The Deadly Dirty D-Words: “Deflation”, “Debt Deflation” and “Defaults” by Nouriel Roubini

The Deadly Dirty D-Words: “Deflation”, “Debt Deflation” and “Defaults”. And How Central Banks Will Have to Resort to “Crazy” Policies as We Have Reached Such Bermuda Triangle of a “Liquidity Trap”

I have been warning since January 2008 that the biggest risk ahead for the US and the global economy is one of a stag-deflation, the deadly combination of an economic stagnation/recession and deflation.

Let me discuss the details of this toxic mixture of deflation, liquidity trap, debt deflation and rising household and corporate defaults:


We Are Close to Deflation and Stag-Deflation

First of all, signs of stag-deflation now are clear: we are in a severe recession and now the recent readings of both the PPI and the CPI are showing the beginning of deflation. Slack in goods markets with demand falling and supply being excessive (because of years of excessive overinvestment in new capacity in China, Asia and emerging market economies) means lower pricing power of firms and need to cut prices to sell the burgeoning inventory of unsold goods; slack in labor markets with sharp fall in employment and sharp rise in the unemployment rate means lower wage pressures and lower labor cost pressures; and slack in commodity markets – that have already fallen by 30% from their summer peaks and will fall another 20-30% in a global recession – means lower inflation and actual deflationary forces. Given a severe US and global recession deflation will soon be a reality in the US, Japan, Switzerland, UK and, down the line, even in the Eurozone and other economies.

The Risk of a Liquidity Trap

When deflation sets in central banks need to worry about it and worry about a liquidity trap. Take the example of the 2001 recession: that was a mild 8 months recession in the US and over by end of 2001. But by 2002 the US inflation rate had fallen towards 1% (effectively 0% or negative given imperfect measurement of hedonic prices) that the Fed was forced to cut the Fed Funds rate to 1% and Ben Bernanke - then a Fed Governor – was writing speeches titled “Deflation: Making Sure “It” Does Not Happen Here” meaning it would not happen in the US as Japan was already in a deflation at that time. So if a mild recession – that was not even global – led to deflation worries how severe deflation could be in a recession that even the IMF is now forecasting to be global in 2009?

When economies get close to deflation central banks aggressively cut policy rate but they are threatened by the liquidity trap that the zero bound on nominal policy rates implies. The Fed is now effectively already in a liquidity trap: the target Fed Funds rate is still 1% but expected to be cut to 0.5% in December and down to 0% by early 2009. Also, while the target rate is still 1% the effective Fed Funds rate has been trading close to 0.3% for several weeks now as the Fed has flooded money markets with massive liquidity injections; so we are effectively already close to the 0% constraint for the nominal policy rate.

Why should we worry about a liquidity trap? When policy rates are close to zero money and interest bearing short term government bonds become effectively perfectly substitutable (what is a zero interest rate bond? It is effectively like cash). Then further open market operations to increase the monetary base cannot reduce further the nominal interest rate and therefore monetary policy becomes ineffective in stimulating consumption, housing investment and capex spending by the corporate sector: you get stuck into a liquidity trap and more unorthodox monetary policy actions (to be discussed below) need to be undertaken.

The Costs and Dangers of Price Deflation

Before we discuss the monetary policy options in a deflation and liquidity trap let us consider the costs and dangers of deflation.

First, if aggregate demand falls sharply below aggregate supply then price deflation sets in (and indeed there is already massive price deflation in the US in the sectors – housing, autos/motor vehicles and consumer durables – where the excess inventory of unsold goods is huge). The fall in prices and the excess inventory of unsold goods forces firms to cut back production and employment; the ensuing fall in incomes leads to further fall in demand and induce another vicious cycle of falling prices and falling production/employment/income and demand.

Second, when there is deflation there is no incentive to consume/spend today as prices will be lower tomorrow: buying goods today is like catching a falling knife and there is an incentive to postpone spending (consumption and investment spending) until the future: why to buy a home or a car today if its price will fall another 15% and purchasing today would imply having one’s equity in a home or a car fully wiped out in a matter of months? Better to postpone spending. But this postponing of spending exacerbates the vicious cycle of falling demand and supply/employment/income and prices.

Third, when there is deflation real interest rate are high and rising in spite of the fact that nominal policy rates are zero. If the policy rate is zero and there is a 2% deflation the real short term policy rate is actually a positive 2% that further depresses consumption and investment; and real long-term market rates are even higher with deflation – as discussed in detail below – as market rates at which firms and households borrow are much higher than short term policy rates.

The Deadly Deeds of Debt Deflation

Fourth, deflation also leads to the nightmare of debt deflation, a situation well analyzed by Fisher during the Great Depression. If debt liabilities are in nominal terms (D) and at a fixed long term interest rate (i) a reduction in the price level (P) increases the real value of such nominal liabilities (D/P goes up); so debtors that are already distressed in a recession and deflation become even more distressed as the real burden of their liabilities (D/P) sharply rises.

Another complementary way to see the perverse effects of debt deflation is to notice that the ex-post – as opposed to the ex-ante –real interest rate faced by borrowers sharply rise. Suppose you are a firm or household that had borrowed – say a 10 year mortgage or a 10 year corporate bond – at an interest rate (i) of 5% at the time when inflation (dP/P) was expected to remain at 3%; then the real ex-ante real cost of borrowing (r= i – dP/P) was only 2% (the difference between 5% and the expected inflation of 3%). Now suppose that, ex-post, the economy falls into a deflation trap and prices are now falling at 2% annual rate and expected to fall as much for a number of years. Now the ex-post real interest rate (r= i – dP/P) on that borrowing rises from 2% ex-ante to an actual ex-post 7% (5% - (-2%)). Thus, ex-post unexpected deflation sharply increases the real interest rate faced by borrowers or, equivalently, sharply increases the real ex-post value of their real liabilities (D/P).

Things are even worse if the debtor had borrowed to finance the leverage purchase of assets whose prices is now falling. Suppose you are a household who borrowed at a 5% mortgage rate to purchase a home whose price is now falling at an annual rate of 15%. Then the effective real interest rate that you are facing on your debt is not 5% but a whopping 20% (the sum of the 5% mortgage rate plus the 15% fall in the price of the underlying asset) that soon leads you into the depth of negative equity into your home. Thus, leveraged purchase of assets whose price is falling is an even more deadly form of debt deflation.

In all of its forms and manifestations debt deflation sharply increases the risk that borrowers will be forced to default on real obligations that they cannot service. Thus, debt deflation is associated with a sharp rise in corporate defaults and household defaults that creates a spiral of deflation, debt deflation and defaults.

High Market Real Interest Rates and Costs of Borrowing in a Deflation/Liquidity Trap

In situations of deflation and liquidity trap traditional monetary policy becomes pathetically ineffective. Consider now why monetary policy is ineffective. The real long-term interest rate faced by borrowers (say a mortgage holders who has a 10 year fixed rate mortgage or a corporate who issues a 10 year nominal rate bond) is given by the following expression:

Real Long Term Market Rate = (Nominal Long Term Market Yield – Inflation Rate) = (Nominal Long Term Market Yield – Long Term Government Bond Yield) + (Long Term Government Bond Yield – Fed Funds Rate) + Fed Funds Rate - Inflation Rate

Similarly the real short-term interest rate faced by borrowers (say a mortgage holder who has a variable rate mortgage or a consumer with credit card debt or a corporate who issues short term commercial paper) is given by the following expression:

Real Short Term Market Rate = (Nominal Short Term Market Yield – Inflation Rate) = (Nominal Short Term Market Yield – 3 month Libor rate) + (3 month Libor rate – Fed Funds Rate) + Fed Funds Rate - Inflation Rate

The first expression above shows clearly that even if the policy rate (the Fed Fund rate) is 0% the long term real interest rate faced by market borrowers can be very high for three reasons:

1. For any given nominal market rate there is deflation that increases real rates

2. The spread between the nominal market rate and the long term nominal yield on safe government bonds (representing the credit spread) can be high and rising

3. The spread between the nominal government bond yield and the policy rate (the yield curve spread) can be high and rising

A similar three-part decomposition holds for the short term real market rate that depends on deflation, on the spread between market rates and the short –term Libor rate and the spread between short term Libor and the policy rate.

Now, in a situation of a liquidity trap all three factors described above keep real long term market rates high and rising in spite of falling policy rates (that end up with the Fed Funds rate down to zero). First, the credit spread has widened for high yield corporates from 250bps in June of last year to a whopping 1600bps in recent days; even the credit spread for high grade corporate has gone from 50bps to 400-500bps. Second the spread between long term government bonds and the Fed Funds rate has sharply increased as the Fed Funds rate has been reduced from 5.25% to 1% (soon 0%) while long bond yields have fallen very little (about 100bps). Third, inflation is sharply falling and deflation is over the horizon.

The same holds for the sharp increase in real short term market rates since the beginning of the liquidity crunch in money markets and short term debt markets: a rise in the spread between market rates (say credit cards or commercial paper) and 3 month Libor; a rise in the spread between 2 month Libor and the policy rate (or variants of the same such as the TED spread or the Libor-OIS spread); a fall in inflation and the onset of deflation.

“Crazy” Monetary Policy to Address the Liquidity Trap and a Severe Liquidity and Credit Crunch

To address the increase in real short term market rates the Fed and other central banks have already undertaken quite unorthodox monetary policy moves. To address the even more severe increase in real long term market rates the Fed and other central banks will have to undertake even more radical and unorthodox policy actions.

The widening of the real short term market rates has been addressed by creating a whole series of new liquidity facilities (the TAF, the TSLF, the PDCF, the swap lines with foreign central banks, the new commercial paper facility). Some of these facilities have been aimed at reducing the sharply rising TED spread, Libor-OIS spread, Libor-Fed Funds spread. While other of these facilities – such as the new commercial paper facility (that has the acronym of ABCPMMMFLF) have had the aim of reducing the sharply rising spread between short-term market rates (such as commercial paper rates) and the policy rate (or the 3 month T-bill rate). Flooding money markets with massive amounts of liquidity and with a massive swap of illiquid assets sitting on the balance sheet of banks and broker dealers (MBS, etc.) for safe Treasuries has finally started – after 12 months of rising spreads – to reduce such Libor versus safe assets spread.

Indeed, the Fed and other central banks that used to be the “lenders of last resort” have become the “lenders of first and only resort” as banks don’t lend to each other, banks don’t lend to non-bank financial institutions and financial institutions don’t lend to the corporate and household sectors.

However, in spite of the Fed becoming the lender of first and only resort (even the corporate CP market is now being propped by the new Fed facility) there are still major problems that remain seriously unresolved in short term money markets and short term credit markets:

- Such Libor spreads are rising again in recent days; and they are still very high – at the 3 month maturity – compared to what they were before this liquidity crunch;

- banks and other financial institutions are still not lending to each other in spite of lower spreads as they need the liquidity received by the Fed and they worry about the solvency of their counterparties;

- only banks and major broker dealers have access to these facilities and thus most of the shadow banking system does not have access to this Fed liquidity;

- market spreads as still rising and the availability of short term credit is becoming tighter as banks increase interest rates on credit cards, student loans and auto loans and make such loans in scarcer supply;

- only rated investment grade corporate have access to the commercial paper facility leaving millions of speculative grade or non-rated firms in an even bigger liquidity and credit squeeze;

- securitization of credit cards, auto loans, student loans is currently dead.

This is why now a desperate Treasury is starting to think about using the remaining TARP funds to directly unclog the unsecured consumer debt (credit cards, student loans, auto loans) market and the securitization of such debt. Desperate times required desperate and extreme actions.

Even “Crazier” Policy Actions Are Required to Reduce Long Term Market Interest Rates

But even more desperate or “crazier” monetary actions are needed to address the increase in real long term market rates. These actions are needed to prevent deflation from setting in, to reduce the credit spread (the difference between long term market rates and long term government bond yields) and to reduce the yield curve spread (the difference between long term government bond yields and the policy rate).

There are a number of tools that the Fed could use to reduce the yield curve spread when the Fed Funds rate is already done to zero. First, the Fed could commit to maintain the Fed Funds rate down to zero for a long period of time: since long term government bond yields are – based on the expectation hypothesis – equal to a weighted average of current short term government bond yields and current expectations of what those short term bond yields will be for the foreseeable future a commitment to keep the Fed Funds rate down to zero for a long time will affect expectations of future expected short rates and could reduce long term government bond yields. Even this action may not be sufficient to reduce long yields on safe assets as such long yields also depend on liquidity premia and risk premia that will not be affected by expectation of future short rates. Greenspan discovered the “bond market conundrum” when raising the Fed Funds rate from 1% to 5.25% did not change much long rates and Bernanke rediscovered this conundrum when reducing the Fed Funds rate down to 1% failed to significantly reduce long rates. Such long rates depend in part on the global supply of savings relative to the demand for investment; thus they are not likely to be strongly affected by current and future expected policy rates.

Second, the Fed could do what it last did in the 1950s: directly purchase long term government bonds as a way of pushing downward their yield and thus reduce the yield curve spread. But even such action may not be very successful in world where such long rates depend as much as anything else on the global supply of savings relative to investment. Thus, even radical action such as outright Fed purchases of 10 or 30 year US Treasury bonds may not work as much as desired.

Next, the Fed could try to directly affect the credit spread (the spread between long term market rates and long term government bond yields). Radical actions could take the form of: outright purchases of corporate bonds (high yield and high grade); outright purchases of mortgages and private and agency MBS as well as agency debt; forcing Fannie and Freddie to vastly expand their portfolios by buying and/or guaranteeing more mortgages and bundles of mortgages; one could decide to directly subsidize mortgages with fiscal resources; the Fed (or Treasury) could even go as far as directly intervening in the stock market via direct purchases of equities as a way to boost falling equity prices. Some of such policy actions seem extreme but they were in the playbook that Governor Bernanke described in his 2002 speech on how to avoid deflation. They all imply serious risks for the Fed and concerns about market manipulation. Such risks include the losses that the Fed could incur in purchasing long term private securities, especially high yield junk bonds of distressed corporations. In the commercial paper fund the Fed refused to purchase non-investment grade securities. Even high grade corporate bonds are not without risk as their spread have massively widened in recent months from 50bps over Treasuries to levels in the 500bps plus range. Also pushing the insolvent Fannie and Freddie to take even more credit risk may be a reckless policy choice. And having a government trying to manipulate stock prices would create another whole can of worms of conflicts and distortions.

Finally, the Fed could try to follow aggressive policies to attempt to prevent deflation from setting in: massive quantitative easing; flooding markets with unlimited unsterilized liquidity; talking down the value of the dollar; direct and massive intervention in the forex to weaken the dollar; vast increase of the swap lines with foreign central banks (an indirect and disguised form of forex intervention) aimed to prevent a strengthening of the dollar; attempts to target the price level or the inflation rate via aggressive preemptive monetization; or even a money-financed budget deficit (an idea suggested by Bernanke in 2002 that he termed to be the equivalent of an “helicopter drop” of money in the economy). The problem with many of these “extreme” policy actions – as well as some of the ones described above to affect the relevant spreads – is that they were tried in Japan in the 1990s and the last few years and they miserably failed: once you are in a liquidity trap and there are fundamental deflationary forces in the economy as the excess aggregate supply of goods is facing a falling aggregate demand it is very hard even with extreme policy actions to prevent deflations from emerging.

Some very aggressive policy actions – such as letting the dollar weaken sharply – may do the job but they may also be beggar-thy-neighbor policies that would export even more deflation to other countries: a much weaker dollar would mean a much stronger value of other currencies that would reduce aggregate demand abroad and exacerbate their deflationary pressures as their import prices would sharply fall.

And indeed with global – rather than U.S. alone – deflationary forces setting in the global economy dealing with global deflation becomes much harder. The world economy has been massively imbalanced for the last decade with the U.S. being the consumer of first and last resort, spending more than its income and running ever larger current account deficits while creating a massive excess productive capacity via overinvestment; while China and other emerging markets have been the producers of first and last resort, spending less than their income and running ever larger current account surpluses. With U.S. spending (consumption, residential investment, capex spending) now faltering and structural rigidities to a rapid growth of domestic consumption demand in China and emerging market economies, a global glut of unsold goods may lead to persistent and perverse deflationary forces that may last for a longer time unless proper policy actions – mostly non-necessarily monetary – are undertaken.

Thus, dealing with this deadly combination of deflation, liquidity traps, debt deflation and defaults that I termed as global stag-deflation may be the biggest challenge that U.S. and global policy makers may have to face in 2009. It will not be easy to prevent this toxic vicious circle unless the process of recapitalizing financial institutions via temporary partial nationalization of them is accelerated and performed in a consistent and credible way; unless such actions are combined with massive fiscal stimulus to prop up aggregate demand while private demand is in free fall; unless the debt burden of insolvent households is sharply reduced via outright large debt reduction (not cosmetic and ineffective “loan modifications”); and unless even more unorthodox and radical monetary policy actions are undertaken to prevent pervasive deflation from setting in.

Thus, while the Fed may pursue radical, “crazy” and “crazier” monetary policy actions the true policy responses to the risk of deflation may lie elsewhere: when monetary policy is in a liquidity trap a properly-targeted fiscal stimulus is more appropriate and effective; cleaning up the financial system and properly recapitalize it is necessary; and debt deflation and debt overhang problems are more directly and properly resolved through debt restructuring and debt reduction than by trying to reduce the real value of such liabilities via higher inflation.

Nouriel Roubini says it all

Coordinated Central Banks Liquidity Injections: Too Little Too Late To Address the Fundamental Problems of the Financial System
By Nouriel Roubini | Dec 12, 2007

Given the worsening of the global liquidity and credit crunch – with a variety of short term interbank Libor spreads relative to policy rates and relative to government bonds of same maturity being even higher recently than at the peak of the crisis in August – it is no surprise that central banks were really desperate to do something.

The announcement today of coordinated liquidity injections by FED, ECB, BoE, BoC, SNB is however too little too late and it will fail to resolve the liquidity and credit crunch for the same reasons why hundreds of billions of dollars of liquidity injections by these central banks – and some easing of policy rates by Fed, BoC and BoE – has totally and miserably failed to resolve this crunch in the last five months. What was announced today are band-aid palliative that will not address the core causes of this most severe liquidity and credit crunch.

There has some heated debate in recent weeks on whether the liquidity crunch is due to:
a) short-term year end liquidity needs (the “Turn”);
b) a more persistent liquidity risk premium;
c) a rise on counterparty risk and broader perceived credit problems of counterparties; i.e. serious problems of insolvency rather than illiquidity alone.
d) a more general increase in risk aversion due to severe credit problems and information asymmetries (risk aversion due to uncertainty about the size of the financial losses and uncertainty on who is holding the toxic waste of RMBS, CDOs and other ABS products);
e) the failure of the monetary transmission mechanism in a financial system where most financial institutions are now non-bank and thus do not have direct access to the central banks’ liquidity or lender of last resort support.

The severe financial crunch is likely due to all of the factors above; but the measures announced today can only partly deal with the first of the two explanations above of the crunch and will do nothing to address the other causes of the crunch. These measures will not be successful for a variety of reasons.

First, you cannot use monetary policy to resolve credit and insolvency problems in the economy; and most of the crunch is due not just to illiquidity but rather to serious credit and solvency problems of many economic agents (households, mortgage borrowers, subprime, near prime and prime mortgage lenders, homebuilders, highly leveraged and distressed financial institutions, weak corporate sector firms).

Second, monetary injections cannot resolve the information asymmetries and generalized uncertainty of a financial system where financial globalization and securitization have led to lack of transparency and greater opacity of financial markets; these asymmetric information problems that generate lack of trust and confidence and significant counterparty risk cannot be resolved with monetary policy.

Third, the US is at this point headed towards a recession regardless of what the Fed does as the build-up of real and financial problems (worst housing recession ever, oil at $90, a severe credit crunch, falling capex spending by the corporate sector, a saving-less and debt burdened consumer buffeted by ten separate negative shocks) in the economy make a recession unavoidable at this point; similarly other economies are also now headed towards a hard landing as the US real and financial mess lead to significant contagion and recoupling.
Thus, to mitigate the effects of an unavoidable US recession and global economic slump the Fed and other central banks should be cutting rates much more aggressively. The 25bps cut by the Fed yesterday is puny relative to what is needed; 25bps by BoE and BoC does not even start to deal with the increase in nominal and real borrowing rates that the sharp spike in Libor rates (the true cost of short term capital for the private sector) has induced.
And the ECB decision not to cut policy rates – and deluding itself that it may be able to raise them once the alleged “temporary” credit crunch is gone – is dangerous and ensures a sharp slowdown in a Eurozone where deflating housing bubbles, oil at $90 and a strong Euro are already sharply slowing down growth. Central banks should have announced today a coordinated 50bps reduction in their policy rates as a way to signal that they are serious about avoiding a global hard landing. Instead the Fed yesterday gave a paltry 25bps with a neutral bias rather than the necessary easing bias.

Fourth, the actions by the Fed today provide more liquidity to a greater variety of institutions but, as the Fed announced, these institutions are only “depository” institutions, i.e. only banks. The severe liquidity and credit problems affect today a financial market dominated by non-bank that do not have direct access to the liquidity support of the Fed; these include: broker dealers and investment banks that do not have a commercial bank arm; money market funds; hedge funds; mortgage lenders that do not take deposit; SIVs, conduits and other off-balance sheet special purpose vehicles; states and local governments funds (Florida, Orange County, etc.).
All these non-bank institutions do not have direct access to the Fed and other central banks liquidity support and they are now at risk of a liquidity run as their liabilities are short term while many of their assets are longer term and illiquid; so the risk of something equivalent to a bank run for non-bank financial institutions is now rising. And there is no chance that depository institutions will re-lend to these to these non-banks the funds borrowed by central banks as these banks have severe liquidity problems themselves and they do not trust their non-bank counterparties. So now monetary policy is totally impotent with dealing with the liquidity problems and the risks of runs on liquid liabilities of a large fraction of the financial system (in a world where these non-bank financial institutions play a larger role in financial markets than non-banks).
And let us be clear: the Federal Reserve Act striclty forbids the Fed from lending to non-depository institutions apart from very emergency situations that would require a complex and cumbersome approval process and the provision of high quality collateral. And the Fed has never – in its history – used this procedure and lent money to non-depository institutions.

Fifth, as discussed before on this blog, this is the first real crisis of financial globalization and securitization; it will take years of major policy, regulatory and supervisors reform to clean up this disaster and create a sounder global financial system; monetary policy cannot resolve years of reckless behavior by regulators and supervisors that were asleep at the wheel while the credit excesses of the last few years were taking place. Now the US hard landing and global sharp slowdown is unavoidable and monetary policy – if aggressive enough with much greater and rapid reduction in policy rates – may only be able to affect how long and protracted this hard landing will be.

Beyond Words!

Fox News: "So why do we need a central bank?"

Greenspan: "Well the question is a very interesting one. We have at this particular stage a fiat money which is essentially money printed by a government and it's usually the central bank which is authorized to do so. Some mechanism has got to be in place that restricts the amount of money which is produced, either a gold standard or currency board or something of that nature because unless you do that, all of history suggests that inflation will take hold with very deleterious effects on economic activity. ... There are numbers of us, myself included, who strongly believe that we did very well in the 1870-1914 period with an international gold standard".

Fox News: "We did well without the Federal Reserve. People forget that."

♭: Statistical Finesse

"They Have Got to be Kidding"
http://www.europac.net/externalframeset.asp?from=home&id=10612

Yesterday, as the dollar fell to new record lows and oil and gold prices surged to new highs, Wall Street remained fixated on wholly meaningless government data that managed to report the lowest inflation in the last half century. These bizarre numbers were integral in allowing the Commerce Department to report 3.9% annualized GDP growth in the third quarter, which was heralded by the bulls as evidence that a resilient U.S. economy had shrugged off the problems in the housing and mortgage markets. However, the government’s ability to make “economic growth” magically appear is based purely on statistical finesse.

To arrive at this rate, the government had to assume that inflation during the quarter ran at an annualized rate of .8% (that’s less than 1%). That is the lowest rate of inflation used to calculate U.S. GDP since the Eisenhower administration. With oil priced at almost $100 per barrel, gold futures trading over $800 per ounce, the dollar hitting record lows, and the Fed printing money like it is going out of style, the government has the nerve to claim that current inflation is the lowest it has been in half a century. Unbelievable!

Just in case there is some confusion, the government adjusts nominal GDP gains using the GDP deflator, which represents the inflation rate during the time period being measured. This is done to strip inflation out of the GDP calculation so that only real growth gets counted: not nominal gains that result purely from inflation.

The consensus estimate for 3rd quarter GDP growth was 3.4%. The reason we beat that number was that the government adjusted the nominal 4.7% gain by a mere .8%. Had the government assumed a higher rate of inflation, say 2.6% (identical to the rate used to deflate second quarter GDP,) the 3rd quarter gain would have been only 2.1%, well shy of the consensus forecast. My guess is that inflation is actually running at an annualized rate closer to 10%. Therefore using a more honest deflator, the U.S. economy is actually contracting, which would explain the recent anecdotal evidence provided by various economic polls, voter dissatisfaction and consumer sentiment numbers. In fact, if one simply measures U.S. GDP using gold or any other currency, it is clear that we are already in a recession.

Similar illusions are created in other numbers, such as retail sales, corporate earnings, and stock prices, which are all rising merely as a result of actual inflation being higher than the official reports. For example, higher retail sales reflect consumers paying higher prices for the products that they buy. They may in fact be buying less stuff, but are paying more for it. Further, part of the gains result from tourists using their appreciated foreign currencies to buy products cheaper here than they can in the own countries. I have heard about Canadians checking into U.S. hotels with empty suitcases, crossing the border to indulge in weekend shopping sprees.

Corporate earnings, particularly those of multi-nationals, are padded as their foreign currency denominated earnings translate into more dollars when those earnings are repatriated. However, such gains are illusions, as companies merely earn more dollars of diminished value for the goods they sell. The actual volume of exports does not necessarily improve much, as evidenced by weak industrial production and manufacturing employment. When those additional debased dollars are paid out as dividends, they confer no real increase in global purchasing power to shareholders.

Similarly, just as inflation causes prices to rise for goods and services it causes stock prices to rise as well. Though such gains may be less than the actual increase in the cost of living, as long as the government gets away with using bogus CPI numbers which fail to fully reflect inflation, Wall Street takes credit for nominal gains as if they were real.

However, as ridiculous as the phony GDP number was, yesterday’s biggest joke was a report on global competitiveness put out by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which ranked the U.S. economy as the world’s most competitive. To arrive at this conclusion, the forum has obliterated the obvious under a mountain of theory. In determining country rankings, the WEF weighed strengths in their "12 Pillars of Competitiveness", including: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labor market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation. Completely ignored however are the measurable results of competitiveness, notably a trade surplus and a strong currency.

It is as if the WEF decided to judge a weight loss contest without using a scale, by instead focusing only on mental attitude, dedication, perseverance, and nutritional education! As a result the prize is awarded to the fattest contestant. Based on the empirical evidence of a gargantuan trade deficit, staggering global indebtedness, and a declining currency, the United States is clearly not the most competitive economy in the world.

♭: Out of Key

The Kings are coming...with lies, lies mixed with Bull Manure. Honor will be forgotten.

"Cramer is pounding the table at CNBC for another 0.5% immediate rate cut."
No inflation there... time to lower FED fund rates another 50bps.

Condutor Extraordinaire: FED Appoints Ben Bernanke to US C.I.O.

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to lower its target for the federal funds rate 25 basis points to 4-1/2 percent.

Economic growth was solid in the third quarter, and strains in financial markets have eased somewhat on balance. However, the pace of economic expansion will likely slow in the near term (a statement and subsequent decision based on historical evidence right?), partly reflecting the intensification of the housing correction. Today’s action, combined with the policy action taken in September, should help forestall some of the adverse effects on the broader economy that might otherwise arise from the disruptions in financial markets and promote moderate growth over time.

Readings on core inflation have improved modestly this year LOL, but recent increases in energy and commodity prices, among other factors, may put renewed upward pressure on inflation. In this context, the Committee judges that some inflation risks remain, and it will continue to monitor inflation developments carefully.

The Committee judges that, after this action, the upside risks to inflation roughly balance the downside risks to growth. The Committee will continue to assess the effects of financial and other developments on economic prospects and will act as needed to foster price stability and sustainable economic growth.

♭: FED's Policy Below the Intended Pitch

FED's Official Policy: From a Reserve of Value to a Not so Convenient Good



Recent Fed and Treasury actions and policies are working around the clock to debase the USD. This US wealth and purchasing power destruction forces investors to seek protection in precious metals (platinum, gold, silver, uranium...) and stocks with high earnings.

This current imported and commodity fueled inflation wawe is reminiscent of the 1979-80 episode when gold, energy, farm land, natural resources and tech stocks were the inflation shelter investors sought.

The Dollar Index chart below demonstrates that the USD reached a low point in 1980 as gold was taking off. You can readily see we're back at lows once again.

Virtuoso: J.P.Morgan's Extravagant Market Manipulation Scheme

Regalian Powers, It's good to be the King!

J.P. Morgan Chase’s derivatives book has swelled by a cool 10 Trillion in notional in Q2-2007

In case any of you are wondering how big new growth of 10 Trillion in notional really is: 10 Trillion / 66 business days = 151 Billion per day
Can anyone tell me how or where it is possible to generate 151 Billion in new business per day – for 66 straight business days - in ANYTHING? Not even China can pull this off.

As reported in the Treasury's OCC’s Quarterly Report on Bank Derivatives Activities - Second Quarter 2007, on page 23:
http://www.occ.treas.gov/ftp/deriv/dq207.pdf

Monetary Debauchery

"The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction… I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity… is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Thomas Jefferson

Monetary Debauchery

"It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

Henry Ford

Monetary Debauchery

"If Cheap Money is what the country needs, why don't we repeal the laws against counterfeiting?"

Senator Gore (OK), 1933

Monetary Debauchery

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

John Maynard Keynes quoting Lenine