Hoisington Investment Management – Quarterly Review and Outlook, Second Quarter 2014
John Mauldin | July 15, 2014
This week’s Outside the Box is from an old friend to regular readers. It’s time for our Quarterly Review & Outlook from Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management, who leads off this month with a helpful explanation of the relationship between the US GDP growth rate and 30-year treasury yields. That’s an important relationship, because long-term interest rates above nominal GDP growth (as they are now) tend to retard economic activity and vice versa.
The author adds that the average four-quarter growth rate of real GDP during the present recovery is 1.8%, well below the 4.2% average in all of the previous post-war expansions; and despite six years of federal deficits totaling $6.27 trillion and another $3.63 trillion in quantitative easing by the Fed, the growth rate of the economy continues to erode.
So what gives? We’re simply too indebted, says Lacy; and too much of the debt is nonproductive. (Total US public and private debt rose to 349.3% of GDP in the first quarter, up from 343.7% in the third quarter of 2013.) And as Hyman Minsky and Charles Kindleberger showed us, higher levels of debt slow economic growth when the debt is unbalanced toward the type of borrowing that doesn’t create an income stream sufficient to repay principal and interest.
And it’s not just the US. Lacy notes that the world’s largest economies have a higher total debt-to-GDP ratio today than at the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, and foreign households are living farther above their means than they were six years ago.
Simply put, the developed (and much of the developing) world is fast approaching the end of a 60-year-long debt supercycle, as I (hope I) conclusively demonstrated in Endgame and reaffirmed in Code Red.
Hoisington Investment Management Company (www.Hoisingtonmgt.com) is a registered investment advisor specializing in fixed-income portfolios for large institutional clients. Located in Austin, Texas, the firm has over $5 billion under management and is the sub-adviser of the Wasatch-Hoisington US Treasury Fund (WHOSX).
Some readers may have noticed that there was no Thoughts from the Frontline in their inboxes this weekend. As has happened only once or twice in the last 14 years, I found myself in an intellectual cul-de-sac, and there was not enough time to back out. Knowing that I was going to be involved in a fascinating conference over the weekend, I had planned to do a rather simple analysis of a new book on how GDP is constructed. But as I got deeper into thinking about the topic and doing more research, I remembered something I read 20 years ago about the misleading nature of GDP, and I realized that a simple analysis just wouldn’t cut it.
Rather than write something that would’ve been inadequate and unsatisfying, I decided to just put it off till next week. Your time and attention are quite valuable, and I try not to waste them. But there will be no excuses this weekend.
The conference I attended was organized by Great Point Partners, a hedge fund and private equity firm focusing on medical and biotechnology. I really had not seen the program until I arrived and did not realize what a powerful lineup of industry leaders would be presenting on some of the latest technologies and research. The opportunity was too good to pass up, as it is so rare that any of us get to sit down with people who are responsible for the science we all read about.
I had breakfast with a small group of 11 readers/investors one morning and learned a lot by asking them what their favorite investing passion was. Although everyone had concerns, they all had areas in which they were quite bullish. I find that everywhere I go. It was interesting, in that they all expected me to be far more negative about things than I am. I guess when you write about macroeconomics as much as I do, and there’s as much wrong with it as there is, you kind of end up being labeled as a Gloomy Gus. I am actually quite optimistic about the long-term future of humanity, but I’ll admit there will be a few bumps along the way. Given how many bumps there have already been, just in my own lifetime, and given that we seem to have gotten through them, I can’t help but be optimistic that we’ll get through the next round.
It was a fascinating weekend, made all the more so by my very gracious hosts, Jeff Jay and David Kroin, Managing Directors of Great Point. They and their staff made sure I could enjoy my time on Nantucket Island. It was my first visit to the area, and I hope it won’t be the last.
Last night I had dinner with Art Cashin, Barry Ritholtz, Jack Rivkin, and Dan Greenhaus. It was a raucous, intellectually enlivening evening, and our conversation ranged from macroeconomics to our favorite new technologies. Jack Rivkin is involved with Idealab, and one of his favorites is that he sees the eventual end of Amazon as 3-D printing becomes more available. Given how Bezos has adapted over the years, I’m not so sure. Jack and Barry will join me in Maine in a few weeks, where we will again join the debate about bull and bear markets.
Now let’s go to Lacy and think about the intersection of velocity and money supply and what it says about future growth potential. I have two full days of meetings with my partners and others here in New York before I return to Dallas, and then I get to stay home for a few weeks. There are lots of new plans in the works. And lots of reading to do between meetings. Have a great week!
Your hoping to be able to stay optimistic analyst,
John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box
[email protected]
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Hoisington Investment Management – Quarterly Review and Outlook, Second Quarter 2014
Treasury Bonds Undervalued
Thirty-year treasury bonds appear to be undervalued based on the tepid growth rate of the U.S. economy. The past four quarters have recorded a nominal “top-line” GDP expansion of only 2.9%, while the bond yield remains close to 3.4%. Knut Wicksell (1851-1926) noted that the natural rate of interest, a level that does not tend to slow or accelerate economic activity, should approximate the growth rate of nominal GDP. Interest rates higher than the top-line growth rate of the economy, which is the case today, would mean that resources from the income stream of the economy would be required to pay for the higher rate of interest, thus slowing the economy. Wicksell preferred to use, not a risk free rate of interest such as thirty-year treasury bonds, but a business rate of interest such as BAA corporates.
As chart one attests, interest rates below nominal GDP growth helps to accelerate economic activity and vice versa. Currently the higher interest rates are retarding economic growth, suggesting the next move in interest rates is lower.
To put the 2.9% change in nominal GDP over the past four quarters in perspective, it is below the entry point of any post-war recession. Even adjusting for inflation the average four-quarter growth rate in real GDP for this recovery is 1.8%, well below the 4.2% average in all of the previous post-war expansions.
Fisher’s Equation of Exchange
Slow nominal growth is not surprising to those who recall the American economist Irving Fisher’s (1867-1947) equation of exchange that was formulated in 1911. Fisher stated that nominal GDP is equal to money (M) times its turnover or velocity (V), i.e., GDP=M*V. Twelve months ago money (M) was expanding about 7%, and velocity (V) was declining at about a 4% annual rate. If you assume that those trends would remain in place then nominal GDP should have expanded at about 3% over the ensuing twelve months, which is exactly what occurred. Projecting further into 2014, the evidence of a continual lackluster expansion is clear. At the end of June money was expanding at slightly above a 6% annual rate, while velocity has been declining around 3%. Thus, Fisher’s formula suggests that another twelve months of a 3% nominal growth rate is more likely than not. With inflation widely expected to rise in the 1.5% to 2.0% range, arithmetic suggests that real GDP in 2014 will expand between 1.0% and 1.5% versus the average output level of 2013. This rate of expansion will translate into a year-over-year growth rate of around 1% by the fourth quarter of 2014. This is akin to pre-recessionary conditions.
An Alternative View of Debt
The perplexing fact is that the growth rate of the economy continues to erode despite six years of cumulative deficits totaling $6.27 trillion and the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy which added net $3.63 trillion of treasury and agency securities to their portfolio. Many would assume that such stimulus would be associated with a booming economic environment, not a slowing one.
Readers of our letters are familiar with our long-standing assessment that the cause of slower growth is the overly indebted economy with too much non-productive debt. Rather than repairing its balance sheet by reducing debt, the U.S. economy is starting to increase its leverage. Total debt rose to 349.3% of GDP in the first quarter, up from 343.7% in the third quarter of 2013.
It is possible to cast an increase in debt in positive terms since it suggests that banks and other financial intermediaries are now confident and are lowering credit standards for automobiles, home equity, credit cards and other types of loans. Indeed, the economy gets a temporary boost when participants become more indebted. This conclusion was the essence of the pioneering work by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851-1914) and Irving Fisher which stated that debt is an increase in current spending (economic expansion) followed by a decline in future spending (economic contraction).
In concert with this view, but pinpointing the negative aspect of debt, contemporary economic research has corroborated the views of Hyman Minsky (1919-1996) and Charles Kindleberger (1910-2003) that debt slows economic growth at higher levels when it is skewed toward the type of borrowing that will not create an income stream sufficient to repay principal and interest.
Scholarly studies using very sophisticated analytical procedures conducted in the U.S. and abroad document the deleterious effects of high debt ratios. However, the use of a balance sheet measure can be criticized in two ways. First, income plays a secondary role, and second, debt ratios are not an integral part of Keynesian economic theory.
We address these two objections by connecting the personal saving rate (PSR) which is at the core of Keynesian economic analysis, and the private debt to GDP ratio that emerges from non-Keynesian approaches. Our research indicates that both the “Non-Keynesian” private debt to GDP ratios, as well as the “Keynesian” PSR, yield equivalent analytical conclusions.
The Personal Saving Rate (PSR) and the Private Debt Linkage
The PSR and the private debt to GDP ratio should be negatively correlated over time. When the PSR rises, consumer income exceeds outlays and taxes. This means that the consumer has the funds to either acquire assets or pay down debt, thus closely linking the balance sheet and income statement. When the PSR (income statement measure) rises, savings (balance sheet measure) increases unless debt (also a balance sheet measure) declines,
