wabuffo

WTF? Is Elon Musk making a hostile bid for BRK?

I must be in the minority here on the new Dune movie. Sure - special effects are more impressive (how could they not be), but the original Lynch Dune is much better in terms of story and important plot points. Hard to believe given the total running time (I'm including the inevitable part 2 here). Style over substance. Just my 2-cents. wabuffo

The debt ceiling drama appears to be temporarily over - and you can see it in the last few US Treasury Daily Statements. From a low general account balance at the Fed of $46b, the US Treasury is quickly ramping it back up to $135b in just 2 days (Friday last week and Monday). It is doing this by rapidly issuing more US Treasury securities than it is redeeming over and above its normal deficit spending. Of course, another debt ceiling crisis may still unfold in December, but I think US Treasury yields are going to start running higher. The commentators on CNBC will be confused as to why and wondering if its due to inflation or bond market "vigilantes", etc. But the real reason will have been the weird dynamics in 2021 of the US TGA drawdown. I have put on all of my TLT LEAP put positions (last one of the batch was on Monday) and will just ignore the Fed and US Treasury from here on in. It's always possible there will be another mini run-down of the TGA balance if Congress again plays games of chicken - but they will eventually raise the limit again (and again....and again). With the Fed also likely to pull back its aggressive buying soon, this will be interesting to watch. Fun stuff for us monetary plumbing nerds. wabuffo

Sounds amazing. What does it cost? Call them and find out. I will say that an annual sub is not cheap - though a lot cheaper than the other heavyweights (Bloomberg/Factset/etc) Request a trial first. Also - they have how-to videos on YouTube that give tutorials on how to use the tools. Watch them to get a feel for the functions/features. https://www.youtube.com/c/Sentieo It's a price-value thing. It's feature-rich if you are doing heavy-duty security analysis of equities. It might not be for you if you don't do a lot of analysis and just trade or buy a few stocks a year. It's also less useful for OTC stocks that have de-registered from the SEC's reporting requirements. This tool feeds on SEC reports, conference calls and published quarterly financials - so if those things don't exist then the tools get a bit bare in terms of usefulness. wabuffo

I thought I remembered Wabuffo recommending a service he subscribes to but it must have been in another thread. Maybe he can share that service name again. Its not cheap - but you were paying for Bloomberg, so.... For basic equity research - I use Sentieo. https://sentieo.com/ It's intelligent search capability is amazing. - You can search keywords and it will run through SEC filings, Conference Call Transcripts, etc and bring up information relevant to your search (plus you can customize the search with some advanced features). I use it to find liquidations, buy-outs, spin-offs, etc. Or you can search "inflation" but only in conference calls for the last two months. Bingo! It will even do charts over time that show how many times inflation came up in a conference call. - It can perform redline comparisons between the same document and show differences. Eg. compare the risk sections of the same company's 10-K year-over-year and highlight changes. I use it to compare mostly proxy statements and 10-K risk sections to flag changes to companies I own or am watching. - it's ability to create customized financial tables with its TableX tool that pulls from company's financial filings saves me a pile of work. And after you're done you can throw the result into excel. - of course, it does screening and plotting against hundreds of company financial variables.... And that's just scratching the surface of what I can do with it. I use it every day, many times a day. wabuffo

But in light of our funds flow discussion here, I believe they are saying that if the deficit spending just piles up in the accounts of people who are content to save it, there will be no inflation, just like cash piling up on your corporate balance sheets wouldn't cause inflation. KJP - I've heard Wray make this very argument in his book "Understanding Modern Money" but I'm not sure I totally understand it either. On the lighter side - it's funny to watch the macro commentators heads explode trying to square this circle: 1) inflation is running high AND 2) the Fed seems like they are throat-clearing for tapering and rate hikes -- BUT 3) Long-term yields are heading lower tonight. Huh? That's not supposed to happen? wabuffo

Are you saying high taxes would ultimately result in less work and less output, thereby driving down demand for money? (I assume you also think this effect in non-linear and really kicks in at very high rates, not moving a marginal rate from 35% to 37%.) Or are you suggesting very high taxes would push people to black markets in which they use alternatives currencies and pay no taxes, and thus have no need for government money? Yes to all of the above. I think MMTers have this blindspot to the effect that the private sector are just sheep to be herded or sheared by government spending or taxing. This is the part where I marry MMT with Laffer Curve theory. I know the Laffer Curve gets ridiculed - but I do think it has some high level applicability (ie - you get zero tax revenue with either a 0% or 100% tax rate - so all we are arguing about is the shape of the curve between those two points - probably different curve shapes depending on the type of income). I think both the Laffer Curve and MMT were revolutionary economic concepts when they were first introduced (Laffer 1978?) and MMT (early 2000s). I think even today we are struggling to comprehend just how big the fiscal capacity of the world's largest and most productive economy truly is. wabuffo

If the recipient of my spending decides she doesn't want to hold that money and instead spend it very quickly on some other goods and services, that's more GDP. If we keep going round and round this way and output can't keep up (it's presumably down at the moment as the result of COVID), then the quantity theory of money identity gets you inflation. In other words, if MV must equal PT because it's an accounting identity. KJP - Velocity of money is a bogus concept, IMHO because the concept of monetary-aggregates-growing-rapidly-leads-to-inflation mantra is a bogus concept. Basically the flow in 2020-2021 went like this (i'm way oversimplifying of course - but simple helps illustrate the idea). 1) The US Treasury sends stimmie checks to everyone creating new deposits. 2) Everyone spends the stimmie checks - thus moving the deposits. 3) The deposits cluster on the balance sheets of the biggest US corporations because everyone bought a lot of stuff from these corporations. 4) The US Treasury issues Treasury securities which the biggest corporations buy in exchange for their mountains of deposits (or deposit their cash in Money Market Funds and thus MMFs buy the Treasury securities). See what happened here? This is what we mean by the US Treasury soaking up reserves/deposits. It has to - otherwise, if there is no step 4, deposits accumulate on the balance sheets of corporations/MMFs and we go negative on rates - since MMFs can't make money and will start charging/gating to accept more deposits. That's kind of where we are right now. The US Treasury can't increase its debt net issuance because of the debt ceiling. (as I look at today's US Treasury daily statement, net US Treasury debt o/s (net of Fed holdings) = $16.854t. That number is marginally lower than where it was on Jan. 1st, 2021 at $16.940t. But meanwhile, the US Treasury has added to deposits (via its net spending) a total = $2t. (equals $2t in new deposits). That's why bank reserves are up - and more importantly why the Fed is doing over $1t of reverse repo + bank reserves are up almost $1t since the start of year. Its all to keep the system in balance and rates from collapsing. I think inflation is usually caused by real economic dislocation - ie, a debt default and devaluation (and I'm putting the US going off the gold standard in 1971 as a de-facto devaluation) or because productive private assets get destroyed due to war, etc. ) I also think excessively high tax rates can also lead to inflation mainly because they cause demand for the government's money to fall dramatically - thus weakening the currency severely. I don't think we had any of those things in 2020-2021 - but what do I know. I'm not a CNBC talking head. wabuffo

Is it stuck at the Fed as reserves It is stuck at the Fed as reserves (in aggregate for the US commercial banking sector that has access to the Fed payments system). There are only three ways reserves can be reduced in a permanent way: 1) The Fed sells assets (US Treasuries, MBS, etc) or doesn't roll over assets as they mature. 2) The US Treasury taxes more than it spends or issues treasury securities (that aren't purchased by the Fed). Currently - US Treasury is in the penalty box as far as Treasury security net issuance is concerned. 3) The banks could redeem their reserves for hard currency. (I'd like to see that armored truck delivery!) Notice that except for no. 3 (which is really a non-factor), the private sector banking system is completely at the mercy of the consolidated US government (Fed + US Tsy) for the size of its reserve asset balance. Basically the Federal govt gives you three choices in terms of how it presents its liabilities to you as a private sector: 1) currency in circulation 2) reserves 3) US Treasury securities. Its no different between your bank and you: 1) currency in circulation = cash/bills at the ATM 2) reserves = demand deposit (ie, checking account.) 3) Treasury securities = time deposits (ie, you get a higher rate but you have to lock up your money 30-days to 30-years). So what the Fed is doing with QE is going to the private sector and saying "I'll exchange your time deposits for demand deposits." The only nuance is that you and I don't get deposit accounts at the Fed - only banks do. So reserves are not great for the private sector - illiquid, frozen and stuck with the banks. We'd rather keep the time deposits (ie., Treasury securities) because if we have to we can pledge them as collateral for loans. You really have to imagine the US Treasury as the world's largest and richest depositor who pays for a lot of stuff (and gets some tax income). The Fed is the US Treasury's bank. The US Treasury has a deposit account at the Fed. So do the commercial banks. So the US Treasury and the banks are the Fed's depositors/customers. Just like your bank clears payments between you and the world around you - the Fed is mainly there to clear payments between the US government and the banks through their individual deposit accounts at the Fed. Its really that simple - but few people understand its innate simplicity. Instead we get these complex talking heads on CNBC who talk out of their arses. wabuffo

Instead of looking at the Fed "printing" money, watch the treasury spending money. I learned that from you @wabuffo.

But don't forget Fed's printing 120 bn per month and that's been going on for a long time. The cash is circulating around the economy. Nope. It is stuck at the Fed. wabuffo

As far as I know AJC never ran any fund. I think the better comparison is Gerry Tsai and his Manhattan Fund of the go-go 60s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Tsai wabuffo

Buffett has been wrong on this point for over 20 years and cost BRK shareholders a ton of returns by hiding in cash and cash equivalents vs bonds. But maybe he's going to be right this year..... wabuffo

Oh no - the dreaded lockbox is going to be empty! There is no lockbox! 1) Social Security payroll taxes are just Federal tax receipts by another name. 2) Social Security checks are just another form of Federal government spending by another name. 3) The US government will never run out of its currency. It can fund social security checks forever if it chooses to. The real question is whether the private sector of the US economy will continue to be productive well into the future so as to produce the resources that society will need. I think so. In fact, I wouldn't bet against it. wabuffo

But I have a question: Under current law, the Fed is not permitted to simply directly credit the Treasury's account, correct? KJP - I am far from an expert in this area or in the history of the interactions between the Fed and the US Treasury, ....buuut....I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night! The short answer is that the Fed can't do this anymore. Congress has mandated that the Fed can only conduct open market operations involving US Treasury securities. I should've added that as political constraint #3. It is strange because people always perceive the "stronger" entity being the Fed with the weaker one being the US Treasury. But it's actually the other way around. For one, the Fed is "owned" by the US Treasury. I mean, literally, the equity account of the Fed is owned by the US Treasury. Second, it is the US Treasury that owns the mint that prints the bank notes and coins. If a bank asks the Fed for a delivery of banknotes, the Fed can't do this itself and has to call the US Treasury. The Fed just handles the accounting (removes a reserve balance from that bank to pay for the currency being sent to said bank). How about that, eh? Jerome Powell doesn't even own the printing press, the US Treasury does! So much for money printer go brrrrrr meme! Finally in extreme situations, its the US Treasury that will directly issue "cash bills" to the Fed in return for a reserve deposit in the TGA (despite constraint #3 above). We saw this during the beginning of the GFC in September 2008. Here was the press release from the US Treasury (and not the Fed): https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/hp1144 Note this is exactly what would drive Lacy Hunt into his bunker full of canned foods and shotguns. The Fed is "lending" reserves to the US Treasury in exchange for T-bills! Aye caramba! But it's the Fed that was in trouble here. The crisis was causing it to swap so much of its Treasury securities out to banks who desperately needed collateral, that it feared running out (ah the days of a Federal Reserve with a tiny balance sheet!). Now at first, the reserve funds given to the US Treasury were 'segregated' to a separate Treasury reserve account to give a fig leaf of cover that this was a temporary measure. But eventually the fig leaf was removed and the "funds" commingled. But notice who creates the "assets" out of thin air. It"s the US Treasury - and I think that's what everyone doesn't understand. In fact, we saw this again during the pandemic. The US Treasury added more "equity" to the Fed's balance sheet so that the Fed could do some of its special "lending programs". So there are two important conclusions here: 1) As I always say - the Fed can only swap financial assets, it is only the US Treasury that can create new financial assets out of thin air. It is the 800-lb gorilla, the Fed is just that small man behind the curtain. Pay no attention to him. 2) There is no Rubicon to cross. The US Treasury is not practically or physically limited. It is only politically limited by Congress. But as we've seen in the above example, since Congress controls the power of the purse, it can and will change the rules when it needs to. Thus if one is worried about deficit spending leading to inflation, then worry away 24-7 and don't concoct bizarre scenarios of how the Fed can release the US Treasury to cross a river in Italy. In fact, Lacy Hunt needs to get more imaginative, since the best one I heard was the truly bizarre scenario of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin*. BTW - I am truly impressed that y'all continue to be interested by this boring stuff! Thanks for engaging and letting me ramble. wabuffo *this was an actual scenario floated by some legal experts from the left during one of the many US debt ceiling cliffs years ago. Since, as we've seen, the US Treasury mints all the currency (and this is not limited by the debt ceiling), the Fed could ask for a trillion dollar platinum coin to be minted. The US Treasury would then trade it to the Fed (who I guess would put in Fort Knox?) and the Fed would credit the US Treasury's general account with $1 trillion in shiny new reserves. See - a loophole where the US Treasury funds itself without issuing debt in contravention of the debt ceiling. Such silliness... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin

So does all of this mean we're still (probably) going to have low interest rates over the short-intermediate term? I don't know about timing - but the next chapter will happen when the debt ceiling is lifted. There's a chance that the US Treasury's acct at the Fed goes to zero (now down to $239b) before Congress does anything. I really thought it would've been resolved by now. wabuffo

Treasury deficit spent -> created reserves at banks -> treasury didn't issue tsy securities in conjunction with the deficit spend so banks had nothing to do with reserves -> excess reserves at banks created potential for negative rates -> fed stepped in with reverse repo to prevent this. Just think of the Fed as a bank. The US Treasury has an account there, so does every Federally-chartered bank. Then just do the debits and credits into & out of those Fed "bank" accounts and you already understand this better than almost everyone on CNBC. I'm confused on how it was in the TGA acct in the first place? Is that $1.6t just created because congress said so? Was their tsy security issuance in the past to raise that money? Well yes - Congress has the power of the purse. So the US Treasury can't spend on anything unless it has Congressional authorization to do so. But in 2019, the debt ceiling was temporarily suspended for two years. So as the pandemic broke, the US Treasury took advantage and issued a bazillion dollars of US Treasury securities. This was fortunate - because in the very early days of the pandemic, the whole world was rushing to the safety of the safest asset in the world - so demand was very high. It's important to note that the US Treasury faces political constraints - not economic or practical constraints. These political constraints confuse everyone into thinking that the US Treasury is like you or me. 1) Political constraint #1: US Treasury can't overdraw its TGA (ie, maintain a negative balance) at any time. 2) Political constraint #2: US Treasury can't have more US Treasury securities outstanding than the level mandated by Congress ("the Debt Ceiling") But in reality none of these are real constraints. For example, the Fed used to allow the banks to overdraw their reserve accounts during "daylight hours" as payment clearing between banks happened. IOW, JP Morgan could start the day with $5b in its reserve account, drop down to as low as negative $100b at mid-day as it cleared payments from its customers' accts and end up back at $5b by the end of the day as it received payments into its customers's accts. Hope this helps. It took me years to figure this all out but eventually the penny drops.... wabuffo

After that, they need to issue treasuries again at the same rate than the deficit, which is a ~$250B monthly rate. Yellen has said that when the debt ceiling is raised, she intends to more or less immediately go back up to a $750b target balance on the Treasury's general acct (TGA) at the Fed. That is going to mean a big slug of new Treasury security issuance (in addition to the $250b or so per month to maintain the TGA level). All we need is for the Fed to slow down/stop its Treasury security buying and that will significantly affect the growth of US Treasury security inventory in the private sector's hands. For comparison purposes (Tsy debt held by the public - Tsy debt held by the Fed = Net Tsy Debt held by the private sector): 8/25/21: $22.249t - $5.346t = $16.903t 3/10/21: $21.786t - $4.889t = $16.927t IOW, there has been ZERO growth in private sector inventory of Treasury securities since early March (mainly due to the liquidation of the US Treasury general acct but also due to Fed open market buying). But - there has been $1.6t in deficit spending in that exact same time period creating bank reserves (from flows from the TGA acct to the commercial banking sectors accts at the Fed) with no net Tsy issuance to soak those reserves up. This shows the urgent necessity of the Fed kick-starting its reverse repo in mid March 2021 which went from zero to $1.1t. Add in $500b growth in bank reserves since that time and that reconciles with the $1.6t in deficit spending as offsets. The reverse repo probably kept interest rates from collapsing completely and dragging the US into negative interest rate territory. BTW - this little real world exercise kind of proves two key things that are actually the opposite of what the economics profession teaches as conventional wisdom: 1) Large amounts of Treasury deficit spending causes lower interest rates - not higher interest rates as economists profess. That's because without security issuance, the private sector accumulates too much in reserves with no need for them. 2) Treasury borrowing is a reserve drain which functions to support interest rate targets and as such is not borrowing as we normally think of it. Treasury security issuance ("borrowing"), instead, is an interest rate maintenance mechanism. wabuffo

Am I alone in thinking Season 2 of Ted Lasso is a massive disappointment? The crux of Season 1 was that everyone was in conflict - either conspiring against Ted or conspiring/fighting against each other. But the moral was that Ted was underestimated and his optimism won out. Where's the conflict in Season 2? Everyone is happy and together. Boring. I thought they had set up the sports psychologist as the new X-factor to create friction and conflict - but so far, nothing. Perhaps its coming, perhaps not. So far its just saccharine-y fan service. (X-mas feel good, Roy Kent comes back as coach.... ya-da ya-da). I guess they caught lightning in a bottle with the first season and can't repeat it. One hit wonder. wabuffo

Does this have a cap, or will it go up for any indefinite amount? If this has a cap, then will we have negative rates? Does not really have a cap b/c it's within the Fed's power to expand the number of participants as well as expand the limit per participant. (right now there's like 100 potential participants and each has an $80b limit - so do the math; we are far from the current max capacity) US can't have negative rates because of this 5bp reverse-repo regime by the NY Fed. Remember my bathtub analogy - the reverse repo is the bathtub overflow drain. If there was no overflow drain - then, yes, one could see negative rates. But right now there's basically a 5bp "floor" to short-term rates. The falling rates should level off soon and start to slowly go back up when two things happen: 1) the debt ceiling is raised - maybe mid-Sept? but not before some high drama in Congress and the US Treasury hitting zero balance in its TGA at the Fed. 2) the Fed will stop its buying of Treasuries soon - also maybe Sept. This does not mean it reduces its holdings - it will just roll over its redemptions with new purchases and keep its ownership level flat. wabuffo

or this one, Spek?

The current run-rate is closer to 3.7% despite the trailing twelve month numbers looking like 5%. We haven't seen him repeat a $9 Billion repurchase quarter since Q3 and Q4 of 2020. I suppose he will increase the buying if the price declines and we don't really know what price he might decrease the repurchase rate. Whether its 3.7% or 5% - my point is that a) the large capital base, b) Buffett's advanced age, mean that repurchases will be a constant every quarter. Of course, valuation matters, but I think we are now at a major inflection point. Its kind of the opposite of the past, when Buffett wouldn't buy back stock in 2000, 2008-09, 2011, 2015-16 even though valuation was compelling because.......reasons? I think all of us have been trained reflexively by past experience with BRK to expect buybacks to dwindle because deep down we always knew Buffett's heart wasn't in it to give up paint from his studio as he still hadn't finished painting his canvas. That's why as the market becomes convinced (and it may take some more quarters to do the convincing) that repurchases are here to stay, then the stock will gradually re-rate to include the buybacks in the return expectation on BRK stock. We'll see I guess, but I think BRK may be coming out of its ho-hum phase that has lasted way too long while Buffett got sidetracked by PCP, KraftHeinz, IBM, the airlines, etc when he should've been using all that wasted capital in repurchasing BRK. wabuffo

Buyback has averaged $6B in Q and is at a FY run-rate at $25B+ The Old Man bought a further ~$1.8b in July. On a rolling 12 month basis (end of July '20 - end of July '21) it looks like he retired 5.34% of the common equity opening balance. I think we have to start treating this as more or less a permanent return of capital and need to start adjusting higher our expectations of total return (6% organic growth + 5% repurchases). I don't think the current share prices of the A's and B's fully reflect this as yet. wabuffo

Brief Update: - no debt ceiling deal was reached by Congress and they are now going on August recess. - Debt ceiling snapped back in place yesterday. We don't have the Daily US Treasury Statement from Friday yet (it comes out today at 4pm). I don't think Yellen hit her goal (either the original goal to get to the level the TGA was back in Aug 1, 2019 or her revised goal of $450b). I think it will end up just slightly under $500b based on Thursday's balance. - the US Treasury is now limited to $28.4t gross debt outstanding (note this includes intra-govt debt ("social security lockbox"). - so, US Treasury must now keep to this target (ie debt issuance = debt redemption) while continuing to run the TGA down in the absence of a deal. Depending on spending requirements (Sept is a corporate tax receipt month) - Yellen can probably go until Sept (maybe early Oct) before TGA balance goes to zero. - this basically extends the treasury yield compression (and yields are compressing today!). They will continue to likely compress until a deal is reached. Yellen has some tricks she can pull (reduce the intra-govt portion while raising the public portion of the debt ceiling) but not a whole lot of wiggle room. - of course, this can all end on a moment's notice if a deal to raise the debt limit is reached. It's all so counter-intuitive... any other country threatening to default on its sovereign debt and the yields on its securities would rise. The US threatens to default and yields on its securities plummet. LOL. wabuffo

No - I don't think the TGA balance will continue to run down. I think the TGA balance will become subordinate to managing to the debt limit, spending, receipts. As to interest rates - I think the trend will be higher but I wouldn't use the word "spike". There's a lot of liquidity in the system that new Treasury issuance will have to sop up. The rate at which that happens will depend on the debt ceiling amount and how much future spending Congress passes through the rest of year. If debt ceiling is raised really high and the Democrats pass both of their "infrastructure plan" - rates could rise at a quicker pace than if the debt ceiling is only raised a limited amount and nothing passes in Congress - then rates would rise rather slowly or go sideways until the Fed stops its QE. There are so many variables in the macro economy that its tough to make calls with certainty. But the TGA drawdown was a one-time special cause that one could see was having a disparate impact on rates. wabuffo