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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (19520)	12/25/2004 12:23:14 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

Long-Term Rates Pivotal for World Economy Sat Dec 25, 2004 07:55 AM ET By Mike Dolan, U.S. Economics Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cheap long-term borrowing provided the glue that held the world economy together this year, but the risk of its sudden disappearance could see an otherwise upbeat outlook for 2005 come unstuck. Among the myriad influences on the global economy, it is hard to overestimate the pivotal role that persistently low U.S. 10-year borrowing rates (US10YT=RR: Quote, Profile, Research) have had in fueling the most rapid world expansion in three decades. U.S. households have once again been the big drivers of the global economy -- firing the domestic economy and providing a seemingly insatiable demand for the produce of the world's exporting countries whose domestic consumers remain cautious. But, apart from maintaining cheap financing for durable goods such as automobiles, low long-term rates supercharged a U.S. housing boom that saw national house price indices rise at a 20 percent annual clip in the third quarter of this year. Experts believe this feeling of greater wealth is a primary reason why U.S. consumers have virtually stopped saving any of their after-tax income -- just 0.2 percent in October. Economists at Merrill Lynch said the housing boom triggered one of the largest savings drawdowns in history this year. They estimate that a $70 billion drop in savings flow in the third quarter alone added more than two percentage points to gross domestic product growth during those three months. WILL IT LAST? A persistence of such low long rates in a year of rapid growth and rising central bank interest rates mystified many. Mark Cliffe, chief economist at ING Financial, dubbed the bond market performance this year "the Great Bear Mystery." "What turns this story into a mystery is economic growth turned out in line with expectations and inflation substantially higher," he said. "The plot thickens if we consider the U.S. dollar was weaker and oil prices much higher than anticipated." Despite inclement conditions for bonds, U.S. Treasury yields -- benchmarks for dollar borrowing for countries and companies worldwide -- are set to end 2004 lower than 2003. A Reuters poll of market experts held one year ago expected 10-year rates to be 5.10 percent by now. But at 4.20 percent on Wednesday they were almost a point lower than that. More puzzling is that long rates will end the year down despite the Federal Reserve's five quarter-percentage-point rate rises since June to bring official rates to 2.25 percent. Last year's forecast was for Fed rates to be half a point lower than that by now. Rates also remain low in the face of a rising national debt and the possibility that President Bush may issue trillions of dollars in bonds to fund transition costs associated with partial privatisation of social security. From an asset-allocation perspective, equity seemed more attractive. World stocks rose 15 percent this year. Yet, 10-year rates are still 2.5 percentage points below levels of early 2000 and almost half peaks of 10 years ago. Several reasons are offered. These include Fed credibility and subdued inflation expectations; modest job creation and brisk productivity growth; simmering geopolitical risks fueling demand for "safe" assets; and an oil price shock that was seen as a tax on growth rather than aggravating inflation. But the sheer dominance of about half a dozen foreign central banks, mainly Japan and China, in buying U.S. bonds as a way of banking dollars accumulated in currency intervention makes them the most suspicious culprits. They bought up to $300 billion of bonds alone this year -- funding about two thirds of the entire annual U.S. budget deficit in the process -- as they staged a fierce fight to prevent a dollar decline sapping export-dependent economies. Some experts say this additional demand for Treasuries -- which is regardless of market value or economic outlook -- has depressed long-term yields by up to two percentage points. And they reckon it is only a matter of time before foreign central banks, worried about overly-concentrated holdings of U.S. debt, lower their purchases of dollars and Treasuries. "The question in my mind is not whether this is going to reverse at some point, but only whether it will unravel in 2005 or 2006," said Nouriel Roubini, economics professor at New York University's Stern Business School. A U.S. current account deficit in excess of 5 percent of national income, meantime, is piling pressure on the dollar. As the dollar (=USD: Quote, Profile, Research) falls and central banks, including Japan and South Korea, temper their battle to buoy the greenback, bond demand may wane and a spike in long rates is a real risk. "A saving-short, asset-dependent U.S. economy needs higher real interest rates to temper excess consumption," Morgan Stanley's head global economist Stephen Roach wrote last week. "To the extent that a further decline in the dollar sparks such an adjustment, the U.S. will have taken an important step on the road to global rebalancing." © Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved. reuters.com