Anticipated 2019 Debt Ceiling Debate Fuels Fears Of “Major Market Disruption”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 12/21/2018
With Washington DC in disarray over the government shutdown battle playing out between the Trump administration and Congress, veteran traders have started to worry about what it might mean for Capitol Hill’s next battle; the early March debt-ceiling reinstatement, reports Bloomberg.
If an agreement can’t be reached in less than 90 days, the Treasury will need to resort to extraordinary measures in order to meet America’s obligations.
In what’s become something of a grim ritual, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are likely to lock horns once again as the clock to a U.S. debt default ticks down, using the threat of economic disaster to try and wrangle legislative concessions from the other party. While Congress has never failed to reach an accord, many longtime Wall Street prognosticators are growing increasingly concerned that 2019’s clash could match, or surpass, some of the more bitter showdowns of years past, leading to a major market disruption. -Bloomberg
“This shutdown episode is important because it’s a window into the governing dynamics next year, which is concerning because the debt limit comes back into play,” said Isaac Boltansky, a senior policy analyst with investment advisory firm Compass Point. “Legislative brinkmanship takes on a whole new market dynamic when it encompasses the debt ceiling. We are going to have a concentration of political risks that investors need to be aware of.”
With the government just hours away from a partial shutdown if they can’t pass a stopgap funding bill that includes $5 billion for President Trump’s highly anticipated border wall, and Trump warning on Friday that a shutdown “will last for a very long time” if the wall money doesn’t appear, the prospect of productive negotiations over the debt ceiling appear quite low.
Senators from both parties have signaled that even modified legislation which includes the $5 billion won’t pass when the chamber returns on Friday for another vote – meaning nine out of 15 government departments will shut down after Friday if there is no resolution.
While the economic impact of a shutdown would likely be limited, the consequences of similar strife over increasing America’s borrowing capacity could be huge, if recent history is any guide. -Bloomberg
As Bloomberg notes, a similar debt ceiling debate in 2011 involving a split House and Senate “took the debt-limit debate down to the wire,” resulting in American’s sovereign credit rating taking its first hit by S&P Global Ratings. Yields on the 10-year Treasury slid over 3% to a then-record low of around 2% as investors counterintuitively kneejerked into government bonds right around the August 2 drop-dead date.
Amid the chaos, the S&P 500 fell around 20%, while the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index surged right after the downgrade.
While longer-term Treasuries gained, some bills and short-tenor notes tumbled as traders avoided securities at risk of non-payment, leaving taxpayers on the hook for an addition $1.3 billion in interest payments for the fiscal year, according to the Government Accountability Office. Similar disruptions in the front end also occurred in the run-up to the 2013 and 2017 debt-ceiling deadlines. -Bloomberg
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