Default Risk Zero

So the US government is having a little argument about the debt ceiling again. China and Japan have warned that a US default might be a little nasty and even the President himself has warned of financial Armageddon.

So why are the markets so sanguine? Where's the panic?

Well we all know there will be a last-minute deal, it's like those clichéd  cop dramas where you know the protagonist is in no real danger. If there was any doubt in your mind take a look at the appointment of über dove Janet Yellen to the chair of the Federal Reserve. A sure signal that they plan to print to infinity.

Back to sleep everyone, no story here.

However…

The US government have no option but default, the only question is when, but that my friend is another story.

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Denninger: deflation

Belatedly, I refer you to Karl Denninger's end-year review and forecast. He sees continuing deflation, and makes a number of other plausible and worrisome predictions - scroll to the end of his post for the horrid gallery of prognostications.

In short:

...rallies are to be sold, cash is to be raised and prudence is to be practiced in your own personal financial affairs. Don't get creative in all things finance, get stingy and prudent. Your personal financial survival could well depend on it.

So instead of staring at the low interest on your cash balance, think of the real capital appreciation of your money as measured by what big-ticket items it will buy. And for once, the government can't easily tax your capital gain.

You may also want to hold more cash away from a bank ("Round #2 of severe bank instability gets served up on us in the second half of 2009").

And maybe diversify your currency holdings:

The Dollar will not collapse. This is not because we're in great shape or will truly recover, it is because the rest of the world is in worse shape than we are... The rest of the world is literally on the precipice of a full-on collapse. European banks are more-levered and less-transparent than our banks as just one example... I see the potential for the pound and euro to both reach par with the dollar.

I think Denninger on the one hand, and Faber/Janszen on the other, may both be correct. It's a matter of timing - deflation now, debasement of the currency later. Because nominal debt gets relatively bigger as assets and incomes decline in value, something will have to give.

Collectivized security leads to riskier behaviour

A most interesting piece by John Mauldin (Safe Haven, 8 December), relating mathematical and scientific discoveries in other fields, to the economic system.

Research into piles of sand grains showed that the timing of sudden collapses is quite unpredictable, but there is an inverse correlation between their magnitude and likelihood. As the sand piles up, "threads" of instability form, that can be triggered by the fall of a single grain in the wrong place. This is akin to the "Butterfly Effect" in catastrophe theory, I suppose.

Mauldin connects this up with a paper published last year, about uncertainty created by humans in the development of their economic structures:

...the greater the number of connections within any given economic network, the greater the system is at risk.

This underscore the concerns I hinted at in an earlier post. The potential for catastrophic change is building up, and we can't predict what will be the trigger. Therefore, all the connections we are forming with each other need to be balanced by provisions for disconnecting, or for insulating one region from changes occurring in another.

To use an analogy, the supertankers that take oil around the world's oceans are internally divided into compartments. It would be cheaper, and so more profitable, not to install the internal compartments. But without them, a large wave hitting the ship could cause a movement in the liquid cargo that would shift the balance and quite possibly sink the vessel altogether.

So there is a trade-off between efficiency and survival.

Another aspect is how human behaviour changes in relation to risk perception. For example, research shows that when road junctions are widened and vision-obscuring vegetation cleared, drivers compensate for the extra security by going faster and less carefully. I understand that each of us has his/her our own preset level of risk tolerance, and when circumstances change, will seek to bring things back to that level .

But what if you don't fully understand the new circumstances? A miscalculation as to the level of security inherent in the situation could lead to your behaving more dangerously than you realise. The complexity and obscurity of CDOs, derivatives and credit default swaps are examples in the world of finance and economics, but surely this applies to other fields, too.

Perhaps conservative instincts are not just laziness, stupidity and timidity, but survival instincts. Have you noticed how those maddeningly slow drivers don't have dents in their old, lovingly-polished cars?

Maybe I'll get a hat, for driving.

Nassim Taleb on "Black Swans"

A very interesting article today in The Daily Reckoning Australia by Nassim Taleb, on asymmetric outcomes.

As the Daily Reckoning put it on May 14th, "...the importance of any event is equal to the likelihood TIMES the consequences." Most people underestimate the impact of rare events and so their risk calculations are skewed.

They may also miscalculate the probability of such an event occurring. I believe this was a factor in the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster. As Wikipedia puts it:

...NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been a key contributing factor to the accident. NASA managers had known that [the] design of the [booster rockets] contained a potentially catastrophic flaw, but they failed to address it properly. They also ignored warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching on such a cold day and had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.

We could use this a metaphor for the economic system and its technical risks, of which some of our bears continue to warn.

Modern Portfolio Theory: what mix of assets should I have?

Many financial advice firms are now fans of Modern Portfolio Theory, which earned Dr Harold Markowitz the Nobel prize in Economics. Explanations can get highly mathematical - the one I've linked to here is a bit more layman-friendly.

But the underlying principle is quite understandable: you can achieve similar investment returns with less risk, by diversifying your assets.

Even within one asset class, such as shares, some items rise and fall together, others move in opposite directions, still others seem to have no particular relationship. If all your shares are in different banking companies, that is still a bet limited to one sector, so it's a relatively risky position in equities.

Risk reduction also means a mix of asset types. A cautious investor may think cash is best, but in effect that is betting on only one horse in the race. Adding some "risky" assets can reduce the risk of the overall portfolio. "Playing safe" is therefore not necessarily the safest way to play it.

Michael Panzner: government guarantees increase risky behaviour

Michael Panzner returns to one of the four central risks of which he warns, here in Seeking Alpha: the government mortgages the future with potential claims on the taxpayer's money.