In June 2011 Carmen Reinhart wrote a paper for the IMF titled “Financial Repression Redux.” She suggested that the current policy of financial repression could ultimately lead to high levels of inflation. Today, five years later it seems like she couldn’t have gotten it more wrong. In spite of the unprecedented monetary expansion, monetization of public debt and swelling central bank balance sheets, deflation seems entrenched. So why worry about inflation at all? In short, because deflation could actually give rise to inflation. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Inflation
Stock markets might not crash. Investors might still lose big.
Our future is being shaped by an unprecedented monetary experiment run by our central bank mandarins, but a happy ending is a mathematical impossibility. The economic imbalances that resulted in the last, 2008 financial crisis are now much worse and we are facing two possible routes of their resolution. One is a full-blown deflationary depression that could see asset prices drop by 50% or more. The other is a strong and sustained decline in the US Dollar (and other major currencies) with an accelerating commodity price inflation that might span a full decade.
Central banks’ overt commitment to supporting asset prices at all costs suggests that the second scenario may be more probable. In this case, a major stock-market crash could be averted; instead, we could see a significant and sustained rise in equity markets, as was the case most recently during the Zimbabwean and Venezuelan inflations, as well as the Argentinian, Brazilian, Israeli and German inflations before that. Below is the chart showing the appreciation of Israel All Share index during the country’s inflationary crisis in the 1980s: Continue reading
The biggest scam in history of mankind
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.” – Lord Acton
Well over a century ago, Lord Acton had understood the problem that’s been well obscured from students of economics, history and politics over the more recent generations. The role of money in our society is not sufficiently well understood today. Its importance was underscored by Thomas Paine when he said that, “Money, when considered as the fruit of many years’ industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow’s dowry and children’s portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.” Continue reading
We’re heading for stagflation!
Last week we learned that U.S. federal debt passed the $19.5 trillion, adding $1.36 trillion during this fiscal year. Just last month, it added $151.5 billion. By now we have all gone a bit tone-deaf with all the billions and trillions tossed about in the news, so let’s put this into a bit of perspective. In August, the U.S. government added $475 per man, woman and child, or $1,206 per household living in the U.S. We are talking one month’s time here! The annual clip is $5,700 per man woman and child!! This is very far from sustainable, but it’s quite a bit worse actually. Continue reading
The Naked Hedgie 