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How money creation threatens hyperinflation
How money creation threatens hyperinflation
In order to understand the relationship between money creation and the price level, we first need to get some definitions straight.
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Philip Haslam: When Money Destroys Nations
Philip Haslam: When Money Destroys Nations
The global debt glut, plus the related money printing efforts by the world’s central banks to try to stimulate further credit growth at all costs, leads us to conclude that a major currency crisis — actually, multiple major currency crises — are practically inevitable at this point.
To understand better the anatomy of a currency collapse, we talk this week with Philip Haslam, author of the book When Money Destroys Nations. Haslam is an authority on monetary history, and more recently, has spent much time in Zimbabwe collecting dozens of accounts of the experiences real people had as the currency there failed.
This week, he and Chris discuss the process by which a hyperinflationary currency collapse occurs:
In South Africa, there’s a river called Suicide Gorge where you can jump off from the top of a series of waterfalls. You jump off each waterfall, and you can then go down to the next. But the problem is, once you jump off each waterfall, you can’t get back up again. So we used this analogy to describe the process of hyperinflation.
Typically, as a government prints money, you get levels of inflation. But that’s inflation based on historic money printing. Every year, when you get your salary increase, you base it on historic processes. You take the latest consumer price index and then build it into your wage increases. If you’re a business, you’ll build it into rent increases and price increases of your products. But it’s all based on historic inflation.
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The Federal Reserve Bank Must Be Destroyed!
The Federal Reserve Bank Must Be Destroyed!
“Delanda est in Susidium Foederatum Bank”
(The Federal Reserve Bank Must be Destroyed)
During the years of the Roman Republic, Cato the Elder ended every speech with the phrase “Delanda est Carthago” (Carthage must be destroyed). Rome had fought two wars with Carthage, yet the threat to the Republic remained. Cato saw Carthage as an existential threat and concluded that Rome would not be secure as long as Carthage existed. So fervently did he hold this view that he ended every speech, even about completely different subjects, with the famous phrase. I believe that we Austrians need to adopt a similar phrase to remind the American people that the US faces an existential threat from the machinations of the Federal Reserve Bank. “Delanda est in Susidium Foederatum Bank”…The Federal Reserve Bank must be destroyed. Like Carthage, the Federal Reserve Bank cannot be controlled or restrained. Either it or our republic will survive, but not both. For the sake of our nation, the Fed must be destroyed.
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Is Japan Zimbabwe?
Is Japan Zimbabwe?
Is Japan Zimbabwe? How preposterous: Japan is an advanced economy that cannot possibly suffer the same fate as Zimbabwe. Right? Or could Japan get hyperinflation? Below I explain why Japan, and with it investors’ portfolios, might be at risk.
The other day, when I was on a panel discussing unsustainable deficits in the U.S., Eurozone and Japan, the risk of inflation and Zimbabwe style hyperinflation came up. When asked about the difference about Japan and Zimbabwe, I quipped that there isn’t any. My co-panelists were all over me, arguing Japan is different. Notably that Japan could not possibly go broke because, unlike Zimbabwe, it’s an advanced economy. The argument being that Japan produces goods the world wants.
To be clear: Zimbabwe and Japan are not the same. But are they really that different? Zimbabwe not only had a much weaker economy, but also much weaker institutions. But the old adage that something unsustainable won’t last forever may still hold.
The difference between Zimbabwe and Japan – and Europe and the U.S. for that matter – is that advanced economies have more control over their destiny. However, all these regions have made commitments they cannot keep by continuing business as usual. A weak country may simply implode. A strong country has choices. The preferred choice these days appears to be to kick the proverbial can down the road.
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The Great Immoderation: How The Fed Is Sowing The Next Recession
The Great Immoderation: How The Fed Is Sowing The Next Recession
In February 2004 Ben Bernanke famously declared the business cycle had been tamed and took a bow in behalf of enlightened monetary management, claiming it was the principal source of this beneficent development. Exactly 55 months later, of course, he terrorized the Congressional leadership and a clueless President with the frieghtening proposition that a Great Depression 2.0 was just around the corner.
As to why he had been so stupendously wrong, Bernanke did not say. Nor did he explain why the brilliantly “stable” US economy had suddenly stumbled to the edge of an abyss despite the Fed’s energetic money printing in the interim. And the Fed had not been stingy in the slightest; it balance sheet had actually expanded by $150 billion or nearly 4.5% annually between February 2004 and the Lehman bankruptcy.
Indeed, six and one-half years on from the financial crisis—-events that made a mockery of the Great Moderation—–the monetary politburo and its acolytes on Wall Street have offered no coherent explanation as to why Armageddon loomed nigh and why the worst business cycle plunge since the 1930s actually materialized. Certainly their lame Monday morning claim that “prudential regulation” had failed doesn’t cut it.
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Time for Some Mattress Padding
Time for Some Mattress Padding
Can you imagine borrowing $1000 from the bank and receiving $10 per year interest from the bank? I didn’t think so. However, this is the happy situation facing some European countries and even a few Swiss companies. The Swiss, Swedish, and Danish governments and the food multinational Nestle are now borrowing money from lenders who are happy to pay them for the privilege. In what may signal the beginning of the end of the current financial system, we have moved beyond zero percent interest rates to negative interest rates.
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Forget The $1 Trillion Platinum Coin–Here’s the $10 Trillion Stone Coin
Forget The $1 Trillion Platinum Coin–Here’s the $10 Trillion Stone Coin
The point I’m making with the $10 trillion stone coin is that if money is a social contrivance, then it should be distributed to those creating goods and services.
You’ve probably heard of the $1 trillion platinum coin proposal: the basic idea is the U.S. Mint issues a $1 trillion platinum coin, and returns the difference between the cost of minting the coin (trivial) and the face value attributed to the coin ($1 trillion) to the United States Treasury General Fund.
This difference is known asseigniorage. The federal government could then spend the $1 trillion without having to borrow the money by selling Treasury bonds–the usual mechanism for funding federal deficit spending.
The idea was originally proposed as a way of avoiding more federal borrowing: rather than borrow another $1 trillion to fund federal spending, the Treasury would be handed $1 trillion in freshly created cash as seigniorage proceeds from the $1 trillion coin.
Is the idea legal? Some scholars say yes, others are doubtful.
The point of the $1 trillion platinum coin is to create money out of nothing and do so outside the Federal Reserve, which creates money out of nothing but balances that debit by buying Treasury bonds, which are booked as an asset.
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“We Just Need To Print More Money” Bank Of Japan’s New Board Member Clarifies Endgame
“We Just Need To Print More Money” Bank Of Japan’s New Board Member Clarifies Endgame
The Abe administration nominated a major proponent of reflationary (inflationary) monetary policy to the central bank’s board, buttressing Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s efforts to save the nation from the dread of deflation. As Bloomberg reports, economist Yutaka Harada, who will replace Ryuzo Miyao, has said Japan can beat deflation by printing money in a 2013 book “Reflationary Policy Revives Japan’s Economy.” So far that is not working so try harder… “The nomination is a good news for Kuroda… he will keep a majority on the board and win what he wants.” Why such good news? As deputy director at the finance ministry’s Policy Research Institute, Harada exclaimed, “we just need to print money.”
As Bloomberg reports, “Harada has been a well-known monetarist and a strong supporter on quantitative easing,” Masaaki Kanno, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., wrote in a note…
In an interview with Bloomberg News in 2002, Harada said the central bank held the key to ending deflation, which began to grip the economy in the late 1990s as Japan stumbled into a recession amid a banking crisis.“We just need to print money,” said Harada, who was a deputy director at the finance ministry’s Policy Research Institute at the time.
“If the BOJ buys all of the bonds from Japan’s debt market, that will create inflation without a doubt. That’s it,” Harada said. “Deflation will be over if the BOJ buys them under the condition that it would continue the purchases until 2 or 3 percent of inflation is achieved.”
In 2012 paper published before Abe took office pledging to shake Japan out deflation with Abenomics, Harada said the “absence of any real monetary policy” had contributed to Japan’s two decades of stagnation.
* * *
So far that’s not working out so great…
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A Very Pernicious Partnership: Keynesian Money Printers And Wall Street Gamblers
A Very Pernicious Partnership: Keynesian Money Printers And Wall Street Gamblers
No sooner was the January jobs report released than the Wall Street Journal posted a succinct headline: “Hiring, Wages Pick Up as Job Market Nears Full Health”.
Whether the job market is actually as red hot as the BLS’ headline numbers is a debatable topic, but it is absolutely clear that the “emergency” the Fed cited 73 months ago when its pegged the money market rate a zero has long since vanished. Indeed, by the standards of all prior history, ZIRP was a death bed remedy. Prior to December 2008, the Fed had never, ever pegged the funds rate at zero—not even during the Great Depression.
So if the US economy did generate new jobs at the 4 million annual rate implicit in the November-January average, how is it that not only is the money market still pinned to the zero bound, but that the Fed continues to energetically waffle over how many more months it will remain there? Don’t these people know what the words “emergency” and “extraordinary measures” mean in plain English?
Not that it really matters. The truth is, the stubborn and unaccountable continuance of a crisis era monetary policy in the face of a purportedly booming labor market reflects something altogether different than economic common sense. Namely, it is the product of a pernicious partnership of convenience between the Keynesian money printers who dominate the Fed and the gamblers who inhabit the Wall Street casino. Together they virtually smoother any recognition that the current juxtaposition is just plain nuts.
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How China Deals With Deflation: A 60% Pay Raise For 39 Million Public Workers
How China Deals With Deflation: A 60% Pay Raise For 39 Million Public Workers
While the rest of the developed world, flooded with re-exported deflation as a result of now ubiquitous money printing, scrambles to print even more money in hopes of stimulating the economy when all it is doing is accelerating a closed deflationary loop (at least until the infamous monetary helicopter drop), China – which still has the most centrally-planned economy in the world even if the US is rapidly catching up – has a more novel way of dealing with the threat of deflation: a massive wage hike across the board for all public workers. Two days ago, at a press conference, the Chinese vice minister of human resources and social security Hu Xiaoyi said that China’s 39 million civil servants and public workers will get a pay raise of at least 60% of their base salaries as part of pension plan overhaul.
The hope is that just like in the US where the Federal government would love to be able to do just that and more, surging wages would stimulate the Chinese economy which over the past year has had to content with the double whammy of surging bad loans and the collapse of shadow banking, as well as the burst housing market.
The pay raise “will make sure that the overall incomes for most of these workers will not decrease after the reform, and some of them could actually earn a bit more,” Ziaoyi said, even if he did not provide details of the plan, which will cover civil servants and public workers, such as teachers and doctors.
According to Caixin, top civil servants, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, will see their monthly base salaries rise to 11,385 yuan from 7,020 yuan (to $1,833 from $1,130), starting in October. Of course, both are billionaires with hidden money around the world, but the raise is all about optics and boosting confidence. The base salaries of the lowest civil servants would more than double to 1,320 yuan. It is unclear if the plans Caixin saw are final.
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The ECB Will Fail Given The “History Lessons Of US And Japan”, Warns Deutsche Bank
The ECB Will Fail Given The “History Lessons Of US And Japan”, Warns Deutsche Bank
Recall that the stated purpose behind the reason why Mario Draghi’s ECB is about to launch a European government debt monetization program ranging between EUR500 and 1000 billion is to halt deflation, spark credit creation and rekindle inflation. Alas, if that is indeed the case, then as Deutsche Bank said has already determined apriori, it will be a failure. Here’s why from the biggest German bank.
First, a broad strokes preview of what the world’s most confused Central bank will do this week:
[The ECB] is trapped down a dark alley and they will bite. For all the pros and cons of public QE as well as the hows and whens, at the end of the day the market has pushed the ECB into that corner. Within the context of the practical limitations of QE, we have no doubt that Draghi once again will leave a warm fuzzy feeling that they are prepared to do all that it takes. Of course, like OMT, it probably doesn’t mean they are buying BTPs come February 1st, but that doesn’t matter for BTPs. It also doesn’t matter for the Euro zone outlook given the dubitancy of QE efficacy.
And here is why the ECB too will follow its peers, the Fed and BOJ, in failing to boost inflation expectations which at last check were below the Lehman collapse levels and sliding fast (see “The Chart That Terrifies The Fed“)
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The Fed and the Price of Oil
The Fed and the Price of Oil
Given the potential for financial losses triggered by oil’s price collapse to cascade into the financial sector at large, the Fed may well be forced to intervene either directly or indirectly.
An email dialog with correspondent Mark G. last month alerted me to the key role the Federal Reserve plays in the price of oil– either helping to maintain the current low prices (by enabling financing of new production) or pushing down supply and production (by making financing of new production more difficult).
Capital–cash or credit–is as important as the actual hydrocarbons in producing fuels and natural gas.Without fresh capital or financing, the oil/gas will remain in the ground.
The Fed flooded the global economy with credit borrowed in U.S. dollars during its quantitative easing programs. Need to borrow billions of dollars to finance new oil production? No problem when the Fed was emitting trillions of dollars into the global financial system.
Now that the Fed has ended its QE money-printing program, the dollars have dried up. The other source of dollars–U.S. trade deficit–has also contracted as the trade deficit has declined.
This decline in the availability of U.S. dollars has placed global borrowers with dollar-denominated debt in a vice as the scarcity of dollars meets the pressing need to refinance debt that’s coming due and needs to be rolled over.
Strong demand and reduced supply lead to much higher prices for dollars–which is exactly what the world is seeing.
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World in a Box
Of all the problems with fiat currency, the most basic is that it empowers the dark side of human nature. We’re potentially good but infinitely corruptible, and giving an unlimited monetary printing press to a government or group of banks is guaranteed to produce a dystopia of ever-greater debt and more centralized control, until the only remaining choice is between deflationary collapse or runaway inflation. The people in charge at that point are in a box with no painless exit.
Prudent Bear’s Doug Noland describes the shape of today’s box in his latest Credit Bubble Bulletin:
Right here we can identify a key systemic weak link: Market pricing and bullish perceptions have diverged profoundly both from underlying risk (i.e. Credit, liquidity, market pricing, policymaking, etc.) and diminishing Real Economy prospects. And now, with a full-fledged securities market mania inflating the Financial Sphere, it has become impossible for central banks to narrow the gap between the financial Bubbles and (disinflationary) real economies. More stimulus measures only feed the Bubble and prolong parabolic (“Terminal Phase”) increases in systemic risk. In short, central bankers these days are trapped in policies that primarily inflate risk. The old reflation game no longer works.
In other words, most real economies (jobs, production of physical goods, government budgets) around the world are back in (or have never left) recession, for which the traditional response is monetary and fiscal stimulus — that is, lower interest rates and bigger government deficits. Meanwhile, the financial markets are roaring, which normally calls for tighter money and reduced deficits to keep the bubbles from becoming destabilizing.
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The Most Elementary Question Must Not Be Asked – The Automatic Earth
The Most Elementary Question Must Not Be Asked – The Automatic Earth.
We’re in dire need of fresh blood and smart new ideas to clean up the mess the present ideologies and their puppets and puppetmasters have created. The present crew has made a neverending series of ‘mistakes’, intentional or not, and they are dead set on making more, if only because they refuse to change the tack that led to all these ‘mistakes’.
I say mistakes because that’s what they are from the point of view of all those who live in the real economy, not because I think the puppetmasters are mistaken from their own point of view. After all, all they do, literally all they do, is take care of their own interests. Where they will find themselves mistaken is down the line, when there is no longer a functioning real economy, and they will of necessity end up going down with it.
However, even though you wouldn’t say it to look at America and Europe these days, we don’t need to be puppets to any masters. I know, I know, most of you don’t even recognize yourselves as puppets – yes, you -. You believe most of what you read, or at least enough to keep going on the beaten track. And they’re good at making you believe. They’ve gotten a lot better at it ever since you were born, whenever you were born.
You only need to listen to things like this week’s US jobs report, which has the media falling over each other and themselves to declare victory. But which, when you take a good look, declares no such thing. And we’ve been going on this road for many years now, a road defined by debt on one side and propaganda on the other, and we stick to it because we are promised on a 24/7 basis that it will lead to growth, which is always just around the corner. Growth is the magic word.
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It’s Official: Party Now, Apocalypse Later | Wolf Street
It’s Official: Party Now, Apocalypse Later | Wolf Street.
The signs are everywhere, after years of central-bank collusion to douse the world with free money: historically low yields even on the riskiest cov-lite junk bonds; corporate profit margins at the upper extreme of the range; record valuations of stocks and other assets…. Heck, even startups: median Series A valuations – the first major VC money after seed money – have gone berserk and are now higher in inflation-adjusted terms than the median Series B valuations were 10 years ago!
And all this in a historically crummy global economy.
Valuations are going to revert to the mean. They always do. And when they do, they’ll overshoot in the process. The business cycle still exists. The great unwind will happen in an environment when nearly everything is overvalued. But those who have dared to stamp a near-term date on that event have gotten hammered by reality. Now, prudent wiggle room is getting built into the scenarios.
Junk bonds are enjoying the most extraordinary bubble ever, as investors – particularly bond funds – are desperate to get some yield in a world where central banks have moved heaven and earth to expunge yield. They’re stretching and reaching for it, and that has created demand that has driven down the very yield they’re so desperately reaching for. Their justification: junk-bond default rates hover near historic lows of about 2%.
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