The risk of corporate debt is often measured by looking at the spread between its yield and similar ‘risk-free’ government debt. The higher the spread, the greater the risk. However, when government credit comes into question, this spread is no longer suitable as a measure of corporate risk. The spread does, nevertheless, tell a story about relative risk. In Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, a number of sectors have negative corporate spreads, suggesting that firms are either less likely to default than their governments or will have higher recovery rates if they do default. The sector that stands apart as being much riskier than the government is financials. If these governments partially default, the guarantees they have made to the banking system are no longer credible, and the credit losses may be severe. Read more »

The difference between Greek and German government bond yields can be used to estimate the market’s view of the likelihood of a Greek default. The chart above shows these probabilities over different time frames on three different dates. On April 30th, no European plan was yet in place to address the ballooning Greek debt, and default was considered a real possibility in the short term. On May 11th, just after the European Stabilization Mechanism (ESM) was announced, markets sharply cut their view on the odds of default across all time horizons. However, the market’s analysis of the ESM has become much more nuanced since then. On September 1st, the market’s view of the probability of default within two years was lower than before the ESM was announced, but higher over longer time frames. Read more »

Foreign ownership of U.S. assets, particularly Treasury bonds, has increased significantly over the last two decades. Foreigners now own 57% of outstanding U.S. Treasurys, up from 37% in 1997. The chart above shows that this growth has been driven entirely by government purchases, notably China’s. In the two years ending in March 2005, official sector purchases accounted for 60% of new issuance, compared to about 40% historically back to 1960. The increasing significance of government participants, whose motivations are not always profit-driven, may help to explain Alan Greenspan’s famous “conundrum” — the question of why long-term interest rates declined in the face of strong economic conditions and rising short-term rates in late 2004 and early 2005. This disruption to the mechanism through which monetary policy normally affects the broader economy may one day work in reverse if governments choose to reduce their exposure to Treasurys back to 1960s levels. The resulting “reverse conundrum” — rising long-term interest rates in the face of weak economic conditions and falling short rates — would be far more unpleasant than the Greenspan version. Read more »

In his recently published memoir, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson claims that Russian officials approached the Chinese in the summer of 2008 suggesting that both countries sell large amounts of debt issued by U.S. Government-Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in order to pressure the United States into explicitly backing these companies. Paulson, who found the report “deeply troubling,” claims that China opted not to collaborate with Russia. Nonetheless, both countries dumped GSE debt that summer, as illustrated in the figure above. Russia sold $170 billion during 2008, while China sold nearly $50 billion between June 2008, when its holdings peaked, and the end of 2008. During this fire sale the yield spread between GSE debt and U.S. Treasury debt soared, as illustrated in the figure below. As GSE debt was widely used as collateral in the U.S. repo market, U.S. financial institutions were obliged to quickly pony up more securities to support their borrowing. This exacerbated the growing credit crunch. The U.S. government was forced to put the GSEs into conservatorship in September 2008. Secretary Paulson was more right than he realized to be concerned. The episode highlighted the clear risks to the United States, and indeed the wider world, of growing American dependence on foreign government lending. Read more »

Greece’s 2009 budget deficit was 13.6% of GDP. The primary deficit – the balance before interest – was 8.5% of GDP. The main difference between the total deficit and the primary deficit is the ‘snowball effect,’ or the effect through time of low growth and high interest rates on the debt to GDP ratio. As shown in the figure above, the snowball effect replaces the primary deficit as the principal driver of Greece’s spiraling debt ratio in 2010 and 2011. New loans from the IMF and European Union may avert default in the short term, but do not change this debt dynamic. According to the European Commission, which optimistically assumes that Greece achieves 1.2% GDP growth and pays an average interest rate of 4.7% in 2011, Greece needs to achieve a primary surplus of nearly 5% of GDP in order to stop the upward march of indebtedness. This is a massive mountain for Greece to climb to avoid default. But consider also that once Greece achieves a primary surplus of any size it actually has an enormous incentive to default, as it can then wipe out huge amounts of accumulated debts without any longer needing the financial markets to fund current expenditures. In short, a Greek default is almost certainly a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if.’ Read more »