Observations: The QandO Podcast for 13 Jan 13
This week, Michael, and Dale discuss…stuff.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 30 Sep 12
This week, Bruce, Michael, and Dale talk about the election.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 09 Sep 12
This week, Bruce, Michael, and Dale talk about the Democratic Convention and the economy.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 22 Jul 12
This week, Bruce, Michael, and Dale talk about Supreme Court, The state of the nation, and the Aurora, CO shooting.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Open thread
I’m in a series of meetings today so I’m unlikely to get any serious blogging done.
You guys talk among yourselves.
Suggestions: “flip-flop” is now “evolution”? Really?
And, dealing with just the politics of Obama’s gay marriage announcement, guess what we won’t be talking about again today?
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 15 Apr 12
This week, Michael, and Dale talk about the Trayvon Martin case, Hillary Rosen, and the economy.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 11 Mar 12
This week, Michael, and Dale talk about the week’s “slut” talk, and the economy.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
Will Eurobonds Work?
(Originally posted at Risk and Return)
I have been skeptical and so is James Bianco:
The problem in Europe is simple – they created a common currency – the euro. For years, the market erred. It thought that meant that every sovereign debt had the same rating as Germany. I was buying Greek bonds. I was buying Irish bonds. I was buying Italian bonds. But I thought I was buying German bonds. Then, a couple of years ago, I had an epiphany – no, I was not buying German bonds; I was buying Greece, Italy, and Ireland, or whatever, not Germany.
Those countries, recognizing that they could borrow into infinity because everybody thought they were lending to Germany, pretty much did that and expanded their welfare states to the point where they cannot pay their debts.
Germany has disappointed everybody with its intransigence, its unwillingness to “get with the program,” and endorse massive ECB bond buying and Eurobonds. Their reason? They believe they will be stuck with the bill. Of course, they are right, they will be:
If a Eurobond market comes with with strict discipline/rules on borrowing and paying debt back, it might work. Unfortunately no one will agree to a Eurobond market with strict discipline/rules.
If a Eurobond market comes with no discipline/rules, then it is just another way to trick the market into thinking they are buying German Bunds. It will “work” for a while as the crisis will ease until everyone borrows too much money and then comes back much worse.
I am not even sure it will work more than a few days at this point, but maybe. Either way it is not a solution, but a stop gap at best. It is also a stop gap that should not be attempted unless an actual endgame is in sight:
So how do you fix the Euro crisis? Unfortunately there are only three solutions and all are distasteful:
- Call off the union and go back to legacy currencies. This destroys the banking system who will be paid back with devalued/nearly worthless currencies.
- Massive austerity. This option is very unpopular among the electorates and will cause a bad recession/depression.
- Fiscal union. This is a nice way of saying Germany finally wins WW2. Is the rest of Europe now ready to take orders from Berlin? Didn’t they fight two wars to prevent this?
The only reason ECB printing keeps being mentioned is because the three options above are untenable and money printing is the only other thing they can think of. Money printing does NOT fix anything, it just makes the problem better for a while until it comes back worse than before.
This dovetails with my analysis in The German Dilemma that their are no good options from the German perspective, and in fact fiscal union is far more problematic than commonly realized:
Full Fiscal Integration: Since all other solutions put in place circumstances that are unstable and merely kick the can down the road, the fundamental flaw in the Euro needs to be addressed. That is the lack of a unified fiscal policy. The answer then is the end of sovereignty, the creation of a US of Europe. An obvious objection is that Germany wants to be a sovereign nation. We’ll skip this niggling little detail, but even if they didn’t want to remain sovereign do they want to harmonize laws and economic policy with Greece and some of the other PIIGS? West Germany just integrated with East Germany and the experience was traumatic featuring massive transfers to East Germans. The PIIGS will still not be competitive with Germany. That means internal adjustments (internal devaluation or austerity) to allow them to become more competitive for the PIIGS’ or massive transfers. Thus unifying the Eurozone under a single fiscal policy means massive transfers from Germany to the PIIGS to harmonize the welfare states and unify the debt and avoid austerity throwing the entire Eurozone into depression. Germans will pay for the debt in one fashion or another.
Cullen Roche points out that in the US we don’t worry much about the need for internal transfers between states to keep the system sound. Today that is true, though it has led to large conflicts in our past, playing a role in civil unrest, uprisings, the conquest of a continent and near destruction of its former inhabitants and the Civil War. Our unity was easier to envision and still born of blood and tragedy.
I am not saying unification of Europe would lead to such tragedies and conflicts. However, we need to ask if Germany (or really all the countries) want to make the internal transfers that make such a system work? Germans would pay a great deal, Greece and the other PIIGS would suffer internal austerity to the extent that they contribute to the economic re-balancing. Do Europeans, or most importantly the Germans, view themselves as a people who will be responsible for paying all the bills to integrate the Greeks and others?
Are Europeans ready to think about their home countries in the same way Texans think of Texas? Their state, but completely subordinate to the US? Will they be able to secede? We answered that question in the US with a war of incredible savagery and destruction. My guess is a unified Europe would be far less stable. They will not choose a civil war comparable to the US, but instead countries leaving over time as well as never entering the union. That leaves us with all the problems we have now still being there. Without a European populace overwhelmingly in favor of a true union this will not work. We would be faced with a PIIGS like crisis with every election and the possibility of secession in each of the former countries.
The necessity of creating a union where there is no possibility of secession, where citizens are more loyal to the European sovereign entity than their own countries is incredibly unappreciated. Half measures will not work. If Texas were to get upset about staying in our own Union it would not matter how overwhelmingly popular the idea of leaving was in the Texas legislature, the US military will ensure that Texas stays a subordinate state. We decided that issue in 1865 at the cost of well over 600k casualties.
If a similarly firm enforcement of Eurozone union is not agreed to (and setting aside a war to force union) then why should the market assume the system will remain intact? Why consider the bonds issued by the various states, or the Eurozone as a whole, deserve a AAA rating? My belief is that eventually the Eurozone will suffer other crises as states face local elections that wish to leave for one reason or another. Critically Eurobonds and fiscal Union make it easier for countries to leave, since the debt will be the Eurozone’s, not theirs. They can leave and stick the remaining members with the bill. That is an incentive which virtually ensures instability.
Treaties don’t matter if there is no enforcement mechanism, and all enforcement mechanisms at the end of the day have to have a credible belief in military force behind them to matter. Otherwise those who wish to exit can just thumb their noses at whoever stays behind. Has there ever been a successful union where the underlying members could leave? Not that I am aware of.
There are no good options, only more or less realistic ones.
Observations: The QandO Podcast for 13 Oct 11
In this podcast, Bruce Michael, and Dale discuss Obama’s “Americans are lazy” comment, the failing EU. and the presidential race.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here. For podcasts from 2005 to 2010, they can be accessed through the RSS Archive Feed.
ECRI Changes Outlook From Slowdown to Recession: Updated with Official Statement at 11:25 AM CST
(Cross posted at Risk and Return)
Okay, I have been sitting on this since Monday, but last week ECRI changed their call from a severe global slowdown to an actual recession here in the US. It was just announced on Bloomberg radio:
He told Tom Keene that a recession is the “overwhelming message coming out of our forward-looking indicators.”
And more ominously: “It is not reversible.”
“The U.S. economy is tipping into a new recession,” he said, adding, “We don’t make these calls lightly.”
He cites “dozens of leading indexes for the U.S.” and “contagion in what is going on among those leading indicators. It’s wildfire, it’s recessionary, it is not reversible.”
The ECRI has been saying since June that a lasting and persistent global slowdown was inevitable and the view has been turning more and more negative. You can see video of Lakshman Achuthan discuss their conclusion in June here, and at the end of August here.
Last Wednesday, the Economic Cycle Research Institute issued its U.S. cyclical outlook, summarized with “Economy on Recession Track – The jury is in, and the verdict is recession.” We look at a lot of things in setting our own expectations, but we’ve found the ECRI to be very useful in confirming or questioning our own conclusions. While the ECRI’s weekly leading index went through a worrisome deterioration in 2010 and concerned us a great deal, ECRI itself never issued a recession warning. Last week, they did.
“Today, we must sound the alarm bells loud and clear. ECRI’s leading indices of U.S. economic activity have turned down in a textbook sequence – first the U.S. Long Leading Index, then the Weekly Leading Index, and finally the U.S. Short Leading Index. Their growth rates are also in cyclical downswings, as are the growth rates of every one of ECRI’s sector-specific leading indexes. Under the circumstances, there is no indication that a reacceleration in economic growth is near at hand.
“In the process of scrutinizing the evidence, we examined every one of these leading indexes to check whether they are in pronounced, pervasive and persistent (three P’s) downturns consistent with a ‘hard landing,’ namely, a recession, rather than a non-recessionary slowdown. After examining the three P’s for all of these leading indexes, we found that the overwhelming majority of their trajectories are currently in recessionary configurations. In practice, such a finding is sufficient to justify a recession call.
“A useful way to summarize the evidence we see pointing to recession is to examine the spread of weakness among the components of ECRI’s U.S. leading indexes of economic activity… In that context, the recessionary decline in a summary measure of numerous reliable leading indicators, coupled with an ominous drop in a broad measure of current economic activity representing facts, not forecasts, constitutes a compelling recession signal.”
We have felt that the chances of a recession were much higher than most not only for now, but as a general feature of the post 2008 crisis US and global economy. At this point we are scratching our heads as to why anyone would assume a recession will not occur in the US and in much of the world economy. While nothing is certain, we believe investors should at minimum consider carefully how much they are willing to see their portfolio decline and make sure their portfolio can stay above that mark should a recession occur.
Update: You can hear the entire interview on Bloomberg Radio here.
Update II: Here is the discussion on CNBC
Abnormal Returns has more thoughts on the call and what it might mean for markets. I think the downside is much further than the average of past recessions due to how far off earnings estimates will be given how stretched profit margins have been.
Here is the official statement from ECRI: