Treasury investors demanding higher yields... "real" cost of capital is rising as the slump deepens.

[RedEarth]

.....from Naked Capitalism......

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph gives us a typically verging-on-apocalyptic but nevertheless informative piece, starting with the Fed and then looking at the pretty alarming data from other economies. However, since IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said last week that advanced economies are already in a depression, Evans-Pritchard in increasingly in line with consensus reality. That alone should get readers worried.

From the Telegraph:

The yield on 10-year US Treasury bonds – the world's benchmark cost of capital – has jumped from 2pc to 3pc since Christmas despite efforts to talk the rate down.

This level will asphyxiate the US economy if allowed to persist... The US is already in deflation. Core prices – stripping out energy – fell at an annual rate of 2pc in the fourth quarter. Wages are following. IBM, Chrysler, General Motors, and YRC, have all begun to cut pay.

The "real" cost of capital is rising as the slump deepens. This is textbook debt deflation. It was not supposed to happen. The Bernanke doctrine assumes that the Fed can bring down the whole structure of interest costs, first by slashing the Fed Funds rate to zero, and then by making a "credible threat" to buy Treasuries outright with printed money.

Mr Bernanke has been repeating this threat since early December. But talk is cheap. As the Fed hesitates, real yields climb ever higher. Plainly, the markets do not regard Fed rhetoric as "credible" at all.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/bond-investors-call-feds-bluff.html

[Joanne98]

1. Another reason for nationalization. Dividend yields=bankruptcy.

They're investor corporate raiders.