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[jumanji0881]

'Dr.Doom' Fears The Looming Stagflationary Debt Crisis : https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/drdoom-fears-looming-stagflationary-debt-crisis

My Comment : The Fed has created so much money that there are no bargains to be found. A recession could create those bargains.

Excerpts:
We are thus left with the worst of both the stagflationary 1970s and the 2007-10 period. Debt ratios are much higher than in the 1970s, and a mix of loose economic policies and negative supply shocks threatens to fuel inflation rather than deflation, setting the stage for the mother of stagflationary debt crises over the next few years.

For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset and credit bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. The warning signs are already apparent in today’s high price-to-earnings ratios, low equity risk premia, inflated housing and tech assets, and the irrational exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto sector, high-yield corporate debt, collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks, and runaway retail day trading. At some point, this boom will culminate in a Minsky moment (a sudden loss of confidence), and tighter monetary policies will trigger a bust and crash.

Making matters worse, central banks have effectively lost their independence, because they have been given little choice but to monetize massive fiscal deficits to forestall a debt crisis. With both public and private debts having soared, they are in a debt trap. As inflation rises over the next few years, central banks will face a dilemma. If they start phasing out unconventional policies and raising policy rates to fight inflation, they will risk triggering a massive debt crisis and severe recession; but if they maintain a loose monetary policy, they will risk double-digit inflation – and deep stagflation when the next negative supply shocks emerge.

But even in the second scenario, policymakers would not be able to prevent a debt crisis. While nominal government fixed-rate debt in advanced economies can be partly wiped out by unexpected inflation (as happened in the 1970s), emerging-market debts denominated in foreign currency would not be. Many of these governments would need to default and restructure their debts.

At the same time, private debts in advanced economies would become unsustainable (as they did after the global financial crisis), and their spreads relative to safer government bonds would spike, triggering a chain reaction of defaults. Highly leveraged corporations and their reckless shadow-bank creditors would be the first to fall, soon followed by indebted households and the banks that financed them.

So, too, are the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England. The stagflation of the 1970s will soon meet the debt crises of the post-2008 period. The question is not if but when.