Economic Perspectives to Start the Weekend

"The obvious solution to both dollar weakness and higher yields is to move quickly towards a more balanced budget once a sustained recovery is assured, but don’t count on the former or the latter. It is probable that trillion-dollar deficits are here to stay because any recovery is likely to reflect “new normal” GDP growth rates of 1%-2% not 3%+ as we used to have. Staying rich in this future world will require strategies that reflect this altered vision of global economic growth and delevered financial markets. Bond investors should therefore confine maturities to the front end of yield curves where continuing low yields and downside price protection is more probable. Holders of dollars should diversify their own baskets before central banks and sovereign wealth funds ultimately do the same. All investors should expect considerably lower rates of return than what they grew accustomed to only a few years ago."

Bill Gross, quoted by John Mauldin


"The causes of economic weakness are largely unchanged and widely known:

• De-leveraging by consumers (paying down debt, voluntarily or involuntarily), leading to reduced consumption and increased saving
• De-leveraging by companies, leading to reduced investment
• Reduced supply as well as demand for credit, constraining even those who want to borrow and spend
• Continuing falls in real estate prices

This combination of reduced spending and reduced credit has sharply depressed aggregate demand, creating a classic vicious cycle where reduced demand leads to reduced economic activity which leads to reduced spending power via increased unemployment and reduced corporate profits. In addition, concerns about financial system solvency are constraining the ability of financial institutions to supply the credit needed by the economy. There will likely be a rolling wave of defaults and debt restructurings in the US and around the world over the next couple of years; this is hard to avoid and constitutes a major reason why the recovery will be slow compared with previous recessions."

Baseline Scenario

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