Equity bears hunting for excess in the stock market might be better off worrying about bond prices, Alan Greenspan says. That's where the actual bubble is, and when it pops, it'll be bad for everyone.
"By any measure, real long-term interest rates are much too low and therefore unsustainable," the former Federal Reserve chairman, 91, said in an interview. "When they move higher they are likely to move reasonably fast. We are experiencing a bubble, not in stock prices but in bond prices. This is not discounted in the marketplace."
While the consensus of Wall Street forecasters is still for low rates to persist, Greenspan isn't alone in warning they will break higher quickly as the era of global central-bank monetary accommodation ends.
Deutsche Bank AG's Binky Chadha says real Treasury yields sit far below where actual growth levels suggest they should be. Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, says it's only a matter of time before inflationary pressures hit the bond market.
"The real problem is that when the bond-market bubble collapses, long-term interest rates will rise," Greenspan said. "We are moving into a different phase of the economy — to a stagflation not seen since the 1970s. That is not good for asset prices."
Stocks, in particular, will suffer with bonds, as surging real interest rates will challenge one of the few remaining valuation cases that looks more gently upon U.S. equity prices, Greenspan argues.
'Fed Model'
While hardly universally accepted, the theory underpinning his view, known as the Fed Model, holds that as long as bonds are rallying faster than stocks, investors are justified in sticking with the less-inflated asset.
