Hyperinflation

That Ray Dalio, famed head of the world's largest (and not one hit wonder unlike certain others) hedge fund has long been quite bearishly inclined has been no secret. For anyone who missed Dalio's must see interview (and transcript) with Charlie Rose we urge you to read this: "Dalio: "There Are No More Tools In The Tool Kit." For everyone who is too lazy to watch the whole thing, or read the transcript, the WSJ reminds us once again that going into 2012 Dalio's Bridgewater, which may as well rename itself Bearwater, has not changed its tune. In fact the CT hedge fund continues to see what we noted back in September is the greatest threat to the modern financial system: a debt overhang so large, at roughly $21 trillion, that one of 3 things will have to happen: a global debt restructuring/repudiation; global hyperinflation to inflate away this debt, or a one-time financial tax on all individuals amounting to roughly 30% of all wealth. That's pretty much it, at least according to mathematics. And according to Bridgewater. From the WSJ: "Bridgewater Associates has made big money for investors in recent years by staying bearish on much of the global economy. As the new year rings in, the hedge fund firm has no plans to change that gloomy view...What you have is a picture of broken economic systems that are operating on life support," Mr. Prince says. "We're in a secular deleveraging that will probably take 15 to 20 years to work through and we're just four years in." So basically scratch everything between 2012 and 2028? But, but, it was that paragon of investment insight Jim "Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept" O'Neill keeps telling us stocks will go up by 20%... stocks will go up by 20%....stocks will go up by 20%...

The current governments in place in Italy and Greece are puppets of the banking system, making sure that countries do not default and pay as much interest for as long as possible by implementing short term austerity measures. This is not the type of technocratic government these countries need. They need a technocratic government that sees that the current debt burden is unsustainable and cannot be serviced, acknowledging that defaults are necessary. They should seize this opportunity to change the financial system and implement structural reforms, while exercising their powers to facilitate orderly defaults for both governments and household debt. This way countries will be able to start from a situation where there is breathing room to implement much needed structural reforms throughout society.

For anyone who thinks that the ECB is some pristine virgin which has barely been touched in that special monetary printing place, we, or rather JP Morgan's Michael Cembalest, has some news for you: "To-date, that’s what the ECB has done: of the 1.1 trillion Euros extended to European banks and governments (through sovereign/covered bond purchases and repo), 970 billion has been given by the ECB." So anyone demanding that the ECB print even more outright (which incidentally we are certain will eventually happen - our thoughts are identical to those of Dylan Grice from two months ago: "ECBCTRL+P: The Next Steps In The European Implosion") should probably keep this in mind. It will also explain why German members of the ECB are dropping like flies, and why Germany, which better than anyone else, most certainly proponents of modern reincarnations of failed Keynesianism, knows what happens when central banks have gone wild, is certain that the ECB proceeding to move from €1 to many, many more trillions of explicit monetary support, will mean nothing short of hyperinflation.

Trust the Germans in the ECB (those who have not yet resigned that is) in this case Jesn Weidmann, to come in and spoil the party:

• Weidmann, speaking in Berlin, says hyperinflation shows why monetizing debt wrong
• Prohibition on monetary financing an important achievement.
• Euro treaty rightly forbids monetary financing
• Stable prices should be key goal of ECB
• Leveraging EFSF with currency reserves prohibited
• Says monetary analysis may gain importance at ECB

And for all our MMT friends:

• "One of the severest forms of monetary policy being roped in for fiscal purposes is monetary financing, in colloquial terms also known as the financing of public debt via the money printing press:” Weidmann
• Pohibition of monetary financing in the euro area “is one of the most important achievements in central banking” and "specifically for Germany, it is also a key lesson from the experience of hyperinflation after World War I"

Yesterday we had the first case study of what happens in a hyperinflation, when we noted that the local central bank had just hiked interest rates from 22% to 27%. Net result for the economy? Zero. Today is case study #2 where we learn what happens to an imploding economy which happens to be surrounded by friendly neighbors who just happen to find themselves in a massive arbitrage courtesy of a currency that is losing multiples of its value on a monthly if not daily basis. Per Bloomberg: "Belarus’s supermarkets are running out of meat as Russians take advantage of a currency crisis that a devaluation and the world’s highest borrowing costs have failed to stem. “All meat has gone to Russia,” Alexander Andreyevich, an 82-year-old former tractor-plant worker, said Aug. 25 in Minsk, the capital. “My relatives near the Russian border called me a few days ago and said the shops are empty."..."Private stall owners simply go and buy meat from state- owned vendors and sell it a couple of steps away for a hefty profit,"Deputy Agriculture and Food Minister Vasily Pavlovsky told reporters in Minsk Aug. 24. The government banned individuals in June from taking basic consumer goods such as home appliances, food and gasoline out of the country. Russians, buoyed by the removal of border checkpoints July 1 as part of a customs union, have circumvented the restrictions." Funny- if the locals had preserved their purchasing power by holding their money in gold, they would not find themselves in a position where those who still have a stable fiat exchange rate (for the time being) can literally steal products from under their noses for a paltry sum as sellers scramble to converts products into some currency before it is devalued even more tomorrow.

Belarus, which recently has been fighting hyperinflation after devaluing its currency by over half, just hiked its central refinancing rate by 5%, from 22% to 27%. We look forward to Comcast's clown channel to pitch Belarussian equities next as the local stock market is poised to outperform every single stock market in the world, complete domestic currency devaluation aside. NB: This is what hyperinflation looks like.

The market is now at a very simple crossroads: bonds are pricing in the hyperdeflation that the resumption of the global depression brings in, while gold is pricing in the central planning policy response to that hyperdeflation, which is nothing but print, print, print. Anyone who feels like arbing the spread on the trade (which has a very unpleasant end in either case), should go ahead and do it now.

Fear is creeping in...

So we move from one probably hyperinflation to another, quite factual one. As we disclosed last week, following its massive and surprising currency devaluation, Belarus has promptly plunged into hyperinflationary hell. The government, scrambling to avoid public unrest, which would likely promptly devolve into revolution and civil war, has just now decided to take reactive price freezing "measures" which will do absolutely nothing but accelerate the immediate destocking of anything and everything still available for purchase. From The Moscow Times: "Belarus on Tuesday froze prices on a number of foodstuffs as analysts warned that the former Soviet republic could descend into economic chaos and an IMF mission headed to Minsk to assess the situation." Ah, good old price controls. Failure is imminent, following which Belarus will introduce a mandatory coupon-based purchasing system now that the currency is for all intents and purposes worthless. Incidentally, those who still hold precious metals have the upper hand in determining what these are exchanged for and at what conversion ratios.

A few weeks ago we presented a chart from SocGen's Dylan Grice, which promptly went viral, indicating the ongoing dilution in the Roman silver denarius over the span of two centuries. The comparisons to the purchasing power of the dollar since the inception of the Fed were missed by precisely nobody. Yet one thing that was missing was charting the corresponding reaction in price levels for a key prevailing staple commodity, namely wheat, which was to antiquity what oil is to the world today. Well, courtesy of Paul Mylchreest's latest must read Thunderroad report, prepare to be stunned by another "comparative" chart which does an admirable job at predicting the future courtesy of the past, and which is about to go viral all over again...

"A ‘91-style meltdown is almost inevitable." So says Alexei Moiseev, chief economist at VTB Capital, the investment-banking arm of Russia’s second-largest lender, discussing the imminent economic catastrophe that is sure to engulf Belarus following the surprise devaluation of the country's currency by over 50%, which we announced on Monday. "Unless Belarus heeds Russia’s call for mass privatization
of state assets, it is headed for “hyperinflation, massive un-
and under-employment, and a shutdown of production" Moiseev concludes. Ah: "privatization" as Greece is about to learn, the lovely word that describes a fire sale of assets to one's creditors, courtesy of a "globalized" new world order. Ironically, this is precisely the warning that will be lobbed at each country in the developed world, as the global race to devalue currencies, first against each other on a relative basis, and ultimately against hard currencies, or on an absolute basis, as the world realizes that there simply is not enough cash flow to cover the interest payments on a debt load, in both the public and private sectors, that continues to rise at an astronomic rate, even as the world prepares to exit from the latest transitory, centrally-planned bounce in the Great Financial Crisis-cum-Depression that started in earnest in 2007 and has been progressing ever since. Ultimately, Belarus will succumb to hyperinflation, as will each and every other government which seek to devalue its currency (hint: all of them): "Unless Belarus heeds Russia’s call for mass privatization
of state assets, it is headed for “hyperinflation, massive un-
and under-employment, and a shutdown of production,” VTB’s
Moiseev said. The ruble will slide to 10,000 per dollar, he
added." Of course, this is the primary side effect of attempting to avoid formal bankruptcy through currency devaluation. And all those who continue to believe deflation is an outcome that will be allowed by the Fed, need to look just to the former Soviet satellite to see what lies in store for everyone currently doing all in their power to devalue their currency.

We knew it was only a matter of time before Albert Edwards would follow up to Russell Napier's call for S&P 400 with his own rejoinder. Sure enough, the SocGen strategist (who previously called for an S&P target in the same neighborhood) has just released the following: "Let me re-emphasise our 400 S&P forecast with sub-2% US bond yields" in which he says: "Amid the equity market enjoying yet another Fed induced mega-rally, many commentators have been left grasping (gasping?) for explanations for the continued low level of global bond yields despite the ruination of the public sector balance sheet. Most have latched onto QE2 as the explanation and hence expect a sharp rise in yields from June onwards as the Fed’s buying programme ends. We expect new lows in bond yields." The reason for that per Edwards, is an imminent bout of deflation, which is precisely what the Fed is hoping to create, in order to get the green light for the Jim Grant defined "QE 3 - QE N". Edwards, naturally recognizes this too: "Despite fully acknowledging the ruination of the government balance sheets as years of excess private sector debt are transferred to the public sector, we still expect to suffer another deflationary bust that will take government bond yields to new lows BEFORE government profligacy and the Fed's printing presses take us back to both double-digit inflation and bond yields. For now, we remain heavily overweight government bonds." In other words, just as we have been claiming for a long time courtesy of the Fed's so predictable Pavlovian reaction to always print more in response to deflation, enjoy 2% bond yields... just before they hit 20%.

To those who follow Dylan Grice's writings closely (and everyone should), his proposal that the only possible outcome for Japan, where stunningly tax revenues no longer ever cover non-discretionary expenditures - a sad fate that awaits none other than the US eventually, is to hyperinflate its way out, is not new. Nonetheless, during the just completed annual CFA Institute annual institute held in Edinburgh, he gave an updated presentation which indicates that he has not yet changed his opinion that if forced to pick between the lesser of two defaults, the only option is that of unbridled printing, now that the US has firm leg up in the global fiat race to the currency bottom, which we predicted back in 2009, will be the key feature of the macro theme until the end of the Keynesian experiment. So, as before, Grice's recommendation, away from the natural trade of shorting bonds (a negative carry trade which has cost the likes of Kyle Bass a pretty penny over the years) as one awaits this only possible outcome, is to actually discount the future, something the market has completely forgotten how to do, and buy stocks, in advance of the Weimar Rally for the Rising Sun. Below we present "Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst...in Japan" - Grice's presentation of an upcoming Japanese hyperinflation, which explains not only why Japan can't afford higher JGB yields, but why its to-date favorable demographic are now looking uglier by the day, and the only outcome for Shirakawa is to finally bite the bullet and beat the Chairsatan at his own game, in the process forcing the Bernank's own hand if he wishes to retain the USD's place at the head of the FX devaluation race.

Walk down history lane ...