The Kondratieff Cycle: The Kondratieff Cycle Revisited

“Deflationists argue, ‘Next year, in America!’ They have been wrong every year since 1933.

“Inflationists argue, ‘Next year, in America!’ They have been correct every year since 1933.

“Gentlemen, place your bets!”

Those are the arguments Gary North presented in “‘Inflation vs. Deflation’ Revisited”:

“Monetary inflation produces price inflation. Monetary deflation produces price deflation.

“The most important money supply charts are found here. I implore you: click this link.

“http://snipurl.com/fedcharts

“Click the first three links on the page.

“If you refuse to do this, then you are not really interested in the inflation vs. deflation debate.”

Economic Trends: Debating the Kondratieff Cycle

Several days later, Gary North argues, “Price Deflation: A Great Idea With Low Probability”:

“You will find a statistic that the deflationists are either unaware of or prefer that their subscribers remain unaware of. Fact: In not one year since 1992 has the rate of price deflation in Japan fallen by as much as 1%. In half of the years, Japan experienced price inflation. In 2004, prices were flat.

“What does this tell us? It tells us that the deflationists have neither economic theory nor modern economic history on their side. They are really lousy psychologists, too.”

The heart of the matter was a collapse of CREDIT that actually overwhelmed Japan even as the central bank tried to prevent it by injections of money. That collapse in credit caused Japan’s mammoth asset bubbles to pop and housing prices to decline for 18 straight years. It also caused the stock market to fall from 40,000 to 8,000 or so in the same time. North ignores declining credit for 60 straight months even as the Bank of Japan tried to prop things up via money supply.

The Kondratieff Cycle: What About Prices in Japan?

Ojisan on The Motley Fool writes:

“I lived in Japan from 1997-2000, and prices of many good and services definitely fell, including food items, haircuts, movie tickets, travel, subscriptions, etc.

“With services, most of the time, it was difficult to see deflation from the outside, because the listed prices didn’t change much, but discounts and ‘specials’ became so common that getting less than the actual price was easy. In the case of subscriptions, for example, companies started throwing in freebies, like coupons for other stuff, household goods, etc., so the consumer was getting more for the same yen.

“Of course, durable goods fell in price, but that’s pretty much expected, especially on the tech side. Still, 100 yen shops (dollar stores) sprung up all over the place while I was there, with some pretty surprising stuff, most of it made in Korea, China, and Malaysia. Secondhand shops, previously shunned by Japanese, became more popular, and more common, putting pressure on department stores, forcing constant sales.

“Finally, it became noticeably easier to haggle, even in the department stores. When I bought a video camera, for example, they threw in all kinds of extras to close the deal. So technically, I paid the listed price, but not really.”

Is it that unlikely that with rising unemployment in the wake of a housing crash that prices of movies, haircuts, and other services drop here too? I think not. If inflationists point out rising home prices as evidence of inflation, then they must point out home price declines as evidence of deflation if and when a housing bust happens.

Economic Trends: Inflation Monster Captured

Following is a snip about deflation in Japan from “Inflation Monster Captured”:

“There are many that think true deflation (decrease in money supply) cannot happen under a fiat system. I disagree, but perhaps the point is moot. Money supply itself actually never contracted in Japan. Instead, it grew very slowly for quite some time. However, bank credit outstanding contracted for 60 months in a row. Clearly, there was a credit contraction. How did money supply still manage to grow? Fiscal deficits were ramped up immensely, roads to nowhere were built, and the Bank of Japan monetized all of it.

“In addition, money velocity plummeted. The net effect of the credit contraction on prices was clearly what one would nowadays call ‘deflationary.’ Prices across a broad range of assets and goods and services fell. Indeed, practically everything fell but government bonds. People were amazed at the alleged ‘bond bubble,’ as well as the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) of the Bank of Japan. However, a 1% interest rate on a 10-year bond makes sense when prices fall 2.5% annually. The real yield is obviously far higher than 1%. Perhaps a practical way to think of deflation under a fiat system is the destruction of credit/debt that exceeds growth in money supply.”

As for current monetary conditions, the entire M (M1, M2, M3, MZM) monetary series is known to have double counting errors. In addition, the M series fails to properly distinguish between credit and money. Frank Shostak pointed out these flaws in an article about Austrian money supply (money AMS) entitled, “Making Sense of Money Supply Data.”

Current money supply (money AMS) figures are much tighter than meets the eye. A glance at the yield curve suggests the same thing.

Five problems of those dismissing the deflation argument:

1. Projecting forever into the future the inflation one sees today.
2. Failure to understand the deflationary nature of a credit implosion.
3. Failure to understand the magnitude of the credit implosion that is likely to come with a housing bust.
4. Failure to understand the difference between money and credit.
5. Assuming that deflation in Japan was a cultural thing and cannot happen here.

For a great discussion about projecting the current trend forever into the future, I highly recommend Marc Faber’s classic book Tomorrow’s Gold.

In “Bernankeism: Another Good Reason to Buy Gold,” Jay Taylor writes:

“‘There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.’ — Ludwig von Mises”

Sooner or later? That is the question. I remain convinced that Ian Gordon’s Kondratieff Winter scenario will come to pass. Then we will see massive bankruptcies, enormous levels of unemployment, extremely high rates of savings and debt repudiation, and the excesses of the economic slate will be wiped clean and a new K Cycle can begin. That will be a horrible environment for commodities, but not for gold and cash.

The Kondratieff Cycle: “Real or Fabricated?”

Is the whole idea of the Kondratieff Cycle just a figment of some very imaginative minds?

“One of the mystical ‘cycles’ that has been getting a lot of play from time to time is the flimsiest ‘cycle’ of them all: the Kondratieff long cycle. The Kondratieff is supposed to be a strictly, or at least roughly, periodic cycle of about 54 years, which allegedly underlies and dominates the genuine cycles for which we have actual data. Even though, as we shall see, this cycle is strictly a figment of its fevered adherents’ imagination, there does seem to be some sort of cycle in the periods when the ‘Kondratieff’ captures the interest of financial and economic analysts…

“Most of the Kondratieffites confidently predicted that the peak would arrive in 1974, just 54 years after the previous peak. Previous peak-to-peak stretches had been 52 (from 1814 to 1866) and 54 (1866 to 1920). So where indeed is the peak? It is now 1984 and counting. We are 10 years past the confident prediction and we still have inflation. The Kondratieffites have been forecasting imminent deflation since the magic 1974 year, but still…nothing…

“Time is inevitably running out on the Kondratieffites. For there will be no Big Bang, no repeat of 1929. Pointing to problems in the economy, to stagnation, to stagflation, to falling commodity prices, to secular rises in the unemployment rate, while interesting and significant, is not enough. It does not demonstrate the Kondratieff. After all, there are always economic problems. The point is that there is no permanent depression, and there is not, and will not be, any deflation. The idea that we are right now in the midst of a Kondratieff depression, but that the deflation is being masked by inflationary bank credit, cannot be the way out. For that is simply the mystic’s fudge factor so that you can never prove him wrong, regardless of the evidence. No, the Kondratieff is dead, and now it is simply a question of how long it will take the Kondratieffites to lie down, to admit defeat and slip away into the night…

“We can only sum up the correct answer to the problem of the business cycle. We have already seen a hint of the solution: that inflation and the inflationary boom are caused by bank credit expansion generated by governments. In fact, government’s central banking system provides the key causal element for all business cycles, a cause exogenous to the market economy. Continuing government intervention sets in motion business cycles by generating inflationary booms. Because these booms distort the signals of the marketplace in interest rates and in relative prices, they bring about grave distortions of production and prices, which must be corrected by recessions and depressions…

“And so we see — and this is the great insight of the ‘Austrian’ theory of the trade cycle — that micro- and macroeconomics are in harmony after all. The free market does tend to adjust harmoniously without boom and bust, without incurring clusters of severe business losses. It is government intervention in the market that creates the business cycle, and unfortunately makes the corrective adjustment of recessions necessary. The cause of the boom-bust cycle is not some mystical periodic Force to which man must bend his will; the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

The Kondratieff Cycle: Objections to the K Cycle

In reading the above, I believe one can summarize Rothbard’s biggest objections as follows:

· The K Cycle is not governed by nice, neat waves at regularly spaced intervals
· The K Cycle is not a natural cycle. It is based on government intervention and other outside factors
· Kondratieffites changed the meaning of the word “depression” as needed to curve-fit 54-year cycles.

Does that mean that the study of Kondratieff Cycles is as useless as tarot card reading? Certainly, there is no reason why cycles should be 54 years long, or any other number, either. One of the reasons Kondratieffites have been so dismissed is their insistence on cycles, super-cycles, grand super-cycles, etc., as well as bending data and definitions to get around variances in those cycles. Still, can anyone deny that overexpansion sets the very seeds of its own demise? Indeed, there are examples going back to Caesar and beyond. A great book on the subject is Empire of Debt by Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin.

Is “cycle” even the right word? Would “business fluctuation” be better? Then again, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.”

The Chinese have a much simpler way of looking at things: “Three generations rich, fourth generation poor.” I am sure as far as generalities go that one is as good or as bad as any other, but the implications seem obvious enough: People forget that prosperity is a result of hard work and saving. Far enough removed, no one remembers the previous economic bust, nor do they think there will ever be another one.

Sticking to fixed cycles of 54 years led to many premature K Winter calls by various people, some of them being rather famous. But does that mean there will not be an upcoming bust, simply because it has not happened in the prerequisite time frame? That we will have another bust as a result of the reckless overexpansion of credit seems to be an Austrian given. A rise from those ashes also seems relatively assured.

Let’s study the following paragraph in greater detail:

“The point is that there is no permanent depression, and there is not, and will not be, any deflation. The idea that we are right now in the midst of a Kondratieff depression, but that the deflation is being masked by inflationary bank credit, cannot be the way out. For that is simply the mystic’s fudge factor so that you can never prove him wrong, regardless of the evidence. No, the Kondratieff is dead, and now it is simply a question of how long it will take the Kondratieffites to lie down, to admit defeat and slip away into the night.”

I am not aware of any K Cycle theorists calling for a “permanent depression,” and if there were some who suggested we were in the midst of a Kondratieff depression in the ’80s or ’90’s, they were most certainly wrong. As for fudge factors: Is there much difference between believing in the inevitability of K Winter versus the inevitability of a “final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion”? If so, what is that difference? That said, the valid objections of Rothbard pertaining to the various 54-year “cycles,” as they have been labeled on various Kondratieff charts, should indeed raise more than a few eyebrows.

Following is an “Interest Rate Interpretation” of the K Cycle:

Here is a longer-term view:

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”

The implication is that cycles are not about a fixed period of time per se, but rather the concept that malinvestments during the boom years will be repudiated (voluntarily or not) in a collapse in credit (debt) during K Winter. Perhaps the cycles are getting longer. Mises’ statement would seem to allow it.

The Kondratieff Cycle: Another Deflationist Excuse?

I propose what we have really seen since the 2002 lows is a “False Spring” reflation caused by the Fed slicing interest rates to 1% in a foolish attempt to defeat the current cycle. That intervention created an echo bubble in housing and an even bigger bubble in credit expansion. The reason that it was a False Spring is that the excesses of the previous credit expansion have never been purged. Consumers never stopped spending, and instead went deeper in debt.

1. Rising productivity and rampant credit expansion led to massive overcapacity.
2. Global wage arbitrage is putting downward pressure on wages and benefits.
3. An enormous bubble in credit lending developed, causing malinvestments and speculation.
4. Speculative credit lending fueled bubble prices in houses and other assets, including the stock market.
5. At some point, housing prices will fall as the pool of stupid buyers exhausts itself. The housing sector will stall. 6. A stalled housing sector will cause rising unemployment and lower demand for goods and services, appliances, eating out, etc., etc., etc.
7. Bankruptcies will rise.
8. Banks will not be willing to extend further credit on assets declining in value, especially to those out of work or nearly underwater on their homes. In fact, appraisals will get tighter at long last.
9. Credit lending will plunge. We have already seen the second consecutive month of declining consumer credit. This is the first time since 1992. There is every reason to believe a reversal is under way. If not now, then soon.
10. Bankruptcies, falling asset prices, and people walking away from mortgage loans is a destruction of credit.
11. If credit counted as inflation on the way up, a destruction in credit MUST be counted as deflationary on the way down.
12. The destruction in credit, rising bankruptcies, an unwillingness of banks to lend, and a rising propensity for people to save will be greater than any monetary printing by the Fed to stop it. That is what happened in Japan, and that is what will happen here.

That is the deflationary case, and I feel it is 100% rock solid. It is a mistake to think it cannot happen again just because it has not happened since the Great Depression. The malinvestments (housing and stock market) are going to be brutally punished, credit is going to get pounded, and the desire to hold cash and to save will rise. That is the very essence of deflation.

Ludwig von Mises: “Depression is the aftermath of credit expansion.” Whether or not one wishes to label that “depression” as K Winter, it is coming like night follows day, and Austrian economists know it.

Regards,
Mike Shedlock / Mish
January 16, 2006