Home » Posts tagged 'monetary inflation'

Tag Archives: monetary inflation

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell knew fighting inflation would cause big problems in a bubble economy loaded up with debt. He put it off as long as he could, calling inflation “transitory.” But once inflation became a huge problem, the central bank had no choice but to get into the fight and start tightening monetary policy. The problem is, the Fed’s plan won’t work. And one reason it won’t work is the massive national debt.

Peter Schiff talked about it in this clip from his podcast.

The federal government already spends about $500 billion per year on interest payments on the $31 trillion debt. Peter noted a CNBC discussion where they speculated that in 10 years, the US government could be paying $1 trillion per year on interest alone.

Ten years? We could be paying $1 trillion in interest in one year! How are these guys getting 10 years?”

Four percent of the $31 trillion debt is $1.25 trillion. The average maturity on the debt is under five years. A third of the debt will mature in the next year. Meanwhile, the debt continues to skyrocket. The national debt grew by $1 trillion in just eight months even with pandemic spending programs winding down.

Five years from now, the national debt will be over $40 trillion, and we’re going to have to pay an interest rate probably more than 5% on that. So, a $1 trillion tab for interest on the national debt isn’t a decade away. It’s a year, maybe two away. That’s how close this crisis is.”

That raises an important question: where is the government going to get the money to pay for this? It will cost something like 30% of all tax revenue just to pay the interest on the debt. Huge interest payments will mean even more borrowing.

This is a massive fiscal time bomb.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Economy May Be Finally Peaking, and the Fed Won’t Help Matters

December 29, 2021

THE ECONOMY MAY BE FINALLY PEAKING, AND THE FED WON’T HELP MATTERS

Here we go again it may seem to many. The Fed is preparing us for a policy tightening just when a powerful growth cycle upturn is faltering. Or is it in fact an example of another well-known type of error from Fed history—getting behind the curve of rising inflation? The most plausible answer is that it is neither.

Instead, the huge monetary inflation shock which the Fed has administered so far in this pandemic means that the “normalization steps” now in prospect for 2022 are all but irrelevant to macroeconomic prospects or asset market price trajectories.

The more Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell has been huffing and puffing, since his renomination (November 22), about normalizing policy, the steeper has been the fall in long-term interest rates. In the first two trading weeks following the renomination, the ten-year yield on US Treasurys was down by thirty basis points to 1.35 percent. A coincidence, surely, explained in part by the possible Omicron menace? Yes, perhaps in part, but not altogether.

The chief’s performance is now in the theater of the absurd. Many in the marketplace have deserted the audience, though the noise still irritates them. Instead, they focus on the drama of monetary reality. The title? “Lost Illusions on the Journey from Mega Pandemic Inflation to Great Depression.” The evolving mood of the audience here will have a powerful effect on financial markets and ultimately the global economy.

Toward understanding the theater of the absurd and its triviality, recall the story of the natural history museum renowned for its dinosaur relics. The guardian there, quizzed by a child as to the age of those specimens, answers: 5 million years and 90 days. How so? Because when he started work there, around three months ago, he was told their age was 5 million years!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inflation and Gold: What Gives?

December 23, 2021

Inflation and Gold: What Gives?

In the last Supply and Demand update, we discussed some different theories which attempt to explain what causes the gold and silver prices to move. We mentioned the:

“…attempt to hold up a famous buyer of metal, while ignoring the thousands of not-famous sellers who sold the metal to said famous buyer.”

Since then, Ireland has bought gold for the first time in over a decade. And predictably, most voices in the gold community see this as a bullish sign.

By the way, we did not see any data about the prices paid on what dates, but the articles on December 1 mention a series of buys over a few months. Assuming a few means two, it looks like Ireland may have paid more than the current price.

The Different Theories on What Moves Gold and Silver Prices

Back to the common bullish view of Ireland’s wisdom, what of the opinions of the 64,300 people who sold their gold to Ireland (assuming the average seller sold an ounce)? Surely, these people believed the price will go down?

Famous and Anonymous Price Movers

There are two competing theories for how to interpret the conflicting views when one market participant is famous and the other is a bunch of anonymous people. One is the “famous buyer” theory, and the other is the “incompetent bureaucrat” theory. The latter was used to explain the sale of half of Britain’s gold between 1999 and 2002.

How could we have known that the UK government was foolish to sell back then, and the anonymous 12,699,250 buyers were right? Whereas today, the Irish bureaucrats are right, and the 64,300 sellers are wrong?

This is just a bias towards bullishness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold Standard and Boom Bust Cycles

July 31, 2021

GOLD STANDARD AND BOOM BUST CYCLES

According to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT), the boom-bust cycle emerges in response to a deviation in the market interest rate from the natural interest rate, or the equilibrium interest rate. It is held that the major cause for this deviation is increases in the money supply. Based on this it would appear that on a gold standard without the central bank an increase in the supply of gold is also going to set in motion boom-bust cycle.

An increase in the supply of gold is likely to result in the lowering of market interest rates. This in turn is likely to cause the market interest rates to deviate from the equilibrium interest rate. Consequently, following the ABCT an increase in the supply of gold is going to set in motion the boom-bust cycle.

According to Robert P. Murphy “More Than Quibbles: Problems with the Theory and History of Fractional Reserve Free Banking” in the QJAE Volume 22 Spring 2019, Ludwig von Mises held that an increase in the supply of gold could trigger boom-bust cycle.

Whilst suggesting that the gold standard could generate business cycles whenever an increase in the supply of gold causes the market interest rate to deviate from the natural interest rate, or the equilibrium rate, Mises however, viewed this possibility as remote.

Mises regarded the gold standard as the best monetary system as far as keeping the expansion in credit under tight control. Murphy quotes Mises on this,

Even a rapid increase in the production of the precious metals can never have the range which credit expansion can attain. The gold standard was an efficacious check upon credit expansion, as it forced the banks not to exceed certain limits in their expansionist ventures…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Monetary Inflation’s Game of Hide-and-Seek

May 19, 2021

MONETARY INFLATION’S GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK

The May 12, 2021, press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the month of April sent the stock markets tumbling for two days and generated fodder for the news pundits with the announcement that the CPI measure of the cost-of-living had increased 4.2 percent at an annualized rate, or nearly 62 percent higher than in March when the annualized rate was 2.6 percent. The era of relatively low rate of price inflation was feared to be ending.

For almost a decade, despite significant increases in the money supply, CPI-measured price inflation remained “tame.” Between March 2011 and March 2021, the M-2 money supply (cash, checking accounts, and small savings) went from $8.94 trillion to $19.9 trillion, or a 222.5 percent increase. Just in 2020, M-2 expanded by nearly 25 percent.

Yet, despite this, the CPI only went up by a little less than 20 percent, from 223 to 266.8 (100 = 1982-1984) between 2011 and 2021. The annual rates of CPI price inflation for this ten-year period were mostly less than 2 percent. What is called “core” price inflation – the CPI minus energy and food prices – averaged each one of these ten years a bit higher most of the time, but not by much in this period. (See my article, “Dangerous Monetary Manipulations and Fiscal Follies”.)

But what, exactly, does the Consumer Price Index tell us? All price indexes, including the CPI, are statistical constructions created by economists and statisticians that, in fact, have very little to do with the actions and decisions of consumers and producers in the everyday affairs of market demand and supply. And they are certainly not accurate and precise guides for central bank monetary policy.

Overall versus “Core” Price Inflation

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The U.S. Government Will Inflate To The Bitter End

November 27, 2020

The U.S. Government Will Inflate To The Bitter End

The big news organizations say Joe Biden’s the next president of the USA. That claims of election fraud and fixing are baseless. Do you believe them? Do you trust them?

Regardless, Biden’s acting as if. He’s talking to foreign leaders. He’s meeting with vaccine makers. He’s making big plans. He’s planning big things. But, apparently, he’s not progressive enough.

This week, for example, an organization called Justice Democrats accused Biden of appointing corporate-friendly insiders. They say these “corporate-friendly insiders […] will not help usher in the most progressive Democratic administration in generations.”

Certainly, Biden’s getting plenty of advice. The political puppet has left many strings to be pulled. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer want Biden to erase the first $50,000 of a person’s student loan debt. According to Schumer, “Joe Biden can do that with the pen as opposed to legislation.”

Will Biden listen to them? Will he listen to progressive superstar Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? On Monday, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, tweeted:

“Student loan forgiveness is good, actually.

“We should also push for tuition-free public colleges to avoid this huge debt bubble from financially decimating ppl every generation. It’s one of the easiest progressive policies to ‘pay for,’ w/ multiple avenues from a Wall St transaction tax to an ultra-wealth tax to cover it.”

Wow! Biden hasn’t even moved into the White House and things have gone stoopid silly. Where to begin?

Cut It Off

Without question, the student debt crisis is a disgrace. There are roughly 45 million student loan borrowers who owe on the order of $1.6 trillion. Most of this debt is from federal student loans.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The monetary logic for gold and silver

November 14, 2020

The monetary logic for gold and silver

A considered reflection of current events leads to only one conclusion, and that is accelerating inflation of the dollar’s money supply is firmly on the path to destroying the dollar’s purchasing power — completely.

This article looks at the theoretical and empirical evidence from previous fiat money collapses in order to impart the knowledge necessary for individuals to seek early protection from an annihilation of fiat currencies. It assesses the likely speed of the collapse of fiat money and debates the future of money in a post-fiat world, in which the likely successors are metallic money — gold and silver— and some would say cryptocurrencies.

Early action to lessen the impact of a failure of the fiat regime requires an understanding of the role of money in order to decide what will be the future money when fiat dies. Will we be pricing goods and services in gold or a cryptocurrency? Will gold be priced in bitcoin or bitcoin priced in gold? And if bitcoin is priced in gold, will its function of a store of value still exist?

Introduction

This week saw the news that a vaccine had been found to combat the coronavirus. At least it offers the prospect of humanity ridding itself of the virus in due course, but it will not be enough to rescue the global economy from its deeper problems. Monetary inflation is therefore far from running its course.

The reaction in financial markets to the vaccine news was contradictory: equity markets rallied strongly ignoring rapidly deteriorating fundamentals, and gold slumped on a minor recovery in the dollar’s trade weighted index. Rather than blindly accepting the reasons for outcomes put forward by the financial press we must accept that during these inflationary times that markets are not functioning efficiently.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inflation, deflation and other fallacies

September 12, 2020

Inflation, deflation and other fallacies

There can be little doubt that macroeconomic policies are failing around the world. The fallacies being exposed are so entrenched that there are bound to be twists and turns yet to come.

This article explains the fallacies behind inflation, deflation, economic performance and interest rates. They arise from the modern states’ overriding determination to access the wealth of its electorate instead of being driven by a genuine and considered concern for its welfare. Monetary inflation, which has become runaway, transfers wealth to the state from producers and consumers, and is about to accelerate. Everything about macroeconomics is now with that single economically destructive objective in mind.

Falling prices, the outcome of commercial competition and sound money are more aligned with the interests of ordinary people, but that is so derided by neo-Keynesians that today almost without exception everyone believes in inflationism.

And finally, we conclude that the escape from failing fiat will lead to rising nominal interest rates, with all the consequences which that entails. The inevitable outcome is a flight to commodities, including gold and silver, despite rising interest rates for fiat money.

Demand-siders and supply-siders

In a macroeconomics-driven world, economic fallacies abound. They are periodically trashed when disproved, only to arise again as received wisdom for a new generation of macroeconomists determined to justify their statist beliefs. The most egregious of these is that inflation can only occur as the handmaiden of economic growth, while deflation is similarly linked to a recession spinning out of control into the maelstrom of a slump.

This error is the opposite of the facts.

Conventionally, macroeconomists split into two groups. There are the Keynesians who believe in stimulating demand to ensure there will always be markets for goods and services, which they attempt to achieve through additional spending by governments and by discouraging saving, because it is consumption deferred.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can An Increase In the Demand For Money Neutralize the Effect of a Corresponding Increase in Money Supply?

July 13, 2020

CAN AN INCREASE IN THE DEMAND FOR MONEY NEUTRALIZE THE EFFECT OF A CORRESPONDING INCREASE IN MONEY SUPPLY?

According to popular thinking, not every increase in the supply of money will have an effect on the production of goods. For instance, if an increase in the supply is matched by a corresponding increase in the demand for money then there will be no effect on the economy. The increase in the supply of money is neutralized so to speak by an increase in the demand for money or the willingness to hold a greater amount of money than before.

What do we mean by demand for money? In addition, how does this demand differ from the demand for goods and services?

Demand for money versus demand for good

The demand for a good is not essentially the demand for a particular good as such but the demand for the services that the good offers. For instance, an individuals’ demand for food is on account of the fact that food provides the necessary elements that sustain an individual’s life and wellbeing.

Demand here means that people want to consume the food in order to secure the necessary elements that sustain life and wellbeing.

Likewise, the demand for money arises on account of the services that money provides. However, instead of consuming money people demand money in order to exchange it for goods and services.

With the help of money, various goods become more marketable – they can secure more goods than in the barter economy. What enables this is the fact that money is the most marketable commodity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The new deal is a bad old deal

July 12, 2020

The new deal is a bad old deal

So far, the current economic situation, together with the response by major governments, compares with the run-in to the depression of the 1930s. Yet to come in the repetitious credit cycle is the collapse in financial asset values and a banking crisis.

When the scale of the banking crisis is known the scale of monetary inflation involved will become more obvious. But in the politics of it, Trump is being set up as the equivalent of Herbert Hoover, and presumably Joe Biden, if he is well advised, will soon campaign as a latter-day Roosevelt. In Britain, Boris Johnson has already called for a modern “new deal”, and in his “Hundred Days” his Chancellor is delivering it.

In the thirties, prices fell, only offset by the dollar’s devaluation in January 1934. This time, monetary inflation knows no limit. The wealth destruction through monetary inflation will be an added burden to contend with compared with the situation ninety years ago.

Introduction

Boris Johnson recently compared his reconstruction plan with Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. Such is the myth of FDR and his new deal that even libertarian Boris now invokes them. Unless he is just being political, he shows he knows little about the economic situation that led to the depression.

It would not be unusual, even for a libertarian politician. FDR is immensely popular with the inflationists who overwhelmingly wrote the economic history of the depression era. In fact, FDR was not the first “something must be done” American president, a policy which started with his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. But the story told is that FDR took over from heartless Hoover who had failed to step in and rescue the economy from a free-market catastrophe, by standing back and letting events take their course instead.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Weekly Commentary: More W than V

June 28, 2020

Weekly Commentary: More W than V

The much vaunted “V” recovery is improbable. To simplify, a somewhat “w”-looking scenario is a higher probability. After such an abrupt and extraordinary collapse in economic activity, a decent bounce was virtually assured. Millions would be returning to work after temporary shutdowns to a substantial chunk of the U.S. services economy. There would be pent-up demand, especially for big ticket home and automobile purchases. A massive effort to develop vaccines would ensure promising headlines.

With incredible amounts of liquidity sloshing around, constructive data supporting the “V” premise were all the markets needed. The enormous scope of hedging and shorting activity back in the March and April timeframe ensured the availability of more than ample firepower to fuel a rally. An equities revival would then spur a general restoration of confidence and spending – in a self-reinforcing “V” dynamic.

Inevitably, highly speculative Bubble Markets inflated way beyond anything even remotely justified by the fundamental backdrop – actually coming to believe the “V” hype. The rapid recovery phase, however, will prove dreadfully short-lived. Scores of companies won’t survive, and millions of job losses will prove permanent. Fearful consumers have made lasting changes in spending patterns, with many retrenching. Tons of fiscal stimulus will be burned through with astonishing rapidity. And a raving Credit market luxuriating in Fed monetary inflation will confront Credit losses at a breadth and scale much beyond the last crisis.

My concern has been that the COVID dislocation would be with us for a while. It’s surprising we haven’t seen at least some relief as summer unfolds. I was not expecting major outbreaks in Arizona, Florida, Texas and Southern California this time of year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Unintended Consequences of Monetary Inflation

June 6, 2020

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF MONETARY INFLATION

“In short, the Fed is committed to rescue businesses from the greatest economic catastrophe since the great depression and probably even greater than that, to fund the US Government’s rocketing budget deficits, fund the maintenance of domestic consumption directly or indirectly through the US Treasury, while pumping up financial markets to achieve these objectives and preserve the illusion of national wealth.

“Clearly, we stand on the threshold of an unprecedented monetary expansion.”

Introduction

President Reagan memorably said that the nine words you don’t want to hear are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Governments in all the major jurisdictions are now making good on that unwanted promise and are taking responsibility for everything from our shoulders.

Those receiving subsidies and loan guarantees are no doubt grateful, though they probably see it as the government’s duty and their right. But someone has to pay for it. In the past, by the redistribution of wealth through taxes it meant that the haves were taxed to give financial support to the have-nots, at least that was the story. Today, through monetary debasement nearly everyone benefits from monetary redistribution.

This is not a costless exercise. Governments are no longer robbing Peter to pay Paul, they are robbing Peter to pay Peter as well. You would think this is widely understood, but the Peters are so distracted by the apparent benefits they might or might not get that they don’t see the cost. They fail to appreciate that printing money is not just the marginal source of finance for excess government spending, but it has now become mainstream.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The looming derivative crisis

April 18, 2020

The looming derivative crisis

The powerful forces of bank credit contraction are at the heart of a rapidly evolving financial crisis in global derivatives, whose gross value is over $600 trillion; an unimaginable sum. Central banks are on course to destroy their currencies through unlimited monetary expansion, lethal for bullion banks with fractionally reserved unallocated gold accounts, while being dramatically short of Comex futures.

This article explains the dynamics behind the current crisis in precious metal derivatives, and why it is the observable part of a wider derivative catastrophe that is caught in the tension between contracting bank credit and infinite monetary inflation.

Introduction

One of the scares at the time of the Lehman crisis was that insolvent counterparties risked collapsing the whole over-the-counter derivative complex. It was for this reason that AIG, a non-bank originator of many derivative contracts, had to be bailed out by the Fed. By a mixture of good judgement and fortune a derivative crisis was averted, and by consolidating some of the outstanding positions, the gross value of OTC derivatives was subsequently reduced.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, in mid-June last year all global OTC contracts outstanding were still unimaginably large at $640 trillion, a massive sum in anyone’s book. It is unlikely to have changed much by today. But in bank balance sheets only a net figure is usually shown, and you have to search the notes to financial statements to find evidence of gross exposure. It is the gross that matters, because each contract bears counterparty risk, sometimes involving several parties, and derivative payment failures could make the payment failures now evident in disrupted industrial supply chains look like small beer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Will It Take to Get the Public to Embrace Sound Money?

January 18, 2020

What Will It Take to Get the Public to Embrace Sound Money?

In the last decade, the combination of virulent asset price inflation and low reported consumer price inflation crippled sound money as a political force in the US and globally. In the new decade, a different balance between monetary inflation’s “terrible twins” — asset inflation and goods inflation — will create an opportunity for that force to regain strength. Crucial, however, will be how sound money advocacy evolves in the world of ideas and its success in forming an alliance with other causes that could win elections.

It is very likely that the deflationary nonmonetary influences of globalization and digitalization, which camouflaged the activity of the goods-inflation twin during the past decade, are already dissipating.

The pace of globalization may have already peaked, before the Xi-Trump tariff war. Inflation-fueled monetary malinvestment surely contributed to its prior speed. One channel here was the spread of highly speculative narratives about the wonders of global supply chains.

Digitalization’s potential to camouflage monetary inflation in goods and services markets, on the other hand, has come largely via its impact on the dynamics of wage determination. It has forged star firms with considerable monopoly power in each industrial sector. Obstacles preventing their technological and organizational know-how from seeping out to competitors means that wages are not bid higher across labor markets in similar fashion to earlier industrial revolutions. These obstacles reflect the fact that much investment is now in the form of firm-specific intangibles. Even so, such obstacles tend to lose their effectiveness over time.

As deflation fades, monetary repression taxes (collected for governments through central banks’ manipulation of rates to low levels so as to achieve 2 percent inflation despite disinflation as described) will undergo metamorphosis into open inflation taxes as the rate of consumer price inflation accelerates. Governments cannot forego revenue given their ailing finances. Simultaneously, asset inflation will proceed down a new stretch of highway where many crashes occur.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon

December 15, 2019

A History of Inflationary Money: From 1844 to Nixon

So that we can understand the financial and banking challenges ahead of us, this article provides an historical and technical background. But we must first get an important definition right, and that is the cause of the periodic cycle of boom and bust. The cycle of economic activity is not a trade or business cycle, but a credit cycle. It is caused by fractional reserve banking and by banks loaning money into existence. The effect on business is then observed but is not the underlying cause.

Modern banking has its roots in England’s Bank Charter Act of 1844, which led to the practice of loaning money into existence, commonly described as fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is defined as making loans and taking in customer deposits in quantities that are multiples of the bank’s own capital. Case law in the wake of the 1844 act, having more regard for the status quo as established precedent than for the fundamentals of property law, ruled that irregular deposits (deposits for safekeeping) were no different from a loan. Judge Lord Cottenham’s ruling in Foley v. Hill (1848) 2 HLC 28 is a judicial decision relating to the fundamental nature of a bank which held in effect that

The money placed in the custody of the banker is to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases. He is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it. He is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in haphazardous speculation.

This was undoubtedly the most important ruling of the last two centuries on money. Today, we know of nothing else other than legally confirmed fractional reserve banking. However, sound or honest banking, with banks acting as custodians, had existed in the centuries before the 1844 act and any corruption of the custody status was regarded as fraudulent.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: monetary inflation

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Cut It Off

Post navigation

Latest Posts