Steepening Global Yield Curve Reflects Thriving Bubble Cycle

``The way out of a deflationary trap is to first induce inflation and then to reduce it. That is an intricate operation and success is far from assured. As soon as economic activity in the United States revives, interest rates on government bonds are liable to shoot up; indeed, the yield curve is likely to steepen in anticipation. Either way, a rise in long-term interest rates is liable to choke off the recovery. The prospect of the greatly increased money supply turning into inflation is likely to lead to a period of stagflation. That, however, would be a high-class, desirable outcome because it would avoid prolonged depression.” George Soros, My Outlook for 2009

The overwhelming performance of today’s stock markets and commodity markets has sent a few bears “capitulating”. The stunning surges in the markets has had powerful psychological leash that has been proselytizing much of the “consensus” to interpret for a “strong” economic recovery.

This clearly has been a manifestation of the operational aspects of the reflexivity theory feedback loop-where people interpret price signals as signifying real events, and where real events reinforce the price signals.

For mainstream analysts, the “animal spirits” have been roaring back to life!

For us, the present phenomenon have been reflecting the escalating symptoms of the influences of monetary forces over the markets and the real economy, which is another way of saying-we are witnessing anew serial bubble blowing dynamics at work which is being fueled by policy induced inflationary forces.

Upward Sloping Global Yield Curve Drives Maturity Mismatches

Notably steeping yield dynamics has been part of the bubble blowing framework, see figure 1.

Figure 1: BCA Research: Global Yield Curve Strategy

The independent Canadian Research outfit BCA Research believes that it would take central banks at least the 2^nd half of 2010 for the policymakers to begin raising rates thereby flattening the yield curve or the ``relation between the interest rate (or cost of borrowing) and the time to maturity of the debt for a given borrower in a given currency.” (wikipedia.org)

According to the BCA, ``During the last recession, the 2/10 Treasury slope peaked in August 2003 but did not begin to steadily flatten until early 2004, a few months before the Fed began its tightening campaign in June of that year. Last week, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart outlined the unusual scenario that if faced with inflation, the Fed could potentially increase the target funds rate even as it continued to pursue quantitative easing. Although technically possible, thanks to the recent policy of paying interest on bank reserves, this outcome is highly unlikely. Rate hikes will be politically impossible in the near term. It would be far easier to gradually and quietly unwind monetary stimulus in the reverse order that it was implemented, i.e. by selling long-term securities. Bottom line: Government yield curves are at cyclical extremes but a material flattening phase may still take until late 2009 or early 2010.” (bold highlight mine)

This would be an example of looking at similar data sets but with divergent interpretations.

Notice that during the dotcom bust at the advent of the new millennium, produced a steepening of the global yield curve which coincided with the incipient boom in the US real estate industry (green circle).

Further notice of BCA’s observation that “the 2/10 Treasury slope peaked in August 2003 but did not begin to steadily flatten until early 2004”- eventually paved way for the real estate bust which emerged in 2006 albeit more than a year later, whereas the bearmarket in stocks finally surfaced in 2007 about a year after the cracks in the US real estate industry became unstoppable force.

Why is this?

Because, according to Professor Philipp Bagus and David Howden, ``maturity mismatching can turn out to be a very profitable business, involving a basic interest arbitrage. Normally, long-term interest rates are higher than their corresponding short-term rates. A bank may then profit the difference — the spread between short- and long-term rates — through these transactions. Yet, while maturity mismatching can turn out to be profitable, it is very risky as the short-term debts require continual reinvestment (i.e., a continual "rollover" must occur).” (bold highlights mine)

In other words, the widening yields spread greatly benefits banks which aside from profiting from maturity mismatch arbitrage also provide funding that fuels the speculative “animal spirits” in the marketplace through the “borrow short and lend/invest long” or the basic framework for what is popularly known as the “carry trade”.

And the ensuing risks emanates from the burgeoning mismatches of assets and liabilities, the liquidity and rollover risks. Why? Because according to Professor Jeffrey Herbener, ``The swollen liabilities of checkable deposits are payable on demand to customers while the matching assets of loans are not recoverable on demand by banks. Profits earned by entrepreneurs no longer correspondent completely to the satisfaction of consumer preferences, but are systematically distorted by the artificial spending stream fed by the central bank. Entrepreneurs are misled by the credit expansion into shifting the use of factors into activities considered less-valuable by consumers.” (bold highlights mine)

Borrowing short and investing long needs constant liquidity infusion because long term investments like real estate can’t be monetized soon enough in the same manner as placements in money market funds. And where a sustained episode of liquidity shortage surfaces, trades founded on this platform ultimately collapses. This had been one of the major hallmarks of the financial crisis of 2007.

But we seem to be presently seeing the resurrection of a similar edifice.

I would like to further add that present policies which induce speculative bubbles don’t generate ‘productivity gains’ that’s because the “artificial spending stream” have been causing entrepreneurs to misallocate or engage in malinvestments.

Moreover, speculating in the marketplace don’t generate net jobs as jobs added are those from the financing side (e.g. brokers, investment houses etc.) at the expense of “unseen” investment and jobs lost serving consumers.

And importantly, once the yield curve flattens or reverses to negative, capital instead of accumulating would be lost, as the unsustainable bubble structure would be eviscerated! In 2008, ADB estimates financial assets losses at $50 trillion (Bloomberg)!

Philippine Yield Curve Reflects Global Direction

Figure 2: Asian Bonds Online: Philippine Benchmark Yield Curve

The elevated slope of the yield curve also applies to the Philippine setting see figure 2.

Remember, the Philippine private sector is largely little leveraged on both absolute and relative levels (compared to Asia).

Hence, when our Central Bank officials as BSP deputy governor Diwa Guinigundo say ``Having the scope for higher savings does not mean of course that we should discourage consumption expenditure in the economy…Consumption sustains higher level of economic activity,” we should expect a boom in credit take up to occur as policies shapes the public’s incentives.

So you can expect domestic bankers and financers to knock on your door and, to paraphrase Mark Twain, lend you their umbrella (offer you generous loans or credit) when the sun is shining (as markets appear to be booming), but eventually would want it back the minute it begins to rain (crisis).

Rest assured present policies will foster persistent expansion of “circulation credit” that should benefit the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) and the Phisix over the interim and the present cycle.

Yield Curve Could Steepen Further, “Benign” Inflation

We agree with the BCA when they suggested that ``Rate hikes will be politically impossible in the near term.” That’s because the economic ideology espoused by Central Bankers and mainstream analysts essentially ensures the continuation of asset supportive policies.

More than that, as Emerging Market (EM) economies begins to experience a cyclical “boom” EM central banks will likely continue to add on US dollar reserves, which most likely will be recycled into US treasuries. The BRICs or the major emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China reported the fastest pace of US dollar buying worth-$60 billion of US dollar reserves in May (Bloomberg).

US dollar purchases by Asia and Emerging markets will likely be sustained for political goals, but the composition of purchases has been substantially changing. This most likely reflects on EM central bankers concerns over US policies, as EM officials have been openly saying so.

Meanwhile the concentration of official purchases has markedly weaned away from agencies with diminishing exposure on long term securities (T- bonds) and has apparently been shifting into short term bills.

Yet if the present direction of US treasury acquisitions persists, then the short end of the yield curve will likely remain supported and probably won’t rise as fast as the longer term maturity.

Figure 3: Northern Trust: Rising Treasury Yields versus Falling Private Security Yields

On the other hand, yields of US treasury bonds have been rising perhaps mostly due to “expectations” on economic recovery as private sector credit spreads has meaningfully declined, see figure 3.

Northern Trust chief economist Paul Kasriel explains, ``If the current and increased supply of Treasury debt coming to market were “crowding out” private debt issuance, then the yields on privately-issued debt would be holding steady or rising in tandem with the rise in the Treasury bond yield. But again, yields on privately-issued debt are falling. In sum, investor risk appetite is returning, which is a good thing for the prospects of an economic recovery, not a bad thing.”

And last week’s 30 year bond auctions successfully drew up a good number of buyers. Despite higher yields (since August of 2007) the bid to cover and number of indirect buyers (possibly foreign central banks) saw significant improvements (Bloomberg).

So maybe, for now, markets appear pricing in a US economic recovery as the credit markets, stock markets and commodity markets, the Volatility or Fear Index and Credit Default Swaps on sovereigns debts have all been in confluence to reveal signs of dramatic improvements over the marketplace.

As my favorite foreign client recently observed, this is could be the benign phase of inflation.

Nevertheless in congruence with the observation of the BCA Research, it seems that the yield curve for US sovereign securities could remain in an upward sloping direction even if it has already been drifting at the cyclical extremes. The massive funding requirements by the US government (estimated at $2 trillion for 2009 out of the $3 trillion estimated for the world) for its deficit spending programs ensure higher yields for the longer maturity sovereigns. This combined with US official policy rates at zero interest levels and emerging market central banks purchases on the shorter end.

And we could expect the slope of the global yield curve to track the direction of the US but perhaps at a much subdued scale as debt issuance compete with limited global capital.

So as long as the yield spreads continues to widen, we should expect the fury of monetary “speculative” forces nurtured by the global central banks to be vented on the global stock markets and commodity markets.