MacroScope

The 1994 bond market massacre is remembered with horror by those who lived through it. Yields on 30-year Treasuries jumped some 200 basis points in the first nine months of the year, hammering investors and financial firms, not to mention thrusting Mexico into crisis and bankrupting Orange County.

The accepted story is that an over-eager Federal Reserve set off the carnage by raising interest rates too soon – the sort of premature move that current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has suggested, again and again, that he is not going to make.

But what if the conventional wisdom about 1994 is wrong? Steven Englander, Citigroup’s head of G10 currency strategy, says that when it comes to the Fed’s balancing act of a mandate – price stability and full employment – the Greenspan-led incarnation, in this instance at least, deserves top marks.

The Fed’s tightening cycle, which began with a modest 25-basis-point hike in February, pushed short-term interest rates up by 2.25 percent by the end of the year. Yes, Treasuries and the dollar took a beating. But by 1995, the Fed could point to a lower jobless rate (5.5 percent vs 6.5 percent in early 1994), falling inflation and slower compensation growth. And, of course, an economy and stock market that were about to take off.

In other words, 1994 was a great success, at least in terms of the dual mandate. To the FOMC, inflicting pain on over-leveraged bond investors may well have seemed an acceptable price to pay.

Italy’s borrowing costs over ten years drew closer to five percent after a decision by Prime Minister Mario Monti to step down early left the country’s political future unclear, hurting riskier euro zone debt.

Monti said on Saturday he would resign once the 2013 budget was approved, raising questions over who will take the reins of the euro zone’s third largest economy at a time when it remains a focus of the region’s three-year debt crisis.

His announcement, potentially bringing forward an election due early next year, came after former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party withdrew its support for the government — and Berlusconi himself said he would run to become premier for a fifth time.

Is the U.S.on the road to Greece, as some politicians have proclaimed?

Most economists say the comparison is nonsense. At a towering $15 trillion, the U.S. economy is not only the world’s largest, it is also more than 50 times the size of Greece’s. This gap makes any type of comparison difficult – it would be like analyzing trends in Maryland in relation to the entire euro zone.

Another key difference: Unlike Greece, the U.S. actually controls its own currency. That means a debt default is effectively impossible. This reality, coupled with strong monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve, helps explain why U.S. bond yields remain near historic lows despite larger deficits.

Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, says a country’s interest burden is far more important than its total debt levels in determining the government’s ability to service it. He argued in a recent editorial:

Looking at some of the recent trends in the euro zone debt market, one could be forgiven for thinking the region is doing alright.

Spanish and Italian funding costs have come down sharply. Data from the European Central Bank on Thursday showed consumers and firms put money back into Spanish and Greek banks in September. And there are budding signs that foreign investors are venturing back to the Spanish sovereign debt market. As one trader this week put it, the market is “healing”:

Liquidity is coming back, liquidity meaning the market can digest larger customer repositioning and flows again.

Financial markets on Thursday were starkly disappointed with the European Central Bank and its president, Mario Draghi. He had promised recently to do everything in his power to save the euro and yet announced no new bond-buying at the central bank’s latest meeting. Riskier assets sold off and safe-haven securities benefitted.

But Francesco Garzarelli of Goldman Sachs, Draghi’s former employer, has a different take on the matter:

We see a material change in the central bank’s approach to the crisis, and a coherent interplay between fiscal and monetary policy. The underwhelming part of today’s announcements lies in the lack of details on the asset purchases and other measures to support the private sector. But it appears that these will have more structure around them than the SMP (Securities Markets Program).

(Corrects to show CRT is not a primary dealer)

Bond bulls are ready to charge after Friday’s July U.S. employment data, according to a survey by Ian Lyngen, senior government bond strategist at primary dealer CRT Capital Group.

Says Lyngen:

Despite the vacation season and the multitude of ‘out of office’ responses we got, participation in this month’s survey was above-average and consistent with a market that’s engaged for the big policy/data events of the summer. As for the results of the survey, in a word: BULLISH.

Lyngen argued the survey results were the most bullish since November 2010, a point that was followed by a selloff that brought 10-year yields from 2.55 percent to 3.75 percent over the following four months.

By Rahul Karunakar

The spread between 2- and 10-year U.S. Treasury yields will shrink to 180 basis points in a year according to the latest Reuters bonds poll – the narrowest margin since August 2008, the month before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Historically, that spread has been a key indication of what investors and traders are thinking about the economy’s prospects: the narrower it gets, certainly with short-term rates already at rock bottom, the darker the outlook.

It wasn’t looking particularly good in August 2008, and of course we all know what happened the following month: the start of an epic financial and economic crisis the world is still struggling to shake off.

So much for policy coordination. Just days after the Treasury published a note touting its progress in lengthening the average maturity of its outstanding bonds, the Fed decided to extend Operation Twist – a policy aimed at doing the exact opposite. By selling an additional $267 billion in short-dated bonds to buy long-term ones, the Fed is trying to take Treasuries with longer maturities out of the market, to lower yields and entice investors to take on more risk.

In a narrow sense, the Treasury’s approach is perfectly reasonable: U.S. interest rates are at historic lows, so it stands to reason that the government should lock in that low cost of borrowing for the longest period possible. However, in the context of an economy that remains exceedingly weak – and where the only source of stimulus appears to be a reluctant central bank – the move could be viewed as somewhat incongruous.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself addressed the issue when he was asked during the post-meeting press conference whether it would make sense for the U.S. government to issue more longer-term bonds given the current low-rate environment.

It’s already been established that economists’ predictions about the euro zone’s future hinge largely on where their employer is based. Euro zone optimists tend to work for euro zone banks and research houses, and euro zone sceptics for companies based outside the currency union.

It somewhat undermined the idea their analyses are based purely on hard-headed economics, and less on national factors.

There was an echo of that in this week’s of economists and fixed income strategists, who were asked whether they expect euro zone leaders will agree to the issuance of a common euro zone bond, as backed by new French President Francois Hollande.

Throughout Europe’s financial crisis, German government bonds have been seen as a safe-haven for those seeking protection against the troubles of southern Europe. However, the confidence of financial markets in Germany’s finances may finally be starting to falter as the cost of a festering financial crisis rises – and the country is seen as ultimately holding the bag.

Demand at the latest government bond auction remained solid. However, the slide in German bunds continued into a second day and, worryingly, it was driven in part by worries about contagion after Spain’s poorly-received 100 billion euro bank bailout.

According to Capital Economics:

The last few days have brought clear signs that bunds are finally losing their safe-haven status.