Treasuries

Four different services hit my mailbox last night with the same headline.

Ten Year Treasury Hits 4%

Putting aside the notion that a 4% yield over the next 10 years lent to anybody (let alone the Federal Government of the United States of America) even approaches a reasonable compensation for risk.

The much referenced "Head and Shoulder" Top is in.

My preference would be for it to go back up and close that gap between about 118.3 and 117.5 and then finish.

As a matter of fact, I believe it will, only because I have come to the conclusion that the notion of randomness in the world is a deception.

I have come to believe that the world is just about as anal and rhythmic as I am (which is pretty damn).

I also believe that the Fed will use every lever to hold rates down.

I'm just not sure it's gonna work.

Savers may not be gasping for income that much longer.

Oh yeah, and P.S.

Did you make that refi application yet?

The Guidotti-Greenspan Rule

Named for Pablo Guidotti, former deputy minister of finance for Argentina (that bastion of resposibility in national financing), and Alan Greenspan, increasingly discredited former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States (that other bastion of responsibility in national financing)

States that a countries financial reserves should equal short-term external debt (one-year or less maturity), implying a ratio of reserves-to-short term debt of 1.

The rationale here, is that countries should have enough reserves to resist a massive withdrawal of short term foreign capital.

The U.S. holds gold, oil, and foreign currencies in reserve.

The U.S. has 8,133.5 metric tonnes of gold (supposedly, ain't nobody counted it in generations).

It is the world's largest holder (supposedly, ..... ).

That's 16,267,000 pounds (at the risk of redundancy ....... ).

At about $1,100 per oz. or $17,600 per pound, it's worth just under $300 billion (you know ..... ).

The U.S. strategic petroleum reserve shows a current total position of 725 million barrels of oil.

At about $80 per barrel, that's roughly $58 billion.

And according to the IMF, the U.S. has $136 billion in foreign currency reserves.

So altogether... that's around $500 billion of reserves.

Now, consider this .............

Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt.

That's not counting any additional deficit spending, maybe another $1.5 trillion ..... ish.

Add it up and you get $3.5 trillion ..... or so, a trillion here a trillion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

That would be about 30% of our entire GDP.

Where do you think that money is gonna come from?

They're gonna print it.

Or snatch your IRA.

If not both.

The above was taken almost in it's entirety (with the exception of the bitter and/or sarcastic comments usually written with type just about this big) from a Porter Stansbury article that was all over the place most of this past fall.

It appears here, here, here  and there, but originated here  (somewhere).