The Fed Punishes Prudence
Its bailout for risky debt helps investors, not employees.
By Sam Long and Alexander Synkov
A deserted street in Washington, March 23.
PHOTO: MANDEL NGAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to purchase trillions in corporate debt went underreported on Main Street, but shocked credit markets. The move will cushion losses for investors in risky assets, yet it’s a dubious step for American capitalism as a whole—one that will accelerate some of the most dangerous trends in the U.S. economy.
Altogether the Fed will deploy more than $1.45 trillion in support of investors in leveraged assets—more than double the size of the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program, and over $7,000 for each working-age American. That includes $750 billion to purchase recently downgraded junk bonds and bond exchange-traded funds—an unprecedented intervention in the private credit markets.
Pumping trillions of dollars into corporate credit and even high-yield debt will further distort markets already shaped by a decade of easy-money policies. This is no abstract concern. The result will be an acceleration of two economywide transfers of wealth: from the middle class to the affluent and from the cautious to the reckless.
The transfer from the middle class to the wealthy continues a trend begun in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis. Like the Fed’s combination of depressed interest rates and quantitative-easing government debt purchases, the new intervention will funnel trillions of dollars toward financial markets and the corporations able to participate in them.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell had little to say about the move, wrapping it in with the central bank’s broader mission to keep workers employed. But bankruptcies among highly leveraged businesses often pose surprisingly little risk to employment. More often than not, creditors choose to keep businesses staffed even when restructuring to retain value for the long-term. By preventing these bankruptcies, the Fed is doing more for equity holders and junior creditors than for employees.
Inflated asset prices spurred by years of low interest rates have also expanded the gap between investors and most Americans. The Fed’s purchases of high-yield ETFs and other instruments will widen it further. At the end of 2019, the average ratio of price to unleveraged cash earnings for S&P 500 companies was 13.4, more than a quarter higher than the 30-year average of 10.6. Drastic monetary stimulus may drive cyclically adjusted multiples even higher, pushing up returns for those who bet on risky assets relative to more cautious savers, many of whom have had meager earnings since the Fed cut interest rates 12 years ago. The average return on a five-year deposit, for example, dropped from 4% to 1% in the past decade.
Low interest rates are designed to encourage risk-taking. But the Fed’s pre-emptive bailout effectively eliminates risk retroactively. A CEO took a risk when he chose to borrow for share buybacks, as did an investor who bought a portfolio of highly leveraged loans. Making such risk-taking riskless necessarily makes prudence unprofitable in comparison. This is effectively a second transfer of wealth, from the most cautious participants in the economy to the most aggressive. At a time when millions of workers are being asked to sacrifice their incomes for the nation’s health, policy makers have chosen to punish savings and penalize prudence—a move that may undermine many Americans’ already wavering faith in capitalism.
Mr. Long is a search-fund investor in Boston. Mr. Synkov is a private-equity investor in New York.