Category: interest rates

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Heading Into Negative (Real) Interest Rates

Posted on March 5, 2020 by James Rickards

This post Heading Into Negative (Real) Interest Rates appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Last July I was in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, along with a host of monetary elites, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference that established the post-WWII international monetary system. But I wasn’t just there to commemorate the past —I was there to seek insight into the future of the monetary system.

One day I was part of a select group in a closed-door “off the record” meeting with top Federal Reserve and European Central Bank (ECB) officials who announced exactly what you can expect with interest rates going forward — and why.

They included a senior official from a regional Federal Reserve bank, a senior official from the Fed’s Board of Governors and a member of the ECB’s Board of Governors.

Chatham House rules apply, so I still can’t reveal the names of anyone present at this particular meeting or quote them directly.

But I can discuss the main points. They essentially came out and announced that rates are heading lower, and not by just 25 or 50 basis points. Rates were 2.25% at the time. They said they have to cut interest rates by a lot going forward.

Well, that’s already happened. The Fed cut rates last September and October (each 25 basis points), bringing rates down to 1.75%. And now, after Tuesday’s emergency 50-basis point rate cut, rates are down to 1.25%.

That’s a drop of one full percentage point. If the Fed keeps cutting (which is likely), it’ll soon be flirting with the zero bound. And if the economic effects of the coronavirus don’t dissipate (very possible), the Fed could easily hit zero.

But then what?

These officials didn’t officially announce that interest rates will go negative. But they said that when rates are back to zero, they’ll have to take a hard look at negative rates.

Reading between the lines, they will likely resort to negative rates when the time comes.

Normally forecasting interest rate policy can be tricky, and I use a number of sophisticated models to try to determine where it’s heading. But these guys made my job incredibly easy. It’s almost like cheating!

The most interesting part of the meeting was the reason they gave for the coming rate cuts. They were very relaxed about it, almost as if it was too obvious to even point out.

The reason has to do with real interest rates.

The real interest rate is the nominal interest rate minus the inflation rate. You might look at today’s interest rates and think they’re already extremely low. And in nominal terms they certainly are. But when you consider real interest rates, you’ll see that they can be substantially higher than the nominal rate.

That’s why the real rate is so important. If you’re an economist or analyst trying to forecast markets based on the impact of rates on the economy, then you need to focus on real rates.

Assume the nominal rate on a bond is 4%; what you see is what you get. But the real rate is the nominal rate minus inflation. If the nominal rate is 4% and inflation is 2%, then the real rate is 2% (4 – 2 = 2).

That difference between nominal and real rates seems simple until you get into a strange situation where inflation is higher than the nominal rate. Then the real rate is negative.

For example, if the nominal rate is 4% and inflation is 5%, then the real rate of interest is negative 1% (4 – 5 = -1).

The U.S. has never had negative nominal rates (Japan, the eurozone and Switzerland have), but it has had negative real rates.

By the early 1980s, nominal interest rates on long-term Treasury securities hit 13%. But inflation at the time was 15%, so the real rate was negative 2%. The real cost of money was cheap even as nominal rates hit all-time highs.

Nominal rates of 13% when inflation is 15% are actually stimulative. Rates of 3% when inflation is 1% aren’t. In these examples, nominal 2% is a “high” rate and 13% is a “low” rate once inflation is factored in.

What is the real rate today?

The yield to maturity on 10-year Treasury notes is currently at a record low of under 1% (it actually fell to 0.899% today before edging slightly higher). That’s never happened before in history, which is an indication of how unusual these times are.

Meanwhile, inflation as measured by the PCE core deflator (the Fed’s preferred measure) is currently about 1.6% year over year, below the Fed’s 2% target.

Using those metrics, real interest rates are in the neighborhood of -.5%. But believe it or not, that’s actually higher than the early ’80s when nominal rates were 13%, but real rates were -2%.

That’s why it’s critical to understand the significance of real interest rates.

And real rates are important because the central banks want to drive real rates meaningfully negative. That’s why they have to lower the nominal rate substantially, which is what these central bank officials said at Bretton Woods.

So you can expect rates to go to zero, probably sooner or later. Then, nominal negative rates are probably close behind.

The Fed is very concerned about recession, for which it’s presently unprepared. And with the coronavirus, now even more so. It usually takes five percentage points of rate cuts to pull the U.S. out of a recession. During its hiking cycle that ended in December 2018, the Fed was trying to get rates closer to 5% so they could cut them as much as needed in a new recession. But, they failed.

Interest rates only topped out at 2.5%, only halfway to the target. The market reaction and a slowing economy caused the Fed to reverse course and engage in easing. That was good for markets, but terrible in terms of getting ready for the next recession.

The Fed also reduced its balance sheet from $4.5 trillion to $3.8 trillion, but that was still well above the $800 billion level that existed before QE1 (“QE-lite” has since taken the balance sheet up above $4 trillion, and it’s probably going higher since new cracks are forming in the repo market).

In short, the Fed (and other central banks) only partly normalized and are far from being able to cure a new recession or panic if one were to arise tomorrow.

The Fed is therefore trapped in a conundrum that it can’t escape. It needs to rate hikes to prepare for recession, but lower rates to avoid recession. It’s obviously chosen the latter option.

If a recession hit now, the Fed would cut rates by another 1.25% in stages, but then they would be at the zero bound and out of bullets.

Beyond that, the Fed’s only tools are negative rates, more QE, a higher inflation target, or forward guidance guaranteeing no rate hikes without further notice.

Of course, negative nominal interest rates have never worked where they’ve been tried. They only fuel asset bubbles, not economic growth. There’s no reason to believe they’ll work next time.

But the central banks really have no other tools to choose from. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Now’s the time to stock up on gold and other hard assets to protect your wealth.

Regards,

Jim Rickards
for The Daily Reckoning

The post Heading Into Negative (Real) Interest Rates appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

5,000 Years of Interest Rates, Part II

Posted on January 22, 2020 by Brian Maher

This post 5,000 Years of Interest Rates, Part II appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

Yesterday we hauled out evidence that interest rates have gone persistently down 500 years running.

And the high interest rates of the mid- to late 20th century?

These may be history’s true aberration, a violent but brief lurch in the chart… like a sudden burst of blood pressure.

Let us here reintroduce the graphic evidence:

Here is an extended picture of downward-trending rates — with the fabulous exception of the mid-to-late 20th century.

As Harvard economics professor Paul Schmelzing reckoned yesterday, as summarized by Willem H. Buiter in Project Syndicate:

Despite temporary stabilizations such as the periods 1550–1640, 1820–1850 or in fact 1950–1980… global… real rates have persistently trended downward over the past five centuries…

Can you therefore expect the downward journey of interest rates to proceed uninterrupted?

We have ransacked the historical data further still… rooted around for clues… and emerged with worrisome findings.

Why worrisome?

Details to follow. Let us first look in on another historical oddity, worrisome in its own way — the present stock market.

A Lull on Wall Street

It was an inconsequential day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones took a very slight slip, down nine points on the day.

The S&P scratched out a single-point gain; the Nasdaq gained 12 points today.

Gold and oil largely loafed, budging barely at all.

Meantime, humanity’s would-be saviors remained huddled at Davos. There they are setting the world to rights and deciding how we must live.

But let us resume our study of time… and money.

For light, we once again resort to the good Professor Schmelzing.

The arc of interest rates bends lower with time, he has established. But as he also establishes… no line bends true across five centuries of history.

Put aside the drastic mid-to-late 20th century reversal. Even the long downturning arc has its squiggles and twists, bent in the great forges of history.

To these we now turn…

“Real Rate Depression Cycles”

Over seven centuries, Schmelzing identifies nine “real rate depression cycles.”

These cycles feature a secular decline of real interest rates, followed by reversals — often sudden and violent reversals.

The first eight rate depression cycles tell fantastic tales…

They often pivoted upon high dramas like the Black Death of the mid-14th century… the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century… and World War II.

The world is currently ensnared within history’s ninth rate depression cycle. This cycle began in the mid-1980s.

Schmelzing says one previous cycle comes closest to this, our own. That is the global “Long Depression” of the 1880s and ’90s.

This “Long Depression” witnessed “low productivity growth, deflationary price dynamics and the rise of global populism and protectionism.”

Need we draw the parallels to today?

It is here where our tale gathers pace… and acquires point.

A Thing of Historic Grandeur

Schmelzing’s research reveals this information:

This present cycle is a thing of historical grandeur, in both endurance and intensity.

Of the entire 700-year record… only one cycle had a greater endurance. That was in the 15th century.

And only one previous cycle — also from the same epoch — exceeded the current cycle’s intensity.

By almost any measure… today’s rate depression cycle is a thing for the ages.

Turn now to this chart. The steep downward slope on the right gives the flavor of its fevered intensity:

Schmelzing’s researches show the real rate for the entire 700-year history is 4.78%.

Meantime, the real rate for the past 200 years averages 2.6%.

Beware “Reversion to the Mean”

And so “relative to both historical benchmarks,” says this fellow, “the current market environment thus remains severely depressed.”

That is, real rates remain well beneath historical averages.

And if the term “reversion to the mean” has anything in it, the world is in for a hard jolt when the mean reverts. Why?

Because when rates do regain their bounce — history shows — they bounce high.

Schmelzing:

The evidence from eight previous “real rate depressions” is that turnarounds from such environments, when they occur, have typically been both quick and sizeable… Most reversals to “real rate stagnation” periods have been rapid, nonlinear and took place on average after 26 years.

Twenty-six years? The present rate depression cycle runs to 36 or 37 years. We must conclude it goes on loaned time. What happens when the loan comes due?:

Within 24 months after hitting their troughs in the rate depression cycle, rates gained on average 315 basis points [3.15%], with two reversals showing real rate appreciations of more than 600 basis points [6%] within two years.

The current rate depression cycle ranges far beyond average.

It is, after all, the second longest on record… and the second most intense.

If the magnitude of the bounceback approximates the magnitude of the cycle it ends… we can therefore expect a fantastic trampolining of rates.

That is, we can likely expect rate appreciations of 6% or more.

What Happens When Rates Rise?

The stock market and the decade-long economic “recovery” center upon ultra-low interest rates. And so we recoil, horrified, at the prospect of a “rapid, nonlinear” rate reversal.

We must next consider its impact on America’s ability to finance its hellacious debt…

A violent rate increase means debt service becomes an impossible burden.

How would America service its $23 trillion debt — a $23 trillion debt that jumps higher by the minute?

Debt service already represents the fastest-growing government expense.

Interest payments will total $460 billion this year, estimates the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

CBO further projects debt service will scale $800 billion by decade’s end.

$800 billion exceeds today’s entire $738 billion defense budget. As it exceeds vastly present Medicare spending ($625 billion) and Medicaid spending ($412 billion).

CBO Doesn’t Account for Possible End to Rate Depression Cycle

But CBO pays no heed to the rate depression cycle. It — in fact — projects no substantial rate increases this decade.

But what if the present rate depression cycle closes… and interest rates go spiraling?

Debt service will likely swamp the entire federal budget.

Financial analyst Daniel Amerman:

If the interest rate on that debt were to rise by even 1%, the annual federal deficit rises by $200 billion. A 2% increase in interest rate levels would up the federal deficit by $400 billion, and if rates were 5% higher, the annual federal deficit rises by a full $1 trillion per year.

Recall, rates rocketed 6% or higher after two previous rate reversals.

Given the near-record intensity of the present rate depression cycle… should we not expect a similar rebound next time?

Hard logic dictates we should.

But what might bring down the curtain on the current cycle?

Unforeseen Catastrophe

Most previous rate depression cycles ended with death, destruction, howling, shrieking.

Examples, again, include the Black Plague, the Thirty Years War and World War II.

Perhaps a shock on their scale will close out the present cycle… for all that we know. Or perhaps some other cause entirely.

Of course, we can find no reason in law or equity why the second-longest, second-most intense rate depression cycle in history… cannot become the longest, most intense rate depression cycle in history.

The cycle could run years yet. Or it could end Friday morning.

The Lord only knows — and He is silent.

Regards,

Brian Maher
Managing editor, The Daily Reckoning

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