Inside Money: LED lights on a debt ceiling

Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion

After my recent full-immersion experience in the world of fixed income I have become desensitised to sovereign debt scare stories.

Greece in defacto default ; Portugal junked - don't worry, my fixed income friends have already 'priced it in'.

Bond managers are habitually blase about such news, their thoughts already absorbed in other worst-case scenarios set in the near and distant future.

With my new-found lend-Zen, then, watching the US debt ceiling debate unfold on multiple TV screens in the appliance shop did not induce the panic the breathless reports clearly intended.

Hmm, I wondered, does President Obama's skin-tone look more natural on the LED or the old-school LCD?

The voice-over shouted something about the majority of US citizens not wanting to lift the debt-ceiling as angry marchers filed by.

But popular discontent about debt ceilings will probably be ignored, according to this report, or else the market might hit the roof.

"The ratings agency Standard & Poor's has warned it would give the US government its lowest credit rating if lawmakers fail to raise the borrowing limit and the United States defaults on its debt, but so far markets have remained unfazed, apparently doubting lawmakers would willingly throw the economy into a tailspin," the report says.

My bond manager had other credit worries.

Governments worldwide, he said, are (understandably) trying to constrain the ability of banks to lend willy-nilly through a range of measures. For example, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has recently lifted bank 'core funding ratios'.

"But the Western world depends on credit growth to expand," the fixed income guy told me. "I don't think people realise what it would be like without it.... Be careful what you wish for."

The LED was definitely better.

It had Freeview.

And a credit option that was priced in.