Gross Says U.S. Must Spend to Avoid Mini Depression
Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., said the U.S. may slump into a “mini depression” unless policy makers spend trillions of dollars to spur growth.
“This economy needs support from the government, a check from the government in the trillions,” Gross said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from Pimco’s headquarters in Newport Beach, California. “There is a potential catastrophe if the U.S. government continues to focus on billions of dollars.”
President Barack Obama has proposed a stimulus package intended to spur growth estimated at as much as $900 billion. The U.S. economy shrank by 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1982 as consumer spending recorded the worst slide in the postwar era, the Commerce Department said last week.
Pimco won a Federal Reserve contract in December as one of the four managers of a $500 billion program to purchase mortgage-backed securities. The company was also one of the managers selected to run the Commercial Paper Funding Facility in October.
The Fed will have to step in and buy Treasuries, Gross said, to keep long-term interest rates low as the U.S. increases its debt sales to finance a growing budget deficit and stimulus programs. Central bank officials said Jan. 28 they were “prepared” to buy longer-term Treasuries.
‘Significant Day’
Government borrowing will probably reach $2.5 trillion during the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Speculation has risen that China, which holds $681.9 billion of Treasuries as the single largest investor in U.S. debt, may stop or slow the purchases of U.S. debt as its own economic growth slows.
“To the extent that the Chinese and others do not have the necessary funds, someone has to buy them,” Gross said. “It is incumbent upon the Fed to step in. If they do, that will be a significant day in the bond market and the credit markets.”
Gross, 64, increased his holdings of U.S. government debt, a category that includes agency securities, in December for the first time in a year, according to the company’s Web site. He said today that he will not buy Treasuries.
Gross manages the $132 billion Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest bond fund. The fund gained 4.8 percent last year and has outperformed 99 percent of its peers over the past five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The average government and corporate bond fund lost 8 percent in 2008, Bloomberg data show.
Pimco is a unit of Munich-based Allianz SE, Europe’s largest insurer.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen Hays in New York at khays4@bloomberg.net Dakin Campbell in New York at dcampbell27@bloomberg.net
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