The Next Financial Crisis

Many observers are predicting further banking and financial crises and collapses. Why? Well, the 2008-2009 collapse did little to cleanse the world's sovereign debt and fiscal deterioration or to correct banking and financial system excesses. We have kicked the proverbial can down the road. Beneath it all most indicators continue to atrophy. Sovereign debt keeps on rising and personal indebtedness across most countries is doing the same. The back-stops provided by the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and myriads of others along with increasingly ingenious albeit contrived rescue schemes have so far managed to prevent another, worse, collapse. The latest "solution" for America is in the realm of the surreal - a trillion dollar platinum coin that even the esteemed? Paul Krugman seems to endorse.
Attention of markets and the media have careened back and forth between Europe, China, Japan, the U.S., and the Middle East. Sometimes the focus is energy (as in oil), sometimes concern about the future of the EU or the breathtaking public debt in Japan or the insolvency of U.S. States or the U.S. itself. It seems that markets and media alike get tired of focusing on any one issue or part of the world for any length of time. Nothing has really changed in the European financial situation, for example. In fact everything continues to deteriorate. Yet bond yields have dropped for Spanish, Greek, Portuguese and other European debt. The focus has shifted once again away from Europe and back to the U.S., perhaps in part due to the mind-numbing pounding on the U.S.  fiscal cliff and the U.S. debt ceiling.
So, where is the next financial breakdown going to occur? Nobody knows, but I am going to focus on a potential U.S. flashpoint - U.S. Treasuries and Bonds.
In a previous post, I discussed a chart that was relevant to foreign holders of 30 Year U.S. T-bonds. The chart depicts the value of T-Bonds, corrected for the value of the US dollar, by incorporating the widely quoted U.S. dollar index. So, in other words, it shows how well a typical foreigner's investment in such bonds is doing after cashing in and converting to his home currency of Euros or Japanese Yen, or whatever. In my previous post I observed that foreign investors were doing very well indeed. But look at the chart today:

Are bondholders getting nervous? If they are and if they stampede to the exits to finally dump U.S. bonds, it will precipitate a major crisis for the U.S. and the world. The $US will go into a tailspin. The Federal Reserve will need to buy all bonds presented for redemption with freshly created dollars. Sellers will then convert their U.S. dollar proceeds into . . . what? Other currencies? Stocks? Gold, Silver? What do you think? Keep an eye on the above chart, updated by stockcharts.com once a day (evening Canada/US Eastern Time) to gauge the risk and progress of the U.S. bond bubble if indeed it becomes the flashpoint to the next financial crisis.

Financial Repression

It's not new but Financial Repression is a term seen recently in many articles, even in the mainstream media. It refers to a purposeful and methodical policy approach by government towards solving its deficit/debt problems by massively cheating investors and savers rather than contemplating default. This is accomplished through strong government control and intervention of interest rates and financial institutions. Savers are given close to zero interest in spite of considerable inflation, which is usually purposefully under-reported.

Because the problems are far more severe than in the past and because world markets far more fluid today, I doubt that governments will be able to control markets successfully enough this time around to prevent a bond collapse (higher interest rates) or some other financial crisis. Many have already begun to flock to gold and silver in an attempt to escape controlled markets. However, so far, the U.S. has succeeded in maintaining absurdly low yields on its bills and bonds, perhaps giving more support to some cynics' views that these are certificates of guaranteed confiscation. For a thorough treatment of "financial repression", please see this excellent article by Daniel R. Amerman.

Sanguine thoughts from the MainStream Media re: Currency Devaluations

It's amazing what is going mainstream. Here is MarketWatch's David Callaway using terms like "Race to the Bottom" in reference to competitive currency devaluations with warnings about conditions that could lead to another depression. Bond bubbles, commodity bubbles, stock market bubbles - I guess it is becoming OK to talk about these things now that the artificiality of rises in these entities is becoming patently obvious to all, while the FED (along with most major Central Banks) desperately tries to keep everything afloat on an increasing sea of liquidity courtesy of modern day printing aka "Quantitative Easing". Gee, until recently, this stuff could only be heard in blogs and "radical" alternative news sites.

Sovereign Credit Ratings Take a Hit

Sovereign credit problems moved to the forefront of financial concerns today as Standard & Poor's downgraded Portugal's credit down two notches to A- and demoted Greece's debt to junk status (BBB-). The market rushed out of equities across the globe and into the U.S. dollar and into US bonds as a supposed "safe haven". For how long will the $U.S. be a safe haven? It's like jumping from a crumbling building into one that is creaking in preparation for something similar.

Anyway, gold moved up $14, in spite of the $U.S. index being up over 1% on the day. Now that is a more realistic safe haven play.

There appears to be a lot more trouble ahead on the sovereign credit front!

Bond Bubble will Burst

Observers have been warning about the dangers of a bond bubble and what a collapse in such a huge market would mean. Recently, The Economist and many other mainstream publications have become more strident in expressing their prognostications and concerns. See this article from the Asia Times for an example.

Artificially low interest rates (aka free money) coupled with stimulus funds recklessly sloshing to and fro have inflated asset prices all over the globe. However, the most dangerous of these runups is likely the U.S. bond market. Banks, governments, agencies and investors have been borrowing short at close to zero percent interest and buying long bonds yielding 4 %. Just for good measure, anytime the bond market looked a little unsteady, the federal reserve steps in and buys a whole bunch. Sounds like bootstrapping, doesn't it? Anyway, this will need to be unwound sooner or later, just like any other market that has been driven up artificially (like the housing bubble in the U.S., sub-prime, etc.)

The big difference is that the U.S. bond market is very close to the top of the pyramid as far as the world monetary and financial systems are concerned. A failure in this market could crash the U.S. dollar, the world's reserve currency, in addition to crashing government financing capability and markets generally. If you think the sub-prime mess was bad, it would be a walk in the park compared to where a bond crash would take us.

While governments have been been frantically trying to defuse our crisis, they are really playing double or nothing and risking everything, including the very foundations of our financial and economic structures. Heaven help us all.

More here.