STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 23 January 2012

[Demeter]

78. The Debt Supercycle Reaches Its Final Chapter BY JAMES J PUPLAVA CFP

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/james-j-puplava/debt-supercycle-reaches-its-final-chapter

Where the Debt Supercycle Begins

All I sold in the 1980’s was fixed income. Who wanted to invest in stocks when you could get double digit returns in guaranteed deposits at a bank or by investing in government debt? I still remember one of my first trades—a 10-year treasury note paying a 15% interest rate.

What I did not realize at the time was the U.S., and the western world in general, was about to embark on what we now refer to as the “Debt Supercycle”—a theory articulated by the investment strategists at Bank Credit Analyst out of Canada. The Debt Supercycle is a description of the long-term decline in U.S. balance sheet liquidity and the rise in indebtedness during the WWII period. Economic expansions in the post WWII world were associated with the buildup in debt as western governments introduced automatic stabilizers through entitlements such as unemployment benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and deposit insurance at financial institutions. During the early stages of debt buildup, government policies were successful in preventing the frequent depressions that plagued the pre-WWII economy. Western economies would experience periodic corrections during recessions, but these recessions did not reverse the long-term trend of debt buildup that continued to grow with each successive decade.

These trends would lead to growing illiquidity making our financial markets more fragile and susceptible to the threat of a deflationary event like we experienced recently in the great credit crisis of 2008-2009. These periodic recessions were fought by governments with more deficit spending and credit creation. Thus, the bigger balance sheet excesses became, the more painful the eventual corrective process would be. The financial stakes became higher in each new economic cycle, putting ever-increasing pressure on governments to reflate demand, by whatever means were available.

According to the Bank Credit Analyst the Debt Supercycle reached an important inflection point in the recent economic meltdown of 2008-2009. Authorities reached the limit of their ability to get consumers to take on more credit. The result is that it forced governments to leverage up instead. This is where we are today as authorities spend, borrow and print money to fight off the deflationary impact of private sector deleveraging. Welcome to the final chapter of the Debt Supercycle—a period of trillion dollar deficits that are being monetized by trillion dollar expansions of central bank balance sheets, otherwise known as money printing. Once fiscal policy is pushed to the limits of sustainability, the Debt Supercycle will come to a violent end. This is exactly what is happening to Europe now.

A graphic depiction of this Debt Supercycle can be seen below. As of this writing, outstanding U.S. federal debt is close to $15.3 trillion dollars. For the first time in my lifetime US federal debt now exceeds U.S. GDP. In personal terms each U.S. citizen now owes $180,559.1

http://imagesize.financialsense.com/

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