Tag Archives: GFC

How Long Has The Lucky Country Got?

31 Mar

Edward Chancellor is the author of the classic text on financial manias, Devil Take the Hindmost. In 2005 he wrote Crunch time for credit: An enquiry into the state of the credit system in the United States and Great Britain, in which he correctly predicted the GFC. His recent report for Boston-based GMO outlined ten signs of a mania in progress, and showed that the Chinese economy meets all ten of those signs. He has also written recently about the Australian housing mania.

From the Financial Times:

Between 1996 and 2006, US home prices rose by nearly 90 per cent in real terms. Australian home prices rose by roughly the same amount.

Over this period, the US private sector increased its indebtedness by two-thirds of GDP. Australian private debt increased by a similar magnitude. Over the past three years, US home prices have fallen by 30 per cent, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite Index. American households have started to deleverage. By contrast, Australian home prices have climbed 30 per cent since 2006 and households continue to pile on debt.

There are a number of explanations for this divergence…

While other governments expended their resources on shoring up busted banks, the Australian stimulus went straight to consumers. Fiscal transfers increased personal disposable incomes by 4 per cent, according to Professor Steve Keen of the University of Western Sydney. Canberra also bolstered the housing market, raising the subsidy for first-time home buyers to a maximum of A$21,000 (£12,200, €14,000, $18,600). Rising home prices arrested incipient deleveraging by Australian households. Outstanding mortgage debt has actually grown by 6 per cent of GDP since February 2009.

Australia may have been fortunate. But it is not out of the woods. For a start, the real estate market remains in bubble territory. Australian home prices are currently some 70 per cent above their long-term trend level. A recent survey by Demographia International finds that all of Australia’s major housing markets were valued at more than five times average incomes, and defines them as “severely unaffordable.” Initial mortgage payments for a home in Sydney or Melbourne are likely to exceed half of your disposable income, claims Demographia. The Australian housing market looks vulnerable to further rate rises.

Then there are the waning effects of the government’s stimulus to consider. The extra subsidy for first-time home buyers ended last year. The removal of this grant could have a similar effect on Australian real estate as the UK government’s reduction in mortgage interest relief in 1988, which killed off the frenzied Lawson housing boom. Prof Keen claims the first-homeowner’s grant has sucked people into the housing market who would not otherwise have bought. One report suggests many recent first-time buyers in Australia are already struggling to meet payments. This is eerily reminiscent of early stage delinquencies on subprime loans in the US back in late 2005. Australia is also exposed to the removal of China’s stimulus measures. China’s actions boosted commodity prices and improved Australia’s terms of trade. Now, Beijing appears more concerned about inflation and potential bad loans from uneconomic investments.

Aussie house prices have not fallen since the early 1950s. A certain complacency is therefore understandable. Yet not long ago many Americans also believed that domestic home prices could never fall. So far Australia has avoided its day of reckoning. But how long will the lucky country’s luck last?

Not long at all.

A recent survey of 26,000 mortgage borrowers showed that:

Almost half of first-home buyers lured into the market by the Rudd Government’s $14,000 grant are struggling to meet their mortgage repayments and many are already in arrears on their loans.

Thousands of young home buyers are using credit cards or other loans to meet obligations, while those in “severe stress” are missing payments.

Just weeks after the grant was withdrawn, a survey of more than 26,000 borrowers conducted by Fujitsu Consulting has found 45 per cent of first-home owners who entered the market during the past 18 months are experiencing “mortgage stress” or “severe mortgage stress”.

On Monday, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens appeared on commercial TV – an unprecedented act by an RBA official – to warn the public about the dangers of the property market.

On the same day, I came across the following comment by a reader of The Australian newspaper:

Waiting for the “correction” Posted at 1:22 PM Today

Now here’s something interesting. My “relationship manager” at Westpac says the housing market is heading for a “significant correction” because the major banks are about to insist on much higher deposits because of their alarm at the amount of questionable loans on their books. This guys says the word is that the Commonwealth will soon insist on a 30 per cent deposit for new purchases and then only to existing customers. “When that kind of thing happens, the heat will immediately go out of the market so stay out of it till the dust settles”. This bloke says Westpac is especially worried about the impact of the first home buyers grant and they’re already seeing significant loan defaults as interest rates rise. “These people took their $14-thousand, then got Mum and Dad to throw them the rest of their deposit because they were led to believe they’d miss the boat. Kevin Rudd has used taxpayer funds to entice a whole lot of young people into buying places they couldn’t afford and going bankrupt as interest rates rise”. That’s a direct quote from a guy at Westpac who used to be in the business of throwing money at you. God’s honour. Maybe the South Seas bubble IS about to pop?

To learn more about the dangers of debt, and how it has fueled the Australian housing bubble, visit the website and blog of Professor Steve Keen.

Special Note:

On April 15th through 23rd, I will be joining Professor Keen in his 230km “Keenwalk” from Parliament House to Mount Kosciuszko, in protest against Australia’s property (and debt) mania that has been driven directly by Federal Government and RBA policies.

Please consider joining us, for the whole trek or even just for an afternoon section of the walk.

If you’d care to assist a genuinely worthy cause, then please consider sponsoring Professor Keen, or indeed myself. Funds raised will support the wonderful charity Swags For Homeless.

Thanks!

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Only US Collapse Can Save The Euro

30 Mar

From Zerohedge:

For once, some actually good insight from a CNBC guest. Philip Manduca, Head of Investment of the ECU Group, discusses Greece and the very severe implications of what the final outcome will look like. “Trichet (Ed: President of the European Central Bank) said the Greeks are crooks, and they’ve been lying about the numbers. There is a deeply embedded corruption within the Eurozone. Combined with the endemic European socialism and there is just no way you are going to get spending cuts and tax raises and maintain a GDP that makes any sense of the percentage aspect of debt to GDP. So the whole show is wrong. This is an intractable situation, this is going to continue on and on. The only hope for the Eurozone, and the Euro as a currency, is that someone takes the spotlight soon, and that may be the United States.”

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We’re About To Discover That Sovereign Nations Can Go Bust Just Like Companies

30 Mar

From BusinessInsider:

Bill Gross (Ed: Head of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond trading firm) knocks the halo off of sovereign bonds in his latest March outlook.

He highlights how sovereign debt has been struck with more bad news than corporate debt lately.

While sovereign credit used to be generally considered more secure than that of private companies, suddenly the default of nations such as Greece, the U.K., or even Japan seems on the table, while that of many strong corporates remains remote.

What’s happening, according to Mr. Gross, is that government bonds are starting to look just like corporate bonds, rather than existing on some privileged less-risky peer as in the past. Because it’s anything goes and anyone can default in the new ‘unibond’ market.

Bill Gross commented that:

Government bailouts and guarantees such as those evidenced and envisioned in Dubai and Greece, as well as those for the last 18 months with banks and large industrial corporations across the globe, suggest a more homogeneous “unicredit” type of bond market. If core sovereigns such as the U.S., Germany, U.K., and Japan “absorb” more and more credit risk, then the credit spreads and yields of these sovereigns should look more and more like the markets that they guarantee. The Kings, in other words, in the process of increasingly shedding their clothes, begin to look more and more like their subjects. Kings and serfs begin to share the same castle.

Barnaby Joyce began raising questions about the possibility of ‘default’ by nations such as the USA last year. He was roundly ridiculed by all and sundry for doing so.

Unfortunately, no one raised the point that there is more than one way that a sovereign ‘default’ can occur. Historically, the most common form of ‘default’ is simply where the sovereign nation inflates away its debts. How? By destroying the value of its own currency:

Thus there are no longer any holy bond cows left in this world.

Heck, even U.S. bonds are subject to ‘stealth-default’ risk, which is simply the eating away of bond value over time via inflation and dollar depreciation.

Barnaby is right.

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‘Concentrated Risk’ Threat to Aussie Banks

29 Mar

From Contrarian Investor’s Journal:

We must confess, we are getting more and more nervous about the potential for a Black Swan hitting the Australian economy. Particularly, we are looking at a vulnerability in the banking system. Here are some facts about Australian banks:

  1. As at December 2009, around 75% of the Australian mortgage market is held by the Big 4 banks. 50% are held by Commonwealth and Westpac while 25% are held by ANZ and NAB. (source: CoreData’s Australian Mortgage Report Q1 2010)
  2. 60% of Commonwealth’s lending books are residential mortgages.
  3. 50% of Westpac’s lending books are residential mortgages.

Now, here’s an interesting news report from almost two years ago:

“The Reserve Bank of Australia has a dark worry about our banks: they get 90 per cent of their cash from each other. If one bank gets into trouble, the Australian financial system could be snap-frozen overnight.”

That is only one concern for Australia’s banking system. You know, the one that we are constantly reassured is “world-leading”, “safe and secure”, “the best in the world”.  The banking system that needed a Government (ie, taxpayer)  Guarantee on customer deposits since October 2008, to stop the “run on the banks” that threatened to collapse it.  The banking system that still has wholesale funds frozen to withdrawals, leaving hundreds of thousands of retirees destitute and forced to go back on the government (taxpayer) pension.

There’s also this concern. Australia’s banks have $13 Trillion in off-balance sheet business.  Yes, that’s Trillion with a ‘T’. But, they only have $2.59 Trillion in on-balance sheet assets.

From Money Morning:

We’re sure the banks and the RBA will claim that all the off-balance sheet business is completely offset, so that losses are contained. Personally, we don’t think you should believe a word of it. The number one risk with the off-balance sheet business is counterparty risk. As long as each counterparty can keep the ponzi scheme going then sure, everything will be tickety-boo.

But as we all know, that can’t happen. We’ve seen counterparties collapse before (Lehman, Bear Sterns, etc…) and they’ll collapse or need bailing out again.

There’s only so long that banks can keep the ponzi going. They’ve scraped through by the skin of their teeth thanks to an unprecedented bail-out by the taxpayer.

Our “world-leading” Big Four banking system is a total disaster just waiting to happen. And it’s all thanks to greed… and Debt.

Barnaby is right.

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Junk Bonds Record in ‘Goldilocks’ Market

29 Mar

From Bloomberg:

Junk bond sales reached a record this month as rising profits and record low Federal Reserve interest rates foster lending and investment to the lowest-rated borrowers.

Companies worldwide issued $38.3 billion of junk bonds this month, passing the previous high of $36 billion in November 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yields fell 0.95 percentage point this month to within 5.96 percentage points of government debt, the narrowest gap since January 2008, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show.

This is “an almost ‘Goldilocks’ environment for leveraged credit markets,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. analysts led by Peter Acciavatti, the top-ranked high-yield strategist in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual survey for the past seven years, said in a March 26 report to the bank’s clients.

This is very bad news.

There has been growing concern around the world that the sales of junk bonds prior to the GFC will lead to a junk bond apocalypse in 2012:

“An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,” said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s.

Private equity firms and many nonfinancial companies were able to borrow on easy terms until the credit crisis hit in 2007, but not until 2012 does the long-delayed reckoning begin for a series of leveraged buyouts and other deals that preceded the crisis.

Now, the ongoing Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) in the USA, and near zero interest rates in Japan and many other developed nations, has led to a new record in the sales of those same high risk ‘junk bonds’.

In other words, central banks and governments around the world are adding more fuel to the fire.

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China Says Greek Debt Crisis ‘Tip Of The Iceberg’

26 Mar

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The euro slumped Thursday to a fresh 10-month low after a senior Chinese central bank official warned that the Greek debt crisis was just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Analysts said the comments, and a debt downgrade for Portugal on Wednesday, suggested the crisis was widening to take in the entire eurozone project.

“The fact that Zhu Min, the deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, felt compelled … to call the Greek debt crisis ‘the tip of the iceberg,’ is as good an indication as any of how rapidly fundamental concerns are growing about the eurozone,” said analyst Neil Mellor at Bank of New York Mellon.

“Indeed, this comment might well signal the point that we stop talking about a ‘Greek debt crisis’ and start talking about a ‘Eurozone structural crisis’ instead,” Mellor said in a research note to clients.

Please take the time to browse the recent posts on this blog.

Our financial authorities – RBA Governor Glenn Stevens, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, and the Labor Government – are all convinced that the global financial crisis is ‘over’.

They have publicly declared that Australia is all set for a new, multi-decade mining boom (thanks to China), that will provide us with a “period of unprecedented prosperity”.

They have ridiculed Barnaby Joyce, our only politician with the courage to publicly raise questions about the state of the rest of the world’s economies, and what calamity that might mean for Australia, since last October.

And, all of them (except Barnaby) completely failed to predict the GFC in the first place.

Yet, our media and the public believe that everything is fine.  That the Government can just keep right on borrowing around $2bn a fortnight, to continue squandering on a massive, rushed and bungled “stimulus”.

Barnaby is right.

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China Facing “Boom, Bubble, Bust”

26 Mar

From BusinessWeek:

China appears on track for an “asset boom, bubble and bust” that may take three years to play out and probably won’t be thwarted by tighter economic policy, Citigroup Inc. economists said.

Citigroup joins hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, Gloom, Boom & Doom publisher Marc Faber and Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff in warning of a potential crash in China.

“What is policy in China doing about the threat of overheating in the financial and real economy?” Buiter and Shen said. “The short answer is: not much, and not enough to prevent the creation of what could become a major asset boom, bubble and bust.”

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Labor Less ‘Creative’ Than Greece

19 Mar

From the Korea Times:

The Greek crisis is a textbook example of the interconnectedness of the global economy and the foreign policy environment.

For most of the last decade, the Greek economy grew faster than others in the euro area. Yet, the country’s balance sheets worsened.

(Sound familiar?)

So, when the global recession hit, and the Greek economy contracted by 2 percent in 2009, international bond markets panicked, fearing that Athens was going to have trouble meeting its obligations. By mid-February the Greek government was paying three percentage points more to borrow money than the interest rate charged Germany, worsening the mismatch between Greek revenues and expenditures.

Wall Street bears some of the blame for this mess. Goldman Sachs and possibly other American financial institutions reportedly helped Athens understate its true indebtedness through the creation of innovative financial instruments.

The Rudd Government has used a more traditional way to understate our true indebtedness. ‘Creative accounting’. Or ‘cooking the books’.

First, Rudd Labor has made changes to the ‘methodology’ used for reporting Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  And they have applied those changes to all the previously reported Budget numbers too.  The result?  A “substantial increase” in Australia’s GDP.  As much as (eg) 4.5% per annum added to the real, inflation-adjusted GDP that was originally reported in the Howard Government’s 2006-07 Final Budget Outcome.

The benefit to Rudd Labor in making this “substantial increase” to GDP in the historical data, is that their spending (as a percentage of that GDP) looks lower.  Their annual spending growth (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower. Their debt (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower. And, their Interest-on-debt (as a percentage of GDP) looks lower too. This explains why Rudd Labor politicians always love to quote everything in percentages. “As a percentage of GDP”.

Second, Rudd Labor has also changed the ‘methodology’ used to calculate the inflation-adjusted value of ‘real’ spending growth.  This was a sudden decision, for the November 2009 MYEFO budget update. The result? The Rudd Government’s reported ‘real spending growth’ is a whopping 30.1% lower under their new calculation method.

Finally, Rudd Labor lies about the GFC whenever it needs to defend its massive spending spree. They have repeatedly told the public that “the GFC punched a huge hole in our projected revenues”.  But the official Budget documents show that this is a lie.  In the May 2009 Budget, the estimated government “Receipts” were only 2.7% lower than for the previous year.  And by the November MYEFO update, government revenues were expected to be slightly higher than for the previous year.

Please follow those links. View for yourself the actual Budget documents that show how Rudd Labor have ‘cooked the books’.

You will see that, unlike Greece, our Labor Government does not need to hide our true state of indebtness through the use of creative financial instruments.

They use good old-fashioned ‘creative accounting’ instead.

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China ‘Greatest Bubble In History’

18 Mar

From BusinessWeek:

China is in the midst of “the greatest bubble in history,” said James Rickards, former general counsel of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management LP.

The Chinese central bank’s balance sheet resembles that of a hedge fund buying dollars and short-selling the yuan, said Rickards, now the senior managing director for market intelligence at McLean, Virginia-based consulting firm Omnis Inc.

“As I see it, it is the greatest bubble in history with the most massive misallocation of wealth,” Rickards said at the Asset Allocation Summit Asia 2010 organized by Terrapinn Pte in Hong Kong yesterday. China “is a bubble waiting to burst.”

Rickards joins hedge fund manager Jim Chanos, Gloom, Boom & Doom publisher Marc Faber and Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff in warning of a potential crash in China’s economy.

And yet, RBA Governor Glenn Stevens, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry, and their many cheerleaders in the Australian media still believe that we are all set for another China-fueled mining boom, this time to 2050.

They failed to predict the GFC (see the many links in this blog for background).  That epic failure has cost Australians literally hundreds of billions of dollars in lost retirement savings and investments in 2007-2009.

So why should we trust their judgement now?

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ECB: Stark Warning of Eurozone Debt Crisis

17 Mar

From BusinessWeek:

European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said the euro region may face a sovereign debt crisis unless governments reduce budget deficits.

There is “a clear risk that we will enter a third wave,” which is “a sovereign debt crisis in most advanced economies,” Stark told lawmakers in the European Parliament in Brussels today.

In Australia, our government is continuing to increase our budget deficit, by refusing to withdraw its woefully incompetent and wasteful “stimulus” spending.

Even though we had no recession, and RBA Governor Glenn Stevens recently referred to 2008-09 as “the mildest downturn” we have had since WW2.

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