Treasury issuance has caught up with QE. There are no more excess funds lying around for dealers to use to mark up stock and bond prices. The balance has shifted. It’s not as bullish as it was, that’s for sure. And it could get much, much worse in the weeks ahead before the Fed reacts.
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In normal times, the Federal Government has a revenue windfall in April, and runs a large surplus for the month. Revenues are typically at least 140% of outlays. Even more in good years.
Revenues covered just 24% of outlays in April. We borrowed 76 cents of every dollar the Federal Government spent last month.
We knew this was coming. The questions now are how long it can last, when it will start to recover, and whether it might get worse.
The monthly Treasury Statement data illustrates the depth of the budgetary crisis that have engulfed the financial markets. It showed that the Federal Government had to finance a deficit of $742 billion for the month. But that apparently doesn’t include a little cash flow matter of $230 billion the government paid out in tax refunds in April. That’s a gargantuan number that we saw in the Daily Treasury Statement data that I reported last week. Therefore on a cash basis, the deficit was more than a trillion. That had to be financed through debt offerings.
The Daily Treasury Statement data through May 12 shows that the situation is not only not getting better. It hasn’t stopped getting worse. The worst readings on withholding tax collections just happened Friday and Monday. Here’s how it looks now, and guidance on how we’ll know when it’s beginning to recover.
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Macro liquidity has slowed slightly in recent weeks as the Fed has taken its foot off the accelerator. But it continues to grow at an historic pace. What does that mean for the short term and the long term.
Oh, wait.
There is no long term.
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The Fed has cut back its POMO purchases to an average of $8 billion per day of Treasuries and $6 billion of MBS this week. That’s down from $10 billion and $8 billion last week, and hundreds of billions in the peak of the panic in April.
The effects of that are beginning to show up in stock prices. Be prepared because here’s what happens next.
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The Federal deficit hit $1 trillion in April. That’s a cool 1,500% increase year to year. That’s for one month.
This is based on the April 30 Daily Treasury Statement month to date totals. It is an estimate based on my simple subtraction of outlays from revenues. It is not official, and the official number may differ when the Monthly Treasury Statement is released on May 13.
Still, a trillion, is a trillion. And the final, official number should be in this ballpark. This is an increase of $941 billion from the April 2019 deficit. Keep in mind that back in the “good old days, before the 2017 tax cut and spending increase, April typically saw a surplus. So even before the pandemic, these numbers were bad.
Obviously, this blowout is due to the Pandemic Pandemonium Panic Relief Programs spending. But it’s also partly due to the plunge in revenue, and embedded increases in regular budgetary spending.
Here are the current horrible numbers, along with the immediate outlook, and what it means for stocks and bonds.
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The Fed just posted how much help it will give the market next week and son of a gun! It’s cutting again. The implications of this are yooge! Apparently Jaysus saves not! At least not the stock market. Doesn’t he care? Is this ritual sacrifice?
Here’s what you need to do now to protect yourself from Jaysus Powell’s Revenge.
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Today’s the day. The Fed announces its next plan. You may have already seen it by the time you read this.
But really. What difference does it make? The Fed has trashed its plan without notice 3 times in the past year and a half.
In the past 2 months, it has had no plan at all. It just responds willy-nilly to whatever happens in the news. My god! The Fed bailed out Carnival Cruise Lines. You know we’re in trouble when the Fed bails out Carnival. The blatant cronyism of the plutocrat class is breathtaking. And the sheep just yawn, placated by a few crumbs thrown their way.
So Jerry and the JayJays will sing yet a new song today. Maybe they’ll stick with the new tune for a few weeks or months. Maybe they won’t. We just have to keep tracking what they do and watching the market response.
Here’s what you need to know.
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Ever resolute, the Fed kept pumping the cash into Primary Dealer accounts. It kept at it until, as I calculated elsewhere, it had pumped in about $800 billion more than the dealers, and indeed the entire world, needed to absorb the flood of Treasury supply that was hammering it. That happened by the middle of April.
It was enough for the dealers to get back to their fun business of acquiring inventories of stocks, marking them up, triggering short squeezes, and convincing their herds of institutional sheep customers to follow the shorts and dive back into the market with whatever cash they had raised on the way down.
It worked, as we all know. Stocks have recovered around 55% of what they lost in the crash.
But the Fed has started to do the tighten up. Here’s what you need to know.
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The Fed has taken its foot off the gas pedal. We’ve been watching this for a couple of weeks now. Crunch time is almost here. Be afraid. Because the Fed doesn’t have a clue what to do next.
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The Fed’s massive bailout of Primary Dealers and its alphabet soup loan programs for all other big financial players, have now made moral hazard permanent and structural. Why worry about risk when you know that the Fed will always take you off the hook when the shit hits the fan?
How can we know how this will play out? How can we know if these loans can ever be repaid? Will they be repaid through inflation, perhaps hyperinflation? Or will the borrowers simply default if the markets and economy recover too slowly?
Then who will be on the hook for the Fed’s guarantees when the Fed must assume the losses? Who pays? Taxpayers? Depositors? Everyone, again through massive inflation?
Of course, there’s always a chance that everything turns out just fine. The world returns to normal in a few months. The economy bounces back, and all the trillions lent by the Fed gets repaid timely, with no financial price to be paid.
We don’t know, but there will be telltale signs in the weeks ahead that will give us a heads up.
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Lee Adler
