Leveraged Loans: A Deathknell for the U.S. Economy

Executive Summary

The leveraged loan market, where the bank debt of non-investment grade companies is traded, has experienced rapid growth over the past few years. But weakness in the market in recent weeks may bring back unpleasant memories of the sub-prime loan debacle a decade ago. Does this recent weakness in the leveraged loan market have negative implications for the macro U.S. economy?

In our view, the leveraged loan market, taken in isolation, is not likely to bring the economy to its knees anytime soon. But its recent weakness may reflect a broader economic reality about which we have been writing. Namely, the overall financial health of the non-financial corporate sector has deteriorated modestly over the past few years. If the Fed continues to push up interest rates and if corporate debt continues to rise, then financial conditions would tighten further, which could eventually lead to a sharper slowdown, if not an outright downturn, in economic growth.

Stress Appears in the Leveraged Loan Market

The leveraged loan market in the United States has mushroomed to more than $1 trillion today from only $5 billion about 20 years ago. Growth has been especially marked in the past two years with the amount of leveraged loans outstanding up more than 30% since late 2016. But the market has weakened recently. The amount of leveraged loans outstanding declined by nearly $20 billion between late November and mid-December, while prices of loans fell about 2 points over that period.

Before discussing macroeconomic implications, we first offer a quick primer on the leveraged loan market. A leveraged loan is a loan that is made to a company with relatively high leverage (i.e., companies with high debt-to-cash flow ratios). Usually, these companies are rated as lessthan-investment grade. Years ago, banks would hold these loans on their balance sheets, but in the past few decades an active market has developed in which these loans are bought and sold. Often, an investment bank will buy leveraged loans from commercial banks to bundle them into structured financial instruments that are known as collateralized loan obligations (CLOs). CLOs trade like bonds, and they improve the liquidity in the leveraged loan market.

Leveraged loans are floating-rate financial instruments, so investors piled into the market over the past two years when the Fed was in rate-hiking mode. However, some investors have started to sell their holdings of leveraged loans recently as doubts have risen about how much higher short-term interest rates actually will rise. Moreover, the evident deceleration occurring in the economy could negatively affect the ability of some highly levered companies to adequately service their debt obligations, which has also contributed to some nervousness in the leveraged loan market. Could the recent weakness in the leveraged loan market have implications for the U.S. economy?

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