The End Of The Great Debt Cycle

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Dear Diary,

“It’s the end of the great debt cycle,” says hedge fund manager Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, taking the words out of our mouth.

Bond fund manager Bill Gross adds context:

In the past 20 to 30 years, credit has grown to such an extreme globally that debt levels and the ability to service that debt are at risk. […] Why doesn’t the debt supercycle keep expanding? Because there are limits.

Neither Mr. Dalio nor Mr. Gross nor we know precisely where those limits are. But the Europeans and the Japanese are rushing toward them.

A Poke in the Eye for Lenders

In Europe, bond yields are lower than they’ve ever been. Between $2 trillion and $3 trillion in sovereign and corporate bonds now trade at negative nominal yields.

We don’t need to tell you that it is unnatural and perverse for lenders to accept a poke in the eye for giving up their valuable savings.

But that’s just part of the perversity of the present system – no real savings are involved. The money never existed in the first place. Getting a negative yield seems almost appropriate, if nevertheless incomprehensible.

Today, banks create “money” from thin air, in the form of new deposits, when they make loans.

As our friend Richard Duncan explains in his book The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, by the turn of the new millennium the reserve requirement – whereby banks are forced to hold some cash or gold in reserve against new loans – was so low that it played “practically no role whatsoever in constraining credit creation.”

That means as long as banks meet regulators’ capital adequacy requirements, they can create as much new money (loans) as they want. No risk of mining accidents. No need for anyone to sweat or strain. No self-discipline or forbearance required.

Savers can eat their cake. And borrowers can have it too.