Credit-Driven Train Crash

Today we will summarize something I've been thinking about for a long time. Exactly how will we get from the credit crisis, which I think is coming in the next 12–18 months, to what I call "The Great Reset", when the global debt will be "rationalized" via some form of nonpayment.Whatever you want to call it, I think a worldwide debt default is likely in the next 10–12 years.

This is part of a yet-undetermined number of installments. We may break away for a week or two if other events intrude, but I will keep coming back to this. It has many threads to explore. I'm going to talk about my expectations given today's reality, without the prophetically inconvenient practice of predicting actual dates.

Also, while I think this is the probable path, it's not locked in stone. Later in this series, I'll describe how we might avoid the rather difficult circumstances I foresee. While it is difficult now to imagine cooperation between the developed world's various factions, it has happened before. There are countries like Switzerland that have avoided war and economic catastrophe. We'll hope our better angels prevail while taking a somber look at the more probable.

The experts who investigate transport disasters, crimes, and terror incidents usually create a chronology of events. Reading them in hindsight can be haunting—you know what's coming and you want to scream, "Don't do that!" But of course, it's too late.

We do something similar in economics when we look back at past recessions and market crashes. The causes seem obvious and we wonder why people didn't see it at the time. In fact, some people usually did see it at the time, but excessive exuberance by the crowds and willful ignorance among the powerful drowned out their warnings. I've been in that position myself and it is quite frustrating.

The steps seemed to fall in four stages. I've dubbed them:

• The Beginning of Woes

• Lending Drought

• Political Backlash

• The Great Reset

Again, the precise route and speed are uncertain, but the probable destination is not. Consider this a kind of "road map" to orient us for the journey. Now, let's look at each stage.

The Beginning of Woes

I recall how legendary railroad engineer Casey Jones was barreling along when an unexpected train appeared ahead. He saved his passengers at the cost of his own life. Today's high-yield bond market has no such hero, and I think the crisis will begin there.

The problem will be what I mentioned last week: massive illiquidity. Trading can and will dry up in a heartbeat at the very time people want to sell. In late 2008, the high-yield bond benchmarks lost a third of their value within a few weeks, and many individual bond issues lost much more, in large part because buyers disappeared.

The same thing happened in the dot-com recession, though not quite as dramatically. There were still several whipsaws and a particularly terrible month in June 2002.

This time, I believe the collapse will go deeper and happen faster because Dodd-Frank has decimated market makers' ability to cushion it. Likewise, the Fed will be reluctant to bail out ridiculously priced bonds like WeWork and its many covenant-lite, unsecured brethren. And rightly so, in my view.

But if it's not high yield, something else will set off the fireworks. There's always a train that shouldn't be there, a dog that didn't bark, always something. We may not even recognize it at the time. Remember, then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said in 2007 that the subprime debt problem was "contained." Whatever starts the next credit crisis, authorities will assure us it is "contained." (Spoiler: It won't be.)

Last week, I read a powerful chapter by William White, former chief economist for the Bank of International Settlements and now chairman for the OECD economic committee. I read everything from Bill that I can get my hands on. He is my favorite central banker in the world. This paragraph jumped out at me (emphasis mine):

… the trigger for a crisis could be anything if the system as a whole is unstable. Moreover, the size of the trigger event need not bear any relation to the systemic outcome. The lesson is that policymakers should be focused less on identifying potential triggers than on identifying signs of potential instability.

This implies that paying attention to macroeconomic "imbalances" may pay bigger dividends than trying to assess financial instability through highly disaggregated "risk maps" of the sort currently being encouraged by the G20 and the IMF. The latter are not only expensive to monitor, but potential rupture points in the financial fabric can change rapidly in real time.

Perhaps more important, serious economic and financial crises can have their roots in imbalances outside the financial system.

As I will show in this letter and others, the system itself is unstable. Predicting the actual trigger in advance is difficult. I can imagine numerous possible "triggers" for the coming credit crisis.

As in the biblical book of Revelation, the initial credit crisis stemming from the fall of high-yield bonds will be merely the beginning of woes. Illiquidity will spread as lower-end corporate bonds fall to junk ratings. Legal and contractual constraints will then force institutions to sell, pressuring all except the highest-grade corporate and sovereign bonds. Treasury and prime-rated corporate bond yields will go down, not up (see 2008 for reference on this). The selling will spill over into stocks and trigger a real bear market—much worse than the hiccups we saw earlier this year.

I give the probability of the credit crisis in the high-yield junk bond market somewhere close to 95%. For the record, nothing is 100% certain, as we don't know the future. But I think this is pretty much baked in the cake.

Lending Drought

Remember how Peter Boockvar describes the new cycle. Instead of recession pushing asset prices lower, lower asset prices trigger the recession. That will be the next stage as falling stock and bond prices hit borrowers. Rising defaults will force banks to reduce their lending exposure, drying up capital for previously creditworthy businesses. This will put pressure on earnings and reduce economic activity. A recession will follow.

This will not be just a US headache, either. It will surely spill over into Europe (and may even start there) and then into the rest of the world. The US and/or European recession will become a global recession, as happened in 2008.

Aside: Europe has its own set of economic woes and multiple potential triggers. It is quite possible Europe will be in recession before the ECB finishes this tightening cycle. With European rates already so low, and the ECB having already bought so much corporate debt, I wonder how else they will try to bring their economy out of recession? Everything is on the table.

As always, a US recession will spark higher federal spending and reduce tax revenue, so I expect the on-budget deficit to quickly reach $2 trillion or more. Within four years of the recession's onset, total government debt will be at least $30 trillion, further constraining the private capital markets and likely raising tax burdens for everyone—not just the rich.

Political Backlash

Meanwhile back at the ranch, job automation will intensify with businesses desperate to cut costs. The effect we already see on labor markets will double or triple. Worse, it will start reaching deep into the service sector. The technology is improving fast.

Needless to say, the working-class population will not like this and it has the power to vote. "Safety net" programs and unemployment benefit expenditures will skyrocket. The chart below from Philippa Dunne of The Liscio Report shows the ratio of workers covered by unemployment insurance is at its lowest level in 45 years. What happens when millions of freelancers lose their incomes?

Source: The Liscio Report

The likely outcome is a populist backlash that installs a Democratic Congress and president. They will then raise taxes on the "rich" and roll back some of the corporate tax cuts and increase regulatory burdens. They may even adopt my preferred consumption-oriented Value Added Tax (VAT)… but without the "reduce income taxes and eliminate payroll taxes" part that I suggested in 2016.

At a minimum, this will create a slowdown but more likely a second recession. Recall (if you're old enough) the back-to-back recessions of 1980 and 1982. That was an ugly time for those of us who lived through it.

Of course, that presumes a recession before the 2020 election. It may not happen—I put the odds at about 60–70%. Also, it is possible the Democrats will fumble what for them will be a golden opportunity. I'm not sure Republicans should view that as a "win" because they will then have to deal with the eventual recession themselves instead of being in opposition. I think by the latter part of the 2020s, US total government debt will be at $40 trillion. You think Washington is paralyzed now? You've seen nothing yet.

My friend Neil Howe thinks we could see a socially conservative, fiscally liberal party gain power. (Some would argue one already did, given the current GOP's spending binge.) But in any scenario, I see very little chance the federal government will shrink or reduce its impact on the economy. That is already a big problem and will only grow.

The Great Reset

Unemployment may approach the high teens by the end of the decade and GDP growth will be minimal at best. What do you call that condition? Certainly not business as usual. Long before that happens, the Federal Reserve will have engaged in massive quantitative easing. There's a lot of misunderstanding about QE, so let me clarify something important.

Quantitative easing is not about "printing money." It is buying debt with excess bank reserves and keeping that debt on the Fed's balance sheet as an asset. The Bank of Japan is an example. They did not put currency (yen) into the market. That's how Japan still flirts with deflation and its currency has gotten stronger. QE is the opposite of printing money, though there is a relationship. That's one reason central bankers like it.

As this recession unfolds, we will see the Fed and other developed world central banks abandon their plans to reverse QE programs. I think the Federal Reserve's balance sheet assets could approach $20 trillion later in the next decade. Not a typo—I really mean $20 trillion, roughly quintuple what they did after 2008. They won't need to worry about the deflation that usually accompanies such deep recessions (dare we say depression?) because the Treasury will be injecting lots of high-powered money into the economy via deficit spending. But since we have never been in this territory before, I must say this is only my guess.

If that's what they do, will it work? No. The world simply has too much debt, much of it (perhaps most) unpayable. At some point, the major central banks of the world and their governments will do the unthinkable and agree to "reset" the debt. How? It doesn't matter how, they just will. They'll make the debt disappear via something like an Old Testament Jubilee.

I know that's stunning, but it's really the only possible solution to the global debt problem. Pundits and economists will insist "it can't be done" right up to the moment it happens—probably planned in secret and announced suddenly. Jaws will drop, and net lenders will lose.

While all that is brewing, technology will keep killing jobs. Many mainstream commentators and serious analysts like Karen Harris (see The Great Jobs Collision) are projecting that 20–40 million jobs will be lost in the US alone and hundreds of millions across the developed world.

As we get into the 2020s, the presidency and Congress will again be whipsawed, and we will begin to discuss Bernie Sanders' "crazy" universal basic employment idea, or others like it. By then, the idea will not be considered crazy, but the only feasible choice. Even conservative politicians can see the light when they feel the heat.

All of this is going to lead to the most tumultuous decade in US history, even if we somehow (hopefully) avoid throwing a war into the mix, as is typical of the end of a Fourth Turning. Typically, the end of a Fourth Turning (which started in 2007, according to Neil Howe), has been accompanied by wars. This one could, too, though I think we will more likely see multiple low-grade skirmishes.

If we somehow get through all that, and particularly the Great Reset, the 2030s should be pretty good. In fact, think incredible boom and future. No one in 2039 will want to go back to the good old days of 2019. Our kids will think it was the Stone Age. But we have to get there first.

Wrong Track

I keep coming back to this train-wreck metaphor because it fits so well. I said Casey Jones plowed into a train that wasn't supposed to be there. The full story is a little more complicated.

Railroads in 1900 knew the danger of collisions. They took extensive precautions to make sure it didn't happen. The stopped train in front of Casey Jones had pulled off onto a siding like it was supposed to. The error was that its last four cars were stuck on the main line because an air hose had broken, locking their brakes.

This is a good analogy for our financial system. We know bad things can happen. We have systems to prevent them and limit their damage. Those systems are only as good as the people who manage them… and even then, surprises happen, and the safeguards fail.

What broken air hose will push the financial system close to collapse and bring on the Great Reset? I don't know, nor do I know when it will break. But I'm quite sure it will happen. Now is the time to get ready. There's no Casey Jones to save us.

Winston Churchill said America always does the right thing—after we try everything else. Maybe we can find that middle and "work it out" before the crisis. America has shifted before. Maybe that's only a dream, but it's one we better hope comes true.

In later letters, we will talk about how to protect your portfolios and trade through the coming crises. You don't have to go gently into that good night. You can get off the train. There is plenty of time, but you need to start planning now.

In U.S., and generally speaking in the whole western economies world, Economy Is Failing Society.

If we want to extend the opportunities for positive social roles to everyone, we have to change the way money is created and distributed in our economy.

One of the most unrecognized dynamics of our era is the structural dependence of our society on our economy. One set of pundits, politicos and academics wring their hands over the fragmenting of civil society (the rise of disintegrative, divisive forces and the decay of integrative forces) and decry the rising inequality that is our economy's dominant feature, while another set of pundits and academics celebrate the economy's remarkable adaptability or focus solely on reading financial tea leaves (interest rates, Fed policy tweaks, unemployment rates, etc.)

Those few analysts who escape their respective silos/academic ghettos rarely get past generalities such as the erosion of social mobility, a dynamic that is clearly economic and social. But the precise mechanisms behind the secular erosion of social mobility are lost in platitudes about how A.I. and robots will free us all to be poets or consumers of a vast and endlessly enjoyable leisure.

The key understanding that's lacking is that economic structures organize and limit the social structures underpinning civil society. To understand why civil society is disintegrating on so many fronts (public health, civil discourse, etc.), we must understand how our economy has failed to support the social structures required for an integrative, inclusive civil society.

Our economy is transforming/adapting as a result of powerful secular trends:the 4th Industrial Revolution (a.k.a. the digital-networked-AI-Big-Data revolution), globalization, the commoditization of ordinary capital and labor, the financial and political dominance of quasi-monopolies and cartels, and perhaps the most unrecognized dynamic, the devaluation of ordinary capital and labor in favor of scarce and often rarified forms of capital and labor in the fields of technology, entrepreneurship and finance.

Collectively, these profound structural changes have created a winner take most economy that favors the politically connected, the privileged (i.e. those who are already wealthy, powerful or holding privileged positions) and those few who have mastered scarce skills in financialization, technology and entrepreneurship.

Everyone below this class has seen their income stagnate or decline, and their household wealth erode unless they happened to own homes in skyrocketing markets or happened to have stock options or some other substantial (and relatively rare) ownership of income-producing assets such as a profitable family business.

My analysis of IRS income found that at most a few million households out of America's 130 million households have productive assets (i.e. assets that generate net income) that aren't tied to asset-bubbles in real estate and stocks. Once those bubbles pop (and all asset bubbles eventually pop), then the millions of households who reckoned their bubble-era wealth was a permanent feature of their lives will discover that bubble-era "wealth" is temporary, a phantom sort of wealth that vanishes as quickly as it arose.

The top tier of our economy lives in a different society than the bottom 90%.Some of the socio-political manifestations of this reality are discussed in a lengthyAtlantic essay: The 9.9% Is the New American Aristocracy.

If we read between the lines, we discern the differences in the economic classes are not just differences in higher education credentials or skills--the fantasy that all we need to solve these structural asymmetries is "more job training"--but differences in values, social networks, family structures and perhaps most invisibly to critics left and right alike, in the positive social roles available to their children.

The foundation of any economy is its money, and this is why I keep saying: if you don't change the way money is created and distributed, you change nothing. Yes, we can tweak various financial parameters and delude ourselves into believing that yet another raft of laws and regulations will actually reverse the erosion of civil society or reverse the rapidly widening gulf between the top 5% and the bottom 95%, but delusions aren't reality.

If we want to extend the opportunities for positive social roles to everyone, we have to change the way money is created and distributed in our economy.That will require a transformation not just in whiz-bang technology but in the foundations of our entire economy.

These two charts reveal the structure of economic and thus social asymmetry: the top owns capital/prouctive assets...

...the bottom own either a bet on an unstable asset bubble (housing or stocks) or no productive assets at all:

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Investing In Collapse: From Caracas To Cuba

For years, I've been writing about Venezuela, describing it as the "movie" by which we can view the future of other jurisdictions that are presently in decline.

The reason is that declining nations follow the same pattern, time and time again, over the centuries. This is not coincidence. The pattern exists because human nature never changes, regardless of the era or the locale. Political leaders make the same mistakes as their forebears, and the people of a nation react in kind.

For this reason, countries have a sort of "shelf life." They rise in prominence, due to work ethic and productivity. They then go through a period of abundance, which eventually deteriorates, due to complacency and apathy. Finally, they collapse into a period of bondage.

If we recognize that this pattern has played out countless times over the millennia, we can track any given country and assess where it is at present, in the pattern. For example, Europe and North America are presently in the last stages prior to collapse, Venezuela is in the processof collapse and Cuba is in the post-collapse recovery.

Well, we can observe Venezuela and see the effects of the present policies evident in our own country, if we happen to live in one that's on the verge of collapse.But, although this may be historically interesting, of what value is it to us in terms of our own lives and the choices we make for our future?

For example, we can see that ever-increasing largesse by a government—on the backs of productive taxpayers—is a major destructive trend. "Protective" tariffs and capital controls also lead to collapse. And excessive debt is a pathway to economic collapse.

We can see from the recent history in Venezuela how these political mistakes caused their collapse, and we can now observe how that collapse plays out.

But, going back to the title of this essay, how do we invest in collapse?

Well, the reader will be familiar with the investment principle of "buy low, sell high." This means that the investor should not wait until an investment is already popular. He should invest when it's at its leastpopular.

So, let's look at that a bit more closely.

The principle would suggest that, in the main, the US, in its final, declining stage, is a poor country for investment, but that Venezuela could be a far better possibility.

But at what point should investment take place? Well, there are a few basic assumptions that might be made. First, investment is difficult at a time when there's massive unrest. If a "boots on the ground" assessment can be made fairly safely, this can be a very advantageous time to begin studying possibilities.

Also, during a collapse, local businessmen and government officials are desperate and will cut virtually any deal with anybody, just to get a bit of money into their hands. Such deals are normally cancelled wholesale by the incoming government, after power has been transferred to them (often just for spite).

So, let's have a look at a country that has already passed through its collapse stage and has stabilized.So, for any investor, the country should ideally be researched both during and following the collapse and a decision made as to what investments to focus on. Then, when the new government has largely stabilized the country (the riots are over and commerce has begun to function normally), the greatest opportunities for investment occur. The country is desperate for inward investment, and opportunities abound.

Cuba collapsed for much the same reasons as its neighbour, Venezuela is now collapsing. But that was back in the 1990s. An anomaly in Cuba's case is that the government was not overturned and the re-stabilisation was left to the still-collectivist government. Being unable to admit that they'd caused the collapse, but desperately needing a recovery, the Castro government chose the obvious solution—capitalism. By this time, the once-committed communist Raul Castro advised his brother Fidel that collectivism was a failure and that they must adopt a free-market if the country was to recover.

However, being unable to admit that the problem was of their own doing (they blamed the American blockade), they set about introducing free-market principles within the existing system.

Over the years since that time, it's become increasingly possible for Cubans to open their own businesses, and to pay the government taxes on the profits.

Today, there are now so many cuentapropistas (business owners) in Cuba that the taxes generated have not only enriched many of the Cuban people, but have refloated the government. (Even a mid-level bureaucrat understands that the reason he's been able to discard his thirty-year-old Russian Lada and now has a new Hyundai is due to the influx of tax revenue.) No one in Cuba has the cheek to call it "free-market," but most everyone understands that the end of food shortages and the importation of such goods as appliances and stylish clothing is due to the cuentapropista revenue.

So, then, why isn't this big news in the larger world? Well, although the free market has been taking over the Cuban economy (from the bottom, up) for over a decade, the Castro government still maintains ownership of much of the real estate, still owns many businesses, and controls the military. However, the government businesses (as they are collectivist) are highly inefficient, so the flood of tourists prefer the privately run businesses, which are thriving.

And the military is now in charge of renovating Havana's old buildings for new shops—they've become a sort of urban public works department.

Yet the claim internationally is that Cuba is still communist.

Strictly speaking, this is so. But each year, more government businesses fold and more opportunities are given to allow restaurants, tourist accommodations, taxi services, farm cooperatives and factories to be started up privately by the Cuban people.

The government not only condones the free-market development, butencourages it, as today, the butter on their own bread comes from tax receipts, not Russian subsidies.

At present, the government still holds many areas of investment for itself. An outside investor cannot legally make an investment deal with a local unless he's a "relation." But the government creates opportunities and joint-ventures with outside investors for tourism, mining, telecommunications, energy, biotechnology, etc., and, in fact, each day cruise ships arrive in Havana Harbour from Miami, loaded with American tourists, whose countrymen are under the impression that they cannot enter Cuba legally.

The anomaly in Cuba is that it's a country that's being reinvented from within, but without the customary announcements from the political leaders that the "rebirth" is underway.

Raul Castro has just stepped down as president, but as I'd expected, he'll stay on as the Secretary General of the Communist party until 2021, which would mean that he'll continue to engineer the rebirth of Cuba from behind the scenes.

After this date, the cloak of free-market secrecy may be tossed off in Cuba, and those who have invested at the bottom will watch their investments blossom.

The U.S. Is Shackled By Historic Debt

Do you feel as if you're drowning in debt? It's worse than you think.

The U.S. government reached a new milestone when our country's debt topped $21 trillion for the first time. The national debt grows by an average of $17,000 every second – more than some people earn in an entire year. That's only an average, and During the past eight months, the national debt grew by $52,000 per second. And the trend toward bigger and higher spending is only getting worse.

The ratio of national debt to GDP is at 105 percent, larger than the economy as a whole.In 1981, the national debt comprised a mere 31 percent of GDP. We are not moving in the right direction. The Treasury Department has plans to borrow $1 trillion this year, an 84% jump from last year. 

When individuals borrow, they can use the money wisely to increase their wealth. That's what happens when people make good investments. What does the government do with all this money? While some of it may be put to good use, the National Science Foundation's spending $856,000 on having mountain lions run on treadmills can't be termed prudent spending. Nor can the $2 billion spent on former President Obama's healthcare website. In 2017, Brooklyn, NY spent $2 million on a 400 square feet restroom in a public park. Flushing money down the toilet?

Even the government's legitimate spending is out-of-control. In 2017, half the entire budget went toward Social Security and Medicare. More than all tax revenues are spent on entitlement programs and defense. The rest is "borrowed," and that creates interest payments. Of course, as the debt increases, so do the interest payments. Which means the government needs to borrow even more money just to pay interest on money it's already borrowed. What happens when the U.S. debt reaches $30 million? President Trump is showing no signs of curtailing this spending/borrowing spree. The interest rate was recently raised to 3 percent, and it will go higher yet.

Since the government can print fiat money at will, it probably isn't overly concerned. However, what about companies and individuals who need to borrow at increasingly higher rates?

When it comes to interest rates, we need to look at LIBOR, the benchmark interest rate used by leading banks around the globe. The LIBOR rate is intrinsically tied to government debt. According to JP Morgan, the U.S. has approximately $7.5 trillion in LIBOR-related-debt alone. Individual loan debts are 97 percent LIBOR-related. Fifty percent of the corporate debt is tied to LIBOR. As interest rates rise, it will hurt individuals and corporations.Chapter 11 bankruptcies have increased to a seven-year high.

Why is the government raising interest rates at a time consumer prices and wages are rising only marginally? During Obama's administration, prices rose 14.6 percent, and the Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. Inflation is up by a mere 2.2 percent since Trump took office, and interests rates keep rising. Is the Federal Reserve playing politics? While the rate of inflation was somewhat higher during the Obama years, the Federal Reserve didn't get aggressive in handling the problem until Trump came to office. If it's politics, what game is being played?

One thing is certain. Government borrowing will continue at an increasingly faster rate, and the unprecedented debt is creating a very vulnerable economy. While revenues are growing, the spending increase is 300 percent of our total revenue.

The current budget for 2018 is expected to be $804 billion, up from $665 billion in 2017. By 2020, the annual budget is expected to top $1 trillion. How long can this type of borrowing be sustained without creating an eventual economic crisis?

People have cause to be concerned. But how does U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin feel about this pile of debt? "It's a very large, robust market — it's the most liquid market in the world [U.S. bond market], and there is a lot of supply… But I think the market can easily handle it… I'm not concerned about that. I think that there are still a lot of buyers for U.S. Treasuries."

Mnuchin assumes there will be a continuing supply of foreign investors willing to buy up U.S. bonds. The interest in U.S. bonds is decreasing, however. Foreign buyers currently hold about 40 percent of U.S. bonds – or debt. This is at a new low since November 2016. Foreign investors have been on a downward trend since its high of 55 percent in 2008. The combination of reduced foreign demand and the need for increased funding could spell disaster for the U.S. economy.

During times of economic chaos, the government has historically resorted to giving the printing presses free reign and flooding the economy with fiat currency. This will devalue the dollar more than it is already, leading to higher inflation.

But Mr. Mnuchin isn't worried a bit. At least, he won't admit that he is. The problem is that putting on a smiley face won't rescue a troubled economy. We can only hope Mr. Mnuchin has the good sense to begin frowning very soon…

Establishment Starts Anti-'Mini-BoT' Propaganda Campaign: "Helps Crooks, Cheats Taxpayers, & Widens Division" In Italy

Well that did not take long. Less than 24 hours after Italy's latest coalition unveiled its plans, which included the potential for a parallel currency, The Financial Times' columnist John Dizard has penned a status-quo-supporting anti-'Mini-BoT' scaremongering "opinion" piece explaining how "the menace of Italian treasury bills known as 'mini-BoTs' has made European monetary policy interesting again," and that these "note-like bonds will potentially help crooks, cheat taxpayers and widen country's divide."

In the past two years, the eurozone seemed to have overcome its existential threats thanks to the European Central Bank's relentless bond purchases. Bond markets were achieving a near-Canadian level of boredom, marked by slow increases in long rates, a moderate recovery and too little volatility to justify traders' bonuses.

That changed with the March 4 electionin Italy. In coming weeks we will see if the populist parties can stitch together a coalition and avoid a new vote. They do, though, agree that their tax cuts and aggressive spending can be paid for in part by issuing mini-BoTs. These would be small (euro) denomination, non-interest-bearing Treasury bills in the form of bearer securities that would be secured by tax revenues.

"BoT" is the abbreviation for an Italian treasury bill, and the small denomination makes them mini. Conventional BoTs are electronic book-entry securities but the mini-BoTs would be printed, reportedly using the state lottery's ticket presses, and the designs have been selected.

Private parties would not be obliged to accept mini-BoTs as payment. While mini-BoTs would almost certainly trade at a discount in the marketplace, the paper (or book entries) could be used to settle tax debts or pay public-sector entities at the mini-BoTs' par value.

Despite this, the populist parties, led by the Lega Nord and the Five Star Movement, continue to insist that mini-BoTs would not be a parallel currency or a backdoor way to add to the national debt. The populists vow to respect the EU's Treaty of Lisbon and under Article 106 of that pact only the ECB can issue the euro currency.

The populists also say that mini-BoTs will not increase the Italian national debt, supposedly limited by the eurozone's stability pact. Mini-BoTs, they say, are simply a way of creating a transferable record of (future) tax receipts.

Since the mini-BoTs would not be currency, transfers from account to account or hand to hand would not be subject to the €3,000 legal limit on cash payments within Italy. That would be convenient for anyone whose business could be more easily carried out with large cash, sorry, mini-BoT transactions. Mini-BoTs, then, would stimulate the vibrant informal sector of Italy's economy.

This is not the first time a government facing limits on bond borrowings has issued a tax anticipation note. California used them during a budget crunch in 2001 and Buenos Aires issued "Patacon" bonds to pay its bills in 2001-02, in the wake of the Argentine financial crash. These were ultimately redeemed with tax receipts.

When Syriza came to power in Greece in 2015, Yanis Varoufakis, its first finance minister, proposed a form of "public digital payments", that would, it was expected, feature "future tax-backed transactions."

The Italian populists took advice on how to structure mini-BoTs from the Syriza socialists and Greek civil servants. None of those instruments, though, were printed bearer transactions. Even Greeks who empathise with the Italian resentment of Eurocrats were put off by that feature.

Central bankers and eurozone finance ministers have been balanced in their reaction to the mini-BoT proposal. Balanced, that is, between outrage and apoplexy.

The Eurocrats believe the mini-BoT plan is another plot to rip off the foreigners. That may be true but it would not be the whole story. Mini-BoTs would also be a way for connected Italians to rip off their less-connected fellow nationals.

Multiple exchange rates are an old trick but that can work for a while. The Eurocrats believe mini-BoTs will be a veiled way to finance populist deficit spending. If that is permitted, the establishment thinking goes, the conventionally minded eurozone voting public would rebel at the debasement of their currency.

The populist retort would be that Italian compliance with orthodoxy has led to stagnation and youth unemployment. True enough — but young people without jobs would not be beneficiaries of mini-BoTs.

No, the big profits would go to those who would buy mini-BoTs from pensioners and state creditors at a discount, say 20 or 30 per cent. They will then sell the quasi-currency to deep-pocketed buyers of Italian goods and services, or property and equities.

There would also be an internal redistribution. Roughly speaking, northern Italian industry and skilled workers would receive the value of export subsidies, and payments to southern Italian pensioners and state employees would get haircuts.

If mini-BoTs are introduced on a large scale, political strains would eventually force either Italy or Germany out of the euro. Having done its damage, the mini-BoT scheme would ultimately be wound up.

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Perhaps this is why the establishment is starting to panic...

Italian risk premia are exploding (even after Draghi's "whetever it takes")...

Learning From America's Forgotten Default

One of the most pervasive myths about the United States is that the federal government has never defaulted on its debts. There's just one problem: it's not true, and while few people remember the "gold clause cases" of the 1930s, that episode holds valuable lessons for leaders today.

One of the most pervasive myths about the United States is that the federal government has never defaulted on its debts. Every time the debt ceiling is debated in Congress, politicians and journalists dust off a common trope: the US doesn't stiff its creditors.

There's just one problem: it's not true.

There was a time, decades ago, when the US behaved more like a "banana republic" than an advanced economy, restructuring debts unilaterally and retroactively.

And, while few people remember this critical period in economic history, it holds valuable lessons for leaders today.

In April 1933, in an effort to help the US escape the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt announced plans to take the US off the gold standard and devalue the dollar.But this would not be as easy as FDR calculated. Most debt contracts at the time included a "gold clause," which stated that the debtor must pay in "gold coin" or "gold equivalent." These clauses were introduced during the Civil War as a way to protect investors against a possible inflationary surge.

For FDR, however, the gold clause was an obstacle to devaluation. If the currency were devalued without addressing the contractual issue, the dollar value of debts would automatically increase to offset the weaker exchange rate, resulting in massive bankruptcies and huge increases in public debt.

To solve this problem, Congress passed a joint resolution on June 5, 1933, annulling all gold clauses in past and future contracts. The door was opened for devaluation – and for a political fight. Republicans were dismayed that the country's reputation was being put at risk, while the Roosevelt administration argued that the resolution didn't amount to "a repudiation of contracts."

On January 30, 1934, the dollar was officially devalued. The price of gold went from $20.67 an ounce – a price in effect since 1834 – to $35 an ounce. Not surprisingly, those holding securities protected by the gold clause claimed that the abrogation was unconstitutional. Lawsuits were filed, and four of them eventually reached the Supreme Court; in January 1935, justices heard two cases that referred to private debts, and two concerning government obligations.

The underlying question in each case was essentially the same: did Congress have the authority to alter contracts retroactively?

On February 18, 1935, the Supreme Court announced its decisions. In each case, justices ruled 5-4 in favor of the government – and against investors seeking compensation.According to the majority opinion, the Roosevelt administration could invoke "necessity" as a justification for annulling contracts if it would help free the economy from the Great Depression.

Justice James Clark McReynolds, a southern lawyer who was US Attorney General during President Woodrow Wilson's first term, wrote the dissenting opinion – one for all four cases. In a brief speech, he talked about the sanctity of contracts, government obligations, and repudiation under the guise of law. He ended his presentation with strong words: "Shame and humiliation are upon us now. Moral and financial chaos may be confidently expected."

Most Americans have forgotten this episode, as collective amnesia has papered over an event that contradicts the image of a country where the rule of law prevails and contracts are sacred.

But good lawyers still remember it; today, the 1935 ruling is invoked when attorneys are defending countries in default (like Venezuela). And, as more governments face down new debt-related dangers – such as unfunded liabilities associated with pension and health-care obligations – we may see the argument surface even more frequently.

According to recent estimates, the US government's unfunded liabilities are a staggering 260% of GDP – and that does not include conventional federal debt and unfunded state and local government liabilities. Nor is this a problem only for America; in many countries, pension and health-related liabilities are increasing, while the ability to cover them is diminishing.

A key question, then, is whether governments seeking to adjust contracts retroactively may once again invoke the legal argument of "necessity." The 1933 abrogation of the gold clause provides abundant legal and economic reasons to consider this possibility. The US Supreme Court agreed with the "necessity" argument once before. It is not far-fetched to think that it may happen again.