-- Posted Monday, 17 August 2009 | Digg This Article
| | Source: GoldSeek.com
Rick’s Picks
Monday, August 17, 2009
“Phenomenally accurate forecasts”
Although we had vowed to let the by-now tiresome inflation vs. deflation debate simmer for a while, it came to an unexpected boil last week after some provocative comments were posted by “Senor Cuidado” in the Rick’s Picks forum. Like us, the Senor finds it difficult to imagine how all of those printing-press dollars the banks are currently sitting on will find their way into the consumer economy. So far, the banks have recoiled from the idea of lending out their digital funny-money, using it instead mostly to purchase U.S. Treasury debt. In the meantime, although bailouts and guarantees offered by the U.S. Government supposedly total close to $13 trillion, the only person we know personally who has gotten a dime of it is our sister-in-law Patti, who recently traded an ancient Volvo for a brand new Honda SUV.
The cash-for-clunkers program that enticed her to trade up would seem to be what the inflationists have in mind when they assert that inflation lies just around the corner. After all, the program put ostensibly inflationary printing-press money directly into the hands of consumers, who duly stampeded into the auto showrooms to buy new cars. But if the so-far $3 billion giveaway has produced even a blip of inflation in the auto sector, we have yet to read about it. Granted, the program involved only a relatively paltry sum in comparison to, say, the bailout of a sizable bank. However, we would argue that if cash-for-clunkers had been a $100 billion program, the inflationary consequences would still have been almost negligible.
Try to Imagine…
Try to imagine what would happen if the automakers were to respond to a $100 billion stimulus in the usual way, ramping up production and building new factories in the South, where union presence is relatively light. Thousands of laid-off workers would return to the assembly lines, abandoning the Rust Belt to squatters and urban survivalists. But does anyone actually believe a few new factories would be productive enough to revive the auto industry, let alone breathe inflation into the larger economy? In purely economic terms, they would need to produce a car with enough profit in it to pay shareholders a good return; beat foreign competition on quality and price; pay the workers themselves a living wage; and, have enough left over to provide health care benefits for current and retired workers, and pension plans for all.
Fall even a smidgen short of those benchmarks, and sooner or later you beget, not inflation, but another round of bankruptcies just like the one that has decimated the auto industry over the last several years. That would be deflationary, and the effect would be exacerbated by the interest-rate burden on that $100 billion loan from taxpayers that was used to get cash-for-clunkers started.
Money from Trees
The inflationists seem not to understand this aspect of the Fed’s monetary blowout. For them, money evidently grows on trees, since, if they considered where it actually does come from, they would understand that each new dollar of printing-press money has effectively been borrowed into existence and must eventually be paid back with interest. Servicing the debt thereof becomes burdensome if the money has been consumed away in cash-for-clunkers giveaways rather than invested productively. Turn the U.S. economy into one big cash-for-clunkers program, however, as the Obama administration has very nearly done, and the resulting debt burden will suffocate all future investment. And because the interest will be compounding, it will also place a crushing deflationary burden on taxpayers.
The ruinous endgame of this process was trenchantly described by Antal Fekete, professor of money and banking at San Francisco University. In an essay published in March on “The Marginal Productivity of Debt,” Fekete described what happens when it takes more and more borrowing to sustain a given level of GDP growth:
Marginal Productivity of Debt
“The key to understanding the problem is the marginal productivity of debt, a concept curiously missing from the vocabulary of mainstream economics. Keynesians take comfort in the fact that total debt as a percentage of total GDP is safely below 100 in the United States while it is 100 and perhaps even more in some other countries. However, the significant ratio to watch is additional debt to additional GDP, or the amount of GDP contributed by the creation of $1 in new debt. It is this ratio that determines the quality of debt. Indeed, the higher the ratio, the more successful entrepreneurs are in increasing productivity, which is the only valid justification for going into debt in the first place.
“Conversely, a serious fall in that ratio is a danger sign that the quality of debt is deteriorating, and contracting additional debt has no economic justification. The volume of debt is rising faster than national income, and capital supporting production is eroding fast. If, as in the worst-case scenario, the ratio falls into negative territory, the message is that the economy is on a collision course and crash in imminent. Not only does more debt add nothing to the GDP, in fact, it causes economic contraction, including greater unemployment. The country is eating the seed corn with the result that accumulated capital may be gone before you know it. Immediate action is absolutely necessary to stop the hemorrhage, or the patient will bleed to death.”
Thumbs-Up for Ignorance
Unfortunately, if there is talk of immediate action, it concerns not stopping the hemorrhage, but the possibility of enacting even more deficit stimulus, since all measures tried so far have produced no credible signs of recovery (other than on Wall Street). Judging from the rousing “thumbs up” the news media gave cash-for-clunkers, you can bet that any future spending programs, no matter how economically wasteful, will have the enthusiastic support of the nation’s reporters and editors. These are the same folks, remember, who for nearly two decades treated the shameless Alan Greenspan -- the guy who assured us that inflated home values constituted “wealth,” and who somehow saw an investment boom at a time when household savings growth was negative – with fawning respect.
***
Information and commentary contained herein comes from sources believed to be reliable, but this cannot be guaranteed. Past performance should not be construed as an indicator of future results, so let the buyer beware. Rick's Picks does not provide investment advice to individuals, nor act as an investment advisor, nor individually advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment. From time to time, its editor may hold positions in issues referred to in this service, and he may alter or augment them at any time. Investments recommended herein should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor, and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. Rick's Picks reserves the right to use e-mail endorsements and/or profit claims from its subscribers for marketing purposes. All names will be kept anonymous and only subscribers’ initials will be used unless express written permission has been granted to the contrary. All Contents © 2009, Rick Ackerman. All Rights Reserved. www.rickackerman.com
-- Posted Monday, 17 August 2009 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com
