inflation

Thoughts on Inflation

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Andrew wrote at the City of God about inflation as welfare for the rich:

(I’m using “inflation” in the Austrian sense here: increase in the money supply, rather than increase in CPI price levels)

I just heard this recently, and it made sense to me:

1. The entire Keynesian scheme of monetary/fiscal spending to stimulate the economy only works because it takes time for people to catch on to the reality that newly printed paper is not real wealth. That is, people don’t immediately realize that they are spending fiat-money, and thus act based on thinking they have more money than they really do.
2. This temporarily causes greater investment, which has the potential to create real wealth and real economic growth.
3. However, as time goes on, sellers realize that buyers have more money, and thus prices rise accordingly, bringing the economy back to status quo ante, except with possibly increased debt (if enough real economic growth did not occur before the sellers caught on).
4. In the case of monetary policy specifically, newly printed money inevitably goes to the rich first: to banks, and from there to massive corporate investments.
5. As time goes on, more of the poor get the new cash, but it also simultaneously becomes less valuable, since prices are rising.

Thus, monetary policy seems to be, inevitably, welfare for the rich.

(Note that none of this would be an argument against government welfare, based on tax-hikes (not spending fiat money), for the poor.)

I responded with some thoughts as an investor:

(1) CPI has not been affected by the inflation of fiat money because there has been no velocity (MV=PQ). Instead of lending money, banks have bought safe US treasury notes to pad their reserves. They have used TARP money to do this. Essentially the US government lends TARP to banks which lend it back to the US government. Also the Federal Reserve bank has bought CDOs from the bank, and the banks have used that money to buy US treasury notes as well.

(2) What we’ve seen since the 2008 credit collapse can therefore be better described as reflation–reflating shrunken credit with fiat money. There are still some mortgages that are collapsing so it may be sometime before we see the most serious detrimental effects of current US fiscal policy (1-2 years?).

(3) Investors are probably more aware of the potential dangers than the public. Therefore we have been making moves in anticipation of a US dollar collapse. This is known as the US dollar carry trade.

(4) Gold is an indicator of inflation, but it also experiences the anticipatory effects of panic about the dollar, as well as periods of profit taking. Its price may therefore at times suggest an overcompensation.

(5) The best hedge against inflation is debt. But you have to buy something with the funds you borrow in order to cover the interest: real estate, dividend bearing stocks, or income investments in foreign currencies or countries (a.k.a., carry trade). The risk is that the investment you make with the debt will not maintain its value, but I consider the current risk of loss of holding currency to be an absolute certainty. So better to own anything except money. For this reason, my current non-registered investment portfolio is 150% in stocks.

(6) Inflation caused by government deficits is not really generational theft as suggested so often by conservatives (or those criticizing current deficits). It is theft of current creditors, bank account holders, fixed income earners and workers, whose current paycheques are garnished through the hidden cost of inflation. It is true that CPI lags inflation, but then pay raises lag CPI. I consider inflation to be especially a heist of the retirement accounts of the older generation–financial advisers often recommend subtracting your age from 100 and that remaining number is what you should have in volatile assets like stocks. The remaining is to stay in fixed income. So if you follow this advice and you are over 70 years old, then 70% of your portfolio is subject to government theft by inflation. Many of these retirees just abandoned stocks altogether during the collapse and now they have cash which is being killed by inflation. It is not a pretty picture. But inflation is not a theft of the younger generation because when the enter the workforce they will earn the currency at its current value.

(7) Inflation in the US will be necessary: (i) to be able to pay the interest and principle on the current debt, inflation is the only way–it is a form of bankruptcy; (ii) to create an effective decrease in the recent minimum wage hike which has put millions of teens and other low wage earners out of work. (iii) to use bracket creep in order to increase everyone’s taxes; (iv) to make effective reductions of entitlement obligations which can’t be paid for.

(8) I am not “rich”, but as an investor, I’ve been able to ride this wave, and I’ve done very well thanks to being able to make the right kinds of move in anticipation of current US inflationary policy, but I may have to bite the bullet on an investment I made with my brother in Austin just before the collapse and that hurts.

(9) While not “rich”, we were able to get a huge amount of bank credit just when I needed it in Oct 2008. That has been great boost to my investments. So indeed, the banks were giving credit to some people, contrary to the widely held belief that no one could get loans.

(10) It is much better right now to be in Canada than the US.

(11) Inflation doesn’t rob the poor but the middle class and wealthy who have holdings which are not hedged against inflation.

(12) Ferengis will make money during periods of inflation.

I’ve since learned that CPI (Consumer Price Index) is manipulated and underestimates inflation by about 7% per annum.

Headlines that make laugh

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From the National Post website, March 20, 2010

It is in vogue to laugh at “goldbugs”.  The fact is that gold remains steady at $1100 and it seems to have found a new floor at US $1050, the price at which India will buy gold for their treasury reserves.  But a headline I saw on the National Post website, made me laugh:  “Gold plunges 1.8% in wake of strong US$”.  Perhaps, “nosedive” or “steep decline” or “precipitously fell”; but “plunges”?  But what’s really laughable is that the “plunge” was caused by a strong US$.  The US dollar has been anything but strong of late, at least from a Canadian perspective.  And frankly, if you bought gold any where below $1050, you’re laughing right now.  The US dollar is in trouble.  It’s just a matter of time before the inflation of the dollar becomes a major issue.

India buys 200 tons of gold

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India bought 200 tons (32,000 ounces) of gold today from the IMF at a price of $6.7 billion. This should be an ominous sign for the deflationistas.  The price of gold spiked to US $1083 per ounce, a new high.

It has become clear to me too that one reason that the US has avoided inflation in the past is that so many governments and individuals hold their wealth in dollars.  John Mauldin wrote in his newsletter (October 30, 2009), “Catching Argentinian Disease” regarding real estate transactions in Argentina:

Interestingly, the dollar is still the real medium of exchange. I was told by several people that if you want to buy a house for half a million dollars, you bring the physical cash to the closing. One person counts the money and the other checks the paperwork and title. Argentina has the second largest hoard of physical dollars in the world, only exceeded by Russia. Is it any wonder they are concerned with the value of the dollar?

What if the international community suddenly lost confidence in the dollar and began to sell its reserves in favor of other currencies (Euros, Canadian loonie), gold and other commodities?  So far we’ve seen a trickle effect: the US dollar is slowly losing value.  But imagine the little Dutch boy with his finger in the hole of the dam, and if he suddenly removes the finger and the dam could burst; once confidence is lost the world markets could be flooded with US dollars in a day.  This seems to me to be a real risk to America and it is why the current Democrat controlled Congress and Office of the President are so immoral and irresponsible in their deficit spending.  What happens when no one wants to buy US debt?  They will have to raise interest rates.  But the US government can’t raise interest rates because already 40 cents on every tax dollar services the national debt.  If the interest rate was raised by a few cents, the US would be like the sub-prime borrowers who could no longer pay their mortgages when interest rates go up, because imagine if for every tax dollar 60 cents went to paying for debt.  That is untenable.  The problem will spiral out of control.  So the US will, as Mark Faber and others have predicted , monetize the debt (this occurs when the Federal Reserve buys US treasury notes) and hyperinflation will set in.  I expressed my fears about this on January 19, 2009, and in terms not too different the Financial Post’s Jonathan Chevreau (on May 27, 2009):

Over the past year, I’ve occasionally mused mostly in jest that the way the United States has been printing money to combat the financial crisis seems to rival Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. All this by way of wondering how it is that the result of running the presses has been rampant hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, yet the U.S. so far seems to have dodged the inflation bullet.

The only thing that can save us is for conservatives to take back Congress in 2010 and the White house in 2012.  The security of the USA and of the world depends on it.

Today at Powerline blog, Paul Mirengoff says that to consider Obama a fool is the charitable explanation of some of his foreign policy.  The same is true of current economic policy.  Rush Limbaugh and others believe that he is intentionally trying to destroy the economy so that he can implement a radical agenda, as Rahm Emmanuel has famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”  Such a sinister intent is consistent with some things that we know about Obama’s background.  But for the moment, I will reserve judgment.

Interestingly, the dollar is still the real medium of exchange. I was told by several people
that if you want to buy a house for half a million dollars, you bring the physical cash to the
closing. One person counts the money and the other checks the paperwork and title. Argentina
Catching
Argentinian
Disease
3
10/30/09
has the second largest hoard of physical dollars in the world, only exceeded by Russia. Is it any
wonder they are concerned with the value of the dollar?

The Destruction of the US Dollar

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A debate is waging between the deflationists and inflationists.  It will come as no surprise to those who’ve read my previous posts on the subject that I fall into the latter camp.  I have indicated numerous times that I’ve put my money where my mouth is.  In January, I was so convinced that there would be inflation, that I eventually decided to implement a strategy of holding little cash but rather oil and gas and gold mining stocks.  I’ve also shorted the US dollar.  This strategy is paying off handsomely so far.   Besides the inflationists have many decades of contemporary monetary history to back their point of view, and the knowledge that government deficits generally feed inflation.  The current Obama deficit is profligate and never seen in the US before Obama. In Bloomberg, David Reilly asks whose face should go on the $1,000,000 bill, but never suggests Obama, apparently because he is afraid to be put on the President’s enemy list.

It is true that the credit bubble was popped last Autumn, and this caused deflation.  But this has been reversed.  Consumers don’t see it yet because consumer goods haven’t increased in price yet.  But rising prices is not the definition of inflation.  One mustn’t confuse the symptom with the cause.  Inflation is caused by an expansion of the money supply without a corresponding growth in real wealth (i.e., goods and services).  When the supply of money is inflated, prices will rise to accommodate it.  This is what is already happening to gold, oil, and the stock market.  In Canada, there is an increase in real estate prices.  Next, consumer prices will catch up and everyone will feel the pain when their pay cheque won’t go as far.  Witness that oil is already back above $80 per barrel, gold is above 1050, and the Canadian dollar is almost en par with the dollar.  These are all symptomatic of the re-inflation of the US money supply.  Meanwhile, the Koreans are buying Harvest Energy Trust, a sign that the Asian, creditor nations are abandoning the dollar for hard assets in commodity interests around the world, including Africa.

Irwin Seltzer writes in a his column, “The Dethroning of King Dollar?“:

Which puts the ball right back in the Fed’s court. Unless Bernanke drains liquidity from the financial system, and shrinks the Fed’s balance sheet by winding down $2 trillion in support programs — and does so precisely when the recovery takes hold so as not to cause a relapse by moving too early — the dollar’s decline will accelerate, shattering confidence in its long-term value. One well-respected expert tells me that in two-to-five years the dollar will no longer be considered safe enough to be the currency in which the world does business. Its replacement: separate deals in local currencies — the Chinese paying for Brazil’s oil in renminbi, which the Brazilians use to purchase stuff made in China — and the International Monetary Fund’s drawing rights, bits of paper backed by a basket of currencies, including but not limited to the dollar. That would mark the end of an era that has seen world trade flourish and millions emerge from poverty. Sad.

The Obama Dollar

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I wrote back in January that Obama budget deficit would lead to inflation.  Now finally financial writers are calling it the Obama dollar.

In personal finances, debt is not a good thing unless properly managed.  Advisers distinguish between good and bad debt.  Bad debt is spent on consumer goods and services (Christmas gifts, food, vacations, etc.).  Good debt is used to buy appreciating assets like a house or investments which will produce positive cash flow (e.g., Crescent Point Energy Corporation, which pays 23 cents per share Canadian per month).

I lamented that Obama called his profligate budget an “investment”.  But there is no question that government debt is bad debt.  It is used neither to purchase appreciating assets nor cash-producing investments; rather government debt is spent on programs and make-work projects that will never have a profitable rate of return.  1.4 trillion dollars was borrowed in the 2009 budget year and it has led to inflation of the US currency as I predicted in January.  Let’s consider the difference in Canadian dollar:  On Jan 23, the Canadian dollar traded at 1.234 to the US Dollar; now today it is at 1.03 per US.  This is a drop of nearly 17%.  But it is not as though Canadian currency is not also being inflated by low interest rates.  In Canada, most investments, including stocks and real estate, have nearly completely recovered from the downturn.  Housing is now completely recovered in much of Canada, and this has financial writers worried about a bubble in housing prices.

I am still shorting the US dollar (it means that I gave borrowed US to purchase Canadian-based Barrick Gold (ABX: NY), Enerplus (ERF: NY), and Daylight Resources Trust (DAY.UN: Toronto).

Writers and analysts often refer to the Federal Reserve Bank “printing” money.  Actually they don’t have to literally print money, because the central bank has the ability to create money without printing it.  This is done especially well when the Federal Reserve buys US treasury notes.  The dollar is called a “fiat” currency, because money can be made from nothing and out of paper and ink.  Eventually, however, printed money flow will have to increase in order to keep up with prices.  But until then, inflation remains an invisible monster which devours people’s savings and cuts into how much they can earn.

The Carter years (1979-1981) were formative for me, as I graduated from high school in 1981.  I remember them like yesterday, and I remember its high inflation and how Reagan implemented so-called Reagonomics, reining in profligate Federal Spending.  Reagan halted an out of control Congress and put America back on track.  Being a beneficiary after my mother’s death in 1977, I remember my own Social Security check being cut.  Unfortunately, Obama was apparently too busy taking drugs during those years (marijuana and cocaine when he could afford it) and so has returned us to the pre-Reagan economic policies and ideas; but he has, in collusion with the Democrat Congress, implemented economic policies which are even worse than what we had during the Carter malaise.

I met a man from Singapore whose father lived in want much of his childhood and therefore as an old man hoarded enough rice for many years.  In like manner, I am afraid of inflation, because that’s what I saw as a child, and I have been preparing for this moment since I first heard about the Obama budget.  I fear inflation as much as any other investment risk, perhaps more.  The so-called safe haven of the dollar is a complete myth, all the more so when it is the Obama dollar.