Fra Bill Gross, Janus Capital, nyhedsbrev, som kan læses her i fuld længde
It’s monetary policy where the battleground for evolutionary ideas is taking place, as the Fed begins to recognize that zero percent interest rates increasingly have negative, as well as positive consequences. Historically, the Fed and almost all other central banks have comfortably relied on a model which assumes that lower and lower yields will stimulate not only asset prices but investment spending in the real economy. With financial assets, the logic is straightforward: higher bond prices and stock P/E’s almost axiomatically elevate markets, although the assumed trickle-down effect leading to higher real wages has not followed suit. In the real economy, it seemed almost straightforward as well: if a central bank could lower the cost of debt and equity closer and closer to zero, then inevitably the private sector would take the bait – investing in cheap plant + equipment, technology, innovation – you name it. “Money for nothing – get your clicks for free”, I suppose. But no. Not so.
Corporate investment has been anemic. Structural reasons abound and I have tried to convey that ever since my well-advertised New Normal, in 2009, which introduced the probability of a future generation of low real growth due to aging demographics, tighter regulations, and advancing technology permanently displacing workers. But there are other negatives which seem to be directly the result of zero bound interest rates. 3 month Libor rates have rested near 30 basis points for 6 years now and high yield spreads have narrowed and narrowed again in the quest for higher investment returns. Because BB, B, and in some cases CCC rated companies have been able to borrow at less than 5%, a host of zombie and future zombie corporations now roam the real economy. Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” – the supposed heart of capitalistic progress – has been neutered. The old remains in place, and new investment is stifled. And too, because of low interest rates, high quality investment grade corporations have borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars, but instead of deploying the funds into the real economy, they have used the proceeds for stock buybacks. Corporate authorizations to buy back their own stock are running at an annual rate of $1.02 trillion so far in 2015, 18% above 2007’s record total of $863 billion.
But perhaps the recent annual report from the BIS – the Bureau for International Settlements – says it best. The BIS is after all the central banks’ central banker, and if there be a shift in the “feed a fever” zero interest rate policy of the Fed and other central banks, perhaps it would be logically introduced here first. The BIS emphatically avers that there are substantial medium term costs of “persistent ultra-low interest rates”. Such rates they claim, “sap banks’ interest margins…cause pervasive mispricing in financial markets…threaten the solvency of insurance companies and pension funds…and as a result test technical, economic, legal and even political boundaries.”
