Here is an example of the market’s current cognitive dissonance.
In the US, as many as 5 states appear to be having serious credit problems and are presently being reflected on the Credit Default Swaps (CDS) or the cost to insure a bond.
One might say that they are the US equivalent to Europe’s version of the PIIGS. We made an earlier similar observation here.
According to Bespoke Invest (chart also from them),
The number next to each state represents the cost per year to insure $10,000 worth of state bonds for 5 years. The higher the price, the higher the default risk. As shown, Illinois has the highest default risk of all states at 303.2 bps -- even higher than California. California ranks 2nd, followed by Michigan, New York, and New Jersey. Not to anyone's surprise, these are basically the five states in the country with the biggest fiscal problems at the moment. States that appear to be in pretty good shape include Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware.
As you can see the credit problems are NOT being reflected on US treasury yields (10 year TNX), which seem to ignore the developments in the CDS markets.
In contrast, the Eurozone recently had a fit of convulsion over the Greece-led PIIGs episode.
And instead, the US sovereign papers are seen “safety” assets where an ongoing onrush appears to be taking place as the mainstream hollers about “deflation (!)”.
In short, you have two markets seemingly headed for a collision course. This means one of them is decisively wrong.
For me, this represents part of the massive distortions engendered by interventionism. And vastly skewed prices have been misleading investors (led by the retail-dumb money). The treasury markets increasingly look like a time bomb, in the perspective of a ‘bond bubble’, set to implode.
The other way to say it is that if those credit woes exacerbate, then eventually, they will be vented on the treasury markets.
Caveat emptor.
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