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Friday, May 30, 2014

Bond Still Rising

Capital Markets

By Louis S. Barnes                     Friday, May 30th, 2014
Many threads, much confusion. Most important, a simultaneous event and indicator: the 10-year T-note broke below 2.47%, mortgages to low-fours. The chart could not be more dramatic; if not a temporary head-fake, long-term rates can fall a long way.
We will know next week. Next Thursday the ECB meets and will announce new stimulus of some kind, and next Friday we’ll get US May payroll data. A big 24 hours.
Explanations for the drop in long rates are inventive. The favorite of gold bugs, central-bank haters, and inflation bogeymen: bond investors are idiots.
A more sensible thought, but likewise mistaken: “geopolitical risks” have driven rates down. But Ukraine is suddenly off-screen: it has a new and capable president, and Vladimir the Stupid is in rapid retreat, covering failure with a giveaway gas deal with China. Today US authorities confirmed Russian troops are headed back to barracks.
Stick with simplicity: long-term rates follow long-term prospects for economic activity and inflation. They go down, rates go down.
The US is in the best shape of the four big global economic zones. That’s why our long-term rates are so high. German Bunds today trade 1.36%, and JGB 10s are 0.575%. “Best shape” is relative. All here expected the 1st quarter GDP to be revised down, but negative 1% was steep. The usual suspects still say “Nothing but weather.”
We’ll see about that. April personal income gained .3%, a little under forecast, but April spending fell 0.1%. If there is a 2nd quarter snap-back of deferred demand, it’s mighty thin. April orders for durable goods appeared to hold the big March gain, but the April show was puffed by defense, a one-time order for ten new Virginia class submarines, $1.7 billion apiece.
No one knows what the ECB will do next week. Mario Draghi has been in hold-me-back mode for years (Germans happy to comply). The euro bond market is shouting: no matter what, too little to late. The very worst financial marker for an economy is falling rates on sovereign debt while rates on private borrowing rise and lending contracts. European bank lending in April shrank for the 24th-straight month.
Japan is a hopeless case, held together only by internal solidarity, the legendary Mrs. Watanabe refusing to leave the yen for a real currency, the yen rising in relative value while China and Europe devalue. China’s newest rebalancing road-bump: prices of homes have begun to fall. The rest of the BRICS are too soft to pull anything, Brazil at the edge of recession and social trouble, South Africa in recession, and India embarking on reform unattainable for 55 years.
Damned glad to be here! And to profiteer on the woes of others, but be suspicious of US log-rolling. One source of optimism is the stock market, but bubbling to new highs despite shaky earnings and the largest fraction of negative earning IPOs since the last tech collapse has more to do with stock buy-backs than an accelerating economy.
It’s an election year, and every left-leaner on the econ beat is tub-thumping the economy to help floundering Democrats. The screwball theories of their counterparts on the right long-since drove away everyone but the choir, so mainstream pubs are unusually tilted, the NYT worst-affected. Monday brings a new econ-political circus: the EPA will join the carbon wars, unloading expensive rules on the nation’s utilities.
The Democrats are going to run on inequality and carbon. They’re not going to do anything about either, just run on them. CO2 could be deadly, but we have no way to know at what pace or extent. The price mechanism since the 1970s has produced extraordinary conservation and substitution, and self-calibrated with incomes. Oil is too expensive for generation, so we stopped; renewables are up to 13%, gas 27%, nuclear 19%. Cheap coal is the tough one, still 39%, expensive to clean up or to squeeze out.
Laudable efforts to wean us from carbon have always run the risk of cost beyond ability to pay, trebly so in a weak economy. At this moment this nation needs jobs and rising incomes more than anything, and without them can’t get done anything of importance.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Pretty Darn Flat


Capital Markets Update

By Louis S. Barnes                     Friday, May 23rd, 2014

A holiday week, thin for new economic reports, markets quiet… one subject rises in importance above all. Politics!! We are in a political transition unprecedented in our national history. From the Civil War until recently our two political parties were ideologically mixed. Republicans were the Party of Lincoln, electing African-American nominees, economic progressives side-by-side with the conservative and propertied WASP elite. Democrats were ethnic and religious immigrants, blue-collar pro-union, welded to Dixiecrats by their hatred of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans, liberals side-by-side with Bible Belt conservatives. Dick Nixon’s “southern strategy” in the 1960s began to change the mix, but it took a long time, complete only a dozen years ago, Democrats Left, Republicans Right. As a nation we are not at all accustomed to the change. The first peculiar result: the rise and fizzle of the “religious right,” and then the Tea Party — extremisms threatening to drag the Republicans to permanent minority. The center has been the decider in US politics. Our most successful presidents represented their parties’ interests, but governed from the center: FDR, Truman, Ike, Reagan, and Clinton. In the last dozen years the second peculiar result of purity: two presidents who campaigned to the center but tried to govern from a wing. Mainstreamish Republicans in the last two years have tried to squelch the Tea Pots. Extremists of all bents share one wacky notion: blind to evidence and election result, they are certain that someday the other 80% will agree with them. Or be forced to. At this moment it looks as though the nutty right is fading again, but while we’ve been amused at its shenanigans the same forces have been working on Democrats. A big chunk of that party in self-admiration has moved several notches to the left — and the contest between these pure parties is more and more economic. The Democrats will be lucky to hold the Senate this fall. Their best angle is social policy, as the Republican social platform annoys so many women that a national majority is impossible. However, the left-heavy push is now “inequality.” A founding principle of this nation: equality of opportunity, but not guaranteed result. But we have limits, and Democrats are gunning for the filthy-rich. The real agenda, of course, is tax revenue: since we have borrowed ourselves senseless, the only way to preserve the left agenda is to find a new tax base. Excessive inequality is a bad thing. Even worse is economic immobility and exclusion, advancement determined by class, or limited by other oligarchy. However, the inequality cry today is immediately suspect: it does not distinguish between income and wealth, the former highly variable year-to-year, and the second not directly measured in any US data base — and the wealthy today as likely as not kids at Facebook, Apple, or Twitter, hardly Robber Barons Rockefeller, Gould, and Carnegie. On the coffee table of every out-there Democrat: Thomas Picketty’s new “Capital in the 21st Century.” A comic book rendition of French free-lunch socialism, the platform of Francois Hollande, he of 18% approval rating but still certain that it is possible simultaneously to extract the earnings of capitalism and to preserve its effort. Hand the Republicans an advantage like that and they’ll fumble off into gold standards, government and regulation are Bad, close the Federal Reserve, and play their big trump card: “We’ve got ours and you’re on your own.” The Senate matters this fall, although this administration isn’t going to do anything anyway. The big stakes: next year, will somebody run for president who understands and can appeal to the center? The Democrats expect to coronate Hillary. Hard worker, fine mind, lousy politician (How could Barry steal eight years from you?), and forced into non-stop Clinton-explaining. Republicans… sheesh. Jeb? Explain, explain: I’m not my dad and I’m not my brother? We are coming to the end of two failed presidencies, and have a greater need to find the way back to economic progress than any time in our history. Be engaged. - See more at: http://pmglending.com/blog/market-commentary/credit-news-by-lou-barnes-may-23-2014#sthash.ez2MG6Ts.dpuf

Friday, May 16, 2014

The Trend May Be Breaking Down


Capital Markets

By Louis S. Barnes                                             Friday, May 16th, 2014
Big changes this week, surprising and confusing — mostly good news here, trouble overseas, and an astounding political turn for the better for mortgage credit. On Wednesday the 10-year T-note broke out the bottom of a well-defined four-month trading range 2.60%-2.80% to 2.50%. That’s the lowest since last November, and at the threshold of a deeper drop. Mortgages moved toward the 4.25% area. Europe’s awful numbers were as much cause as any: in the first quarter an overall GDP gain of 0.2%, but Finland entered recession, Italy shrank 0.1%, Portugal by 0.7%, and Holland by 1.4%. Visit Pimco.com and its “secular outlook” for a grim rundown on the emerging world, and a new forecast that a 0% Fed is now open-ended normal. In the US, better. April retail sales were flat, but held after an exceptional surge in March. The NFIB small-biz survey nosed up. April housing starts jumped 13%, some pundits complaining they are heavy with attached dwellings, but land is scarce in most metro areas, and dense redevelopment is our future. Headwinds still blow. Core year-over-year CPI has risen to 1.8%, close to the Fed’s target, but wages are still dead. Thus real earnings have fallen 0.1% year-over-year. A rise in prices now for any reason is a contractionary event, not sustainable Politics and mortgages… Melvin Luther Watt early this year replaced Ed DeMarco as director of the FHFA, boss of Fannie and Freddie. Mel Watt had been a North Carolina congressman since 1993. Upon his appointment everyone in our trade was pleased to see DeMarco go; for five years he had executed his own private charter to shut down the mortgage GSEs and force a privatization of mortgage credit, no matter what the cost to consumers and the economy — all without interference from the White House. None of us knew what to make of Watt. Another Obama low-horsepower, no-gas figurehead? This week we found out. Mel! You da man!! Watt’s first policy speech is a model. Ever since 2008, mortgage credit has suffered the back-blast from the bubble, scorched and paralyzed by political anger and over-regulation. Watt could easily have chosen a passive path. Instead: “FHFA is focused on how we manage the present.” Peter Drucker would be thrilled: act in the now, not the past or future; do what you can, and leave aside what you cannot. The FHFA will reduce buy-back demands by independent dispute resolution and sensible re-underwriting of loans which do not perform well. FHFA will revisit the overtightening of credit standards, and will not cut conforming loan limits. It will explore means of privatizing MBS risk, and will wind down retained portfolios, but will “no longer involve specific steps to contract the Enterprises’ market presence.” Huzzah! It will take time for Watt’s initiatives to be felt on Main Street. The FHFA’s destructive lead has been overtaken by the misbegotten Consumer Financial Credit Bureau. The CFPB’s first actions were thousand-page hammers on an already flattened credit supply, but we may get relief even there. A wave of public anger must run its course until large constituencies understand the damage done by blind retribution. Anger can break like a fever, people and politicians coming awake, blinking and head-shaking at babies and bath water scattered all over the horizon. The truly stupid Johnson-Crapo “reform” of Fannie and Freddie made it out of Senate committee, but the bill will die. All the more remarkable in Watt’s speech: when asked his opinion of the reform bill, “No comment.” The White House had okayed it, but its FHFA appointee knows better and did not even pretend to go along. Ever since 2008 this administration has gotten everything wrong on housing. Its primary focus was to keep people in houses they demonstrably could not afford, and then to waste time and priority pursuing reductions in loan principal. It failed completely to bring under control bank-owned loan servicers, still abusing the public. It failed to secure an adequate supply of mortgage credit despite strong protests from the Fed, and only last year hamstrung the FHA. In spite of all of that, thank you for Mel Watt. A mensch, this guy. - See more at: http://pmglending.com/blog/market-commentary/credit-news-by-lou-barnes-may-16-2014#sthash.lbP4it1M.dpuf

Friday, May 9, 2014

Another Good Week


Capital Markets


By Louis S. Barnes                                Friday, May 9th, 2014
Bond and mortgage yields have frozen. The 10-year Treasury note in the last three months traded in a slushy harbor 2.60%-2.80%, but you could skate on this week’s 2.58%-2.63%. When a glacier like this breaks up, expect the shattering onset of true up-down volatility and change in trend. No, I don’t know which way. Harry Truman growled his wish for a one-armed economist. No more on-the-other-hand! Apologies: both of mine are still attached. Long term rates move with inflation which moves with economic activity. US rates respond to domestic forces, but a globalizing economy applies pressures we’re not used to. I am a US skeptic, and I have company. Janet Yellen: “A high degree of monetary accommodation remains warranted.” She sees faster growth later this year, and inflation rising toward the Fed’s 2% target. However, her predecessor had the same foresight, as had every Pollyanna on Wall Street, and failed for four straight years. Chair Yellen’s vision of risks this week began with “adverse developments abroad… geopolitical tensions… or intensification of financial stresses,” and then “Flattening out in housing activity could be more protracted than currently expected.” If the US economy does not accelerate, interest rates are poised to come down. Don’t bet on that! But it’s true. The global economy today is held together by four central banks. The Fed, the ECB, the People’s Bank of China, and the Bank of Japan. Without their exertions, the world would quickly descend into old-time deflation, drowning in excess capacity, excessive investment, excess labor, and heaven knows excess debt. The PBoC is doing best of all, mostly because Xi Jinping’s new government is working on rational and sustainable reform. The BoJ is in its last ditch, which may still be decades long, as Japan’s sovereign debt is too big to grow out of and sooner or later must be written down. We, of course, have no government but function without. The ECB has gotten by on bluff alone for three years, but its near-impossible situation has festered and it may actually have to do something. Look for perverse outcomes affecting us. For Germany the euro’s value at $1.38 is cheap, making it easy for the Teutonic hive to export, its net surplus running 7% of GDP. Life is great in Germany, just enough inflation, about 2%, and its budget deficit melting away in easy austerity. Germany knows that all will be well for the others if they will only become Germans. But the others are not Germany (one is enough). The others never have had comparable productivity, yet the euro forces them to compete with the hive. The only way they can compete is to embrace the old cyanide of the gold standard, “internal devaluation,” the oh-so-polite term for cutting wages. To serfdom if necessary. Debts remain as they were, or rising, but wages and ability to pay are falling. How very odd that the result is pan-European deflation. Aggregate European inflation has fallen to 0.5%, still above zero by the miracle of averaging with Germany. Mario Draghi of the ECB has been in hold-me-back mode for years, but the Germans have opposed any stimulus for fear of German inflation above 2%. Draghi this week at last signaled action in June. What kind and how much, nobody knows. His long-running bluff: the ECB will buy euro-sovereign bonds if anyone dares to short them. And it has worked. Don’t bet against somebody with an infinite checkbook. But the result is simultaneously encouraging, frightening, and absurd. German 10-year bunds pay 1.44%, half the 10-year T-note. French 10s trade 1.89%, and even Italy and Spain are 2.93% and 2.88%, respectively. These yields make sense only in protracted depression/deflation or a state of fear-buying. The second lesson from the Fed’s QE (after “It works”): when a central bank enters with stimulus, markets assume it will work and rates rise. If the ECB comes big, rates will rise there and here. If the ECB tries a symbolic dink, down we go, pulled by Europe. - See more at: http://pmglending.com/blog/author/loubarnes#sthash.JKKKRFbQ.dpuf

Friday, May 2, 2014

This Time It's Ukraine

Capital Markets


By Louis S. Barnes                                Friday, May 2nd, 2014
A bizarre sequence of events and data has taken bond and mortgage yields to their lows of the year, the 10-year T-note 2.58% and mortgages near 4.50%. Ukraine is the largest immediate force pushing down on rates, but we’ll review that after trying to make sense of the most contradictory steam of economic data in a long time. 1st quarter GDP on Wednesday looked like the onset of recession; the Fed’s same-day post-meeting minutes had an other-worldly calm; and today’s April employment report on the surface boomed. A foreword on data. Many civilians regard economic data as books baked by conspirators. Too many professionals support this cynicism in their sales pitches. Don’t believe any of that: the agencies compiling data do the best they can. When the numbers look as crazy as the following, we are either beyond our ability to describe our economy, or the economy has departed its prior patterns, or both. Today, both. A third thicket for civilians: the professional spinners, 90% of them sunshine boys. GDP rose only 0.1% annualized in the first 90 days of 2014, and were it not for ObamaCare sign-ups boosting “services consumption” would have shrunk more than a point. ACA “consumption” of course acts more like a tax. The usual suspects dismissed the quarter as bad weather, including a 7.6% tank in exports. That’s not weather; that’s the whole fool world trying simultaneously to export its way out of trouble. It was a rotten 90 days, but temporarily below-trend, not pre-recession. The ISM manufacturing survey has been stable in the low 50s all through 2014. But the GDP report confirmed one persistent flaw in the economy: incomes are losing ground even to very low inflation. The BLS Employment Cost Index rose 0.3% in the first quarter, the worst performance since stats began in 1980. Enter the monthly payroll report. 288,000 net-new jobs! Unemployment to 6.3%! Nobody outside the stock market or White House believes either number. You’d think there was a way to know for sure how many people are at work, or not, but the devil is in seasonal adjustment. So, look to several-month averages, which leads so many analysts to smile wisely, note almost 200,000 new jobs monthly and announce, “The economy is slowly healing.” I wish I had one of those guys nearby to strangle, slowly. Look to long-term averages, but also crossfoot disparate reports for confirmation. Buried in the payroll figure: average hourly earnings in this booming April rose… zero. Zip, zed. Theory holds that as any pool of available labor shrinks, employers will compete by paying higher wages. Today’s pool is global. Oceanic. Workers still are competing with each other to find jobs and accepting poor pay. Not the compressive gouging by employers 100 years ago, just electron-greased global substitution. Slowly healing? “Another few years in that wheelchair and we’ll have you on crutches!” Interest rates are going to stay down until wages turn, if only because inflation cannot move up, out of this too-low danger zone until wages rise. Ukraine. Markets for months have assumed that Ukraine will be mostly or completely absorbed by Vladimir. Alarm has returned to markets only upon combat, no matter how inevitable the outcome for Ukraine. Serious sanctions would also have effect, but they are even less likely than Ukraine’s survival. History marks today’s dilemma. Never promise to defend a place if you can’t. That only emboldens futile resistance (Budapest ’56, Prague ’68), or gets something big going (Poland ’39). On the other hand, feeding pieces of your neighbors to the barbarian du jour can leave you alone on the menu, and Ukraine more resembles 1938 than any situation since. Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel have been the least-active pair of Free World leaders since the big war, tempting adversaries to interpret restraint as weakness. A John McCain spasm would be wrong, but how to demonstrate resolve? Baseballers call this a “tough chance.” Although restraint is right, watching Ukraine go down is terrible. - See more at: http://pmglending.com/blog/author/loubarnes#sthash.tthqHa5k.dpuf