The long crisis, and the rediscovery of the family

Calculated Risk plots the actual and projected change in demographics from 1950 to 2050, adds the observation that over-65s cost 3 times as much in medical care as their juniors, and the rest is future history.

Meanwhile, Leo Kolivakis looks at the looming meltdown in US pension schemes, mirroring what's going on now in the UK.

Long term, it looks like down with house prices (since the younger generation will have much less free income to take on debt) and (thanks to the oldies' rising income need) down with stocks.

Nurture your young.

Faber: correction, then inflation

Cash for now, while we wait for the second half selloff; then stocks and gold to hedge against inflation, says the good Doctor.

Cash vs the stock market: an inconvenient truth

Mish looks at certificates of deposit vs returns from stocks. Investors, take note.

The folly of buy-and-hold may also apply to houses.

"Holding stocks, you have to hold your breath, as the smell may be fatal" - wepollock (htp: Jesse)

Financial experts "miserably bearish"

This report by Jim McTague from Barron's, reproduced on the Cumberland Advisors site, gives an indication of how the money experts were feeling this month, on their annual fishing trip in Maine:

[David] Kotok's diagnosis of the cause of the gloom that permeated the crowd was this: Most of them see more economic downside than upside; we don't have functioning credit markets; banks and big Wall Street credit intermediaries are either dead, wounded or on life-support; housing is a wreck; and the auto industry "is done."

Once the economy stabilizes, it will take many years to fully recover, he said, because no strong growth engines are evident. "That's why people are so gloomy! They see no upside!" He personally is investing client money in agricultural plays because, he says, the long-term price of food is trending up. He likes bio-companies whose products are geared to an aging population. And he likes Asia as an investment destination...and he doesn't like much else.

I conducted in-depth interviews with a dozen of the participants. They all perceive the economy in the early stages of a multiyear recession that will be the most painful downturn since the 1970s. The housing market, which experts once predicted would recover in 2008, may not recover even in 2009. Credit woes on Wall Street will begin to inflict real pain on Main Street.

We're already seeing the impact on housing, though the worst may not have happened yet; and I think stocks and bonds are still in something of a fool's paradise. I'm sticking with my guess that in retrospect, we will see that the upturn began in the Spring of 2010.

Bonds: up or down?

Where's safe for your money? It's like a minefield: we seem to be zig-zag running between financial explosions. Housing? Overpriced, full of bad debt. The stockmarket? Due to drop when earnings revert to the mean. The commodity market? Distorted by speculation and manipulation.

How about bonds? Clive Maund thinks US Treasuries are due for a pasting as yields rise to factor-in inflation; but Karl Denning is still firmly of the DE-flation persuasion and thinks a stockmarket fall may be our saviour:

The Bond Market no likey what's going on. The 10 is threatening to break out of a bullish (for rates) flag, which presages a potential 4.20% 10 year rate. This will instantaneously translate into higher mortgage and other "long money" rates, destroying what's left of the housing industry.

There is only one way to prevent this, and that's for the stock market to blow up so that people run like hell into bonds, pushing yields down!

He also gives his own theory as to why the Fed stopped reporting M3 money supply rates:

The moonbats claim that The Fed discontinued M3 because they're trying to hide something. In fact they discontinued M3 because it didn't tell you the truth; it was simply NOT capturing any of the "shadow" credit creation caused by all the fraud (and undercapitalized "insurance" which, in fact, is worth zero), but it sure is capturing the forcible repatriation into bank balance sheets when there is no other when it comes to access to capital for companies and governments.

So, two elephants are riding the bond seesaw: fear of inflation, and fear of losing one's capital. I hope the plank doesn't snap. Antal Fekete reckons the bond market can take all the money you can throw at it - but what goes up will come down.

Cash still doesn't seem like such a bad thing, to me.

Reversion to mean

Echoing recent comments by Vitaliy Katsenelson (also on Barron's), Jeremy Grantham thinks profit margins will decline towards normal and the Standard & Poor's 500 will head from its current c. 1334 to 1100 in the year 2010 - a drop of about 18%.

Grantham is emphatic that borrowed money is not a stimulant to the economy:

I have an exhibit that shows the 30 years prior to 1982 when the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio was completely flat at 1.2 times. Total debt is defined as government debt, personal debt, corporate debt and financial debt. Then in the 25 years after 1982, the flat line goes up at a 45 degrees angle from 1.2 times to 3.1 times GDP. Massive. In the first 30 years, when debt is flat, annual GDP growth is its usual battleship, growing at 3.5% and hardly twitching. After the massive increase in debt, GDP, far from accelerating, grew at 3%. So debt in the aggregate does not drive the economy. The economy is driven by education, man-hours worked, capital investment and technology.

That last sentence is really pregnant. I'm not sure about the man-hours (the closer we approach peasanthood, the harder we'll work), but I think that on both sides of the Atlantic, we've been falling down on the other three.

In Britain, our government has failed to distinguish between investing in education, and managing it - and where it has tried to do the latter, has pursued a Romantic-heritage political agenda. Capital investment? Going abroad. Technology? Ditto - and eagerly taken up (if not positively filched) by our Eastern trading partners.

I live in what used to be Car City; now, the vast Longbridge site is being redeveloped for housing and shops - in other words, open prison for the new ex-industrial underclass.

But Rome, too, kept control of its plebs with bread and circuses for a couple more centuries, before it fell.

Stocks may follow bond yields down

Bob Bronson gives us a striking graph of the apparent correlation (since 2000) between the stockmarket and the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds. There is now a very wide gap between the two and seemingly the implication is that stocks are overdue for a large correction.

Red speckles

Paul Nolte (Financial Sense yesterday) strikes a more judicious note. He points out that house price drops do not hit everybody equally, since not everyone has extracted equity and not everyone needs to sell:

... real estate is not like buying 100 shares of Cisco in early 2000 and watching it drop 80% - everyone loses the same amount, very unlike the real estate market. The point – the real estate market is not like the stock market bubble and will take a much longer time to work out – our best guess is an initial bottom is likely in 2009 and we won’t see a meaningful turn higher in overall real estate prices until sometime 2011-2012.

Similarly, there is opportunity for people to cut back on energy consumption in response to higher oil prices.

He expects a bit of a pullback in commodities and precious metals, and currently tends to prefer bonds to stocks.

More on Brad Setser

Further to the last, it's worth struggling through Brad Setser's presentation to the Congressional committee even if (like me) you're not an economics buff.

In essence, he says that America has gotten away with its continuing trade deficit over the last few years, for several reasons:

• the effective interest rate on foreign debt held by the US, is higher than on loans made by foreigners to America


• foreign equities have had higher yields and better capital appreciation, so US overseas investment has done better than foreigners' share holdings in America


• the weakening dollar has amplified the effects in both points above


• foreign central banks' willingness to buy US debt has kept US interest rates low, making Americans' debts easy to service and fuelling share and property booms

But it can't go on for ever. Either America's debts will continue to increase, or foreign sovereign wealth funds will buy more and more equities, or both. If foreigners slacken in their support for US debt, interest rates will rise; and losing equities to foreign owners takes away from America's future wealth and income.

Setser concludes:

The US will likely both have to sell more equity to the rest of the world and pay a somewhat higher interest rate on its external debt than it has recently...

While rapid central bank reserve growth and large official financing of the US deficit can help the US postpone the necessary adjustment, the longer the adjustment is deferred, the greater the long-term risks...

Bringing the US deficit and emerging economy surpluses down without tremendous costs will also take time. If the US and the world are to adjust gradually, they need to get started.

Yet again, I wonder whether the UK's enormous purchases of US dollar-denominated securities since June 2006 make sense for Britain.

Another thought: seeing two late market interventions last week, Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia (3 August) speculated that there may be "...in the financial market a buyer of last resort who comes in to goose the indexes at critical times, when investor confidence is especially fragile."

Rather than the Plunge Protection Team, could it be foreign sovereign wealth funds buying-in on the dips? Maybe that's why the Dow has bounced back 286 points today, as I write.

Pessimism overstated?

Seeking Alpha has a useful round-up of stats and news items on the US housing debacle.

I shall try out a contra-contrarian position here.

It's obvious that adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) will pose a problem for American borrowers as they emerge into a variable and now-higher interest rate environment. We are approaching a peak in this process around October/November and again, that's known about, so with all the belated hoo-ha in the media now it should be factored-in to the market.

The packaging of mortgages into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and their sale to perhaps naive institutional investors, is now better understood and has started a bout of worry that has spread to prime lending, too. So we have a reasonable dose of pessimism in the mixture, with Michael Panzner and Peter Schiff ensuring we're taking the medicine regularly.

One of Michael's posts last week included a detail of a "charming colonial" house in Detroit going for $7,000. Over here in the UK, somebody screwed a 0 to the side of our house prices over recent years, and if I was shown a residential property fund that would snap up streetsful of properties like the one in Detroit and wait for the turnaround, I'd be tempted.

When recession hit the UK in the early 80s, house prices plummeted in Consett, a Northern steelworking town where the local works - the main employer - closed and unemployment rose to 36%. Now the median price is £152,000. This was a working-class town, not a fashionable area, and at that time (1981) the national average house price was £24,188. So even if you'd bought a house in Consett at that price (and because of unemployment and deep pessimism, it would have been far less), you'd have made a 7.3% compound pa capital gain in the 26 years since - plus income from rent, less expenses.

I don't think the housing market runs the economy, it's the other way round. When we have a real economy, our wealth will be more secure. Perhaps the USA needs to wait for a fresh President who can take tough decisions early, in time for the fruits of his/her labours to show and be rewarded with a second term.

It's early days, but the pessimists in my Dow poll (see sidebar) have the upper hand. I still think there may be a small bounce by the end of the year, when we've digested all the bad news and are ready for a sweet. Please cast your vote!

Bank of England investment in US Treasuries; gold

Let's combine the recent mystery about Britain's massive investment in US Treasury securities, with the worldwide asset bubble.

This is Doug Casey speaking to the Agora Financial "Rim of Fire" conference in Vancouver this week, on YouTube (thanks to "Daniel" for alerting me to it).

His view on American bonds? "A triple threat". Why?: (1) interest rates are very low and are going to become very high; (2) credit risk: he says he would not wish to be a lender now, with so much debt everywhere -he refers to a possible "financial credit collapse"; (3) currency risk - he says dollars say "IOU nothing", and compares them to the Argentinian peso 10 years ago.

So, why has the UK invested an extra $112 billion in US-dollar-denominated Treasury bonds, between June '06 and May '07? To dramatise this figure somewhat, let's look at the Forbes list of the richest people in America (Sep 2006): the top 5 billionaires are worth $155 bn between them. Britain is now into America for $167.6 bn. The increase in the last year alone is more than the net worth of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. I wonder (rhetorically) whether they would bet their entire fortunes on US Treasuries?

We already know what Casey thinks about cash held in dollars, and he regards stocks and property as overvalued, too.

So what does he favour? Gold. "It's not just going through the roof, it's going to the moon". He's been a gold bull for the last 7 years. He picks mining stocks, but warns that they are very volatile, even more than Internet stocks. But there are other ways to own gold.

Meanwhile, is there anyone here in the UK who is willing to grill the supposedly independent Bank of England (it wasn't the British Treasury, after all, it seems) about the rationale for its vast punt on "triple risk" US bonds?

Let's finish with Bill Bonner's keynote speech at the same conference, on the difference between the real boom of the Far East and the Ludwig von Mises "crack-up boom" of our inflationary economies:

How long can Japan power world stockmarkets?

An interesting audio file of Gary Dorsch (Global Money Trends, Sir Chartsalot) being interviewed by Jim Puplava (Financial Sense) on 16 June.

He notes UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e. finance minister) Gordon Brown's denial that increases in the money supply are closely correlated with inflation, and says that this is why governments around the world don't raise interest rates fast enough and high enough. (Now that Gordon Brown is Prime Minister, I don't expect a sudden change of heart.)

Dorsch also notes that foreigners are becoming reluctant to keep pumping cash into US Treasury bonds, and bond yields are rising. He regards the yield on the 10-year bond as critical for housing and stockmarket valuations.

He also notes that Japan is resisting rises on its own 10-year bond yield, for fear of a strengthening yen and weakening trade balance; but the rate (c. 2%) is still so incredibly low that traders are borrowing vast sums (the Japanese have $7.5 trillion in bonds, I think Dorsch stated) to invest in global equities. So until there is a significant hike, the "carry trade" will continue to help inflate stocks. He wonders whether at some point, "bond vigilantes" will have enough strength to force an interest rate rise.

Meanwhile, Dorsch notes growing interest in commodities. He likes producing countries such as Canada, Australia and Brazil, and thinks that the ever-growing demand for base metals and energy (especially oil) from China and India will bear them up on the tide.

Globalisation and economic depression - some strategies

China has its problems. Monsters and Critics, quoting UPI, says that 3.5 million jobs could go if the yuan appreciates much more against the dollar. But if it doesn't, the trade imbalance continues and the economy and stockmarket carry on overheating. So China too is between a rock and a hard place.

In the long run and given free global trade, surely low-wage economies will take work from the higher-wage ones, until we reach equilibrium. It's the rate of change that makes it messy. For people like the Chinese, they have to work out how to take over our manufacturing capacity without bankrupting their biggest customers; for the West, how to lose all this work and wealth and remain democracies.

Richard Duncan thinks it can't be done without some original form of intervention - he suggests a steadily rising minimum wage, to give the worker in the developing economies enough money to take over the job of buying things, a job that we in the West thought was ours for life.

But the implication for us seems clear - we must become poorer. The winners among us will be those who are able to extract capital out of their possessions and preserve it. Marc Faber says that there are bubbles everywhere - property, shares, commodities - but I guess that in a deflationary world there must be something that will increase in value relative to most other things.

Cash seems obvious - the deflation of the Thirties was such that in the UK we had the Geddes Axe, actually cutting the wages of public servants to maintain a steady relationship between money and things (UPDATE: I got Geddes wrong - see HERE - sorry). So public servants who had accumulated savings would have done well - if they had saved. For many others, it was unemployment and poverty. To get an idea of the process and consequences, read "Twopence to cross the Mersey" by Helen Forrester, a real-life story about the economic descent of her middle-class family, which had (typically) lived on credit before the Crash.

Some fear that our governments will shudder at the thought of repeating that period and will try to buy their way out of the jam by printing money, in which case we could go from deflation to hyperinflation, and this is where the gold-bugs raise their voices.

On this analysis, I should think the strategy is clear. First, get out of/avoid debt. Then, live simply, and if possible convert unnecessary assets to cash - which you may partly invest in whatever you think will hold its value. And look for the steadiest job you can find?

More on Marc Faber's investments

Bloomberg quotes Marc Faber as saying that US stocks are more reasonably priced than other markets after the recent fall in the dollar's value. When you read on, you find he means they're less outrageously priced, but still overvalued.

So where does he think your money should be?

"Faber recommended investing in "depressed assets,'' citing the Middle East market and the Detroit property market. He also said farmland in Argentina and Brazil is a good value and property in New Zealand and Australia may be a sound investment because of their proximity to China. [...] he has large positions in real estate and equities in Vietnam."