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Calculated Risk - Using Corporate Bonds as an Economic Predictor
Justin Lahart reports in the WSJ on a new research paper: Giving Corporate Credit Its Due (ht James)
In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Monetary Economics [economists Simon Gilchrist and Vladimir Yankov at Boston University, and Egon Zakrajsek at the Federal Reserve] show that spreads on low- to medium-risk corporate bonds, particularly those with 15 or more years until maturity, predicted changes in the economy phenomenally well, forecasting the ups and downs in both hiring and production a year before they occurred. Since writing the paper, they extended their analysis back to 1973 and found bonds' predictive ability still held.

With the massive widening in corporate-bond spreads last fall, the economists' model predicts industrial production will fall another 17% by the end of the year, and the economy will lose another 7.8 million jobs on top of the 5.1 million it has shed since the recession began. Ouch.emphasis added
I haven't seen the paper yet, but here are the spreads I've been following based on 30 year corporate bonds.



This graph shows the spread between 30 year Moody's Aaa and Baa rated bonds and the 30 year treasury.


"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet
by Melanchthon on Fri Apr 10th, 2009 at 10:43:54 AM EST
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