The Automatic Earth

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Stoneleigh: Adaptive cycles are the foundation of both natural ecological and human socio-economic systems, and have been investigated independently from very different perspectives by ecologists and financial analysts who have almost certainly never heard of each others’ work. It is interesting then to look at the strong correspondence of the self-similar hierarchical patterns, best described as fractals, which emerge from both fields. This form of organization seems to be a fundamental dynamic in many areas.

The bewildering, entrancing, unpredictable nature of nature and people, the richness, diversity and changeability of life come from that evolutionary dance generated by cycles of growth, collapse, reorganization, renewal and re-establishment. We call that the adaptive cycle. Holling, 2009

Figure 1: Sierpinski Triangle Fractal

Holling, Panarchy and Resilience

Arguably the most significant thinker in the field of ecological cycles has been Buzz Holling, who refers to the conceptual model he derived from the study of forest ecosystems as Panarchy. Holling observed that ecosystems developed in adaptive cycles of exploitation, conservation, release and reorganization which could be described in three dimensions – ecological ‘wealth’, connectedness and resilience. These cycles provide a framework for the opposing forces of growth and stability versus change and variety.

 

Figure 2: Adaptive Cycle in Three Dimensions

 

In an adaptive cycle, early growth is rapid as individuals of many species arrive in a newly opened space and seek to exploit a plethora of vacant ecological niches. Genetic diversity and biomass, both living and dead, increase quickly in this expansion phase. Ecological connections are initially simple and sparse, but over time many interconnections and mutual dependencies develop. The system therefore increases in both ‘wealth’ and connectedness, as flows of energy and materials become larger and more complex. Biological ‘wealth’ confers the potential for novelty, allowing the system to adapt in disparate directions as circumstances warrant. Connectedness permits increasing stability, through the development of negative feedback loops, which help to regulate conditions conducive to life.

There are about three kinds of scientists – the consolidator, the technical expert, and the artist. Consolidators accumulate and solidify advances and are deeply skeptical of ill formed and initial, hesitant steps. That can have a great value at stages in a scientific cycle when rigorous efforts to establish the strength and value of an idea is central. Technical experts assess the methods of investigation. Both assume they search for the certainty of understanding.

In contrast, I love the initial hesitant steps of the “artist scientist” and like to see clusters of them. That is the kind of thing needed at the beginning of a cycle of scientific enquiry or even just before that. Such nascent, partially stumbling ideas, are the largely hidden source for the engine that eventually generates change in science. I love the nascent ideas, the sudden explosion of a new idea, the connections of the new idea with others. I love the development and testing of the idea till it gets to the point it is convincing, or is rejected. That needs persistence to the level of stubbornness and I eagerly invest in that persistence. Holling, 2009

 

As time passes, rapid growth gives way to conservation. Inter-dependencies become highly specialized and self-regulation becomes fine-tuned and sophisticated. Efficiency is maximized as niches are fully occupied, and flows of energy and nutrients are tightly controlled by the existing biota. This represents the end of the growth phase.

Relatively few opportunities are left for newcomers or novel strategies, hence diversity stabilizes or declines. The system is ‘rich’, but becomes more rigid, and therefore less resilient in the face of potential shocks, which can propagate rapidly through a highly inter-connected system with smaller margins for error than it had in its generalist phase. An increasingly brittle ecosystem becomes, in Holling’s words, “an accident waiting to happen”.

When something does push the ecosystem outside of the boundaries it can tolerate, the long growth phase can morph into a rapid and chaotic release and reorganization phase, where nutrients and energy stores previously tied up can suddenly be liberated. This can be associated with a considerable loss of complexity, but also with much greater potential for generalist strategies and for novelty.

 

Figure 3: Adaptive Cycle Stages

• During the growth phase the system finds an abundance of resources available. Expansion and exploration of new opportunities are key concepts within this stage. “When new ecological spaces open up – due, for instance, to forest fires, or retreating glaciers, or many other things- resources needed for other species to grow are made available. There’s more light reaching the soil surface when large trees are toppled, or burned to the ground, for example.”
• “The “r” phase is transitory, and as the system matures, it is replaced by the K phase. Eventually slower growing, long lived species or entities enter the system. Resources become less widely available as they become “locked up”… The K phase is sometimes called the conservation phase, because energy acquired goes into maintaining or conserving existing structure, rather than building new structure. In this phase, a few dominant species or companies or countries … have acquired many of the resources and are controlling the way they can be used.”
• “Often systems rapidly pass into a phase called omega. This is also referred to as the release (or creative destruction) phase because structure, relationships, capital or complexity accumulated during the r and K phases is released (often in a dramatic or abrupt fashion). … Plants may die … or a company may go bankrupt, releasing workers and decommissioning factories or offices.”
• “The fourth, or alpha phase, is a period of reorganization, in which some of the entities previously released begin to re-structure but not necessarily as they were before. This phase can mark the beginning of another trip through an adaptive cycle … Many new entities may enter the system, and innovation becomes more probable.” Project Shrink

 

However, such adaptive cycles do not exist in isolation. Local ecosystem cycles are embedded in larger and slower-moving regional cycles operating over years and decades, which are in turn part of global climate and elemental cycles (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus etc) that may unfold over centuries or millennia. These larger cycles can act as stabilizing factors by adding a ‘memory effect’, or wealth reservoir, enabling rapid regeneration following a localized setback, but only if the larger cycle is not in its own contraction and reorganization phase. In addition to being part of larger cycles, dynamic ecosystems are also composed of smaller and faster-moving cycles of growth and decay, operating on much shorter time horizons. This nested set of self-similar structures allows for both persistence and innovation.

 

Figure 4: Panarchy (Nested Adaptive Cycles)

 

Where higher and lower order cycles are very tightly coupled, they may synchronize, becoming trapped in a extended growth phase at many scales at once, thereby risking synchronous collapse. This need not be triggered at a large-scale level, but can begin anywhere in a set of nested adaptive cycles and proceed both upwards and downwards. A destabilizing event arising from below, for instance a disease outbreak leading to widespread morbidity and further adverse consequences, is called a ‘revolt’.

A synchronous collapse, which can take the form of a “pancaking implosion”, to use Holling’s term, can lead to a poverty trap, or persistent maladaptive state characterized by low ‘wealth’ and connectivity, which is very much more difficult to recover from than a localized reversal would have been. By way of illustration, the Canadian province of British Columbia is currently facing a confluence of circumstances that pose a significant large-scale ecological threat. A long-standing policy of fire-suppression, in a hitherto naturally fire-controlled ecosystem, has led to a thick understory of growth, which has in turn caused significant stress to trees forced to compete for water and nutrients in an area becoming warmer and drier.

Trees under stress have much lower resistance to pine beetle infestation, with the result that a pine beetle population explosion is killing huge tracts of forest despite all efforts to contain the outbreak. This adds to the combustible material on the forest floor and greatly increases the risk of widespread conflagration. The much smaller self-limiting fires typical of the province would have opened up areas for new growth, killed insect pests and released nutrients for regeneration, and in fact are required by some tree species in order to open up seed pods for reproduction. In contrast, very large and intense fires, fueled by a tremendous excess of flammable detritus, can comprehensively denude enormous tracts of land.

This can remove the biological reservoir of potential repopulating species as well as lead to enough soil erosion to inhibit regrowth of the forest ecosystem. An interlocking series of adaptive cycles has been synchronized through being locked into an extended growth phase and is therefore much more vulnerable to a catastrophic event that could become a lasting poverty trap.

When collapse occurs it can be a natural part of the pattern of adaptation and learning. That is what happens in forests when they burn or are attacked by natural enemies. Recovery typically replaces the old with a similar but new pattern that is similar because of the memory reserved in seeds and vegetation of the understory. But when the collapse occurs as a consequence of long effort to freeze the system into one paradigm of development and management, then it might involve collapse of a level of the panarchy, which in turn threatens other levels. The collapse of ancient societies has this character- the top religious and political controls can collapse, triggering the gradual collapse of institutions till the family is left as the sole source of survival. It leads to a “poverty trap.” Holling, 2009

Much of Holling’s work has focused on the crucial role of resilience in both natural and human systems, and the Resilience Alliance has been the result:

We define resilience, formally, as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure and feedbacks – and therefore the same identity.

 

Resilience arises from a redundancy that has the appearance of inefficiency and a lack of critical structural dependency on specialized hierarchy, neither of which conditions are likely to be met at the peak of the growth phase of an adaptive cycle. For these to be achieved from this point at least a partial, or localized, collapse to a simpler level of organization would have to occur.

There can potentially be a fine line between a retreat from rigidity to this level of resilience and a ‘poverty trap’, where a collapse has proceeded so far and so fast that the system has been stripped of the wealth (biological or otherwise) that it would need to rebuild. Where adaptive cycles have become synchronized, so that the likelihood of deep collapse is increased, striking a balance of resilience would be far more difficult.

A resilient world would promote biological, landscape, social and economic diversity. Diversity is a major source of future options and of a system’s capacity to respond to change.

• A resilient world would embrace and work with natural ecological cycles. A forest that is never allowed to burn loses its fire-resistant species and becomes very vulnerable to fire.
• A resilient world consists of modular components. When over-connected, shocks are rapidly transmitted through the system – as a forest connected by logging roads can allow a wild fire to spread wider than it would otherwise.
• A resilient world possesses tight feedbacks. Feedbacks allow us to detect thresholds before we cross them. Globalization is leading to delayed feedbacks that were once tighter. For example, people of the developed world receive weak feedback signals about the consequences of their consumption.
• A resilient world promotes trust, well developed social networks and leadership. Individually, these attributes contribute to what is generally termed “social capital,” but they need to act in concert to effect adaptability – the capacity to respond to change and disturbance.
• A resilient world places an emphasis on learning, experimentation, locally developed rules, and embracing change. When rigid connections and behaviors are broken, new opportunities open up and new resources are made available for growth.
• A resilient world has institutions that include “redundancy” in their governance structures and a mix of common and private property with overlapping access rights. Redundancy in institutions increases the diversity of responses and the flexibility of a system. Because access and property rights lie at the heart of many resource-use tragedies, overlapping rights and a mix of common and private property rights can enhance the resilience of linked social-ecological systems.
• A resilient world would consider all nature’s un-priced services – such as carbon storage, water filtration and so on – in development proposals and assessments. These services are often the ones that change in a regime shift – and are often only recognized and appreciated when they are lost. Walker, 2008

This will be a very tall order in a panarchic future.

Prechter, Elliottwaves and Socionomics

Bob Prechter has also spent decades studying the structure of nested cycles, but in his case in financial markets, carrying on the work of RN Elliott, who established the field in the 1930s. Elliott painstakingly documented motive (impulse) and corrective patterns which unfold at all degrees of trend simultaneously – from small moves completing in minutes to larger cycles playing out over months, years, decades and longer. Elliott noted that motive waves in the direction of the one larger trend occur in fives, while corrective waves counter to the one larger trend form threes or multiples thereof. Prechter explains that this is the minimum requirement for an adaptive cycle capable of both fluctuation and progress, and therefore the most efficient form. Each move itself is composed of the same patterns, while each also forms a component part of larger structures. (Motive waves are labeled with numbers, while corrective waves are labeled with letters.)

 

Figure 5: Motive and Corrective Elliottwaves at Different Degrees of Trend

Figure 6: Fractal Market Structure at Different Timescales

 

As opposed to self-identical fractals, whose parts are precisely the same as the whole, and indefinite fractals, which are self-similar only in that they are similarly irregular at all scales, a robust fractal is one of intermediate specificity. Though variable, its component forms, within a certain defined latitude, are replicas of the larger forms. Prechter, 1999, p17

 

Figure 7: The Brain as a Robust Fractal

 

Bob Prechter’s socionomics model combines Elliott’s observed fractal patterns with an understanding of human herding behaviour, comprising a comprehensive challenge to prevailing notions such as the Efficient Market Hypothesis by reversing causation and recognizing the role of emotional/irrational behaviour as the prime market driver. While the real economy demonstrates negative feedback loops, finance is thoroughly grounded in positive feedback.

 

Figure 8: Perception Versus Reality in Socionomic Causation

 

Socionomics provides a model of collective mood swings which permits collective human behaviour prediction in finance, the real economy and beyond. Consensus takes time to build, so that the more extreme the sentiment, the closer one is to a trend change. Collectively optimistic people engage in one range of behaviours over different timescales – typically buy stocks, borrow funds to build businesses, employ others in the expectation of profit, vote for incumbents whom they credit with stability, engage in cheerful expressions of popular culture and behave in an increasingly inclusive manner in recognition of common humanity.

Collectively pessimistic people become increasingly risk averse and suspicious of others, in whom they look for differences rather than similarities. Both optimistic and pessimistic behaviours, particularly in their extreme forms, can create self-fulfilling prophecies for varying periods of time, until perception substantially overshoots reality and the trends it creates can no longer be sustained. The manic trend of recent years has led to an unsustainable debt burden of unprecedented scope and complexity.

It also led to an unprecedented degree of global economic and financial integration dependent on hierarchical specialization, comparative advantage and just-in-time delivery that are clear examples of rigidity creating a brittle system.

 

Figure 9: Phase 1 of the Decline with Elliottwave Labels

 

Like Holling’s panarchy, Prechter’s nested socionomic cycles either reinforce or counter each other depending on the direction of cycles larger and smaller than the one under consideration. Where cycles at several degrees of trend are moving in the same direction, the move will be extreme – either a mania to the upside or a crash to the downside. The largest mania ever known topped in the year 2000, and we have been in bear market territory since then (more obviously in real terms).

We are now approaching a synchronized move in the opposite direction as the rally of recent months peters out in the face of the larger downtrend. The consequences of this will be considerable, but we are still quite near the beginning of the large-scale and complex downward pattern the model predicts will unfold over the next several decades. We can expect many deleveraging cascades and many intervening rallies, some larger than we have seen so far.

 

Figure 10: Diminishing Marginal Productivity of Debt in the US Economy

 

It is inevitable that the complex web of debt instruments and inter-dependencies that humanity invented to prolong its growth phase (to use Holling’s terminology) by stealing from the future will be a prime focus for a sharp reversal, as we have already reached the point where additional debt provides less than no benefit. Socionomics tells us that the trust and complacency as to systemic risk that allowed this debt structure to develop will be primary casualties of a synchronized move to the downside, being both cause and effect in a powerful positive feedback loop.

Tainter, Complexity and Peer Polities

Joseph Tainter’s work complements that of Holling and Prechter, providing a framework of diminishing marginal returns to complexity which encompasses ecosystems, individual societies and competitive peer polities. As complexity increases, it eventually becomes a liability, as we can see with Holling’s description of rigidity reducing the resilience of ecosystems and Prechter’s many writings on the debt complexity of manias and the systemic risk it engenders.

 

Figure 11: Declining Marginal Returns to Complexity

 

As with diminishing marginal productivity of debt, past a certain point further investments in complex solutions to increasingly complex problems has a negative return. Tainter explains, however, that where there is not a single political structure, but instead competitive peer polities, these entities become trapped in a competitive spiral where investment in organizational complexity must be maintained regardless of cost, as the alternative is domination by another member of the cluster at the same level of complexity, rather than collapse to a simpler system.

The counter-productive actions of states are legitimized to the citizenry by the fact that each member of the cluster is engaging in the same behaviour. Collapse, which requires a power vacuum, is not possible unless the whole cluster collapses at once at the point of economic exhaustion.

Peer polity systems tend to evolve toward greater complexity in lockstep fashion as, driven by competition, each partner imitates new organizational, technological, and military features developed by its competitors. The marginal return on such developments declines, as each new military breakthrough is met by some counter-measure, and so brings no increased advantage or security on a lasting basis.. A society trapped in a competitive peer polity system must invest more and more for no increased return, and is thereby economically weakened. And yet the option of withdrawal or collapse does not exist…..Peer polity competition drives increased complexity and resource consumption regardless of cost, human or ecological. Tainter, 1988, p214

Tainter observes that the peer polity nature of the modern world creates a more apt comparison with the rapid collapse of the ancient Maya than with the slow decline of Rome. To use Holling’s terminology, we have seen a panarchy of nested cycles synchronize, with the effect of artificially extending the growth phase for all simultaneously. The evidence for this is abundantly available in terms of the many limits to growth we are approaching or have reached, most notably the high EROEI energy required to maintain complexity. The significant risk is therefore of deep collapse over a relatively short period of time (although this would still likely be decades at least).

Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner. Tainter, 1988, p214

References

• LH Gunderson and CS Holling (2001). Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems.
• RR Prechter (1999). The Wave Principle of Human Social Behaviour and the New Science of Socionomics.
• RR Prechter (2002). Conquer the Crash.
• RR Prechter (2003). Pioneering Studies in Socionomics.
• JA Tainter (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies.

George N. Barnard Old Dixie’s Down1864 A passel of Yankees in repose at federal picket post near Atlanta, Georgia

Stoneleigh: A recent article by Gary North, entitled Pushing on a String, has ignited another round in the inflation/deflation debate. Our readers at The Automatic Earth have repeatedly asked us for comment. The topic still remains a confusing one for many. To shine some light, let’s use Mr North’s words against him, shall we?

My first impression on reading “Pushing on a string” is that it is distastefully egotistical, dismissive of a position that is obviously not understood, and very likely to cause confusion due to the misuse of terms. Rarely do I find the writing of others grating on a personal level, even if I disagree with their position, but in this instance I would have to describe both the initial article and Mr North’s response to analyst and web writer Mike (Mish) Shedlock’s very valid criticism of it as pompous and ill-informed. That out of the way, let’s talk meat and bones.

Mr North frames the dichotomy between inflation and deflation in price terms, which does nothing but muddy the waters. Those who argue for deflation (whom North describes rather contemptuously as “a tiny band of intrepid non-economists who have seen their founder’s prediction refuted by the facts in every year since 1973“) do so on the basis of inflation and deflation as the monetary phenomena they are, rather than as price movements.

This is fundamental to the argument, hence attempting to refute that argument by deliberately using the terms to refer to something different is disingenuous. He does use the term ‘price inflation’ but does not make clear the importance of the distinction between price movements and changes in the money supply. Nor does he distinguish between prices in nominal terms versus real terms, which is vital to understanding what is happening to affordability.

As we have consistently explained here at The Automatic Earth, inflation is an increase in the supply of money and credit relative to available goods and services, while deflation is the opposite. Deflation, moreover, is aggravated by a collapse in the velocity of money. Price movements are lagging indicators of monetary changes, but are also subject to a number of other drivers, such as scarcity and substitutability (or lack thereof).

For this reason, price movements alone have no explanatory or predictive value. For instance, we have lived through a highly inflationary credit expansion over the last couple of decades, but prices have not reacted consistently. Some have risen, as one would expect, but others have fallen, due, for instance, to the effects of global wage arbitrage. For prices to fall in nominal terms during inflationary times, they must be going through the floor in real terms.

Deflation would be associated, at least initially, with prices falling across the board, as the collapse of purchasing power would drastically reduce price support for virtually everything. In a deflation, people sell anything they can, in order to pay down debt, to meet margin calls and to cover the cost of living, once access to credit is cut off and earning an income becomes very much more difficult. This is a recipe for prices falling by perhaps 90% in nominal terms, but for goods and services to become simultaneously much less affordable, as purchasing power would be falling even faster. In other words, in real terms, prices rise (i.e. affordability decreases).

 

 

As a much larger percentage of a much smaller effective money supply would be chasing essentials, these would receive relative price support, making them even less affordable than everything else. If we later see scarcity of essentials, due to the collapse of global trade and the just-in-time economy, it is possible that prices would begin to rise again in nominal terms despite deflationary deleveraging. For nominal prices to rise during deflation, they would have to be going through the roof in real terms. The interaction of various factors will determine prices, but the deflationary contraction of credit is a given, and deflation can render things unaffordable far more quickly and comprehensively than inflation.

An understanding of the scale of the inflation we have lived through requires far more than looking at CPI or even casting an eye over conventional money supply measures. It is necessary to appreciate the role of credit and the massive scale of a credit expansion that largely took place in the unregulated shadow banking system. Credit is the critical factor, as the ‘moneyness’ of credit in a myriad different manifestations drove the expansion of the effective money supply.

As John Rubino explained in 2007:

”Doug Noland has for years been pointing out that one of the drivers of the credit bubble has been the ever-broadening definition of money. As the global economy expanded without a hic-up, more and more instruments came to be used as a store of value or medium of exchange or even a standard against which to value other things—in other words, as money. Thus mortgage-backed bonds and even more exotic things came to be seen as nearly risk-free and infinitely liquid. In Noland’s terms, credit gained “moneyness,” which sent the effective global money supply through the roof. This in turn allowed the U.S. and its trading partners to keep adding jobs and appearing to grow, despite debt levels that were rising into the stratosphere. For a while there, borrowing actually made the world richer, because both the cash received and the debt created functioned as money.”

Mish agrees in his response to Gary North:

“We have a credit based economy and anyone watching money supply and not watching credit is simply wrong. This is a statement of fact, not idle conjecture.”

Mish is right. However, credit only functions as equivalent to money during the expansionary phase. Once the credit ponzi scheme has reached is maximum extent, the quality of ‘moneyness’ disappears. As the value of credit collapses, so does a money supply of which credit has come to comprise the vast majority. This is deflation, not the fall of prices, and there is precious little central bankers can do about it other than to play a desperate confidence game, hoping that they can obscure reality long enough for confidence to return by itself. It isn’t going to work. Their actions, in combination with natural swings in herding behaviour, can postpone, but not prevent a credit collapse. Mr North says:

“… deflationists argue that the economy is in a deflationary spiral that the FED cannot prevent. They do not know what they are talking about. They never have.”

In reality, it is he who shows no understanding of the importance of credit and the impotence of the FED in combating its collapse. John Rubino again:

”With a few months of hindsight, it’s now clear that debt-as-money was not one of humanity’s better ideas. When the U.S. housing market -the source of all that mortgage-backed pseudo money- began to tank, hedge funds found out that an asset-backed bond wasn’t exactly the same thing as a stack of hundred dollar bills. The global economy then started taking inventory of what it was using as money. And it began crossing things off the list. Subprime ABS? Nope, that’s not money. BBB corporate bonds? Nope. High-grade corporates? Alas, no. Credit default swaps? Are you kidding me? No longer able to function as money, these instruments are being “repriced” (a slick little euphemism for “dumped for whatever anyone will pay”), which is causing a cascade failure of the many business models that depend on infinite liquidity. The effective global money supply is contracting at a double-digit rate, reversing out much of the past decade’s growth.”

Even as it seeks greater and greater powers, the FED is not omnipotent. Its reach is limited, particularly in relation to the shadow banking system, as Henry Liu pointed out in 2007:

“As an economist, Ben Bernanke, the new Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, no doubt understands that the credit market through debt securitization has in recent years escaped from the funding monopoly of the banking system into the non-bank financial system. As Fed Chairman, however, he must also be aware that the monetary tools at his disposal limit his ability to deal with the fast emerging market-wide credit crisis in the non-bank financial system. The Fed can only intervene in the money market through the shrinking intermediary role of the banking system which has been left merely as a market participant in the overblown credit market. Thus the Fed is forced to fight a raging forest fire with a garden hose.“

Here’s Mish again, from 2008, making clear the limitations of money printing in an attempt to prevent deflation in a fiat regime:

”Although Japan was rapidly printing money, a destruction of credit was happening at a far greater pace. There was an overall contraction of credit in Japan for close to 5 consecutive years. Property values plunged for 18 consecutive years. The stock market plunged from 40,000 to 7,000. Cash was hoarded and the velocity of money collapsed. These are classic symptoms of deflation that a proper definition incorporating both money supply and credit would readily catch. Those looking at consumer prices or monetary injections by the bank of Japan were far off the mark. Yes, there was deflation in Japan. Furthermore, if deflation can happen in Japan, then there is no reason why it cannot happen in the US as well.”

We are on the verge of a deflationary debt default tsunami. More and more individuals, companies and governments at all levels are approaching the point where servicing their debts will no longer be possible. Quantitative easing will eventually greatly exacerbate the difficulty this poses by risking a seizure in the bond market that would send interest rates into the double digits. For the time being though, we have very low nominal interest rates. Mr North argues that this should spur lending, as money is essentially free:

“At some low price – such as “free” – people will take the money. That’s why price inflation is in our future. Price deflation isn’t, short of a banking gridlock, which is quite possible, but an unpredictable event”.

It is, however, real interest rates that matter, not nominal rates. Money offered at zero percent interest in nominal terms is not free if the effective money supply is contracting, as the real rate of interest is the nominal rate minus negative inflation. The Fed is pushing on a string as even zero is not low enough. And banking gridlock is not an unpredictable event under the circumstances we are facing. On the contrary, it is to be expected.

Money is actually free when real interest rates are zero, or even negative, as they were in the years following the tech-wreck. Low nominal interest rates against a backdrop of a rapidly expanding credit pyramid was an invitation to take on unsustainable levels of debt if ever there was one, and both borrowers and lenders took full advantage of the opportunity. Borrowers thought only of their low monthly payments and lenders thought only of the fees they were earning by setting up loans and selling them to Wall Street in the form of securities. Lending standards hit a new low as credit-worthiness was forgotten.

Both parties are now living to regret their previous excesses, but the damage is done. Now that credit is contracting, that ‘free money’ has turned into unpayable debts and illiquid asset markets, which will eventually have to be marked-to-market. Now balance sheets must be rebuilt and neither borrower nor lender is willing to dig themselves into an even deeper hole. The velocity of money will inevitably fall dramatically as risk aversion rises, reserves are held again looming defaults and cash is hoarded. The scale of the bad debt in our global economy is gargantuan. The Fed cannot midwife credit creation under those circumstances, and things will get much worse before they get better.

Mish, in response to Gary North:

“Of course those “excess reserves” are a mirage; they don’t really exist. Banks need those reserves because of the massive wave of credit card defaults and foreclosures yet to hit the books. Every uptick in unemployment exacerbates credit card losses, foreclosures, losses on home equity loans, etc, something that Gary North ignores.”

Mr North dismisses the role of credit and the impact of its contraction summarily, stating:

”Those forecasters who are predicting price deflation argue that monetary inflation will not be powerful enough to overcome price deflation. Nobody is predicting an actual decrease in the money supply, short of some sort of banking gridlock and a complete breakdown of monetary transactions, which no conventional analyst even considers, since it is just too pessimistic to consider seriously, like nuclear war.”

Commentators are predicting an actual decrease in the effective money supply. If conventional analysts are not, then they need to broaden their understanding of what constitutes the money supply in practice. Saying that something cannot happen because the impact would be severe is a non-argument. Serious negative events do occur, and the circumstances leading to this one are obvious. We are headed for banking gridlock and a breakdown of monetary transactions, as we did in the 1930s, only this time it will be worse, as the excesses leading up to this crisis have been worse in every way than they were in the Roaring Twenties.

Finally, Mr North has a distressing tendency to personalize his criticism of his intellectual opponents in a particularly patronizing manner. His leading criticism of Mish for instance, is that, as a photographer, Mish could not possibly have the time to be a credible economic commentator:

“It takes years to build this sort of portfolio. You must eat, drink, and sleep photography. You must master the tools of the trade. You also need creativity. This is not a part-time occupation. It is not a hobby. It is a career. I know what it takes. I used to be an amateur photographer. I gave it up in 1960. I knew I did not have the time to become really good and also pursue my work in economics, history, and markets. I had to choose.“

He would no doubt make a similar criticism of me, were he aware of my existence, as I am also an inter-disciplinarian. Not everyone is forced to choose one field to the exclusion of all else in order to understand the fundamentals of that field. In fact, building an appreciation of the bigger picture requires a broad view. In order to understand the scope of our predicament, it is necessary to understand finance, but also energy (net energy, EROEI, receding horizons etc), ecological carrying capacity and population, collective psychology and herding behaviour (see Prechter), diminishing marginal returns to socio-economic complexity (see Tainter), catabolic collapse (see Greer), positive feedback loops, adaptive ecological cycles (see Holling), pollution and pathogens, game theory, real politik, risk dynamics, reality versus perception as socioeconomic drivers etc, etc. Breadth and depth are not mutually exclusive, and the narrowly focused approach will only take one so far. I think Gary North has some serious reading to do.

Note: I have not answered Mr North’s 10 questions for deflationists, as he frames the debate in terms that serve to obscure rather than illuminate the important factors. The fundamental criticism of Mr North’s position is that he fails to recognize the role of credit and the nature of deflation.

My position on the financial aspect of our predicament can be found here:

• The Resurgence of Risk – A Primer on the Developing Credit Crunch
• Inflation Deflated
• From the Top of the Great Pyramid
• Markets and the Lemming Factor

National Photo Co Six Inches of Relativity June 30, 1922 Washington policeman Bill Norton measuring the distance between knee and suit at the Tidal Basin bathing beach after Col. Sherrell, Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds, issued an order that suits not be over six inches above the knee

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Stoneleigh: People often ask us which currency they should hold and whether or not we think the US dollar is about to plummet, so I thought it would be a good topic for a primer. Basically, the value of a currency can be looked at in two ways – relative to other currencies internationally and relative to goods and services domestically. It is the former that people are generally concerned about, but it should be the latter. Deflation is already outpacing the ability of central bankers and governments to ‘print money’ (monetize debt), and in a deflation, cash is king, relative to goods and services.

You need liquidity, and you need it in a form that will be accepted in your locality, whatever that currency is worth relative to others. As a fully liquid cash equivalent, you could also consider short term bonds (30-90 days) issued by your own government, as long as your government isn’t Zimbabwe or anywhere comparable.  Our horizons will contract drastically as we move towards a far more local world – a world where trading one currency for another might not be possible at all for most people. For most people, the time to think internationally is over. Credit expansion effectively shrank the world and turned it into a global village, but the world is about to get much larger again.

In the past, most people were born and lived and died all within about a five mile radius, and that is the world we are returning to. What good would a foreign currency be under those circumstances? If you are caught with foreign currency you can’t legally trade, you would lose either all or most of its value (depending on the availability of a black market, but that has its own risks). Also, in a world that will be increasingly jingoistic and xenophobic, with the unfolding of an inevitable blame game, holding foreign currency could also be construed as unpatriotic, and that could be dangerous.

If you have liquidity, then you will be able to purchase necessities, and also the hard assets you will eventually need. Deflation will force down the prices of almost everything, hence preserving your purchasing power now will give you options in the future that very few will have. All fiat currencies are eventually inflated away, and in this case that will happen once the credit bubble has finished deflating and the international debt financing model is well and truly broken. I would expect that to be quite some time, as deflation and depression are self-reinforcing, and during that downward spiral it will be impossible to inflate.

During the deflationary phase you will need liquidity, but once it is over you will need to switch to hard assets. I would suggest waiting for very substantial price falls in order to hang on to as much of your wealth as you can, but not to wait for the bottom. The risks of spending a lot of money when no one else has any will grow with time, and you will need time to climb the learning curve associated with any self-sufficiency assets you buy. My guess is that deflation could last for a number of years, and that the best time to shift to hard assets (from a purely financial point of view) should be at least a couple of years away. Others with more resources may make the shift sooner, knowing that they will lose money, but having the luxury of being able to do so in order to buy time to learn new skills.

As for the value of your currency relative to others, that is less important for ordinary people, but may be important for those who are lucky enough to have far more wealth to begin with. Deflation is currently pushing up the value of the US dollar on a flight to safety (temporary pullbacks notwithstanding), and we are on the verge of an unwinding of the yen carry trade, which should also increase the value of the yen substantially. I would expect the euro to fall (temporary rallies notwithstanding) as the internal pressures build in Europe, and currencies that were on the opposite side of the yen carry trade should also fall as the yen rises.

Commodity currencies should do poorly as commodity demand falls and global trade is greatly scaled back, but could recover if we see a supply collapse and commodity prices rise again. This would probably depend on the commodity in question. Beyond a certain point, however, I am expecting currency relationships to become very volatile, if not chaotic. We are likely to see a series of beggar-thy-neighbour competitive devaluations as countries attempt to secure an advantage for themselves, if only temporarily. Where many currencies are falling, relative value depends on which one falls the fastest, or where a perceived safe haven may lie this week. My guess is that we will move into this kind of environment within the next two years, and quite possibly sooner rather than later.

As bets on relative currency values form a large part of the derivatives market (along with interest rate bets), sudden bursts of volatility are likely to generate large losses that could further destabilize an already precarious situation. Betting on specific currency swings under such circumstances would amount to very aggressive gambling and is generally a recipe for losing your shirt. At some point we are likely to see a relatively sudden dislocation in the bond market as we see international borrowing become more difficult, with continuous bailouts making the bond market nervous. Essentially, bailouts will be overtaken by events. That would involve bond prices falling substantially and interest rates soaring – quite possibly into the double digits.

People frequently worry that this will be inflationary, but it would actually precipitate an enormous amount of deflationary credit destruction. Interest rates on all debts would rise with bond rates to crippling levels, leading to a huge wave of defaults. This would amount to hitting the ’emergency stop’ button on the economy, and is one reason we point out that holding debt can easily be financially fatal during deflation. In addition to a default tsunami, we would see governments cut back services drastically in order to reduce terribly expensive borrowing. This means being on your own in a pay-as-you-go world, which is why we emphasize the need for you to hold cash in hand. For many people, the only way to achieve no debt and cash in hand is to sell property and rent. For others, pooling resources may achieve the same thing.

Whatever the fate of the dollar relative to other currencies during a bond market crisis, its value relative to available goods and services domestically should still be increasing. Of course some goods may not be available at this point if they are sourced from abroad and trade has collapsed. There may therefore be some goods that would be worth purchasing at today’s prices, in order to secure items that could be very useful while all it takes is the internet and a credit card.

When we eventually do see inflation, it will not come from the initial havoc in the bond market, but from the aftermath of its destruction. Once deleveraging is over and countries must function in financial isolation, there will be nothing to prevent them from printing actual cash, as opposed to desperately trying to expand credit in a double-or-nothing gamble as they are currently doing. Down that road lies a currency hyperinflation on a Zimbabwean scale, but we are nowhere near that point now. You must survive deflation in order to have to worry about hyperinflation.

Harris & Ewing Fairview Hotel 1916 1st Street and Florida Avenue, Washington The proprietor is former slave and “colored philosopher” Keith Sutherland

Stoneleigh: The interface between finance and energy will prove to be the most important determinant of the way the Greater Depression we are rapidly moving toward will play out in practice. For those here who may be unaware of peak oil, the point is that global oil production appears to have reached a production peak that it will not be physically possible to exceed. Oil discoveries peaked decades ago and we have since been increasing production from large existing fields using ever more complicated and expensive technology, in order to supply increasing global demand from decreasing reserves.

The production peak does not mean that oil is imminently running out – in fact there is probably half of all the oil that ever existed still in the ground, but it is the expensive and relatively inaccessible half. We can no longer increase production and production will fall over time as we continue to use up reserves which are not being replaced by new discoveries. Although discoveries continue to be made, they are few and far between, and of much smaller size than the giant fields we have relied on for so long. As they are much more challenging to produce, they rely on high oil prices in order to remain commercially viable.

One might imagine that as an essential resource becomes scarcer, it’s price would move in one direction only – up – and for a while it appeared that would be the case. However, our energy supply system is set in the context of our existing economic and financial structures. The extreme and increasing stress that these structures are under will interact with future energy scarcity with devastating effect, effectively placing a hard limit on any eventual recovery. Energy is the master resource without which no activity, economic or otherwise, is possible.

The effect of easy credit was to flood commodity exchanges with liquidity, as liquidity fleeing risky securitized assets searched for a safe haven. This pushed up the prices of all commodities beyond what could be justified, sending premature signals of scarcity that attracted even more speculative investment. In this way a bubble was formed, but bubbles always burst, and when they do, the speculative money disappears very quickly, taking price support with it. The price collapse we have seen since is partly a result of speculation in reverse, as speculators go short, and partly a result of falling demand, and that fall in demand has only just begun.

The consequence of that price plunge is a severe impact on the viability of continued fossil fuel exploration and development, and also a similarly significant impact on the viability of energy alternatives such as renewables and efficiency investments. Ilargi has long referred to this as the Law of Receding Horizons, meaning that each time alternatives appear to be reaching the threshold of viability, the combination of the price of conventional energy and the cost structure for the alternative is such that the threshold is never quite reached. Once again, energy prices are falling as costs for alternative have remained high, so that the hoped for developments will again be put on hold.

We are seeing the beginning of a global demand collapse, as the credit crunch takes an ever increasing toll on global economic activity and international trade. Already we are seeing the dire effects on shipping in the Baltic Dry index, thanks to the difficulty in obtaining letters of credit for shipments. Consumers in developed countries are tapped out and trying to repair their tattered balance sheets by cutting back, as are companies and banks. Consumption is therefore falling, which will hit exporting economies very hard indeed. They have spent vast sums, and used huge amounts of raw materials, to build what will now be shown to be an enormous excess of productive capacity. Their demand for raw materials will not recover any time soon, as there will be no demand for their products for a very long time.

For the time being, the on-going demand collapse, which has very much further to go, is causing the price of commodities, and particularly energy, to drop like a stone. This may well continue for a period of time, but the danger is that the demand collapse will lead to a supply collapse, and at that point prices will find a floor and begin to climb again. This price bottom could happen earlier in the coming Depression than would be the case for other goods and services.

Exactly when we might see the impact on supply is not clear, but I doubt if it will be all that long. Already there are many projects with high cost structures which are no longer viable. These are the projects that could have cushioned the down slope of Hubbert’s curve (the decline from peak production of oil), but will not now come on line. Although they could in theory be developed at a later date, increasing capital constraints will make financing almost impossible, hence development will be unlikely for a very long time. We will therefore continue to make do with the fields already in production, but many of those are depleting very quickly – Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, Burgan in Kuwait and many others.

For a while it will be enough to sustain the much lower level of economic activity that we are headed for, but not for all that much longer, especially since there will be many other ‘above ground factors’ to consider. For instance, production infrastructure requires expensive maintenance that will be increasingly difficult to perform, separatist movements in producing countries will seek to control resources for their own benefit, productive capacity being fought over will be damaged or destroyed, sabotage by the disaffected with nothing left to lose will increasingly become a factor, and piracy will make delivery much more challenging. Living off our fossil fuel legacy will therefore become progressively more difficult.

Many governments around the world, including those of all the major powers, are well aware of peak oil. In a very real sense in a modern world, oil IS power, as there is no comparable source of concentrated, transportable and flexible fuel. Securing access to it is therefore of the utmost strategic importance. Some governments, like the Anglo-Saxon economies, have so far appeared to place their trust in the global markets and their own perceived ability to outbid the competition. Others, notably China, have been quietly arranging long term bilateral supply contracts directly with producers, thereby taking production off the market.

China’s strategy is likely to prove far superior in difficult times when international trade is drying up, the fungibility of oil comes under threat and no one can be sure of being able to outbid the competition. By the time others realize that trusting the market to provide is essentially a modern day cargo cult, they may have been completely out maneuvered. In my opinion, this will be the foundation of the coming shift in hegemonic power towards the Far East, but it will not be a peaceful transition. Resource wars are a given under these circumstances.

Lewis Wickes Hine Scavengers November 1912 Children going through Whitman Street dump. Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Stoneleigh: There are many things we have discussed here frequently that come up as questions in the comments because we are attracting new readers all the time. I thought it would be a good time to answer those questions en masse, so that there would be a URL to point to if the same questions should come up again.

The basic point is that we here at TAE are expecting deflation. Although inflation and deflation are commonly thought of as descriptions of rising or falling prices, this is not the case. Inflation and deflation are monetary phenomena. The terms represent either an increase or a decrease, respectively, in the supply of money and credit relative to available goods and services. Rising prices are often a lagging indicator of an increase in the effective money supply, as falling prices are of a decrease. There is an important distinction to be made between nominal prices and real prices, however. Nominal prices can be misleading as they are not adjusted for changes in the money supply and so do not reflect affordability. Real prices, which are so adjusted, are a far more important measure.

Nominal prices typically rise during inflationary times as there is more money available to support higher prices, but prices need not rise evenly, and some prices may fall, depending on other factors. In real terms the picture would be quite different, as increases would be smaller and decreases would larger. When nominal prices fall despite inflation, it means that the price in real terms is plummeting. For instance, global wage arbitrage allowed the price of imported goods to fall drastically in real terms. In deflationary times, nominal prices typically fall across the board, but prices need not fall in real terms, and, in cases of scarcity, may well rise.

The easy availability of cheap credit has conveyed a considerable amount of price support – price support that will be progressively withdrawn as credit tightens. Prices will fall, but the collapse of credit will cause purchasing power to fall faster than price, leading to the apparent paradox of nominally cheaper goods being less affordable in the future than nominally more expensive goods are today. Moreover, there are likely to be substantial changes in relative prices between essentials and non-essentials. As a much larger percentage of a much smaller money supply will be chasing essentials such as food and energy, there will be relative price support for those items. In other words, while everything is becoming less affordable due to the collapse of purchasing power, essentials such a food and energy will be the least affordable of all, whatever the nominal price. People commonly speak of unaffordable prices as a result of inflation, but do not realize that deflation can have the same effect, only much more abruptly.

Thanks to a credit boom that dates back to at least the early 1980s, and which accelerated rapidly after the millennium, the vast majority of the effective money supply is credit. A credit boom can mimic currency inflation in important ways, as credit acts as a money equivalent during the expansion phase. There are, however, important differences. Whereas currency inflation divides the real wealth pie into smaller and smaller pieces, devaluing each one in a form of forced loss sharing, credit expansion creates multiple and mutually exclusive claims to the same pieces of pie. This generates the appearance of a substantial increase in real wealth through leverage, but is an illusion.

The apparent wealth is virtual, and once expansion morphs into contraction, the excess claims are rapidly extinguished in a chaotic real wealth grab. It is this prospect that we are currently facing today, as credit destruction is already well underway, and the destruction of credit is hugely deflationary. As money is the lubricant in the economic engine, a shortage will cause that engine to seize up, as happened in the 1930s. An important point to remember is that demand is not what people want, it is what they are ready, willing and able to pay for. The fall in aggregate demand that characterizes a depression reflects a lack of purchasing power, not a lack of want. With very little money and no access to credit, people can starve amid plenty.

Attempts by governments and central bankers to reinflate the money supply are doomed to fail as debt monetization cannot keep pace with credit destruction, and liquidity injected into the system is being hoarded by nervous banks rather than being used to initiate new lending, as was the stated intent of the various bailout schemes. Bailouts only ever benefit a few insiders. Available credit is already being squeezed across the board, although we are still far closer to the beginning of the contraction than the end of it. Further attempts at reinflation may eventually cause a crisis of confidence among international lenders, which could lead to a serious dislocation in the treasury bond market at some point. If a debt-junkie economy can no longer easily raise funds, then interest rates would rise substantially and spending at home would be drastically cut. This would be the financial equivalent of hitting the ’emergency stop’ button on the economy, as it would cause a far larger rash of defaults than anything we have seen so far. We are not there yet though. Currently the dollar is benefiting from an international flight to safety, and it will probably continue to do so for some time, despite temporary counter-trend pullbacks from time to time.

We have seen a pattern of ebb and flow of market liquidity since February 2007, when the credit crisis arguably began. A constellation of market trends has largely moved in synch with liquidity. As liquidity falls, equities fall, bond yields fall (and prices rise), commodities fall, precious metals fall, real estate falls and the dollar rises, as cash becomes king. When we see market rallies, in contrast, rallies in bond yields, commodities, and metals are also common, and the dollar experiences a pullback. We appear to be beginning a market rally at the moment, which should lead to precisely this set of trend reversals. Such a rally is only temporary relief however. It may last for a couple of months, but then the decline should resume with a vengeance.

We have a very long way to fall, and the deleveraging process is likely to play out over several years.  During this time we can expect to be mired in a worse depression than the 1930s, as the excesses that led to our current situation are far worse by every measure than were those of the Roaring Twenties. Unfortunately, we are much less prepared to face such an occurrence than were our grandparents. Our expectations are far higher, our knowledge and skill base is much less appropriate, we are far less self-sufficient and we have a structural dependency on cheap energy. This will be a very painful time. Deflation and depression are mutually reinforcing, leading to a vicious circle of decline that is very difficult to escape. It will be over when the (small amount of) remaining debt is acceptably collateralized to the (few) remaining creditors. At that point trust will begin to rebuild.

For a longer and more detailed explanation of the credit bubble and deflation see The Resurgence of Risk – A Primer on the Develop(ed) Credit Crunch. This an article I wrote in August 2007 that was recently rerun on The Oil Drum, where I used to be an editor.

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