Deflation, A Stock Market Crash And Then Christmas
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Dorothea Lange Social Security Tattoo August 1939 “Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest, Oregon” Don’t get me wrong, I’m no
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I have one quick question for you.
I agree with your analysis and the trend towards deflation, but how does this account for the continuing rise in food prices and how will that effect and be affected by the larger situation?
Thanks!
“Deflation is already here.”
Not for me.
I think that it is for those with money buying distressed assets with free money from the central banks.“People are not spending, i.e. the velocity of money has fallen.”
I would agree that people are not spending. People who have savings are spending their saving. Since the majority of people don’t have saving, and their costs of what they need are going up then its becomes a simple exercise of cutting in one place to spend in another place.
Even borrowing/credit has dried up, except, for student loans and car loans.
On the other hand, the velocity of money has increased among the “big players” getting “free money.”If we did not have the internet, very few people would be aware of what is happening.
“Because either those who keep claiming that Bernanke and the rest of the Fed board have made nothing but honest mistakes for years are right, and I am profoundly stupid – which I don’t think I am -, or I am right and the Fed is loaded with really stupid people. And I don’t believe that either.
There is a third option, however and of course: that the Fed has not at all been doing what they say they have, and it wasn’t a long line of mistakes, but something else altogether.”
“That this entire group of more than average intelligent people make all these mistakes, and misinterpret all of these signals, despite having more and better access to data than anyone else, and you still don’t wonder if perhaps they’re not trying to do what they say they are? How can you claim to be an analyst if you don’t even question your most basic assumptions? How is that analysis and not apologism?”
“At some point you need to ask: stock market crash? What stock market? How is it still really a stock market if it hinges to such a large extent on the Fed pumping money into Wall Street banks? At the very least, you might question if the S&P still reflects an actual market at all, if that market is supposed to reflect what goes on in the economy, and obviously doesn’t. You might want to ask what purpose such a largely illusionary stock market has, what its use is within the larger economy. And while you’re at it, you might also want to answer what use the financial system as a whole is to the real economy, if all it does is squeeze money out of it.”
“Let’s redefine all this talk, and call a spade a spade: The Federal Reserve defines and executes policies aimed at aiding the banking system, not the overall US economy…. The Fed, more than anyone else, has access to the data that prove this. It knows how badly off the banks are.”
Since this is not Zero Hedge comment section, I will only say that I’m reminded of an old discussion, by the teen boys of yester-years which I’m sure most of you are familiar, if you are too young to know then ask your grad parents.
“Did you get to first base?
Did you get to second base?
Did you get to third base?( Only a small minority will get to enjoy third base)
I think I’m in agreement with Jal’s view of money velocity. According to the chart in the article, velocity of money has been falling (more or less steadily) since 1997, and is now at a half century low. But oil and gasoline prices are far higher than the 2001 and 2009 lows, when money velocity was higher. And there exists the energy price head winds of a huge natural gas glut and rising crude production volumes (USA) and declining crude import volumes.
So if the problem is a quickly vanishing supply of cheap oil, velocity of money can go to zero and there still won’t be much cheap oil. And every year that goes by means even less legacy cheap oil in the mix.
We’re almost 6 years into this credit bust, and consumer and producer prices keep grinding higher. If there were any serious monetary deflation it would have bled through to consumer prices by now.
This isn’t to say there won’t be a stock market crash and massive contraction of the economy. However, it will be hyper inflationary, not deflationary.
Rebecca-
If you look at global food prices (taken from prices of futures contracts on everything from wheat, sugar, pork, beef, etc), the picture is one of falling prices since 2011, not rising prices. Overall, commodities have dropped too. Including gold & silver. Of course those are global food prices, so prices of local stuff for which there is no international market may vary.
And since 2012, eurozone bank credit has declined, and right now its declining by 7% per year. “Normal” is growing 5-12% per year (2003-2008), so that’s quite a swing.
These things all point to deflation, at least over the past few years.
Naturally I pick 2011 as my reference point, rather than the trough after the 2008-2009 crash. I could also pick 2008 – top of the bubble – and food prices are down from that point as well.
Again, what we care about for purposes of this discussion is not the price of lettuce in Cleveland, it’s the overall directionality of pressure from the monetary system. Is it inflationary, or deflationary? All my data suggests – deflation.
The recipe is really pretty simple. Willing borrowers create money via the banking system. And so when bank credit declines, when borrowers default, or repay their loans in aggregate, that’s monetary deflation by definition.
There was a small business survey in the US – they asked businesses what was their major concern. Inflation was mentioned by 3% as their top concern. Government rules & regulations: 21%, Taxes 20%, poor sales 19%. That’s anecdotal evidence that seems to confirm what my monetary data is showing me.
Some people get stuck “fighting the last war”; since we’ve had inflation since the Depression, therefore, we must have inflation today, data be damned. And they are convinced that nothing has changed since the 1970s, even though we’ve had a multi-generational debt bubble pop of massive proportions and the credit indicators I watch (especially in the eurozone) supports what Ilargi is saying.
Why do we care? If we think there is inflation because we just watch lettuce prices, when in fact its deflation that is the overall problem, we might make the wrong decision about what is to come, and how to protect yourself.
If hyperinflation starts up, it will show up in the data quickly. And I’ll be the first one up on the soapbox talking about it. But until the data supports a hyperinflationary trend – why on earth must we expect that as the logical outcome when the data says otherwise?
Dave,
I understand basic economics and how inflation and deflation work. I’m not arguing that deflation is not happening in most parts of the economy; you can walk into any big box country in the store today and get a 32″ for as much as $50 less than two or three years ago. Everything is decreasing in price except for necessities.Food prices are one of the things that’s rising, and that goes against the deflationary trend. It’s not just “the price of lettuce in Cleveland,” it’s what people require to stay alive. Remember that any society is only three meals away from anarchy. People all over the U.S. who pay attention have been complaining about how much food prices have gone up, and I’ve seen it myself. I watch my family’s food budget quite closely, and the only thing that has gone down this year overall is coffee. Eggs are up 20 cents this year, agave is up 50 cents (wholesale), cocoa powder just jumped 30 cents (though that will probably come back down somewhat due to holiday sales), etc.
Rebecca-
I did mention that edible items with international prices have (by and large) gone down since 2011. Wheat: down, Corn: down, Soybeans: flat, Cocoa: down, Cattle: down, Sugar: way down, Coffee: way, way down – as you noticed. Coffee is down 66% from its peak.
They don’t have futures for eggs or Agave, so I can’t comment on those. Likely egg prices are locally determined (i.e. lettuce in Cleveland), and agave – well I’m not sure we should classify that as one of the “things people need to survive.” Although I suppose sugar falls under that heading as well. If the high price of agave disturbs you, you can always switch to sugar. 🙂 I would venture a guess that people on low incomes most likely don’t buy agave.
Your observation about cocoa is valid – cocoa over the past 6 months IS up 20%, but it still remains down 30% from levels that peaked in 2011. It all depends on where you draw your starting point. If it is six months ago, and you just focus on cocoa, then you’re right.
Please, do me a favor. Rather than relying on your shopping list to determine price movement of necessities worldwide, look at global/international price charts for the input commodities. That way you are taking a look at a broader picture, not just stuff that affects you personally, in your local area.
at stockcharts.com:
$DJAAG (corn, soybeans, wheat, sugar, soybean oil, coffee and cotton)
$DJASO (cotton, sugar, coffee index)$CORN, for instance, is almost HALF of what it was back in 2011 (and 2012). You know, back when Mexico was about to have a revolution because of high corn prices. And of course we don’t hear about that anymore. That’s because corn prices have plummeted. But good news never makes headlines.
I get most of my aggregate data from the UN FAO, and the rest from looking up individual futures contracts and indices. My request to you: please, go look at the global price data. Then come back and tell me I’m wrong.
And before you complain that this data is irrelevant or meaningless, the peaks in these charts from FAO correlated pretty closely to the revolutions across the (poor) MENA countries, linking directly back to your point about every nation being 3 meals away from revolution.
That research here:
https://necsi.edu/research/social/foodcrises.htmlHowever, the updated version of those food price charts? Declining from that 2011 peak.
First, you can’t have inflation in one segment of an economy and deflation in another. That’s not how it works. You don’t need to look at food prices to know where you are either, though Dave does an admirable job. That velocity of money graph is really all you need, because it says the money supply would have to explode just to keep up with the downward pull caused by money flowing through the economy at the slowest pace in 60 years. It isn’t. At that pace, increasing the money supply makes hardly any sense, because people are not spending anyway, so it wouldn’t flow. You would also have to see increasing wages, and that too is not happening. There will be no inflation unless people can be forced to spend, and that is near impossible when their debts are so high. On the other hand, there are huge amounts of debt that have yet to be written down, restructured or defaulted on, and all that means more deflationary pressure. Food prices are not a factor in that, certainly at local levels. There is no such thing as food inflation.
I think the wage-deflation link nails it. How can inflation rear its ugly head when real wages have been stagnant (in the USA) for 80% of workers since the early 1970s? If wages begin to rise, I’d look at it again. But how can that happen when more and more work is part time?
Ilargi-
I know food prices shouldn’t be “the metric” for deflation, but I think they are (in aggregate, in terms of overall international price trends) a signpost of sorts. Droughts can confuse things, so can big harvests, so can geopolitics, so its a poor substitute for the more accurate monetary indicators you describe. But because its a signpost everyone understands, I just can’t resist using it.
Those two factors – credit growth, and velocity – are the important indicators. And not just credit growth anywhere. To be useful in fighting deflation, the new money has to be given to someone who will spend it into the economy – a homeowner, a consumer, a business, etc. If its borrowed by a worried company and the cash sits on the balance sheet, it doesn’t help fight deflation.
But right now, velocity is dropping, AND credit is contracting. By anyone who understands how things work, and who really take the time to look at the time series and understand what they mean, the conclusions are undeniable.
The funny thing is, I don’t hear anyone – and really, I mean anyone – talking about declining bank credit in Europe, and to me it’s the smoking gun of why there’s no growth over there.
Spain – its credit contraction is 14% PER YEAR in overall bank loans, and we know all those Spanish banks are lying through their collective teeth about the extent of their bad debt. [There was a good recent article on that] They are just now starting to come clean. And we imagine with this massive credit contraction Spain will somehow magically return growth? Not. Gonna. Happen.
dave said, “…so its a poor substitute for the more accurate monetary indicators you describe.”
Why not just use y-o-y consumer prices, using the measuring metrics that were in place in 1980, before all the smoothing, seasonal adjusting, and hedonic replacement? In 2011 consumer prices were up 11%, y-o-y, and in the 9% to 8% range in 2012 and 2013.
When you have a mix of cheap oil and expensive oil, the price is set by the cost of production of the marginal barrel. Demand gets whacked, and the high cost fields get idled, and the price of crude plunges. In 2001 it plunged all the way to $11/bbl, but in 2009, during a far steeper recession, it bottomed at $35/bbl. The higher 2009 bottom represents the much smaller portion of the global oil production stream comprised of legacy cheap oil at that time. And today, legacy cheap oil is an even smaller % of the total.
We had near perfect growing conditions in the USA farm belt this past growing season, so I wouldn’t put too much hope in lower grain prices staying down. Besides, consumer food prices are a function of many inputs, not just grain prices.
Why don’t go to the grocery store in the next week or so and buy 100 items that you are sure to buy again in six months time and carefully record their prices and net weights. If there is massive deflation now, don’t you think the identical basket of 100 items will cost much less next May? What if that basket cost 4.5% more(y-o-y 9%)?
Why not just use y-o-y consumer prices
Because they say nothing about inflation or deflation, other than as a lagging indicator. Why look at prices when you can use much more accurate and immediate indicators? Whether prices fall today or in 6 months or 18 doesn’t tell you much about where an economy is moving. M and V are far superior signs.
For instance, deflation makes people poorer (reflected today in wages, profits), and of course they will try to make up for what’s lost by raising prices wherever they can. Until they can’t. So at least some prices can very well rise during early phases of deflation, but you get to misinterpret that if you look only at prices.
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business — as Chris Martenson et al learned this year.
Nadeem Walayat, proprietor of marketoracle.co.uk, has a different view, below. We’ll see who is right.
https://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article43068.html
Stock Market Forecast 2014 Crash or Rally? Drone Wars and the Nuclear Apocalypse Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2014 Nov 11, 2013 – 11:46 AM GMT
By: Nadeem_Walayat
[snip]
The bottom line is this: the US government shutdown is GREAT NEWS! because for bull markets to persist and continue they NEED BAD NEWS every few months, THEY NEED MOST PEOPLE TO BE SKEPTICAL, TOO AFRAID TO INVEST! And so it continues to be the case for the DURATION OF THIS BULL MARKET, where over 90%, NINTEY PERCENT OF Market commentators have been WRONG and continue to be WRONG, Everyone who has just proclaimed its END IS WRONG and Will BE CRUCIFIED, just as they have been crucified at every market turn for the past FIVE YEARS !
YOU WANT TO LOVE MARKETS THAT ARE HATED!
YOU WANT TO BE AFRAID OF MARKETS THAT ARE LOVED!
UNDERSTAND THIS – THIS stocks stealth bull market is one of the GREATEST bull markets in HISTORY!Ilargi: y-o-y consumer prices “say nothing about inflation or deflation, other than as a lagging indicator.”
OK. So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business …
So I didn’t. My exact words:
I’m not saying things will happen in this order and timeframe. Just that they’re going to if central banks and treasury departments don’t up the ante. But they will.
And may I add to prove my point:
Enter stage left Janet Yellen ….
You know, if only just to avoid a repeat of all the times when we said things MIGHT happen, and then be accused ad nauseum by the less literate of saying they WILL happen. Because that gets old fast.
Perhaps I should add that unlike Nadeem (even though he re-publishes our articles all the time), Nicole and I don’t focus on markets, which is maybe why this site is not called The Automatic Market. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with trying to be as rich as you possibly can in 2 weeks time, it’s just that it’s not what we do. We try to look a few inches beyond that.
So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
10 years seems a good time frame, as long as you don’t try arguing the past 10 prove anything towards your notion. See ya in 10.
The western economies have been in deflationary depression since 2008 or before, as banking and financial assets were irreversibly deflated then, due to aggregate debt saturation and fraud failure, and the money supply being leveraged on the value of those assets, inflation has become impossible because the metric expansion of the money supply cannot be resumed. The price discovery of said depressed assets has been prevented to afford the temporary illusion of mere stagnation instead of revealing the extent of collapse.
There are two officially acknowledged channels of inflation, cost-push and demand-pull inflation, and both should be provably untenable if the aggregates of both wage-based purchasing power and credit consumption are stagnant or declining, despite increasing real costs of oil-based inputs, there’s insufficient price support to maintain the price of most goods and services at a given volume of overproduction.
“At some point you need to ask: stock market crash? What stock market? How is it still really a stock market if it hinges to such a large extent on the Fed pumping money into Wall Street banks?”
https://www.ufppc.org/us-a-world-news-mainmenu-35/10633
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kP9gqCRn7vI/Tkn9LZJGR6I/AAAAAAAAMSs/q-XB3yWUxo8/s1600/corpcontrol.png
https://www.ladydragon.com/news2012/super-entity.jpgLast I heard, half the stocks on earth are now owned by a financial oligarchy comprising 8000 people, the same group who collectively own the central banks and most of the financial superstructure, the ‘wealth effect’ was only ever intended for their benefit. As is tradition, the overclass will quietly exit the market just before the crash which their financial concordance of scandalous manipulations will inevitably percipitate, poised to consolidate the remaining productive assets they don’t own yet, when these are sufficiently deflated, using the worlds remaining liquidity to appropriate the ownership of most of the planets people and real wealth as the western middle class is simultaneously dissolved beyond remedy.
Conspiracywise, to conceal their plunder in the ruin of the west, but especially to remove the threat of a counter-revolution against them, the oligarchs final assault on the remnants of liberty and democracy will undoubtedly entail a deliberately provoked WW3 in some form, perchance by triggering a second formidable market crash and blaming some strategic enemy via a false flag event, but said overclass may have divergent agendas on the desired magnitude of planetary destruction and depopulation, concerning the preservation of infernal hierarchy, but that’s off topic.
alan asked, “That is, they[prices] may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.”
Consumer prices have been rising at a year over year rate of about 8% or 9%, on average, for the last decade, if measured in the same way that they measured prior to 1980. That means that the inflationary forces are overwhelming the deflationary forces.
When deflation seemed to be on the brink of getting the upper hand, in 2008 and 2009, the y-o-y price increase plunged to only +5%. This tells you that if we get a huge dose of deflation like these guys are talking about, you will see it at the gas pump, the grocery store, and everywhere else almost immediately. Certainly within a few months.
They are using this ‘lagging indicator’ jargon because they can’t understand why prices keep going up, year after year, in a so-called deflationary environment. The answer is simple. There are always both deflationary forces and inflationary forces in every economy. And in our economy, the inflationary forces have the upper hand. If they didn’t, prices would be falling hard.
They point to bankrupt cities like Detroit, with a few tens of billions of dollars getting written off. But every year, the USA federal govt. adds $6.5 Trillion to the debt. There is the $1 trillion cash deficit, and another $5 or $6 trillion in (present worth of) new unfunded liabilities. The reason for this is that they have looted the Social security trust fund, and now must account for trillions in unpaid interest every year.
These guys here imply that the USA Federal Govt. will eventually default on their Social Security and Medicare obligations, and they might. But the result of that will be instant anarchy, or concentration camps, not deflation. You will see shortages and barter, which is a form of currency failure, which is a form of hyper inflation.
pipefit post=8246 wrote: These guys here imply that the USA Federal Govt. will eventually default on their Social Security and Medicare obligations, and they might. But the result of that will be instant anarchy, or concentration camps, not deflation. You will see shortages and barter, which is a form of currency failure, which is a form of hyper inflation.
Huh? You think the govt will do nothing until one day on the first of the month they will go to print the SS checks and realize, “Ooops! There’s no money in here. Sorry!” Long before the money runs out they will come out and say, “we’re running out of money, we need to cut benefits, raise taxes, etc in order to honor our obligations.” We’ll get “austerity” just like they’ve been doing in Europe. That will be deflationary. The elites will squeeze the people as hard as they can as long as they can to extract as much wealth as they can. But eventually the people will get fed up and elect a populist President who will promise a chicken in every pot. That is where the tip into inflation may occur as the new populists in govt crank up the presses. This is exactly what happened in the US in the 30’s and only WWII saved us from high inflation. Since every other factory on the planet had been destroyed people had to buy all their stuff from us. They gave us gold and we paid off our debts.
So we will get deflation before inflation. Remember that high/hyper inflation is always and only a political phenomenon. The Fed CANNOT create high/hyper inflation because all of the currency they create is offset by debt. So there is no net currency creation. Only Congress can truly “print” currency by sending cash to the people who will spend them and the currency pool expands.
Why not go to the store and calculate my own personal grocery cost inflation rate from the set of products I buy every week? Well primarily because I don’t assume that I can intuit what the overall monetary pressures are worldwide from just looking at how my own shopping list behaves. Let’s say I buy sugar, and coffee – while Rebecca buys Cocoa and Agave. We will see two very different ‘inflation rates’. Which one is right? And how about the Egyptian’s inflation rate? Or the person from Mexico? Heck, if there is a problem with the cocoa crop, cocoa prices rise. Is that “cocoa inflation” (i.e. more money chasing the same number of goods)? No. That’s just a shortage of cocoa. Like right now, we have a glut of natgas here in the US. Is that deflation? Of course not. Its just overproduction of natgas.
My focus is either nationwide and/or worldwide. Grocery lists aren’t of interest for me because of that. I watch input prices because I’m looking at global macro trends. Not just my own corner of the world.
Now then, for those who claim we have inflation for the past decade – sure, if you choose your starting point as 2003, you can easily make the case that its been an inflationary time. Money supply has also dramatically increased over that period. Heck, go back to 1990. You’ll see even more inflation. That’s what my data shows anyway. Massive credit growth = big inflation numbers.
But I have zero interest in the period prior to the bubble pop. This is because I’m trying to understand how the bubble pop has affected the economy, and especially the answer to the question “what state are we in now.”
From what I can tell, there was a burst of commodity-push inflation (which isn’t monetary inflation) immediately after the 2009 low that lasted through early 2011. And then it stopped cold. Almost all commodities sold off after that peak.
What’s more, if you are seeing your shopping list increase in price since that peak in 2011, you aren’t buying wheat, or corn, or soybeans, cocoa, coffee, sugar, or even gasoline (stockcharts weekly: $WHEAT, $CORN, $SOYB, $DJACC, $COFFEE, $SUGAR, $GASO).
Perhaps you like agave, ahi tuna, wild-caught salmon, or some other stuff that has its own supply & demand curve to it and that is unrelated to monetary matters.
Me, I just look at the input commodity prices for the big agricultural and energy commodities and draw general conclusions from that.
And I have to say, I’m not an avid shadowstats reader. That man over there has been predicting imminent hyperinflation “next year” for the past 6 years. It’s imminent in 2014 too, just FYI, just like it was back in 2008. He had more of a case back then with all that credit growth. Now, unless the Fed drops 10 trillion dollars in the wallets of the actual people of the United States, they most likely won’t get hyperinflation.
Having said that, I have to say that Ilargi is in the business of predictions, not me. I just watch the data, and report what I see. I understand the whys of his predictions, like I understand the whys of the hyperinflationists, but there is none – zero – evidence of any hyperinflation in the western world. Even inflation is just barely visible, and that only in the US, and then only because the banks have been able to pretend-away their losses.
If that changes, I’ll be the first to talk about it. But I refuse to be the prisoner of pre-crash thinking. I refuse to continue fighting the last (inflationary) war, especially when all the monetary evidence I see is to the contrary.
As for medicare & social security – if we can’t afford it, we won’t do it. The specifics of how that plays out, I have no idea, but that which can’t be done, won’t be. What’s more, imagining that the only possible outcome to that predicament is hyperinflation is simply displaying a lack of imagination as to alternate possible outcomes.
ilargi post=8243 wrote:
Stock market crash by xmas? Maybe. But predicting market crashes is dangerous business …
So I didn’t. My exact words:
I’m not saying things will happen in this order and timeframe. Just that they’re going to if central banks and treasury departments don’t up the ante. But they will.
And may I add to prove my point:
Enter stage left Janet Yellen ….
Your exact words, IN THE TITLE (nb: it is hard to feature a thesis more prominently than in a title): “Deflation, A STOCK MARKET CRASH, AND THEN CHRISTMAS“
That seems clear enough. I take the word “then” to mean AFTER the stock market crash. Though, it is true that I am only an idiot who takes words at face value, and who often fails to appreciate the subtleties.
But in this case, I will appreciate the subtleties, such as what you wrote later: “What can hold off a crash? Probably only more asset purchases by the Fed, and temporarily at that [i.e. it could be postponed, but not for long]…. We may make it to Christmas without a market crash, with lots of happy expectations for record sales and a last bout of happy moodswing. That’s not that interesting. What is, is what’ll happen after that.”
OK! So, soon after Christmas (right?) everything will implode, the market will crash, etc. That’s clear, too. I say “soon” because, if we’re seriously thinking in terms of a crash BEFORE Christmas (only 7 weeks away), then it could hardly be all that much longer AFTER, right? Stands to reason.
Bottom line: It will happen before xmas, unless it doesn’t, in which case it will happen shortly after. “Shortly after” might mean, say, a couple or three months, or perhaps even six months, stretching it. Right? Would that not be a reasonable interpretation? If not, please advise as to what is.
ilargi post=8244 wrote:
So here’s my question: would rising consumer prices every year for, say, 10 years in succession, mean anything? Anything at all? That is, they may be a lagging indicator, but still an indicator (after a lag), right? If that is true, then what do they indicate? If anything.
10 years seems a good time frame, as long as you don’t try arguing the past 10 prove anything towards your notion. See ya in 10.
So 10 years is long enough to demonstrate something, but only prospectively. Data from previous periods of 10 years must be discarded. Correct?
I don’t know about that. It seems a strange attitude toward the data.
Maybe I’m just being an idiot, again.@alan –
Pre-pop data is clearly inflationary. Lots of annual credit growth, lots of inflation, the stuff everyone is used to. That’s the old world.
Post pop, the data looks quite different. Some sort of phase-change occurred. That’s today’s world.
I know it doesn’t seem fair that people exclude the past 10 years of data, but that’s because if you mix pre-pop data and post-pop data, you can’t look clearly at directionality that way. And that’s our goal. We want to find out where we are headed post bubble pop.
Averaging pre and post pop together actually ends up hiding information, misleading us as to where we are going.
For example, it similarly hides information if we were to first put someone in a sauna for 4 hours, and then put him in a freezer for 2 hours, average his temperature over the 6 hour period, and then conclude that he is most likely too hot right now because his average temp is hotter than normal.
It compounds the problem if we then go to the next step we predict our victim is likely to die of heat stroke if he stays in that freezer…and then we suggest as a remedy that our victim (currently in the freezer) drink ice water in order to help his clearly above-average temperature.
Make sense?
Data before pop: irrelevant to figuring out where we’re headed.
If it is accepted that never ending growth is not possible, does it not follow that deflation – and the subsequent slowing down of material consumption and money velocity – is a step in the right direction?
Is deflation not inevitable as the material resources of the planet are depleted? Is the currently increasing degree of deflation an indication of physical reality as well as economic (un)reality?
Regards, and thanks for this site,
JPFI
The deflationary crisis and stock market collapse continues!
https://www.google.com/search?q=djia&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
[as of 14 July 2016: DJIA at 18,500+ — an all-time high]
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