Juggling Dynamite

Excellent piece from John Hussman this week.  Read  The coming Fed-induced pension bust: “We strongly encourage investors to continue to save in a disciplined way, but nothing forces investors to allocate these funds to speculative asset classes.”  Unbiased, informed, commonsense, risk-management insights–so very rare and so valuable.  Here’s some highlights:

“All of this is tied together: zero interest rate policy, speculative yield-seeking, pension underfunding, financial bubbles, malinvestment, crisis, and economic stagnation. The intentional distortions created by wholly experimental monetary policy carry a great deal of responsibility for these outcomes. The global financial economy has been pushed to such reckless speculative extremes that the ability of this house of cards to survive even a quarter point increase in short-term interest rates is a subject of serious and uninterrupted debate.

The Fed has done enormous violence to the public, and to the underlying stability of the financial markets, not only by encouraging a reckless yield-seeking financial bubble as the response to a global financial crisis that resulted from the previous Fed-induced yield-seeking bubble; not only by driving the financial markets to the point where poor long-term returns and wicked interim losses are inevitable (the same dangers investors faced at the 2000 and 2007 peaks); but also by creating an environment where scarce savings have been increasingly diverted to speculative activities, and where pensions have been encouraged to underfund their liabilities in the belief that past realized returns are indicative of future outcomes.

Despite the dismal 10-12 year prospects for conventional portfolios, we strongly encourage investors to continue to save in a disciplined way, but nothing forces investors to allocate these funds to speculative asset classes.

…The tide will turn, as it always has in complete market cycles across history, and as investors discovered during the market collapses of 2000-2002 and 2007-2009. The erasure of realized past returns will restore reasonable prospects for future investment, as other retreats have done. Meanwhile, keep saving, reach for umbrellas, fasten your seat belt, and brace for the consequences and eventual opportunities that the current recklessness will bring.”

“Freedom 55” was a marketing slogan from the financial sales industry that arose during the late, great secular bull that ran from 1982-1999 and encouraged people to spend too much and save too little while banking on risky financial bets to make up capital deficits.  The real estate/mortgage business has also done a great job of convincing people that borrowing and buying expensive real estate is ‘investing’.  Scotiabank’s “You’re richer than you think” slogan to encourage borrowing and high risk/high fee securities is just one repulsive example.  It may have seemed like magic, but none of this was ever a realistic sustainable financial plan. Unfortunately, the masses have been very slow to see the truth. As Mark Twain once said: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

A third of Canadians who don’t have an employer pension are reaching their mid-sixties without enough in retirement savings, forcing them to keep working. Here is a direct audio link.

The best plans are grounded in realism. People have to want to be defensive and proactive in their own financial health. For my summary of some tangible steps, see: Commonsense financial management.

Many good points made in this speech. What is missing in the history recited (as usual), is the reality that the credit bubble first ballooned housing and financial assets to unsustainable levels that encouraged households and pensions to undersave and make bad investment decisions on risky bets. Individuals and government revenues rejoiced in the run up and were decimated by the run down. To make wiser choices, we have to acknowledge both sides of the equation and govern our animal spirits accordingly. This takes an appetite for foresight and personal fiscal discipline before bubbles burst. Grown ups don’t have to be helpless victims.

Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered a floor speech on May 23, 2016 on Republican efforts to roll back new protections for retirement savings.  Here is a direct video link.