Nouriel Roubini wrote:
> Let us sum up: traders are borrowing at negative 20 per cent rates
> to invest on a highly leveraged basis on a mass of risky global
> assets that are rising in price due to excess liquidity and a
> massive carry trade. Every investor who plays this risky game
> looks like a genius – even if they are just riding a huge bubble
> financed by a large negative cost of borrowing – as the total
> returns have been in the 50-70 per cent range since March.
> People’s sense of the value at risk (VAR) of their aggregate
> portfolios ought, instead, to have been increasing due to a
> rising correlation of the risks between different asset classes,
> all of which are driven by this common monetary policy and the
> carry trade. In effect, it has become one big common trade – you
> short the dollar to buy any global risky assets.
> Yet, at the same time, the perceived riskiness of individual
> asset classes is declining as volatility is diminished due to the
> Fed’s policy of buying everything in sight – witness its proposed
> $1,800bn (£1,000bn, €1,200bn) purchase of Treasuries,
> mortgage-backed securities (bonds guaranteed by a
> government-sponsored enterprise such as Fannie Mae) and agency
> debt. By effectively reducing the volatility of individual asset
> classes, making them behave the same way, there is now little
> diversification across markets – the VAR again looks low.
> So the combined effect of the Fed policy of a zero Fed funds
> rate, quantitative easing and massive purchase of long-term debt
> instruments is seemingly making the world safe – for now – for the
> mother of all carry trades and mother of all highly leveraged
> global asset bubbles.
> While this policy feeds the global asset bubble it is also feeding
> a new US asset bubble. Easy money, quantitative easing, credit
> easing and massive inflows of capital into the US via an
> accumulation of forex reserves by foreign central banks makes US
> fiscal deficits easier to fund and feeds the US equity and credit
> bubble. Finally, a weak dollar is good for US equities as it may
> lead to higher growth and makes the foreign currency profits of US
> corporations abroad greater in dollar terms.
> The reckless US policy that is feeding these carry trades is
> forcing other countries to follow its easy monetary policy.
> Near-zero policy rates and quantitative easing were already in
> place in the UK, eurozone, Japan, Sweden and other advanced
> economies, but the dollar weakness is making this global monetary
> easing worse. Central banks in Asia and Latin America are worried
> about dollar weakness and are aggressively intervening to stop
> excessive currency appreciation. This is keeping short-term rates
> lower than is desirable. Central banks may also be forced to lower
> interest rates through domestic open market operations. Some
> central banks, concerned about the hot money driving up their
> currencies, as in Brazil, are imposing controls on capital
> inflows. Either way, the carry trade bubble will get worse: if
> there is no forex intervention and foreign currencies appreciate,
> the negative borrowing cost of the carry trade becomes more
> negative. If intervention or open market operations control
> currency appreciation, the ensuing domestic monetary easing feeds
> an asset bubble in these economies. So the perfectly correlated
> bubble across all global asset classes gets bigger by the day.
> But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest
> co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to
> reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous
> reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged
> carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover
> their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long
> leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by
> dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky
> assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and
> credit instruments. ...
> This unraveling may not occur for a while, as easy money and
> excessive global liquidity can push asset prices higher for a
> while. But the longer and bigger the carry trades and the larger
> the asset bubble, the bigger will be the ensuing asset bubble
> crash. The Fed and other policymakers seem unaware of the monster
> bubble they are creating. The longer they remain blind, the
> harder the markets will fall.
>
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9a5b3216-c70b ... ab49a.html