Purchasing Power

The aftermath of the biggest crash in the Indian rupee in history is becoming clear: business are scrambling to refine budgets, import and export activity is disappearing as there is zero clarity what the actual transaction prices net of FX are, purchases of hard assets are exploding as people are desperate to protect what little purchasing power they have left, capital controls are being instituted virtually everywhere, and the overall economy - at least that part that is reliant on foreign trade flows - is grinding to a halt. In fact, it got so bad, that moments ago the 1 month USDINR forward hit a ridiculous 70.

UPDATE 2: It would appear Abe got a late-afternoon phone-call to sell some JPY and buy some Indian 10Y bonds... (since Traders have not seen the RBI intervene directly - or thru local banks)

UPDATE 1: Gold (in USD terms) is breaking out... $1428.47 (gold now at a three-and-a-half month high)

From a weak open, the Indian Rupee has now plunged a stunning 3.88% today. This is the largest single-day drop in the Rupee's value since March 1993. The Indian people have lost 30% of their global purchasing power since March 2013 (though those who swapped their paper wealth to gold have seen their purchasing power rise 6% in Rupee terms). With Gold in Rupees having broken to a new all-time high, it would seem the government has little choice but to lease its gold (no matter how vehemntly they deny the fact).

In Part 1 of this article we documented the insane remedies prescribed by the mad banker scientists presiding over this preposterous fiat experiment since they blew up the lab in 2008. In Part 2 we tried to articulate why the country has allowed itself to be brought to the brink of catastrophe. There is no turning back time. The choices we’ve made and avoided making over the last one hundred years are going to come home to roost over the next fifteen years. We are in the midst of a great Crisis that will not be resolved until the mid-2020s. The appearance of stability is illusory, as the civic fabric of the country continues to tear asunder. Record high stock markets do not trickle down. The masters of propaganda seem baffled that their standard operating procedures are not generating the expected response from the serfs. They have failed to take into account the generational mood changes that occur; propaganda loses its effectiveness in proportion to the pain and distress being experienced by the citizenry.

In September 2010, Guido Mantega coined the phrase "currency war" as he proclaimed the world's central bank's FX interventions were dangerous for citizens' purchasing power and would lead to a vicious circle of competitive devaluations. In March, Mantega unleashed a mini-war by taxing foreign borrowings and threatening capital controls. But this week, after the BRL devalued over 26% since March as Fed Taper talk and EM capital flight takes hold around the world, Brazil has waded into the world's currency war with the largest currency intervention the nation has ever planned. Following a dismal current account deficit print, as The FT reports, "Brazil will launch a currency intervention program worth about $60bn to ensure liquidity and reduce volatility in the nation’s foreign exchange market" - offering USD500 million per day in currency swaps to support the Real. But, as Citi warns, it does not fix any of Brzail's problems.

Presented with little comment (over our earlier detail) but just to note that around the world there are significant events occurring (even as the US equity market slumbers). So much for the gold coin ban - gold now trades at 4 month highs in Rupee terms.

How Bad Can Things Get? Nobody knows the answer, so we have to consider our responses to a spectrum of possibilities. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked, "If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." While there is certainly much wisdom in this reassurance, that still leaves us the task of preparing for the one that doesn't run harmlessly into the ditch.

Because diluting the paper currency through endless global central-bank printing is obviously not enough to boost corporate top and bottom lines, next up on the dilution wagon are the corporate "rewards programs" which have decided to join the fray and are kind enough to advise honored clients their point purchasing power is about to be diluted by "a modest" 10%-15%. First on deck: Hertz. To wit: "in light of rising costs, we find it necessary to implement our first reward redemption point increase since 2008. Beginning October 1, 2013, point redemption levels for Rewards will increase a modest 10-15% in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and U.S.V.1."

With all of the problems afflicting the world economy nowadays, inflation seems to be the least of our worries. In addressing the post-2008 economic malaise, which stems from over-indebtedness, policymakers are correct to focus on the threat of debt deflation, which can lead to depression. But dismissing inflation as “yesterday’s problem” could undermine central banks’ efforts to address today’s most pressing issues – and, ultimately, facilitate inflation’s resurgence. Understanding how the Great Inflation from the late 1960’s to the early 1980’s was tamed offers important lessons for addressing far-reaching economic problems, however different ours may be, and provides insight into the dangers that may lie ahead.

There are real-world consequences to over-issuing credit and currency. Eventually this leads to a bidding war for trust: Whose credit/cash will be trusted to retain its purchasing power? There is a grand irony here, of course; as issuers of credit/cash attempt to debase their currency to boost their exports, their debased currency buys fewer real-world resources.

Every time real personal income goes negative, a recession occurs. Now that personal income is falling, a recession is baked in. The Big Lie of the "recovery" is that it is self-sustaining. Minus government transfers, the reality that the Fed and Federal government are simply enriching the top 1/10th of 1% with access to unlimited credit at zero interest is revealed.

Bullish on one, no so much on the other. 

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character. There is a common denominator in all the bubbles created over the last century – Wall Street bankers and their puppets at the Federal Reserve. Fractional reserve banking, control of a fiat currency by a privately owned central bank, and an economy dependent upon ever increasing levels of debt are nothing more than ingredients of a Ponzi scheme that will ultimately implode and destroy the worldwide financial system. Since 1913 we have been enduring the largest fraud and embezzlement scheme in world history, but the law of diminishing returns is revealing the plot and illuminating the culprits. Bernanke and his cronies have proven themselves to be highly educated one trick pony protectors of the status quo. Bernanke will eventually roll craps. When he does, the collapse will be epic and 2008 will seem like a walk in the park.

We do not inhabit a “normal” economy. We live in a financialised world in which our banks cannot be trusted, our politicians cannot be trusted, our money cannot be trusted, and – not least thanks to ongoing spasms of QE and expectations of much more of the same – our markets cannot be trusted. At some point (though the timing is impossible to predict), asset markets that cannot be pumped artificially any higher will start moving, under the forces of inevitable gravitation, lower.

Back in 1978, the Chinese politburo enacted the "one-child policy", whose main purpose was to "alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems" in China as a result of the soaring population. According to estimates, the policy prevented more than 250 million births between 1980 and 2000, and 400 million births from about 1979 to 2011. And while not applicable to everyone, in 2007 approximately 35.9% of China's population was subject to a one-child restriction. Regardless of the numbers, things are about to change: with the Chinese economy now having peaked and suddenly finding itself in rapid deceleration with excess credit growth providing virtually no boost to marginal growth, the Chinese government is forced to reexamine 35 years of social policy in order to extract growth from the one place where for nearly 4 decades it had tried to stifle: demographics.  According to the 21st Business Herald which cited sources close to the National Population and Family Planning Commission, China may relax its one-child policy at end-2013 or early-2014 (read end) by allowing families to have two children if at least one parent is from a one-child family.

The man who in the first months of his reign took over the bankruptcy process turning it over on its head to benefit the state over centuries of established creditor rights (with GM, Chrysler and a whole lot of union votes), and who defined his entire first term by nationalizing the US healthcare system, who personally determined the cutoff for "wealth" at $250,000 per year (with the corresponding tax hike "benefits" to go with it), not to mention inheriting the George W. Bush personal surveillance apparatus and taking the nationalization of individual rights and liberties to a whole new level, has just decided to branch out and subordinate yet another two birds of distributed, efficient, global decision-making to his will: trade and patent law.