저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
요약 보기
재무부가 20~30년 장기 국채 바이백 규모를 회당 20억달러에서 40억달러로 두 배 확대했고, 이를 사실상 양적완화에 준하는 조치로 봄. 장기채 평균 쿠폰 3.44%를 단기채 약 4% 차입으로 대체하면 재융자 위험과 납세자 부담이 커진다고 주장. 금 가격은 이 발표 직후 급등했고 약세 채권은 금에 긍정적이라고 봄. 연준의 물가 판단 실패와 재정 확장이 인플레이션의 근본 원인이라는 입장. 장기 채권 조정이 더 커질 것이라는 전망을 강조.
다듬은 글
So, a weak bond market is a positive for gold. This is not a negative. Look at what the Fed is doing. Never mind what Warsh says: "I'd rather sell my gold to get 5% on 10- year Treasury bonds." But the market confirms my interpretation. Because look what happened to the price of gold. The FOMC's view was that inflation was a problem.
It is too high, and the probability of its growth is higher. They were looking for excuses, someone to blame for inflation. Some of them blamed artificial intelligence for this. The stock market does not cause inflation. Artificial intelligence does not cause inflation. The Federal Reserve causes inflation.
So, in essence, the government, by running large deficits and buying Treasury bonds, is pursuing a soft, extremely soft fiscal policy, which complicates the Fed's task of pursuing a tight monetary policy. Quantitative easing is coming. In fact, the Fed is already implementing quantitative easing. It's just not an official program, but they'll have to ramp it up, and it's obvious they won't be able to raise the stakes.
This would put monetary policy at odds with fiscal policy . The Treasury announced that it will now double its buyback of long-term Treasury bonds. These are treasury bonds with a maturity of 20-30 years. They bought 2 billion during each buyback, and now they will buy 4 billion in Treasury bonds. And as soon as the announcement appeared, the price of gold rose sharply.
In fact, I didn't even know about this announcement. I had to look for information. I saw how gold, bitcoin, stock futures were moving, and I had to check the news. I wasn't even sure, because remember, I'm on vacation. So I just had to go online and try to figure out what was going on. But many called it quantitative easing or " light" quantitative easing.
This is not quantitative easing. The Fed announced nothing. This is done by the Treasury. The Treasury will buy more long-term bonds. But unlike the Fed, the Treasury doesn't have a printing press, and it can't simply create money out of thin air to buy long-term bonds. So where does it get the money?
It sells more short-term bonds. Thus, it finances the debt. It buys back previously issued long-term debt and replaces it with short-term debt. Why do they do this? Because this is a very reckless step. First of all, if you look at the average coupon on government debt now, on long-term obligations, with a term of 10 years or more, the average coupon is 3.44%.
The Treasury just doubled its purchases of long-term bonds, and that may be a sign of desperation, not strength. As Peter Schiff points out, replacing long-term debt at 3.44% with short-term borrowing at around 4% increases refinancing risk . The government is effectively betting that future conditions will somehow become easier.
This shifts the risk from today's bond market to the burden of tomorrow's taxpayers. Peter Schiff goes on to explain why this buyback could imperceptibly make the debt problem even more dangerous. Why would you even refinance it? Rates on 30-year bonds are currently at 5.3%. Now they have dropped just below 5.2%.
I think I saw 5.18%, and the 10-year bond fell to, you know, 4.6 something. But if you have all this long-term debt at 3.44%, why the hell would you refinance it with Treasury bills at 4%? It would be like someone having a mortgage. Maybe there are 25 more years left to pay. And you have a mortgage at 3.5%.
Why the hell would you pay it off by borrowing more money at an annual floating rate? No one would be stupid enough to do that except our government. They don't do it because they're stupid. They do it because they are scared. This is a real panic move by the government, a desperate attempt to stop long-term interest rates from rising by announcing that the government will buy the bonds that everyone else is selling.
Remember, they are actually intervening in this trade because the market doesn't want Treasury bonds. The market is selling Treasuries, and now the US government has decided to use taxpayer money to buy the bonds that everyone else is selling off. This is obviously an unwise financial move. So why do they do this?
They are trying to slow the rate of growth in long-term bond yields. But the price of this is a reduction in the average maturity of public debt, which is already just under 6 years. And it will get much shorter as this program expands, because it won't be enough. This is just the first suggestion, right?
This is not the end. This is more like the beginning. The real danger is not today's interest rate. And in the "wall of repayment" that the government is deliberately creating. According to Peter Schiff, refinancing cheap long-term debt with more expensive short-term bills makes Washington vulnerable if rates rise.
This makes future budgets increasingly sensitive to monetary policy. While officials claim to be stabilizing markets, for investors this means that today's intervention could become tomorrow's inflationary pressures and currency risk. Peter Schiff goes on to explain why this first step could be just the beginning of a much larger Treasury Department intervention.
And I have long said that the Ministry of Finance is going to increase the volume of buybacks. But it will also, you know, make it much harder for the Fed to raise short-term interest rates because now the government itself becomes more vulnerable to them rising because of the need to refinance this short-term debt.
So why do they do this? Why should the government swap long-term debt, which already has a low yield, for one that exposes it to all these risks? It's all for profit. They are simply delaying the inevitable. They are trying to trade relief from short-term problems for long-term suffering. But the long-term problems will come when all this short-term debt needs to be repaid and rolled over, or the Fed, realizing this vulnerability, simply won't raise rates.
Actually, when people call this quantitative easing again, it's not, because the Fed is not doing any buying. So the money supply is not increasing as a result, but the Treasury just doubled its long-term bond purchases, which may be more of a sign of desperation than strength. As Peter Schiff points out here , replacing long-term debt at 3.44% with short-term borrowing at around 4% increases refinancing risk.
The government is effectively betting that future conditions will somehow become easier. This shifts the risk from today's bond market onto tomorrow's taxpayers. Peter Schiff goes on to reveal why this buyback could quietly make the debt problem even more dangerous.
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