Purchasing Power

The United States Department of Justice delivered a very clear and unfortunate message on Friday: “Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism. While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country.” These remarks were released by the US Attorney’s office in the western district of North Carolina following the conviction of one Bernard von NotHaus, the creator of the ill-fated Liberty Dollar. Somehow, though, I doubt that Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano or Attorney General Eric Holder will end up labeling Mr. Bernanke as a domestic terrorist.

Each time we begin to approach the end of an announced QE period, the nervous jitters of financial markets start to set in. Will Bernanke continue with QE(n+1) or won’t he? Now it’s true that professional traders live and die by their ability to front run rumor and perception, but for long term investors who fret over such decisions, it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what QE really is. To put it succinctly, QE is an economic deal with the Devil. Once it is begun in earnest there can be no turning back. It must be played to its ultimate conclusion.

Regardless of your traditional investment preferences, tangible assets like gold and silver can help make the profitability and safety of your retirement portfolio far more attainable.

Simply put, gold can reduce the volatility of your retirement savings.  Historically, gold has moved counter to the direction of stocks, bonds and mutual funds.  Technically speaking, precious metals are "negatively correlated" to stocks.

The DXY has just breached the support from 2010 lows. Ben Bernanke's stealth plan to inflate the debt is working. In other news, the dollar is now one lap ahead of everyone in the devaluation race. On a real, not nominal, basis the S&P is now down 2.3% expressed in constant dollar purchasing power terms.

The Fed is being disingenuous in claiming it is blameless for global inflation: the Fed's zero-interest rate policy and quantitative easing are both unleashing "hot money" that is seeking higher returns anywhere they can be found in the global economy. In a larger sense, the Fed is attempting to repeal the business cycle. In the normal course of capitalism, low rates and easy credit lead to increased borrowing, which leads to rising consumption and investment in production to feed that increased consumption. This leads to higher profits, which feed more investment and debt. At some point, the cycle hits a brick wall: borrowers can't afford to pay more interest, so debt stops rising, and consumption and demand slump as borrowing levels off. In the rush to mint profits, production capacity exceeds demand, and as a result prices and profits both fall. As the boom progressed, investors sought out riskier, more marginal investments. As new debt and demand fall, then these riskier investments lose money and are either shuttered or sold for a loss. As profits decline, workers are laid off and commercial borrowers find their income streams aren't sufficient to meet their obligations. The credit cycle turns from expansion to contraction, as marginal borrowers go bankrupt and insolvent businesses and loans are liquidated or written down. This purging of bad debt, speculative excess and misallocated resources sets the foundation for another cycle of renewed growth. But the Fed has attempted to repeal the credit cycle.

I said it! Bill Gross said it (and put his money where his mouth was by selling off all US treasuries)! Common sense says it... Central Bank manipulated interest rates are too low. They will rise. What happens when they rise during a supply glut of real estate, foreclosure issues and a slow economy??? Put it this way... What made the markets crash in 2008: unemployment, slow economy, snow... Or real estate prices getting in touch with reality?

Reader Nick Ricciardi submits a rather controversial view on the future of Japan: "Over the past few weeks there has been a new round of articles and commentaries predicting doom for Japan’s economy. Yet, as usual, Japan’s bond markets have shrugged off these fears. Japan’s capital markets and its macro-economy are replete with confounding puzzles. But they are all rooted in two basic misconceptions that Japanese hold concerning their debt. Moreover they are understandable if analyzed from a perspective of both the public and private sectors. Doing so gives us insight into why Japan’s public debt offers the lowest yields of any nation when its debt/GDP ratio is the highest, why Japan’s corporate credit spreads are so narrow and its yield curve almost flat, why Japan’s bond prices are less volatile than those of other industrialized nations when its economy and stock market is “leveraged” to global growth, and why the yen tends to strengthen when Japan’s economy turns down."

Why wouldn't the average Japanese person, who is in the exact same boat, enjoy falling prices, too?
Well, as it turns out, they do! Though wages and asset prices have stagnated in Japan for decades now, the quality of life for the average Japanese has not massively deteriorated in the way you'd think if you blindly accepted what the Western media tell you. Sure, Japan has huge problems. The rapidly aging and shrinking population, a lack of political willingness to reform, and a huge government debt burden all pose enormous challenges. But, as far as I can see, what's usually portrayed as the biggest problem of all in Japan, deflation, only really hurts the government. And that's only because the "real" value of all the hundreds of trillions of yen that it owes (mostly to its own citizens) goes up every year.

A recent debate between Rick Santelli of CNBC and James Bullard, the St. Louis Fed, inspired this analysis - Would the US economy be doing better without the QE2 initiative?

You can go back through thousands of years of economic history and realize one fact: No country has ever printed their way to prosperity, all who have tried have wound up in hyperinflation, war or demise. How a guy can teach himself calculis, get into Harvard, become a professor at Princeton and NOT understand that - well it totally defies logic. The idiot was asked about the one time in our history that we had no debt. (Please don't think we balanced the budget during the Clinton years - for you can't debt (apply IOU's in the Social Security Trust Fund) as income.) Andrew Jackson balanced the budget and wiped away our debt by using non debt based money. Bernanke was asked about this during a recent hearing and he scoffed at it - his merit? Because it happened before the Civil War.

Of course, what sucks for the American worker is great for our Multi-National Corporate Masters and we all love a good puppet show, so they bought out the President to say "U.S. companies shouldn't worry about inflation if they're planning on expanding their business."

Ouch!

Mohamed El-Erian made one of his regular media appearances today (in addition to his almost daily Op-Ed, released earlier) appearing on Bloomberg Surveillance with Tom Keene and talking the developments in the Maghreb. While the full highlights are presented below, there are two items of note. El-Erian once again hits on what we believe will be the keyword of 2011: stagflation. To wit: "we have to appreciate that in the west, what is happening in Egypt and North Africa results in stagflation in the short term. So higher inflation and lower growth because of higher oil prices that take away purchasing power and transfer wealth somewhere else; because of higher geopolitical risk, which tends to diminish animal spirit and therefore impact investment; and let's not forget that the Middle East is a market, particularly for European exports. So from an economic perspective, it is important for the west to understand that these are stagflationary winds that have been added to the global economy." It is important, but not necessary: as long as the manipulated, liquidity glutted market continues to misrepresent the true state of the economy, nobody will care until it is too late. And speaking of "too late", validating our sarcastic observations over the past several weeks that the dollar is no longer the "flight to safety" currency (that would be the PM complex, and the swiss franc if anything), is the Pimco CIO's suddenly very dour outlook on the weakening US Dollar: "It is a warning shot to America that we cannot simply assume flight to quality, flight to safety. That people are starting to worry about the fiscal situation in the U.S., worrying about the level of debt and what they're hearing about states and municipalities. I would take this as a warning shot that we cannot assume that we will maintain the standing of the reserve currency as we have in the past." That's a given - the question however remains, which fiat currency, if any, is willing and ready to step in and replace the USD? With all eyes continuing to be look at the CNY, how long before China finally takes the plunge to find out just who is the real reserve currency in the world?

We have long claimed that in advance of the great "to be or not to be QE3" decision in June, there will likely be a major market swoon in March/April. The reason for that is that, as David Rosenberg explains in a very coherent fashion, the market will soon realize that the case for another bout of monetization is increasingly shaky: "when you go back to August 2010, when QE2 was announced, U.S. core
inflation was 1.1% and headline was 0.1%; by June of this year, we will
probably be looking at 1.5% on the core and as high as 3% on headline
inflation. That combined with the reality that the S&P 500 is 300
points higher now than it was then would certainly suggest that the case
for extension of the Fed’s QE program will not be there, at least not
by the time QE2 runs its course. So this is what we would be looking for
in terms of chronology (it may be too late to sell in May this year)." So unlike before, the context this time around will be one of much higher inflation, making the stimulation case that much more difficult. The downside? 300 points of downside due to a marginal hole that will no longer be plugged by the Fed. And with a fiscal contraction coming for more (see Koo's notes from yesterday), one can see why as Rosie says "it may be too late to sell in May this year." We agree that there will be a return to market volatility in the months ahead of June, but we believe that the Fed will have no choice but to continue monetizing sooner or later courtesy of the $4 trillion in bond issuance over the next two years. There is no way around it. What it means for the "inflationary" thesis we leave it up to readers.

Don't fall for the old divide-and-conquer trick ...