Of Fat Tails and Fashionable Gloom and Doom
“Worried that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. dollar are on the brink of collapse,” says a report at CNNMoney, “lawmakers from 13 states… are seeking approval from their state governments to either issue their own alternative currency or explore it as an option.”
“In the event of hyperinflation,” warns Glen Bradley, who has sponsored one such proposal in North Carolina “depression, or other economic calamity related to the breakdown of the Federal Reserve System… the state’s governmental finances and private economy will be thrown into chaos.”
And with that we find ourselves in peculiar territory this morning.
We’re on a train to D.C. to meet with fellow conspirators — gentlemen from the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ — who share in the belief gold must be reintroduced to the global monetary system. It’s become an unintentional hobby of sorts.
The meeting is classified at the moment, so we’ll reserve comments for another time.
But our current mission is only part of what’s making us uneasy.
We begin today by briefly exploring what our line of work is all about. Scientists who’ve studied probabilities and plotted them on a chart typically find a bell-curve distribution — in which the most likely events bunch up in the middle of the curve.
But a funny thing happens out at the ends of the curve, where the rare events are registered.
“Scientists have found small bumps and bulges,” explains Bill Bonner. “Things that were not expected to happen very often actually happened more than they thought.”
“’Hundred-year floods,’ for example, happened every 88 years. ‘One in a million’ shots hit their mark every 700,000 or so. Statisticians refer to these odd bulges on the extremities of bell-shaped curves as ‘fat tails.’ Instead of tailing off as they are supposed to, the rare events seem to swell up where you don’t expect them.”
We are in the business of anticipating fat-tail events — while the “mainstream media” sit in the middle of the bell curve. Click the graph to enlarge and you’ll get the idea:
The problem is that since 2008, “fat-tail events” — like the collapse of the U.S. dollar and the dismembering of the Federal Reserve system — have become harder for us to stake out.
We were once derided as “doom and gloomers.”
Now doom and gloom has become downright fashionable. Heck, we see the National Geographic Channel debuted a show last night visiting survivalists in their bunkers… and here we are carrying on with business as usual in the “belly of the beast.”
With all that in mind, we daresay that declaring the mother of all financial bubbles might be passe. Don’t get us wrong: It’s still inevitable the bubble will pop.
But today we throw in the towel and make a concession: The monetary mandarins will successfully inflate the bubble a few months longer. And the peace we expect to break out once they’re defrocked of their power and prestige will have to wait for another day.
“The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) has made it official,” writes Daily Reckoning regular Charles Kadlec at Forbes: “After its latest two-day meeting, it announced its goal to devalue the dollar by 33% over the next 20 years.”
And that’s if everything goes according to the plan… based on the Fed’s now-formal target of 2% annual inflation.
Likewise, the Federal Reserve’s latest figures on consumer credit jumped in December — to an annualized 9.3% rate, on top of November’s 9.9%.
We’ve seen nothing like it in 10 years — not since the Fed poured gasoline on the fire first ignited by the tech bust in late 2001 made it possible for automakers to offer 0% financing.
Yes, student loans are a big part of the growth, as they’ve been for many months now. But auto loans are up big, and even credit card use is growing again.
The Wall Street Journal talks to a bank president in Colorado who says loan volume is up because more people now qualify and they’re willing to take on more debt.
The paper also profiled a couple in Pennsylvania financing a new SUV. “We had looked at our budget, and it was something we knew we were comfortable affording,” said Heather Davidson. They’re buying a 2012 Nissan Armada for $57,000.
Presumably they got every bell and whistle available, since the manufacturer’s suggested retail for the base model Armada is $40,275. But hey, why not splurge and trick the thing out? It’s easy payments of $650 a month for the next 72 months, the paper says.
Six years? Oy…
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