from seekingalpha.com
Bill Cara
Demand for Debt Service
What happens when commodity prices zoom? Interest rates zoom.
Should interest rates pick up from here, it will not take much (as I have been saying) to put the so-called âsmokingâ economy into recession. Higher interest rates have a way of bringing debt holders to their knees. Over the years, itâs same old, same old. People who take on more debt have the need to service that debt, and when asset prices stop rising and bankers start calling loans, the jig is up.
Credit derivatives, of course, make everybody in the financing business seem secure. Wait until this cycle starts to unwind. Weâll see how many lenders stay in business. Governments that are presently allowing lending rules to change, with respect to permitting longer periods of non-performing loans, can only be carried so far. At some point the banks will cut bait, and full debt service will be demanded.
Pension debt is another issue today. The longer social payment plans go under-funded, the closer we get to a financial Armageddon. Yesterday, when the Fed Head, the President and the Treasury Secretary and their legion of shills were out pumping up financial asset prices, I didnât hear a single serious comment on the pension problem⦠Or the healthcare funding problem⦠Or the rising commodity price problemâ¦
But, with a single pump of the Treasury bond market, I heard lots of hype about falling bond yields. Ha ha ha.
This morningâs ISM Manufacturing Index gives rise to more questions about the Q406 +3.5% GDP growth number. So too did the housing data and the auto sales data.
The truth is that the credit balloon can only be blown up so far before it pops. I expect that popping sound sometime in the next two to six months. Meanwhile, I hope you focus on the Relative Strength Index numbers (i.e., those over 70 on the Monthly-Weekly-Daily) - particularly those companies that carry a lot of debt or bonds as asset holdings) - and that you can find the resolve to sell into strength, or at least switch into stocks of high quality companies that have M-W-D RSI values below 30. The latter will likely be the first to move higher in the next Bull market.