Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me

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This essay is excerpted from the most recent version of the HCM Market Letter.  To subscribe directly to this publication, please go here.

"In principle, public debt can operate as an instrument of collective rationality, a mechanism through which political power claims the economic resources it needs to enact its decisions.  In current practice, however, it works the opposite way:  as a mechanism through which the costs of collective irrationality – rampant greed and recklessness, exorbitant externalities, perverse incentives, and systemic dangers – are imposed on everybody.  We face something more enveloping than the classic contradiction between the privatization and the socialization of risks: public debt has shouldered the burden of sustaining an economic system whose leaders and ideologues have consistently repudiated the very idea of public responsibility."

Richard Dienst1

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The news cycle has given short shrift to the fact that Congress and the Obama Administration are struggling to pass a budget for the 2012 fiscal year.  Admittedly events in Japan and the Middle East have distracted both the government and the media from this issue, but America’s public finances continue to rot away.  The failure to tackle entitlement reform is eroding confidence in American leadership and the U.S. dollar.  Investors should be disturbed that the dollar did not rally during the Japan crisis but instead traded down against the feeble Euro.  The dollar is decreasingly seen as a safe haven as the world watches U.S. monetary and fiscal policy continue on their self-destructive courses.

Bill Gross’s most recent Investment Outlook (“Skunked,” April 2011) highlights just how dire the situation is becoming.  Mr. Gross points to the $65 trillion discounted net present value of entitlement liabilities of current spending if it continues at the projected demographic rate.  This off-balance sheet, unrecorded debt burden is equivalent to more than 500 percent of current GDP, and it is growing at a faster rate than GDP.  No wonder the world is losing confidence in the dollar.  When it comes to public debt, Japan’s got nothing on us.2

The budget crisis is a crisis of leadership.  There is no intellectual mystery involved in cutting the budget – entitlement spending must be reduced through the adoption of tighter eligibility standards (age and wealth).  The other major area of potential budget savings is the military budget.  The U.S. cannot afford and cannot win the Afghan war and should start winding it down immediately.  But Congress and the Administration can’t even agree on modest cuts for next year’s discretionary budget (which are wholly symbolic and will not make a dent in the deficit).  This is no longer simply a case of fiddling while Rome burns; our politicians are striking the matches and fanning the flames.

Europe

Portugal

The U.S. markets’ complacency concerning Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is also striking.  The crisis continues to run the course HCM expected, with Portugal now on the cusp of a forced debt restructuring.  Portugal’s 10-year bond yields have surpassed the 7.5 percent level that many observers consider unsustainable.  On March 31, the Portuguese government announced that last year’s budget deficit was equivalent to 8.6 percent of GDP, missing its target of 7.3 percent.  Despite raising taxes and sharply cutting expenses, the country did not come close to meeting its self-imposed budget target.  Naturally, Portugal was downgraded twice by Standard & Poor’s during the last week, telling the world what it already knew – the country is going to default.  The rating agency also downgraded the credit rating of four Portuguese banks and left their outlook negative.  As bad as things are, however, Standard & Poor’s is still maintaining an investment grade rating on the country (barely – it rates the country BBB-), suggesting once more that the credit rating agencies are the last ones to know what they are supposed to be know.  Not to be outdone, S&P’s evil twin Moody’s Investor Service jumped on the belated bashing bandwagon shortly thereafter (and mini-me Fitch joined in the act by downgrading the country to a still investment-grade BBB- on April 1).  Portugal’s two-year bond yield jumped to 8.75 percent on the S&P news, surpassing the yield on its 10-year debt of 8.41 percent.  The country’s 10-year yield now exceeds Germany’s by a record 490 basis points, but it is still not high enough to compensate holders for the coming restructuring.  The country was able to sneak in a €1.6 billion auction of 15-month bonds at 5.79 percent on April 1, 2.5 percent higher than its borrowing costs a year earlier.  Portugal’s dilemma is accentuated by the resignation of its prime minister, which renders it unable to request aid from the European Union until after new elections are held.

Portuguese bonds yields rising

Making matters worse, it appears that the restructurings of Greece and Ireland are not yet complete and will require additional EU support.  The €700 billion European Stability Mechanism, which will replace the temporary €440 European Financial Stability Facility in 2013, is viewed by many as sufficient to handle the restructurings of these three countries as well as whatever comes next.  Consistent with our “cup-half-empty” view of the world, HCM disagrees.  The new fund is not as robust as the headlines suggest.  European nations will contribute only €80 billion in five annual installments, with Germany’s share expected to be €22 billion between 2013 and 2017.  Moreover, the payments are in the form of guarantees, some of which may not be deliverable if economic conditions deteriorate further during the period of payment.  If Spain, for example, were to default, that country would be in no position to honor its guarantee.  The expanded emergency fund is best considered an idea rather than a reality at this point, although financial markets looking for reasons to rally are clearly looking at it in reverse.

Irish Eyes Are Crying

Ireland is also far from resolving its debt problems as well.  On April 1, S&P again reared its ugly head and downgraded the country’s debt to a still investment-grade BBB+ but revised its outlook to stable.  Ireland is asking the European Union for an addition €60 billion of medium-term funding to replace emergency temporary support from the Irish Central Bank.  This money is required after the completion of another series of stress tests showed that the banks remain undercapitalized.  The EU is balking until Ireland completes a recapitalization of its banks, which appears to be heading in the direction of asking bondholders to finally accept responsibility for their bad judgment and take some losses.  Ireland’s big four lenders – Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks, Irish Life & Permanent and the Education Building Society – are reported to need an additional €34 billion of capital after the completion of stress tests performed by Blackrock.  Irish 10-year bond yields are now parked above 10 percent while its two-year notes are only slightly lower at 9.87 percent, levels that render the country unfinanceable without EU support.  The ECB is currently providing about €100 billion of short-term loans to Irish banks, with the Irish Central Bank kicking in another €70 billion.  The amount of support required by Ireland’s banks alone should give pause to those who continue to believe that even the enlarged emergency fund is going to be sufficiently large to fund the Continent’s credit losses or prevent additional defaults and restructurings.  HCM expects that the markets will continue to shrug off the reality of Europe’s debt crisis until it hits Spain, which is too large to ignore.


1. Richard Dienst, The Bonds of Debt:  Borrowing Against the Public Good (New York: Verso 2011), p. 59.

2. And those who believe that China will continue to defy the laws of economics should keep in mind that China’s sovereign debt, which includes the obligations of its banks, is much higher than commonly believed.  China desperately needs its high single digit GDP growth to prevent its own debt crisis at some point in the future.