Juggling Dynamite

Investment grade bond yields have been falling in tandem with global growth forecasts over the past 7 months again, leaving the consensus, who are expecting a pick up in inflation, on the wrong side of the trade.

This segment offers a good summary of some of the reasons that present inflation expectations are likely to continue to over-estimate as demand and growth continue to slow. Here is a direct video link.

The largest factor not mentioned in the clip however, is debt. Debt is future consumption denied, and the world has tried to borrow its way out of the debt crisis of 2007-08 by adding on trillions and trillions of more debt every year since. The weight of this debt at all levels of the economy now from households to governments and large cap business has left a large hole in potential demand over the next few years. This means, slower growth and disinflation, not to mention necessary deflation in financial assets as markets finally recouple with the reality that the world economy is driven by customers not central bankers.

Danielle was guest today with Kerry Lutz on The Financial Survival Network talking about recent trends in the world economy and markets.  You can listen to an audio clip of the segment here.

It was one thing when the world was in love with high tech shares in 2000 or with US banks, home-builders and construction materials in 2007. Those were extremely dangerous times to be sure and many oblivious and greedy “investors” deservedly learned brutal lessons of loss. But seniors and risk averse people still had a reasonable investment option back then. Interest rates at both of these prior market peaks were still within the normal range and savers could still earn 5% in guaranteed bank deposits and investment grade bonds without facing high risk of loss.

Today cash rates are less than 2% and even locking into 20 or 30 year government bonds will earn less than 2.7% interest. The madness of zero-interest rate central bank policies the past 5 years, has increasingly corralled gullible throngs into the arms of investment “advisers” who have sold them over-valued bank shares, sector ETFs and mutual funds at the most extreme valuations seen to date (see chart below of the Canadian bank index ETF).

Since  these “conservative, dividend-paying” bank shares lost 50% in both of the last down cycles, the carnage this time threatens to be even deeper and more wide spread than in 2001-02 or 2008-09. Only this time, victims will be even more exposed, that much older and less able to recover or make ends meet.