09/29/09 London, England
The rally may end any day, but it didn’t end yesterday. Stocks rose 127 points, as measured by the Dow. Oil closed at $66. Gold rose $2.50.
We said we were doing some serious thinking this week. Maybe it is the season. But more and more, our thoughts become grayer. Less black. Less white. Less hard. Less soft.
A few years ago, it looked to us as though the world financial system had gone to war. We cheerfully awaited the victory parade. We figured Mr. Market would whup the feds good and hard. It hasn’t happened so far.
On one side, are the forces of a natural market correction…following a long, long period of expansion. The easier money gets, the more people tend to misspend and mis-invest it. Then, inevitably, their mistakes must be corrected. That’s what bear markets and recessions are for.
But the feds don’t like bear markets or recessions. And at least since the Keynes outlined his general theory back in the early 20th century, they’ve believed that they don’t have to put up with them. Keynes took a page from the Old Testament. Government should act like an enlightened Egyptian Pharaoh, he didn’t say, but should have. It should run surpluses in the fat years and deficits in the lean years…thus flattening out the pattern of boom and bust.
Pharaoh was no dope. He stored up grain for seven years, when the harvests were bountiful. Then, when the seven lean years came, he released the grain to the people. Problem solved.
Keynes believed that modern government could do the same thing. But Pharaoh was not running a democracy. He had no voters to answer to. So, if he wanted to store grain in the fat years, he could do so.
In theory, the US government could do the same. But, in fact, it never runs significant surpluses. There are too many people who want too much bread and too many circuses. And you don’t win votes by denying the voters what they want. So, in practice, the feds run deficits even in the fat years! Last year, before the downturn really started to bite, the US federal government ran the biggest deficit in history – nearly half a trillion dollars.
Now, let’s imagine how that would work for a bad Pharaoh. He would give out grain in the fat years. This would encourage farmers to produce less grain. Then, when the lean years came, Pharaoh would have no grain to give out…and the farmers would have less grain stored up themselves, since they grew less during the boom years. The famine would be worse than ever.
Then, if we can imagine that Egypt was trading with China at the time, perhaps Pharaoh could borrow grain from the Zhou dynasty to help ease the peoples’ pain. Perhaps he could mortgage the pyramids. Whatever, he – and the Egyptian people – would have been in much better position if he had done as Joseph told him in the first place…lay up stores in good times, draw then down in bad times. How difficult is that?
But Bernanke didn’t see the famine coming. Neither did Geithner. Or Greenspan. Or any of the other savants Pharaoh interpret his dreams. None of them expected hard times. None of them warned the public. None of them encouraged the government to save money for the recession. Nassim Taleb asks why Bernanke was reappointed after he clearly failed the most critical test. But heck…the federal government is an equal opportunity employer. Employees aren’t let go just become they’re incompetent.
Anyway, getting back to our thoughts…
…it looked like a battle to us – between the forces of inflation (the feds)…and the forces of deflation (the market). But battles usually have clear winners. One side is master of the field and the other retreats. One side is victorious; the other is defeated.
Alas, some wars produce no hosannas of success…and no wailing widows of failure. Some end in draws…or in confusion…or in disgrace and bankruptcy for both sides.
Like the bad Pharaoh, the feds saved nothing. Now, they have to try to work their Keynesian magic on credit. This puts them in a weak position; like a government that wages war on borrowed money. They can continue their campaign only as long as lenders allow them. They can’t wage the war as effectively as they’d like. Then again, maybe they can’t lose it as spectacularly as they might.
For the moment, their credit is still good. The bond market foresees an inflation rate of less than 2%. Bankers, taking money from the government, are happy to lend it back to them.
But the forces of the correction are giving up little ground. While stocks rally, the real economy remains in a funk.
“Sharp drop in start-ups,” is a news headline from yesterday. New business start-ups are a major source of new jobs. Bad omen.
Even glamour publisher Conde Nast is forced to make cutbacks. It has told employees that they may not spend more than $1,000 a night when they are traveling.
A Pimco economist says savings rates are still going up…and may exceed 8%. This represents hundreds of billions of dollars taken out of the consumer economy. Oddly, while it makes the slump worse, it also helps finance the government’s battle against it. Savers buy US debt (albeit indirectly).
So, the battle is still going on…and the outcome is still in doubt.
Our own Addison Wiggin was interviewed by The Daily Bell on his beginnings at Agora (working on an old laptop on a desk he shared with your editor in Paris), whether or not the West can save itself – and on this ‘war’ between inflation and deflation.
On the latter, here’s what Addison had to say:
“‘Deflation now, inflation later’ is a mantra we’ve adopted at The Daily Reckoning. The Federal Reserve, through it’s program of quantitative easing, is busting the seems of it’s own balance sheet in order to fight a deflationary trend in the West. At some point, the tide will shift. Mr. Bernanke assures the world he’s watching inflationary indicators like a hawk. We have our doubts whether those indicators will do him any good. As Paul Volcker, the great inflation slayer of the early 1980s, said when we interviewed him for I.O.U.S.A. ‘Once inflation gets started, it’s very hard to stop. And there’s a strong flavor of that at the moment.’
[To read Addison’s full interview, see here.]
“Global trade rose at its fastest rate in more than five years in July,” The Financial Times reports, “suggesting the economic recovery is feeding through into commerce.”
“I’ve been worried about the effects of protectionism in shutting off different markets and making a weak economy even worse off,” says colleague Chris Mayer. “Commodity markets especially need open markets to function well. The EU, for example, just put a 40% tariff on Chinese made steel pipe. That’s not good for steel pipe demand and hence, the steel makers and the commodities that go into steel. If we see widespread adoption of such measures, we’d have to re-think some things.
“But so far, it looks like we’ve got a recovery of some kind in global trade. When I look at the global economy, many of the bright spots stem from surging trade along old trade routes (such as China and Arab world).”
Racehorse prices are in freefall, says a report out yesterday. But collectible cars are still doing well.
Yesterday, we saw someone drive by in a huge, gaudy pink Cadillac from the 1960s. It had magnificent fins and enough chrome to stagger a blind man. In it were a middle-aged man and woman, looking very comfortable and proud. They were traveling in style…in a rolling sculpture.
Old cars are not only holding their values, they’re still going up. But not all old cars. Detroit’s muscle cars have been falling in price for the last three years. Not very green?
Until tomorrow,
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
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As an owner of a collectible car I can tell you demand may not have softened in the upper-most end of the market, but in the middle and bottom (among people who own show-quality cars they drive, such as the couple you saw, and people just entering the hobby with a modest investment)the bottom has fallen out. Over the past year middle and entry markets were flooded with values as more and more owners (such as myself) decided they’d rather have cash in the bank than iron in the garage– no matter how beautiful that iron may be.
The Clinton administration was running a surplus prior to the Bush era of Cowboy Capitialism. The same goes here up north, it didn’t take long for the ultra right-wing Harper government to reverse the budget surpluses left behind from the Liberals.
In my view, disaster capitialism is what brought us to the brink, we can point the finger at government, but they have done only what the Elite Robber Barons have told them. The interest of the common people have been abandon. The American Dream of working hard and getting ahead is shattered. In the end, it is the unfettered, unaccountable and uncontrolled capitialism that led to its’ own demise.
Amen, Bloomer (above, Sept. 29, 2009.
If capitalists want to save capitalism, they should act right and behave themselves. Unregulated capitalism simply does not work, but true capitalism without the corruption is the best we have been able to come up with.
To both Fred and Bloomer I would recommend Robert Murphy’s excellent, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism. An easy read, but very informative.
I think many may be blaming “capitalism” for our recent economic trials, but a closer look at how government has manipulated the interests rates would show that it is the “government’s thumb in the pie” that is the cause of our troubles, not capitalism.
( but a closer look at how government has manipulated the interests rates would show that it is the “government’s thumb in the pie” that is the cause of our troubles )
You good say the FEDs showed everyone else how to misbehave… and everyone else followed right along.
Bill you have mentioned pharaoh and Joseph before. Have you missed two important points? One, God told Joseph what the dream meant. Is God telling anyone on this site exactly what is going to happen to our economy? If so,speak up please! Two, after the 7 lean years PHARAOH OWNED EVERYTHING!!! After just 3/4 of a lean year with Obama, he already owns the banks and 2 of the big three. Health care next…
Here in NZ american muscle(‘60-’72) has seen the best gains of all cars in the last 15 yrs. Australian muscle cars are, as always,very popular here too. Aussies make great cars…Holdens(GM) and Falcons(Ford).Seems to me that theres a bit of a TAX revolt brewing in the USA at the moment. And who can blame the average citizen for that,when its so OBVIOUS that corruption rules at the top. No tax without representation is an american anthem after all.
Disclosure: I ride a 1965 Triumph ‘thunderbird’,and its not worth anything because its not for sale.
“deflation now, inflation later”. Quite. Watching the government’s forces of inflation do battle against private sector contraction is like watching someone organising a rowdy keg party to drown out the noise of a funeral service. But when will the music stop and the dollar get a decent burial? I’m plumping for 2010 as the year of the next stock market crash and the final flight to safety (and a last opportunity to short treasuries and buy gold) before collapse in 2011.