Treasury bulls like lemmings headed for a suicidal cliff dive?
The Long March toward the destruction of the creditworthiness of the United States of America took a Great Leap Forward today, or perhaps we should say “one small step for Paulson, one flying leap for mankind.” The Treasury announced and carried out 2 same-day surprise auctions of medium term notes totaling $20 billion. They announced 2 more auctions of similar paper for another $20 billion tomorrow. The market choked on its vomit. 5 year yields rose 22 bp on the day, and at one point were up 50 bp from the low of the day, which came right after the open when the market was digesting the meaningless worldwide central bank coordinated rate cut.
The Fed action in cutting the Fed Funds target to 1.5% was merely rubberstamping the action it had already taken a couple of weeks ago when it first flooded the system with cash and drove Fed Funds rates into the ground. Today they just made it official that they intend to pursue aggressively reflationary policies of monetizing virtually anything. What next after commercial paper? Baseball cards? Monopoly money?
Lee Adler
The Wall Street Examiner
Ironically, today they had to pump in $20 billion via OMO as Fed Funds soared on Tuesday to nearly 3%. I suspect that they will have ongoing difficulty trying to peg actual Fed Funds trading to anywhere near the target rate.
The Treasury market’s problem is not theoretical. It’s not about the threat of investors discounting future inflation. It’s much simpler than that. It’s about simply choking on a barrage of new Treasury supply that’s running between $100 and $200 billion every week! There is no way that stocks, or corporate bonds, or GSE paper, or munis can compete with this supply. Today we saw first signs that the market can’t even absorb just the Treasury supply. As the interest rates rise on Treasuries as a result, we will be facing an unimaginable economic environment, one in which the world rightly questions the ability of the US Government to service its obligations.
The Fed is converting these Treasury funds into loans on, and purchases of, securities and loans, at least some of which are certain not to be repaid. We are now backing our money with assets that may never be able to be liquidated. A time is now virtually certain that there will be no realistic way to pay off the debts the Treasury is now incurring.
As the market begins to realize this, we may face the ultimate collapse, the collapse of US Government finance. Ultimately the world as we know it will be changed in ways that we cannot imagine. Even if the US Government were to reverse course now and say, flat out, no more bailouts, no more Treasury borrowing to finance bailouts, it’s probably already too late.
It’s one thing to allow private capital markets to fail. It’s another thing entirely to foster, foment, and cause the failure of government. A loss of confidence in financial markets is one thing. A breakdown of confidence in government would mean societal changes that we never dreamed of. |
