This was the expected response to S&P’s cut in US credit rating.

The irony is the jump in US Treasury prices caused a decline in the interest rates.This is because bond prices and interest rates are inversely correlated.

Usually, when your credit rating is cut, the interest rate at which you can borrow goes up.  But, in the case of the US government, it has gone down.

The current yield on a 10-year Treasury is 2.31%.  Last month it was 3.02%. Similarly, the yield on a 30-year Treasury bond is 3.65%, down from 4.28% last month.

Maybe S&P should take down the US’s credit rating another notch, and cause interest expenses to fall even further!

Okay, I’m being facetious.

But I don’t like the way it’s playing out. The current economic scenario reminds me of Japan over the past two decades.

Will the US economy continue to flounder for the next several years just as Japan did?

Will the government continue to prop up failing banks and poorly run business at the expense of the tax-payer?

Will interest rates continue their downward spiral?

Will real estate continue to slide for the rest of the decade?

Are we really turning Japanese?

I really think so!

Related Posts

• January 9, 2009 -- What Happens When Demand for US Debt Dries Up?
• November 5, 2008 -- Heard On The Street
• August 28, 2008 -- Manipulation In the Financial Markets
• August 15, 2008 -- Rogers Still Bullish On Commodities
• April 1, 2008 -- Cheney Betting Against The Dollar
• March 23, 2008 -- Jim Rogers’ Opinion On Bear Stearns’ Bail-Out
• March 14, 2008 -- Gold Cracks $1000/Oz: Investing For A Recession

There are tons of great books available on the subject of portfolio allocation, but I wanted something easy to understand (and thus, remember). One of the better models I can across was Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio.

The basic premise is to cover all possible scenarios in your porfolio:

25% of portfolio to protect against Inflation (eg. Gold)
25% of portfolio to protect against Deflation (Cash)
25% of portfolio to do well in a Bull Market (equities)
25% of portfolio to do well in a Bear Market (bonds)

Taking it a step further you can add in protection against Devaluation (eg. invest in foreign currencies and foreign bonds).  You can also add in real estate or REITs as an inflation hedge, and foreign equities. The the basic premise is simple. You try and benefit from any sort of market. 

This is pretty simple to implement. All you need is to do is buy low-cost ETFs and check your portfolio once a quarter to rebalance to the appropriate percentages.

If you like this philosophy but don’t want to implement it, you might want to take a look at the Permanent Portfolio Fund (PRPFX) which is modeled and named after Harry Browne’s  Permanent Portfolio. Over the past 27 years, it’s been down only 4 years. Maximum annual loss was 12% in 1984. In 2008, it lost less than 9%! It’s expense ratio is also reasonable at 0.82%. It’s 5-year average return is a respectable 10.3% vs say an S&P 500 index fund like (SWPPX) which had a 5-year average return of 0.99%.

 It’s portfolio consists of gold, silver, Swiss franc assets such as Swiss franc denominated deposits and bonds of the federal government of Switzerland, stocks of U.S. and foreign real estate and natural resource companies, aggressive growth stocks and dollar assets such as U.S. Treasury securities and short-term corporate bonds.

Related Posts

• January 10, 2008 -- Top Performing Funds of 2007
• October 13, 2007 -- Time To Invest In Mutual Funds?
• October 1, 2007 -- How Does Your 401k Compare?
• December 15, 2011 -- Profiting From the Collapse of the Euro
• June 10, 2011 -- Humor: I Want To Buy Salesforce.com
• January 27, 2011 -- Golden Rules of Financial Safety
• January 11, 2011 -- New Year’s Predictions And Why Bernanke Sports A Beard

Politicians will never admit there’s a problem. Portugal’s prime minister just said that they don’t need any financial assistance. Just like Greece’s prime minister said last March, he claims they want to help themselves out of this mess. And like Ireland’s minister of foreign affairs said last November, there’s no need to panic. Of course a couple of weeks later both prime ministers came begging for aid. Portugal will probably do the same.

Everyone wants someone else to bail them out, and pay for their transgressions.  And other nations are rushing in to buy the sovereign debt – using freshly minted money of course. Maybe these saviors know that their own balance sheets are somewhat murky and hopefully someone else will return the favor in the future?

After all, printing more money to buy another country’s debt is a splendid idea. Keeps the world economy chugging along without having to deal with any of the difficult issues. Like reducing debt. (I’ve never quite understood the notion of solving a country’s excessive debt problem by rolling it over in to more expensive debt. But financiers make money selling debt, so that’s what economists (who secretly harbor dreams of working on Wall Street) will advise the governments to do). But there is a crisis of sorts and whenever there is a crisis anywhere, people flock to the US and to the relative safety of US treasuries.

Everyone and their mother seem to be making financial and investment predictions for the rest of 2011. So I’ll do the same.

1. For the first half of the year the US dollar and government bonds will appreciate – especially against the Euro.

2. Also during the first half of 2011, Gold and Silver prices will drop from their spectacular highs as the US dollar appreciates. But I think Gold prices will stay above $1000/ounce.

3. But eventually, probably during late-summer, people will realize that all the major countries are printing money and using it to prop up failing countries and companies by buying debt, the US dollar and treasuries will slide. And Gold and Silver prices will start to rise again.

4. This collapse in treasuries will be precipitated by multiple bankruptcies in the municipal bond markets.
In the past 2 years, 15 municipalities have filed bankruptcy. According to a recent article in WSJ:

Mr. Bernanke downplayed the notion that many state and local governments run the risk of defaulting and that the municipal bond market could be headed for turmoil. The muni market, he says, has been functioning “reasonably well,” with lots of bond issuance and liquidity in trading. “We’re not seeing extraordinary stress,” he says. Some analysts have been warning that a crisis is looming in the muni market. Mr. Bernanke described these warnings as overly pessimistic. He also said the Fed, which has some limited authority to buy short-term municipal debt, has “no expectation or intention to get involved in state and local finance.” If states are to be bailed out, he said, “it would have to be Congress.”

Isn’t that exactly what he said right before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went bankrupt? Let’s face it. There will be a muni-bond meltdown, and Bernanke will scare congress into bailing them out. Bernanke is just a bare-faced liar. Actually, he got tired of being called a bare-faced liar which is why he sports a beard. But regardless, the only reason he brought it up is because it is an issue that will become pertinent within the next 18 months.

Incidentally, previous Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, said exactly the same about the housing bubble back in 2005. That it wasn’t an issue and there was nothing to be worried about. As an economist, he should have seen it was a bubble, of his own creation.

This collapse of muni-bonds will scare the pants of regular Americans and foreign investors. As the last bastion of fixed income for the retired, the wealthy and global pension-funds, muni-bond defaults will trigger a major panic. Citizens and investors will realize that they’ve been hoodwinked by the government and Wall Street, and they can’t trust either of them.

5. This will cause a flight to gold and silver, possibly the last and most intense run in this bull market.
I predicted back in December 2005 that “the US is going to enter a period of inflation and recession brought on by the trade & budget deficit and precipitated by the devaluing dollar” and that at $508, it was a great time to buy gold. I still believe it is. If you haven’t already established a position, make sure you buy both gold and silver on dips. If you don’t know how to buy, read through the previous posts on gold and silver. Hopefully, this major rush in gold will not trigger the complete collapse of global currencies. And if it does, it’s still a few years away, so it’s not an 2011 prediction.

Disclaimer: I’m short a Euro ETF, long gold and silver (bullion and mining stocks). None of this should be construed as investment advice.

Related Posts

• May 12, 2010 -- Gold Closes At Record High
• January 25, 2010 -- Venezuela Devalues Its Currency
• January 9, 2009 -- What Happens When Demand for US Debt Dries Up?
• October 4, 2009 -- World Bank President: Time To Diversify Out Of The Dollar
• September 15, 2009 -- The Recession Is Over, Unemployment Expected To Rise
• September 8, 2009 -- Why Is Gold At A $1000/Oz?
• August 24, 2009 -- How To Invest Like China

Buoyed by gold’s action, silver has also seen some price movement. After dropping as low as $15.13 in February 2010, it has jumped nearly 30% to 19.52. (Silver prices hit $19.70 today in intraday trading).

Seems like Marc Faber was right about gold being a bargain at $950/oz! Since that post about 2 years ago, gold prices are up about 29% versus the S&P 500 which is down about 8%.

Related Posts

• January 11, 2011 -- New Year’s Predictions And Why Bernanke Sports A Beard
• January 25, 2010 -- Venezuela Devalues Its Currency
• October 4, 2009 -- World Bank President: Time To Diversify Out Of The Dollar
• September 8, 2009 -- Why Is Gold At A $1000/Oz?
• August 24, 2009 -- China To Buy $80 Billion Worth Of Gold
• March 6, 2009 -- Global Economic Recession: Coming To A Town Near You!
• February 18, 2009 -- Demand For Gold Tops $100 Billion!

Millions of Americans are now deeply underwater on their mortgage. If you’re among them, you need to stop living in a dream world and give serious thought to walking away from the debt.

No, you shouldn’t feel bad about it, and you shouldn’t feel guilty. The lenders would do the same to you—in a heartbeat. You need to put yourself and your family’s finances first.

If you are reluctant to give up on “your” home, realize that it isn’t “yours.” If you are in negative equity, it’s the bank’s home. You’re just renting it. And right now you may be paying way above market rates. You need to be ruthless about your cash flow.

Still, when it comes to the idea of walking away from debts, many people are held back by a sense of morality. They feel it’s wrong to abandon their obligations. They don’t want to be a deadbeat.

Your instincts, while honorable, are leading you astray.

The economy is fundamentally amoral.

Whether we like it or not, walking away from debts is as American as apple pie. Companies file for bankruptcy all the time, and their lenders eat the losses. Executives and investors pocketed millions from the likes of Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns when the going was good. They didn’t have to give back one cent of that money when the companies went into bankruptcy.

Wow, I’m speechless. It seems the greed of Wall Street has permeated down to the lower rungs of society and it’s perfectly okay to socialize your debts and losses. (By socializing, I mean the bank or taxpayer or a large group of people who are not affiliated to you end up paying for your debts/losses/mistakes/greed). Apparently its as American as apple pie. Is this the change I didn’t vote for? If everyone in all sections of society thinks its perfectly okay to default on your obligations, logically, the next question is

How much longer until the US Government starts defaulting on its debts?

Of course, the US Government cannot default, since it can keep printing US Dollars to pay for its debt. Which it is already doing. The only problem is that this increases the number of dollars in circulation and causes the currency to devalue. Sooner or later, we’re going to see a large of amount of inflation. No we may not see hyperinflation like Brazil or Zimbabwe, but we sure might see 10-12% inflation for a few years.

But 12% inflation for only 6 years would cause the price of everything to double. If you don’t think that’s possible, just look at a country which isn’t currently in deep recession, like India. Inflation in India is currently running at 9%. And over the past decade it has been running at a similar rate.

So what’s the effect on the average Indian? Highly skilled workers saw their salaries jump 10 times, while salaries for unskilled labor is up about 5 times. So everyone is better off, right? Not exactly, people living on fixed incomes basically got screwed as prices for everything else went up 5-10 times as well. It was great if you owned real assets like real estate, gold and to some extent stocks, but terrible if you owned bonds or cash. Just make sure your investments are tailored towards those investments that happen to do well during inflationary times.

Related Posts

• September 15, 2009 -- The Recession Is Over, Unemployment Expected To Rise
• January 11, 2011 -- New Year’s Predictions And Why Bernanke Sports A Beard
• May 26, 2010 -- US Debt Breaks $13 Trillion
• January 25, 2010 -- Venezuela Devalues Its Currency
• January 19, 2010 -- Suzie Says “Pay Off Your Home Mortgage”
• September 22, 2009 -- The Sun Sets On Dollar Supremacy
• September 10, 2009 -- Weekly Round Up Of Interesting Articles