Showing posts with label bond spread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bond spread. Show all posts

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Last Step Before QE

What more can the Fed do? Quantitative easing is next, I guess. As if the Fed's balance sheet didn't look bad enough. The only good news about the Fed rate cut is the weakening of the dollar. This should bolster commodities a bit, plus it will quiet the deflationary spiral panic monkeys.

See:
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/explainer/2008/12/16/bernanke-s-blowout

What can't the Fed do? Fix the economy. The problems are now systemic. The spread between the corporate bond (Baa) and 10-year Treasuries is around 6 percentage points (http://www.treas.gov/offices/economic-policy/macroecon/monthly_economic_data.pdf), which means the perception that corporations will fail is extremely high. Think of it another way, corporate bonds are now giving much greater returns than shares of equity. I thought several months ago that there might be a bit of a bond bubble. Looks like it has arrived. The good thing about a bond bubble is that it can only burst with widespread corporate defaults. If that happens, get a gun because chaos will reign when unemployment hits 20% or so.