Roger McKinney | On June 5, 2015

The VIX (volatility index) is in a coma, so most investors are dozing while danger signs about the current stock market pop up. The idea that the Fed causes recessions by raising interest rates has relaxed many investors. Some writers have assured nervous investors that it won’t be until the Fed’s third rate increase that the market will respond.

In this previous post, I used Hayek’s Ricardo Effect to explain that recessions can happen without rising interest rates. Now, Hoisington Investment management adds support for Hayek from a different perspective. In the Quarterly Review and Outlook for the first quarter of this year, Hoisington wrote about the financial histories of nations with over-indebted economies. That history goes back two thousand years, but the US has suffered through four such seizures in the 1830-40s, 1860-70s, 1920-30s and the past two decades. The report offers six characteristics of excessive debt:

1. Transitory upturns in economic growth, inflation and high-grade bond yields cannot be sustained because debt is too much of a constraint on economic activity.
2. Due to inherently weak aggregate demand, economies are subject to structural downturns without the typical cyclical pressures such as rising interest rates, inflation and exhaustion of pent-up demand.
3. Deterioration in productivity is not inflationary but just another symptom of the controlling debt influence.
4. Monetary policy is ineffectual, if not a net negative.
5. Inflation falls dramatically, increasing the risk of deflation.
6. Treasury bond yields fall to extremely low levels.

I placed in bold part of item #2 for emphasis because of its relevance to this year. Most investment analysts fear only the bogey man of rising interest rates, as Hoisington wrote:

Many assume that economies can only contract in response to cyclical pressures like rising interest rates and inflation, fiscal restraint, over-accumulation of inventories, or the stock of consumer and corporate capital goods. This idea is valid when debt levels are normal but becomes problematic when debt is excessively high.

Since Ms. Yellen had hinted that she won’t raise the Fed’s rate until the end of the year, analysts assume they have a cloudless sky in which to fly. But I agree with Mr. Hoisington, whose returns on bonds embarrassed those in stock markets in 2014, that the Fed will be unable to raise rates for many years, maybe decades.

The real bogey man is another recession that is likely this year, in which case bond yields will fall like a clown’s baggy pants and shock analysts, only they won’t laugh. For if inflation turns to deflation of -1%, which is likely in a recession, and nominal yields on bonds are 1.5%, then the real yield is 2.5%. In such a scenario, long term US government bonds will outperform just about anything else.

Roger McKinney