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DAVID STOCKMAN: You'd Be A Fool To Hold Anything But Cash Now

For those that do not know David Stockman, he was an architect of one of the biggest tax cuts in U.S. history.

Here is some text from the article linked above. (emphasis added)

Q: Why are you so down on the U.S. economy?
 A: It's become super-saturated with debt.
Typically the private and public sectors would borrow $1.50 or $1.60 each year for every $1 of GDP growth. That was the golden constant. It had been at that ratio for 100 years save for some minor squiggles during the bottom of the Depression. By the time we got to the mid-'90s, we were borrowing $3 for every $1 of GDP growth. And by the time we got to the peak in 2006 or 2007, we were actually taking on $6 of new debt to grind out $1 of new GDP.
People were taking $25,000, $50,000 out of their home for the fourth refinancing. That's what was keeping the economy going, creating jobs in restaurants, creating jobs in retail, creating jobs as gardeners, creating jobs as Pilates instructors that were not supportable with organic earnings and income.
It wasn't sustainable. It wasn't real consumption or real income. It was bubble economics.
So even the 1.6 percent (annual GDP growth in the past decade) is overstating what's really going on in our economy.

Q: How fast can the U.S. economy grow?
 A: People would say the standard is 3, 3.5 percent. I don't even know if we could grow at 1 or 2 percent. When you have to stop borrowing at these tremendous rates, the rate of GDP expansion stops as well.

Q: How does it end?
 A: At some point confidence is lost, and people don't want to own the (Treasury) paper. I mean why in the world, when the inflation rate has been 2.5 percent for the last 15 years, would you want to own a five-year note today at 80 basis points (0.8 percent)?
If the central banks ever stop buying, or actually begin to reduce their totally bloated, abnormal, freakishly large balance sheets, all of these speculators are going to sell their bonds in a heartbeat.
That's what happened in Greece.
Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today 7/8— utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today.

Q: You sound as if we're facing a financial crisis like the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.
 A: Oh, far worse than Lehman. When the real margin call in the great beyond arrives, the carnage will be unimaginable.

Q: How do investors protect themselves? What about the stock market?
 A: I wouldn't touch the stock market with a 100-foot pole. It's a dangerous place. It's not safe for men, women or children.

Q: Do you own any shares?
 A: No.

Q: But the stock market is trading cheap by some measures. It's valued at 12.5 times expected earnings this year. The typical multiple is 15 times.
 A: The typical multiple is based on a historic period when the economy could grow at a standard rate. The idea that you can capitalize this market at a rate that was safe to capitalize it in 1990 or 1970 or 1955 is a large mistake. It's a Wall Street sales pitch.

Q: Are you in short-term Treasurys?
 A: I'm just in short-term, yeah. Call it cash. I have some gold. I'm not going to take any risk
.
Q: Municipal bonds?
 A: No.

Q: No munis, no stocks. Wow. You're not making any money.
 A: Capital preservation is what your first, second and third priority ought to be in a system that is so jerry-built, so fragile, so exposed to major breakdown that it's not worth what you think you might be able to earn over six months or two years or three years if they can keep the bailing wire and bubble gum holding the system together, OK? It's not worth it.

Q: Give me your prescription to fix the economy.
 A: We have to eat our broccoli for a good period of time. And that means our taxes are going to go up on everybody, not just the rich. It means that we have to stop subsidizing debt by getting a sane set of people back in charge of the Fed, getting interest rates back to some kind of level that reflects the risk of holding debt over time. I think the federal funds rate ought to be 3 percent or 4 percent. (It is zero to 0.25 percent.) I mean, that's normal in an economy with inflation at 2 percent or 3 percent.

Q: Are you hopeful?
 A: No. 

Nuff said?