Did you see Maulden's latest piece regarding the monetization of US debt??
George Cole posted it on Stictly Drilling II
Message 17889290
To:Frank Pembleton who started this subject
From: George S. Cole Saturday, Aug 17, 2002 10:54 AM
Respond to of 17485
MUST READ article by John Mauldin on Fed policy and the inflation/deflation debate. Points out that Fed policy has been much less aggressive than many think, and much of the recent money supply growth is due to exogenous factors not under Fed control.
But this could change if the economy remains weak much longer. The thing to watch for would be a Fed move to start monetizing Treasury debt via bill passes. This would be HIGHLY INFLATIONARY and would undoubtedly explode the gold price.
Text version is below. To view in color or printer friendly .pdf
please visit our website at www.2000wave.com
If It Quacks Like Japan
Japanese Disease
We Have Not Yet Begun to Push
The Real Difference between Japan and the US
Secular Bear Economic Cycles
Why the Fed Did Not Cut Rates
Home Again, Home Again
By John Mauldin
Today we examine several fundamental and critical questions, to see
if they give us come clues as to the direction of the economy and
the stock markets:
"Why do we have no inflation since the Fed has been growing the
money supply at very high levels for a very long time?"; the ever
popular, "Is the Fed pushing on a string?" and "Is the United States
headed down the same path as Japan?"
My analysis will be controversial in many circles, especially the
doom and gloom circuit, but will not make market bulls happy either.
As usual, I will fall in the Muddle Through Middle, which is
precisely where you should be.
I first wrote seriously about deflation in the fall of 1998. It has
been one of my more enduring themes these last four years. There are
deflationary pressures everywhere: too much capacity, Japanese and
Chinese deflation washing to our shores, imploding debt, etc. The
list is long, and I have written about them extensively in past
issues.
But I must admit that even as I predicted and demonstrated the
presence of deflation in the US and world economies, I was puzzled
as to why these deflationary pressures persisted in the face of very
strong growth in the money supply. My basic monetarist instincts (a
school of thought in economics) said such high growth in the money
supply should be reflected in the inflation rate.
Japanese Disease
Inflation is running about 1.5% over the last 12 months. Over the
last four months, inflation is running at a yearly average of less
than 0.7%. The explosive first quarter of inventory rebuilding
accounted for 80% of the very low inflation we have seen in the last
year, and now inflation has seemingly gone back to bed. At current
rates, it is in danger of falling out of bed into outright
deflation. That is why so many writers are suggesting we are in
danger of catching "Japanese disease": a deflationary depression.
I must thank economic guru Dennis Gartman for pointing out, and then
explaining with remarkable patience, the reason why inflation in not
showing up in our economy as a result of the rise in monetary
growth.
But first, let's quickly document exactly what type of monetary
growth rate we are talking about, courtesy of Greg Weldon. Money
supply is measured by statistical compilations called M-1, MZM, M-2,
M-3 and the Adjusted Monetary Base. Each statistic is a different
way of looking at the money supply, and has a different purpose.
For instance, M-1 is basically cash. MZM is cash plus money market
funds. M-2 starts to add in time deposits and other cash
substitutes. M-3 starts to add foreign dollar deposits and large
time deposits, plus other items.
Today we read that the 13 week rate of change of the growth of M-2 (
a way of measuring the momentum or direction of growth) has risen
from 2.9% only six weeks ago to 7.3% today. That is a very large
gain. The 13-week change in M-3 is growing at 8.4%. Both measures
are growing at over 8% annually.
If you go to the St. Louis Federal Reserve database, you will find
that the adjusted monetary base, that most basic measure of money,
has grown from 596 billion dollars to 682 billion since the
beginning of 2001, a jump of $86 billion or 14% in only 17 months!
This is sending out alarm bells in every gold bug's heart, as this
type of growth should be giving us inflation, and thus a rise in
gold.
But when you break down the numbers, as Gartman led me to do, the
growth due to direct Fed action becomes far slower, and in some
cases actually disappears. This insight helps reconcile the apparent
conundrum of seemingly rampant monetary growth and the (almost)
existence of deflation.
One of the things the Federal Reserve is required to do by law is
meet the demand by banks for cash currency. If a bank asks for paper
money, the Fed supplies it. The currency component of M-1 (cash
money in circulation) went from $530 billion to $615 in the last 17
months. This is a jump of $85 billion, or almost exactly 100% of
the growth in the adjusted monetary base.
Where has this cash gone? Have you or anyone you know buried $85
billion in coffee cans in your back yard? Do you need 17% more cash
than you did in 2000? The answer is, "No."
Further, if you look at a measure of how fast money is circulating,
something called the velocity of money (again on the St. Louis Fed
website), the velocity of money has dramatically slowed over the
last few years (in itself deflationary, but that's another story).
We simply don't even seem to need more cash money.
(I should note this is a national average. It is not based upon
personal experience. Money seems to be leaving my accounts much
faster.)
It is my belief that the largest portion of this money has gone
offshore. If you go to any third world country, you will find
dollars are the local currency of choice. If you live in Peru,
Brazil, Argentina, Russia, pick a country in Africa, and much of the
less-developed world, US cash is King.
Further, if you look at the growth of cash over the last 6 months,
it is a "mere" $24 billion. That coincides nicely with the
changeover from physical European currencies to the euro. All
physical European currencies (marks, francs, lira, pesos) had to be
converted to physical euros in the first two months of 2002. I wrote
last year that there was a huge demand for US cash dollars, as third
world European currency holdings had to be converted on the black
market, because if you had hard currency in Zambia or Argentina, you
did not want to take it into your local bank for local currency.
This is in addition to the underground European economy which
scrambled for dollars to avoid reporting their assets to the taxman.
For all intents and purposes, this money is not in the US monetary
base. It has gone AWOL. That is not to say it could not come back,
but the circumstances which would cause a mass flight from US
dollars to Brazilian reals or Russian rubles are difficult to
imagine.
What about the dramatic growth in MZM? That is M-1 (cash and bank
deposits) and money market funds. The growth in money market funds
has been huge. But that growth did not come from the Fed. It came
from investors fleeing the stock market. It is the same with other
monetary measures. The growth in each statistic can be explained in
the growth of electronic cash, as individuals, institutions and
businesses move to cash. This is a conservative movement, away from
risk, and much of it is actually deflationary, as it slows down the
flow of money, and pulls money out of the fractional reserve banking
system.
If you look at what the Fed has actually done to directly increase
the money supply, apart from their normal liquidity functions, it is
statistically insignificant. They are not monetizing the US debt or
buying significant amounts of government obligations. They have not
reduced bank reserve requirements.
All they have done in the last 18 months is lower the Fed fund rates
so as to lower the cost of borrowing money, in an effort to jump
start the economy. While this is significant, and is in theory
inflationary, it has not shown up in the actual inflation rates.
Even though the money supply is growing, assets are falling. We all
know about the $5 trillion+ (depending upon the day you look) loss
of paper assets in the stock market. But much of this was paper
assets. The market giveth paper and it taketh it away.
More critical is the implosion of actual dollars through
bankruptcies. Weldon points out that corporate bankruptcies were
$258 billion last year and already $267 this year, with much more to
come. Personal bankruptcies were up 5.9% to yet another high. This
is well over half a trillion dollars in 18 months. Much of this
money is "poofed." Someone loaned a company or individual money, and
now they are only going to get a portion, if any, of that debt back.
That is dollar destruction and deflationary. It takes money out of
circulation. Indeed, it is the debt destruction cycle that the most
ardent doom and gloom proponents constantly cite as the primary
reason we are about to enter into a full scale depression.
Deflation is staring us in the face. The Producer Price Index is
down 1.1% over the last year. Crude materials cost are down 6.2%.
The Philadelphia Fed tells us the difference between the prices
businesses pay for products and the prices they can charge is
decreasing. 30% of the categories of the CPI were experiencing year
over year declines.
The only reason CPI is positive is the rise in the cost of services,
tobacco and health care. Yet, service industries are beginning to
once again show a net loss of jobs. That means they have profit
problems. Real hourly wages actually went down last month, even as
output increased. We are working more for less.
We now import 33% of the goods we consume in the US. Stephen Roach
tells us, "...non-petroleum import prices were still running 1.5%
below their year-earlier level in July 2002 following a 2.4%
deflation over the preceding 12 months. Importing deflation is not
that big a deal in a closed economy. In today's increasingly open US
economy, it's a different matter altogether."
There are segments of the economy which are slowing. Housing starts
are down for the second month in a row, over 5% from May and sales
are sliding down as well. Employment growth looks weak, and in some
sectors is not growing at all.
Consumer spending growth is slowing. Data from Gian M. Fulgoni, the
Chairman of comScore Networks, Inc. underscores this. comScore
tracks the online buying habits of 1.5 million consumers (with
permission). Online sales growth clearly slowed in the second
quarter, which was born out in their statistics as well as the
dramatically slowing of GDP growth to an anemic 1.1%.
Their concern is that the trend is getting worse. July posted the
slowest growth rates ever in their data. He writes me, "Based on a
belief that online buyers are, in fact, "early adopters," whose
buying behavior can be used as a lead indicator of upcoming trends
in consumer spending in the U.S. economy at large, we believe this
is a clear sign that consumer retail spending has softened
substantially... Of particular concern is our observation that the
growth rates have continued to decline during the month of July,
2002, portending continued softness in the economy."
We Have Not Yet Begun to Push
The data shows us we are close to deflation. It also shows the
economy is not in danger of starting into a boom cycle anytime soon.
I could cite a much larger litany of economic problems than those
mentioned above.
Now we come to the crux of this letter. Recessions and bear markets
are part of the business cycle. It takes a government working hand
in hand with a central bank to create a Depression.
(Let me state at the outset: I am merely commenting upon the world
the way it is. Please, no lectures on the evils of central banking.
I have read my von Mises and even had the privilege of meeting with
Hayek.)
The Federal Reserve recently published a paper analyzing the
Japanese deflationary depression. Yes, they had a bubble. Yes, it
burst. Yes, the drops in the stock markets look eerily the same. The
Japanese dropped their interest rates to 0%, and it had no affect.
The term that is in popular use is that the Bank of Japan is
"pushing on a string."
Yes, the recent drop in rates looks like the US Fed might also be
pushing on string. We have had serious interest rate cuts, and yet
there is no real recovery. The argument seems to be that if the US
economy quacks like Japan and waddles like Japan; we must be headed
for a deflationary depression. It is an argument based upon faulty
parallels.
This Fed paper is significant. The Federal Reserve authorized it,
published it and made sure everybody knew they were involved with
it. This was to my mind a clear message from the Fed. The paper
analyzed everything the Bank of Japan did wrong. It was a long
paper.
I have often written that the Bank of Japan (and the Japanese
government in general) is the only management group which can make
Xerox management look competent. Xerox squandered more great
inventions than any management team I know of. They should be
bigger than both Microsoft and IBM combined, if they had properly
exploited their research. Yet today their loans are considered junk.
The Bank of Japan, along with their government, has likewise made a
bad situation into a disaster. They raised rates and kept them too
high. They did not deal with corporate debt, moving to hide it and
weakening the bank system while keeping brain-dead corporations on
life support. They let deflation become a spiral by not directly
monetizing debt or changing bank reserves. They raised taxes, ran
huge deficits and funded pointless work projects. Just about
everything you could do wrong, they did.
In fact, they acted much like the US Fed did in the 1930's where it
was a case of wrong policies and then of too little, too late.
This paper seems to be saying (or at least I hope it is saying), "We
see the problem. We will not let the US economy go into a
deflationary spiral. We have tools at our disposal. We will not use
them unless we have to, but we will use them if necessary."
In short, the Fed has not yet begun to push. Printing cash that is
by and large going overseas is not pushing on a string. Investor
movement to cash is not pushing on a string.
There is serious argument in certain quarters that the economy may
be turning around. Indeed, "There is almost no chance of a double-
dip recession in the United States and growth in the second half of
2002 will clearly point to recovery, according to research by The
Conference Board." Their only concern they suggest is deflation
coming from the rest of the world.
While you can make an argument that the Conference Board
guaranteeing no recession is a sure sign we will shortly be in one,
it is nevertheless indicative of the thinking of a lot of economists
and businesses who believe things will soon get better.
The Fed is hoping they are right. If the economy does Muddle
Through, as I think it might, then monetizing the debt or changing
reserve requirements would be a very bad thing to do. It would be a
guarantee of rising inflation.
There are clearly things that could be done by the government to
help the current situation, and let us avoid the situation
altogether. We could abandon our recent and disastrous protectionist
trade policies, and demonstrate that we actually believe in the free
trade George W. professes. (Are you listening, Karl?) We could stop
the rampant growth in government spending. We could stop taxing
dividends at the corporate level, along with a dozen more policy
changes. All these things would help the economy.
The Fed will only move to fight deflation as a last resort, because
the consequences may not be pretty.
How will we know when they do? It will likely happen by something
called a "bill pass." That is a direct monetization of US debt. That
has not yet happened. Gartman thinks that if it happens it will
start on the short end of the yield curve, driving money market
rates even lower, thereby encouraging savers/investors to find other
places for cash.
Now, class, please note that monetizing the debt or changing bank
reserve requirements is not a path to prosperity. It is far from it.
These steps should only be taken when there is clear and present
danger of a deflationary spiral caused by an asset bubble bursting
and credit implosion. Minor deflation may not move the Fed to act in
the hope that the economy will cure itself. Such moves will only be
taken because we are in deep kimchee, and as a last resort.
(For the record, I understand that deflation caused by increasing
productivity and competition is - or should be - the natural order
of the world, and is not bad. But the deflation we are experiencing
is not the product of improving productivity.)
Monetizing the debt will not stave off recession, increase
employment or make us more productive. It will simply produce
inflation, probably in the midst of a recession, as a recession is
the likely trigger for us to go into outright and serious deflation.
This will bring us to stagflation, which is easier for business to
deal with than serious deflation. Better the devil we can deal with
than a new devil we know will destroy. If deflation gets to the
point the Fed has to act, it will be a choice between two evils:
stagflation or deflationary depression. Which would you choose?
Can they produce just a little inflation? Good question. The paper
did not provide the equation for "just a little inflation." We would
be in new territory, and with very little historical precedent. I am
sure central bankers are confident they can adjust without hurting
the patient too much, but I am a little more sanguine about
experimental medicine by un-licensed practitioners.
Could it end up looking like stagflation? Quite definitely the
answer is yes. That is why you do not pull that trigger unless you
have to.
The Real Difference between Japan and the US
What the paper did not say is the real difference between Japan and
the US, and that is our free market business climate. Betting long-
term against the Us entrepreneur is a losing proposition, and always
has been.
Japan tried to stave off recession by denial. We let our Enron's and
WorldCom's go down. We let the dogs die. Japan runs by consensus,
and it takes a long time to make decisions and react. US businesses
often build consensus on the fly, reacting to a changing environment
more quickly than Japanese firms, at all levels. Japan resists
change. We embrace it.
Say what you will, US corporate management struggles to survive and
produce profit, from the smallest firm to the largest. While the US
business climate if unchecked can produce outrageous examples of
greed and avarice, it also produces prosperity and growth. By and
large, most workers and management are honest and competent.
In short, we are not Japan. If we enter into a deflationary spiral
and depression, it will be because of massive incompetence in the
Fed and in our government. Governments can't avoid recessions. That
is not in their power. They can only make them worse, or lessen the
affects. I do think we still have a serious recession in our future
at some point, as we need to clear out the excesses of the recent
boom. The Day of Reckoning will come.
But it will be a recession, and not a repeat of Japan. Until that
recession, we will Muddle Through. Then we will once again hit the
reset button, and do what a free economy is supposed to do: create
opportunity for those who work and take risks.
Secular Bear Economic Cycles
My central theme remains: we are in a secular bear market. History
suggests it will last for years. Investing under the rules of the
1980's and 1990's will be a fruitless, if not a disastrous task.
Absolute Returns are the order of the decade.
Finally, I can't help but point out that long term bonds are
(finally!) going in my long-predicted direction. We will see if this
move is for real, but I think it is. I think there is still some
room for bonds to rise, and long-term rates to drop before the next
rate rise cycle begins. This is because I think there is more
disinflation/deflation in our near future.
Why the Fed Did Not Cut Rates
The statement from the recent Fed meeting clearly stated that the
economy is biased to the downside. It reads like my letters have
for the last year. We are in a Muddle Through Economy. Why not cut
rates then?
If the Fed fund rates had been at 4%, they would have cut them and
cut them again. But now they are at 1.75%. A 0.25% rate cut would
have little, if no, affect on the economy.
Greenspan is down to seven 25 basis point cut bullets in his
holster. The last three, to take us to zero, would be seen as
desperation, and would be worse than doing nothing. The next four
are only good for emotional impact. He will save these bullets for
an emotional moment, when they might do some good. For instance, if
we attack Iraq in September, a rate cut shortly after might be seen
as calming. What if there is another terrorist attack?
(I seriously doubt we will attack in October. That would be too
political. Either in September or after the first week in November
is my guess.) |
