FNArena’s Weekly Insights – November 23 2020
Dear time-constraint investor: A shift is happening in financial markets as year-end approaches
In ths week’s Weekly Insights:
-Same But Different, Different But The Same
-Conviction Calls
-Question Of The Week (on All-Weathers)
By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor
Same But Different, Different But The Same
Earlier this year I wrote a story titled “The Bear Market That Changes The World”. In it, I predicted further unprecedented central bank market support measures and interventions, as well as governments joining in on the act through accumulating a heavy load of additional debt.
As we all know today, those forecasts have proven accurate and as the story title suggests, it will be incredibly difficult, if not nigh impossible, to wind back the enormous mountain of debt that has been built to fight off the economic consequences from this year’s global pandemic.
And this story is not over yet. Global debt is still rising, and it will continue rising as governments cannot escape the cold reality that businesses that stop operating no longer pay tax, no longer keep people in jobs and they certainly won’t be making any investments needed to lift the economic recovery onto a sustainable trajectory.
Last week the Institute of International Finance reported global debt has surged by over US$15trn since 2019, reaching a new all-time record high of US$272trn-plus during the September quarter of 2020, projected to grow further to US$277trn by year-end, equal to 365% of global GDP.
Anyone who still thinks governments will finally come up with a credible path towards reducing this historic mountain of public and private debt is seriously deluding him/herself. When you’re this deep down into the rabbit hole, there simply is no way back. The Rubicon has now well and truly been crossed.
How exactly this scenario plays out over the decades ahead, I don’t think anyone genuinely knows, but I can confidently make one prediction: we all have to get used to the fact that debt, in its broadest concept possible, is now an integral and crucial part of governments, businesses and households for the times that lay ahead.
And the more time passes by, the more the world is changing. In a sense, that title I chose in March is misleading. This year’s pandemic and societal lockdowns have not changed the world per se; they have made sure that running trends, such as accumulating debt and extreme central bank policies, have now become irreversible.
