저자: MichaelBurry · 외국인
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버리가 2020년부터 인플레이션과 정부 부양·부채 누적을 경고해 왔다고 설명. 2024년 3월 헤드라인 인플레이션 3.5%(1월 3.1%)로 재상승, 연준 금리 인상 → 증시 조정 가능성 제기. 신용 확장(서브프라임·ARM 사례)과 현재 마진부채(2023년 9천억 달러 이상)를 2008년 위기와 비교. 스태그플레이션 시나리오 언급. 결론적으로 실물자산 선호, 투기적 투자 회피, 변동성 대비 권고.
다듬은 글
so seeing the economy on the verge of collapse I did the logical thing I sought to profit from it Michael Murray the famed investor from The Big Short predicted that inflation would return and now it's back headline inflation hit 3.5% in March up from 3.1% in January and while it's lower than its peak in 2022 it's above the fed's 2% Target bur first flagged this risk back in April 2020 when inflation was nearly flat but he warned that government stimulus and Rising debt would fuel a dangerous cycle this combination of inflation debt and speculation could be the biggest danger facing the stock market right now bur wasn't just predicting inflation back in 2020 he was predicting why it would happen What many investors failed to see and what bur got right was how the massive stimulus and government spending would Stoke inflation ways not immediately visible the US government's response to the pandemic injected trillions into the economy initially this money seemed to just plug holes left by the economic slowdown but bur saw that it was creating excessive liquidity which eventually had to flow somewhere into stocks housing and everyday Goods bur warned about this as far back as his lecture at UCLA where he discussed how government interventions often lead to unintended long-term consequences if we we look at the 2008 housing crisis bur pointed out that Decades of government-backed housing policies inflated the real estate bubble similarly today's government spending has inflated asset prices driving everything from stocks to real estate higher while artificially keeping borrowing costs low the consequence inflation has become a ticking Time Bomb to better understand how he predicted the housing crash of 2008 we need to watch this part of his lecture soon my attention was caught by this growing importance of the housing sector the amount and type of Leverage the generations old acceptance and assumption that prices always went up and the Very broad societal participation greater than 60% owning homes this all called out to me this was not just a case where a few early adopters made a lot of money or a few Venture capitalists acted badly the entire entire economy depended on home price appreciation the slope home price appreciation consumer spending jobs Securities markets all of it soon I would see Financial Armageddon with housing as its trigger point now in predicting when and how the collapse would occur my focus was again on the actions of our government and the response of the private sector this was much in keeping with my studies a decade earlier in Chicago let's consider that history the idea of an American Dream being related to home ownership has been around for nearly a century nearly every modern president promoted in one way or another with a named program the government helped returning GIS after World War II by homes and the government was the first to securitize mortgages in the early 7s private securitized mortgages followed shortly thereafter thanks to leri President Reagan would sign the secondary secondary mortgage Market enhancement act which among other things allowed in insurance companies and pensions to invest in these securitized mortgages in a short time later rean signed a law that made these types of products much more tax efficient to be clear securitization of mortgages means there is actually virtually no limit on the amount of mortgages that can be originated by an institution they just get sold through to Wall Street to investors but all all this was considered harmless it was a good thing for the American dream to almost all concern for decades the desire to satisfy this dream though needed a tool something something that would make Home Loans themselves much more affordable for those without the income credit or assets to afford one let's step back to 1982 again the depository institutions act legalized adjustable rate mortgages for the very first time these adjustable rate mortgages or teaser rate mortgages would in various forms be the primary mortgage product at the heart of the collapse of our economy two and a half decades later but adjust War mortgage did not take off immediately they really did not take off until additional more additional Regulatory and legislative changes in the 1990s and early 2000s jumpstarted the market for affordability products in the mortgage space specifically during the 90s the community reinvestment Act of 1977 was reinterpreted several times by Robert Rubin the treasury secretary at the time and Bill Clinton the president at the time the general point was to increase pressure on banks to make more loans to less creditworthy customers and they did subprime issuance bloomed about five to six times during the 1990s and there was a mini crisis thereafter Bill Clinton had a had a name for this drive as all pres presidents did his name was the national home ownership strategy then in 199 99 the Graham Leach blyly act repealed the glass steagle Act of 1933 and officially removed the increasingly leaky separation between the activities of Wall Street Banks and depository Banks this freed Banks to experiment and to expand into new lines of business none more fateful than the experiment with derivatives and subprime asset back securities the private Market therefore gained the capability to mount a massive response to all the government's efforts to stimulate housing we all remember 1999 very well but in fact our Global Village underestimated many many risks throughout the 90s as is typical of a generally good economic time and we had to deal with stock market crash Enron 911 world and eventually War the Federal Reserve stepped in cutting the discount rate at charge lenders from 6% to roughly 1% in order to save offer session other key short-term interest rates followed not all coincident coincidentally from 2001 to 2003 we saw American home prices which had largely moved in line with household income over the decades suddenly accelerate up and away from the household income trend line home prices had good reason for such deviation from 2001 through 2003 rapidly declining short-term rates to Lowe's not seen since the aftermath of the Great Depression induced a boom in adjustable rate mortgages a homeowner's dollar homeowner's dollar went farther during that teaser raade period And so home prices Rose unnaturally risk would be low as long as home price appreciation was strong under this Paradigm thanks to refinancing options it was a positive feedback loop with the full blessings of the US government in fact amids early fears that the housing market was getting ahead of itself in 2003 fed chairman Alan Greenspan assured everyone that National bubbles in real estate simply do not happen as I serve the surveyed the national Trends in housing at that time I wondered whether Common Sense ought rule against the application of precedent to the unprecedented Mr Greenspan went on to advise in 2004 that they were underutilizing the new types of adjustable rate mortgages in 2005 he allowed specifically the Technologies used by subprime lenders to get subprime borrowers into homes tragically for all of us the Federal Reserve actually had authority to block any lending activity it deemed deserving of such treatment but it had absolutely no will to do so in any event by 2003 mortgage rates stabilized at 40-year lows and importantly plain vanilla adjustable rate mortgages had already come into widespread use this was a big problem for public lenders with a growth mandate they needed to stimulate more loan volume despite stable mortgage rates and inadequate income growth at this point if home prices were to rise significantly they would have to float almost entirely on the back of the type and quality of mortgage credit provided to the buyer critically interest rates alone would no longer determine affordability in my letter to investors at the time I term this credit extension by instrument and it took our housing market into a new paradigm it was the private Market's time to overreact the instrument chosen for subprime borrowers by lenders in 2003 was a relic of the 1920s the interest only adjustable rate mortgage lenders by implementing a mortgage product they had long avoided showed for all to see they were interested in growth more than they were interested in maintaining credit RIS Credit Credit standard standards they were no longer interested in checking excess credit risk at the door by fall of 2004 I noted for my investors that the that Countrywide Financial a very large national mortgage lender reported subprime mortgage originations up 13 58% year-over-year despite a 24% decline in overall loan originations evidence was therefore manifest Banks were chasing bad credits inclusive of housing speculators the only question was how far could they go ominously fraud jumped the point at which the provision of credit was most lacks in my mind would Mark the point of maximal price in the asset I imagine the top in the housing market would be marked by a mortgage in which home buyers of subprime quality were in tce to buy with teaser rate monthly payments near zero I was very aware lenders would take this to the nth degree thanks to securitization any loans the banks did not want to keep they could always sell through Wall Street to investors who were simply ravenous for yield importantly because subprime mortgages were being turned into Securities there were mandatory regulatory filings and this is how I educated myself on the sector so let's compare it to our present situation in the 2008 crisis bur saw that adjustable rate mortgages or arms created short-term affordability but long-term risk today cheap money and low interest rates have created a similar dynamic in the broader economy investors are overconfident believing inflation will stay in check while overleveraging continues especially in areas like margin debt the fact that margin debt hit over $900 billion in 2023 is no accident it's fueled by the same overconfidence that led to the housing bubble bur's prediction wasn't just that inflation would rise he predicted that it would come back after an initial cooling off period he was right in January 2023 inflation was still over 6% and bur forecasted that it would fall later in the year but he also warned this isn't the last peak of this cycle we're seeing the early signs of that now as inflation has once again creeped up inflation is not the biggest problem by itself it's what inflation triggers that scares bur historically when inflation Rises the Federal Reserve responds by raising interest rates this cools inflation but hurts the stock market as higher rates make borrowing more expensive in 2018 when mortgage rates increased the entire housing market unraveled because homeowners could no longer afford their adjustable rate mortgages bur saw this coming years ahead of time today a similar chain reaction is possible but it's broader than just housing the economy is hooked on low rates companies have borrowed heavily and stock valuations are based on the assumption that money will stay cheap bur has been warning that the next inflation Spike could force the fed's hand driving interest rates higher and leading to a market-wide correction what is tricky is that the FED is in a bind they can't just cut rates to stimulate growth like they did after the 2008 crisis if they cut rates too soon they risk reiting inflation if they don't act inflation could continue to rise especially with external pressures like Global conflicts and supply chain issues bur's view aligns with many economists who believe we could be facing a stagflation scenario a dangerous mix of high inflation and slow economic growth the fed's next moves will be critical but as bur said fed will cut and government will stimulate and we will have another inflation Spike this creates a kind of positive feedback loop where inflation triggers fed action which then causes economic pain only for the government to step in and stimulate creating more inflation down the road it's a scenario where short-term Solutions create long-term problems exactly what bur described in his lecture about government intervention in the housing market bur doesn't just see inflation as a problem he sees speculation and debt as the true culprits behind a potential market crash in his uccla lecture bur explained how subprime mortgages created a false sense of stability before 2008 today we're seeing something similar with margin debt investors are borrowing money to buy stocks at record levels pushing prices higher without underlying value to support them the most dangerous part of speculative bubbles is that they create a nothing can go wrong mentality just like before the housing crash people think today stocks only go up but bur has warned that speculative Behavior fueled by debt is dancing on a knife's edge when interest rates rise margin debt becomes too expensive to maintain and that's when the market could implode just like in 2008 when adjustable mortgage rates reset leaving homeowners unable to pay Brice concerns are further validated by historical patterns in 2000 the bubble popped after years of excessive speculation in 2008 the housing bubble burst when debt fueled buying hit a wall today the stock market looks oddly similar with tech stocks and crypto assets attracting speculative money in ways that are disconnected from reality so what's the solution bu has been very clear about his strategy for protecting against inflation real assets he emphasized how real estate and commodities hold their value in inflationary environments while stocks and bonds May May falter real assets like gold oil or even Farmland maintain their purchasing power when inflation is high credit derivatives on an underlying asset could be worth multiple orders of magnitude more than the asset itself is worth because all all asset back Securities all asset back derivative Securities settled in cash pay as you go in the 1970s during the last major inflationary period Real Estate Value surged while stocks and bonds suffered real assets have intrinsic value they're not dependent on the cheap money fueling today's speculative stock prices this is why bur has shifted much of his Focus to tangible Investments that aren't as vulnerable to Rising interest rates so in conclusion the biggest danger facing the market isn't just inflation it's the combination of inflation specul ative Bubbles and the massive debt that's fueling today's stock prices bur has seen this pattern before and if inflation forces the FED to raise rates the whole system could unravel his track record of seeing what others Miss whether it's the 2008 housing crash or the recent rise in inflation makes his warnings hard to ignore bur's advice focus on real assets avoid speculative Investments and expect volatility the warning signs are there and if inflation spikes again we could see the market hit another rough patch just like we did in 2008
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