The Crocodile of Debt Deflation
The laws of nature cannot be dodged forever.
It really is amazing to think that dinosaurs still live on our wee blue planet. Go to the Northern Territory in Australia and see them in the wild. Saltwater crocodiles are simply awesome creatures and have survived 80 million years. Even we humans, who have seemingly tried to eradicate everything else in nature, cannot harm them much. When you see a crocodile in the wild, run! (Which reminds me of a joke, but I’ll leave that to the end).
If you used your imagination and squinted your eyes a little, the chart below could resemble a crocodile with its mouth wide open (ok, ok, maybe after a dram or two). The chart shows the level of Non-Financial Corporate Debt as a proportion of Gross Domestic product in the U.S.A as well as the Moody’s Seasoned Baa Corporate Bond Yield. That bond yield series represents the middle-to-lower quality of corporate debt.