Insolvency Too
October 5, 2010
As readers know, I was in Europe a few weeks ago, making a LOT of presentations. My London-based partners seem to feel that an hour or two of down time is wasted and only for sissies. I learn as much as I impart, and come away with lots of interesting information. Every now and then I learn something that gets into the category of what in the wide, wide world of (multiple expletives deleted) economics is going on? Subprime was like that when I first read about it. Could you really design CDOs that were so patently absurd and then sell them to the Europeans and Asians? Turns out you could.
Last week, Niels Jensen (head of Absolute Return Partners) and I were talking with a variety of pension funds. They started telling us about this thing called Solvency II. Outside the arcane world of European pension funds and insurance companies, it is not on the radar screen of most people. But it may be one of the more explosive problems in our future. Cutting to the chase, the new rules require insurance companies and pension funds to buy more bonds to match their liabilities. But as yields go down they are required to buy yet MORE bonds and then yields go down some more. And so on. The possibility of serious defaults by these same pension funds in the wake of these new rules (setting aside whether it makes sense to actually require pension funds to set aside enough assets to pay their obligations) is all too real. And more pervasive than we now think.
Niels, in his latest Absolute Return Letter, wrote up what we learned, and it is Today’s Outside the Box. Wonder why yields in Europe are falling? Read on.
One quote:
“I am not sure if policy makers understand how potentially dangerous this situation is. We are on the road to insolvency. And, even if pension providers manage to stay solvent, future generations of retirees are likely to run into serious financial difficulties as their retirement savings earn next to nothing, because our political leaders forced new rules on the industry, the implications of which they did not grasp.”
(You can read more of his work at www.arpllp.com and look at the absolute return funds on their platform by writing to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
I know, I am just a bundle of fun. But this really is stuff we should be aware of. And tomorrow I am off to discuss this and more (with some serious play time thrown in) at the Barefoot Ranch Symposium. Enjoy your week!
Your ready for some R&R analyst,
Running through a minefield, backwards
July 27, 2010
Before we get into today's Outside the Box I want to clear up a few ideas from this weekend's letter. There have been posts on various websites equating my piece on deflation with Paul Krugman. They say I am advocating kicking the can down the road and not reducing the deficit.
Wrong. What I have been trying to point out for several years is that we have no good choices. We are down to bad and very bad choices. The very bad choice (leading to disastrous - think Greece) is to continue to run massive deficits. The merely bad choice is to reduce the deficits gradually over time. As I try to point out, reducing the deficits has consequences in the short term. It WILL affect GDP in the short term. Krugman and the neo-Keynesians are right about that. To deny that is to ignore basic arithmetic.
I am not for kicking the can down the road. Not to begin to deal with the deficits, and soon, risks an even worse problem. But - and this is a big but - I don't want to stomp on the can, either.
Now, let's get into this week's Outside the Box. I offer you a very intriguing essay by those friendly guys from Bedlam Asset Management in London. They argue that Belgium's sovereign debt should be suspect, and is the country that could be a "sleeper" problem. This is a very interesting read, with a lot of history. It is not too long and very interesting. Enjoy. (www.bedlamplc.com)
Your thinking sovereign debt is the biggest bubble of all analyst,