Cost of Insuring Sovereign Debt Jumps to Record High

The cost of insuring against the U.S. and several European governments defaulting on their debt hit record highs on Tuesday as investors fretted about the scale of financial rescue programmes needed to navigate recession.

The level of borrowing with which governments around the world are saddling themselves sent the prices paid on government debt credit default swaps (CDS) higher, in some cases sharply.

Five-year CDS on UK government debt jumped 7 basis points to a record 106.4 basis points while the 10-year U.S. Treasury CDS hit a record 66.4 basis points, up two basis points on the day, credit data company CMA DataVision said.

That means it costs 106,400 pounds per year to insure 10 million of UK government bonds against default and $66,400 per year against the United States defaulting on its 10-year debt.

Five-year Italian government CDS widened to 161.5 basis points from 155 basis points at Monday's close, while the French equivalent reached a record 56.8 basis points from Monday's 54.4 basis points.

"The impetus to the recent rise has been the move into fiscal stimulus and the prospect of even lower economic growth going forward," said Meyrick Chapman, a fixed income strategist at UBS in London.

In the United States, the Federal Reserve has more than doubled its balance sheet to $2.2 trillion in recent months through its pledges to support various assets and guarantee lending.

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to unveil a multi-hundred billion dollar fiscal package early next year, which would follow the fiscal stimulus and $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program already approved by Congress.

On Monday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke raised the possibility of the Fed buying Treasuries and other so-called 'quantitative easing' measures.

European finance ministers met in Brussels to discuss a proposal for governments to spend an extra 1.2 percent of gross domestic product from their budgets to boost growth.

Chapman at UBS said buying by structured note hedgers -- "first to default" hedgers -- were also behind the acceleration in the trend of rising CDS in recent sessions.

The move was most severe in Greek, Irish and Italian CDS, with 5-year Irish CDS having blown out almost seven-fold to 213.4 basis points on Tuesday compared with levels seen mid-September when the global financial crisis reached new depths with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Five-year CDS on Italian government debt widened from 47 basis points on Sept. 16, with similar moves from double digit to triple seen in CDS on UK and Swedish sovereign paper, according to CMA DataVision.

"In our opinion, the Italian budget will veer into unsustainability in 2009. By unsustainable we mean new debt issuance will be required to cover the interest payments in 2009. The same problem is likely to recur in 2010 as well," Chapman at UBS said.

"We also believe the average Italian state debt service cost is not likely to fall much from recent 4.4 percent unless the duration of the portfolio shrinks much more than we expect. In fact, the duration has been extending in recent years."

Italian and Greek government bonds have also cheapened sharply, with their yield premium over benchmark German Bunds soaring well over 100 basis points as investors switched into safer haven German assets.

"If CDS was a true asset -- rather than an off-balance sheet vehicle -- the total returns offered by the price changes would place it among the highest historical performers, particularly among OECD members," Chapman said.

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