Client Advice - Crowding Out.

It's difficult if not protocol-breach for Asymptotix to disclose precisely who its clients are right now and what specific advice we give to them. Particularly in the context of what we do right now, all of our advice work is currently focussed on ‘impaired (or toxic) assets’, sensitive stuff with multi-legal entity stakeholders. We have to have some regard for our own NDA process! Often it is placing fortune as hostage to give one’s clients advice which can be construed as a warning! But that is what we did at the end of last year (2008). We predicted to one sceptical client that full-blown "crowding out" was not only likely but imminent. All of our analytics on Money Supply (components), the yield curve and some aggregate real factors were shouting “Crowding Out”! Unfortunately our vision has been reified, it seems clear. The consequence is that as hard as we try to put a price on toxic assets so as to allow bank lending to flow again – it has now become pointless.  As of last week there was no breathing space for less than the rock-stars of the private sector in the capital markets, as Keynes might have said: yields we're too low.