저자: JeffreyGundlach · 외국인
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결론: 다음 경기침체 시 기업채·국가부채 문제로 큰 혼란이 올 수 있으며, 단기 등락보다 이 구조적 리스크에 주목해야 한다. 연준 정책: 파월의 '인내(patient)'는 말을 먼저 하기 전까지 금리를 건드리지 않겠다는 뜻이며, 금리 인하 여부에 대한 시장의 확신은 없다고 봄. 양적긴축은 과거 '자동운행' 발언과 달리 양적완화를 정규 정책수단으로 검토하는 등 연준이 방향성을 잃은 상태. 기업채 리스크: 모건스탠리 분석 기준 레버리지만으로 투자등급 채권의 약 45%가 정크 등급 수준이며, 경기침체 시 신용등급 하향이 불가피함. 대형 기업들의 부채 축소 약속은 신뢰하기 어려움. 국가부채 리스크: 2018 회계연도 국가부채 1.27조달러 증가(적자 약 8000억달러 발표는 사회보장기금 대출·전쟁비용 등 제외 때문에 축소된 수치). 경기침체 시 부채/GDP 비율은 통상 약 4%p 상승하며, 부채는 연 10% 수준으로 증가할 수 있다고 봄. 올해 만기 기업채 약 7000억달러, 향후 하이일드 채권·은행대출 만기 누적. 장기금리 전망: 경기침체 시 단기금리는 연준 조작으로 떨어질 수 있으나 대규모 국채 발행 때문에 장기금리는 하락하지 않을 수 있다고 봄. 장기 금리 상승 쪽으로 기울어 있으며 올해 말 30년물 약 3.5%를 넘으면 가속 상승 가능성, 연말 무렵 장기 국채금리 약 4%를 상정. 경기침체 신호: 선행지수·PMI·소비자심리는 아직 완전한 적신호는 아님(옐로 그린). 실업률이 36개월 이동평균(4.3%)을 넘으면 침체 경고 신호. 하이일드 스프레드는 12월 급등 후 되돌림. 장단기 금리차는 약 17bp로 낮아 우려 요인. 침체 시점은 6개월 이내로 보기 어렵다는 입장. 정치·재정: 자사주 매입 규제 움직임은 주식시장에 부정적으로 봄. 정치권의 사회주의적 공약에 비판적이며, 재정적자 지속으로 2025년 이전 재정위기가 올 가능성을 언급. 2020년 대선이 선거인단 과반 실패로 의회에서 결정될 가능성도 거론. 출연자 전망: 단기 침체 신호는 아직 아니지만 중장기적으로 금리 상승과 재정·신용 리스크 확대를 경고.
다듬은 글
Julia LaRoche is standing by with Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital. Julia, take it away. Hey, thanks Miles. I'm here with Jeffrey Gundlach, that's right. And Jeffrey, thank you so much for having us here. Sure, thanks for coming in. Okay, so I want to start with the Fed because Fed Chair Powell has continued to reiterate that the Fed is desiring to remain patient.
And many are interpreting that as the Fed is reluctant to hike rates and that they might even ease. Do you think the market's getting this right that they may in fact actually ease next? I'm not so sure that the market has an opinion where the Fed's going to ease next or or just I think it's more that they're going to stay where they are.
When the Fed says patient, what they mean is I think that they're not going to do anything unless they say something first. So, patient just means that until we communicate something different, we're not doing anything with interest rates. And that's obviously a massive change from the December press conference that J.
Powell gave after the Fed meeting when he said that quantitative tightening was on autopilot. In fact, I just read the other day that the Fed admits that they're having discussions about doing quantitative easing again, which is radical change from saying that quantitative tightening is on autopilot.
They're saying that they might they're discussing, they haven't drawn a conclusion yet. They're discussing the idea that quantitative easing will be a regular policy tool, not one that is used only during emergencies or when you're already have gone to the zero interest rate lower bound, which suggests that So, the market doesn't think the Fed's going to do anything with interest rates.
They also aren't sure whether they're going to do quantitative easing or quantitative tightening. So, the Fed is kind of I'd say uh lost its way in terms of having an articulated direction, which isn't necessarily bad. That's the way it used to be but under Alan Greenspan, he was famous for saying if you think you understood what I said, I wasn't being vague enough.
Right. Well, a lot certainly has changed as you mentioned, and you're someone who's known as someone who always looks at risk. You look at various risks. So, I'm curious, what is on your radar right now? What are you focused on? Well, I think the biggest risk, and it may not materialize for a little while longer, is that when the next recession comes, there's going to be a lot of turmoil because the corporate bond market is extraordinarily leveraged.
The ratings of the corporate bond market are very low. Um there's a study by Morgan Stanley Research that said that if you use leverage ratios alone, and there are other variables that the rating agencies use, but one of the most important, of course, is leverage ratios of a corporation. And if you use leverage ratios alone, that 45% of the investment-grade bond market would be rated junk right now.
Right now. So, if there's a recession, obviously, these ratings will have to be lowered. For now, the rating agencies are listening with sympathetic ears to reassuring statements by some large corporations that they're aware that their leverage ratios are kind of high, but they plan on addressing that sometime in the next few years.
If there's a recession, it's obvious that the leverage ratios will not be addressed, and the ratings will have to go. So, that's a really big risk. Also, during the next recession, we're going to have an extraordinary extraordinary uh national debt problem because the national debt is growing at a very rapid rate already.
And we're supposedly, if I listen to Larry Kudlow and the president, they keep telling me that it's best economy ever. I know that they know that they're being hyperbolic, but it is a growing economy. Real GDP is 3% year over year on the most recent reading. And yet, the national debt in fiscal 2018, which ended September 30th, was increased by 1.27 trillion dollars.
Now, the government tells you that the deficit was a little under 800 billion, but they're not really telling you the truth because the national debt is the debt. And what's missing from the 800 to the 1.27 trillion are things like war expenditures. They're deemed to be off-budget, national relief for natural disasters, and loans from the social security system, which obviously are not real.
I mean, that's just one branch of the government funding another branch of the government that you can't finance yourself. So, if we're growing at 6% of GDP, which is what we're really growing at in terms of national debt, in fiscal '18 during a 3% real economy, what's the debt going to grow by during a recession?
Well, typically, the debt-to-GDP ratio goes up by about four percentage points during a recession. So, it suggests that the debt-to-GDP the national debt would grow at around a 10% annual rate if we go into a a normal average type of recession. That's obviously a really big problem. There's also tons of bonds maturing.
The corporate bond market has $700 billion of bonds maturing this year. That's a significant number. In future years, we're going to have lots of high-yield bonds and bank loans. And of course, the Treasury's quantitative tightening program is issuance of bonds that were never floated during the deficits of the past.
So, it's quite possible that during the next recession, and I've been talking about this for a while now, that what we're used to happening, which is oh, it's bad economy and so Treasury rates fall, maybe that will only happen at the short end. Maybe long-term interest rates won't fall during the next recession because of the tremendous amount of bonds that will be you know, put into the market.
So, I think those are the the things in the longer term that are the big risks. In the short-term risks sometimes don't really matter. It's really what's the big problem. I mean, I try to go back to kind of the cornerstone principle when I think about the starting point for asset allocation. Like back in 2006, the only thing that mattered was you understood there was a credit crisis coming.
I think this time the only thing that really matters is this problem with the corporate bond market and the national debt issue when the next recession comes. And that's really going to trump any kind of short-term movements. So the real key I think is to think about that looming problem on the horizon with the next recession.
I think we're going to get a question in from New York real quick. Hey Julia, thanks so much. It's Jen Rogers. Jeffrey, I lost count of how many times you said the next recession, which brings me to the question of when do you see the next recession coming? Are there any signals that you're looking at that are scaring you?
Um a little bit more than it was a year ago. What was really interesting about entering 2018 was that there was this narrative of a synchronized global expansion. Uh that was true. Everything was really flashing green lights for the economy entering 2018. And yet what's interesting about that when things are flashing green light, most people don't understand that it means it's kind of the end of the game for risk assets.
The global stock market peaked January 26th of 2018. US hung on until October, but the global stock market peaked January 26th of 2018. Entering 2019, there was a narrative developing that is also true of some synchronized global slowdown. Yet the indicators that we look at for a recession are not even flashing fully yellow yet.
It's more of a yellowish green right now. We look at things like the leading economic indicators, kind of the granddaddy of them all, that's put out by the Conference Board. That year-over-year always has gone negative before the front end of a recession. And while it's weakening from a very high level, it's still pretty high at around 5% year-over-year.
And the stock market being up in the last couple of months means that probably the leading indicators will hang in there. What is signaling recession a little bit more are sentiment surveys. The PMI surveys typically collapse in a very observable way before the front end of recession comes. They are collapsing sort of right now, but they're still at high levels.
Consumer sentiment, same sort of a thing. Um unemployment rate is starting to flash yellow a little bit. Unemployment claims, they're reported every Thursday, have bottomed out and appear to be in a rising trend. And uh the uh unemployment rate now is above its 12-month uh moving average, unemployment rate, and that's a necessary condition to be talking about potential recession.
What would really be a major indicator would be if the unemployment rate would go above its 36-month moving average, which right now rests at 4.3%. Unemployment rate right now is at 4.0, so it's not terribly far away from that moving average. We have to watch that very carefully because if that cracks above, then I think we would say that we're starting to flash yellow for a recession.
Another indicator that's very important are junk bond spreads. Junk bond spreads uh in the last before last two recessions really blew out by several hundred basis points before the front end of the recession came. We had a scare on that uh during December, just like the stock market went down 20% plus in most of the indices, but the rebound has been all the way back to the breakdown point.
So, uh high yield spreads are starting to look a little less scary. So, it's just to look for a recession in the very near term, I think you have to look very hard and look with a jaundiced eye. I think right now it's too early to say that we have the necessary conditions in place for a recession on the foreseeable horizon, which is good news, but the bad part of that news is the foreseeable horizon is typically no longer than 6 months, usually more like 4 to 6 months.
So, for now that seems to be okay. Um also lastly, the yield curve that got a lot of play, you know, the twos-tens yield curve is about 17 basis points, that's pretty low. That's a little bit of a concern and there is no yield curve at all from basically uh LIBOR out to the 5-year Treasury. You're all about 2.5%.
That suggests that the market is looking for no movement from the Fed frankly for years to come. I'm sure that won't be the case, but uh that's the message from the mathematics of the yield curve right now. Uh Jeffrey Mills out there in here in New York. I want to ask you um about share buybacks which has gotten a lot more play among a number of politicians.
Recently, you were just talking a moment ago about leverage ratios in the corporate bond market. Um does anything about the conversation about buybacks concern you just in terms of politicians I suppose being a little bit more hostile towards corporate America? Well, it's pretty clear that the rhetoric from presidential hopefuls for 2020 on the on the uh left side anyway has gotten very very hostile.
Obviously, to have legislators telling private companies or public companies in this case what they should be doing uh with their profits is a little bit uh disconcerting to say the least. So, I I on the margin you have to take legislation prohibiting or limiting buybacks as a negative for the stock market.
It's pretty clear that the leverage ratios in the corporate bond market have driven have been been uh hand in glove with buybacks and the corporate economy is very leveraged. So, I think what the politicians want is their thought process is stop enriching the wealthy who are already you know disproportionately uh wealth inequality is pretty bad.
Stop enriching them with boosting up stock prices. Um the idea it might be to have more money for workers' wages which is obviously part of the uh wealth inequality problem. So, I I can kind of see how all of this is all all different parts of the same picture viewed from different angles. But, the politicians clearly are talking about socialism.
Uh Uh socialism just puts the word democratic in front of the word socialism because it sounds good that at least you're voting for it instead of being forced into it. But, you know, socialism is not a very good way of building wealth as shown by millennial uh you know, hundreds of years of history.
Uh most recently down in Venezuela is is all you have to look at. I remember there was a thing called the Soviet Union which uh had 5-year plans and uh I don't think they're around anymore. So, uh not a really good I idea but it's all part of the uh the cycle that we're in where the technology has gotten way ahead of the society's ability to adapt to it.
This is the classic ebb and flow of history. As I said during the 2016 election, when I predicted way back in January of 2016 that Trump would win, I said, "If you think this election is weird, 2016, you ain't seen nothing yet." And here we are. Uh we're already pretty feels like we're already pretty far into the 2020 race even though it's only February of 2019.
And we even have the possibility for a third-party candidate. And we might even, in my view, have four candidates that get electoral votes or at least have decent polling uh in in the election. I think the biggest thing that might be a worrisome development relative to politics is it's just possible.
I'm not saying this is a base case, but I'm open I say it's plausible that the next election is decided by Congress because it's possible that no one gets the majority of the Electoral College delegates. And if you think that Congress is dysfunctional now and that there's anger and vitriol, just imagine what it would be like if Congress actually picked the next president and vice president of the United States.
That would be something. The House would pick the president and the Senate would pick the vice president. And you could just imagine if they were picked candidates from different parties, how that would go. So, we're in we're in very difficult political waters. We have been for a while. And uh I don't think it's going to get any better anytime soon.
Hey Jeffrey, one more from uh New York. It's Andy Serwer. I I actually want to ask you a little bit more about Washington if you can stomach that. Um what what is it about um Washington that actually concerns you the most? I mean, in terms of I mean, you talk a lot about monetary policy. Is it fiscal policy?
Is it infrastructure? Um number one, and number two, is there anything that anyone in Washington is doing right? Um well, there's always some people somewhere in the government they're doing things right, but the biggest problem is that we have a growing economy, and yet we have decided that debt doesn't matter one bit.
You know, Dick Cheney was famous for saying Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. But, the national debt just went over $22 trillion yesterday. And it's growing at over a trillion dollars a year during a growing economy. And our taxation versus GDP has gone from around 20% a few years ago to about 15%.
So, 15 is it's not the lowest level ever, it's just the lowest level since 1949. So, we have decided to run a large government with huge deficits, and it seems that nobody's interested in collecting the taxes for that. I I wish government were smaller. I I think it's not a problem of taxation, but once you're going to establish the size of spending the way it is, you've got to pay for it.
And we've gone very, very far away from that, and that's an issue that is going to get a lot of attention because the deficit is going to continue to grow, and the Fed has been raising interest rates. They've stopped for now, but the debt expense, the the interest expense is at a 1.25% of GDP uh right now, but the CBO says that by the mid-2020s, it's going to be at 3%, which is a 1.75% increase relative to GDP which in a very simplistic framework means that GDP all things being equal will be 1 and 3/4 % slower uh in the mid-2020s.
And we're already struggling under insufficient economic growth. Think about the nominal GDP that with the most recent one was announced which is through September 30th which is fiscal 2018. You know, the um the the the growth of of nominal GDP was about 5.3%. But the growth of the national debt was 6% of GDP.
And part of economic growth is the delta in government spending. So, with the national debt growing by 6% of GDP and nominal GDP going up by 5.3% it means if you had a balanced budget, the economy would have been negative during fiscal 2018. So, everything that we're doing is based upon debt expansion and it is not insignificant.
And it is not true when you hear politicians I listened to Elizabeth Warren's uh speech when she said she was running for president. She looked right into the camera and lied to the American people that it is not true that we can't afford Medicaid for all and free college tuition and all the other goodies that that the socialists want to bring out.
They she says it's just simply not true that we can't afford them. And I hear other politicians saying, "Oh, it's just World War all over again." Well, taxes were raised massively during World War and not just taxes on the wealthy, the taxes on the middle class and the lower middle class were raised massively to for to pay for World War going into the 1930s the tax rate for the average American household was 1 and 1/2%.
By the 1944 it was 25%. So, this is a massive tax increase. Taxation during World War went from 5% of GDP to 15 to 20% of GDP. So, no, we cannot afford these things without having a complete collapse of our standard of living as we know it. So, broadly speaking, what's going on in Washington is very much on the wrong track, but we all need to have an awareness of the problem before we get the intestinal fortitude to make changes.
And unfortunately, our political system is one that does things in response to crisis. And so, we're going to have to have a crisis of the fiscal situation, and it's probably going to happen before 2025 before we finally make the changes that need to happen to the level of spending versus the level of taxation.
Okay, Jeffrey, before we send this back to New York, let's get a prediction from you. Where do you think the 10-year will end this year? I've long ago learned not to fall into that trap. There was one year when I said the 10-year would end at X, and it actually ended 5 days before year-end exactly at X.
And then there was a big move the last 5 days. And so, I ended up off by like 35 basis points or something. I remember people saying I was wrong because I was off by 35 basis points when in fact I was only off by 5 days. I think Well, let me put it this way. I'm not going to put a number on it, but I think long-term interest rates are headed higher.
I think what we had in response to the weakness in risk assets in the stock market, I think we had the Pavlovian reaction of Oh, I've seen this movie. When stocks get weak, you buy long-term Treasuries. And we had a decent rally, about 50 basis points in long-term Treasuries, but now we're basically drifting higher again.
And I think that what I said earlier is going to start finding its way into people's psyche, which is when the next weakness comes, there's going to be so much debt, so many bonds, that it's possible that short-term rates drop if they're manipulated by the Fed, and flight to safety leads people to find a 250 two-year to be okay, but I'm not really sure if people will find the 280 tenure to be okay when you're staring down the barrel of trillions of dollars of bond issuance.
So, I think interest rates are headed higher. Um I really uh didn't think they would get back below 3% on the 30-year Treasury. They did for a minute. And now now they're back above three. I But I think when and if long-term interest rates move up towards about 350 on the 30-year, I think you could see them accelerating higher.
And so, a nice round number to think about would be around a a 4% on the long-term sort of Treasury as we move towards the latter part of this year. Jeffrey Gundlach, CEO DoubleLine Capital, thank you so much and back to you all in New York.
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