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Archive for the ‘Treasury Auction’ Category

30 Year Auction: A Solid “F”

Posted by Karl Denninger

There’s no other way to describe this:

Bad.  Actually, let’s go worse than bad and call it what it is – by any definition this is just one step off from “Failed.”

Yield was way over where it was trading at the time, as you can see here:

The more-worrying factor here is that we’ve got this “mystery” direct buyers out here again taking nearly 25% of the offered amount (who is bidding for that undisclosed?) and another 11% taken down by The Fed for the SOMA account.

Yet even with this Treasury had to pay up to get it to go and the bid-to-cover was anemic at best.

Given the Primary Dealer system we have in this country, any BTC under 2.0 is an effective fail.  To get an auction that behaves in this sort of fashion, complete with mystery direct bidders and heavy SOMA (Fed) participation, yet Treasury has to pay up in the form of a significantly higher coupon is not a good sign at all.

Remember folks, this sort of issuance isn’t a local event.  It will continue through the year, as we are on track to run record budget deficits, so the premise that “it will all be ok and this won’t start a ratchet up of rates on the long end” is perhaps more than a bit fanciful.

Rick Santelli gave the auction an “F” and I agree – there’s simply no possible way to read this as anything positive at all, and that the equity market is ignoring it (other than a quick, small spike downward on the release) likely has more to do with how tightly equities have become coupled to the dollar in the last couple of weeks than anything else.

This morning we got this from Bloomberg:

Retiree Annuities May Be Promoted by Obama Aides (Update2)

By Theo Francis

To contact the reporter on this story: Theo Francis in Washington at tfrancis14@bloomberg.net.

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is weighing how the government can encourage workers to turn their savings into guaranteed income streams following a collapse in retiree accounts when the stock market plunged.

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.

Annuities generally guarantee income until the retiree’s death, and often that of a surviving spouse as well. They are designed to protect against the risk that retirees outlive their savings, a danger made clear by market losses suffered by older Americans over the last year, David Certner, legislative counsel for AARP, said in an interview.

“There’s a real desire on a lot of people’s parts to try to encourage something other than just rolling over a lump sum, to make sure this money will actually last a lifetime,” said Certner, legislative counsel for Washington-based AARP, the biggest U.S. advocacy group for retirees.

Promoting annuities may benefit companies that provide them through employers, including ING Groep NV and Prudential Financial Inc., or sell them directly to individuals, such as American International Group Inc., the insurer that has received $182.3 billion in government aid.

Balances Fall

The average 401(k) fund balance dropped 31 percent to $47,500 at the end of March 2009 from $69,200 at the end of 2007, according to a Fidelity Investments review of 11 million accounts it manages. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index tumbled 46 percent in that period. The average balance of the Fidelity accounts recovered to $60,700 as of last Sept. 30 as the stock market rebounded.

There is “a tremendous amount of interest in the White House” in retirement-security initiatives, Borzi, who heads the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, said in an interview.

In addition to annuities, the inquiry will cover other approaches to guaranteeing income, including longevity insurance that would provide an income stream for retirees living beyond a certain age, she said.

“There’s been a fair amount of discussion in the literature taking the view that perhaps there ought to be more lifetime income,” Iwry, a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said in an interview.

Lump Sums

“The question is how to encourage it, and whether the government can and should be helpful in that regard,” Iwry said.

While traditional defined-benefit pensions were paid out as annuities, providing monthly payments for retirees and often their spouses, workers increasingly are taking advantage of options to receive lump-sum distributions.

Only 2 percent of 401(k) plan participants convert retirement savings into an annuity on retirement, according to a July 2009 report from the Retirement Security Project, a joint venture of Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and the Brookings Institution in Washington.

A survey of 149 companies released on Dec. 17 by employee- benefits consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide, now part of Arlington, Va.-based Towers Watson & Co., suggested that about 22 percent of employers with retirement savings plans offered retirees the choice between an annuity and a lump-sum distribution.

Annuity Sellers

Government success in getting workers to move retirement assets into annuities may prove profitable for insurers that sell annuities, Anne Mathias, policy research director for Washington Research Group, a policy analysis unit of Concept Capital, said in an interview.

Retirement plans, including 401(k) accounts, held $3.6 trillion in assets at the end of the second quarter of 2009, while annuity investments of all kinds totaled about $2.3 trillion, according to figures from the Washington-based Investment Company Institute, a trade association for asset managers.

The top sellers of individual annuities in the U.S. include AIG, MetLife Inc., Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Lincoln National Corp. and New York Life Insurance Co., according to figures from the American Council of Life Insurers for 2008. The top group-annuity sellers include ING, Prudential Financial, MetLife and Manulife Financial Corp.

Under Fire

Asset managers are concerned the government may go too far in encouraging annuities, said Mike McNamee, a spokesman for the Investment Company Institute. Seven in 10 U.S. households would object to a requirement that retirees convert part of their savings into annuities, according to a survey the group released today.

“Households’ views on policy changes revealed a preference to preserve retirement account features and flexibility,” the institute said in a report.

The institute also said annuities have received support from academic research and “it is unclear why individuals usually forego the annuity option” even when it is available. The survey didn’t ask about potential efforts by the government to encourage voluntary use of annuities.

Annuity sales to individuals have come under regulatory scrutiny in recent years over the size of sales commissions and whether some varieties are suitable for older investors.

Social Security

John Brennan, the former chairman of Vanguard Group, the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based mutual-fund company, criticized annuities today as often expensive and offering little inflation protection. Americans already benefit from “the best annuity in the world, which is Social Security,” Brennan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.

AARP’s Certner said policy makers could avoid many of those pitfalls by encouraging the use of group annuities, which are bought by employers rather than individuals and often carry lower fees, or using approaches that provide retirement income without commercial annuities.

Adding lifetime income to 401(k) plans won’t be sufficient for many workers because they can’t, or don’t, save enough to live on in old age, and Social Security often proves inadequate as more than a safety net, said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center in Washington, D.C.

Senate Bill

“It’s a great idea, but how much are people really going to get out of it?” she said. A better approach would be to give employers incentives to revive defined-benefit pensions, which have languished as employers have focused on cheaper and more flexible 401(k) plans, Ferguson said.

One proposal raised by Iwry as co-author of a paper while at the Retirement Security Project, before joining the administration, has reached Congress. A bill requiring employers to report 401(k) savings both as an account balance and as a stream of income based on an annuity was introduced on Dec. 3 by Senators Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, and Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat.

On CNBC this morning, Rick Santelli from the CME had this to say:

The floor is a bit abuzz. There is published reports out that I am getting from many of my sources about something the Obama administration is going to put towards a public comment period. This is very early in the process, but it goes something like this – avg Americans were hurt big during the big givebacks in their IRAs when the credit crisis pushed stocks down. So remember how IRAs are formulated, they are thinking of changing that and allowing more of an annuity scenario. Now if you think this thru what it means is instead of a bit of your paycheck going into equities every week, it will probably be going into things like Treasuries it would be a little bit lower return but it would be safer and this is very early but you want to pay attention to any new stories coming out about this annuity conversion they are going to put out for public comment.

Sue Herrera and Tyler Mathiesen comment about (a) isn’t this the wrong time to go into treasuries since folks coming on CNBS are saying it is, and (b) people can already put their IRA monies into Treasuries if they want.

Rick responds: The difference is that it is going to be something that is going to be more of a large scale program a very simple one and more of a conversion as well. Like I said early stages, but the range of opinions is “hey it is not a bad idea” to very cynical that we are worried about who is going to buy treasuries ad infinitum.

Rick’s a pretty sharp guy and most importantly, he tells the truth.  So, what does this all mean?  We shall translate:

US Treasury To Americans:  To Prevent Treasury Market Collapse, We Will Force YOU To Buy Treasuries In Your Retirement Accounts

The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.   Business Week

In other words, Social Security Trust Fund II.   As of last month Fund I is broke.   Summary of 2009 Annual Reports Social Security Board of Trustees    The government already stole all this money, and has not been refunding it for years.  With all the deficit expenditures heaped on top of this, which have gone exponential in the last two years, Social Security ran out of money completely last year, more than 5 years ahead of the previously projected date.  This means that retiree’s checks only go out through DAILY sales of Treasuries.  So, if they sell them to YOU, perhaps you can fund the retirees.  Heh.  Talk about a Ponzi scheme that is doomed to go the way of Bernie Madoff.

 Although this proposal will be presented shortly by the administration as being a ‘frugal choice,’ maybe even the ‘patriotic choice.’  And this will actually sound good to the people who were scrambling around in 2008 trying to find a safe-haven for their retirement accounts during the stock market sell-off.   Indeed, historically speaking,, there has never been a safer asset class in which to be invested.  The problem is, this time we aren’t talking about just a stock market (equities) crash, we’re talking about a potential crash in the Treasury market.  The reality is that there is no one left to buy Treasuries and they need YOU to fund their debt.  After all, China stopped buying Treasuries (funding our debt) in October 2009, but of course no one is talking about this. 

 Press Release:  Treasury International Capital 

 Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities 

You see, if they force people to buy Treasuries now, at the current price, when more and more foreigners stop buying, like China did, the price goes down as the yields (interest rate) goes up.  Thus, all the people forced to buy in here will LOSE a tremendous amount of money. 

 Expect the procedure to look something like this:

Step 1 – Make this ‘option’ available
Step 2 – Listen to crickets
Step 3 – Crash stock market
Step 4 – We’re the government and we’re here to help. All your IRA are belong to us. Or of course, you can risk it in stocks if you want.

It’s step 5 they wont’ tell you about:  Treasury market crashes, after all your money has been allocated into it.  It’s exactly like herding sheep.

At this point, anyone expecting the government to be honest about their true intentions about this proposal, or anything for that matter,  is woefully misguided.

For some reason Zero Hedge is prone to take a great deal of heat (both directly radiated and reflected) whenever we opine on the (rather obvious to us) prospect that interest rates might actually (quelle surprise) rise in this environment.  Today, rather than engage in “we told you so” gloating, or endure the repetitive pleadings of commentators that this or that Treasury auction was really a success if you just look a little deeper at the figures, we’ll just quote Bloomberg quoting other fixed income observers on today’s auction of two years, in an article “ambiguously” titled “U.S. 2-Year Yields Highest Since October After $44 Billion Sale.”

Treasury two-year note yields reached the highest levels since October as an investor class that includes foreign central banks bought the least of the debt in five months at today’s record-tying $44 billion auction.

Indirect bidders purchased 34.8 percent of the notes, the lowest amount since July, and below the average for the past 10 sales of 45 percent. Treasuries of all maturities have fallen 3.6 percent this year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch indexes. That would be the worst performance since at least 1978, when Merrill began collecting the data.

We aren’t really sure how this will be spun into a “good thing,”™ but we are sure that someone will find a way.  Back to you, CNBC.