Sovereign Debt

And the award for the most prosaic and "Field Marshall Obvious" statement of the day goes to Irish finance minister Michael Noonan, who just told the Dail that Irish sovereign debt is sustainable if the economy grows. We have just one question: how does the brand new minister, who therefore gets the benefit of the doubt for a few more hours, justify that statement, with the attached chart?

There is a real sense of the “calm before the storm” in markets globally. Complacency reigns, despite signs that the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is deepening and that Japanese and US bond markets also look very vulnerable due to rising inflation, very large deficits and massive public debt. US Treasuries have been sold by some of the largest investors (both private and sovereign) in the world recently (see news). These include large creditor nations Russia and China but also PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world. A global sovereign debt crisis is now quite possible. At the very least, we are likely to have a long period of rising interest rates which will depress economic growth. Contrary to some misguided commentary, rising interest rates will benefit gold as was seen when interest rates rose sharply in the 1970s. It was only towards the end of the interest rate tightening cycle in 1980, when interest rates were higher than inflation, that gold prices began to fall.

Lately there has been a lot of chatter among the supposedly smarter-than-mainstream media that even should the debt ceiling not be raised, it would not mean the bankruptcy of America as interest payments would still be satisfied. While that technicality is absolutely true, it is even more absolutely irrelevant. What propagators of such theories forget is that lately there are just two exponential curve trendlines that are worth noting: that of the cumulative debt issuance, and of the US cumulative deficit (see chart below). Each month, the US issues around $50 billion more debt than is needed to just fund the deficit. This is debt that is on top of the debt that is needed to plug the different between revenues and expenditures. As Zero Hedge has pointed out repeatedly before, that ratio is already roughly 1 to 2, meaning for every dollar in revenue the US government issues more than one dollar of debt just to fund the deficit. And then some. As the chart below shows, in December alone the government issued $84.4 billion on top of the budget funding shortfall ($80 billion deficit and $164.4 billion in debt issuance)! So yes, while the Treasury can fund interest expense at record low interest levels, that is completely irrelevant. Unable to fund incremental expenses to the tune of hundreds of billions per month, the US government will shut down (a point when nobody will accept US government IOUs, not Social Security which passed the point of being self sustaining last year, and certainly not Medicare and Medicaid, and most certainly not private sector Defense Vendors) just like it did in 1995. Below, we present the key charts and the full report from a must read SocGen report on the sovereign debt crisis, titled Can It Happen Here? We urge all those who pretend to have an educated opinion on the US funding crisis to read this report before they open their mouths in public and once again validate their critics.

All you wanted to know about why the world is bankrupt in many pretty charts.

No government debt has ever been or can ever be repaid in full. This is especially the case when a government imposes a monopoly on what can be used as money by passing and enforcing “legal tender” laws. The US did this with the introduction of the Fed in 1913. Eventual default becomes an absolute certainty when government makes its own debt paper the ONLY “reserve” behind the “money” it alone can create. The US did this under President Nixon in 1971. The whole world went along with it because the US Dollar was the reserve currency and no government or people anywhere dared jettison it. The result is the global financial quagmire we see everywhere we look. - Bill Buckler

Today's sudden spike in yields across the curve is being widely attributed to a conversation between Moody's Steven Hess, Senior Credit Officer covering sovereigns, and Market News, in which Moody's has given the point blank warning that a permanent extension in the Bush tax cuts may lead to a downgrade of the US, putting yet more pressure on the president, who despite having shown a conciliatory stance recently vis-a-vis permanent tax extensions, may suddenly find himself boxed once again, and without much choice but to prevent an all out compromise. As the market has recently been running higher on expectations that a tax cut extension is pretty much guaranteed, today's announcement by Moody's pours cold water over yet another "priced in" concept, which suddenly may not materialize. The net result: a smackdown in the 10 Year which is slowly migrating to all risk assets.

With total cumulative purchases at just over €60 billion since the beginning of its sovereign debt monetization program in May, the ECB purchased just €302 million in (Greek 6 Month) debt last week. As always, tomorrow will see the pyramid scheme of taking the purchases and reliquifying the market in yet another weekly term deposit auction to the tune of €60 billion. If indeed European liquidity is as bad as feared, especially with less than the total upcoming auction size on deposit with the ECB, the bid to cover on tomorrow's latest auction should be another informative data point as to just how bad the EUR scarcity in the eurozone currently is. On the other hand, with the ECB signalling a slow down in monetization, should the ramp in Libor/OIS rates continue, very soon it will be forced to step right back into the sovereign bond purchasing market, confirming the recent solvency lull is only temporary.

GMO's Edward Chancellor has written what is arguably the coup de grace of papers analyzing the dynamics of soveriegn default, together with the conditions required to succumb to this terminal condition, and is the functional equivalent of months of research and combing through all the recent literature on the topic. By initially highlighting the reasons for government default, which include i) a reversal of capital flows, ii) unwise lending, iii) excessive foreign debts, iv) a poor credit history, v) unproductive lending, vi) rollover risk, vii) weak revenues, and viii) rising interest rates, Chancellor presents the frame of reference in which every potential sovereign default situation should be analyzed. Chancellor also highlights several examples where a sovereign default was all but assured (Britain post the Napoleonic wars, Sweden in the 1990s), analyzes the opportunity cost of hyperinflating instead of pursuing default (when inflation is more convenient, when it resolves political conflicts, when avoiding inflation is a low priority, and when there has been a public credit flameout), and makes an exhaustive analysis using historical parallels of today's sovereign debt crisis. He summarizes the different view of the current sovereign fiasco as follows: i) this time is (really) different, ii) we are not all Greek, iii) posits that the US is not on the verge of a default, iv) that inflation is more likely than default. He concludes by analyzing potential tipping points, which in a herd mentality market such as ours, are all that matters, and suggests that Japan is precisely on the verge of such a tipping point. Yet his two most critical conclusions, in our opinion, are the following: "public finance is a ponzi scheme" and, for all those who are fans of Rosie's thesis that bonds are the go to investment currently, "Current yields on government bonds in most advanced economist are at very low levels. Under only one condition - that the world follows Japan's experience of prolonged deflation - do they offer any chance of a reasonable return. But this is not the only possible future. For other outcomes, long-dated government bonds offer a limited upside with a potentially uncapped downside. As investors, such asymmetric pay-off profiles don't appeal to us." Must read for everyone who wants to have an intelligent opinion on the matter.

The gap between the truth vs. the lies that pass for truth in the media has never been so wide. But living a lie is very destructive, so it’s important to cross this gap. Today I want to clear up one of the most important lies reinforced by the media–the idea that we have sovereign countries.

No doubt most of you have heard of the sovereign debt crisis that so many countries are facing. We hear endless economists, reporters, and billionaire hedge fund raiders talk about it. But the phrase they use is fictitious. It is a fabrication of the Ivy League, Wall Street, and erudite periodicals like the Financial Times of London. Sovereign debt is an impossibility. It cannot exist.

Last week, the ECB had a failed QE "sterilization" operation, when it was unable to cover the full €55 billion in previously purchased government debt via a Fixed Term Deposit operation, better known as a liquidity reacharound. That particular auction, which occurs every Tuesday, generated only €31.9 billion in bid side interest, or 0.6x BTC. The failure was largely attributed to the massive LTRO maturity the next day. Which is why everyone will be closely following tomorrow's most recent FTD operation. Even more so, since as the ECB just announced, in the prior weak the central bank bought an additional €4 billion in sovereign bonds as part of the Securities Markets Programme which is now at €59 billion. As the chart below shows, this indicates a steady buying interest of €4 billion per week for each of the past 4 weeks. On the other hand, as we have been expecting for a long time, with total bidding interest declining, while the total FTD amount rising each weak, the likelihood of ongoing failed auctions, and continued loss in European liquidity conference keeps going higher.

The world’s financial press, in which leading economists and analysts publish their work, never examines the relationship between the abandonment of the gold standard and unemployment, de-industrialization, and the huge chronic export deficits of the Western world powers. Yes, Dorothy, the bankers really are responsible for the world's financial problems today so get your head out of Oz!

The bankruptcies and debt collapses are coming as a result of overcrowding in the sovereign and public debt markets. This series aims to prepare you for the coming collapse... The Doo Doo 32 revisited!

The global equity markets are in meltup mode again. I want to take this opportunity to reiterate that I am still quite bearish on much of the situation in Europe. Let’s glance at the credit markets, major banks and the state of sovereign indebtedness in Spain.

"The government's debt cannot grow indefinitely at a rate much faster than the economy itself grows, so ultimately, something has got to change — either taxes are raised, spending is reduced, or the real value of the debt is eroded through an increase in inflation, an outcome the Federal Reserve is committed to preventing." - Jeffrey Lacker, Richmond Fed

A US debt downgrade could trigger a stampede into the debt of healthier countries. Emerging market debt has a much rosier future of credit upgrades to look forward to than US bonds. A 6.44% yield on an appreciating asset. These days, many emerging markets have little or no debt. The sovereign debt crisis is sending bonds issues by financial responsible countries to decent premiums, while punishing the bad boys with huge discounts. Time to trade in Marilyn Monroe for Carmen Miranda? (PCY), (LQD).