The Contrarian Curse

I have the Contrarian Curse, and I have it bad. The Contrarian Curse is: as soon as the herd adopts your previously contrarian view, you start questioning the new consensus, just as you questioned the previous consensus.

Example #1: fiat currencies are doomed. After all, if creating “money” out of thin air solves all our problems, why not just let everyone print as much as they want at home? Oh, wait, only the super-wealthy and powerful get the newly created “money”? Oh, that makes it really sustainable, doesn’t it?

Now the hot meme is the U.S. dollar is expiring and gold/commodity-backed currencies will replace it atop the heap. Many of us on the fringes have pondered alternatives to fiat currency, and so this becoming mainstream is a real sea change.

Which immediately arouses my contrarian curse. Ok, so exactly how does a gold/commodity-backed currency work? If gold or wheat declines (as measured in purchasing power to everything else), does the quantity of currency shrink to reflect this decline in value?

Can the currency supply only expand if gold/commodities rise in relative value? Can the issuing central bank just keep emitting new currency without expanding the reserves of gold/commodities?

What about private banking creating new “money” by originating new mortgages and other loans? What’s backing all this new privately-created “money”?

Knotty Questions Without Easy Answers

Lots of knotty questions, few if any detailed answers to how a gold-backed currency functions in actual markets. An idea can be great as an abstraction but the execution of the details is what differentiates an abstraction from a real-world system that’s functional, transparent and thus trustworthy.

Can I convert my gold-backed quatloo into gold? If not, then what exactly does gold-backed mean?

As for digital currencies issued by central banks or private banks, how are these different from existing fiat currencies, which are for all intents and purposes, already fully digital currencies?

Even more contrarian: what if the demand for U.S. dollars pushes the relative value higher despite the intrinsic flaws in fiat currencies?

“Money” is a funny thing. You can print more, but expanding the supply tends to devalue the existing stock of “money,” reducing the value of the newly issued currency. But if demand for the “money” exceeds supply, the relative value increases even as the supply continues to expand.

Here’s another funny thing about “money.” Take a bunch of loans – student loans, truck loans, mortgages, lines of credit, etc., and extinguish all that debt by writing them off as uncollectible, forgiving the loan, reducing the market value of the underlying collateral (if any), and so on. All that “money” goes to Money Heaven and the supply of “money” shrinks accordingly.

If demand remains steady, this reduction in the supply of “money” will push its relative value up.

Hmmm…

Example #2: yields and interest rates have to stay near-zero or the system implodes. Now that debt has ballooned to insane levels, there’s no way to service the debt except at near-zero rates of interest which means Treasury yields also have to be near-zero.

Now that this is the consensus, I wonder: what if rates will continue rising anyway? What would it take for the 40-year bull market in bonds – i.e. 40 years of declining yields/interest rates – to reverse into a Bear market for bonds, i.e. yields/interest rates steadily marching higher?

What if entire mountains of debt are extinguished, effectively reducing the supply of “money”? If capital becomes scarce, then perhaps there will be a premium charged to borrow it.

Geopolitically, one way to reduce the burden of higher commodity prices is to increase the value of the nation’s “money” by inducing demand while limiting supply. One way to induce demand is to treat capital fairly and transparently.

What if all the new consensus memes are as wrong as the ones they replaced? I told you it’s a curse.

OK, let’s move on. Some say we’re entering a replay of the 1970s. Is it true?

The 1970s or the 1920s?

The awakening of inflation after decades of slumber has triggered a flurry of comparisons to the 1970s accompanied by a chorus of projections for 1970s-type stagflation, defined as inflation plus economic stagnation — limited or negative growth and high unemployment.

A less popular comparison is with the 1920s: a massive expansion of debt, an equally massive speculative bubble in assets and extreme wealth-income inequality, all against a backdrop of slowing growth and debt saturation.

Each of these eras shares certain characteristics with the present, but beneath the surface there are consequential systemic differences. Let’s start with the 1970s.

The oil shock that fueled inflation had two sources: 1) the oil-exporting nations took control of their hydrocarbon resources and repriced them in the context of 2) declining reserves and production in the West, particularly the U.S., which had been the Saudi Arabia of the world through the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

A second, much less understood dynamic was the immense investment required to clean up the U.S. industrial base. Pollution in the U.S. was out of control by the early 1970s, with toxic rivers catching fire and high levels of air pollution. The oil shock prompted federal regulations on pollution and improvements in the basic efficiency of appliances, vehicles, etc.

This was a major sea change for the entire industrial sector, and it required immense investments of capital and a painful learning curve. This diversion of capital depressed profits and acted as an economy-wide tax on the system. In today’s money, the overall cost of this transition was in the trillions of dollars.

Debt

The debt levels in the 1970s were by today’s standards absurdly modest. The cultural values of frugality and avoidance of debt still held, and there was resistance to heavy public-private borrowing that has completely vanished.

The demographics of the 1970s was also completely different from today. The 65-million strong Baby Boom generation was entering the workforce and starting families and enterprises. The demographic double-whammy was the mass entry of women into the workforce as opportunities and ambitions expanded.

Meanwhile, the energy picture was brightening under the radar as the development of newly discovered super-giant oil fields in Alaska, the North Sea and Africa began. It took many years to bring these new hydrocarbon sources online, but by the mid 1980s, the price of oil had fallen to lows that slashed the income of oil exporting nations, including the Soviet Union.

None of these conditions are present today. Much of America’s domestic production was offshored in the past 20 years, the demographics are no longer as favorable (soaring population of elderly and flatlined workforce) and the production from the super-giant fields brought online in the 1970s is declining. There are no new super-giant fields in the global pipeline to replace those in the depletion phase of declining production.

Unchartered Territory

As for the 1920s: the parallels are debt saturation and speculative excess against a backdrop of an economy that feasted on debt-fueled spending and speculation while absorbing new technologies.

The differences are the U.S. still had immense natural resources and relatively limited infrastructure in the 1920a. While private debt was through the roof – $100 in a stock market account leveraged $900 in stock purchases due to the 10% cash margin requirement–federal debt was still modest compared to modern levels.

This set the stage for massive expansions of federal debt in World War II that funded sustained investments in infrastructure through the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

In the present, we have all the fragilities of the 1920s and few of the strengths. We have all the debt saturation and speculative bubble excesses but our resources have been heavily tapped and every sector of the economy is heavily indebted.

All of these similarities and differences are setting up a sea-change revaluation of capital, resources and labor that will be on the same scale as the tumultuous transformations of the 1920s and 1970s.

We’re in uncharted territory.

Regards,

Charles Hugh Smith
for The Daily Reckoning