US credit wobbles; hold cash not bonds

The fuss about S&P's "AAA with negative outlook" for US credit is remarkable mainly for being so far behind the curve.

The Beijing-based Dagong credit rating company gave America a significantly lower "AA" with negative outlook, back in July 2010 (and the UK was one level worse than that). Remember that China is a business partner and needs a clear view of how commercial operations are proceeding; this is not about Oriental mischief-making.

On the other hand, the talk of US Treasury default is wild, and I quite understand how it makes pensions expert Leo Kolivakis decidedly impatient; after all, that "negative outlook" comment is screwed to the side of a continuing AAA rating. But I do rather doubt that current US bonds will be honored in the sense of preserving and slightly increasing your wealth.

Charles Hugh Smith's thesis, on which I commented a few days ago, is that the American plutocracy will consolidate its gains by forcing a bond strike; personally, I think it's unnecessary to postulate a conspiracy in order to agree with him about the consequences. With interest rates at an historic low in the Anglo-American sphere, there's really only one direction in which they can change. Why would you buy now? And more importantly, why would you hold, when a rate rise could savage the tradable value of your holding?

Those who need to keep exports flowing, such as China, may be prepared to pay the price of maintaining the status quo, making on profits what they're losing on bonds, but as I said in February ("Global Credit Warfare"), the language over there is getting rather anxious and aggressive. Dagong's report bluntly states that America is exporting inflation worldwide.

Having said that, inflation in prices is very uneven and unfair. Proportionally to income, the rising costs of food and energy are hitting the poorest worst: I can cut back on brandy and weekend leisure trips, but how does the underclass cut back on hamburger helper? And with a large wad of ready cash, the better-off are in a position to snap up residential property cheaply, and bargain hard for luxuries such as cars, computers and other shiny gewgaws. I should think this is a great time to go to bankruptcy auctions, especially since the taxman isn't much bothered about setting a reserve. So in many ways, inflation hasn't yet really reached the rich.

But invulnerability is an illusion. When the remains of Mayan civilization were discovered, no wealthy Mayans were found sipping mai tais among the half-finished stone carvings.

We're all in this together, and because it's global now, we're mutually involved in a way that hasn't happened before. As Adam Fergusson relates in his chilling book(recently reissued) "When Money Dies", during the 1923 Weimar hyperinflation and the period leading up to it, German export business did very well, so well that the jealous and punitively-minded French wondered who'd won the war. Speculators also prospered, until the currency was reorganised, at which point they "took off for Paris and went to work on the franc, their departure the first signal that stabilisation was a fact." For a long time, reports Fergusson, visitors to Germany would see apparent national prosperity, simply because the cafes and restaurants were full of the winners; they didn't see the middle class exchanging their pianos for a side of ham.

But now, with an increasingly integrated international economy, it's getting more difficult to evade the problems simply by moving to another country. Tensions are rising, and not just in the Arab street.Western governments are deferring the day of reckoning, consuming their own debt like the serpent Ouroboros but without the element of timelessness. The present state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely, as Karl Denninger has been saying since 2007.

What are the possible outcomes?

Outright default? Don't hold bonds.Bond strike, interest rate rise, savage economic retrenchment? Don't hold bonds.Total collapse of the currency? Don't hold bond. High inflation? Don't hold bonds.

The least nuclear of all the options is the last, so unless we have a collective death wish that seems the most likely. Jesse thinks the dollar won't go to zero, but have a few zeroes knocked off it, like the French franc in 1960 (not that that stopped the decline): "I think the reissue of the dollar with a few zeros gone is inevitable. It is the timing of that event that is problematic. It could be one year, or it could be fifty years. There is a big difference there for your investment strategy." Reminds me of the scene in an old Cheech and Chong movie where they offer a peasant dollars and he spits on the money, saying you haven't got Mexican? Except this time he'll want a chicken or a silver necklace, instead, because inflation now respects no national boundaries.

Whether the debt-accelerated system manages to slam on the brakes without hospitalizing the vehicle's occupants, or hits a tree (everyone got airbags?), or simply grinds to a rutted halt in a cornfield, buying into the bond market now without some ulterior motive looks like wanton self-sacrifice.

Don't take it from me; take it from Bill Gross, who "sees no value in U.S. government bonds at current interest rates" and has dumped them altogether.

Meanwhile, let's start a national debate about social cohesion. That or wait for the jungle to recolonise the abandoned temples.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

US university invests heavily in gold

The University of Texas has doubled its holdings of gold in 2010, bringing the total to nearly $1 billion, according to Bloomberg.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Hold cash now, buy bonds when interest rates rise?

On Friday, Charles Hugh Smith posted a theory that I can accept as at least plausible: America's rich will consolidate their long-term gains by engineering a bond crisis - a refusal by the Federal Reserve to keep financing government spending.

This will make interest rates soar (collapsing the tradable values of bonds and, I'd have thought, equities); new bond issues will have to offer much higher income; the rich move in with their huge reserves of cash; then comes the demand for serious economic retrenchment; interest rates fall; because of their locked-in high yields, the capital value of new bonds shoots up; hey presto, another killing for the millionaires.

If that's so, the strategy will be to copy the rich (if you have the resources) - hold cash patiently and pile into the bond market when interest rates peak.

Other implications that occur to me: don't owe any more money than you have to, don't overinvest in residential or commercial property, don't be in a business that depends on people's discretionary spending. Reconsider your balance of shares, bonds and cash. It may even be worth thinking about moving somewhere with historically lower crime rates.

What about "inflation-protected" investments, such as NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificates (due to become available again soon)? Smith observes: "Holders of TIPS [Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, in the USA] will do OK, unless the government fraudulently sets the rate of inflation well below reality. Hmm, isn't that exactly what's it's already doing?" But presumably there's a limit to how much the government can misrepresent inflation; and besides, Smith's thesis is that we are headed for deflation because inflation robs the rich.

He could be wrong; but if he's right, the word passed down the ranks of cash holders is "Stand fast!"

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Exhausted by outrage

Read this article in Rolling Stone (hat-tip to Robert Wenzel), about how the Federal Reserve gave money to America's foreign competitors, billionaires in tax havens and even the business-inexperienced wives of Wall Street dealers.

Then if you can stand it, read Matt Taibbi's article about how nobody important on Wall Street is going to get prosecuted for the misdeeds that blew up the Global Financial Crisis.

This can't be happening.

April News

1. National Savings & Investments has not yet reintroduced Index-Linked Savings Certificates, but watch out for their return as reportedly they have a target (limit) of £2 billion in new issues. I think they will go very fast, bearing in mind continuing concerns about inflation. You can register with NS&I here to receive email updates and be among the first to get in.

2. As we are in a new tax year, you have a fresh ISA allowance. The overall limit per person is £10,680 of which up to £5,340 can be in a cash ISA; any excess must go into a stocks and shares ISA, which can be with the same or a different provider.

3. Investing for children: as you will know, the Child Trust Fund was launched in 2005 and vouchers backdated to include children born after 1 September 2002 - and now the scheme has been shelved. However, plans that have started can continue and contributions can still be made. This autumn (1st November) we expect the introduction of an alternative for under-18s, the Junior ISA. According to the Daily Mail, the allowance will be £3,000 per child and unlike adults ISAs it will be possible to switch from cash to stocks and shares and back again. It's also worth noting that this allowance also applies to children born before 1 September 2002 (who were not eligible for the Child Trust Fund). Please also see this article by Gaynor Pengelly on other options for children's investments.

4. For various reasons, my personal attitude to risk re stocks and shares is still cautious, except possibly for commodities - but even in that sector there are issues of big-boy speculation and market manipulation. If you invest now, I'd suggest you be prepared to take a long-term view. Do please contact me if you'd like a personal discussion of your own portfolio and future plans.

5. Contracting out of SERPS/S2P: from 2012, it will no longer be possible to contract-out through a personal pension, stakeholder or money purchase pension scheme. This is because the Government plans to introduce a more generous flat-rate State Pension for all, from 2015 or 2016. I warmly welcome this, because up to now we've had a terribly complicated scheme of giving with one hand and taking away with the other - Pension Credit, Pension Savings Credit etc. The bizarre result was something like an effective 40% tax rate if you had a small State pension and had a little extra income from savings - Higher Rate Tax for poor people! Here's an intriguing angle: We've yet to get full details, but a possible effect of this change of policy could be that if you are currently contracted-out (or have previously done so) and are due to reach State Pension Age after the new scheme starts, you may get the full new State Pension PLUS extra income from the contracted-out pension, whereas someone who had stayed in SERPS/S2P throughout would get nothing more. Maybe the Government will do something about it (surely their civil servants will have spotted it) - but let's keep our fingers crossed and hope they'll think it's too complicated to adjust now.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: None. Still in cash, and missing all those day-trading opportunities. DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog.

Alternative Vote and the Apathy Party

If AV is a controversial step, what about tackling non-participation? The last four UK General Elections have also been the lowest in terms of turnout since World War II, according to this site:

Statistically, there appears to be only a slight negative correlation between the size of turnout and the size of the winner's majority, as witness the 2010 results:

... but the British system is full of idiosyncrasies. A constituency in the Western Isles, or Northern Ireland, or one of the industrial blightlands, is not going to have the same characteristics as one in Hampshire, Slough or Greater London. And apathy can be confused with despair: in a rock-solid safe seat, those who would vote against the incumbent if they had a chance of unseating him/her, may simply not bother to vote at all.

Why not insist that everone must vote - perhaps adding the option "none of the above" to the ballot form?

Australia has a system of compulsory and enforced participation in General Elections, and so does Singapore; among European countries where it is compulsory but not strictly enforced, are Belgium and (for Senate elections) France.

South America (which I think will have a very interesting and possibly bright history over the next century) has many countries where voters must take part. Using the information here, I give below a map of them:

Let's start with AV, and if that doesn't winkle the people out of their sofas, let's go where so many other countries have led the way. Who knows, we may one day have a democracy.

Voting reform: AV = First Past The Post

The above video is no longer available on Youtube but can be watched on the BBC's website here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-13048603/referendum-campaign-broadcast-by-the-no-campaign-broadcast-on-11-april-2011
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This evening I saw the political broadcast for the "No" vote and I think I've rarely seen anything so untrue and misleading.

First we got candidate Alan B'Stard promising everything to get in, then forming a coalition and welching on all the manifesto promises. Ans: No, that is what we got under the present system.

Then we saw a horse race where the third placed was declared the winner. Ans: No, under AV the victor IS ALWAYS the first one past the post, the "winning post" being 50% of all ballots cast, if necessary by taking into account second and third (etc.) preferences.

As opposed to the present system, where the last Labour government got a clear majority of 66 seats on the basis of a minority of the votes. In the 2005 General Election, out of 650 MPs, only 220 won 50% or more of the votes cast in their own constituency (see "Election results for Using and Applying statistics" here.) In over 66% of Parliamentary constituencies, all the horses failed to finish!

Working the figures the same way for the 2010 General Election, only 217 out of 650 MPs jockeyed their way past the post. That's almost exactly the same situation as in 2005; we have a coalition government only because of disillusioned and mistrustful voters switching between parties - using the current voting system.

In 2005, Labour got 35.7% (the largest proportion) of the total national vote; in 2010, the Conservatives got 36.5% (the largest proportion) of the total national vote. The mess we have is, I repeat, under the current voting system and is a result of political breakdown, not (directly) owing to a glitch in the psephological mechanism.

Some might say, why change the system, then?

I'd answer, the breakdown of the relationship between the representatives and the people is (to a significant degree) attributable to an unrepresentative system of voting, one which encourages a party political divide because MPs in "safe" seats needn't bother listening. For 20 years I had no member of any of the major political parties even ask for my vote, because however I voted, I was going to get the Labour stooge. When the constituency boundaries were altered for 2010, suddenly I had both Labour and LibDem candidates on my doorstep.

Needn't bother listening? Needn't bother working, either, in many cases: how is it possible for "hard-working" MPs to write novels, handle handfuls of directorships etc, if not for the cosy calculus of "pairing" and the lazy delegation of most of the constituency work to constituency workers? I am reminded of the eighteenth century Caribbean plantation owners who lived in London and left all the responsibility to their estate managers and overseers.

Oh, and all that guff we're hearing about how very complex AV is? Bollards. Fifty years ago, housewives were completing similar questionnaires in newspaper ads, to win washing machines - "Put these advantages in order of personal preference: price, speed, capacity..."

No-one can foresee exactly how voting will change when all votes count, or at least half of them, anyway. The LibDems needn't assume that it will benefit them most, for if it does, the other parties will adopt a raft of me-too policies. No bad thing, perhaps, to make politicians work for a consensus.

And maybe, just maybe, we'd start to examine the candidates more carefully, rather than simply glance at their rosettes. No wonder there's such resistance to change from the spoiled heirs of the present arrangement. Just who IS funding the "No" propaganda?

Ah, but without (so-called) first-past-the-post we wouldn't have had Thatcher, say the Conservatives. Well, I think a general retrospective reassessment of her achievements is in order, seeing as how we've nearly killed our industrial base and allowed the financial sector to come out in a massive, choking algal bloom. But while we're reviewing her with the crystal hindsight of history, we can look again at the miserable record of the Socialist governments, too. The vaunted advantage of a government enabled to take bold action on the back of a Parliamentary majority founded on a minority of votes, is not such a strong argument, in my view. *

And why should all be decided on red and green benches in the best clubs in London, anyway? We're long past the time when it took days to ride a horse to the capital and every provincial church told its own time; modern communications call into question the antiquated system of remote, unresponsive, not infrequently rather arrogant and sometimes downright corrupt representation.

When it really matters, the people can and will declare a clear opinion, even against the advice and guidance of their leaders, as witness Iceland's referendum on the bailout of the banks. More referendums, say I - provided the arguments to inform them aren't as lying and twisted as what I saw tonight.
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*Update (November 28, 2017): Only twice since 1918 has any party garnered more than 50% of votes cast nationally in General Elections - the Conservatives both times, in 1931 and 1935 - see page 12 of "UK Election Statistics: 1918 - 2017" (pdf) on the House of Commons website here:

http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7529#fullreport