When Will Interest Rates Rise?

May 7, 2013 1 Comment

Everyone wants to know: when will long-term interest rates rise?

Are we so sure they aren’t rising now?

Let’s consider a few recent events: Microsoft recently raised $2 billion selling bonds. Soon after, Apple raised $17 billion selling bonds. These companies have historically shied away from borrowing long-term money. Microsoft has not sold debt since 1996. The last time Apple sold debt was 20 years ago.

They both have huge amounts of cash, but the interest rates on these instruments were ridiculously low for both companies. Investors wanted a slightly higher rate from Apple than from Microsoft. In any case, both normally debt-averse companies believe that now is the time to lock in low rates. These companies must believe that rates will stay low or rise. Either way, they do well at the expense of bondholders. If rates rise, then they have cheap borrowed money with which to cash in on the higher rates. They borrow at 4-5% and make double, triple, or more on that money. If rates fall, then they can buy back the bonds and reissue the debt at lower rates.

When asked about Apple bonds specifically, Warren Buffett said: “We’re not buying bonds of Apple — we’re not buying bonds of anybody. It has nothing to do with them being a tech company. The yields are too low.” Berkshire Hathaway has been selling corporate bonds over the last two years.

I had a spasm of intuition in reading about the above events. “Are we at or around the bottom”? It seems to be a fair interpretation that “smart money” is selling bonds, and “dumb money” is buying bonds. Look at corporate debt — can those rates seriously go lower?

FRED Graph

The economy is bad, but is it Great Depression bad? Apparently not, so maybe the rates can’t go any lower… for now.

This year, it seems those rates have been pushed up. Is fear of inflation creeping in there?

Look at the 30 year Treasury yield, which has fallen to insane lows post-2008. Yet at the right end of the graph, we see the rate trending upward despite Operation Twist.

Chart forTreasuryYield30Years (^TYX)

I am talking about long-term rates. Short-term rates are basically going nowhere. As I wrote last year, I believe this is because there is fear and “regime uncertainty.”

FRED Graph

Even so, data seems to indicate that real rates are climbing back into positive territory.

fed real int

CONCLUSION

While people can describe the conditions under which rates will rise, they cannot reliably predict when this will occur. It seems assured that anytime someone says with confidence, “Rates cannot get any lower,” the rates still get lower. If you want an example that baffles investors endlessly, look at Japan. There is a reason shorting Japanese government bonds is a trade known as the “widow-maker.”

I don’t want to be one of “those” guys, but I think we are around the bottom on long-term interest rates for this stage of the business cycle. I’m not making a “hard” prediction on this, because I think a recession will push rates down further. I think that recession will occur soon. However, it is theoretically possible to muscle through the recession with expansionary monetary policy and keep the “boom” going. The Fed is in full offensive mode. Short-term and long-term rates will rise if the Fed continues this policy and banks are no longer willing to stockpile excess reserves. In Canada, the BoC has been buying debt for Harper and the Conservatives, resulting in net increases in assets for two years. I interpret this to mean that both American and Canadian central banks are desperate to hold off recession.

“The yields are too low.”

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, CMR, Economics, Inflation, Investments Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Poloz Prepared to “Nourish” Economy. Translation: He Will Inflate

May 6, 2013 Leave a comment

Poloz thinks it will be necessary to “nourish” the economy.

To a Keynesian central banker from the EDC, this means “buy assets” i.e. inflate.

The boneheaded idea that this strengthens the economy is characteristic of cranks throughout history.

Currency depreciation cannot ever boost the economy. If Poloz were to announce that he will start expanding rate of growth in the money supply, the outcome on the foreign exchange market would be for other currencies to appreciate versus the loonie. Domestic producers would want to increase exports due to increased international demand, and would borrow from commercial banks to fund production at interest rates lower than otherwise. Resources would shift away from other industries into Canadian export industries. Exporters would record higher profits, but in real terms, the citizens of Canada would be getting fewer imports for each export. Basically, Canada would gain more foreign exchange, but they would get getting fewer real goods in exchange. Canadians in general would therefore become poorer.

And those higher exporter profits? As time goes by, monetary expansion would cause prices to rise and those artificial, subsidized profits would disappear. The end result is a weaker economy where resources have been misallocated due to credit expansion and interference with market exchange rates, and along the way some politically-connected export industries would make a bit of extra money.

Poloz needs to read Mises:

The much talked about advantages which devaluation secures in foreign trade and tourism, are entirely due to the fact that the adjustment of domestic prices and wage rates to the state of affairs created by devaluation requires some time. As long as this adjustment process is not yet completed, exporting is encouraged and importing is discouraged. However, this merely means that in this interval the citizens of the devaluating country are getting less for what they are selling abroad and paying more for what they are buying abroad; concomitantly they must restrict their consumption. This effect may appear as a boon in the opinion of those for whom the balance of trade is the yardstick of a nation’s welfare. In plain language it is to be described in this way: The British citizen must export more British goods in order to buy that quantity of tea which he received before the devaluation for a smaller quantity of exported British goods.

The Canadian dollar will surely suffer under Poloz’s governance.

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Currencies, Economics, Inflation, Money, Trade Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Mourn for the Lost Penny

May 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Every Canadian hated pennies. Even homeless street beggars hated getting pennies. If someone dropped a penny, they wouldn’t even bother to pick it up. Every Canadian seems happy that the penny is gone.

Sadly, Canadians do not realize how this loss is truly a tragedy, because it unequivocally shows how the government and the Bank of Canada have abused the monopoly over money. If you go to the BoC website, you can see that since 1914 the Canadian dollar has lost 95% of its value.

This is the inevitable result of the age-old credo of monetary cranks and inflationists. Mises wrote:

A very popular doctrine maintains that progressive lowering of the monetary unit’s purchasing power played a decisive role in historical evolution. It is asserted that mankind would not have reached its present state of well-being if the supply of money had not increased to a greater extent than the demand for money. The resulting fall in purchasing power, it is said, was a necessary condition of economic progress. The intensification of the division of labor and the continuous growth of capital accumulation, which have centupled the productivity of labor, could ensue only in a world of progressive price rises. Inflation creates prosperity and wealth; deflation distress and economic decay.

All this time, rather than having pennies lose value until they must be eliminated, pennies should have been increasing in value. We should have been able to buy more stuff with pennies today than 50 years ago. That is how a free economy with a stable money supply works. Money is saved and invested into more production. Workers create more goods, and so the monetary unit can purchase more stuff. Instead, the Canadian government and its central bank have distorted the economy and redistributed wealth by means of monetary policy. Monopolies are always bad, and a monopolization of money is the most dangerous of all.

The death of the penny should be a blaring wake-up call to Canadians. The Bank of Canada should be shut down, the government should abolish legal tender laws, and Canadians themselves should decide what their money should be. Otherwise, expect to someday bid farewell to nickels, dimes, and even loonies as the government continues its destruction of our currency.

— Read more at the Mises.ca —

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, CMR, Economics, Inflation, Money, Monopoly, Ottawa, Totalitarian Democracy Tagged with , , ,

Economic Ignoramus Stephen Poloz to Replace Carney as Bank of Canada Governor

May 2, 2013 1 Comment

So far, we don’t know much about Mr Poloz on a philosophical level.

Based on the little we do know, I think he is a bad choice. He has a PhD in economics, so he likely knows very little about economics.

We also know he has spent most of his life as a bureaucrat. Most of his career has been “public service” (cough cough) at the BoC and Export Development Canada. I’m sure he made lots of friends in the export industry there. Friends who will really appreciate a subsidy in the form of monetary inflation.

Back in late 2008, he wrote a commentary on the financial crisis. In essence, he appeals to animal spirits, like all Keynesians who are baffled by economic law. He blames it on nothing more than a change in psychology following the 9/11 attacks. Everyone had a “live for the moment” attitude, he says, and ultimately this created the housing bubble.

The first sign of failure in economic analysis is a reliance on nonscientific pop-psychology. He completely fails to identify the source of bubbles and account for why business cycles occur. The culpability of central banks is nowhere challenged. He pleads agnostic about the ability of economists to understand the cause of bubbles at all. He does not understand the Austrian theory of the business cycle.

Based on these facts, I can safely conclude he is an Keynesian/inflationist/mercantilist. Sort of like, well, all central bankers. He may prove to be better or worse than Carney. Only time will tell.

Ultimately, it matters only a little who is the head of the Bank of Canada. The system as such is the problem, and not so much the individual people in charge.

— Read more at BoC’s website — 

Filed under Banking and Finance, Bureaucracy, Central Banks, Currencies, Inflation, Money, Ottawa Tagged with , , , , , , ,

RRSPs Are a Government Trap

April 26, 2013 2 Comments

Tax season. Ugh. Around this time of year, you always get a lot of people chattering about how RRSPs are totally awesome.

Mises wrote that a fundamental category of human action is preferring goods now to goods later. That is why present goods cannot be traded for future goods unless they are discounted (hence the phenomenon of interest).

The government relies on present-orientation when it comes to tax-deferred retirement accounts like RRSPs. The government reduces the taxpayer’s suffering now — tax deferral — for the sake of a nebulous future benefits that may not materialize. As the saver puts more and more money into the account, the reluctance to withdraw the funds grows. Hence, RRSPs are a trap.

Everyone hopes they will be in a lower tax bracket when they withdraw from their RRSP. They always assume tax rates won’t be higher, and inflation will not push them into higher tax brackets. They assume won’t be victims of capital markets gone bad.

Think about what happens if there is an emergency while the markets are being hammered. Your assets will drop significantly in value, and yet if you are forced to sell them to raise money in a situation where you are already in a high tax bracket, you then you have to pay the taxes on your accrued capital gains/whatever at the same time. It would be pretty painful.

The government gets a sweet deal by having people siphon money into these tax-deferral (not tax-free) plans:

  • Annual reports to CRA about what you own
  • Regulatory control over what is an authorized investment
  • A massive supply of assets that can nationalized in a serious financial crisis
  • The government can change the tax code so you’ll be in a higher tax bracket than expected when you withdraw
  • Inflation will push you into higher brackets as time goes on
  • It becomes harder to escape the more money you put into it

Such accounts also drive greater levels of resources into government-approved investments. The over-investment this fosters will bring and even harsher day of reckoning: when a significant number of people decide to retire and start eating into their retirement accounts, the prices on these assets will fall quickly. There will not be enough bids to cover the offers at those high prices. Younger savers will fear long term implications and withdraw early. There will be too much risk and the entire RRSP system will be exposed as a dangerous scam.

Some will deny the possibility that the government would ever confiscate the assets in retirement accounts. But why wouldn’t they? There is ample historical precedent for confiscation. Heck, the United States nationalized its mortgage industry to “save the economy” just a few years ago. Why wouldn’t Western democracies do so with retirement accounts, under the pretense of protecting citizens’ hard-earned savings?

Of course, the confiscation would be sneaky. In a major crisis, retirement accounts would be devastated. The high (nominal) gains for long-term savers would diminish. A government would declare that the safety of people’s retirement cannot be left to the heartless whims of the market. Therefore, the government would nationalize those accounts and replace the assets with “loonie bonds” or some such thing. The bonds would have a “guaranteed” return of, say, 3%.

Those bonds would not be marketable and represent nothing more than an accounting trick by the government. Since the government would be broke, the retirement accounts would have to be covered with general revenues. It would simply be a huge transfer of wealth from younger people to older people. This completely distorts the natural state of society, where older people help the younger people, because they have more accumulated wealth.

Tax-deferral can be useful, but it is not risk-free. It is not even that favorable compared to the non-registered alternative. Your capital gains outside of the RRSP are taxed at 50% of your marginal rate. You can also offset capital gains with capital losses, which is not possible in the RRSP. You can also consider the option of selling losers at the end of the year to offset gains, and if they are still good investments, just buy them back after time frame required by the superficial loss rule.

A TFSA is a much better saving tool. You pay no tax on your returns (but you can’t offset with losses).

CONCLUSION

Do you trust the government? If so, then maybe the RRSP is right for you. If you lack such trust, then be careful about dumping piles of money into one. You’ll probably be regret it someday. Take responsibility for your after-tax income and don’t delude yourself into thinking the government is trying to do you a favor.

Filed under Banking and Finance, Economics, Investments, Regulation, Stock Market, Taxation Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Gold Delivery Denied! Paper Gold Is a House of Cards

April 24, 2013 1 Comment

A rich American man had gold in a segregated account in a Swiss bank. Or so he thought.

When he tried to get delivery of his gold, the bank refused. It said the central bank wouldn’t let them do it, because it was more than 200,000 euros worth of gold. So instead, the bank would settle with cash.

What’s going on here?

I don’t think it’s anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering regulations, as the bank says.

Over the years, banks have borrowed non-interest-bearing gold from gold owners, including central banks, at 1% or so, then sold it to buy higher-yielding bonds. It was a reliable trade for a long time. But as the banks have refinanced those loans, gold prices have climbed and many of those debt instruments have fallen in value. They cannot buy back the gold on the market at today’s prices, and the bonds in which they invested have suffered and cannot be sold without a loss.

The day of reckoning comes when these gold shorts cannot pay back the gold owners. This means many investors, including central banks that lent out their gold, will not get their gold back. Like our American friend who tried to take delivery from the Swiss bank.

Imagine the fallout when this spreads. The paper gold market is like a stick of dynamite. When it blows up, you don’t want to be holding it. Yet when this happens, the holders of actual physical gold will be very happy.

— Read more about this story at King World News — 

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Gold, Investments, Precious Metals

Trusting Bureaucrats and Politicians Will Cost You Money

April 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Before the financial crisis in Cyprus, the Cypriot president assured voters that the government would never seize their bank deposits.

Then guess what happened?

On April 4, CMR asked if the Canadian government would have a Cyprus-like response to a banking crisis, as was implied by the language of pages 144-145 of the new budget.

The government is trying to assure us now that they won’t steal your deposits to prop up an insolvent bank. Yet Mark Carney himself wouldn’t rule out the possibility.

“Canadian institutions have substantial unsecured debt obligations in the wholesale market and as well as other classes of capital, and they have substantial capital as well, so once you stack all of that up, regardless of whether one would look to reach into it … it’s hard to fathom why it would be necessary,” the Bank of Canada governor said.

“Hard to fathom”? That is not exactly what I’d call “comforting language.” Especially because this is from a guy who is wrong nearly every time he opens his mouth.

He admitted the queue of capital buffers for banks would likely include some types of deposits, but did not elaborate.

Yet Carney also referred to a response from Flaherty’s office, which stated:

“The ‘bail-in’ scenario described in the budget has nothing to do with consumer deposits and they are not part of the ‘bail-in’ regime. Under a ‘bail-in’ arrangement, a failing financial institution has to tap into its own special reserves or assets (which it has been forced to put aside) to keep its operations going.”

“Nothing to do with consumer deposits.” Okay.

Remember Rockwell’s Law: always believe the opposite of what state-officials tell you. If they say you have nothing to worry about, then you should start worrying.

But let’s say for the sake of argument deposits are supposed to be excluded from any proposed “bail-in” scenario. What is the bank going to do? Canadian banks are capitalized about as well as Lehman Brothers before things went bad.

Consider TD. They have $818 billion in assets. They have $768 billion in liabilities. Very little equity is available to withstand losses in asset value or income. All the big Canadian banks are like this. A tremendous amount of special reserves need to be put aside to withstand even a 10% drop in the value of a Canadian bank’s assets.

There will be more crises. Canadian banks cannot survive a crisis without a government bailout. Don’t take any comfort in anything coming out of Ottawa and the BoC.

— Read more about this story at CBC — 

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Taxation Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Australia to Join the World’s Orgy of Currency Debasement?

April 19, 2013 Leave a comment

Australia’s mining boom is fading. Demand from China is slipping. The economy is going to contract. Yet their dollar is strengthening.

Central bankers are Keynesian-mercantilists that get bent out of shape when their own currencies are “too strong.” Especially when the economy is threatening to slow down. The bureaucrats at the RBA are no different.

What are they going to do? Try to hold down the price of the Australian dollar. They will join Europe, Japan, China, America, and the Swiss in the frenzy of currency debasement.

This is… a bad idea. Yet it is to be expected, as are the negative consequences it will create.

It might be best to start trading your Aussie dollars for something better. For other currencies, few good choices exist. I used to like the yen before Abenomics. Now I like the Singapore dollar.

Hardly any central bank  can resist racing to the bottom. I don’t think Australia’s can resist.

— Continue reading at Sunday Morning Herald —

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Commodities, Currencies, Inflation, International, Intervention, Investments, Mining, Ontario, Trade

Mini-Review: CBC Documentary “The Secret World of Gold”

April 19, 2013 Leave a comment

On April 18, CBC aired a documentary called “The Secret World of Gold.” Though flawed, the program was interesting and covered many issues.

Here are some things talked about in the documentary:

  • The Bank of Canada has sold almost all our country’s gold over the last 30 years.
  • Underwater treasure hunts for gold.
  • Secret government deals to control gold.
  • Futures market manipulation (this was by far the weakest part of the show — the futures market is not explained and the case made for manipulation is very thin).
  • Buildings with gold windows.
  • Wars for gold.
  • How Chavez got all Venezuela’s gold back from the US and Europe
  • Gold shifting to the East from the West
  • Death gold from Nazi extermination camps (some of which was used to fill Hitler’s teeth — WTF).
  • Allocation of central bank gold holdings — who owns the gold? Is the gold even there?

Think about taking 45 minutes out of your weekend to check it out. You can watch it here for free, the only drawback is there are a few dumb CBC ads.

UPDATE: You no longer need to watch it at CBC. The copyright police got to “The Secret World of Gold” on YouTube, so it looks like you have to watch on CBC…

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Currencies, Economics, Gold, Imperialism, Inflation, International, Intervention, Investments, Mining, Precious Metals, War Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Is Now the Time to Get Out of the Stock Market?

April 15, 2013 Leave a comment

Last week gold and silver got killed, especially after the rumor hit that Cyprus would sell gold to get a big fat bailout (honestly I doubt that will happen).

The slaughter continued today. I am writing this with gold at $1365. Margin calls are probably dropping left and right.

Other commodities have fallen, including oil. Bonds have rallied recently. The 30-year Treasury offers less than 3%, which is pretty much completely crazy. Meanwhile, Canada lost 54,000 jobs in March — the worst employment update in four years.

To me, these are pieces of data which imply an economic correction trying to work itself out, rather than a rippin’ recovery. If these developments justify concerns about a slowing economy, then you want to be careful about the mainstream coverage about this gold panic, and their general frenzy about  buying stocks.

US stocks, which are the hot ticket these days, seem to me dangerously high. Corporate earnings in the US are 70% above their historical average due to massive fiscal profligacy by government and citizenry, and aggressive cost-cutting post-2008. Periods of strong corporate profits are never permanent and eventually regress towards the mean. Therefore it should be expected that future earnings and dividends will disappoint.

The Fed is struggling to perpetuate the error cycle and keep the ‘recovery’ going.

Meanwhile, the TSX is not performing well this year, after being one of the world’s worst stock markets in 2012. And the TSX-V — which is where all the most exciting action is — is going to get smaller. The average level of cash held by TSX-V-listed stocks has fallen from $4.3 million in mid-2011 to about $2.8 million now. This might not sound too bad because it is still several times higher than pre-2008 levels, but on a per-share basis, it is terrible. TSX-V companies have only about 2.8 cents per share as of last quarter, a drop of more than 50% in two years. Remember, these companies don’t usually generate their own cash flows from any operations, and cash is frequently their only good asset. All the while, TSX-V companies have doubled their liabilities per share — so when the nearly 2.6 cents per share is paid off, they are basically broke. So while this says nothing about any individual companies, it suggests the junior resource sector is going to come up on some hard times.

I absolutely expect Canada and the US to join the other developed nations suffering from recession.

If you hold stocks at this time, you should seriously think about just selling most or all of them. Be ruthless about keeping only the absolute best ones. Keep the balance in cash and patiently await buying opportunities as prices fall.

If you are a long-term believer in gold, this is clearly a huge buying opportunity. Gold could still fall another 10-15% before hitting a bottom, and it could take a 6-12 months to recover. I would like to point out that during the previous gold market, there was a 20% price drop in late 1978.  We know how that turned out. Yet, if the fundamental argument for gold is still sound, then today’s prices are a godsend.

Filed under Banking and Finance, Central Banks, Commodities, Economics, Gold, Investments, Oil, Precious Metals, Stock Market Tagged with , , , , ,

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