Government Debt

Author(s):  
Keith Pareti ◽  
Rob Kennedy

This chapter focuses on the origin and functionality of U.S. government debt (Treasuries). Debt in the U.S. has been increasing for many decades, especially since the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The types of debt securities are discussed along with the auction process to obtain these investment vehicles. All investments involve risks and rating agencies attempt to rank and grade the risk associated with sovereign debt. Default rates, derivative contracts, and risk are important in making investment decisions with government debt. Investors could range from long-term investors, short-term speculators, and others. This chapter concludes with the outlook into the future and the historic high debt-to-gross-domestic product ratio.

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1and2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ms. Reenu Bansal ◽  
Dr. N M Sharma

Credit rating is the symbolic indicator of the current opinion of rating agencies regarding the relative capability of issuer of debt instruments, to service the debt obligations as per contract. The corporations with specialized functions namely, assessment of the likelihood, of the timely payments by an issuer on a financial obligation is known as credit rating agencies. Lately, the credit rating agencies have been the subject of significant criticism for failing to warn the investors of the defaults well in advance. Investors in long-term debt instruments are usually risk averse, buy-and-hold types; and hence, for them, the variability of investment-grade default rates is particularly important since they employ simple investment-grade rating cut-offs in the design of their investment eligibility plan. According to CRISIL (Credit Rating Information Services of India) and another credit rating agencies, default mean that the company has either already failed in the payment of interest and/or principal as per terms or is expected to fail. This paper tests the reliability of ratings assigned by CRISIL on the basis of the actual default rate experience in different sectors over a period of ten years, i.e., 2000-2011.Since the credit rating agencies do not publish ratings that are not accepted by the issuers, this study is limited to only those issues that have been accepted and used by the issuers. The default statistics were examined sector-wise, period-wise, and company/institution-wise. Analyses of the background and business, operating performance, management and systems, financial performance, prospects, key issues, and the reasons cited for defaults were undertaken with respect to all the companies. Further, an attempt was made to identify whether companies in default had issued other debt instruments that were rated by other credit rating agencies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 535-564
Author(s):  
Patrycja Chodnicka-Jaworska

Covid-19 Impact on Countires’ Outlooks and Credit Ratings The aim of the study is to examine the impact of the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 on chang­es in outlooks and credit ratings of major rating agencies. The research hypothesis was as follows: the financial crisis caused by COVID-19 negatively affected the change in outlooks and credit ratings of countries. The study used long-term and short-term credit ratings and outlooks collected from the Thomson Reuters / Refinitiv database regarding liabilities expressed in foreign currency and macroeconomic data from the International Monetary Fund databases, for 2010–2021. The analysis was carried out using ordered logit panel models. The presented results showed a weak significant im­pact of the COVID-19 pandemic on credit rating. The agency that changed its notes in connection with this situation is Standard & Poor’s (S&P). However, the attitude responded to the situation un­der investigation. During the crisis, country ratings have become less sensitive to growing debt, which may be dictated by widespread loosening of fiscal policy. The rate of GDP growth has a par­ticular impact during the COVID-19 period in the event of a change of outlook. Rising inflation is particularly dangerous in the age of pandemics. It may be related to monetary policy easing.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Suveera Gill

Lately, the credit rating agencies have been the subject of significant criticism for failing to warn the investors of the defaults well in advance. Investors in long-term debt instruments are usually risk averse, buy-and-hold types; and hence, for them, the variability of investment-grade default rates is particularly important since they employ simple investment-grade rating cut-offs in the design of their investment eligibility plan. According to ICRA (Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India) and the other credit rating agencies, default means that the company has either already failed in the payment of interest and/or principal as per terms or is expected to fail. The debt rating at no time informs as to how much bond face value holders would recover in the event of a default. The present regulations pertaining to the credit rating agencies preclude the investors and issuers from suing agencies for awarding a particular rating. Hence, credit ratings are of value only as long as they are credible. This paper tests the reliability of ratings assigned by ICRA on the basis of the actual default rate experience on long-term debt across five sectors over a period of seven years, i.e., 1995–2002. The reason for including only long-term debt instruments for the purpose of analysis is that the assigned rating and its movement can be observed only over a long period. Since the credit rating agencies do not publish ratings that are not accepted by the issuers, this study is limited to only those issues that have been accepted and used by the issuers. The default statistics were examined sector-wise, period-wise, and company/institution-wise. Analyses of the background and business, operating performance, management and systems, financial performance, prospects, key issues, and the reasons cited for defaults were undertaken with respect to all the companies. Simple metrics like default rates by rating grades and rating prior to default were used to analyse whether low ratings (i.e., speculative-grade ratings) were assigned by ICRA to defaulting credits well in advance of default rate. Further, an attempt was made to identify whether companies in default had issued other debt instruments that were rated by other credit rating agencies. The findings highlight the following: The performance of the manufacturing sector vis-a-vis other sectors has been dismal. The period of high defaults (1997-1999) coincides with a high interest regime and poor economic conditions in India. ICRA's performance in terms of proper surveillance and provision of timely and complete information about the companies rated by them has not been up to the mark. The findings certainly draw attention towards the fact that excessive reliance on credit rating needs to be reduced. Since the governance of the credit rating agencies is questionable, adequate steps have to be taken to make them more accountable.


Author(s):  
Paul Stuart

<p>As the U.S. economy has mainly recovered from the 2008 Financial Crisis, with unemployment below 5%, inflation below 2%, and the stock market near all-time highs, there is growing concern about the huge amount of U.S. government debt, which today stands at over $20 Trillion dollars and 106% of Debt/GDP. Could this be the next thing to derail the U.S. economy, and in so doing, negatively affecting nearly every other country in the world?  This paper reviews the size and scope of the U.S. National Debt in it’s historical context. There are three reasons to be alarmed about this, especially now. First, the annual budget deficit, which had been shrinking in the later years of the Obama administration, is once again on the rise. Second, the Republican tax reduction bill is estimated to add another trillion dollars to the overall level of government debt in the next 10 years, even with higher GDP growth rates factored in. Third, the Trump administration, while slashing other areas of government spending (State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, and more) is once again seeking major increases in military spending. This scenario is strikingly similar to the early 1980’s, where deficits soared as a result. The paper also offers some solutions as to what can be done to bring it down to a more manageable level (or at least reduce it’s rate of growth). Like many things in economics, the “best” solution is to find ways to return to levels of historical GDP growth rates (3% and above).</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Ramaprasad Bhar ◽  
A.G. Malliaris ◽  
Mary Malliaris

The Financial Crisis of 2007-09 caused the U.S. economy to experience a relatively long recession from December 2007 to June 2009. Both the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve undertook expansive fiscal and monetary policies to minimize both the severity and length of the recession.  Most notably, the Federal Reserve initiated three rounds of unconventional monetary policies known as Quantitative Easing.  These policies were intended to reduce long-term interest rates when the short term federal funds rates had reached the zero lower bound and could not become negative. It was argued that the lowering of longer-term interest rates would help the stock market and thus the wealth of consumers.  This paper investigates this hypothesis and concludes that quantitative easing has contributed to the observed increases in the stock market’s significant recovery since its crash due to the financial crisis


Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 154
Author(s):  
Lorena Caridad y López del Río ◽  
María de los Baños García-Moreno García ◽  
José Rafael Caro-Barrera ◽  
Manuel Adolfo Pérez-Priego ◽  
Daniel Caridad y López del Río

Long-term ratings of companies are obtained from public data plus some additional nondisclosed information. A model based on data from firms’ public accounts is proposed to directly obtain these ratings, showing fairly close similitude with published results from Credit Rating Agencies. The rating models used to assess the creditworthiness of a firm may involve some possible conflicts of interest, as companies pay for most of the rating process and are, thus, clients of the rating firms. Such loss of faith among investors and criticism toward the rating agencies were especially severe during the financial crisis in 2008. To overcome this issue, several alternatives are addressed; in particular, the focus is on elaborating a rating model for Moody’s long-term companies’ ratings for industrial and retailing firms that could be useful as an external check of published rates. Statistical and artificial intelligence methods are used to obtain direct prediction of awarded rates in these sectors, without aggregating adjacent classes, which is usual in previous literature. This approach achieves an easy-to-replicate methodology for real rating forecasts based only on public available data, without incurring the costs associated with the rating process, while achieving a higher accuracy. With additional sampling information, these models can be extended to other sectors.


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