Wednesday 7 January 2009

German government fails to sell bond issue

When I read the following story in the FT, I immediately thought of UK gilts. Darling plans to run up the biggest deficit in a generation. Including existing debt that is about to mature, the government needs to borrow around £150 billion every year until 2011.

Investors shunned one of the most liquid and safest assets in the world on Wednesday as a German bond auction failed in a warning for governments seeking to raise record amounts of debt to stimulate their slowing economies.

It is the first eurozone bond auction of the year and an ominous sign of potential trouble ahead for governments around the world, with an estimated $3,000bn expected to be issued in sovereign debt this year – three times more than in 2008.

The auction of 10-year bonds failed to attract enough bids to reach the €6bn the government wanted to raise. Although a number of German bond auctions failed last year, it was almost unheard of before the credit crisis.

Meyrick Chapman, a fixed-income strategist at UBS, said: “When a German bond auction fails, then that does suggest there is trouble ahead for governments wanting to raise money in the debt markets.


If the Germans can't sell their debt, what hope is there for the UK government?

If Darling can't shift the paper, he has only two options. Either he raises government bond yields or he goes to the Bank of England and asks Mr. King to buy the bonds in return for newly printed pounds.

With the first option, interest rates throughout the economy willl creep up. Rather than sustain economic growth, Darling will prolong a recession as the fiscal deficit crowds out private investment.

With the second option, he risks a sudden pick up of inflation. Darling's deficit plans accounts for the recent crash in sterling. Foreigners are anticipating a surge in money creation. Therefore, they are wisely dumping sterling before it becomes worthless due to an unprecedented surge in inflation.

The sensible thing would be to pare back the fiscal deficit drastically. This would reduce long term interest rates, create some space for private investment and prevent the UK from becoming a quasi-socialist basket case.

Today's news from Germany is a very helpful and timely warning. Lets hope those jokers in the Treasury can send a short memo to Darling telling him where he is leading the UK economy.

7 comments:

Fred said...

Bloomberg also has an article on the prospects for new UK gilts being iffy.

New short dates yield almost nothing and long dates will run through inflation to almost nothing.

There maybe a point to all this but it is elusive IMHO!

Nick von Mises said...

The US stimulus, and it's resulting flooding of the world with Treasuries, is going to hoover up all the savings putting emerging markets in severe difficulty of rolling over debt. AE Pritchard seems to think the UK will be within the "safe" group here.

Whatever the future, the biggest crimp on Labours Keynesian madness will be the bond vigilantes. I was probably wrong in my prediction they would nix Obama's craziness (due to even high pressures in the retreat from risk assets). The UK prolly won't have that counterbalance.

Which is good if it teaches Brown some respect for prudence.

K T Cat said...

Nick, don't you think that other countries will become unhappy with the US gorging itself on their investment dollars? What steps might they take to stop the money from leaving their countries and heading to the US?

K T Cat said...

Linked

Nick von Mises said...

It's not their choice to make. Much of it is repatriated dollars or otherwise privately held.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately it will be the man person with savings and a money in a pension plan that will be destroyed next by this evil government.

Anonymous said...

Pare back the fiscal deficit dramatically? I totally 100% agree with you Alice.
GB will watch the UK burn first though, cut backs reveal the whole decade for the sham it was.
(interestingly, I made a freudian typo and put shame instead of sham)