend well into 2010 and perhaps beyond.

To end the crisis, four developments are needed, in our view. The elimination of excess house inventories will probably continue until at least the end of 2010, as discussed earlier. The writedowns and recapitalizations of financial institutions -- at least those related mainly to mortgage-related problems that have unfolded so far -- are well along.

Subsidizing the mortgages of underwater homeowners is beginning to develop. And of course the quicker the excess house inventories are eliminated, the more limited will be further house price declines and the fewer will be the additional homeowners who will slip under water. Bailouts of bad loans and securities in the three additional areas we've identified are big unknowns in terms of cost and feasibility. Nevertheless, policymakers are gaining experience as they grope their way through the current round of bailouts and may be real pros when further big problems surface.

The Dollar

At the end of last year, we forecast that the dollar would end its seven-year slump and rally later in the year against most currencies, but not the yen. And it did, starting in July. It was obvious a year ago that far too many were negative on the greenback. As with commodities, many institutional and individual investors considered foreign currencies as an asset class, worthy of a certain percentage of their portfolio.

Much more importantly, we were forecasting a major global recession and reasoned that, as usual in times of trouble, the dollar would be the global safe haven. We didn't expect the U.S. economy to improve but that the rest of the world would join America in the tank. The greenback would be the best of a universally bad lot. We expect the dollar to keep rising for the next 5 to 7 years, continuing the long- run pattern.

Profits

With the nonfinancial sector joining financial businesses in full retreat, domestic corporate earnings will be decimated in coming quarters, as discussed earlier. And U.S.-based multinationals will also be clobbered by weak foreign revenues and the strong dollar, which will make foreign earnings worth less in dollar terms. Some 30% to 50% of revenues of consumer staple companies like PepsiCo, Sara Lee and Campbell Soup come from abroad. With our forecast of a severe recession, we look for corporate profits, as defined by the Commerce Department, to fall 48% from their peak in the third quarter 2007 to the fourth quarter 2009, and to drop 32% from 2008 to 2009.

P/Es and Stock Prices

Our forecasts imply S&P 500 operating earnings of $40 per share in 2009, down 35% from our $62 estimate for this year. That may sound extreme, but not for the most severe worldwide financial crisis and deepest global recession since the 1930s. At stock market bottoms, the S&P 500 P/E tends to be in the 10-12 range. But low interest rates normally push up P/Es and 10-year Treasury now yield 2.66%, and will probably be even lower later while 30-year Treasury bonds are now at 3.0%, our long-held target, and also a low in recent decades, but may drop further.

So a P/E of 15 at the stock bottom sounds reasonable, but would put the S&P 500 index at 600 then, down 32% from here and 61% below its record close on Oct. 9, 2007. Wow! Earlier, we warned of the number 777, not the Boeing airliner model but the low on the S&P 500 in 2002. If it were breached, we noted, then the bear market that started in early 2000 would still be intact, and all of the rally from the 777 low in October 2002 to the peak five years later would merely be a rally in a bear market. Last month, the S&P 500 fell below 777. It has since bounced, but probably not for long as new lows lie ahead.

There are other reasons to expect considerable further weakness in stocks. High dividends can support stocks at least to a degree, and dividend yields in Europe are meaningful, averaging 5.2%. But not in the U.S. where the S&P 500 yield is a miserly 2.5%. And dividend cuts are coming fast and furious. In the U.K., dividends are constrained for financial institutions getting government bailouts, while in the U.S., the financial sector is slashing dividends.

Some 36 of the S&P 500 have cut dividends 46 times this year, axing $33.8 billion, with $30.8 billion coming from financials. Among those S&P 500 firms, about 20% of dividends this year are from financials, down from 34% in 2007. Elsewhere, REITs are cutting payouts, and GM eliminated its dividend. Only 202 S&P 500 companies have initiated or raised dividends 218 times this year, representing payments of $18 billion, with only $2.4 billion being from financials. In 2007, 298 did so and only 12 reduced or suspended dividend payments.

In troubled times, investors tend to withdraw from foreign markets to concentrate on the home scene they know best. That's why bear markets tend to be uniform. U.S. investors sold a net $92 billion in foreign stocks and bonds in the July-September period, a record flight from overseas investments, while foreign investors pulled over $100 billion from stocks in Japan, South Korea and India so far this year. U.S. stocks are actually falling less than most foreign markets.

Deflation

For years, we've been forecasting that chronic deflation of 1% to 2% per year would start with the next major global recession. Well, it's here! In October, the U.S. producer price index fell 2.8% from September and the CPI dropped 1.0%, the biggest decline since before World War II. Sure, the big driver was the decline in energy costs, but even excluding food and energy, consumer prices dropped 0.1%.

The Fed worries that in deflation, offsetting monetary policy is difficult since its target rate has to stop declining when it reaches zero. Of course, the Fed has other tools as witnessed by the quantitative easing discussed earlier. Nevertheless, all these measures amount to leading the horse to water, as discussed earlier, and he may not drink. The deflation in Japan in the 1999-2005 years worried the Fed when it appeared imminent in the U.S. early in this decade, and it still does. Japan again faces chronic deflation, and the Bank of Japan forecast zero change in the CPI (ex food but not energy) for the fiscal year ending March 2010. Fed Vice Chairman Kohn said the lesson from Japan was that "we should be very aggressive in combating deflation."

Deflation encourages saving since money is worth more later. It also spawns deflationary expectations. Buyers anticipate lower prices later by waiting to buy. That sires excess inventories and capacity, which forces prices down. Buyer suspicions are confirmed so they wait even further to buy, generating a self-feeding downward price spiral, as now seen in autos and houses. Deflation also elevates the cost of debts and debt service since both remain fixed in nominal terms but the revenues and incomes used to repay them tend to fall with overall prices.

Deflation fears and other forces have also reduced reducing 30-year Treasury bond yields to our long-held target of 3.0% and completed what we dubbed in 1981, when the yield was 14.7%, "the bond rally of a lifetime." The recent financial crisis has also helped as investors abandon everything else -- stocks and fixed income alike -- in favor of Treasurys.

Deflation results from overall supply exceeding general demand. We have been forecasting the good deflation of excess supply, as in the late 1800s and in the 1920s, due to today's confluence of semiconductors, the Internet, computers, biotech, telecom and other productivity-soaked technologies. But we have allowed for the bad deflation of deficient demand, as in the 1930s, if one of two adverse conditions develop -- widespread financial crises and worldwide protectionism. Sadly, both are real possibilities.

Inflation?

Many, of course, worry not about deflation but inflation due to all the money being pumped out by central banks and governments globally. They no doubt are biased since most have lived only in an era of inflation and don't agree with us that inflation is the result of excess government spending in wars, both hot and cold. In peacetime, deflation reigns. Starting with rearmament in the late 1930s, then World War II and the Cold War with its hot phases, Korea and Vietnam, wartime and inflation persisted for 60 years.

For now at least, all that money from central banks and governments isn't getting outside financial institutions. We're in a liquidity trap. The horse isn't drinking, thank you very much. And if lenders do start to lend, central bankers, with their congenital fear of inflation, will no doubt reel in all that extra credit.

Even if the bank reserves stimulate the money supply with the usual multiplier effect, the credit created will pale in comparison to the destruction of derivatives and other privately-created liquidity due to persistent deleveraging and writedowns.

Finally, the consumer saving spree we're forecasting will probably increase the saving rate by one percentage point per year on average for the next decade. That would generate a cumulative $5.5 trillion and go a long way to offsetting the intervening fiscal stimuli, and then some.

The Six Lessons from Last Week's Action

John Mauldin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:19:58 GMT

This week we look at a short but excellent summary of the state of the current economic crisis. I always enjoy reading David Rosenberg, the North American economist of Merrill Lynch. He has a no-nonsense style that is refreshing from most mainstream economists. The reality is that things continue to deteriorate. Today's stock market action shows that we are not of the bear market woods just yet. Rosenberg gives us a few reasons why.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

The Six Lessons from Last Week's Action

By David Rosenberg, North American Economist,
Merrill Lynch

1) Expect the worst recession in the post-WWII era

First, this is going to be the worst recession in the post-World War II era, in our view. The ECRI leading indicator hit a record low for the fifth week in a row – down to - 29.2 as of the November 21st week versus -28.2 the week before. This index, which leads real GDP by two quarters with a 70% historical correlation, is getting further and further away from the prior all-time low of -19.8 that defined the worst recession of the post-WWII era and saw a six-quarter consumer recession coincide with a 45% peak-to-trough decline in the stock market. Perhaps the fact that this bear market is proving to be even more severe is symptomatic of an economic downturn that will also prove to be deeper and more prolonged. After the flurry of data released just before Thanksgiving, we are now tracking close to a 4.5% QoQ annualized fall in real GDP in 4Q. This would be the largest pullback since the 1982 recession, and we see a similar contraction in the first quarter of 2009.

2) Capex is in a steep decline

Second, capex is in a very steep decline right now. Durable goods orders dropped 6.2% in October, the third decline in a row. Over that time frame, orders have plunged at a 39% annual rate, which is unprecedented. The retrenchment has spread to the tech sector, where order books were expanding at a 7% annualized rate over the three months to June. Currently, that same three-month trend has swung to a negative 13% annualized rate.

3) Consumer spending down sharply; savings rate is soaring

Third, consumer spending fell 1% in October, which was a near-record decline. This, in fact, was the fourth straight monthly decline, which is unprecedented. The savings rate is soaring; it leapt to 2.4% from 1.0% in September, in a sign of heightened risk aversion and cash preservation, and is a shift that we believe should be seen as secular, not merely cyclical.

This was a conclusion that came through loud and clear in the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index, principally in the spending intention components of the survey. Auto buying plans dropped for the third month in a row to a record low in October while home-buying plans fell to their lowest level since the 1982 recession. Consumer plans to buy a major appliance fell to a 14-year low as well – down for three months in a row. During this four-month period of unprecedented consumer retrenchment from July to October, spending on discretionary items collapsed at an average annual rate of 18%. Even spending on groceries has declined 6%, toiletries are off by 6% and utilities are down 3%. So, even some of the classic staples are being curtailed.

The only areas that have posted increases in spending over this unprecedented four-month decline in spending have been pharmaceuticals (+7%), telecom services (+3%), medical care services (+5%) and mass transit (+26%) – all other forms of transportation, from rail to bus to air fell at a 19% annual rate.

4) Obama planning a $700 billion fiscal package

Fourth, we learned this week that President-elect Obama's economics team is planning a fiscal package as big as $700 billion over the next two years. We are going to wait for the details to see how this is going to impact our base case macro forecast. Suffice it to say that the cornerstone of the stimulus this time around will likely be infrastructure, not tax rebates. The key for investors is where these outlays will be concentrated, which, in turn, means identifying the areas of the capital stock that have been the most underinvested in recent years. After sifting through the data, we believe that the prime candidates will be hospitals, waste management services and passenger transit.

5) Housing market is not close to bottoming out

Fifth, we learned that the housing market is nowhere close to bottoming out. New home sales dropped 5.3% in November to a 433k annualized rate – the worst since the 1982 recession. Even though sales are now down 69% from the July 2005 bubble peak of 1.39 million units, we believe builders have not been aggressive enough in curbing production because the most critical variable of all, the unsold inventory backlog, rose to 11.1 months' supply from 10.9 in September.

Need to see inventory backlog drop to 8 months' supply

The reality is that even though single-family starts have dropped to 26-year lows of 531,000, they are still running 23% above the prevailing level of new home sales. The worst the inventory-sales ratio ever got in the early 1990s real estate meltdown was 9.4 months' supply. We are currently 18% above that level and almost 40% higher than the 8 months' supply we would need to see before calling an end to the housing deflation phase.

Another 15-20% decline in home prices likely from here

As we saw last week, the Case-Shiller index fell 1.85% MoM or at a 20% annual rate. All 20 cities were down both sequentially and YoY. Home prices are now down a remarkable 22% from the 2007 peaks. With the unsold inventory sitting at the third highest level of the past three decades and mortgage approvals for new home purchases falling to their lowest level in nine years, we believe the laws of supply and demand point to a further 15-20% decline from here. So, of all the things that happened last week in the market, retailing stocks up 17%, the bank stocks up 26%, tech up 9%, the one development that probably has the greatest chance of being reversed is the 60% surge we saw in the homebuilding group.

6) Fed has switched December meeting to a two-day affair

Sixth, we learned that the Fed is going to make the December FOMC meeting a two-day affair instead of one (December 15-16). The market is already sniffing out a 50 basis point rate cut. However, now that the Fed has de facto embarked on the process of quantitative easing, perhaps the need for a two day meeting is to iron out a more aggressive plan to revive the credit markets and the economy. The only areas that have posted increases in spending over this unprecedented four-month decline in spending have been pharmaceuticals (+7%), telecom services (+3%), medical care services (+5%) and mass transit (+26%) – all other forms of transportation, from rail to bus to air fell at a 19% annual rate.

As Chairman Bernanke suggested in several speeches he gave back in 2002 and 2003, one of the deflation-fighting strategies would likely involve Fed action to nurture lower rates at the longer end of the yield curve. Perhaps this prospect is behind the rally in the 10-year note yield and long bond to cycle lows. This would fit in very well with our ongoing strategy of focusing on equity sectors that have income-generating characteristics like utilities, health care and telecom services; these sectors also screen very well in a negative nominal GDP growth environment.

When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

John Mauldin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:07:44 GMT

Can the credit crisis get any worse? In this week's Outside the Box my London partner Niels Jensen shows that it indeed can. Banks, and mainly European banks, have large exposure to emerging market debt of all types through both sovereign, corporate and individual loans. Just as banks have had to write down large losses from the subprime crisis and other related problems, next will come a wave of potential losses from yet another source. Niels then goes on to give us a look the size and problems with hedge fund deleveraging. Altogether, this is a very interesting letter and one that is written from a non-US point of view that I think you will find instructive.

Niels Jensen is Managing Partner of Absolute Return Partners based in London, which is a boutique alternative investment firm (www.arpllp.com). You can write Niels at info@arpllp.com if you like with your comments and questions.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

The helicopters are here

You may remember my prediction last month that Bernanke's helicopters were on their way. I cannot resist the temptation to show you this chart, courtesy of John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics (see chart 1). The US monetary base has literally exploded in recent weeks and is up a staggering 38% year-on-year - the highest increase since 1939 according to my good friend Simon Hunt at Simon Hunt Strategic Services. Not entirely surprising, you might say. After all, you would expect the Federal Reserve Bank to react swiftly in response to the drama unfolding in front of our eyes.

I just wish we had central bankers here in Europe who would be prepared to move as quickly and as decisively as their colleagues on the other side of the pond. Our 'eurocrats' continue to worry unnecessarily about inflation and, by not acting aggressively enough, it is more than likely that the recession which is engulfing us as we speak will end up doing considerably more damage here in Europe than in the US.

Bank lending is responding

Meanwhile, in the US, bank lending is already responding to Fed's tactics. Total commercial and consumer bank lending has grown by an annualised rate of almost 50% in the last month and a half. Quite impressive in an economy which is supposedly in recession.

So far so good. The problem is, however, that the near meltdown has unleashed an asteroid storm of problems. Take Iceland. As most investors know by now, Iceland is in very serious trouble. According to at least one estimate, European banks stand to lose about $75 billion on Iceland - not exactly pocket change. And that is on a population the size of Coventry! Earlier this week, the Central Bank of Iceland raised the policy rate from 12% to 18%. Inflation is now running at about 16% and will undoubtedly peak at much higher levels. According to Danske Bank, expect it to hit 75% before things get better. That is ugly.

The canary in the coalmine

I have an increasingly uneasy feeling that Iceland is the canary in the coalmine. Hungary is struggling. So are Pakistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania and Argentina. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the President of Argentina, took everyone by surprise last week when she announced that the country's private pension funds (about $26 billion) would be transferred into the state pension system. The official line is that she is aiming to protect the country's pension funds from the global turmoil. Who is she kidding?

Now, the Federal Reserve Bank has decided to provide emergency loans to Mexico, Brazil, Singapore and South Korea. Not that long ago, it was Singapore (amongst others) which provided emergency funding to the ailing US banking sector. If countries such as South Korea and Singapore require help from the outside, the state of affairs in other and less developed nations could be much worse than generally perceived.

Looking at the evidence produced in a new Goldman Sachs research paper¹, it is primarily Eastern Europe one has to worry about. Credit growth in Eastern Europe and Latin America has been much stronger than in emerging Asia (chart 2).

However, if you then look at the state of the current account (chart 3), it is evident that Eastern Europe is facing a much bigger challenge than the other two regions. Their current account deficit has grown dramatically since the turn of the Millennium and now stands at close to 10% of GDP.

This puts Eastern Europe in a very vulnerable situation. When Asia was in a similar situation back in the late 1990s, it ended in tears with currencies blowing up and consumer spending collapsing. Ultimately, though, it resulted in much improved current accounts as the weak currencies led to an export boom, but there was considerable pain before they got to that point.

Stephen Jen and Spyros Andreopoulos at Morgan Stanley have further explored the subject². They suggest that an already weak banking sector in the OECD could be further stifled by non-performing loans to emerging market countries.

European banks at risk

Worldwide cross-border lending now stands at $37 trillion with about $4.7 trillion going towards Eastern Europe, Latin America and emerging Asia. Cross-border lending by European and UK banks to emerging market countries accounts for 21% and 24% of respective GDPs compared to 4% for US banks and 5% for Japanese banks (see chart 4). Europe has about $3.5 trillion of debt outstanding to emerging market countries whereas the US has only about $500 billion on the line.

The country most exposed to emerging markets is Austria with total emerging market loans accounting for no less than 85% of the country's GDP - most of it to Eastern Europe. Austrian banks have been aggressively pursuing opportunities in Eastern Europe for years. They have in fact been so aggressive that their total lending to the region (approximately $300 billion) exceeds the amount lent by Germany to Eastern Europe. Even more worryingly, Austrian banks are the largest holders of debt on Hungary and Ukraine - two of the most fragile economies on the old Soviet bloc. As an aside, when the global banking system collapsed in May 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression, it was a run on the Austrian banks which acted as a catalyst.

Italy is possibly in an even more dire condition. According to a recent article in The Daily Telegraph³, Italy's public debt is now the third largest in the world, behind the US and Japan. And, at 107% of GDP, it is almost twice the limit set by the Maastricht Treaty (so much for treaties!). Italy is also a big lender to Eastern Europe. Unicredit alone has about $130 billion of debt outstanding to Eastern European countries. Italy's predicament is well recognised by fixed income investors. 10-year Italian government bonds now yield 1.08% more than their German sister bonds. The market is telling us that something rather unpleasant could happen to Italy. It is even possible that Italy could be forced to pull out of the euro, unless they can turn the ship around fairly quickly.

Meanwhile, UK banks are primarily exposed to emerging Asia and Latin America. Only Poland stands out in Eastern Europe as a major recipient of loans from UK banks and Poland is perhaps not up to its neck in problems the way Hungary and Ukraine are right now, but the situation is deteriorating there as well. Sweden is mostly exposed to the Baltic countries. The three Baltic countries owe a total of $123 billion, $83 billion of which originate from Sweden. Knowing that Latvian banks in particular have been rather innovative with the structure of their mortgage products (such as Yen based loans), would you sleep well if you were the credit officer of one of the major Swedish banks?

Spain is the Latin juggernaut

Spain is another worry. Contrary to popular belief, the US is not the largest lender to Latin America - Spain is. Just under $1 trillion of cross-border debt is outstanding across Latin America. Only 17% of that comes from US banks. Spanish banks, on the other hand, have more than 30% of the debt on their books. Let's hope for Spain's sake that Ms. Kirchner is telling the truth when she claims that the nationalisation of the private pension funds was done to protect them from the evils of this world. Somehow I doubt it.

The sharp rise in the value of the US dollar and the Yen is not helping emerging market economies either. We do not know exactly what proportion of the $4.7 trillion of loans to emerging market countries are denominated in US dollars and Yen respectively, but we suspect that it is a significant share. As long as the world is deleveraging, you should expect both currencies to continue to appreciate in value, as most carry trades have been based on either US dollars or Yen. Meanwhile, some countries are putting up a brave fight (e.g. Hungary and Romania). However, as we learned in 1992, a wounded currency is like a bleeding torso in shark infested waters. You can rest assured that speculators will finish off the job. No central bank can win that battle.

One might argue that a devaluation of the Hungarian currency or a collapse of the Pakistani economy won't really affect your portfolio, but that misses the point. It is the risk to an already wounded banking industry you have to worry about. And, as I have pointed out above, European banks are much more exposed to emerging market countries than their US competitors.

Annus Horribilis

Enough said about emerging market risk for now. My other big worry at the moment is what is happening to (some) hedge funds. Clearly, 2008 has been to hedge fund investors what 1992 was to Queen Elizabeth II - Annus Horribilis (see chart 5).

Merrill Lynch did a study recently, showing that the 30 biggest US equity holdings amongst US hedge funds were amongst the poorest performers in the S&P500⁴. In other words, it is likely that much of the recent sell-off in equity markets around the world can be traced back to hedge fund liquidations.

There is no question that hedge funds are downsizing at present. The problem is to obtain precise data on the phenomenon. If we estimate that the global hedge fund industry controls about $2 trillion of capital, and we assume that 15-20% is going to be pulled out between now and year-end (which is not far from the truth according to our sources), $3-400 billion must be returned to investors between now and 31^st December.

Deleveraging continues

That is not the whole story though. The average hedge fund uses leverage, to the tune of about 1.4 times (see chart 6). This is down significantly from a year ago, but it still means that hedge funds need to liquidate investments of at least $500-550 billion in order to meet current redemption requests. And the real number is probably higher because some of the worst performing strategies this year are the ones using the most leverage. The real number is therefore more likely $6-800 billion, and that is a big enough sum of money to put downward pressure on the markets.

Add to this the fact that some hedge funds (mostly the bigger ones) have been selling credit default swaps (CDSs). A CDS is an insurance against corporate default. The buyer of a CDS supposedly makes money if the underlying credit blows up. I say 'supposedly' because the payment is a function of the seller's ability to pay up. That was why Morgan Stanley had to be saved at all cost. MS has been, and continues to be, one of the largest players in the CDS market.

There is no way we can establish precisely how many CDSs hedge funds have on their books, but please consider the following: The CDS market is a $50 trillion market (give or take). Before they blew up, AIG were one of the biggest sellers of CDSs with approximately $500 billion on their books. They ran into problems (partly) because they were heavily exposed to the financial services industry which is already in recession.

Recession in the early stages

The rest of the economy, however, is not yet in recession - or rather, we do not have the statistics to prove it. Corporate defaults are still low, both here and in the US. But corporate defaults will go up as they always do in recessions. If AIG, one of the largest and most sophisticated financial institutions could get themselves into trouble with barely a 1% share of the global CDS market, what will happen to the sellers of the remaining 99%?

Who 'owns' this risk? Is it hedged or not? Is it even possible to hedge the risk, knowing that your counterparty might not be able to pay up? What we do know is that only the larger hedge funds have participated in the practise of selling CDSs. Right now it feels very good not to be invested in those types of hedge funds (as you may be aware, our focus is on alternative investment strategies away from mainstream hedge funds). I also suspect that the extreme volatility in recent weeks is somehow related to this phenomenon. Investor redemptions are not the whole story.

Conclusion

I pointed out several months ago that the world's stock markets would present several 'false dawns' before we could finally declare victory against the bear market. Last week's more upbeat tone was one such 'false dawn', in my opinion. There are three reasons for that:

Firstly, investors have not yet fully capitulated, and that is a necessary condition for markets to turn around. It is best illustrated by a survey conducted by BCA Research at the end of their two-day investment conference held in New York on 20-21^st October. Only five or six of the more than 250 people in the room expected the stock market to be lower a year from now⁵. Not consistent with capitulation! Having said that, it is perfectly normal to experience powerful rallies in the midst of a major bear market. The sharpest rallies in history have actually been bear market rallies.

Secondly, de-leveraging has a long way to run yet, not so much in the hedge fund community where I suspect that much of the damage will be behind us once we pass the next major redemption hurdle on 31^st December, but in society more broadly. Governments, banks, (some but not all) companies and, most importantly, the majority of households are more leveraged than good is. I have borrowed Chart 7 below from BCA Research, and it shows total US bank loans as a percentage of US GDP. Unfortunately, the picture would be much the same for many of the European countries. We are now facing a major de-leveraging cycle and it will suppress economic growth and put a lid on the stock market for years to come.

Thirdly, whereas I fully agree that the worst of the financial crisis might now be behind us, bear in mind that we have not yet seen the full effect of the economic crisis. We are only in the first or second innings of this recession, and the emerging market story has the potential to wreak further havoc. So do credit default swaps - or something else. Recessions are by nature quite unpredictable. There is one thing I am sure about, though. Just as for New Year's Eve, the more extravagant the party, the bigger the hangover. Prepare for this one to linger for a while yet.

Niels C. Jensen

¹Global Economic Weekly, 29^th October, 2008

² "Europe more exposed to EM bank debt than the US or Japan", Morgan Stanley, 27^th October, 2008

³ "Traders warn of Italian iceberg", The Daily Telegraph, 31^st October, 2008

⁴ Source: "Hedge Funds in Trouble", The Economist

⁵ BCA Research Global Investment Strategy, 24^th October, 2008

Where is My Swap Line?

John Mauldin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:58:34 GMT

The G-7 countries now have what amounts to access to the US Fed's window for dollars for their banks. But what of the rest of the world? Brad Setser, an analyst who writes a blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, ask some very interesting questions and points out some big holes in the world economic landscape. If you can't get dollars what does that do to your currency? This contributes to the rise in the dollar against some emerging market currencies. Setser asks: "Where is my swap line? And will the diffusion of financial power Balkanize the global response to a broadening crisis?"

You can read some of his other material at http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/. Setser is an applied international economist with experience at the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund. Currently examining central bank reserve growth, sovereign wealth funds, and the political implications of emerging market financing of the United States. Author of the recent Council Special Report, Sovereign Wealth and Sovereign Power.

John Mauldin, Editor,
Outside the Box

Where is my swap line? And will the diffusion of financial power Balkanize the global response to a broadening crisis?

Some emerging market central banks have noticed that they - unlike the Bank of Japan, Bank of England, Swiss National Bank and the European Central Bank - don't have access to unlimited dollar credit through reciprocal swap lines with the Federal Reserve.

Peter Garnham of the FT, drawing on Derek Halpenny of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, observes:

Analysts say the unlimited dollar currency swaps set up between the Federal Reserve and central banks have helped bring stability to currencies through alleviating institutions desire to purchase dollars in the spot market to satisfy overnight funding requirements. "In contrast, the lack of currency swaps put into place between the Federal Reserve and emerging market central banks has likely helped to exacerbate the pick up in emerging market currency volatility" says Derek Halpenny, at the Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ.

Think of Korea. There is “a shortage of dollars in the Korean banking system” - and Korean banks (and the Korean government) are scrambling to obtain them. That is likely adding to the pressure on the Won.

For all the talk about how the G-7 has lost relevance, in a lot of ways the recent crisis has reinforced the G-7's importance. Banks in G-7 countries that borrowed in dollars have access to unlimited dollar financing from their central banks - dollar financing that comes from the fact that the main G-7 central banks have access to large swap lines with the Fed.

Banks in emerging market countries have no such luck.

Korea is a highly developed emerging economy. In a lot of ways it already has emerged. But it isn't part of the G-7 (or G-10) and doesn't have a swap line with the Fed that allows the Bank of Korea to borrow dollars from the Fed by posting won as collateral. That means that it has to rely on its foreign currency reserves - and its government's capacity to borrow dollars in the market - to support its banks. Unless, of course, Korea could draw on a set of East Asian swap lines, and effectively borrow from Japan and China.

The old global architecture for responding to financial crises had, in my view, two essential components:

First, the major countries themselves were responsible for acting as the lender of last resort (and the bail-outer of last resort) to their own domestic financial system. Since the advanced economies banks' had liabilities denominated in their own countries' currency (US bank deposits are in dollars, British deposits are in pounds, and so on) this wasn't hard.

And emerging economies had to turn to the IMF (sometimes reinforced with "second line" financing from the G-7) for dollar (or DM or pound or Euro) financing - whether to help meet their government's own financing need, to help the emerging economies' central bank provide a "hard currency" lender of last resort to its domestic financial system or to provide the emerging economy more foreign currency reserves to backstop its currency.

And since emerging market governments often borrowed in dollars or euros rather than their own currencies - and since many emerging market savers held dollar or euro denominated domestic deposits - emerging economies often had a need for significant financing.

This financing though was never unconditional - and was never unlimited. The $35b the IMF lent to Brazil in 2002 and the $20-25b the IMF lent to Turkey in 00-01 seemed big at the time, but it now seems small.

That architecture has been extended in one key way in the crisis:

European and Japanese banks facing difficulties refinancing their dollar liabilities now have (indirect) access to the Fed. The availability of $450b in credit from the Fed allowed European central banks to lend dollars to their banks without dipping into their (comparatively modest) reserves.

Emerging market central banks generally haven't been as lucky. Their ability to lend dollars to their own banks is still limited by their own holdings of dollar reserves, their ability to borrow reserves from the IMF in exchange for IMF policy conditionality and their ability to borrow dollars from other emerging market economies with spare dollar reserves.

I am still trying to figure out how important a change this is - and to assess whether this new architecture makes sense for a global financial system that has changed fundamentally in some ways but not in others.

At one level, the stark divide between banks regulated by a the G-10 countries — which now have access to the Fed as a lender of last resort, albeit indirectly — and the banks regulated by the rest of the world seems a bit anachronistic. The center of the world economy won't always be in the US and Europe.

On another level, a higher level of cooperation is possible among countries with broadly similar political systems than among more diverse group of countries with different political and economic systems. Similar forms of government, broadly similar (though changing) conceptions of the state's role in the economy and a standing political alliance* facilitate the kind of cooperation among G-10 central banks that we have seen recently. Korea could presumably be drawn into the club without changing its basic character - Korea is a US ally and a democracy. Iceland could too, if it patches up its relationship with the UK - though the risk that Iceland's government now has more debt than it can pay makes accepting Icelandic collateral in exchange for dollars a bit more of a problem.

Adding emerging economies with different economic and political systems from the G-7 countries into the “swap line” club might fundamentally change its character. Among other things, the US and Europe basically agree that their currencies should float against each other — and that they should regulate (or, until recently, not regulate) their financial systems in fairly similar ways.

There is another key difference between European banks' need for dollars and many emerging markets' need for dollars. European banks need dollars to finance their holdings of US mortgages and other US securities. If they didn't have access to dollar financing, they would either have to borrow euros and buy dollars - pushing the dollar up (and hurting US exporters) or they would have to dump their US assets (hurting US banks holding similar assets). By lending to European central banks who then lent to their own banks, the US kept some European banks from being forced sellers of risky US assets - and in the process putting pressure on US banks. The US wasn't acting entirely altruistically.

Emerging market banking systems by contrast often need dollar financing not to support their portfolios of US assets but to support their domestic dollar lending.

And it is now clear that a broad range of emerging economies do need access to the international banking system to continue the kind of breakneck growth that they have experienced recently -- and have been caught up in the recent “deleveraging” of the global financial system. The FT's Garnham again:

Analysts said emerging market currencies were being hit as foreign investors pulled money out of developing regions, driven by liquidity pressures from the credit crisis. “There seems little now that the authorities can do to reverse the process of deleveraging that is taking place with financial institutions all contracting their balance sheets at the same time,” said Derek Halpenny, at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Hungary is scrambling for euros.

Ukraine's government is scrambling for dollars and euros - both to back its currency and to cover the maturing foreign currency borrowing of its banks.

Pakistan's government needs dollars.

Korean banks are scrambling for dollars.

As are Russian banks. And Kazakh banks. And Emirati banks.

In many of the oil exporters, the government was building up foreign currency assets (reserves, sovereign wealth funds) while the private sector (including many firms with close ties to the government) were big borrowers from the international banking system. In the Emirates there is an added complication: Abu Dhabi was the emirate building up its external assets, while Dubai was the emirate doing the most borrowing.

But across the emerging world, external bank loans have dried up - creating a scramble for foreign currency liquidity.

And emerging markets (and Iceland) are looking for help from a range of sources. Their own central banks' reserves (Korea, Russia, the Emirates) - or the foreign assets of their sovereign fund (Russia, China, Qatar, Kuwait, perhaps Abu Dhabi).*** The IMF, which is clearly back in business. European central banks (Hungary borrowed 5 billion euros from the ECB, the Nordics swap line with Iceland — which was recently tapped for euro 400 million). Russia (if it lends to Iceland).

Or China. Pakistan was certainly hoping that China would offer an alternative to the IMF; China though does not currently seem to be willing to hand Pakistan a sum that is equal to a couple of days of its reserve accumulation ...

This frantic activity suggests another potential change to the global architecture for responding to crises: the IMF no longer necessarily has a monopoly on hard currency crisis lending to the emerging world. It is now one player among many.

That is a fundamentally a reflection of the increased reserves of many large emerging economies.

China clearly has more dollars than in needs to maintain its own financial stability, which means that it is an alternative source of dollar financing. Russia may be too - though the large dollar and euro liabilities of Russian banks and firms implies that its own need for reserves could be quite large. It isn't in as comfortable a position as China.

The diffusion of pools for dollar liquidity available to lend to troubled emerging economies seems at least to me to pose a fundamental issue for the G-7 countries that traditionally have been able to essentially decide on how the IMF's funds are used among themselves: does the diffusion of financial power a major effort to bring the big emerging powers into the IMF's fold - and thus to restore a de facto IMF monopoly on large-scale crisis lending? Or would the cost of any "deal" that would lead that countries like China and Russia and Saudi Arabia (which already has a large IMF quota) channel their lending through the IMF prohibitive?

The right answer isn't clear to me. On one hand, granting the new players significantly more votes might make it next to impossible to build consensus in the IMF - and even a generous increase in the voting weights of key emerging economies might not be enough to convince them to channel their "crisis" lending through the IMF. China might not want to give up on bilateral lending in exchange for say 15% of the IMF's voting shares. On the other hand, China hasn't been keen to throw its reserves around over the past few weeks - preferring the safety of Treasuries to Agencies (or a dollar deposit in Pakistan's central bank) - and might prefer conditional IMF lending to the risk of losing its funds ...

For now it seems to me that the crisis likely has increased the gap between the G-7 (and G-10) countries and the rest of the world in a couple of key ways. Inside G-7 land, US banks could lend in euros (and European banks lend in dollars) secure that they had access to a lender of last resort - and the G-7 countries would still be in a position to offer hard currency loans to their "out-of-area" friends through the IMF. Outside G-7 land, countries would rely primarily on their own foreign currency reserves to cover the foreign currency liabilities of their banks - and potentially could use their own reserves to finance their crisis lending to other troubled countries.**

In some ways, that is a world where the gap between the G-7 countries and the rest would gets larger not smaller ...

* Switzerland is an exception; it stands outside the "Western' alliance but has access to the swap lines. But the Swiss have long been a big part of central bank cooperation - Basle and all.

** This leaves aside a key issue, namely the fact that countries outside the G-7 provide enormous quantities of unconditional dollar financing to the US through the buildup of their reserves. That reserve growth is partially a function of the need for countries outside the G-7 world of reciprocal swap lines to hold a lot more foreign currency - but it is also a function of these countries ongoing policy of pegging their currency to the dollar at an undervalued level. It also ignores the debate over whether sovereign funds investments in the US and European banks should be considered private investments for profit, or part of the global policy response to the crisis.

*** SWF Radar has been invaluable in tracking the use of sovereign funds to support domestic banking systems; many of my links are drawn from there.

Survival of the Unfittest

John Mauldin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:09:20 GMT

It is indeed a very interesting time in which to live, especially watching the financial markets. The disconnect among authorities, regulators, companies and investors is almost too much to comprehend. There are no precedents for the turmoil we are in. This week we read an essay by a name familiar to readers of Outside Box, Michael Lewitt of Hegemony Capital Management (www.hegcap.com). As usual he offers us some very cogent comments on the continuing efforts by those in authority to bail out the system, along with insights on the deal by Merrill and the woes at GM. It is a very interesting letter, so I will stand aside and let Michael jump in.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Survival of the Unfittest

by Michael Lewitt

"Can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest."

- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)

Honest to God, HCM is trying to find the light at the end of the dark tunnel that the U.S. economy and financial markets have become. But every time we turn around, regulators and other power brokers continue to avoid making the hard choices necessary to deal with the problems at hand. As a result, the practices that led the current credit crisis are being preserved, and changes that could lead to more stable and healthy markets are being pushed into the future (perhaps forever). The last month has provided so much grist for this mill that we hardly know where to begin, but begin we must. Our survey of what can only be described as a regulatory wasteland begins with the SEC's misbegotten short-selling legislation.

Regulatory Malfunction

On July 21, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS for airing singer Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show. The court ruled that the Federal Communications Commission had "capriciously departed" from its policy over the past 30 years of policing the airwaves with "practiced restraint" when it imposed the fine. Importantly, the court stated that, "[l]ike any agency, the FCC may change its policies without judicial second- guessing. But it cannot change a well-established course of action without supplying notice of and a reasoned explanation for its policy departure." This demand for consistency and fair warning in the law has been absent from enforcement of the nation's securities laws for many years, resulting in botched prosecutions, inconsistent regulation, and damage to the system.

The latest example of regulatory malfunction in the financial markets is the SEC's limitations on selling short the stocks of 19 financial firms. Readers should understand that this stopgap measure will have absolutely no impact on the underlying value or the long-term stock prices of these companies. This is merely a political bone being thrown to those who would sooner blame short-sellers for the credit crisis than the institutions (and the individuals responsible for mismanaging them) who acted in a wholly irresponsible manner. Leon Cooperman, one of this generation's great investors and a man always willing to speak his mind, described the situation very frankly in a recent interview in Barron's: "The financial economy is in disarray and that is really a result - and you can quote me on this - of imprudent financial activity by the commercial banks and investment banks. They levered themselves up. They did things that were foolish. They should be ashamed of the way they conducted themselves, and now they have to right that, and they are de-leveraging."¹

By engaging in selective protectionism of a few favored companies rather than re- imposing the uptick rule and treating all companies equally, the SEC furthered the appearance of favored treatment for large institutions that raises serious moral hazard concerns and dampens confidence in U.S. financial markets. The following is the list of the 19 firms that the powers-that-be decided were worthy of special protection from market forces:

BNP Paribas Securities Corp.
Bank of America Corporation
Barclays PLC
Citigroup Inc.
Credit Suisse Group
Daiwa Securities Group Inc.
Deutsche Bank Group AG
Allianz SE
Goldman, Sachs Group Inc.
Royal Bank ADS
HSBC Holdings PLC ADS
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc.
Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.
Morgan Stanley
UBS AG
Freddie Mac
Fannie Mae

Among the more interesting aspects of this list is the fact that more than half the names are non- U.S. firms enjoying the protection of the U.S. regulators and the fact that some large U.S.-based firms that are clearly being pummeled by short-sellers are missing from the list (i.e. Wachovia Corp., AIG International Group, Inc., Washington Mutual). The ostensible basis for inclusion on the list - status as a primary dealers plus Fannie and Freddie - speaks to the reactionary nature of the rule-making. Finally, this desperate measure is yet another example of the capitalism-for-the poor, socialism-for-the-rich economic model that American financial authorities have adopted over the past two decades.

As has been widely noted, the SEC effectively restricted "naked short selling" several years ago but failed to adequately enforce the rule. ("Naked short selling" involves selling short shares of stock that one has not borrowed or determined are borrowable. As The King Report points out, SEC Release 34-50103 dated July 28, 2004 states that Rule 203(b)(3) "requires any participant of a registered clearing agency...to take action on all failures to deliver that exist in such securities ten days after normal settlement date, i.e., 13 consecutive settlement days. Specifically, the participant is required to close out the fail to deliver position by purchasing securities of like kind and quantity." A "threshold security" is defined as a stock experiencing an unusually high number of fails to deliver. A "fail to deliver" is a failure to actually deliver shares that have been borrowed to effect a short sale and are most commonly associated with "naked" short sales. Rule 203(b)(3) is the rule that the SEC has failed to enforce with sufficient teeth, effectively allowing "naked" short selling to run rampant.)

As a result, when it announced that it would enforce the rule selectively with respect to a select number of financial stocks that had been battered by short sellers (ignoring the fact that a number of these companies had posted tens of billions of dollars of losses due to gross mismanagement and deserved to be sold), the agency effectively admitted that it had been failing to enforce its own rules. The SEC's announcement predictably sent holders of naked short positions scrambling to borrow stock while other short sellers ran to cover their positions in these and other financial stocks in anticipation of a rally in these shares. The result was a historic rally in financial shares that was given a boost by the bailout of Freddie and Fannie but was wholly unrelated to any improvement in the underlying businesses of the companies whose stock prices rose so sharply.

The real question is why the SEC did not reinstitute the uptick rule, which, in one of the those coincidences that you can't make up, was repealed on the same day that the Bear Stearns' hedge fund problem came to light, June 13, 2007. Re-imposing the uptick rule on all stocks rather than trying to protect a handful of financial stocks from the verdict of the market would seem to be a far more enlightened method of regulation. HCM has made this point before, writing in April (The HCM Market Letter, April 1, 2008, "How To Fix It") the following:

"Short selling is an absolutely legitimate way to invest or hedge a portfolio. The SEC made a major error when it repealed the [uptick] rule last year. The repeal of this rule increased downside volatility exponentially and contributed to the ability of quantitative and other computer-driven selling to push the market lower based on technical rather than fundamental investment considerations. The SEC should reinstitute the [uptick] rule immediately." (emphasis in original)

In addressing concerns that short-sellers are unfairly targeting financial stocks, the SEC had a choice about how to proceed. By taking the path it did, it appears to have continued an unfortunate tradition of enforcing rules that are already on the books but that practitioners have practiced with relative impunity because regulators have allowed them to. The King Report noted that the New York Stock Exchange fined and censured J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Daiwa Securities, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse two years ago for failing to enforce rules against naked short selling.³ Apparently these penalties (which were a couple of million dollars) were insufficient to end the abuses, and the fines were treated as just another cost of doing business.

Wall Street firms that lend stock and bonds to short sellers earn enormous profits from such activities. According to a recent article in the Financial Times, "US prime brokerage firms, most of which are owned by big Wall St. banks, will reap revenue of $11 bn this year" from lending stock to facilitate short-selling.⁴ Accordingly, the securities industry has very little interest in seeing any crackdown on short-selling. Fines of a couple of million dollars are hardly sufficient to dissuade them from ignoring the rules when they stand to earn billions of dollars from the activity in question. As distasteful as it is to see the largest financial institutions in the world thumb their noses at the rules, it is even more discouraging to see the regulators allow them to do so.

What most disturbed HCM about the SEC's decision was the fact that it is just the latest example of the beggar-the-poor, boost-the-rich policies that the American financial authorities have followed over the past two decades. HCM understands perfectly well that allowing financial institutions to fail is not a viable policy either politically or economically. But while the government acted literally overnight to protect Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and 17 other financial institutions and their already wealthy executives, Congress took much longer to debate and pass a mortgage rescue plan to help the millions of less fortunate homeowners who are on the verge of losing their homes. There is obviously an enormous difference between an agency's ability to issue a rule overnight and Congress's ability to legislate, but at some point - and that point is coming sooner rather than later in HCM's opinion - the American people are going to ignore that distinction and ask why Wall Street continues to get bailed out before Main Street. There is nothing pre- ordained about the policy choices that are being made. As Professor Lawrence E. Mitchell writes in his recent book, The Speculation Economy, "modern American corporate capitalism is the result of human choices. It is a system we maintain out of choice. It is a system that has ramifications beyond the economic that have helped to embed social norms of individualism that interfere with the cooperation necessary for a successful economy and a thriving society. It is within our power to change it, to modify its rough edges or to accept it as it is. But these choices can only be made with understanding."⁵ Smoothing out the rough edges is a very mild version of what needs to be done. What needs to be done is to make difficult policy choices that will necessarily involve the infliction of pain on certain constituencies that have thus far been protected from the consequences of their own sins.

HCM is not proposing that the authorities stand by with their hands in their pockets while firms like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or Bear Stearns face collapse. What HCM is arguing, however, is that such rescue plans should not provide protection for the shareholders of these companies. The minute the U.S. government was compelled to open the discount window to the investment banks, it should have made it very clear that there would be no support for the shareholders of these companies. Bear Stearns' shareholders received $10/share more than they deserved when that company was bailed out by the Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan Chase.

This leads to a conclusion that was discussed several months ago in this publication (The HCM Market Letter, April 1, 2008, "How To Fix It"). Since it is apparent that we are not prepared to allow certain firms to fail, then we must take steps to limit their ability to endanger the system in the first place. This requires rules that impose limitations on financial institutions' leverage; eliminates their ability to conceal assets and liabilities in opaque off-balance sheet entities; restricts asymmetric compensation schemes that reward insiders for taking indecent risks with their firms' capital at the expense of shareholders and ultimately taxpayers; and adopt economic and monetary policies that encourage productive investment rather than speculation. This is no small order, but it is eminently achievable. Moreover, it is absolutely necessary if American capitalism is going to continue to flourish and maintain the confidence of the keepers of the world's capital in the years ahead.

Sticking One's Head In The Sand

In April, HCM wrote the following about the egregiously leveraged off-balance sheet entities known as Structured Investment Vehicles (SIVs) that inflicted so much damage on the global financial system (The HCM Market Letter, April 1, 2008, "How To Fix It"):

"Off balance sheet entities should be outlawed immediately, plain and simple. If first Enron and now the SIVs haven't taught us the necessary lessons about hidden liabilities, the system probably doesn't deserve to survive. Speaking as someone with extensive knowledge of these off-balance sheet entities, it would not be difficult to render them extinct relatively easily. It would be doing the world a favor."

On July 30, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) reluctantly caved in to pressure from the very institutions that created these off-balance sheet monstrosities and agreed to delay for one-year (a period that will undoubtedly become extended if the financial industry remains under pressure a year from now) the introduction of rules that would have forced banks to consolidate more off-balance sheet vehicles onto their balance sheets. FASB Chairman Robert Herz did not go gently into the good night, however, admitting, "t does pain me to allow something that has been abused by certain folks, to let that go for another year." Mr. Herz also noted that he was "chagrined" by what had been uncovered about these vehicles as the new rule was being prepared, noting that a combination of poor reporting and lax enforcement had led to the current situation.

The FASB was caught between a rock and a hard place. The reality is that banks can't absorb additional liabilities onto their balance sheets at the current time without violating capital rules. These institutions are barely capable of remaining solvent as it is. They are continuing to report massive write-offs and are experiencing tremendous resistance when they try to go back to the well to raise additional capital. Accordingly, requiring the addition of what may amount to several trillion dollars of off-balance sheet liabilities onto banks' balance sheets is simply inconceivable at the present time because it would automatically render several of the world's largest financial institutions (including several on the protected species list from attacks from short-sellers) instantly insolvent. But giving banks a one-year reprieve may simply buy them time to develop other strategies to keep these assets hidden in the opaque shadow banking system.

Moreover, regulators need to assure global investors that no new vehicles of this type will be permitted to be formed in the future. News that the new rule has been delayed suggests that the balance-of-power still lies with institutions that remain too large to fail and can still lord it over regulators by pointing to the catastrophic consequences that hard-and-fast accounting standards will unleash on the financial industry. But the result is that the system sticks its head in the sand for another year as it prays for a recovery in the value of the trillions of dollars of highly complex and illiquid securities (many of them derivatives). HCM would wager heavy money that we have not heard the last about delaying adoption of this rule.

Merrill Lynch: The Dundering Herd

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.'s decision to dump $30.6 billion of mortgage securities at an average price of $0.22 on the dollar barely a week after its quarterly earnings announcement (which itself included a $10 billion write-down on such securities!) raises more questions than answers about the firm and the prospects for credit markets to recover from their current crisis. Merrill Lynch agreed to sell these securities to Lone Star Funds for $6.2 billion, yet barely two weeks earlier the sale the firm had valued those identical securities at $11.1 billion. Moreover, the sale is structured in such a way that Merrill Lynch is financing 75 percent of the transaction. This means that Lone Star is on the hook for the first $1.7 billion of losses, and then Merrill Lynch will eat any losses beyond that. In other words, another $0.05 drop in the value of these securities would leave Merrill Lynch back on the hook for more losses. Either this will prove to be one of the most desperate transactions done in the annals of the current credit crisis, or John Thain knows something the rest of us don't want to know about the real value of the toxic waste he just sold to Lone Star. At the same time, Mother Merrill announced the sale of 380 milion new shares of stock to raise $8.5 billion in new equity capital. The issuance of additional shares at current prices triggered a make-whole provision in an earlier share sale to Singapore's state investment agency, Temasek that cost Merrill Lynch $2.5 billion. Temasek, the firm's largest shareholder, turned around and reinvested this $2.5 billion in Merrill's new share offering along with an addition $900 million. These announcements not only left Merrill Lynch shareholders severely diluted but, if they had been paying attention to the quarterly earnings call, deluded.

This transaction may constitute one of the oddest corporate announcements in recent memory.⁶ First, it suggests that Merrill Lynch's quarterly earnings announcement was grossly inaccurate since, with respect to these assets alone, the firm's valuation was apparently off by a factor of 40 percent. Second, it raises serious questions about the values all financial firms are placing on their mortgage securities. Either Merrill is alone in mis-marking its book by 40 percent, or other firms are grossly over-valuing their holdings and will be forced to report large write-offs in the third quarter. What is particularly troubling (but gives the anti-quantitative HCM a wonderful dose of schadenfreude) is the enormous gap in valuations that different firms (i.e. Lone Star and Merrill Lynch) can apparently derive from securities that are allegedly valued according to mathematical models whose precision is such that they would have problems hitting the side of a barn.

And naturally Merrill Lynch's announcement, which included a highly dilutive share sale to compensate for the multi-billion capital loss suffered by the firm, led to a rally in the firm's stock price. Let us get this straight - the firm admits that it grossly mis-marked its book, reports a(nother) multi-billion dollar loss, announces a hugely dilutive stock offering, and the stock rallies? Makes perfect sense to us. And people wonder how and why the financial markets continually fall into crisis!

Fannie and Freddie

Merrill Lynch' actions raise a more serious question, however, which is why investors would bet on a recovery in financial institutions at all at this point in time? The reason to do so, it seems, lies more in a bet on what public officials will do than on whether these companies are worthy investments or will have any future value. Investors betting on a turnaround in financial shares are really betting on whether government officials are going to allow these companies to fail. Thus far, it appears that the answer is a resounding "no." The government has demonstrated that it will do everything in its power (and sometimes more than its power expressly permits) to prevent failure. The question, of course, is whether the size of the problems at some point will exceed even the government's grasp.

The bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is particularly bizarre in this respect. The very fact that a bailout was necessary demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the entities were insolvent and that the public shareholders should have lost all of their money. The only reason these two companies were not forced to declare bankruptcy is that the U.S. government agreed to stand behind their obligations. Yet the stocks continued to trade at a value greater than zero and will not be wiped out by the government support plan. Yet the real shareholders in terms of bearing the biggest risk of loss in these companies are no longer the holders of the publicly traded shares but the American taxpayers, who are effectively guaranteeing the companies' multi-trillion dollar obligations. Accordingly, the taxpayers should be the ones who received any gains on the equity value of these dinosaurs as they are restructured to operate in the future.⁷ Just because government officials state that they don't "expect" such guarantees to be called upon doesn't erase the fact that such obligations are in place and must be honored. To put it politely, Treasury Secretary Paulson and Congress effectively picked the pockets of the American people by denying them the upside on their new investment in Fannie and Freddie.

And despite passage of the bailout plan, investors in the agencies are not necessarily out of the woods, as HCM suggested earlier this month. On July 9, HCM warned that investors should be cautious in betting on the unsecured obligations of Fannie and Freddie, writing "investors should not presume that a federal bailout will provide a lifeline to all of the companies' investors....subordinated debt holders also should not expect protection in a bailout that would not only be unprecedented in size but also cast the United States' balance sheet and currency in a wholly unfavorable light." (The HCM Market Letter, July 9, 2008, "The Deepening Crisis"). HCM's cautiousness contrasted sharply with the statements and actions of bond giant PIMCO, which has effectively bet the ranch on the debt securities of Freddie and Fannie based on a belief that the government would never permit these institutions to fail. But sure enough, proving once more that even paranoids have enemies, S& P announced on July 25 that it was placing Fannie and Freddie's subordinated debt and preferred stock ratings on CreditWatch Negative. This was based on the fact that the language in the government plan "increases the likelihood that subordinated debt holders and preferred stockholders would face greater subordination risk. This heightened risk is not incorporated into [S&P's] current subordinated debt and preferred stock ratings on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We may lower these issue ratings one to two notches at the conclusion of our review of the final legislation."⁸ We very much admire the individuals at PIMCO, but we are entering uncharted territory and recommend investors act with an extra degree of caution. It wouldn't be the first time that investors learned the hard way that a security that was deemed riskless turned out to be nothing of the sort.

Demolition Derby

The slow motion death of the American automobile industry is almost too painful to watch. The flood of bad news coming out of Detroit has literally swelled into a tsunami in recent days, and there is no end in sight.

First came another credit rating downgrade. On July 31, Standard & Poor's did another number on the industry. In three separate reports, it downgraded General Motors Corp. and GMAC LLC, Ford Motor Co. and Ford Motor Credit Co., and Chrysler LLC and DaimlerChrysler Financial Services Americas LLC (DCFS). The stated rationale for these downgrades (S&P could have chosen a dozen reasons) was basically concern over shrinking cash flows and liquidity at all three companies and their finance arms. While S&P can hardly be blamed for stating the obvious, the rating agency probably didn't go far enough in continuing to rate the automakers ‘B-,' one notch above the once infamous CCC+ level. In today's world, of course, a CCC+ rating no longer bears the stigma that it once did, but in the case of these companies, it is only a matter of time before they bear the insignia of insolvency that such a rating portends. The world is witnessing a classic case of an industry in denial. Rather than taking the truly radical steps necessary to address its problems, Big Auto's management is still engaging in incremental change in the hope that it can buy itself enough time to effect a changeover to more fuel efficient models. Unfortunately, these executives are doing nobody any favors by delaying the inevitable balance sheet restructurings that are going to be a necessary component of the endgame for their industry.

Just prior to S&P's move came the effective collapse of the automobile leasing industry. In the days prior to the S&P downgrade, the automobile financing industry came totally unglued. This is the latest indication of how severely credit is being rationed at all levels of the U.S. economy. Chrysler Finance was the first of the Big Three automakers' finance arms to announce that it would stop extending automobile leases. This decision, which is nothing less than catastrophic for Chrysler's vehicle sales despite unconvincing protests to the contrary by the privately-owned carmaker, was due to the fact that leasing has been rendered unprofitable by Chrysler Finance's rising borrowing costs and the plunging residual value of Chrysler's gasguzzling vehicles. Chrysler debt is trading at levels that suggest an imminent bankruptcy filing.

GMAC and Ford Motor Credit are not expected to eliminate leasing entirely but are likely to severely cut back on auto leases since they can't make any money on these transactions. Wells Fargo has also withdrawn from the business of financing car leases. Other financial institutions are sure to follow.

The dramatic reduction in the availability of auto financing will be another nail in the coffin of the American automobile industry (at some point the coffin will have so many nails in it that it won't need any wood). Leases account for roughly 26 percent of annual auto sales. Just as subprime mortgage financing led many consumers into homes that they couldn't afford, low-cost auto leases allowed many people to lease cars to which they otherwise wouldn't have had access. Leases also led many consumers to replace their vehicles in a much shorter period of time than they ordinarily would have done, leading to higher auto sales. Automobile manufacturing and financing is a significant component of the American economy, and we are watching it being deconstructed piece-by-piece before our very eyes. The economy is seeing the dark side of what happens when financial engineering creates false demand for consumer goods that is unsustainable on a fundamental basis.

Finally, on the last day of July and first day of August, GMAC and GM issued two lackof- earnings releases that not even the happy faces on financial television could spin in a positive way. On July 31, GMAC released its second quarter 2008 results, a loss of $2.5 billion (that would have been much worse without $1.55 billion of lease support payments that GM is obligated to make to GMAC under risk-sharing and support agreements dating from 2006.) GM reported that it has $30 billion in North American leases, including $12 billion in SUVs and $6 billion in other trucks. If current trends hold, GMAC is looking at further multibillion writedowns on these vehicles. Residential Capital LLC contributed $1.9 billion of losses to GMAC during the quarter compared with a $254 million loss a year earlier. HCM will leave it to others to try to find a silver lining at GMAC. The hard truth is that the deterioration of every aspect of this company is accelerating.

Not to be left out in the cold, on August 1, GM announced a grotesque $15.5 billion loss for the second quarter of 2008 ($27.33/share on an $11.00 stock price for those who are still counting such things). Global sales plunged by 18 percent during the quarter, with U.S. sales fading by 16 percent through June. July trends continue to point sharply downward, and the effective elimination of leasing by GMAC can only further reduce sales. A significant portion of the loss was attributable to charges for attrition programs (i.e. job reductions), an adjustment to its reserve for its former parts-maker Delphi Corp., and a $2 billion loss attributable to lower residual values for leased vehicles. But at this point, HCM would seriously discount the one-time nature of these charges, which continue to hit GM's balance sheet with depressing regularity as the company continues to try to dig out from the detritus of its past business structure and history. Backing out these so-called one-time charges left GM with a $6.6 billion quarterly loss, which was still 450 percent larger than analysts projected (which is further evidence that nobody, and HCM means NOBODY, has a clue about how GM is going to survive as a going concern).

The latest news out of Detroit makes it abundantly clear that the endgame for the Big Three is going to be massive bankruptcy restructurings. One would hope that politicians in Washington, particularly the two Presidential candidates, would begin formulating national energy plans that include restructuring plans for the American automobile industry. No viable energy plan will meet this country's needs without creating the proper tax and other economic incentives to build fuel-efficient vehicles. Rather than continuing to be one of the problems that lie at the heart of the American economy, the recovery and revitalization of the auto industry could be a major component of an economic and energy policy that could lead this country out of the difficult times we are experiencing and are doomed to repeat unless we take some bold steps right now.

Footnotes:

1 Barron's, July 28, 2008, "The Market's Down, Not Doomed," p. 35.
HCM/August 1, 2008

5 Lawrence E. Mitchell, The Speculation Economy How Finance Triumphed Over Industry (San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007), pp. x-xi.

6 Christopher Wood calls attention to a similar announcement by the National Australia Bank (NAB), which wrote-off nearly 90 percent of its US conduit loans, which consisted of 10 CDOs consisting of two "super senior" strips and eight AAA senior strips (in layman's terms, mortgage-related securities). See GREED & fear, 31 July 2008. The Merrill Lynch and NAB write-offs contrast with much smaller writeoffs at other institutions holding the same type of instruments and suggest that future write-offs remain likely and large.
HCM/August 1, 2008

7 In this respect, we are reminded of a statement by Joseph A. Schumpeter: "The only realistic definition of stockholders is that they are creditors (capitalists) who forego part of the legal protection usually extended to creditors, in exchange for the right to participate in profits." See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Business Cycles (McGraw-Hill, New York: 964), p. 79.
HCM/August 1, 2008

8 Standard & Poor's, Research Update: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Ratings Placed on CreditWatch Negative; Senior Debt Rating Affirmed, July 25 2008.
HCM/August 1, 2008

Your wishing he was still fishing analyst,

John Mauldin

The End of the Inflation Scare?

John Mauldin — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:34:00 GMT

I mentioned in last Saturday's letter a report by Louis Gave of GaveKal fame on whether inflation may be waning and its importance. Louis gave me permission to use it as this week's Outside the Box. It is typical of the thoughtful analytical work they do.

Louis and his partners and associates at GaveKal write some of the more thought-provoking material I read. They really challenge my position on numerous matters, causing me to look at many items from a different view. That of course, makes this particular piece good for Outside the Box. Whether you agree or disagree, you need to know why you hold a position. If you can't articulate the "against," how can you be sure you truly understand the "for"?

I think given the current debate on inflation, this week's Outside the Box is a must read. While it may look longer, there are a lot of very important graphs here. And thanks to Doug Harrison for helping with the tricky technical aspects of getting this letter out today. It was a lot more than a simple cut and paste, and way beyond my pay grade.

And congratulations to Louis and his wife Kelly who by this time may have a new child. She was due any minute on Friday. I trust you are enjoying your summer. I will be on Larry Kudlow's show tomorrow evening and then having dinner with he and Louis' father Charles (and Tiffani of course). And expect an announcement about a new survey in the next few days.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

The End of the Inflation Scare?

by Louis-Vincent Gave

While most economists and strategists spend time worrying about growth, changes in inflation are usually a much greater driver of financial markets than changes in economic activity. This is because:

1- A surge in inflation usually increases volatility of economic growth--which in turn reduces P/Es and the willingness of the private sector to take risks.

2- As highlighted in The Myth of Reverting Margins, inflation typically takes a much meaner bite out of margins than a recession does. As we wrote back then concerning the US growth/margin relationship: "Margins bear little relationship to the level of GDP or consumption growth. In fact, as the economy accelerated from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, margins plunged. Similarly, as the economy slowed from the early 1980s to the present, margins accelerated... It is inflation, not growth, which wreaks havoc on profit margins (ironically, if everyone has pricing power, no one makes money).

3- Finally, a surge in inflation typically means interest rates will be rising in the near future. Which means that investors get to lose money on both bonds and equities. For example, from 1966 to 1980 (i.e.: the last "inflationary surge" period), US bonds shed -2% per annum and US equities fell -4.9% per year.

Unsurprisingly, given the above, fears are now running high that we may have reentered such an "inflationary bust" period (see The Inflationary Bust Threat). And to be sure, growth almost everywhere around the world is slowing while inflation in almost every country is still accelerating.

Now everyone knows where the slowdown in growth comes from: de-leveraging in the financial sector, overextended consumers needing to tighten their belts, transfers of wealth from the private sector to the public sector through high oil prices, etc... And there are of course myriad opinions as to how long the slowdown will last. But meanwhile, on inflation, our clients seem to be much longer on questions than answers. Where does the current inflation spike come from? How long is it going to last? And can inflation abate without a "Paul Volcker" like monetary policy from the Fed?

In this ad hoc comment, we aim to review some of these questions and, as we always tend to do--answer these questions with yet more questions of our own!

1- Where Does the Inflation Come From?

Just like George Orwell's farm animals, all currencies are equal... though, of course, one is more equal than others. Indeed, the US$ remains the world's reserve currency and, thanks to this status, foreigners cannot impose a particular kind of monetary policy unto the US. As Treasury Secretary Connolly once said: "the US$ is our currency and your problem". And lately, there is little doubt that the US$ has indeed become the world's problem, with its fall in value associated with the spike in commodity prices, which in turn has triggered a sharp upturn in inflation rates all around the world, but especially in the emerging markets (where food and energy represent a much bigger piece of the average family's spending than in most OECD countries).

But of course, the surge in commodity prices cannot be the sole explanation for the recent surge in inflation numbers around the world. After all, an event like the spike in oil prices could also prove to be highly deflationary, since it takes money from the private sector and gives it to the public sector which will typically waste it (i.e.: Chavez financing Castro, Ahmadinejad subsidizing Hamas and Hezbollah, etc...). For a commodity price spike to be inflationary, it needs to be accompanied by excess money creation. If it is not, all that we witness is a change in relative prices across the economy (i.e.: oil prices up, auto and house prices down). This is why Milton Friedman once said that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" while, around the same time, Jacques Rueff made the observation that "inflation is subsidizing expenditures that give no returns with money that does not exist".

So given that we are now living through a surge in inflationary prices, the questions we should ask ourselves is a) where the excess liquidity creation of recent years has come from? and b) whether excess liquidity continues to be pushed into the system, hereby guaranteeing further increases in inflation in the coming quarters and years?

2- What Explains the Surge in the Amount of Money?

As highlighted above, the US$ is "more equal" than other currencies and, consequently, the Fed holds a "special place" in our current financial system. Undeniably, the Fed is the world's most important central bank and it is thus not that surprising that, as inflationary pressures accelerate around the world, most people are quick to blame the Fed for "falling asleep at the wheel" and allowing money supply in the US to grow unchecked. But is this a valid criticism?

After all, as the charts below highlight, narrow money supply growth in the US (i.e.: the aggregate mostly under the control of the Fed) has not seen much of a rise in recent years (incidentally, the same can be said about Japan and money growth is now decelerating fast in Europe):

While the Fed did print money aggressively between 2002 and 2005 (M1 annual growth was above +5% and sometimes close to +10%), in recent years, the pace of monetary creation has by and large been tame. So the ‘excess money' had to come from somewhere else.

Now as we never tire of pointing out, two sets of players can create money ex- nihilo in our system: central banks and commercial banks. So if the excess liquidity creation has not been the central banks, then the explanation must lie with the commercial banks.

And sure enough, in recent years, banks have ridden the 'financial revolution' as hard as they possibly could and we have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in credit (witness the growth in C&I loans at US banks, red line below):

And, as we now know, money creation off the banks' balance sheets was also, until recently, going strong. Witness, for example, the rapid expansion in corporate paper outstanding in the period between 2003 and 2007 (red line below):

To return to our old favorite, Irving Fisher's equation of MV=PQ, it seems obvious to us that the current increase in P (prices) has more to do with the past few years' extremely buoyant V (velocity) than excessive M (money) growth. A possibility which immediately raises the question of whether velocity will remain as buoyant over the next two years as it did in the 2003-2007 period.

3- Will Velocity Remain As Strong?

As the chart below suggests, the answer to the above question is a simple "No". With bank balance sheets under severe strain, and with bank shares almost everywhere around the world plumbing new depths, an increase in the willingness to take risk from private lenders would be very surprising. And sure enough, after its longest period ever in negative territory, our velocity indicator is once again negative after a brief respite:

This message of slowing private sector liquidity growth is also confirmed when adding the loans at commercial banks with the issuance of commercial paper (for a total private credit growth aggregate--blue line on following page). We have slumped from an annual growth rate of +13% in private credit one year ago to +2.8% today; a level not seen since 2003 (see chart).

So we are now in a situation where a) The Fed is not printing money and b) US financials are de-leveraging rapidly. Thus, if inflation is "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon", one may conclude that what we are now seeing in the inflation numbers is the echo of the 2003-2007 credit boom, but that looking ahead, the inflation picture should start improving rather dramatically. But such a conclusion would miss out on the other big contributor to global liquidity growth, namely the US current account deficit.

4- The Importance of the US Current Account Deficit

Because the US$ is "more equal" than other currencies in our global system, the US current account deficit plays a specific, and very important, role in our global monetary systems. In essence, the US current account deficit provides the world with its working capital. After all, at any given point, the world needs US$. For example, Nokia needs US$ to pay for the chips it may buy in Taiwan. China needs US$ to pay for the iron ore it buys from Australia and Sweden needs US$ to pay for the oil it buys from neighboring Norway...

This is why, whenever we see an improvement in the US current account deficit, somebody somewhere goes bust. Indeed, when the US exports a lot of dollars, then the rest of the worlds gets used to a "plentiful" liquidity situation... and when the US exports less money, then somebody gets cut off.

So in essence, the current account deficit has always been the mechanism through which the United States could reflate, or deflate, the global economy. When the US current account deficit improved, the US deflated other countries and vice versa.

Now today, the US current account deficit still stands at a rather large 6% of GDP. However, the composition of this deficit has changed dramatically: two years ago, around two-thirds of the US deficit went to non-oil producers and one third was for petroleum products. Today, that situation is inversed to the point where one could argue that, while the US is still reflating oil producing countries (which hardly need it), it is now deflating non-oil producing countries by around 2% of GDP. Moreover, should oil prices start pulling back, we would move extremely rapidly into a situation where the US current account deficit was deflating the whole world (below is a chart we borrowed from The Economist)!

The fact that the US is no longer reflating non-oil producing countries is a very important change in our economies. Indeed, over the past few years, the prevalent belief amongst investors of all stripes has been: a) the US runs a large current account deficit, b) that US interest rates are low, and that, consequently c) the value of the US$ could only fall. And if the value of the US$ could only fall, then borrowing in US$ to finance whatever real estate project, factory, or financial market speculation made perfect sense. This is why, in a number of countries, we started to witness a growth in central bank reserves which far outpaced trade surpluses and foreign direct investment inflows; all of a sudden, a number of large countries started to save more than they earned!

But how can one save more than one earns? The answer, we have argued in the past (see The Surprisingly Strong Growth in Chinese Reserves) is simple: one borrows the difference. As mentioned above, if the perception is that the US$ can only fall against the RMB, INR, VND, MYR, etc... then why borrow in local currency to finance one's capital expenditures or investments? Much better to finance any spending in the ever falling, and cheap to borrow, US$!

So what happens when a Chinese property developer, or a Vietnamese industrialist, borrows US$ to finance his latest project? The first thing he does is that he changes the dollars he does not need for RMB, Rupee, Dong, etc... And, at this point, the foreign central bank has three choices:

1- It can allow its currency to rise. This is what Brazil, South Korea... have done in recent years.

2- It can print money to prevent its currency from rising and then sterilize its FX intervention.

3- It can print money to prevent its currency from rising and just accept the consequences of fast money supply growth (usually higher inflation and asset prices).

And by and large, this is what most nations on the other side of the US current account deficit (i.e.: Asia and OPEC) have done. And unsurprisingly, these are the countries that are today dealing with the largest inflation threats.

We would thus argue that the US current account deficit has been a double inflationary force for the world at large. First, the US current account deficit has pushed a number of countries towards reflation, and secondly, the large US current account deficit has helped propagate the belief that the US$ could only fall, and thus encouraged large borrowings of US$ outside of the US.

And the US current account deficit, combined with the willingness to borrow US$, has been an inflationary force for more than just Asia and the Middle East. It may also explain the surge in money growth in Europe! Indeed, with central bank reserves growing very rapidly around the world (despite a high oil price which, at the very least, should have drained the reserves of Asian and European countries), central banks such as the PBoC or the RBI have likely spent the past few years diversifying their reserves, which for all intents and purposes means buying the Euro... And, as we argued in our book The End is Not Nigh, this "diversification" of reserves means buying European government bonds or, in other words, subsidizing the expenditures of foreign governments with domestically borrowed money.

Et voila! We are now back to Jacques Rueff's definition of inflation being "a policy which subsidizes expenditures that give no returns (i.e.: government spending in Europe or the US) being financed with money that does not exist (i.e.: central bank reserves that have been borrowed, not earned)!"

5- Will the US Deficit Continue to be an Inflationary Force?

Having established that one of the main factors of excess liquidity growth in the world (the willingness of the financial sector to lend very aggressively) had now disappeared, can we rely on the US current account deficit to continue providing excess liquidity to the world. Will an ever growing US trade deficit continue to force other countries to reflate and lead to an ever lower US$? We tend to believe that the answer to that question is a very firm "no". And, this for several reasons:

Reason #1: As reviewed on page 6, the US current account deficit is already improving. Moreover, since oil is now a bigger percentage of the US deficit, should oil prices roll over, we could witness the most rapid improvement in the US current account deficit ever seen. But even without oil rolling over, the recent weakness of the US$ argues for a continued improvement in the deficit:

As does the weakness in US housing:

Meanwhile, the prevalent belief of recent years that borrowing US$ to invest in local currencies was a "no-brainer" is now undergoing a significant test. For example, in recent months, the "long dong" strategy has undeniably failed (the black market now expects a devaluation of over 20% in the Vietnamese currency). The strategy is also failing in India where the Rupee, to many investors' surprise, has been amazingly weak in recent months....

In fact, an interesting development is occurring on the US$: fewer and fewer currencies have lately been rising against the US$ and this despite some pretty poor news from the US (MBIA downgrade, fears on Lehman, weak housing, weak growth, high oil, fears of war with Iran...). Now the typical pattern for an equity bull market is that, as it nears its peak, fewer and fewer shares make new highs even as indices keep on powering ahead. Major corrections are typically preceded by a narrowing breadth... And today, we are undeniably witnessing a deteriorating breath in the "anti-US$" bull market:

To cut a long story short, and with hindsight, the large US current account deficit and the weak US$ were another very potent inflationary force in our system. But, at least at the margin, these inflationary forces should abate, rather than acceler- ate, over the coming months.

6- Conclusion

There is little doubt that, right now, inflation is proving to be a massive headwind for financial markets. And part of that "inflation headwind" is the fear that the Fed, the ECB and other central banks will have little choice but to tighten monetary policy in the coming months. This is most likely true of some central banks, but maybe not all? After all, looking around the world, the inflationary threat is a sure thing in certain regions, and less of a threat in others:

In the US: In a recent paper (see The Dollar's Successful Devaluation), Charles argued that the Fed had just managed to engineer a "good devaluation" for the US$, whereby the currency is brought down without an explosion in monetary aggregates and a rapid acceleration in inflation. This makes the economy competitive and local assets attractive for foreigners. Since then, not much has happened to warrant a change in this view. In fact, since then, the main development has been the roll-over in velocity and renewed fears as to the health of the US financial sector. With velocity plummeting, we think that the bond market is broadly right to not anticipate an acceleration in US inflation.

In Euroland: Just like in the US, the bond market does not seem to really anticipate a massive surge in inflation. And given the very overvalued currency and the inverted yield curve, this makes sense to us.
In the Middle East: The one region of the world which is still experiencing reflation from the US current account deficit is the Middle-East (and to a lesser extent Russia). The unwillingness of policymakers to revalue their currencies (see The Arab Pegs) and the inability of local central banks to sterilize their FX intervention means that the local economies are condemned to continue experiencing inflation as long as they refuse to revalue their currency. More worryingly, a pursuit of the current fixed exchange rate, inflationary policies could lead local economies into the same kind of boom-bust cycle that Vietnam (and maybe India?) are now having to endure.
In India and Southeast Asia: If the US went through a ‘good devaluation' (i.e.: a lower currency without a spike in inflation, triggering an increase in foreign and domestic investments and productivity gains), then it increasingly looks as if India and Southeast Asia have just gone through a ‘bad devaluation' (i.e.: a lower currency which brings about fast money growth, higher inflation, deteriorating trade balances and foreign investor flight). As such, certain countries (India, Vietnam...) are now stuck in the unfortunate position of having to defend their currencies, which is rarely conducive to either economic, or asset price growth.
In China: Inflation is undeniably a problem but, thus far, it seems to be mostly contained to food and energy prices (see A Dummy's Guide to Chinese Inflation). Meanwhile, the only pressures on the RMB are still of a positive nature. Thus, if either the US$ rebounds or commodities roll over (two events that are likely to happen simultaneously), China's inflation problem could dissipate relatively quickly. Chinese and HK shares would then soar.
In Japan, Korea, and Taiwan: Japan, Korea and Taiwan have seen little "hot money" inflows in recent years and have also been better at letting their currencies rise against the US$ (this year, the NT$ is one of the world's best performing currencies with a +6.5% rise while the KRW was one of the best performing Asian currencies between 2004 and 2006). In general rule, these countries today have far less of an inflationary problem than the rest of Asia:

While the markets had started to rally in April and early May, the spike in oil prices fuelled fears of faster inflation and triggered a threat of coming rate hikes from the Fed and the ECB. In turn, all these events weighed down equity markets around the world. However, as we have tried to show in this paper:

The inflation threat is very different between countries. At most risk today are the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, inflation is far less of a threat in the US, Japan and North Asia.
Given the fact that the forces behind the recent pick-up in inflation are now turning around (strong willingness to take risk amongst financial firms, growing US current account deficits, overall weakness in the US$), inflation could well start abating in the coming quarters. Moreover, with the turnaround in velocity and the implosion in the banking systems, it seems increasingly likely that neither the Fed, nor the ECB will be willing/have to match their recent hawkishness with rate hikes.
As inflation rolls over in the OECD, the leadership of equity markets should go through a serious adjustment.

Your meditating on inflation analyst,

John Mauldin

A Kind Word for Inflation

John Mauldin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:01:00 GMT

This week's Outside the Box will challenge a few of your base assumptions. Paul McCulley, the managing director at PIMCO, offers us a kind word for inflation and the reasons that the Fed will be on hold for a lot longer than the markets currently think. And part of that is to avoid a real recession or even a depression. Getting this debate right is important.

These are indeed interesting times we live in. I look forward to being with Paul at the end of July on our Maine fishing expedition, where he can defend his proposition to the group of economists and analysts gathered there. Have a great week.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

A Kind Word for Inflation

by Paul McCulley

No, I have not lost my mind. I'm fully aware that inflation is not kind to bonds, so offering a kind word for inflation is de facto offering an unkind word about my own business. Investment managers don't tend to do that. But facts are facts. And the essential fact right now is that the American economy needs an inflation rate above the Fed's comfort zone. Needs, you ask?

Yes. Soaring commodity prices, particularly for petroleum and food, and especially in recent months, are an unambiguous negative real terms of trade shock to America. For those not familiar with the term, a nation's terms of trade is the ratio of what it must give up to get what it imports. The easiest way to understand the concept, at least for me, is to think of the number of hours of work necessary, at the average national hourly pay rate, to buy a barrel of oil – a real variable compared to another real variable. The chart below tells that simple story.

Misery Is as Misery Does
Americans are working more hours for the same barrel of oil. That is a negative real terms of trade shock. Put differently, we are less rich or more poor than we were before oil prices took off. There is no getting ‘round this. In turn, there is no escaping collateral adjustments of temporarily higher inflation and temporarily lower growth and employment. The question of the hour is how this pain should be apportioned. Last week, Fed Vice Chairman Don Kohn provided the right answer, presuming there is a right answer (my emphasis):

"... an appropriate monetary policy following a jump in the price of oil will allow, on a temporary basis, both some increase in unemployment and some increase in price inflation. By pursuing actions that balance the deleterious effects of oil prices on both employment and inflation over the near term, policymakers are, in essence, attempting to find their preferred point on the activity/inflation variance-tradeoff curve introduced by John Taylor 30 years ago. Such policy actions promote the efficient adjustment of relative prices: Since real wages need to fall and both prices and wages adjust slowly, the efficient adjustment of relative prices will tend to include a bit of additional price inflation and a bit of additional unemployment for a time, leading to increases in real wages that are temporarily below the trend established by productivity gains."¹

Mr. Kohn was preaching the raw, honest truth: a surge in oil prices raises the Misery Index, temporarily lifting both inflation and the unemployment rate. In turn, those outcomes beget lower real wages and, presumably, lower real profits, too. We are less rich or more poor – period. Thus, those who holler and scream at the Fed for letting the inflation genie out of the bottle need to calm down. A negative terms of trade shock is a real shock, so it must be translated into lower real wages and profits. That simple and that painful. Logically, it also must be translated for a time into lower, even negative, real short-term interest rates, the rate of return on money.

Spiral Risk?
But, you retort, if the Fed surrenders to negative real interest rates, it will set off an inflationary spiral, as second and third round effects on prices and wages take hold: capital and labor will extrapolate what should be viewed as a transitorily higher inflation into permanently higher inflation. In a world of perfectly indexed prices and wages, this could well be the case. The 1970s resembled such a world, and nasty oil price shocks that should have been one-off adjustments in the price level via temporarily higher inflation morphed into a price-wage-price inflationary spiral.

In monetary policy terminology, inflation expectations in the 1970s were not firmly anchored at the pre-oil price shock level. This is true, I think, but more elementally, the highly unionized, closed-economy structure of the American economy price and wage setting process was inherently geared to transforming a one-off inflationary shock into an enduring inflationary shock.

We no longer live in such a world. Most importantly, wage inflation is now only loosely connected to price inflation, in the wake of a more globally competitive, less unionized labor force. As Vice Chairman Kohn hinted, the combination of somewhat higher inflation and higher unemployment is a prescription for diminished pricing power by labor, leading to lower real wages (than would be dictated by labor's productivity growth). Thus, unlike the 1970s, there is little wage fuel to generate over-heating aggregate demand and, thus, a sustained price-wage-price inflationary spiral.

This is good news indeed. Fed officials would make this argument through the lens of well-anchored inflationary expectations, and I have no quarrel with that interpretation, though I think it is but a veil over a more global, more competitive, less oligopolistic price and wage setting structure in the United States. Indeed, I believe the more nasty is the negative terms of trade shock, the fatter is the fat tail of asset price deflation rather than the fat tail of accelerating goods and services inflation.

Avoiding a Modern Day Depression
Deflating asset prices in a highly levered economy are a much more nefarious outcome than temporary increases in inflation in goods and services. This is particularly the case from a starting point of low inflation in goods and services (excluding those involved in the negative terms of trade shock). How so? Simple: a negative terms of trade shock and asset price deflation are a prescription for not just a recession, but a nasty one. More to the point, from a starting point of low goods and services inflation, the Fed is never far from the zero lower limit on nominal short-term interest rates, commonly known as a liquidity trap.

Therefore, the more flexible are wages in the face of a negative terms of trade shock, particularly if it coincides with asset price deflation, the greater is the risk of policy makers losing control of the economy on the downside. In turn, this reality argues for the Fed to tolerate higher headline inflation in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock.

To be sure, the Fed must be aware of the dreaded second and third round effects, constantly checking to make sure that real wages and real profits are being eroded by the aberrantly high headline inflation. But, assuming the evidence supports that thesis, as the following graph displays, it would be an absolute folly for the Fed – or any central bank in similar circumstances – to hike interest rates in an attempt to make the negative terms of trade shock go away. By definition, it can't. And if it tries, it will create an even bigger mess. In this case, the motto of a central bank should be the same as that of a physician: first, do no harm.

I think the Fed thoroughly understands these exigencies in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock. It doesn't mean that the Fed won't or shouldn't rhetorically sound tough at times, in the name of preventing inflationary expectations from becoming unmoored. But the bottom line is that as long as there is a huge gulf between the negative terms of trade cup and the wage inflation lip, the Fed should talk about the cup and focus on the lip.

Bottom Line
Which means, my friends, that low, even negative real short-term interest rates are here to stay for a considerable period. Yes, I know that many believe that it is somehow sinful or immoral for the Fed to hold nominal short rates so low as to render the real return on cash to be negative. I don't buy this proposition. Why should it be that those who only have labor to offer to the market should not be made whole for a negative terms of trade shock, while those with cash should be made whole?

In the wake of a negative terms of trade shock, all factors of production should absorb a negative hit to their real returns. If indexing to headline inflation is inappropriate for labor wages and capital's profits, why should cash yields be indexed by the Fed?

And what if holders of cash don't like it? Then they can step out on the risk spectrum. After all, a basic of capitalism is no risk, no reward. And temporarily higher inflation in the wake of a negative terms of trade shock is an efficient lubricant for the economy to make the necessary real adjustments.

Paul McCulley
Managing Director
June 16, 2008
mcculley@pimco.com

¹ http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Kohn20080611a.htm

Your betting the Fed will be on hold a long time analyst,

John Mauldin

Why We Must Fix It

John Mauldin — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:18:00 GMT

This week in Outside the Box we take up a topic that should be on the top of the agenda of every regulatory authority, executives at financial services firms of all types, and average investors: How do we fix the credit markets to make sure we do not have such a crisis again? Good friend Michael Lewitt of Hegemony Capital Management gives us his observations, some of which go further than I would personally like to see us go. But this is the conversation that must happen if we are to steer clear of future crises. It is clear to me now that a laissez faire approach to regulating certain financial instruments exposes the entire economy to risks much larger than the loss of a business here or there. While better disclosure is certainly appropriate, it is not enough.

I think that we should seriously consider having an exchange for credit default swaps and other similar OTC derivatives. If Bear Stearns is deemed too big to fail because of the extent of its CDS book, and taxpayers are put at risk in a bailout, which I agree was necessary, then rules must limit taxpayer exposure. Having futures and options trade on an exchange certainly hasn't limited commerce or restrained business, and with instantaneous execution and inexpensive transactions there is little friction from using an exchange.

Getting the rules right in the future is going to be difficult and contentious. But it is something we must begin to do as soon as possible. The footnotes that Michael uses are at the end.

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box

Why We Must Fix It

By Michael Lewitt

"Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure -- but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and moral natures, each in their appointed place."

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Last month's issue of this publication ("How To Fix It," March 1, 2008) attracted more reaction than usual. Like several previous issues, it was featured in John Mauldin's Outside the Box and Kate Welling's welling@weeden, and was also widely circulated on the Internet and elsewhere. While many readers agreed that drastic steps are needed to avoid continuing down the dangerous path that our economy and society are on, there were a few individuals who felt that HCM's proposals were too radical.¹ But in the face of the wholly inadequate plan that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson offered up in response to the current crisis, it is painfully apparent that our suggestions were not radical enough. Mr. Paulson's recommendations do little to address the regulatory black holes that permitted some of the most powerful institutions in the world to make hundreds of billions of dollars of worthless loans.² Moreover, his plan fails to address the asymmetric compensation structures that allow financial industry executives to leverage their firms to the hilt and then walk away with pots of gold before their institutions all too predictably tumble into the abyss, inflicting damage on all parts of the financial system except the executives' own wallets.

Despite the fact that the financial markets have temporarily recovered their equilibrium, virtually none of the profound imbalances that led to the current crisis are being addressed. The markets, and those with the power to regulate them, continue to cling to the false ideologies that maintain that markets can correct themselves and that government regulation should be kept to a minimum. In fact, it has been the government that has had to bail out the markets each time they have nearly collapsed in recent years. George Soros makes this argument quite compellingly in a recent interview in The New York Review of Books ("The Financial Crisis: An Interview With George Soros," May 15, 2008).

"[T]he system, as it currently operates, is built on false premises. Unfortunately, we have an idea of market fundamentalism, which is now the dominant ideology, holding that markets are selfcorrecting; and this is false because it's generally the intervention of the authorities that saves the markets when they get into trouble. Since 1980, we have had about five or six crises: the international banking crisis in 1982, the bankruptcy of Continental Illinois in 1984, and the failure of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, to name only three. Each time, it's the authorities that bail out the market, or organize companies to do so. So the regulators have precedents they should be aware of. But somehow this idea that markets tend to equilibrium and that deviations are random has gained acceptance and all of these fancy instruments for investment have been built on them."

This time, the authorities were not only forced to bail out Bear Stearns but were also compelled to take a series of unprecedented steps to infuse massive amounts of liquidity into the banking system in order to fend off a collapse. Some of these steps broke new legal ground. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who is enjoying a resurgence in idolatry for his tough love policies of the early 1980s, castigated³ the current Federal Reserve for breaking new ground (and maybe the law): "The Federal Reserve has judged it necessary to take actions that extend to the very edge of its lawful and implied powers, transcending in the process certain long embedded Central Banking principles and practices." HCM imagines that Mr. Bernanke's response, faced with a potential collapse of the credit system, would be, "So sue me!" Over the past two decades, each successive crisis has required more draconian governmental action to ward off disaster, because the global financial system has grown exponentially larger and more complex. This growth is largely attributable to the uncontrolled and unregulated growth of derivatives and other financial products that have never been truly stress-tested. This is what HCM meant when we wrote last month that "n spite of claims to the contrary, the American economy has become increasingly unstable in recent decades." The only adjustment we would make to that statement would be to change the word "American" to "global" as the American economy has become increasingly linked to the global economy. The economic stability that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan used to brag about was just a veneer -- under the surface, forces of instability were building due to the fact that the system was becoming increasingly leveraged and unregulated. That is why we have to fix the system before it is too late (if if is not already too late). Mr. Soros points out in his interview, "[t]here are now, for example, complex forms of investment such as credit-default swaps that make it possible for investors to bet on the possibility that companies will default on repaying loans. Such bets on credit defaults now make up a $45 trillion market that is entirely unregulated. It amounts to more than five times the total of the US government bond market. The large potential risks of such investments are not being acknowledged." The CDS market, which is properly understood as an insurance market that is most likely under-reserved (not an insurance market without reserves, as some have incorrectly described it), now looms as everybody's candidate for the next accident waiting to happen. At the very least, it is somewhere between grossly and criminally irresponsible for the financial authorities to permit such a vast market to remain unregulated. The real question is whether there is anybody in our government who is even remotely qualified to regulate this market. Even the slightest tinkering with a market of this breadth without a proper understanding of the potential consequences could add a frightening new chapter to the law of unintended consequences. Doing nothing, however, is no longer an option. The failure to make the regulation of this market the top priority of government regulators is nothing less than a national disgrace. Let us hope it does not turn into a national tragedy.

We wish we could be as optimistic as Morgan Stanley's highly respected economist Richard Berner, who writes: "Re-regulation and a safer, better-capitalized financial system are coming. Intermediaries with little to no regulation will get new oversight, new disclosure responsibilities, and new capital requirements."⁴ Unfortunately, addressing the regulatory flaws that led to the current crisis won't be nearly as easy as Mr. Berner makes it sound. While HCM believes that more regulation is absolutely necessary, it is going to have to be implemented in a more enlightened and creative manner than in the past. The last time regulators took aggressive action to address flaws in the system, they badly missed the mark. They outlawed the type of off-balance-sheet investments done by industrial companies such as Enron Corp. but completely ignored the much larger and more highly leveraged shadow banking system (the Structured Investment Vehicles [SIVs]) until it collapsed under its own weight five years later. Federal prosecutors engaged in a series of high-profile show trials that featured far more abuses of prosecutorial power than findings of guilt against significant defendants. And the SEC stepped in too late, after billions of dollars were stolen from investors, to outlaw blatantly unethical but widely tolerated conduct such as lax underwriting standards verging on fraud, the participation of research analysts in the underwriting process, and after-hours trading in mutual funds. This time, we don't need political sound bites. We need independent parties with market experience who are not afraid to offend the powers-that-be to write and enforce the rules so our markets can function properly. Secretary Paulson is compromised, unfortunately, by his background as the former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. His reaction to the crisis appears to be far too protective of the industry in which he made his fortune and does not go far enough to address the issues of leverage and asymmetric compensation structures that are ruining our markets and destroying our economy. The need to change how our markets are regulated is not merely a matter of law or economics; it is a matter that will affect the future of our country as it moves forward into a globalized world characterized by commodity shortages, religious conflicts that have economic overtones, and increasingly rapid technological change. The financial markets lie at the center of our way of life, and our obligation to insure that they operate fairly and efficiently extends beyond mere economic considerations. Nothing that has occurred in the past month dissuades HCM from the view that the long-term economic trends facing the United States are ominous and demand radical policy action. The continuing debasement of the U.S. dollar, the incessant (and only partially dollar-related) rise in the price of oil, and the unceasing flow of financial institution losses attributable to derivatives and structured products blunders convince HCM more than ever that the United States is set on a path that can only lead to a loss of its lead role in the global economy. The consequences of this will be deteriorating U.S. living standards on a relative and absolute basis, continued financial market volatility, further economic instability, and a long-term weakening of the United States' ability to influence world events in its favor. Americans, particularly the most advantaged, have sold their souls to the twin devils of immediate gratification and overconsumption. Unless we radically rethink our priorities and then put into action a drastic new policy regime, we will end up living in a world that is significantly more economically, culturally, and spiritually impoverished than today's before the current century has reached its midpoint.

Long-Term Threats

HCM sees several long-term threats that are being ignored by the markets as they struggle for some type of short-term stability. While we see many opportunities to invest profitably in the near term, we remain extremely concerned about long-term economic trends. We realize, with sadness, that there are very few long-term investors left in the world. Investors seem to have taken to heart, in a manner that borders between irony and self-delusion, John Maynard Keynes' famous statement that "in the long run, we are all dead." Since we are all not going to be dead tomorrow, however, HCM thought it would be useful to discuss some of the trends that are working against us as we live out our days. At the very least, these factors should be taken into account by investors as they fashion investment strategies for short- and intermediate-term time horizons.

Inflation: The first significant long-term threat is inflation -- both asset inflation and product inflation. The steps taken by the Federal Reserve to rescue the U.S. financial system from collapse have created the conditions for a long-term inflationary boom. Simply put, the authorities did what they always do in the face of a threatened systemic collapse: they reflated like crazy. Allowing the Federal Home Loan Banks and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to further swell their balance sheets with mortgage paper is hardly going to contribute to fiscal discipline. All it did was stick a finger in the dyke in the hope that other leaks wouldn't spring out right now. Second, the demographic and political pressures lifting the prices of both soft and hard commodities remain unrelenting. Oil is just the tip of the iceberg, though the best analogy is one that places the U.S. economy as the Titanic sailing straight at it. The long-term energy picture is nothing less than ruinous for the United States and other oil-dependent Western economies, as well as for the environment of our entire planet. The shift of wealth away from the U.S. and Western Europe toward countries that do not share our political values or interests is nothing less than potentially catastrophic for the future of world peace. That may sound like a terribly harsh statement to make now, but looking back on it in 50 years, it is likely to ring painfully prescient.

HCM's inflation view is somewhat different from that of Van R. Hoisington and Lacy H. Hunt of the highly regarded Van Hoisington Investment Management Company. We mention these gentlemen's views because their recent track record in economic forecasting has been second to none, and because we never believe we have cornered the market in knowing what's going to happen. In its most recent Quarterly Review and Outlook, Van Hoisington downplays the risks of a near-term inflation spiral. Conceding that CPI over the last twelve months has increased by 4.1 percent, much higher than the 2.8 percent average annual increase this decade, Van Hoisington points to four mitigating factors. First, inflation is a lagging rather than a leading indicator, and they believe that the historical pattern will persist of major reductions in inflation occurring in the early stages of the recovery from the current recession. Second, inflation gauges peaked well before the inception of the growth recession that began in mid-2007. Third, Van Hoisington believe that the upturn in headline inflation is transitory because higher food and fuel prices have not fed into wages (which is critical since labor costs comprise almost 70 percent of production costs in the U.S.). Finally, Van Hoisington believe that monetary policy is actually restrictive, not expansionary, pointing to the reversal of prior financial innovations (securitization) and absence of new ones, as well as the well-known refusal of banks to lend. HCM would never dismiss the views of Van Hoisington, which remains among the most accurate inflation and economic forecasters around. One question HCM would ask Van Hoisington about its forecast is whether tightness outside the Federal Reserve system (i.e. the collapse of the shadow banking system -- SIVs) will override the looseness being exercised by the Federal Reserve and other central banks themselves. In the near-term these two forces will struggle, but in the long-term HCM expects that it will be hard for the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury to put the Jack back in the box. But on a broader level, HCM is looking out much further in time than Van Hoisington. Van Hoisington's view is not intended to be a long-term (i.e. 5 to10 year) view of inflation (at least HCM does not read it that way). One cannot manage money very effectively these days based on such long-term views, although such forecasts should play some role in the process. The almost exclusive focus on the short term must be counted among the most profound flaws plaguing our markets and society today. And this is not merely a theoretical lament. This is one reason why so many investors end up losing years of returns in short periods of time through so-called "Black Swan" events. They invest in strategies that are sustainable in the short run, such as highly leveraged credit arbitrage strategies, but are susceptible to blowing up at some point in the future when conditions change. Such changes in conditions are always a certainty; the question is the timing of such changes, and the ability of investment managers to exit positions before the Black Swan drops a turd on their heads.

Dollar Debauchment: The second threat to U.S. economic hegemony is the demise of the U.S. dollar standard. There is no way to avoid the conclusion that wrong-headed economic and political leadership have all but completely debauched the American currency. Jason Rotenberg noted recently in Bridgewater Daily Observations⁵ that "we think we are now experiencing a breakdown in the US dollar system that is similar to the 1971 breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. Recent financial developments and the extreme provisions of liquidity that they have and will require are extremely bearish for the US dollar and are accelerating the process." HCM concurs with the view that the U.S. dollar breakdown is accelerating. With the Euro surpassing $1.60 for the first time (we take little long-term comfort in the recent "rally" to $1.55), the better play for investors concerned about the U.S. dollar continues to be South Asian currencies and the Chinese Yuan. But the fact that the dollar trades so poorly against the European currency, which represents an economic region that suffers from even more long-term structural deficiencies than the United States, raises serious concerns (however legitimate the view that the dollar is oversold in the short-term against the Euro).⁶ HCM remains squarely in the camp of those who believe that the dollar is a terminal short play absent radical changes in economic policy in the U.S. and around the world.

Corporate Earnings Weakness: The third threat is slower U.S. economic growth than in the rest of the world. This is a more complex question that deserves some discussion. Bridgewater Associates places the gap between U.S. and global GDP growth at 4 percent.⁷ Dr. Marc Faber warns that corporate profits are going to be far weaker than Wall Street analysts are projecting. Dr. Faber writes: "[m]y impression from talking to a large number of investors and from attending numerous investment conferences is this: yes, the mood among institutional investors is negative due to recent losses, but the urge to buy the dips is still far greater than the urge to sell on rebounds. Institutions perceive the current credit problems to be temporary and still expect S&P earnings to recover strongly in late 2008 and 2009."⁸ Dr. Faber cites a March 17, 2008 research report by Morgan Stanley economist Richard Berner entitled "Downside Risk for Corporate Profits," in which Mr. Berner writes: "I think the earnings outlook will disappoint. The US economic outlook has darkened and fading operating leverage, dwindling pricing power, and deteriorating credit quality will squeeze margins. Despite the benefit of a weaker dollar, slower growth abroad seems likely to tame the overseas earning boom."⁹ Mr. Berner points to two areas of concern. First, the fact that operating leverage is currently far higher than in the 1990s, meaning that "a deeper recession, especially one that spreads abroad, would promote a much more serious profit squeeze." Second, overseas earnings represent 31.5 percent of earnings today, compared with only 15 percent twenty years ago, so a non-U.S. slowdown would bode poorly for U.S. corporate profits. Mr. Berner already sees signs of the U.S. slowdown impacting foreign earnings (particularly in Europe): "Together with tighter financial conditions, I'm concerned that weak earnings at European companies could contribute to a sharp deceleration in capital spending and in European growth. That would complete the circle, because it would also hurt US earnings abroad. About half of those overseas earnings originate in Europe." Morgan Stanley's European analysts recently projected a 16-percent drop in European corporate earnings this year, something that has not been carried through into U.S. analysts' earnings projections for U.S. companies with European exposure. U.S. stock market investors are still looking for a free lunch, and that lunch may be served cold (and stale). Weak corporate earnings are a particular concern in a recessionary environment in which the balance sheets of many companies have been larded with debt as a result of leveraged buyouts and similar speculative transactions. Retailers and airlines have already begun to default in packs, and more are of their brethren are certain to follow. Even as we appear to be well into the middle of the mortgage collapse, we are only in the very early innings of the corporate credit slowdown. There is a counterargument to the weak corporate earnings thesis, however. Many U.S. companies are continuing to post extremely strong results, particularly in the capital goods, energy infrastructure, commodities, and chemicals industries. Many U.S. companies retain unparalleled expertise in these industries and are exporting record amounts of products to the emerging markets around the world. One reason why the U.S. economy has not suffered as severely as some economists have expected from the housing industry collapse is that the global industrial economy has remained robust. HCM is working on a separate research report on the global industrial economy that explores this theme in detail, but our tentative conclusion is that many opportunities still exist to invest in the equity and debt of many U.S. companies providing goods and services to the global economy in the industries enumerated above. The question remains whether the strength in these sectors will be sufficient to counter the pronounced slowdown in the financial, housing, and consumer sectors that will continue to hang as an albatross around the neck of corporate profitability in the U.S. and Europe in coming quarters. On a long-term basis, the outlook for growth in these segments, and for the U.S. companies selling into them, remains very bullish. We hope to have our report completed sometime in June and will be making it available to readers of The HCM Market Letter at that time.

Relief Rally

Risk assets have rallied off their lows since JP Morgan Chase's acquisition of Bear Stearns in mid-March. The S&P 500 Index has jumped by 9 percent since that event, and the Merrill Lynch High Yield Bond Index has tightened sharply to a spread of 685 basis points over Treasuries from a high of 860 basis points. The prices of leveraged loans, which saw their worst drop in the history of that relatively new market in the first quarter of 2008, have also recovered sharply as dealers have managed to work down their backlog of unsold loans to under $100 billion from over $250 billion at year end. A key factor in the recovery in high-yield bonds and bank loans has been the continued low level of defaults, which have increased but remain confined thus far to the airline and retail industries. In the meantime, financial institutions such as Citigroup have had little trouble attracting additional debt and equity capital, and the markets are acting as though the worst of the crisis has passed. After all, compared to facing Armageddon, just waking up the next morning feels pretty good.

HCM is not surprised by this market recovery, particularly in the corporate credit markets. The bank loan market was bound to recover in the absence of any significant defaults, since its sell-off was entirely technically driven. The high-yield bond market, which remains a treacherous market for long-term investors, was also oversold in the absence of a rash of credit problems. At 680 basis points, however, it is again a poor value and should be avoided like the plague that it is (for everyone except the private equity firms who take advantage of its inability to price risk to purchase companies at exorbitant multiples). There is no question in HCM's mind that default rates will increase significantly in the second half of 2008 and 2009. When that occurs, the worst losses will be experienced by the holders of high-yield bonds in transactions that were completed in the 2005-2007 period, when acquisition multiples were mostly in the double digits. At anything less than 1000 basis points, high-yield bonds do not compensate investors for the risks they bring in today's economic environment.

Bank loans, on the other hand, continue to offer excellent value even after their recent rally. As floating-rate instruments that offer a senior position in the capital structure and collateral, bank loans offer extremely attractive risk-reward trade-offs. The market for Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) remains moribund, but CLO liabilities remain an attractive way for investors to take advantage of the madness of crowds that have fled this asset class. Bank loans are not mortgages. One of the great lessons of the subprime debacle is that whatever fancy packages mortgages and other types of loans are wrapped up in, the only thing that matters in the end is whether borrowers can meet their obligations. Mortgage CDOs were flawed because the underlying borrowers couldn't make their mortgage payments, and all of the financial hocus-pocus in the world couldn't compensate for that. The same is true of CLOs. Either corporations will repay their loans or they won't. HCM believes that most will, and that most CLOs will end up repaying their liabilities and rewarding their equity investors handsomely. We are highly confident that those CLOs managed by our firm will do so.

The Road to Hell

As we said last month, the U.S. is being buried beneath the self-satisfied grins of investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and private equity tycoons who have figured out how to make personal fortunes without contributing commensurate amounts to the productive capacity of our economy. We can only join in Jeremy Grantham's recent lament:

"This has indeed not been our finest hour in the U.S. Times are bad enough, in fact, to make us mourn the American leadership skills of WWII and the generosity and foresight of the Marshall Plan. We can all wonder at the incredible vision, drive, organizational skill, and willingness to sacrifice resources that were required by the Manhattan Project and compare it to the rudderless or even deliberate avoidance of leadership of the greatest issues today: climate change and energy security. We can only wonder what a Manhattan Project aimed at alternative energy might have accomplished by now, had it been started 15 years ago. What we have had in lieu of vision, leadership, and backbone is a series of easy paths taken."¹⁰

It is a national tragedy that so much of the intellectual capital of this country is being directed at financial speculation rather than scientific and creative thinking. HCM believes that this is a problem of moral education. Our educational institutions need to teach the best and brightest students that there are rewards in this world other than pecuniary ones. Then it is up to the rest of society to insure that the financial rewards of doing good are commensurate with the benefits that such conduct confers on our communities.

PIMCO's Bill Gross is one of the few public figures in the market willing to speak out against the obscene compensation schemes that result from the asymmetric reward system that institutional investors have somehow been conned into believing align their interests with those responsible for generating the investment returns that will enable them to fund their future obligations. Jeremy Grantham's recent comments are consistent with Mr. Gross's and our own views:

"What's worse, those who took on unjustified risk live to prosper and reinforce the existing agency problems. These problems were big enough already: stock options, for example, that encouraged risks by rewarding upside success and punishing failure. If you win, you take some of the shareholders' company, and if you lose, you lose nothing. In fact, if you lose, you rewrite your options at depressed or crisis prices, just as some financial companies are doing as we write. Similarly some hedge funds and private equity firms can take a level of leverage that might guarantee failure in the long run but with asymmetrical returns they pocket gains and sidestep the worst impacts of a potential terminal loss. To maintain a healthy respect for risk taking, it is surely necessary to punish egregious over-reaching or spectacular misjudgment with the spectacular penalties they deserve and used to get but no longer."¹¹

Despite the performance of the occasional outliers, pension funds, endowments, and the like continue to experience shortfalls and other serious strains as professional money managers fail to provide sufficient returns to meet growing future spending needs. Moreover, outperformers continue to reap Brobdingnagian pay packages that sweep away a disproportionate amount of the upside from overall portfolio performance that never recycles back when conditions return to the mean. Some may think that we can simply continue on the road we are on. HCM believes otherwise. We believe that we must fix it.

Footnotes:

1 Most readers who disagreed with our approach took the high road, with the exception of one smug fund-of-funds executive who quoted a dead Nazi while accusing me of being a liberal fascist. He will no longer be receiving this publication from us. We are happy to listen to all types of criticism, however expressed, but we cannot stomach moral obliquity.

2 Estimates of total losses from the credit crisis keep mounting. Morgan Stanley is beginning to think that its current estimates of $400 million of total losses from mortgage lending and $750 million of overall credit losses may be too low. See Morgan Stanley Research North America, US Economics, "Funding Pressures, Adverse Feedback Loops and Monetary Policy," April 14, 2008. Some are estimating that the losses will exceed $1 trillion. However you measure it, there aren't enough guillotines to chop off the heads of all of the responsible parties.

3 "Castigation" may sound like an overstatement, but one has to understand Fedspeak to appreciate the harshness of Mr. Volcker's words.

4 Morgan Stanley Research North America, US Economics, "Fixing the Credit Crunch -- The Growing Case

for 'Unconventional' Tools," March 25, 2008.

5 Bridgewater Daily Observations, April 10, 2008.

6 Just to be clear, at this point HCM would not recommend shorting the dollar against the Euro but would recommend shorting the dollar against a basket of South Asian currencies and the Chinese Yuan.

7 Bridgewater Daily Observations, April 10, 2008.

8 Dr. Marc Faber, The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, April 5, 2008, p. 5.

9 Morgan Stanley Research North America, US Economics, March 17, 2008.

10 GMO Quarterly Letter, April 2008, "Immoral Hazard."

11 GMO Quarterly Letter, April 2008, "Immoral Hazard."

On a lighter note, I am in South Africa after a 15-hour flight, landing to perfect weather. I watched the movie The Great Debaters, with Denzel Washington. It is a great movie. Rent it when you get a chance.

Your hoping that the authorities get it analyst,

John Mauldin

How To Fix It

John Mauldin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:21:29 GMT

This week we will look at what will be a fairly controversial essay by good friend Michael Lewitt of HCM. In light of today's speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of the re-organization of the regulatory system in the US, Michael suggest we...(read more)

John Mauldin's Outside the Box : The Fed

Quarterly Review and Outlook - Third Quarter 2009

Quarterly Review and Outlook - Third Quarter 2009

Ponzi Finance

A Downward Spiral

The Impossible Promise

The Hesitant Fed

Dollar Weakness

The Thinking Behind the Stimulus and Bailout Programs

Comments Before the Money Marketeers Club Playing Solitaire with a Deck of 51, with Number 52 on Offer

Saving Capitalist Banking and a Speech by Paul Volker

Saving Capitalist Banking from Itself

The Nature of Fractional Reserve Banking

Enter the Government

The Mae West Doctrine

Government Goes All In4

Bottom Line

The Great Experiment

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

CAN FED POLICY CONTROL ECONOMIC DESTINY?

ARE MASSIVE FISCAL DEFICITS A CURE?

MAJOR HEADWINDS FOR CONSUMER SPENDING

GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS

HISTORY OF DEBT BUBBLES AND LONG-TERM INTEREST RATES

Setting the Bull Trap

Setting the Bull Trap

Is the Ultimate Bull Trap Being Set?

Why is the Federal Reserve Punishing Prudence?

FOMC Statement December 16, 2008

A Few Examples of the "Not-So-Free-Market"

Summary—Why Will the Bull Trap Hurt so Many Investors???

All In

All In

Semi-Annual U.S. Economic Outlook: Collapsing On Schedule

Semi-Annual U.S. Economic Outlook: Collapsing On Schedule

Housing Horrors

Foreclosure Sales

25% More

Underwater

Financial Problems

Diversification

The Overarching Reality

A TARP For All

Worst Since The 1930s

Spreading Financial Woes

TALF

Foreign Financial Woes

Central Bank Responses

Consumer Retrenchment

Jobs

Impotent Monetary Policy

$700 Billion In Perspective

Phase 4

Commodities

Tsunami In The Swimming Pool

Recession Ends When?

The Dollar

Profits

P/Es and Stock Prices

Deflation

Inflation?

The Six Lessons from Last Week's Action

The Six Lessons from Last Week's Action

1) Expect the worst recession in the post-WWII era

2) Capex is in a steep decline

3) Consumer spending down sharply; savings rate is soaring

4) Obama planning a $700 billion fiscal package

5) Housing market is not close to bottoming out

6) Fed has switched December meeting to a two-day affair

When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

The helicopters are here

Bank lending is responding

The canary in the coalmine

European banks at risk

Spain is the Latin juggernaut

Annus Horribilis

Deleveraging continues

Recession in the early stages

Conclusion

Comments Before the Money Marketeers Club
Playing Solitaire with a Deck of 51, with Number 52 on Offer

Government Goes All In⁴