......The U.S., and other countries, have spent the last 20 years or so building up both sides of the balance sheet. Back in 2004-2005, newspapers were peppered with the fact that "household net worths were at a record high." And indeed, the newspapers were correct. The one important point left out by the press and one that I have focused on for years is that the net worth was induced by debt growth. At the consumer level, debts as a percentage of GDP are off the charts and growing parabolically

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I then read a lot about how liquid households were and how they would forever buy stocks and that liquidity wasn’t an issue. Again, I can’t argue with the part about loads of cash; what I do argue with is the amount of net cash. Think of the consumer as one big balance sheet with two bloated sides: increasing asset prices (real estate bubble) and increasing debt. When the assets decline, the debt remains.
This is how margin calls develop. So I will bring out a chart I haven’t used since 2001 that shows how much cash is available at the household level adjusted for debt. And there are only a few resolutions to large amounts of debt. You must service the debt, re-finance the debt, or default on the debt. Since re-financing, for now, is out of the question, this leaves servicing the debt and defaulting and I will highlight the consumer’s ability to service debt in the chart below.

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According to Ned Davis Research, "the household debt service ratio is an estimate of required debt payments to disposable income. The higher the burden, the less money consumers have left over to spend on goods and services and the more likely they will default." No wonder the Christmas season was so weak.
Imagine that the stock market is a car moving down the road that needs fuel to keep accelerating. If the tank, in this case liquidity (or better yet net liquidity) is on ‘E’, the market will stop accelerating or possibly stall out. The chart below, while slightly confusing, simply takes all of the ‘non-equity liquid assets,’ which includes checking accounts, CDs, money funds, savings accounts, corporate, foreign, municipal and U.S. Government Bonds and subtracts debt from that. As of September 30, 2007 that number stood at $10.451 trln dollars. The problem, of course, is that household liabilities stood at $14.157 trln, leaving net liquidity at minus $3.706 trln. Why is this important? Net liquidity is what drives secular bull markets.
To see how much liquidity there is relative to market values you simply divide assets (in this case the Wilshire 5000 Equity Index: a very broad equity index valued at $15.362 trln) and one finds that there is minus 24.1% liquidity to market value. That tank isn’t only on ‘E,’ it is below 'E.' Also of note is that in 1953, 1974, 1980, and 1984, the gas in the tank was near 70%. Now that is a full tank. Does this mean the market can’t go higher? Of course not. It simply suggests that the marginal dollar isn’t going to be able to move it as fast. The chart below says it all.

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In sum, the consumer is highly leveraged and fairly fully invested in stocks, which the chart below with data from AAII (American Association of Individual Investors) shows, and does have a lot of cash, with which if debt levels increase could eventually be a source of fuel for stocks. But the most glaring part of the pie chart to me is the 9% position in bonds, while Treasury yields fall, but as corporate bond yield rise (credit spreads are rising dramatically). So one has to wonder if that cash will go to pay off/service debt or into the capital markets. My guess is to pay down debt and consume less.
I first talked about debt deflation, because in a world built on a mountain of debt, an economic slowdown could result in a tough recession and/or deflation. Then I said that perhaps it could lead to hyperinflation, because if the U.S. continues to print money at nearly 20% a year, surely the dollar must collapse and international investors might demand higher and higher rates to own U.S. bonds.
This has happened in other countries, notably Germany and Brazil, but is it unimaginable that it could happen in the U.S.? This question lead me to the idea that the situation that the U.S. finds itself in is so unique that perhaps it will define history as opposed to history being its guide? Is it possible that this is the ‘Great American Debt Experiment’ and that 20 years from now, we will look back and see that this was history? To be frank, this is the way I am leaning.
For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why international investors (both foreign central banks and foreign institutions) kept buying U.S. bonds while the dollar kept plummeting. Under normal circumstances, the buyer would demand higher yields to compensate to the asset they own falling in price in their currency terms. To get an idea how many U.S. Treasuries they own, the number now stands at 51.7% of all marketable Treasuries, the highest on record. They have sailed through the magical 50% and now own the majority of U.S. Treasuries. Hardly enlightening, if you ask me.

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Of particular interest to me is that the rate at which they are purchasing Treasuries has diminished when using a 12 month rolling calculation. What are they buying instead? Corporate bonds, loads of them, on the order of $600 bln in the last year. This is as spreads blow out. It seems that international investors simply have an insatiable appetite for U.S. assets. Why? Because America is on sale in their currencies.
Imagine you are from the Middle East and your currency is essentially oil and you are buying currencies in deflated currencies, namely dollars. And companies like Merrill Lynch (MER), Citigroup (C), Morgan Stanley (MS) and UBS (UBS) need capital to fight off writing off the values of the low quality assets on their balance sheets.
These investors gladly walk in (the Chinese government, Singapore government and Abu Dhabi Bank have all done this just in the last month) to own parts of great franchises at very low levels in their own currencies. And this trend, I am afraid, is just beginning. If I had asked you five years ago if it were possible for Singapore to bail out the Union Bank of Switzerland, would you have believed me? The U.S.' destiny is firmly now in the hands of international investors and they are buying and will likely keep buying. Wouldn’t you?
I have constructed a chart dating back that shows just how cheap the dollar is compared to the DXY, which, according to Bloomberg, "indicated the general international value of the U.S. dollar." In 1995, the ratio was approximately 0.1, meaning that the DXY was valued at 10x the value of a barrel of oil, but today a barrel of oil buys 1.3 units of DXY, a stunning 13-fold increase. Yes, America is on sale.
Barrel of Crude Oil divided by the DXY (U.S. Dollar Index)

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For several years, I have been preaching to only take credit risk when you are paid to take credit risk. This concept really holds true for all sorts of asset classes including stocks and real estate. Generally speaking, buying into a parabolic move in prices in Japanese stocks, technology stocks, homebuilder stocks, real estate or Chinese stocks is a dicey proposition.
Like Twain said, "History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme."
We are without a doubt within a nasty, yet necessary, unwinding of the massive credit bubble that began in earnest in 1995, courtesy of the Greenspan Fed and now the Bernanke Fed. There are bailouts galore but none seem to be working, and in my opinion, simply forestall the inevitable.
So what to do? There is a phrase that goes "Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows." This is the key to understanding when to participate in the credit markets again. The credit market is like a top that was spinning, very balanced, but has begun to wobble.....But something tells me this game is far from over and despite the fact that spreads have widened dramatically, an unwinding of an unprecedented credit bubble should be, well, unprecedented. So I will continue to wait and see, but what lies on the other side of caution is opportunity. I live by the age old adage of "Buy from the fearful and sell to the greedy."
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