The Bone Rattler

In the financial world, it is rare to find individuals who not only represent their firms in public, but who are seemingly allowed to speak and write the unvarnished truth, however ugly it might be.

Of course, if the outlook is genuinely positive, all firms actively encourage anyone and everyone within earshot of a reporter or with access to the broadcast media to say so -- as loudly and as often as possible.

One officially sanctioned sell-side commentator who has been ahead of the curve as far as the unraveling of the worldwide credit bubble goes is Albert Edwards. Interestingly, he works for a large German-based bank that might not stand to do so well should his worst case assumptions prove correct.

In "Dresdner’s Edwards on the Big Domino that Has Yet to Fall," the FT Alphaville blog details his latest thoughts.

Regular readers would expect Albert Edwards, Dresdner Kleinwort’s resident bear, to be at his snarling best right now, despite the efforts of some in trying to talk confidence back into financial markets.

But whoa! The strategist’s latest weekly missive, sub-titled Which domino will fall next in ‘The Great Unwind’?, should cause DK clients to pause and think.

So much for a holiday weekend here in Britain. We should cut to the chase:

Who knows whether this ends in global recession? But what is very clear is that the market is still attaching a minimal probability to the recession outcome. Our own economists’ probability of a US recession is 40%… In a recession we see large falls in profits of about 35% (especially financials) — an environment in which equity markets might half, Fed Funds and bond yields fall below they previous cyclical lows of 1% and 3.1% respectively and general carnage in leveraged risk investments. The risks to investors are so, so very asymmetric.

In an unusually long (and, we note, badly-edited) edition of his Global Strategy Weekly, Edwards meanders through the carnage already wrought, finding evidence at every turn for much more to come.

Some snippets:

The real carnage has been in the money markets that have been hit by the extreme levels of risk aversion by market participants - as evidenced by short dated Treasury Bill yields plunging due to their safe haven status. I think that things are much worse than most believe…

Despite flooding the market with liquidity and cutting the Discount Rate to calm things down, there is absolutely no reason that extreme risk aversion should dissipate. The levels of losses in hedge funds etc are the result of massive levels of leverage invested in risk assets which, in the main, have moved only moderately downwards. It is leverage and extreme levels of risk appetite that are the problem…

Are inverters now de-levered? If they were I would suspect that asset prices would be a lot lower than they currently are. There are lots of bodies still floating to the surface. I believe investor/lender risk aversion is highly appropriate given the way funds have been able to cover up losses with mark to model practices and the inability of rating agencies to see simulate the losses seen on assets in the even of a housing crash (which was wholly predictable)…

With banks one moment claiming they have no exposure to US subprime only to be found to be virtually bankrupt a week later, what confidence can investors as the stench of incompetence and cover-up now emanates from the financial industry.

And there’s more:

Most equity investors still have a touching belief that equities are cheap and hence will relatively safe during “The Great Unwind”..

This relative cheapness of equities has been cited as the reason for the crazy levels of corporate finance activity recently…(But) companies are now simply not in a position to borrow at the rate they were to fund these activities. The single biggest buyer for the US equity market is now been effectively slide tackled into touch…

If long-term earnings decline, as they did post-Nasdaq bubble, PEs will contract sharply even despite sharply lower bond yields. Equities are therefore not really cheap. It is an illusion.

And more:

Hence we have always forecast continued Ice Age multiple contraction in the event of a US economic downturn, whereas most commentators will forecast that there will be multiple expansion because equities are cheap and bond yields will decline. Hence in the next recession (which could be coming soon) a 35% decline in profits (say) could be accompanied by multiple contraction from the current 15.5X trailing earnings to say 12x. This would generate a portfolio wrecking 50% decline in equity indices…

This sort of forecast usually meets much hilarity, even with those few clients who are sympathetic to our arguments. But the assumption that the de-bubbling of valuations is over is that - just an assumption.

All of which leads Edwards to a bone-rattling conclusion:

What commentators totally miss is how incredibly fragile consumption really is. With mortgage lenders going bust by the day and the household sector hit by a barrage of depressing headlines it is entirely possible that further retrenchment in the obscenely high borrowing requirement will yet generate a economic slump which no-one will predict…This is the big domino that is yet to fall.

Comments

[Bill]

The emperor has no clothes. The empire has too many homes.

[Harleydog]

This Edward's comments could be extremely detrimental to his job security over there. Candor is not tolerated in a business driven by investment banking.
Keep up the great blog Mike.