Nominal GDP

From the management of a global currency war to the 1998 Committee to Save The World, QBAMCO provides an all encompassing escape into the reality our current - and future - monetary (and inflationary) world. While Brodsky and Quaintance do not expect a breakdown in global monetary oversight, they do expect fiat currency debasement to continue to mask the driver of real economic malaise and contraction - global bank deleveraging; and they do expect this process to lead to a popular loss of confidence in today’s major currencies as savings instruments – perhaps beginning in the global capital markets in 2013. What will eventually (or soon) occur will be the rare occasion when return-on-savings trounces return-on-investment, implying precious metals will outperform the great majority of financial assets (except for shares in precious metals miners and natural resource producers).

Yesterday we presented a simplistic analysis of why for Japan "This Time Won't Be Different", a preliminary observation so far validated by the just announced Japanese December current account deficit which was not only nearly double the expected 144.2 billion yen, printing at some 264.1 billion yen, but was only the first back-to-back monthly current account deficit since 1985. But perhaps we are wrong and this time Abe will succeed where he, and so many others, have failed before. And, as is now widely understood, perhaps Japan will succeed in finally launching the necessary and sufficient currency war that would be part and parcel of Japans great reflation, as even various G-8 members have recently acknowledged. The question is will it, and when?  One attempt at an answer comes from the fine folks at Bienville Capital who have compiled the definitive pros and cons presentation on what Japan must do, and how it will play out, at least if all goes according to plan.

Asset inflation often produces something called "wealth illusion," the belief that pricier asset holdings necessarily make one permanently richer. Illusions are dangerous. Eventually, painful reality intervenes. The "wealth illusion" of asset inflation is seductive, which is why central banks in charge of a fiat currency and subject to no external disciplines so often drift in that direction. Politicians smile in satisfaction and powerful Washington lobbies cry for more.  But an economy built on an illusion is hardly a sound structure. We may be doomed to learn that lesson once again before long.

G4+CHF can fight the currency wars longer and more aggressively than small G10 and EM countries can.  However, as Citi's Steven Englander notes, it also takes a lot of depreciation to crowd in a meaningful amount of net exports. His bottom line, GBP, CHF and JPY have a lot further to depreciate.  In principle, the USD can easily fall into this category as well, but right now the USD debate is focused on Fed policy – were it to become clear that balance sheet expansion will end well beyond end-2013, the USD would fall into the category of currency war ‘winners’ as well. Critically, though, the reality of currency wars is that policymakers do not use FX as cyclical stimulus because of its effectiveness; they use it because they have hit a wall with respect to the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies, and are unwilling to bite the structural policy bullet. The following seven points will be on every policymakers' mind - or should be.

The purpose of asset purchases by the Fed might no longer be improvements in the real economy, but rather a more subtle financing of U.S. government deficits. However, in the long run, expanding the money supply inevitably leads to inflationary pressures. Luckily for the Fed and the U.S. government, there is so much slack in the labour market that inflation might be years away. And, if we are right about the long run unemployment rate being structurally higher, then the Fed has all the room it needs to continue Quantitative Easing (QE) to infinity. This might allow them to continue to hide the true financial position of the government for many years to come. Nonetheless, the rising GAAP deficit and the sheer size of the U.S. Federal Government’s liabilities to its citizens makes it clear that one day or another, services (health care, social security) will have to be cut. Financial alchemy can hide reality, but it does not provide any tangible services. Europe’s (unresolved) experience with its debt crisis provides an insightful window into the future. Austerity measures in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece have caused tremendous pain to their citizens (25% unemployment rates) and wreaked havoc in their economies (double digit retail sales declines). Are we going to ignore the obvious?

Since Alan Greenspan became the Fed chairman in 1987, there has been a policy consensus on the primary role and effectiveness of monetary policy in cushioning an economic downturn and kicking it back to growth. Fiscal policy, due to the political difficulties in making meaningful changes, was relegated to a minor role in economic management. Staving off crisis and reviving growth still dominate today's conversation. The prima facie evidence is that the experiment has failed. The dominant voice in policy discussions is advocating more of the same. When a medicine isn't working, it could be the wrong one or the dosage isn't sufficient. The world is trying the latter. But, if the medicine is really wrong, more and more of the same will kill the patient one day. The global economy was a debt bubble, functioning on China over-borrowing and investing and the West over-borrowing and consuming. The dynamic came to an end when the debt crises exposed debt levels in the West as too high. The last source of debt growth, the U.S. government, is coming to an end, too, as politics forces it to reduce the deficit. Trying to bring back yesterday through monetary growth will eventually bring inflation, not growth.

In this piece, I re-examine what many economists call "financial repression" and I find it to be sorely lacking as a description of what is happening. I also look at a related concern about the loss of central bank independence. Color me skeptical.

With the decision of the Federal Reserve to continue its policy of asset purchases (QE) as long as US employment remains depressed, we can say that inflation targeting as a tool of monetary policy, introduced in the early 80s under Paul Volcker, has finally been buried. Central banks are now moving towards a policy of targeting asset prices and other economic variables, primarily nominal GDP (or jobs per se). The consequences of this monetarist revolution on asset price formation are difficult to assess. However, we cannot overemphasise the potential disruption to the correlation and volatility regimes to which investors have become accustomed. In such conditions, proven investment strategies may prove obsolete. More than ever, investors will need to be able to challenge and fight against preconceived ideas. Lastly, and fundamentally, it is to be hoped that the policy of quantitative easing (QE) does not last too long, because, ultimately, it could lead to a massive distortion in the allocation of capital. However, as the charts below illustrate, every decade has been characterised by a different economic, monetary/fiscal policy, and investing environment and the limitations of Keynesian policy have been betrayed.

Our biggest concern here on the cusp of 2013 is the current odd combination of extreme complacency about the risks presented by extend-and-pretend macro policy making and rapidly accelerating social tensions that could threaten political and eventually financial market stability. Before everyone labels us ‘doomers’ and pessimists, let us point out that, economically, we already have wartime financial conditions: the debt burden and fiscal deficits of the western world are at levels not seen since the end of World War II. We may not be fighting in the trenches, but we may soon be fighting in the streets. To continue with the current extend-and-pretend policies is to continue to disenfranchise wide swaths of our population - particularly the young - those who will be taking care of us as we are entering our doddering old age. We would not blame them if they felt a bit less than generous. The macro economy has no ammunition left for improving sentiment. We are all reduced to praying for a better day tomorrow, as we realise that the current macro policies are like pushing on a string because there is no true price discovery in the market anymore. We have all been reduced to a bunch of central bank watchers, only ever looking for the next liquidity fix, like some kind of horde of heroin addicts. We have a pro forma capitalism with de facto market totalitarianism. Can we have our free markets back please?

Why the lack of follow through? Because, according to preliminary desk talk, just as we predicted yesterday now that the Fed has reengaged the QEasing machine, the ECB will too have to intervene and ease on its own once again to push the EURUSD lower (as otherwise the internal devaluation for most European countries will be simply unbearable). Which means one thing: the time to drag the Spanish insolvency out of cryogenic sleep is coming, and if Rajoy still refuses to request a bailout, he will get some much needed assistance from Frankfurt to make up his mind, allowing the ECB to inject hundreds of billions into the market and in doing so to keep up with the Fed or else risk dropping too far behind in the global race to debase (with a footnote that in Europe, a drop in the currency always raises redenomination risk now and going forward).

When two weeks ago Mark Carney was appointed head of the Bank of England (despite his firm denials of any interest in the position) many were surprised. Not us: we were certain the former Goldmanite, and incidentally current head of the Bank of Canada, would lead the world's oldest central bank. We were even more convinced Carney would become BOE head after on November 8 the Bank of England halted QE as its "potency was questioned." Needless to say to the banker sponsors of the MIT monetary genius diaspora (as profiled previously), there is nothing more terrifying than the prospect of an end of electronic money conceived literally out of thin air, and debiting it into perfectly willing excess reserve accounts at any/all banks. So what is a statist financial system caught in the final days of its existence and desperate to extend its life as long as possible to do? Why, appoint the one person who would turn this "disastrous" conclusion on its head, and promptly proceed with doing exactly the opposite: printing like a drunken Hewlett Packard laserjet.

There are five distinct stages in the life cycle of sovereign nations. These life cycle stages map to generational cycles and to Long Cycles such as the Kondratieff Cycle. Since these cycles are fundamentally behavioral shifts, they consequentially take the nations economic and political process with it. Democracies become exposed and borderline ungovernable in Stage V. This is a result of the electorate's expectations, entitlements and James Madison's "Complicity from the Tyranny of the Majority", as outlined in the "Federalist Papers". Success breeds complacency and complacency breeds leverage. Fiat currency enables a late stage country to delay the realization that it is no longer rich, but not avoid it. In a period of major Global Imbalances, which the world presently faces, this will make democratic policy setting extremely difficult and in fact will show democracies to be borderline ungovernable. In cases of grossly distorted expectations, such as the US, it will be found to be ungovernable.

We face one of the deepest crises in history. A prognosis for the economic future requires a deepening of the concepts of inflation and deflation. Inflation is a political phenomenon because monetary aggregates are not determined by market forces but are planned by central banks in agreement with governments. Inflation is a tax affecting all real incomes. Inflation is a precondition of extreme deflation: depression. Should in fact the overall debt collapse, there would be an extreme deflation or depression because the money aggregate would contract dramatically. In fact the money equivalent to the defaulted debt would literally vanish. It is for this reason that central banks monetize new debt at a lower interest rates, raising its value. All the financial bubbles and the mass of derivatives are just the consequence of debt monetization. How will this all end? In history, debt monetization has always produced hyperinflation. In Western countries, despite the exponential debt a runaway inflation has not yet occurred. Monetary policy has only inflated the financial sector, starving the private one, which is showing a bias towards a deflationary depression. Unfortunately governments and banks will go for more inflation. As history teaches, besides money the freedom of citizens can also be the victim.

N as in "Nominal". Nominal GDP targeting, the latest burlesque of monetary fiction. But first things first. There is a land, where people calculate a "potential GDP". How do they do that? By simply extrapolating trends. Potential GDP is "the level of economic activity achievable with a high rate of use of its capital and labor resources". In the past, the differences from observed GDP were not very large, though now we are growing "below trend". But what if that trend has changed? With a flawed measurement of economic activity, leading to an imaginary output gap, what else might our economic elite come up with? Stagnating real GDP and high unemployment are no fun. After exhausting every traditional and non-traditional tool of monetary and fiscal policy, what else could be done to make that GDP grow? Nominal GDP equals real GDP plus inflation. So if real GDP doesn't want to grow... Eureka! you just have to cause more inflation, and nominal GDP will obediently join its potential GDP. Except for one little error of judgment: if elevated inflation led to wealth creation and jobs, Zimbabwe would be the richest country on earth. As real incomes of US employees have stagnated for more than a decade, rising prices would either lead to falling volumes, or force households further into debt. Also, how would this be different from a communist command-style economy?

Somewhere in the deep bowels of Brussels bureaucratic labyrinth, a murder of European ministers (as they most closely approximate the Corvus Corvidae Genus/Species) currently sitting down and trying to come with a solution that "fixed" Greece. It will do no such thing: in fact, all that the Eurogroup is doing today, in addition to trying to do with it already did twice before without success, is to find a socially palatable way to disclose a policy that will see Greek debt haircut by a very modest amount (modest enough to be considered prohibited under Article 123, but who is counting any more), either through an outright haircut of official sector debt (something Germany has repeatedly said "9" to), or through a debt buyback of existing private debt (something which will have no impact now that the debt has soared following a long-running political leak which has allowed bondholders to trade accordingly). Aside for applying lipstick on a dead pig, what Europe is doing is focusing on the numerator in the all critical debt/GDP ratio. Sadly, this is just half of what Europe should be focusing on. The other half? Why GDP of course. Because it is here that things get truly hilarious.

In summary: Greek 2022 debt/GDP will be 115% if and only if Greece not only cuts its debt by EUR50 billion, but manages to grow its GDP by EUR60 billion.