LATE STAGE DELEVERAGING

Late Stage Deleveraging

6/13/2019

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Bill Gross of Janus Capital commented on... his recent investors’ letter (emphasis added is ours Macro-Ops.com):

“What readers should know is that the global economy has been powered by credit – its expansion in the U.S. alone since the early 1970’s has been 58 fold – that is, we now have $58 trillion of official credit outstanding whereas in 1970 we only had $1 trillion.”

There is a phase in the debt cycle when revulsion sets in.

At the end of the business cycle there are three forces at work:
1) Rising interest rates sap demand and raise the cost of capital.
2) At the same time, according to capital theory, future returns decline due to over capacity.
3) While demand is decreasing and there’s a glut of supply, the herding nature of market participants create euphoric sentiment that drives expectations (and market prices) well past likely outcomes.
This process is what forms a market top. Alex Barrow Co-Founder of Macro Ops

The chattering class continues to opine about whether rates will rise or continue to be stomped on by central banks. Meanwhile the yield curve is telling us that the monied class is rejecting long term debt amortization in favour of short term rates where the cost of borrowed capital is the cheapest. Long term planning is at risk.

Looking at Federal Direct Investment in Canada, future returns are moot if there is a continuation of the last 20 years of foreign direct investment in Canada that has remained negative relative to Canadians making direct investment offshore to get a better return on capital and labour. Global over capacity means that our export markets for goods and services are price marked to global markets.

With respect to the third point above and concentrating on the wrecked affordability of housing in Canada, the FOMO herd is facing waning sales and waxing inventory and the current low cost of borrowing is no longer a stimulus to enter into risk positions. And this is playing out now in Canada's poster province ground zero metro and Demographia's international runner up: Vancouver.

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The household debt service ratio, measured as total obligated payments of principal and interest on credit market debt as a proportion of household disposable income, edged up to 14.9% in the first quarter (2019), as total obligated debt payments grew at a faster pace than disposable income.

Mortgage interest payments (+4.0%) have outpaced mortgage principal payments (-0.4%) as a result of higher interest costs, continuing a trend since the second quarter of 2018.

Household credit market debt as a proportion of household disposable income remained at 177.6% in the first quarter, as debt and income grew at similar rates.

In other words, there was $1.78 in credit market debt for every dollar of household disposable income.
StatsCan June 13, 2019,

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