Financial markets have posed a number of vexing questions to investors over the past two years, not the least of which included the height to which interest rates could rise without negatively impacting US economic activity.
We expect the recent passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to be an extremely positive impulse for municipal credit stabilization and underlying fundamental improvement more broadly.
Over the course of history, during world wars, pandemics, financial crises, and deep recessions, municipal bond defaults have been an extremely rare occurrence. There have been less than 700 rated municipal bond defaults in the over 100 years of public finance existence. As a point of comparison, we saw over 117 corporate defaults in 2019 alone.
The dramatic recovery in fixed income markets, which began in Q1, persisted throughout the second quarter. Investors increasingly sought safe haven investments in light of geo-political uncertainty and perceived overvaluation in equity markets more broadly.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” to borrow a phrase from Dickens’, Tale of Two Cities. As 2016 came to a close it seemed truly the best of times for many. Following the US election, there was renewed hope and optimism for growth initiatives, as well as public policies, which generated a sense of certainty and euphoria about the future.