The Big Reversal: Inflation and Higher Interest Rates Are Coming Our Way
This interaction will spark a runaway feedback loop that will smack asset valuations back to pre-bubble, pre-pyramid scheme levels.
According to the conventional economic forecast, interest rates will stay near-zero essentially forever due to slow growth. And since growth is slow, inflation will also remain neutral.
This forecast is little more than an extension of the trends of the past 30+ years: a secular decline in interest rates and official inflation, which remains around 2% or less. (As many of us have pointed out for years, the real rate of inflation is much higher–in the neighborhood of 7% annually for those exposed to real-world costs.)
The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 (August 1, 2016)
Inflation Isn’t Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs (May 25, 2017)
About Those “Hedonic Adjustments” to Inflation: Ignoring the Systemic Decline in Quality, Utility, Durability and Service (October 11, 2017)
Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised (October 5, 2017)
Apparently unbeknownst to conventional economists, trends eventually reverse or give way to new trends. As a general rule, whatever fundamentals are pushing the trend decay or slide into diminishing returns, and new dynamics arise that power a new trend.
I’ve often referred to the S-Curve as one model of how trends emerge, strengthen, top out, weaken and then fade. Trends often change suddenly, as in the phase-shift model, in which the status quo appears stable until hidden instabilities cause the entire “permanent and forever” status quo to collapse in a heap.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) recently issued a report claiming that Demographics will reverse three multi-decade global trends. Here’s a precis of the case for a globally aging populace and a shrinking workforce to reverse the downward trends in inflation and interest rates: New Study Says Aging Populations Will Drive Higher Interest Rates (Bloomberg)
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