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He does an OK job of describing the differences in opinions re inflation risks... between near term "transitory" due to base effects... and those thinking the problem is "deflation" now... and those thinking inflation is here now and going to stay...
Note, as it wanders on... that the difference evaporates into a long term "yeah, they have to inflate"...
What Rickards ignores... is what I've been railing about for years... that mercantilist systems are fragile, and you can't just turn them off and back on without reinventing the whole scheme from scratch. The only element that is "transitory" is the temporary gain from short lived efficiencies won from imposing centralizing functions... which once its done... becomes a long term drag from structural rigidity imposed to control flows to the unique benefit of "some" only... at the cost of killing innovation and removing flexibility in the whole systems ability to deliver organic change. Centrally directed economies don't work... no matter the political or profit motives of the central planners imposing that control by force...
That's not less true in centralized control of finance... with fake market functions... than it is in other things ?
In that vein, Peter Schiff is more right than Rickards... who shows he has an excess of faith in central bankers... not in their ability to be stupid and impose control... but in their ability to succeed... He fails to understand the aggregate impact, over time, of believing your own propaganda... buying into the argument that the lie you believe is the same thing as the truth... But, boundaries between reality and belief do matter.
Ricards thus tends to overly value... and thus attaches his opinions to... the interest of the insiders who he cultivates for access and depends upon for insider information...
Otherwise... he's not wrong in the INTENT of the bankers to deliver QE driven deflation while lying about there being a risk of inflation... which you see being implemented as policy in the Reverse Repo sucking the "inflation causing stimulus" right back out of the economy as fast as they can put it in... as a MOPE ploy...
But, then, he ignores that the same Reverse Repo... subsidizes the banks with above market interest rates paid on overnight deposits of a trillion dollars... allowing them to FAKE the lower rates that are said to be the "real" market rates ?
But, that also assumes the source of the inflation risk... is all and only a function of that M2 function in velocity being goosed by the stimulus delivering a flood of cash... Yeah... THAT was a flash in the pan... and they've sucked it all back out of the economy already.
But, silver is still in REAL deficit ? New copper mines are not springing up like weeds after a spring shower ? Transportation is still NOT restored to its robust pre-pandemic capacity to flow. The virus risk is NOT over, yet. And it will prove true that global shipping will not have that former capacity it had restored for maybe two or three years ?
They're simply wrong about V shaped recovery in mercantilist systems being possible... as reality requires it will take 3 to 5 years to "fix it"... But, then, that assumes they do implement policy making it possible to fix it... and thus far they're mostly failing to do that... while actually moving policy in the opposite direction ?
The plan is: steal underpants... ???... profit ? But, unlike the gnomes in the South Park episode... they've hit on a middle step... "burn the underpants"... and prevent more being created... ?
Recovery in demand... not a problem. Recovery in capacity to produce materials and goods ? Not happening anytime soon... or, not within a framework that any sane person would define as "transitory"...
The "base effects" they talk about... as an artifact of the math in comparisons in one year vs another ?
Do they even understand the CONCEPT of entropy ? Or, what what overcoming it requires ?
NO. It isn't about the comparison in terms of math. It is that prior function will not be restored... by itself as if by magic... And, that is still ignoring the additive influences of the still growing trade disputes...
It is STRUCTURAL... and you cannot obviate it with math in a comparison... or make it go away by sleights of hand in financial manipulations... for the same reason that BRRRRR can't print gold... It also can't print willing workers... ships crews... functional mines... or change attitudes by making people unsee what they've seen happen in the last two years... etc.
Note, Rickards presents the same issue I have in "it being useful to know what the plan is being WHY they don't want you to know what it is" ? But, then, he just leaves it laying there and steps away from it ?
