This chart (courtesy of Mish), shows that contrary to hype, retail has not recovered to anywhere near pre-crash levels, though the consumer culture is still very much alive.
About the only thing he got wrong was his prediction that the financial collapse would be inflationary, but of course he called gold correctly (it was about $300 at the time).
I love it when a reporter catches a high-profile official letting down his guard:
SEWARD, NE—Claiming he wasn’t afraid to let everyone in attendance know about “the real mess we’re in,” Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke reportedly got drunk Tuesday and told everyone at Elwood’s Corner Tavern about how absolutely fucked the U.S. economy actually is.
Bernanke, who sources confirmed was “totally sloshed,” arrived at the drinking establishment at approximately 5:30 p.m., ensconced himself upon a bar stool, and consumed several bottles of Miller High Life and a half-dozen shots of whiskey while loudly proclaiming to any patron who would listen that the economic outlook was “pretty goddamned awful if you want the God’s honest truth.”
“Look, they don’t want anyone except for the Washington, D.C. bigwigs to know how bad shit really is,” said Bernanke, slurring his words as he spoke. “Mounting debt exacerbated—and not relieved—by unchecked consumption, spiraling interest rates, and the grim realities of an inevitable worldwide energy crisis are projected to leave our entire economy in the shitter for, like, a generation, man, I’m telling you.”
“And hell, as long as we’re being honest, I might as well tell you that a truer estimate of the U.S. unemployment rate is actually up around 16 percent, with a 0.7 percent annual rate of economic growth if we’re lucky—if we’re lucky,” continued Bernanke, nearly knocking a full beer over while gesturing with his hands…
…Numerous bar patrons slowly nodded in agreement as Bernanke went on to suggest the United States could pass three or four more stimulus packages and “it wouldn’t even matter.”
“You think that’s going to create long-term economic growth, let alone promote job creation?” Bernanke said. “We’re way beyond that, my friend. There are no jobs, okay? There’s nothing. I think that calls for another drink, don’t you?”
While using beer bottles and pretzel sticks in an attempt to explain to the bartender the importance of infusing $650 billion into the bond market, the inebriated Fed chairman nearly fell off his stool and had to be held up by the patron sitting next to him.
Another bargoer confirmed Bernanke stood about 2 inches from her face and sprayed her with saliva, claiming inflation was going to “totally screw” consumer confidence and then asking if he could bum a smoke.
“Sure, we could hold down long-term interest rates and pursue a program of quantitative easing, but c’mon, we all know that’s not going to make the slightest bit of difference when it comes to output, demand, or employment,” Bernanke said before being told to “try to keep [his] voice down” by the bartender. “And trust me, with the value of the U.S. dollar in the toilet, import costs going through the roof, and numerous world governments unprepared for their own substantial debt burdens, shit’s not looking too good for us abroad, either.”
“God, I’m so wasted,” added Bernanke, resting his head on the bar.
Customers at the bar told reporters the “shitfaced” and disruptive Bernanke refused to pay for his drinks with U.S. currency, claiming it was “worthless.” Witnesses also confirmed that near the end of the evening, Bernanke put money into the jukebox and selected Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” to play five times in a row.
And who knew Bernanke and I had similar tastes in music?
For those who haven’t seen this yet, it’s classic Grant: eloquent and merciless. The Fed doesn’t need PhD’s, he says, but should be run by someone with a bachelor’s degree in the law of unintended consequences.
We have had inflation since late 2009, using my favored definition of inflation as an increase in money supply and credit from Mish. By the way, commodity prices change with the speculative whims of of the financial markets, and are not a good definition of inflation (commodities fell from 1980 to 2000, as we experienced credit & monetary inflation and the price level doubled).
Since 2007, the monetary base has of course soared (see below), but in 2008 and 2009 its increase was overwhelmed by the decrease in private debt (marked-to-market), and the mood of risk-aversion. Since then defaults have eased and new debt issuance has grown, so we have had significant inflation.
Monetary base:
shadowstats.com
Monetary Aggregates:
shadowstats.com
The world is still laden with too much debt to sustain, so we will likely be back into deflation and de-risking before long. The following debtors in particular have yet to have their come-to-Jesus moments:
The Kondratieff cycle is not perfect, but its main point is that debt cycles are generational, since they have as much to do with attitudes as with numbers. The deflation/de-leveraging phase (winter) can last over a decade, and this one certainly looks like it will.
Previous recent generations were as follows, off the top of my head:
The dates are approximate – some say that winter began in 2000 when we first faced deflation. Also, all nations are not in sync. Japan went into winter in 1990, and is still in it despite massive and repeated central bank printing. What clears the way for spring is the reduction in debt, and the west is making the same mistake that we criticised the Japanese for making, propping up failed institutions and not allowing the market to clear.
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Bonus chart: US dollar index since 1985 – in classic form, by the time everyone started worrying about a dollar crash (2007), it had already happened.
shadowstats.com
Despite its central bank’s profligate ways, the Japan’s currency has risen dramatically since the 1990s. Don’t count the dollar out just yet. This chart shows yen per dollar (downward slope = rising yen):
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Glancing around at the commodity and global stock markets, it looks like the bounce from last month’s lows has been adequate to reset psychology for another decline. This is not to say things have to drop this week, but if prices fail to push higher gravity could take over, as the general climate appears to be shifting back to de-risking and deflating (credit downgrades, budget cuts, poor housing sales, lack of hiring, treasury bond strength, etc).
China is the perfect proxy for risk appetite, as it had the biggest stock bubble and action there is linked to gobal consumer demand and industrial commodity prices. Here’s a long-term view of FXI, the ETF of largecap Hong Kong-listed Chinese shares. The big bounce ran out of steam last October, after which prices have made a series of lower lows and lower highs, the definition of a downtrend. Daily RSI and MACD suggest that short-term upside momentum may be stalling:
TD Ameritrade
Taking a look at a 4-hour chart of SPX futures (ES), I wouldn’t necessarily expect stocks to keep dropping this week. In fact, it would be somewhat clearer if we got one of those rollercoaster topping patterns over the coming days, where stocks rally and fall by 2-3% for a few times to bleed off the momentum, such as they have done at the last three intermediate-term tops in October, January and April.
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If SPX sticks to that topping pattern, it could fill the box I’ve drawn below on the daily chart, meaning another try or two at 1130:
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Commodities did spectacularly well from winter 08-09 to winter 09-10. Many tripled in price, such as oil, copper and palladium. The world seemed convinced that another great phase of inflation was underway or would start real soon now.
The reality is that demand is anemic and that there has been little or no economic growth. The only exceptions are property bubbles in China, Australia and Canada that are just running on fumes, where America’s was circa 2006. The commodity bounce was purely a technical reaction from an extremely oversold condition, exacerbated by mistaken faith in Keynesian policies deployed worldwide. The rally began to stall out from mid-autumn to this March, and is now starting to roll over in force.
Here’s a 3-year chart of copper, a very liquid and widely followed market. Many believe it is an economic guage, but this is nonsense IMO, since it was trading well under a dollar as the economy was booming a decade ago, and like a lot of other commodities was very expensive in the stagnant 1970s (and right now of course). Prices are driven first and foremost by fads. Why else would you expect it to trade at $3.50 in the middle of a deflantionary depression when stockpiles are huge?
Stockcharts.com
I don’t like to brag, since I get plenty of timing wrong, but back in April I noted the divergence in RSI and MACD right as copper made its top around $3.60.
Another favorite guage of risk appetite is the silver:gold ratio, which has remained stalled for the better part of a year now, and looks set to decline again:
Stockcharts.com
Also check out the palladium:gold ratio, since palladium experienced a major speculative bubble lately which has started to crash very hard:
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Here’s oil, West Texas Intermediate… in all of these commodity charts, note the severity and unrelenting nature of the last drop in 2008. There were few rallies where one could safely get on board for a short sale — you were either short from the top for the ride of your life or just had to watch.
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I’m not expecting a lot of chop in these markets. I’d love a nice rally here to increase short positions, but it’s not the nature of commodities to take their time on the way down. Traders had months to see this trade coming and set up shorts, but for those who don’t over-leverage themselves it is by no means too late to get on board.
By the way, the commodity currencies (Australian, New Zealand, Canadian dollars, Brazilian Real and South African Rand) have also started to fall hard but have a long way to go to correct their rallies from last winter.
Want to see one commodity market that we’re definitely not too late to short? Gold and silver mining stocks (GDX ETF below). The gold bugs have been extremely confident and their ranks have swelled lately, so a deep set-back is much needed in this sector. After all, mining stocks often have a greater correlation with the S&P 500 than with the gold price (which I expect to fall, though not as much as stocks).
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Ironically, I’m part of a group that’s building a huge database and stock screener in this space, called the Mining Almanac. Launching our beta site right at the top of a commodities bubble couldn’t be worse timing, so I’m trying to make lemonade and using it to search not for value stocks (what I designed it for) but the opposite so that I can short them!
For safety, don’t buy gold stocks, which are a financial asset with value contingent upon stock market conditions, tax laws (seen in Australia lately as their leftist government has slapped an extra tax on the mining industry) and myriad operational concerns. Along with plenty of cash and treasury notes, buy gold itself, either stored in your name in a vault oversees or in your personal posession. Gold is money, and in a deflationary depression with undertones of currency crisis, you want the very best.
From Bloomberg:
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Some great comments on the OMB (“lying on their forecasts”), Geithner (“who has a mortage on a house not far from mine… who didn’t understand risk and real estate prices”), Summers (“uses wrong mathematics in his papers” and has “systemic arrogance”), and Bernanke (“the one who crashed the plane”).
He has praise for David Cameron, whom he thinks understands how to solve the crisis.
Plenty of fodder for inflationists and bond bears here: Hard assets like metals and agricultural land would be a good way to protect value. Forget the stock market and most real estate.
Does anybody, such as professors, now understand the issues he raises? No. Don’t go to business school, but if you go, don’t take any business class that has equations in it: “it’s all bogus.”
From the National Times:
WHEN house prices soar, you can hear the silent cheering all around you. Most of us own homes, so rising prices increase our notional wealth. They mean someone else will have to pay us more in future to buy our homes.
Market analysts and the media bombard us with data on what are the ”best-performing suburbs” – meaning the suburbs where prices rose most. They see it as self-evident that rising prices are a good thing – and the higher, the better for us.
Well, sorry, but they’re wrong. Rising prices may be good for those of us who own homes – but far less than we assume. And they are not good for ”us” as a society.
Let’s be blunt. No social change in recent times has done more to make younger Australians worse off than the waves of house price rises since late 1987, when Labor restored the tax break for negative gearing.
Since September 1987, the Bureau of Statistics tells us, average house prices in capital cities have risen by 433 per cent. In other words, a typical house that was an affordable $100,000 in September 1987 cost $533,000 by December 2009.
But haven’t incomes risen too? Yes, they have: but by only 195 per cent. So if a typical household had a disposable income of $30,000 in September 1987, it has risen to $88,500 now. (There are no figures for median household disposable incomes, but these are in the right ball park). The cost of a typical home, in this example, used to be 3.33 years’ disposable income. But now it costs six years’ income…
…Rising prices are inflation. We don’t think higher petrol prices or higher fruit prices are a good idea, although they certainly make someone better off. Why do we think inflation is such a good thing when it applies to owning a home?
This is one area of policy where government intervention has made things worse for the group they say they want to help: aspiring home owners. That is clear from the sharp fall in home ownership among younger age groups (indeed, among all age groups under 55). (cont…)
The author makes some good points, such as calling asset prices inflation (they are indeed a symptom of inflation, an expansion of money and credit), but he doesn’t seem to get that prices can form bubbles and crash without any changes to the tax code or the traditional supply/demand curve. What matters is cheap credit made available by the moral hazard extended to banks by the existence of a central bank and its ability and willingness to print gobs of money and bail them out.
Break up the cartel and allow a free banking system, and bubbles would be localized and contained by bank runs and the mere risk of bank runs. Bankers need the “fear of God” as on old-time chairman New York’s Chemical Bank put it when asked how he managed to redeem his notes in gold and silver through panics that sank so many others.
