Las bolsas estadounidenses se
han vuelto a los máximos del año pasado de un tirón. El correctivo de diciembre
ha sido borrado de un plumazo. Hay optimismo y lejos quedan esos miedos de la
recesión… No aprendemos nada. O no hay alternativa de inversion a la bolsa…
After the 2008 crisis forcefully shoved
the faces of most countries directly into the mess they had created, most major
global economic participants arrived at the obvious conclusion that
since debt caused the crisis to begin with, a deleveraging was necessary in
coming years.
But instead, just the opposite has
happened, according to Bloomberg: central banking cowardice and flawed
monetary policy have, over the last decade, dug the world deeper into the hole
it was in prior to the crisis. In the U.S., for instance, debt has shifted
between industries, but it has not gone away. China, once relatively
responsible in its debt positioning, has now emerged as the newest bastion
for taking on debt to encourage growth.
Here's a graphic representation of debt in
2007:
And where we stood in 2018:
It was well known in Wall Street circles
that there was simply too much leverage prior to the 2008 crisis. Bankers would
reportedly compare U.S. household debt to GDP against the personal saving rate,
which painted a clear picture of the chaos that would be coming. Here's how
those numbers stacked up during 2008, versus where they are today:
Heading into the financial crisis,
consumers were overlevered as low rates allowed them access to cheap credit
- sound
familiar? At the same time, European banks were suffering
meaningful losses.
Of course, nobody likes a
deleveraging, no matter how absolutely necessary it is: it's uncomfortable,
generally results in underconsumption and it leads to collapsing economic
growth. So instead of dealing with that discomfort, post-crisis, central banks
just cut rates leading to even
more leverage. In addition, the world discovered a new
"borrower of last resort" in China, whose debt has skyrocketed over
the last decade, putting it alongside of the U.S. as leaders in global
debt.
By 2008, household debt accounted for
98% of U.S. GDP. While spending excesses
have been reined in to some degree, the country is seeing new types of debt
come to prominence. Auto
loans and student loans, for instance, have doubled since the crisis, moving
from $1.36 trillion to $2.73 trillion.
The news isn't all terrible. If you're a
perma-bull (or you work for the New York Fed) and are looking for one metric to
hang your hat on, you could note that housing debt is lower than it was ten
years ago, and Helocs have declined sharply. And as banks have offered more
credit to card holders, balances haven't been rising in concert - yet.
And (for
now) banks seem to be on better footing. After the crisis,
banks in the U.S. deleveraged as the government stepped in to rescue them.
Since being re-regulated, they have used low rates to put their financial
houses back in order. It's
amazing how trillions of dollars in freshly printed bailout money and low rates
can really shore up a bank's debt to equity ratio.
Banks in Europe have also started to
deleverage. Germany has seen its banking assets go from 3x its GDP to about 2x
its GDP now. And many of the big banks in Europe are too large for their
respective governments to ever step in and rescue them, should the situation
again warrant it. Banks in the euro zone over the last decade have
cut back their assets by an amount equivalent to the region’s entire GDP.
Non-bank corporations were less leveraged
entering the 2008 crisis than they were at the beginning of the decade. Since
then, new debt has outpaced the free cash that these companies have been
generating - especially companies that make up the Russell 2000 index. This
could suggest further vulnerabilities going forward.
Perhaps the most frightening detail is
that companies rated BBB+, BBB, or BBB- (the three lowest grades before
they would hit “junk” status and be faced with higher interest payments) now
outnumber companies with some level of debt rated A. Companies appear to be purposely
toeing the line between BBB- and junk, trying to take on as much debt as
possible before getting downgraded. From the below chart, you can see how it
looks like companies are "pushing it":
Abrazos,
PD1: El Señor predicaba con la
palabra, y con obras, con el ejemplo, dando testimonio, incluso entregando su
propia vida. Igual hemos de hacer nosotros. No nos podemos quedar sólo en las
palabras: hemos de concretar nuestro amor a Dios y a los demás con obras. Nos
pueden ayudar las Obras de Misericordia, siete espirituales y siete corporales,
que nos propone la Iglesia. Lo que sea, pero que en las obras se nos note que
somos cristianos, en nuestro hablar y en lo que hacemos cada día…
