Despite The Fed's best efforts to crush the business cycle, the crucial credit-cycle has reared its ugly head as releveraging firms (gotta fund those buybacks) and deflationary pressures (liabilities fixed, assets tumble) have led to a surging market cost of capital. As WSJ reports, softening U.S. corporate fundamentals have been largely overlooked but the markets for riskier debt have become snarled with rising downgrades and an increase in U.S. corporate defaults indicate “some cracks on the surface” of the domestic-growth outlook. In fact, in the latest quarter, the ratio of upgrades-to-downgrades is its weakest since the peak of the financial crisis in 2009. Falling profits and increased borrowing at U.S. companies are rattling debt markets, a sign the six-year-long economic recovery could be under threat. Credit-rating firms are downgrading more U.S. companies than at any other time since the financial crisis, and measures of debt relative to cash flow are rising. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services downgraded U.S. companies 297 times in the first nine months of the year, the most downgrades since 2009, compared with just 172 upgrades. Meanwhile, the trailing 12-month default rate on lower-rated U.S. corporate bonds was 2.5% in September, up from 1.4% in July of last year, according to S&P. Analysts expect profits at large companies to decline for a second straight quarter for the first time since 2009. U.S. companies have increased borrowing to levels exceeding those just before the financial crisis, as firms pursue big acquisitions and seek to boost stock prices by buying back shares. According to one metric, the ratio of debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for companies that carry investment-grade ratings, meaning triple-B-minus or above, was 2.29 times in the second quarter. That’s higher than the 1.91 times in June 2007, just before the crisis, according to figures from Morgan Stanley. “We’re seeing more widespread weakness across more industry sectors in the U.S.,” Ms. Vazza said. “It’s become broader than just the commodity story.” “The metrics that you measure health and credit by have peaked a while ago,” said Sivan Mahadevan, head of credit strategy at Morgan Stanley. “They are beginning to deteriorate.” * * * You Are Here...