Morgan Stanley’s piece on Treasuries Priced for Perfection…for Now! is pretty bearish. The basic gist is that while the ten-year represents fair value today, because inflation expectations have become unanchored, Morgan Stanley expects the yield to rise from 3.3% to 5.5%. That’s a disaster of 1994 proportions. Obviously, given some of my recent comments, this is not what I expect to happen, but be well aware of the risk; in this economic environment, it would be fatal.

Here’s an excerpt of what Manoj Pradhan had to say (emphasis added):

Fed Chairman Bernanke’s speech on Monday could not have been better tailored to keep bond markets happy. The commitment to keep policy rates "exceptionally low" for an "extended period" and the benign outlook for inflation were both very well received by bond markets, as well as other risky assets… Our proprietary model, MS FAYRE, shows a current fair value of 3.3% for the US 10-year Treasury yield – bang in line with actual yields…

Priced for perfection… MS FAYRE generates its fair value estimate using the real fed funds rate, 1-year ahead CPI inflation expectations from the SPF conducted by the Philadelphia Fed and the 5-year rolling standard deviation of inflation as a proxy for inflation volatility (for more details on the MS FAYRE model, see Fairy Tales of the US Bond Market, July 26, 2006). With the fed funds rate at 12.5bp, core PCE inflation tracking at 1.3% and the 4Q09 number for 1-year ahead CPI inflation expectations from the SPF coming in at 1.6%, MS FAYRE produces a fair value of 3.3% for 10-year bond yields, which is exactly where the 10-year yield is now (interested readers should contact us for a user-friendly spreadsheet for simulating the FAYRE model). Forward-looking bond markets thus seem to be pricing in altogether too rosy a scenario for the foreseeable future.

…for now: With actual bond yields bang in line with our fundamental fair value estimate, investors seem to be receiving no compensation for macroeconomic or fiscal risks..

Our forecasts look for bond yields to rise in 2010: Our US economics team expects bond yields to rise to 5.5% by the end of 2010 – an increase of 220bp that outstrips the 137bp increase in the fed funds rate expected over the same horizon (see Don’t Fear the Double-Dip, October 6, 2009). Our US interest rate strategy colleagues suggest that this bear steepening of the curve in 2010 may well be preceded by slightly lower 10-year yields in 2009 (see Liquidity Aplenty but Rising Sensitivity to Rates, October 22, 2009)…

Inflation expectations don’t seem to be anchored… The SPF measure of long-term CPI inflation expectations in the US has indeed remained stable, as claimed, since the median expectations have held steady for nearly a decade now. However…

…our conversations with clients also suggest a split into two fairly distinct camps. A smaller set of clients are bearish on the economic outlook and believe that inflation will be extremely low or even be outright negative for the next few years. The rest believe that inflation risks, and probably inflation itself, will rise within a year or so as the recovery becomes sustainable. The important point here is that it is difficult to find investors who believe that inflation over the medium-to-long run will be precisely in line with central bank targets. Both pieces of evidence do not support the argument that inflation expectations are anchored.

Obviously, Morgan Stanley is bullish on the economy because they are talking about a bear steepener across the Treasury curve. Their thinking on Treasuries is one reason you see Barack Obama talking about reeling in deficit spending. He obviously believes that an increase in interest rates would trigger a double dip recession.

My thinking goes more to bull flatteners where the two-year – ten-year spread decreases as expectations of a fed rate hike are countered by weak economic fundamentals.  This dichotomy points out some very real risks in the bond market right now.

Bill Gross his on the record expecting Treasuries to rally because he is cautious on the economic environment.

Gross has been talking about a “new normal” of deleveraging, deglobalization and reregulation. In his view, this means weak consumer demand counterbalanced only by heavier government intervention, leading to slow growth for the foreseeable future (See my post ‘Gross: The new normal for “the next 10 years and maybe even the next 20 years”’).  In essence, he sees a scenario that is bullish for bonds (especially longer duration types like the 10-year and the 30-year) but not particularly bullish for shares.

But we know that Gross loves to talk his book and he made billions from the Fannie/Freddie bailout doing so.  You have to make your own call here. It’s Morgan Stanley on one side of the trade and Pimco on the other.

Realistically, if rates spike to 5.5%, it would be a blood bath for insurers, and probably for pension funds (and hence municipalities as well). Mortgage rates would skyrocket and this would stop any housing recovery dead in its tracks. That sounds like double dip and depression to me; this is not an early 1990s economic environment. 

Ironically, 5.5% rates would sow the seeds of future 3.3% rates or lower. If you hold – and do not sell at the bottom – I don’t see how this induces a capital loss.

Related posts:

• Morgan Stanley: Recession will ‘end by mid-to-late summer’
• Morgan Stanley sees U.K. downturn worse than Great Depression
• Financial Alchemy at Morgan Stanley: Greywolf A3 CDOs now Aaa bonds
• Another take on the treasuries bubble
• Bill Gross: Fed on hold through 2010

Video embedded below

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• Bill Gross: Fed on hold through 2010
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• The $1 trillion deficit: has Bill Gross gone crazy?

I pick up Bill Gross where I left him on Friday.  He said in his monthly newsletter that the Fed is going to keep interest rates at zero percent through 2010. But, he is not willing to stick his neck out in a liquidity seeking return kind of way even though this is what reflation is all about. He advises lower risk assets over higher risk ones cognizant that this could mean under-performance.

What I found interesting is that Gross highlighted only two bits in his piece. That should lead you to believe these are the most important points he makes.  The first bit is the rationale behind why he thinks the Fed is on hold through 2010:

The Fed is trying to reflate the U.S. economy. The process of reflation involves lowering short-term rates to such a painful level that investors are forced or enticed to term out their short-term cash into higher-risk bonds or stocks. Once your cash has recapitalized and revitalized corporate America and homeowners, well, then the Fed will start to be concerned about inflation – not until.

This is what’s called an asset-based recovery and is exactly the same model we followed in 1992 and 2002. the Federal reserve lowers rates so much that the cash in your pocket burns a hole in it. Grandma may be stuffing her dollars in a mattress, but investors judged against an investment benchmark get fired if they don’t seek returns.  how did Chuck Prince put it: When the music’s playing…

If you are an insurance company, you have a ton of money invested expecting 6-7% nominal returns.  But, in a deflationary environment you have to be smoking something if you think you’ll get that return in low risk assets. So everyone is running the liquidity-seeking-return play. 

The Wall Street Journal mentioned this today:

Though insurers continue to buy bonds, the rally does "make it challenging in terms of getting yield," Steven Kandarian, chief investment officer at MetLife Inc., told analysts in an Oct. 30 earnings call.

Life insurers have long been one of the nation’s biggest bond buyers, currently holding about $1.78 trillion in corporate debt, or 16% of the total outstanding, according to industry group American Council of Life Insurers.

Their frustrations in finding investment opportunities signal how far and fast the bond market has recovered from the dark days when markets were frozen and insurers were diverting almost all incoming premiums and investment income into cash accounts.

But, it sounds like Gross is having none of this.  He asks a rhetorical question about overpriced assets in nearly every asset class:

Do you buy the investment grade bond market with its average yield of 3.75% (less than 3% after upfront fees and annual expenses at most run-of-the-mill bond funds)? Do you buy high yield bonds at 8% and assume the risk of default bullets whizzing at you? Or 2% yielding stocks that have already appreciated 65% from the recent bottom, which according to some estimates are now well above their long-term PE average on a cyclically adjusted basis?

Answering his own question is the only other part he highlights in his essay – one doubting the elevated price of risk assets. He says:

In a low growth environment, it seems to me that a company’s stock should yield more than its less risky debt, and many utilities provide just that opportunity.

Gross goes on to recommend high dividend safe stocks like utilities.  But, I did get the sense he was talking out of both sides of his mouth.  For months now, Gross has been advocating reflation as an economic policy. He has advocated massive deficit spending too.  Back in June of 2008, he was the first one I knew who was talking about deficits in the trillions. Yet, here he is cautioning us about inflated asset prices.  Well, zero rates and inflated asset prices go hand in hand. And I’m sure Bill Gross knows this.

Source

Anything but .01% – Bill Gross, Pimco

Related posts:

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• Bill Gross: “almost all assets appear to be overvalued on a long-term basis”

Bill Gross of Pimco spoke on Bloomberg with Tom Keene and Ken Prewitt. He thinks the U.S. is entering a new normal of low nominal GDP growth. However, financial bets have been made on 6-7 percent nominal GDP (think pension liabilities).  Unless we get 5-6% nominal GDP growth debt deflation and deleveraging dynamics (the D-process)will take hold, Gross says.

This is not a bullish scenario for equities as revenue growth is based on nominal GDP, meaning profit growth must come from trimming expenses and a secular increase in already high profit margins. Lower interest rates are the only other way to improve the net present value of future profit streams.

Pimco is dipping a toe into equities, however.  Gross remains cautious on high yield, which he sees as fully priced (buyer beware) a.k.a. overvalued. Mortgage backed securities are also overpriced in his view.  That leaves you emerging markets, corporates, and treasuries in the bond area.

So the Fed will be on hold because they need to see at least 4-5% steady nominal GDP growth, something unlikely to occur before the end of 2010, Gross says.

Video below.

Se also: Bill Gross Says Value Diminishing in Credit Markets – Bloomberg

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• The $1 trillion deficit: has Bill Gross gone crazy?

Bill Gross has a must-read piece out for his monthly Investment Outlook called “Midnight Candles.” He begins the piece with allusions to his advancing years (Gross is now 65) and the mortality he feels because of it – pretty sobering stuff. gross then abruptly segues into his investment outlook, leaving one with the distinct impression he is suggesting there is something ephemeral in the global financial system’s status quo ante.

To solve the problem, Gross suggests continuing artificially low interest rates to maintain pumped up asset prices. This is a perverse conclusion I reject categorically. But his analysis leading up to this is right on the money. And the line he takes to make the transition to his thinking is right out of Credit Writedowns’ playbook.

I’ll jump straight into a discussion of why in a New Normal economy (1) almost all assets appear to be overvalued on a long-term basis, and, therefore, (2) policymakers need to maintain artificially low interest rates and supportive easing measures in order to keep economies on the “right side of the grass.”

Let me start out by summarizing a long-standing PIMCO thesis: The U.S. and most other G-7 economies have been significantly and artificially influenced by asset price appreciation for decades. Stock and home prices went up – then consumers liquefied and spent the capital gains either by borrowing against them or selling outright. Growth, in other words, was influenced on the upside by leverage, securitization, and the belief that wealth creation was a function of asset appreciation as opposed to the production of goods and services. American and other similarly addicted global citizens long ago learned to focus on markets as opposed to the economic foundation behind them. How many TV shots have you seen of people on the Times Square Jumbotron applauding the announcement of the latest GDP growth numbers or job creation? None, of course, but we see daily opening and closing market crescendos of jubilant capitalists on the NYSE and NASDAQ cheering the movement of markets – either up or down. My point: Asset prices are embedded not only in our psyche, but the actual growth rate of our economy. If they don’t go up – economies don’t do well, and when they go down, the economy can be horrid.

This, my friends, is the dreaded asset-based economy. It is the same financial model which has led us to mountains of debt and repeated bubbles and extreme financial instability.  I have said in the past that aggregate debt levels as measured by ratios like debt to nominal GDP should remain constant to the degree that the capital used to generate that growth is efficiently allocated. However, we have seen a ballooning in debt, which suggests that we need far more capital to generate a unit of growth than we did a generation ago.  Gross makes similar arguments, focusing instead on assets instead of debt (liabilities).

First of all, assets didn’t always appreciate faster than GDP. For the first several decades of this history, economic growth, not paper wealth, was king. We were getting richer by making things, not paper. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the cult of the markets, which included the development of financial derivatives and the increasing use of leverage, began to dominate. A long history marred only by negative givebacks during recessions in the early 1990s, 2001–2002, and 2008–2009, produced a persistent increase in asset prices vs. nominal GDP that led to an average overall 50-year appreciation advantage of 1.3% annually. That’s another way of saying you would have been far better off investing in paper than factories or machinery or the requisite components of an educated workforce. We, in effect, were hollowing out our productive future at the expense of worthless paper such as subprimes, dotcoms, or in part, blue chip stocks and investment grade/government bonds.

Again, these themes echo something i recently posted on, namely the hollowing out of America’s middle class from downsizing and outsourcing. See my post “A conversation with Stephen Roach on Charlie Rose “ in which the juxtaposition between a Stephen Roach interview circa 1996 and one from this past week makes plain the long-term problem.

Gross comes to a very different conclusion to all of this than I come to.  He says, faced with a potential collapse in nominal GDP growth, the answer is to feed the patient more of the asset price elixir to wean him off his drugs. Cold turkey would lead to depression (i.e. death – that makes the tie to his lead in plain).

This is where it gets tricky, however, because policymakers, (The Fed, the Treasury, the FDIC) recognize the predicament, maybe not with the same model or in the same magnitude, but they recognize that asset prices must be supported in order to generate positive future nominal GDP growth somewhere close to historical norms. The virus has infected far too many parts of the economy’s body, for far too long, to go cold turkey. The Japanese example over the past 15 years is an excellent historical reference point. Their quantitative easing and near-0% short-term interest rates eventually arrested equity and property market deflation but at much greater percentage losses, which produced an economy barely above the grass as opposed to buried six feet under. The current objective of global policymakers is to do likewise – keep the capitalistic patient alive through asset price support, but at an “old normal” pace if possible, six feet or 6% in U.S. nominal GDP terms above the grass.

My conclusion is different. I have said before that I also think cold turkey would lead to disaster (see my post “Confessions of an Austrian economist), but I am under no illusion that we need to keep supporting the asset-based economy indefinitely.  Our goal should be to use government stimulus as cover to eliminate malinvestments and downsize bloated sectors of the economy like financial services. This is one reason I am in favor of introducing a comprehensive too-big-to-fail (TBTF) resolution process to allow big banks to fail and breaking up TBTF financial institutions.

Going back to Gross, he concludes that his policy preference for maintaining is supportive of asset prices in the medium-term but not so supportive that we are going back to the gold rush of yesteryear.

If policy rates are artificially low then bond investors should recognize that artificial buyers of notes and bonds (quantitative easing programs and Chinese currency fixing) have compressed almost all interest rates. But while this may support asset prices – including Treasury paper across the front end and belly of the curve, at the same time it provides little reward in terms of future income. Investors, of course, notice this inevitable conclusion by referencing Treasury Bills at .15%, two-year Notes at less than 1%, and 10-year maturities at a paltry 3.40%. Absent deflationary momentum, this is all a Treasury investor can expect. What you see in the bond market is often what you get. Broadening the concept to the U.S. bond market as a whole (mortgages + investment grade corporates), the total bond market yields only 3.5%. To get more than that, high yield, distressed mortgages, and stocks beckon the investor increasingly beguiled by hopes of a V-shaped recovery and “old normal” market standards. Not likely, and the risks outweigh the rewards at this point.

While I disagree with Gross, his is a very good piece if you want to know which way the wind is blowing. I have linked to it below.

Enjoy.

Source

Midnight Candles – Bill Gross, Pimco

Related posts:

• Bill Gross: Fed on hold through 2010
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• Bill Gross: “Staying Rich in the New Normal”

Bill Gross is a bond man.  In fact, he is often called the “Bond King” because Pimco, the organization where he is founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer, is the largest bond fund in the world. In Bondland, what Gross says has a lot of weight.

And Gross has been talking about a “new normal” of deleveraging, deglobalization and reregulation. In his view, this means weak consumer demand counterbalanced only by heavier government intervention, leading to slow growth for the foreseeable future (See my post ‘Gross: The new normal for “the next 10 years and maybe even the next 20 years”’).  In essence, he sees a scenario that is bullish for bonds (especially longer duration types like the 10-year and the 30-year) but not particularly bullish for shares.

But, Gross is also reducing risk.  There has been a huge run-up in corporate bonds, especially in high yield bonds. And Gross believes now is the time to take profits and reduce exposure to riskier assets, a view he first put forth in his monthly newsletter at the beginning of July (see my post, “Bill Gross: the new normal means investors should shun risk”).  And Gross is re-balancing his portfolio quite heavily to reflect this “glass half-empty” bias. His portfolio has its heaviest concentration in five years of Treasuries, considered the U.S.’s risk-free financial assets.

Below is a video of Gross talking on CNBC along with two other market experts, Bob Doll and Dan Tishman, regarding their view of the economy and financial markets. Gross goes as far as to say point blank that one should sell equities and other riskier assets like high-yield bonds.

Before you watch the video, be aware that two other formerly bearish analysts, Richard Bernstein and Jim Grant, have flipped to bullish recently.  Gross mentions Grant by name and disagrees with his take on the economy, calling it “disingenuous.” Articles by or on Bernstein and Grant’s view’s are below the video.

This is the third in a series of posts about reducing risk. See also:

• Sell equities
• Way too much risk in the equity market

Related articles
From Bear to Bull: James Grant on Recession and Recovery – Jim Grant, WSJ.com
Bernstein: Best Value In Junky Names – CNBC.com

Related posts:

• Bill Gross: Fed on hold through 2010
• Sell equities
• Gross isn’t buying corporates, high yield or equities even with zero rates
• Bill Gross: the new normal means investors should shun risk
• Marc Faber: "I don’t think that you’ll see gold below $1,000 per ounce probably ever"

Bill Gross has a piece out now on Pimco’s website suggesting we are about to witness a sea change in saving and spending habits, government intervention, and a host of other issues. This is not a buy-the-dips kind of atmosphere and it will last for, oh, 20 years.

Gross says:

This “new” vs. “old” normal dichotomy was perhaps best contrasted by Barton Biggs, as I heard him on Bloomberg Radio in early 2009, when he said he was a “child of the bull market.” I thought that was a brilliant phrase, and Barton is a brilliant phrase-maker. He went on to say though, that his point was that for as long as he’s been in the business – and that’s a long time – it has paid to buy the dips, because markets, economies, profits, and assets always rebounded and went to higher levels. That is not only the way that he learned it, but that is the way, basically, that capitalism is supposed to work. Economies grow, profits grow, just like children do. I think that’s why he said he was a child of the bull market, not just because he had experienced it for so long, but also because economic growth and higher asset prices are almost invariably a natural evolution, much like the maturation of a person. That’s how people grow, and so I think Barton was saying that capitalism just grows that way too.

Well, the surprise is that there’s been a significant break in that growth pattern, because of delevering, deglobalization, and reregulation. All of those three in combination, to us at PIMCO, means that if you are a child of the bull market, it’s time to grow up and become a chastened adult; it’s time to recognize that things have changed and that they will continue to change for the next – yes, the next 10 years and maybe even the next 20 years. We are heading into what we call the New Normal, which is a period of time in which economies grow very slowly as opposed to growing like weeds, the way children do; in which profits are relatively static; in which the government plays a significant role in terms of deficits and reregulation and control of the economy; in which the consumer stops shopping until he drops and begins, as they do in Japan (to be a little ghoulish), starts saving to the grave.

Not exactly a bullish scenario, is it?  More here.

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Now, Bill Gross, the Bond King, knows that bonds go up in price when bad economic data comes out.  So, leaving aside the desire to talk one’s own book, I think Gross makes a number of good points on CNBC about the unemployment data which came out at 830 ET.  His basic point is this: no jobs and no wage growth equals no recovery.

We need to see incomes rise in order to get consumers to spend.  If the Obama Administration wants recovery, they need to do more to increase incomes and worry less about bailing out the banks.

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PIMCO, the world’s largest bond fund, has a new investment outlook by Founder Bill Gross. In it he says that we are in a long-term lower growth pattern as the asset-based economy of yore has melted away.  He warns that this means risky assets should not be one’s investments of choice.

Here are a few choice snippets of his article.

Our economy’s lights, if not switched off in a rehash of the 1930s Depression, have certainly been dimmed in a 21st century version likely to be labeled the Great Recession. Much like John McSherry, U.S. and many global consumers gorged themselves on Big Macs of all varieties: burgers to be sure, but also McHouses, McHummers, and McFlatscreens, all financed with excessive amounts of McCredit created under the mistaken assumption that the asset prices securitizing them could never go down. What a colossal McStake that turned out to be. Now, however, with financial markets seemingly calmed and an inventory-based recovery in store for the balance of 2009, there is a developing optimism that we can go back to the lifestyle of yesteryear. PIMCO’s driving thesis however, if not a juxtaposition, is succinctly described as a “new normal” where growth is slower, profit margins are narrower, and asset returns are smaller than in decades past based upon the delevering and reregulating of the global economy, which in turn should substantially inhibit the “gorging” of goods and services that we grew used to in decades past…

…The fact is that American consumers have suffered a collapse in wealth of at least $15 trillion since early 2007. Global estimates are less reliable, but certainly in multiples of that figure. And when potential spenders feel less rich by that much, the only model one can use to forecast the future is a commonsensical one that predicts higher savings, lower consumption, and an economic growth rate that staggers forward at a new normal closer to 2 as opposed to 3½%. There’s no magic in that number, and no model to back it up, just a lot of commonsense that says this is how people and economic societies behave when stressed and stretched to a near breaking point.

I was impressed this weekend by an article in the Op-Ed section of The New York Times by staff writer Bob Herbert. “No Recovery in Sight” was the heading and his opening sentence asked, “How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are out of work?” That is really all one needs to ask when divining our economy’s future fortune. Unless an optimist can prescribe how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and shuffle him/her back to work then there can be no return to an “old normal.”…

Investors who stuffed themselves on a constant diet of asset appreciation for the past quarter-century will now be enclosed in a cage featuring government-mandated, consumer-oriented fasting. “Non Appétit,” not Bon Appétit, will become the apt description for the American consumer, and significant parts of the global economy, including the U.S. Because this is so, short-term policy rates will be kept low for longer than cyclical norms, and the outlook for risk assets – stocks, high yield bonds, and commercial and residential real estate will involve just that – risk. Investors should stress secure income offered by bonds and stable dividend-paying equities. Consumer Cuisinart consumption is a relic of the past.

Source

"Bon" or "Non" Appétit? – Bill Gross, PIMCO

Related posts:

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• Bill Gross: “Staying Rich in the New Normal”
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PIMCO’s founder Bill Gross is out with his latest monthly missive.  It makes for interesting reading, especially in regards to the captains of finance and their desire to stay rich using other people’s money.

I remember as a child my parents telling me, perhaps resentfully, that only a doctor, airline pilot, or a car dealer could afford to join a country club. My how things have changed. Now, as I write this overlooking the 16th hole on the Vintage Club near Palm Springs, the only golfers who shank seven irons into the lake are real estate developers, investment bankers, or heads of investment management companies. The rich are different, not only in the manner intoned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but also in who they are and what they do for a living. Whether some or all of them are filthy is a judgment for society and history to make. Of one thing you can be sure however: over the next several decades, the ability to make a fortune by using other people’s money will be a lot harder. Deleveraging, reregulation, increased taxation, and compensation limits will allow only the most skillful – or the shadiest – into the Balzac or Forbes 400.

Gross goes on to reflect that the U.S. is not keeping pace with the rest of the world in terms of producing Forbes 400 wealth, the obvious takeaways being that the U.S. is declining relative to the rest of the world and this spells trouble for the megarich as much as it does for the average American.  Obviously, this has great significance for the fortunes of the U.S. government and its ability to stimulate the economy with deficit spending.  Gross was on record saying the sell-off in U.S. government paper was a direct result of doubts regarding the U.S. government’s solvency, something Willem Buiter is also analysing regarding the U.K. government.  Gross has this to say about the fortunes of the U.S. government (emphasis his):

To zero in on the U.S. of A., its annual deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion is 10% of GDP alone, a number never approached since the 1930s Depression. While policymakers, including the President and Treasury Secretary Geithner, assure voters and financial markets alike that such a path is unsustainable and that a return to fiscal conservatism is just around the recovery’s corner, it is hard to comprehend exactly how that more balanced rabbit can be pulled out of Washington’s hat. Private sector deleveraging, reregulation and reduced consumption all argue for a real growth rate in the U.S. that requires a government checkbook for years to come just to keep its head above the 1% required to stabilize unemployment. Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations.

Later in this same piece, he opines that moving to a more balanced budget is certainly the way to end the increase in treasury yields and the prospect of enormous interest payments compounding annually to new breathtaking proportions.

The obvious solution to both dollar weakness and higher yields is to move quickly towards a more balanced budget once a sustained recovery is assured, but don’t count on the former or the latter. It is probable that trillion-dollar deficits are here to stay because any recovery is likely to reflect “new normal” GDP growth rates of 1%-2% not 3%+ as we used to have.

But, as he suggests, trillion-dollar deficits ARE the new normal indeed.  Moving to eliminate these deficits too early as Tim Geithner suggests the Obama Administration wants to do risks a 1937 outcome.  See my post “Beware of deficit hawks” to see why Japan in the 1990s and the U.S. in the 1930s suffered prolonged depressions because of deficit hawkishness.

In the end, one can only conclude that the U.S. is indeed likely to deficit spend for a considerable period and that this is going to have negative effects on its credit rating and relative standing in the global economy.  A diminished future for America is an inevitability of having lived beyond its means for far too long.  Accepting this fact is likely to provide a better outcome than resisting it as the U.K. did when its tenure as king of the hill came to an end.

Source

Staying Rich in the New Normal – Bill Gross, PIMCO

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• Bill Gross: the new normal means investors should shun risk
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• Bill Gross: Sell equities and buy Treasuries

Bill Gross, the founder of the world’s largest bond fund, PIMCO, is out with his new monthly market commentary. His subject: government involvement in the world of finance and investment. Below is a little of what he had to say. I have highlighted in bold the bits I feel most important.

A photograph of Bernard Baruch looms ominously on the far corner of my PIMCO office wall. Vested, with pocket watch and protruding chin thrust prominently toward the observer, this well-known financier of the early 20th century at times appears almost alive. It was Baruch who almost schizophrenically cautioned investors during the stock market’s speculative blow-off in the late 20s that “two plus two equals four and no one has ever invented a way of getting something for nothing.” Three years later during the depths of economic and financial gloom he opined just the opposite: “Two plus two still equals four,” he said, “and you can’t keep mankind down for long.” Homo sapiens, as it turns out, stayed on the deck for much longer than Baruch envisioned – some historians having suggested that it was only war and not the rejuvenating economic spirits of a capitalistic peace that eventually turned the tide – but his words, first of caution and then of optimism, typify the way that fortunes were, and still are, made in the financial markets: Get your facts straight, apply them to the current valuation of the market, take decisive action, and then hold on for dear life as the mob hopefully comes to the same conclusion a little way down the road.

I stare into Baruch’s eyes almost every day – not that we are simpatico or kindred spirits of any sort – but when I do, it’s as if I can hear him almost whispering to me over the portals of time: “Two plus two,” he commands, “two plus two, two plus two.” The message – fortunately, I suppose – ends there. If you thought I was receiving market calls from the ghost of Bernard Baruch I suspect PIMCO would have far fewer clients than we do today. But his lesson nonetheless remains clear: separate reality from exuberance either on the up or the downside and you have the ingredients for a successful market strategy.

Through my years here at PIMCO there have been numerous demarcation points where Baruch’s whispers almost turned into screams. Two plus two screamed four in September of 1981 with long-term Treasury yields approaching 15%, and two plus two boomed four in 2000 when the Dot Coms rose to prices that discounted the hereafter instead of the next 30 years. Similarly, 2007 was a screaming mimi with the subprimes – if only because the liar loans and no-money-down financing were reminiscent of a shell game, Ponzi scheme, or some other type of wizardry that was bound to lead to tears.

2009 is a similar demarcation point because it represents the beginning of government policy counterpunching, a period when the public with government as its proxy decided that private market, laissez-faire, free market capitalism was history and that a “private/public” partnership yet to gestate and evolve would be the model for years to come. If one had any doubts, a quick, even cursory summary of President Obama’s comments announcing Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing would suffice. “I stand with Chrysler’s employees and their families and communities. I stand with millions of Americans who want to buy Chrysler cars (sic). I do not stand…with a group of investment firms and hedge funds who decided to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout.” If the cannons fired at Ft. Sumter marked the beginning of the war against the Union, then clearly these words marked the beginning of a war against publically perceived financial terror.

Make no mistake, PIMCO had no dog in this fight, and has infinitesimally small holdings of GM bonds as well. In turn, the rebalancing of wealth from the rich to the “not so rich” is a long overdue reversal, one that I have encouraged in these Outlooks for at least the past several years. But promoting and siding with the majority of the American public in their quest for change does not mean that as investors, we at PIMCO stand star-struck like a deer in front of the onrushing headlights, doing nothing to protect clients. Our task is to identify secular transitions and to preserve and protect capital if indeed it is threatened. Now appears to be one of those moments.

This is a new era of big government and re-regulation. What does all this portend for the economy and investing. Gross says it means slower growth and higher risk premia for financial assets in the U.S. But, Gross does not believe this is a bad thing at all – it is a necessary change. I agree 100% (see my June post making exactly the same argument). One could see this train coming from a mile away.

The full text of his missive is available at the link below.

Source
2 + 2 = 4 – Pimco Investment Outlook, May 2009

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• Bill Gross: Fed on hold through 2010
• Bill Gross: Sell equities and buy Treasuries
• Bill Gross: “Stop the decline in asset prices”
• Bill Gross: the new normal means investors should shun risk

Bill Gross, Pimco’s founder and Chief Inestment Strategist is bold. In the past, he has argued for extreme measures to bailout subprime, questioned the CPI and said a lot more over the past few years. Now he’s calling for a President Obama to crank up the government juice and spend like mad. Gross is calling for a $1 trillion deficit.

I am no Keynesian, so I can’t endorse his call for government spending and bailouts as medicine for what ails the United States. But, I do admire his out-of-the box thinking. Bold!

Here is a snippet of what he has to say:

Dear President Obama, Bill Gross, Pimco, July Investment Outlook

Dear President Obama:

You have inherited a mess. Your predecessor, fixated on emulating a former Republican icon from a far different economic era, chose to emphasize tax cuts for the rich and excessive consumption for all Americans. He promoted deregulation and free markets when, in fact, the markets and their institutions needed tough love. Over eight years, he failed to put forth a coherent energy policy. He needlessly invaded Iraq and lowered worldwide esteem for this nation as a symbol of freedom and benevolence…….

Now I know, Mr. President, that you’re already addicted to those nicotine smokes and I’m not trying to promote a caffeine habit here, but this economy will need an additional jolt of $500 billion or so of government spending real quick. It must replace both reduced residential investment and consumption whose decline has placed the U.S. economy near, if not in a recession. Some quick math for you Sir: gross private domestic investment (machines, houses, inventories) has declined by $200 billion since its peak in late 2006. Due to higher unemployment and energy costs, domestic consumption will soon be $300 billion less than it should be if we are to return to historical economic growth rates. According to that old C + I + G formula (scratch the trade deficit for now) when C + I is reduced by $500 billion, then G should increase by that amount in order to fill the gap. The G, Sir, is you – the government deficit, the fiscal stabilizer popularized by Keynes following the Depression. And since the fiscal deficit for 2008 is likely to press $500 billion even before you take the oath of office, well there you have it: $500 billion + $500 billion = $1 trillion big ones, probably by sometime in 2011 or so. It takes time to spend those types of bucks.

It took the Japanese a lot of time too, Sir. Take a look at the chart below which graphically displays Japan’s increasing deficits as a percentage of GDP following their property bubble of the late 1980s. Over a seven-year span, expansionary fiscal spending widened from a relatively benign 2 percent deficit to a level that exceeded 10 percent at its peak in 1998. Our one trillion dollar level in 2011 would equate to something like six percent of GDP, a mere pittance by Japanese standards.

Related posts:

• Bill Gross: “Staying Rich in the New Normal”
• Bill Gross: This economy requires a check from the government
• Bill Gross: the new normal means investors should shun risk
• Bill Gross: Government intervention in markets will last
• Gross isn’t buying corporates, high yield or equities even with zero rates