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Here’s Why Hyperinflationist Lira Is Wrong
First, let me say that I’ve long enjoyed reading the rants of over-the-top inflationists like Jim Willie, but also the relatively subdued essays of Gonzalo Lira — even if the latter sometimes comes across as the kind of guy who could wear out a mirror. I feel a comradeship with both because, predictions about the financial endgame aside, I agree with much of what they have said — most particularly about the robust defensive role that bullion seems likely to play no matter what happens. But that is not to say that I agree with all of Lira’s and Jim Willie’s arguments. Some background is in order. My instincts concerning deflation were hard-wired in 1976 after reading C.V. Myers’ The Coming Deflation. The title was premature, as we now know, but the book’s core idea was as timeless and immutable as the Law of Gravity. Myers stated, with elegant simplicity, that “Ultimately, every penny of every debt must be paid — if not by the borrower, then by the lender.” Inflationists and deflationists implicitly agree on this point — we are all ruinists at heart, as our readers will long since have surmised, and we differ only on the question of who, borrower or lender, will take the hit. As Myers made clear, however, someone will have to pay. If you understand this, then you understand why the dreadnought of real estate deflation, for one, will remain with us even if 30 million terminally afflicted homeowners leave their house keys in the mailbox. To repeat: We do not make debt disappear by walking away from it; someone will have to take the hit.
Expanding on that point alone, I could dismiss Lira’s entire argument with a wave of the hand, invoking the killer question that blogger Charles Hugh Smith has asked of overheated inflationists, to wit: Why would the rich and powerful men who control the Federal Reserve, and who would be wiped out by hyperinflation, allow such a thing to happen? The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t. And won’t. I’ve made this point myself many times before and in many ways, sometimes asking rhetorically whether we should expect Joe Sixpack and tens of millions of other underwater homeowners to be able to retire their mortgages using the confetti money that a hyperinflation would produce. Mortgage lenders would be big losers, of course, but so would anyone hoping to ever own a home — or to borrow money, for whatever purpose.
Unbearable Cost of ‘Escaping’ Debt
One of the best places to find the inflation vs. deflation argument deconstructed to a fine science, and to confront the horrific – and, as I am about to argue, unbearable — cost of “escaping” debt via hyperinflation, is the 1993 book The Great Reckoning. Co-authors Jim Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg went to great lengths to refract every aspect of the debate. It was this book, and a subsequent dialogue that I had with Jim Davidson, that hardened my deflationist ideas, convincing me – as they likely would many of you, though perhaps not Lira — that a deflationary path would at least be less ruinous than a hyperinflationary one. To be sure, vast amounts of real wealth would be destroyed in either case. But deflation would have the virtue of inflicting pain on debtors more or less in accordance with their sins, bankrupting those who most deserved it. That said, one needn’t drag in moral baggage to explain why the powers that be are extremely unlikely to pursue a hyperinflationary course.
And “pursue” is the correct word here, since, as The Great Reckoning made clear, hyperinflations don’t simply happen; they can only occur following the willful and deliberate decision of a sovereign government to hyperinflate. We need only consider the catastrophic consequences of hyperinflation to understand why such a scheme is so very unlikely to be promoted and effected by the Masters of the Universe. For starters, savers and lenders as a class would be wiped out, since their financial assets would become as worthless as the dollar itself. Bond markets and all other institutional conduits of saving and investment would cease to function in the absence of trust – trust that would take many years for capitalists to earn back. From day one, a darkening economy would subsist on cash transactions, which in turn would bring on the hardest of times, little economic growth, and a drop in the standard of living so steep that it might take a generation to rekindle even a glimmer of the American Dream.
Deflation’s ‘Virtues’
Deflation, on the other hand, would leave the bond and stock markets intact, sparing those with little or no debt from its worst ravages. For those who owe, a tidal wave of bankruptcies would mete out punishment commensurate with each borrower’s sins of profligacy and/or greed. Businesses would be starved for credit, but whatever savings were available would go to the most promising of them. Most advantageously for an economy on-the-mend, it would be many years before capital would be hijacked by the paper-shufflers and feather merchants. In both the public and private sphere, Americans would be forced to live within their means.
I won’t belabor Lira’s arguments where he attempts, not entirely without success, to “slice and dice” my logic when it is at its weakest. But his main criticism — that I have not made a case for deflation, only one against hyperinflation – is disingenuous. For in fact, I have stated the case for deflation thus: Someday very soon, following the precipitous failure of the world’s banks and securities markets, we will all be too broke to push the price of anything sky-high. Hyperinflationists assume we will have vast piles of cash at-the-ready, physical or digital, to exchange for real goods in a panic or along the way to hyperinflation. But will we? Read Lira’s smug hit-job a dozen times and you will find no mention of how that cash will get into our hands, much less into our hands if the banking system should go blotto. He avers only that, well before a collapse, via quantitative easing, the government will “ram” money “into the economy.” As if that hasn’t been tried to death already.
No Middle Way
If you believe that one or the other, deflation or hyperinflation, will eventually do us in, then you may find yourself won over by my argument simply on the evidence I muster against hyperinflation. Read on and judge for yourself. For what it’s worth, Lira’s ruinist essays suggest that we do see eye to eye on one thing – that there is no “middle way” that might allow us to avoid the catastrophic liquidation of a global debt bubble whose notional value has been estimated as high as a quadrillion dollars.
Let me dwell for yet another moment on this idea that Americans could go broke overnight. Lira apparently believes this unlikely, if not impossible, and he could be right. But not very, since it is beyond conjecture that the day-to-day economy would grind to a halt quickly if digital money were thrown into chaos and disrepute for more than a few days. And it’s not as though Americans are so very confident in electronic money’s soundness at this point that the banking system could withstand even a minor crisis. Unfortunately, and as we all know, there are no minor crises any more, especially in the financial realm.
We’ll All Be Broke
So, broke is what most of us will be when the dust settles, and it is perhaps only a matter of the rate at which we go broke that divides inflationist from deflationist. How quickly could the financial system come tumbling down? Last May’s “flash crash” on Wall Street demonstrated that it could occur in a trice. Picture the Morning After the next flash crash, but assume that, this time around, the Plunge Protection Team has been unable to arrest its spread into bond markets and other securities markets around the world. Hardly a stretch, right? But it’s a big stretch to imagine a hyperinflation arising from the smoke and rubble of the creditless world that would result.
Will we have gone broke without having had the chance to pay off our mortgages in snide? I say yes; Lira, for his argument to hold, is obliged to say no. I hope he’s right. Then again, maybe hyperinflation will unfold so slowly that we’ll all have time to trade piles of shrinking dollars for real stuff currently owned by…fools?
Whatever happens, I wouldn’t put much store in Lira’s assurance that even small branch-banks keep scads of cash around. Try to withdraw $25,000 from your own branch if you want to find out the truth. He’ll probably say that the banks, with a nod from Uncle Sam, could refill everyone’s account with digital money overnight. I say, think about that for a moment – about the economically fatal traffic jam this would create instantly in the world of real transactions.
Deflationary Gas-Bag
Lira’s arguments, although certainly not his ungentlemanly, preening condescension, are at their weakest when he attempts to explain how quantitative easing will inject a hyperinflationary sum of dollars into the real economy. He says our bankrupt government will simply spend limitless quantities of funny money into the “wider economy.” If it were that easy, why are home prices still falling after trillions of dollars worth of “stimulus”? And why have wages failed to rise? Granted, fuel and grocery prices have been going up. But how long can that trend continue with incomes stagnating and household discretionary cash plummeting? (That was not a problem in 1922 Weimar, by the way, for reason that I shall explain shortly.) And how many seats will the airlines fill this summer if prices stay above $500? With respect to the inflation of stock-market prices, we’ll let Lira shoot himself in the foot if he wants to argue that Wall Street’s cosmic gas-bag is other than a deflationary juggernaut waiting to implode. Meanwhile, a vastly larger gas-bag in the form of a global derivatives bubble is set to implode with irresistible force. Hundreds of trillions of dollars’ worth of collateral are destined to shrink to the vanishing point. That is the true measure of deflation’s force, and when it starts to snowball again as it did in 2008, no puny multitrillion-dollar monetization by the Fed will even begin to counteract it.
Finally, we cannot let Lira evade the question of how, specifically, the government will “ram” (his word) QE3/QE4/QE5 money into the economy, especially when the state and local governments who in earlier times would have been the most eager and efficient conduits for these sums have begun to refuse them, knowing as they do that each new stimulus dollar will only create more debt for future taxpayers. We’d like to believe that the common sense of Republican and Tea Party governors and legislators alone will suffice to smother any inflation that might otherwise seep into the economy via supercharged outlays of cities, counties and states. In fact, the deflationary opposite is happening as local and state governments expand layoffs and pare budgets to the bone. Which leaves only the private economy to receive a wage stimulus sufficient to catalyze hyperinflation. On that score, just as we’ve asked hyperinflationists to wake us when we can sell our home for a quadrillion dollars, we’ll ask them now to send us a job application when GM is paying assembly-line workers $800 an hour.
When Money Dies
Big employers effectively did so in Germany, allowing weekly wage settlements with then-pervasive trade unions to track hyperinflation almost step-for-step. But you’ll need to read Adam Fergusson’s book about the Weimar hyperinflation, When Money Dies, to understand exactly why the U.S. is legally and practically constrained from duplicating Germany’s dubious feat. If you believe otherwise — believe, as Lira evidently does, that the Fed could somehow put a google of dollars into circulation on demand — then you should be buying real estate hand-over-fist right now. When Money Dies is a great read even for those who’d rather not be disabused of the notion that today’s USA, economically and financially, is not 1921’s Weimar. I particularly recommend a chapter that recounts how the most extreme periods of German hyperinflation occurred while the country’s money-printing presses were idled by strikes. Turns out, some of Weimar’s largest employers had been authorized by the government to print scrip in the event that crates of official money didn’t arrive in time to meet payroll. Imagine what such a policy could do for Detroit! For the whole world!
Rather than argue that this couldn’t happen, we’ll say only that if it did, it would be but a momentary blip in a deflationary collapse in real estate that Lira doesn’t even mention. Just wait till the incipient collapse in commercial property values hits full-bore. This is yet another deflationary juggernaut that the arrogant and pompous Lira has conveniently failed to notice. He will soon, though, and the shock of it may yet distract his attention from an inflation that so far has barely overflowed the lettuce bin.
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Love this argument between you guys. Very informative. But please remember to keep it civil. You're both obviously quite intelligent, so its not worth muddying the waters between you with personal attacks.
I second this, on both counts.
Third, both counts.
My view is that we will get both, credit contraction will squeeze assets like houses and CRE. But, the Fed will print to meet the demand for cassh to spend ASAP on food and neccesities.
I do not know the future. Holding gold as well as CASH in FRNs as well as digits seems smart.
Ditto, and I think this guy was certifiably smarter than me, so I'll take his word for it:
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." T. Jefferson
I think we've been pretty much following the script perfectly here so far.
Why would the rich and powerful men who control the Federal Reserve, and who would be wiped out by hyperinflation, allow such a thing to happen?
Let me answer that.
Because the bulk of their wealth is in other currencies, hard assets, and unreachable by the tainted fingers of the state.
Because their power and wealth comes about through the printing of money.
Because they will next deflate the currency and buy assets for a song.
Because they have the inside information on when there will be tight or loose money they soon own everything in the nation.
Because they know that deflation will incur riots by the people and their elimination from power.
Because printing money and handing it out makes them feel powerful.
Because inflation creates two classes of people: the super-rich and powerful and the peons who live like serfs of the middle ages.
Does Rick Ackerman work for these people?
SOZ +1
Obviously the hyper-rich have provided for deflation by having piles of cash. Rick would have us believe that they have not prepared for hyperinflation by hedging themselves accordingly. Ha, not buying that logic Rick. When the rich can control the masses psychological reactions to perceptions of value then and only then can they control hyperinflation and the Governments reaction to that perception which is to print physical cash as fast as possible.
Good point about hedging. That has clearly gone on, to the tune of hundreds of trillions, but here's the rub. There is no place for the criminal class to hedge risks of that size, except with another broke bank.
As much as I hate Bernanke, and I do, much of the financial activity world wide, is simply driven by the desire to prevent the implosion of all of those essentially fraudulent "hedges."
Exactly SOZ, it isn't about paper fiat for these people, it is about power and control.
because shalom follows talmud and protocols of sion...
IF you are going to gratuitously spew crap tinged by anti-semitism, at least get it fucking right...
that's Zion you dickhead
now va chier frenchie
Preferable to not spew anything.
It destroys credibility and turns what is a great website into the appearance of a sheltered workship.
Notwithstanding, information and legitimate criticism is helpful.
It is almost as if the trolls create these screeds as a strawman to promote delegitimacy.
USA=sheltered workshop.
BTW- Ackerman is a good guy. No need for the crap.
+
Wazzup, bro?
haha, not much, you?
Cool, a regular pissin contest! Shouldn't make light of it though, very informative and thought provoking from all parties concerned. Ackerman has best one liner so far though - Lira is the kind of guy that can wear out a mirror.....lol
Thanks, Dexter. I held back on nastier putdowns, but if Lira should go on the attack again with ad hominems, I'll put on my brass knuckles. Incidentally, concerning his putdown of "those who teach," I have a trading CTA call Bluefin Financial LLC whose performance is public record.
Touchy-touchy, aren't we, Little Man.
GL
Geez, Lira. We've all been hearing the inflation/deflation debate for years now and most of the time the writers tend to just stick to providing backups to their arguments...it all eventually comes down to individuals placing their bets in what they understand is the most likely outcome. Not sure why you went after Ackerman personally the way you did with your original post, but the comments in your article, as well as your response above, lead me to believe that you, rather than Ackerman, is the "Little Man".
Dude, dont be an ass.
If you think your logic is infallible, answer Ricks question.
How can you have hyperinflation across the board with housing and salaries falling?
A run to dump treasury bonds would do the trick. That's when the dollar is destroyed and we wouldn't be able to buy any imports because no one would want our worthless dollars.
Hey,Rick is ok with enslaving people by force and intimidation to work for and save in a worthless fraudulent currency.
i agree the dollar sucks,
Solution if you have no fear of deflation- take all you liquid assets and buy silver, when you need cash sell a bar or three. I should have done this 5 years ago.
Not every country in the world is the US?
Inflation: increase in money supply
Hyperinflation: loss of confidence in money supply
@Ricky: How many times?
true
I dont know where you live but chances are your country thrives from our consumerism.
we stop consuming... your toastado.. capiche?
Oh, the ol' 'US has been/will forever be the only game in town' chestnut.
Er, unless the rest of the planet over and above the 250 mil or so that make up the US start 'consuming' a slightly larger share? Look around...it seems like you haven't for awhile.
Good luck with your hubris. (FWIW: it's wearing a bit thin.)
Not being a smart ass here but what did you do with the other 60+ million Americans? A bit stuck in 1990 as for as the population goes eh? I am not belittling your point, just reminding people that accuracy is important in these discussions, if you can't be exact but know you are rounding or generalizing to make a point please say so.
I do also think that economic activity around the globe will not alter that much in share per nation, I mean nothing stays the same and all will experience ups and downs, but also all have unique blends of circumstances that have held them back in the past and will hold them back in future, like property rights, rule of law, inventiveness in general, intellectual property rights, investment in R&D, political stability, social safety nets, respect for individuality, lack of secular government, lack of natural resources, and crushing overpopulation, yes the BRIC's are suddenly consuming more, but from where I stand most of that is temporary and not structural, Russia is a plutocratic mafia based economy with major problems in infrastructure and distribution, ruled by one man with a few dozen oligarchs as deputies for now. China and India both have a long list of major problems to overcome but the one neither will overcome in my opinion is crushing overpopulation that threatens to undo all their gains. Brazil has also many issues that will limit their advancement and population is becoming an issue there as well, although they have the bright spot of vast new fields of petroleum being found that will help.
In my opinion the USA is and has been the economic leader of the world for a lot of reasons and most of those are still viable, still making us the global envy, and we have social and political cycles, ups and downs, but unless we really mess those advantages up we will retain our leadership no matter the hells the planet goes through. It happened before in the 20's and 30's and 40's, depressions, hyperinflations, wars, and we still got through it with America not only richest and the world leader but stronger and richer than ever. The only thing that will destroy the nation in this respect is republicanism should it gain traction.
Right 310 mil or so. Compared to the entire population of the earth it's still a very small fraction; a simple enough point. And the very large remainder of that fraction to which I was referring only has to pick up their consumption a small fraction per capita to soak up any excess created by a dearth of demand suddenly appearing in your fraction of the world's population; it's the nature of fractions. People will eat, after all. But yeah, 'it depends', natch.
"In my opinion the USA is and has been the economic leader of the world...", <emphasis mine>
Sure. Jingoist, without even attempting to qualify the brutal truth of 'how'; but sure. Hovever, ya lose me by continuing,
"...most of those are still viable, still making us the global envy, and we have social and political cycles, ups and downs, but unless we really mess those advantages up we will retain our leadership no matter the hells the planet goes through."
more jingoism, or overly optimistic; hard to tell which. Unless you really believe that the US military acts on your behalf of course, in which case <facepalms>.
"This is no time for my country right or wrong; remember what that brought." -Lou Reed
Regards
Good work with the bold, but please do not criticize me for stating that what I was saying was opinion rather than fact, it is something this board could use a lot more of. Jargon and jingoist phrasing is about the best I can manage short of writing a paper for peer review to be published, especially at this hour.
Overly optimistic? Can you prove that? I mean, I respect your position because I admit I have no better knowledge of the future than any other person here, but neither do you possess a crystal ball.
I know the US military does not act on my behalf, that is why I am a 100% disabled veteran from an event that was perfectly predictable and preventable and why it took more than 25 years of appeals to get the rating I now have.
I was only pointing out that while there have always been flaws in our nation that seemed like good ideas at the time but in hindsight were horrible mistakes, treatment of native populations for example, DDT for god's sake, Japanese internment, MAD, advertising, tattoos, but in the larger picture the USA has been a net positive for mankind in many ways and even if you feel abused by it I do not want to live anywhere else. Sanitation alone makes life here worth it.
There have been events, eras when the people here thought the world was ending, that the USA was in total failure, that the leaders were evil and/or without clue, my grandfather was raised in luxury up on the Puget Sound until one day there was a knock on the door and some fellow from the bank told his mother they had 2 hours to get their personal things packed and get out, that was May 1930. He and millions of others were scarred for life, but life did go on.
I did say HOW the nation attained such wealth and progress, in very general terms, and the list was not intended to be all inclusive, I depend on my readers to use some of their own brain cells, or would you rather I write a three hundred page book? We all use shorthand here, it was a comment not a treatise.
I am the last person you should accuse of the Archie Bunker mentality of flag waving piggy Reichwinger philosophic bent, I am a 50 something gay man that has never in his life known equal rights and who has been subjected to humiliating and degrading discrimination just for who I was born as, mostly at the hands of morons that believe in some asshole lunatic sky-god of war that any reasonably intelligent child of 6 can figure out does not exist. I am no longer even a democrat because the party has moved so far to the center/right it looks like the party of Nixon rather than FDR.
"loss of confidence" is not enough to generate hyperinflation. Again, how do I spend $1 billion on an egg if I don't earn or am given $1 billion. You tell me, GoinFawr, what is the mechanism by which U.S. workers will earn $1 billion a year?
good point! the difference between historical hyperinflations and the present day USA is historically there was a distribution of printed money driving the inflation. today the increase in money supply isn't hitting the street so it can drive prices up. commodities are also trading in a vacuum so market pricesetting mechanisms are contemporary and lack predictive qualities.
That's right, you starve, bitch, and I trade my silver for eggs!
You don't. But that doesn't mean it won't cost $999 million to bring that egg to the grocery store.
You should realise that people who sell "products/commodities/food..." sell at the highest bidder.
And if people keep paying more for the good stuff because they can because there's more then enough money. Prices will keep rising and you'll get your hyperinflation.
Digital or not. In fact, because everything is digital these days, it might go much faster then in the Weimar period where they still communicated with pigeons!
Price controls will be the big red light warning to buy whatever you can with the paper or digital tokens.
If Obama pronounces "price controls" more then 2 times in 1 speech, everybody will be fucked.
Monsanto's rise in profits : +15% confirms this.
SD, the road has been laid out by O man. He has said that the price of oil must "necessarily skyrocket", and the whole Ocare program is nothing but rationing.
This is a socialist/communist government that sees everything through the prism of government control to gain power and support for the elite running government. Got to have golf every weekend, date nights on Wed, and vacations in Marbella. Never mind the peasants. Cannot get close enough to them because they smell bad.
"Why would the rich and powerful men who control the Federal Reserve, and who would be wiped out by hyperinflation, allow such a thing to happen?"
Simple: Because they are not dependent on the survival of any one currency or country for their wealth or survival. IN fact, if they see that the ship is sinking, they would likely be the first to exit thus exacerbating the problem (causing the hyperinflation). Every time someone loses, someone also wins...and when you make the rules...you usually win.
Exit into what? Even Soros doesn't "know" which asset classes will survive, let alone perform. Deflation, unlike inflation, is not a money-making opportunity; rather, it is a time when even financial geniuses will be challeneged to preserve a fraction of their peak worth.
In my opinion, the flaw in your argument is that you seem to assume that these "men" react to situations rather than CREATE them. I am in the camp that believes they Create situations rather than react to them....And that's the big difference.
+1
And you're confusing what Soros says publicly with the actions he takes. I would think that any adult or reality TV viewer would know this is not true.
This is an old game. It has an old answer. To wit,
Right now the banks are in the position to buy up everything for dirt cheap. Will they not end up holding all the "hard assets" like farms, factories, and mines? As long as the companies that hold those assets stay afloat, with said elite at their helm, Jefferson looks pretty damn smart.
The elite don't need the dollar per se, its just a means to an end.
Cooter
Thomas Jefferson NEVER SAID THIS. THIS IS A MADE UP QUOTE from the internet. Please don't spread this kind of disinformation and do some god damned research. Thanks.
Um, my original post had a link ... to www.monticello.org ... which you suggest is a fake?
Please advise,
Cooter
EDIT: Hmmm ... my bad ... I did attempt to source ... and thought I found it when I posted orginally ...
LOL @ trgfunds! It's only one of Jefferson's more famous quotes.. Kind if illuminates 'he who protest too much' and how he feels about corporatism. lol
The elite in late 18th century France owned everything too, and look where that got them. It's true that greed can be boundless and blind people to anything else, but when the number of people who own everything gets smaller and smaller a tipping point is reached and then the guillotines come out. The only way a system holds together is if there are enough people with a stake in keeping the system going.
Commodity inflation is already here. Even Walmart's CEO says to get ready for "serious inflation."
Bernanke says the inflation is transitory....until it isn't.
"Serious inflation" means Wal Marts will be like ghost towns. Can't you hear the echoes now?
How long can Wal Marts, Home Depots, Best Buys and so on survive with "serious inflation?"
Without higher incomes, higher prices shut down the economy.
Hyperinflation can only occur when incomes keep up with inflating prices as in Weimar Germany and to a lesser extent Zimbabwe.
Exponential inflation in the prices of necessities only causes food riots, not hyperinflation.
What we are experiencing now is not money printing but asset inflation in the financial casino using microchips instead of plastic chips. The real dollars in the economy are disappearing with higher unemployment, failing small businesses and real estate deflation.
More quantitative easing will kill the economy. Less quantitative easing will kill the financial system.
There is no in-between.
Time to trade this system in for a new one....
Or maybe none at all.
Serious inflation means you get robbed for food. Not for "food money" but for actual FOOD.
The only way to deal with a society in the throws of hyperinflation...Leave.
Rick,
Why does there have to be physical cash in hand for there to be a run on goods or a parabolic rise in the velocity of money?
Also, I worked at a bank for several years and can tell you that most branches will have anywhere from $180,000 to $300,000 at a time. Banks that operate as the "Vault" for the rest of the branches can easily have several million on hand.
The reason that people get turned away for trying to get $20,000 in cash at once is because they do not have that many in large denominations at one point, nor do they want 10% of the money to go away with one customer, thus not serving all of the rest.
However, cash at one location is not the point. It is the velocity of money that matters when hyperinflation strikes. If cash changes hands for goods at a faster pace (velocity), then the volume of goods for sale drops just as fast, producing a situation where you have more money chasing fewer goods. This is a feeedback loop that gets ever worse.
Not really my field, but I'll take a stab at it. We know how the banks get money, the question is how do you and I get money? That would have to come from jobs, wage increases, small business profits, or increased lending, none of which is happening or likely to.
Velocity of money is an economic artifact, a residual, that can as easily come from speculation or theft as productive economic activity. Who is building, who is investing in plant and equipment, who has confidence to do much of anything new and important in this increasingly unstable environment? You want to start a business now, in the States? Go at it. I'll watch.
As the author says, if you believe in hyper-inflation, this is the perfect time to buy real estate. Catch that falling knife. I'll wait for a few million more foreclosures. The trend is your friend.