Friday, December 18, 2020
Friday, November 27, 2020
The Course of a Currency Collapse
The end of fiat currencies is likely to come sooner than later, from the consequences of today’s massive money-printing, particularly of dollars. Already, US government spending is financed substantially more by currency debasement than taxes, a condition that will almost certainly continue to deteriorate rapidly in the coming months. Furthermore, the global banking system, which is extremely thinly capitalised, faces a tsunami of bad debts which can only lead to a systemic failure — most likely in the Eurozone initially, but threatening all other jurisdictions through counterparty risks. It is coming to a head and is likely to happen soon, possibly triggered by the second covid wave.
Long before the two or three years required for any CBDC to be operational, the world’s reserve fiat currency, the US dollar, is already hyper-inflating. There are signs the markets are beginning to understand this. Bitcoin’s price has risen sharply, sending signals to everyone that the differential between its ultimately fixed quantity and the accelerating rates of fiat currency debasement is feeding dramatically into the price.
Despite the economic slump, equity markets are being driven to new highs as non-financial customers deem stocks to be preferable to bank deposits. It has not helped that the Fed reduced deposit rates to zero last March, well below everyone’s time preference. The Fed has also promised infinite QE in order to fund the fiscal deficit. Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals and corporations are shifting out of cash balances into financial and other assets, with the notable exception of fixed-interest bonds. Rising commodity and raw material prices are also telling us that dollars are been sold in those markets.
This is the point being missed in all commentaries: the mounting evidence that markets, being forward-looking, are beginning to abandon the dollar. And once it goes beyond a certain point, nothing will reverse a rapid loss of purchasing power to the point of worthlessness. To avoid this outcome central banks led by the Fed must immediately abandon inflationary financing of budget deficits.
That is not going to happen. In addition to the current hyperinflation must be added the inflationary cover for the costs and consequences of rescuing a failing global banking system. The costs are immediate, in that governments will take on their books everyone’s bad debts. The consequences are that through their central banks they will have no political alternative other than to counter the economic slump through yet more money printing.
US Treasury bond yields are already beginning to rise, perhaps reflecting this developing outcome as Figure 1 shows.
The up-arrow at the bottom-right of the chart shows that the downward momentum for the bond yield has reversed, forming a golden cross; that is to say the yield is above its two commonly followed moving averages which in turn are forming a cross with the 55-day moving average rising above the 200-day moving average, a strong indicator of a major turning point and of higher bond yields to come. The upward turn of bond yields is to be viewed in the context of the dollar’s trade weighted index, which is shown in Figure 2.
Currently standing at 92.40, if the dollar’s TWI breaks below 91.75 (the low on 1 September) it is likely to head significantly lower. With foreign holdings of dollars and dollar denominated financial securities totalling almost $27 trillion, the chances are that dumping of the dollar on the foreign exchanges will increase rapidly. That being the case, the Fed will not only be funding the unprecedentedly high (for peacetime) budget deficit but will have to absorb foreign sales of US Treasuries and dollars in order to keep the cost of government funding suppressed.
Evidence is mounting that it cannot be done. And with the end of the suppression of interest rates comes the collapse of accumulated malinvestments, of government finances, and of the currency itself.
Long before the two or three years required for any CBDC to be operational, the world’s reserve fiat currency, the US dollar, is already hyper-inflating. There are signs the markets are beginning to understand this. Bitcoin’s price has risen sharply, sending signals to everyone that the differential between its ultimately fixed quantity and the accelerating rates of fiat currency debasement is feeding dramatically into the price.
Despite the economic slump, equity markets are being driven to new highs as non-financial customers deem stocks to be preferable to bank deposits. It has not helped that the Fed reduced deposit rates to zero last March, well below everyone’s time preference. The Fed has also promised infinite QE in order to fund the fiscal deficit. Therefore, it is not surprising that individuals and corporations are shifting out of cash balances into financial and other assets, with the notable exception of fixed-interest bonds. Rising commodity and raw material prices are also telling us that dollars are been sold in those markets.
This is the point being missed in all commentaries: the mounting evidence that markets, being forward-looking, are beginning to abandon the dollar. And once it goes beyond a certain point, nothing will reverse a rapid loss of purchasing power to the point of worthlessness. To avoid this outcome central banks led by the Fed must immediately abandon inflationary financing of budget deficits.
That is not going to happen. In addition to the current hyperinflation must be added the inflationary cover for the costs and consequences of rescuing a failing global banking system. The costs are immediate, in that governments will take on their books everyone’s bad debts. The consequences are that through their central banks they will have no political alternative other than to counter the economic slump through yet more money printing.
US Treasury bond yields are already beginning to rise, perhaps reflecting this developing outcome as Figure 1 shows.
The up-arrow at the bottom-right of the chart shows that the downward momentum for the bond yield has reversed, forming a golden cross; that is to say the yield is above its two commonly followed moving averages which in turn are forming a cross with the 55-day moving average rising above the 200-day moving average, a strong indicator of a major turning point and of higher bond yields to come. The upward turn of bond yields is to be viewed in the context of the dollar’s trade weighted index, which is shown in Figure 2.
Currently standing at 92.40, if the dollar’s TWI breaks below 91.75 (the low on 1 September) it is likely to head significantly lower. With foreign holdings of dollars and dollar denominated financial securities totalling almost $27 trillion, the chances are that dumping of the dollar on the foreign exchanges will increase rapidly. That being the case, the Fed will not only be funding the unprecedentedly high (for peacetime) budget deficit but will have to absorb foreign sales of US Treasuries and dollars in order to keep the cost of government funding suppressed.
Evidence is mounting that it cannot be done. And with the end of the suppression of interest rates comes the collapse of accumulated malinvestments, of government finances, and of the currency itself.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Monday, November 23, 2020
The Destruction of the Euro
If ever there was a political construct the unstated objective of which is to enslave its population, it is the European Union. Its opportunity stems from national governments which, with the exception of Germany and a few other northern states, had driven or were on the way to driving their failed states into the ground. The EU’s objectives were to support the policies of failure by corralling the accumulated wealth of the more successful nations to fund the failures in a socialistic doubling-down, and to accelerate the policies of failure to ensure that all power resides in the hands of statist looters in Brussels.
It is Ayn Rand’s vision of the socialising state as looter in action.[i] All of surviving big business is aligned with it: those who refused to play the game have disappeared. Senior executives with extensive lobbying budgets are no longer at the beck and call of contentious consumers and have hollowed out their smaller competitors. They have opted for the easier non-contentious life of seeking favours of the looters in Brussels, enjoying the champagne and foie gras, the partying with the movers and shakers, and the protection they bribe for their businesses.
It is a corrupt super-state that evolved out of American post-war policy — the child of the American Committee of United Europe. Funded and staffed by the CIA in 1948, the committee’s objectives were to ensure the European countries bought into a US-controlled NATO, in the name of stopping Stalin’s westwards expansion from the post-war boundaries. This was the official story, but it is notable how it formed a template for subsequent American control of other foreign states. It is the action of the jewel wasp that turns a cockroach into a zombie, so that its lava can subsequently feed off it.
This European cockroach is now in the final stages of its zombified existence. In Brussels they don’t realise it, but they are partying into the dawn of the next world, and they will have nowhere left to go. Outside of the Brussels hothouse and EU capitals it is hard to discern any support for a failing political system, beyond simply keeping the show on the road. The German population grumbles about lending their money to economic failures, but like any creditor deep in the hole they will remain blind to the deeper systemic problem for fear of its collapse. At the other extreme are the Greek socialists who claim Germany still owes them for their brutality and destruction seventy-five years ago. It is a Faustian pact between creditors and debtors to ignore the reality of their respective positions. It is the method of imperialism; but instead of being applied to other nations, Brussels applies imperial suppression to its own member states. And now that they been hollowed out, there is nothing left to sustain Brussels.
This is the destination they have arrived at today. Brussels and its European Parliament are nearing the end of their ridiculously expensive and pointless pig-on-pork socialising destruction. Not only have the panjandrums no one left to rob, nowhere left to go, but they have bankrupted a whole continent. Surely, the robbing of the rich and giving to the poor is close to its end. The creditors and debtors have nothing material left — money in everyone’s balance sheet will be written off through a monetary and economic collapse. It is the process of it and the destination we must analyse.
The Eurozone’s banking system is a heartbeat from collapse, as will become evident in this article. There are two basic elements involved. At the bottom there are the commercial banks with rapidly escalating non-performing loans, a phrase which hides the truth, that they are irretrievable bad debts. At the top is the Eurozone-wide settlement system, TARGET2, which is increasingly used to hide the bad debts accumulating at national levels.
Before we look at the position of the commercial banks, in order to understand how toxic the Eurozone has become we will start by exposing the dangers hidden in the settlement system.
The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost
The imbalances between the ECB and the national central banks in the TARGET2 Eurozone settlement system are indicative of the current situation.
Germany (light blue) is now “owed” €1.15 trillion, an amount that has escalated by 27% between January and September. At the same time, the greatest debtors, Italy, Spain and the ECB itself have increased their combined debts by €275bn to €1.3 trillion (before September’s additional deterioration for Spain and the ECB are reported — only figures up to August for them are currently available). But the most rapid deterioration for its size is in Greece’s negative balance, increasing by €45.6bn between January and August.
Is the Bundesbank worried by the increasing quantities of euros owed to it in a system that was always intended to roughly balance? Certainly. Will it publicly complain, or privately demand they be corrected? Almost certainly not. For statist systems such as the EU depend entirely on total obedience towards a common objective. All dissenters are punished, in this case by the waves of destruction that would be unleashed by any state refusing to continue to support the PIGS. TARGET2 is a devil’s pact which is in no one’s interest to break.
The imbalances are all guaranteed by the ECB. In theory, they shouldn’t exist. They partially reflect accumulating trade imbalances between member states without the balancing payment flows the other way. Additionally, imbalances arise when the ECB instructs a regional central bank to purchase bonds issued by its government and other local corporate entities. As the imbalances between national banks grew, the ECB has stopped paying for some of its bond purchases, leading to a TARGET2 deficit of €297bn at the ECB. The corresponding credits conceal the true scale of the deficits on the books of the PIGS national central banks. For example, to the extent of the ECB’s unpaid purchases of Italian debt, the Bank of Italy owes more to the other regional banks than the €546bn headline amount suggests.
It is Ayn Rand’s vision of the socialising state as looter in action.[i] All of surviving big business is aligned with it: those who refused to play the game have disappeared. Senior executives with extensive lobbying budgets are no longer at the beck and call of contentious consumers and have hollowed out their smaller competitors. They have opted for the easier non-contentious life of seeking favours of the looters in Brussels, enjoying the champagne and foie gras, the partying with the movers and shakers, and the protection they bribe for their businesses.
It is a corrupt super-state that evolved out of American post-war policy — the child of the American Committee of United Europe. Funded and staffed by the CIA in 1948, the committee’s objectives were to ensure the European countries bought into a US-controlled NATO, in the name of stopping Stalin’s westwards expansion from the post-war boundaries. This was the official story, but it is notable how it formed a template for subsequent American control of other foreign states. It is the action of the jewel wasp that turns a cockroach into a zombie, so that its lava can subsequently feed off it.
This European cockroach is now in the final stages of its zombified existence. In Brussels they don’t realise it, but they are partying into the dawn of the next world, and they will have nowhere left to go. Outside of the Brussels hothouse and EU capitals it is hard to discern any support for a failing political system, beyond simply keeping the show on the road. The German population grumbles about lending their money to economic failures, but like any creditor deep in the hole they will remain blind to the deeper systemic problem for fear of its collapse. At the other extreme are the Greek socialists who claim Germany still owes them for their brutality and destruction seventy-five years ago. It is a Faustian pact between creditors and debtors to ignore the reality of their respective positions. It is the method of imperialism; but instead of being applied to other nations, Brussels applies imperial suppression to its own member states. And now that they been hollowed out, there is nothing left to sustain Brussels.
This is the destination they have arrived at today. Brussels and its European Parliament are nearing the end of their ridiculously expensive and pointless pig-on-pork socialising destruction. Not only have the panjandrums no one left to rob, nowhere left to go, but they have bankrupted a whole continent. Surely, the robbing of the rich and giving to the poor is close to its end. The creditors and debtors have nothing material left — money in everyone’s balance sheet will be written off through a monetary and economic collapse. It is the process of it and the destination we must analyse.
The Eurozone’s banking system is a heartbeat from collapse, as will become evident in this article. There are two basic elements involved. At the bottom there are the commercial banks with rapidly escalating non-performing loans, a phrase which hides the truth, that they are irretrievable bad debts. At the top is the Eurozone-wide settlement system, TARGET2, which is increasingly used to hide the bad debts accumulating at national levels.
Before we look at the position of the commercial banks, in order to understand how toxic the Eurozone has become we will start by exposing the dangers hidden in the settlement system.
The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost
The imbalances between the ECB and the national central banks in the TARGET2 Eurozone settlement system are indicative of the current situation.
Germany (light blue) is now “owed” €1.15 trillion, an amount that has escalated by 27% between January and September. At the same time, the greatest debtors, Italy, Spain and the ECB itself have increased their combined debts by €275bn to €1.3 trillion (before September’s additional deterioration for Spain and the ECB are reported — only figures up to August for them are currently available). But the most rapid deterioration for its size is in Greece’s negative balance, increasing by €45.6bn between January and August.
Is the Bundesbank worried by the increasing quantities of euros owed to it in a system that was always intended to roughly balance? Certainly. Will it publicly complain, or privately demand they be corrected? Almost certainly not. For statist systems such as the EU depend entirely on total obedience towards a common objective. All dissenters are punished, in this case by the waves of destruction that would be unleashed by any state refusing to continue to support the PIGS. TARGET2 is a devil’s pact which is in no one’s interest to break.
The imbalances are all guaranteed by the ECB. In theory, they shouldn’t exist. They partially reflect accumulating trade imbalances between member states without the balancing payment flows the other way. Additionally, imbalances arise when the ECB instructs a regional central bank to purchase bonds issued by its government and other local corporate entities. As the imbalances between national banks grew, the ECB has stopped paying for some of its bond purchases, leading to a TARGET2 deficit of €297bn at the ECB. The corresponding credits conceal the true scale of the deficits on the books of the PIGS national central banks. For example, to the extent of the ECB’s unpaid purchases of Italian debt, the Bank of Italy owes more to the other regional banks than the €546bn headline amount suggests.
- Source, Goldmoney
Sunday, November 22, 2020
The Global Reset Scam
Increasingly, people are beginning to realise that their world is undergoing a period of rapid change, with the future of fiat money now uncertain. For most, it is too difficult to even contemplate. But growing uncertainties are driving wild speculation about what those in authority now have in store for the human race in the form of a global reset. It is a time for conspiracy theorists, aided and abetted by our politicians and central bankers who are being increasingly evasive, because events are spiralling out of their control.
Then there is America’s Deep State, or the British equivalent, the more recently christened Blob; an amorphous entity comprised of the permanent bureaucracy with its own agenda. These faceless planners have moved on from merely making ministers’ lives difficult if they deviate from the blob’s predetermined course — immortalised in “Yes Minister” and its sequel series “Yes Prime Minister”.
As we saw with Brexit, The Blob has been rigging political outcomes, even conniving in elections. Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 officer produced a dodgy dossier on Trump to influence the American presidential election in 2016. But there is no such thing as an ex-MI6 Agent because of the Official Secrets Act, so we can only conclude that the intelligence arm of The Blob sanctioned it on a distanced basis. MI6 works with other intelligence agencies under the five-eyes agreement and is close to the CIA. Though they do not necessarily share intelligence, it is impossible to conceive of Steele’s role in influencing the outcome of a US presidential election without the CIA’s knowledge. Almost certainly, the fact that it was commissioned must have been with the CIA’s blessing.
At the time of writing, we do not know the outcome of the current presidential election, but enough doubt has been thrown on the validity of the voting process to implicate unknown parties in managing the outcome. It can never be proved, but for increasing numbers of sceptics it looks like a Deep State operation. It is therefore hardly surprising that conspiracies abound.
The World Economic Forum
The most prominent of these conspiracies has hit the headlines in recent weeks. Its ambition is to take the lead in resetting the world by dismantling the capitalist system in favour of a greater technocratic rule — a fourth industrial revolution no less, even planting microchips in humans to read their brains and control them. The leader is one Klaus Schwab, whose World Economic Forum runs the annual Davos bunfight.
As leader of the Davos forum, Schwab probably sees himself as the coordinator of world government. If so, at 82 years old he is probably getting impatient about the progress towards his personal vision of ultimate power. The covid chaos and the success of his climate change agenda must be encouraging him to think he is very close to a breakthrough. Alternatively, we might consider Schwab as a latter-day Charles Fourier (1772—1837), the utopian socialist philosopher, whose forgotten ideals were only marginally more narcissistic and bizarre than Schwab’s.
While the great and the not so good love the annual Davos party as a networking venue for the politics industry, when it comes to transferring real power to Schwab, it’s a no-no. The only time a politician transfers power is when he is deposed by his or her electorate, colleagues, or the military. And history is littered with utopians, like Schwab, grasping for power over their fellow men. In addition to Charles Fourier, we can include Georg Hegel (1770—1831) and Auguste Comte (1798—1857), as well, of course, as Karl Marx. As thinkers or philosophers, they were all influential in their day and some of their ideas persist in the naïve.
So, while increasing numbers of well-informed people are beginning to sense the end of the current world order, to assume that this will hasten the WEF’s grab for world domination by influencing events is a mistake. All our deep states, blobs and their branches, particularly central banks, will want to hold onto and enhance their executive power with the political class increasingly cast as cover. The planners at national level are not going to submit to Mr Schwab’s plans for world domination. Instead, international relations involve mutual cooperation to secure purely domestic objectives, something President Trump was in the process of destroying. From the Deep State’s point of view, perhaps that’s why he had to be deposed in favour of Biden, who is a long-serving compliant figure.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
There can be little doubt that central banks wish to increase their control over money and how it is used, cutting out the obstacle of commercial banks who produce most of the money in circulation through the expansion of bank credit. From a statist point of view, commercial banking is a dinosaur, an outdated remnant of free markets, perpetuating needless systemic risk and superseded by technology. Branch networks will disappear with cash, changing relationships between banks and the general public for ever.
By introducing direct central bank accounts for members of the public and every business, commercial banks become superfluous and can be allowed to die. And if one goes bust before commercial banking has ended, the facility to transfer all its loans and deposits onto a central bank’s books will then exist. The removal of systemic risk by the abolition of commercial banks is one of several likely long-term objectives of CBDCs. Commercial banks can be left with the role of investment banking activities in capital markets.
We can imagine the development of CBDCs going even further than just replacing cash. Stimulation by dropping money into personal accounts can be used to target increased spending by consumers, or even groups of consumers, sorted by wealth, location or other factors. Some consumers can be favoured relative to others, so in a swing state, for example, an incumbent administration might buy votes. While this would be strongly denied, as we have seen with unfettered fiat currency the state creeps incrementally towards unstated objectives, using every tool at its disposal. The election of Deep State-approved politicians then becomes possible.
Eventually, funding of all capital projects will come under the direct control of the central bank. And savings deposits, always seen to be a brake on consumption, can be banished. Capital can be made available for government schemes and favoured businesses on the say so of the central bank.
A future government statement might be issued on the following lines:
“Your Government is pleased to announce that the National Audit Office has approved a number of infrastructure projects targeted at improving communications between administrative centres. This investment over ten years will secure an estimated 500,000 jobs. The cost over the life of the project is XXX billion monetary units. The Central Bank has confirmed it will make funding for these projects available, both to your Government and approved private sector contractors.”
This would be a planners’ heaven. Furthermore, CBDC money can be withheld or frozen for anyone suspected of crimes and tax evasion, starving them into confessions of guilt. The justification is always that it is in the national interest to ensure that financial and tax crimes are eliminated — something commercial banks have singularly failed to do. Overseas payments can be routed through other CBDCs, giving the central banking network control over world trade. Just imagine foreign trade being conducted through a grander version of the Eurozone’s TARGET2 settlement system!
Worried yet? In the advanced economies Covid-19 has nearly eliminated cash, which doubtless is intended to be replaced entirely by CBDCs. The end of cash and bank deposits will allow the central bank to cap the amount of cash anyone can hold, and also ensure that everyone is paid a “living wage”. Already flagged, another intention is to eliminate the burden of interest rates and by controlling where money supply is expanded, manage the economy.
It is commonly assumed that those in charge of us know what they are doing — they don’t. They have become trapped at a socialist endpoint and are doubling down in their efforts towards greater socialism. But their dreams of future control are mere escapism. Individuals will lose yet more personal freedom, but ultimately the state cannot conquer human nature and the will of individuals to do what they want. The Soviets attempted it and failed, despite killing and starving many millions.
Central to the collapse of any state-directed reset will be the loss of faith in fiat currencies, and particularly that of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar. This remains the case irrespective of whether circulating currency is in cash, bank deposits, or CBDCs. Indeed, the collapse could be hastened by CBDCs, because the intention is to increase the pace of injection of new money into the economy if it is required (it always is), and to impose deeper negative interest rates, which cannot be easily achieved under the current monetary system.
If these statist intentions are allowed to prevail, along with other agendas such as the elimination of cheap and effective fossil-based energy, the outlook for humanity is exceedingly grim. Like communism, the global reset into which the western world is drifting will destroy society. Those who believe in liberal values in the original sense of the term — not the modern socialist connotation — will find themselves welcoming the destruction of the current system before it is evolved any further.
Then there is America’s Deep State, or the British equivalent, the more recently christened Blob; an amorphous entity comprised of the permanent bureaucracy with its own agenda. These faceless planners have moved on from merely making ministers’ lives difficult if they deviate from the blob’s predetermined course — immortalised in “Yes Minister” and its sequel series “Yes Prime Minister”.
As we saw with Brexit, The Blob has been rigging political outcomes, even conniving in elections. Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 officer produced a dodgy dossier on Trump to influence the American presidential election in 2016. But there is no such thing as an ex-MI6 Agent because of the Official Secrets Act, so we can only conclude that the intelligence arm of The Blob sanctioned it on a distanced basis. MI6 works with other intelligence agencies under the five-eyes agreement and is close to the CIA. Though they do not necessarily share intelligence, it is impossible to conceive of Steele’s role in influencing the outcome of a US presidential election without the CIA’s knowledge. Almost certainly, the fact that it was commissioned must have been with the CIA’s blessing.
At the time of writing, we do not know the outcome of the current presidential election, but enough doubt has been thrown on the validity of the voting process to implicate unknown parties in managing the outcome. It can never be proved, but for increasing numbers of sceptics it looks like a Deep State operation. It is therefore hardly surprising that conspiracies abound.
The World Economic Forum
The most prominent of these conspiracies has hit the headlines in recent weeks. Its ambition is to take the lead in resetting the world by dismantling the capitalist system in favour of a greater technocratic rule — a fourth industrial revolution no less, even planting microchips in humans to read their brains and control them. The leader is one Klaus Schwab, whose World Economic Forum runs the annual Davos bunfight.
As leader of the Davos forum, Schwab probably sees himself as the coordinator of world government. If so, at 82 years old he is probably getting impatient about the progress towards his personal vision of ultimate power. The covid chaos and the success of his climate change agenda must be encouraging him to think he is very close to a breakthrough. Alternatively, we might consider Schwab as a latter-day Charles Fourier (1772—1837), the utopian socialist philosopher, whose forgotten ideals were only marginally more narcissistic and bizarre than Schwab’s.
While the great and the not so good love the annual Davos party as a networking venue for the politics industry, when it comes to transferring real power to Schwab, it’s a no-no. The only time a politician transfers power is when he is deposed by his or her electorate, colleagues, or the military. And history is littered with utopians, like Schwab, grasping for power over their fellow men. In addition to Charles Fourier, we can include Georg Hegel (1770—1831) and Auguste Comte (1798—1857), as well, of course, as Karl Marx. As thinkers or philosophers, they were all influential in their day and some of their ideas persist in the naïve.
So, while increasing numbers of well-informed people are beginning to sense the end of the current world order, to assume that this will hasten the WEF’s grab for world domination by influencing events is a mistake. All our deep states, blobs and their branches, particularly central banks, will want to hold onto and enhance their executive power with the political class increasingly cast as cover. The planners at national level are not going to submit to Mr Schwab’s plans for world domination. Instead, international relations involve mutual cooperation to secure purely domestic objectives, something President Trump was in the process of destroying. From the Deep State’s point of view, perhaps that’s why he had to be deposed in favour of Biden, who is a long-serving compliant figure.
Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
There can be little doubt that central banks wish to increase their control over money and how it is used, cutting out the obstacle of commercial banks who produce most of the money in circulation through the expansion of bank credit. From a statist point of view, commercial banking is a dinosaur, an outdated remnant of free markets, perpetuating needless systemic risk and superseded by technology. Branch networks will disappear with cash, changing relationships between banks and the general public for ever.
By introducing direct central bank accounts for members of the public and every business, commercial banks become superfluous and can be allowed to die. And if one goes bust before commercial banking has ended, the facility to transfer all its loans and deposits onto a central bank’s books will then exist. The removal of systemic risk by the abolition of commercial banks is one of several likely long-term objectives of CBDCs. Commercial banks can be left with the role of investment banking activities in capital markets.
We can imagine the development of CBDCs going even further than just replacing cash. Stimulation by dropping money into personal accounts can be used to target increased spending by consumers, or even groups of consumers, sorted by wealth, location or other factors. Some consumers can be favoured relative to others, so in a swing state, for example, an incumbent administration might buy votes. While this would be strongly denied, as we have seen with unfettered fiat currency the state creeps incrementally towards unstated objectives, using every tool at its disposal. The election of Deep State-approved politicians then becomes possible.
Eventually, funding of all capital projects will come under the direct control of the central bank. And savings deposits, always seen to be a brake on consumption, can be banished. Capital can be made available for government schemes and favoured businesses on the say so of the central bank.
A future government statement might be issued on the following lines:
“Your Government is pleased to announce that the National Audit Office has approved a number of infrastructure projects targeted at improving communications between administrative centres. This investment over ten years will secure an estimated 500,000 jobs. The cost over the life of the project is XXX billion monetary units. The Central Bank has confirmed it will make funding for these projects available, both to your Government and approved private sector contractors.”
This would be a planners’ heaven. Furthermore, CBDC money can be withheld or frozen for anyone suspected of crimes and tax evasion, starving them into confessions of guilt. The justification is always that it is in the national interest to ensure that financial and tax crimes are eliminated — something commercial banks have singularly failed to do. Overseas payments can be routed through other CBDCs, giving the central banking network control over world trade. Just imagine foreign trade being conducted through a grander version of the Eurozone’s TARGET2 settlement system!
Worried yet? In the advanced economies Covid-19 has nearly eliminated cash, which doubtless is intended to be replaced entirely by CBDCs. The end of cash and bank deposits will allow the central bank to cap the amount of cash anyone can hold, and also ensure that everyone is paid a “living wage”. Already flagged, another intention is to eliminate the burden of interest rates and by controlling where money supply is expanded, manage the economy.
It is commonly assumed that those in charge of us know what they are doing — they don’t. They have become trapped at a socialist endpoint and are doubling down in their efforts towards greater socialism. But their dreams of future control are mere escapism. Individuals will lose yet more personal freedom, but ultimately the state cannot conquer human nature and the will of individuals to do what they want. The Soviets attempted it and failed, despite killing and starving many millions.
Central to the collapse of any state-directed reset will be the loss of faith in fiat currencies, and particularly that of the world’s reserve currency, the US dollar. This remains the case irrespective of whether circulating currency is in cash, bank deposits, or CBDCs. Indeed, the collapse could be hastened by CBDCs, because the intention is to increase the pace of injection of new money into the economy if it is required (it always is), and to impose deeper negative interest rates, which cannot be easily achieved under the current monetary system.
If these statist intentions are allowed to prevail, along with other agendas such as the elimination of cheap and effective fossil-based energy, the outlook for humanity is exceedingly grim. Like communism, the global reset into which the western world is drifting will destroy society. Those who believe in liberal values in the original sense of the term — not the modern socialist connotation — will find themselves welcoming the destruction of the current system before it is evolved any further.
- Source, Goldmoney
Friday, November 13, 2020
The Form of Today’s Monetary Collapse
The first thing to consider is the current relationship of the quantity of money to the economy. US dollar M3 money supply, the broadest definition of money, has increased along with US GDP: M3 stood at $18.327 trillion last July, while second quarter GDP was estimated at $19.52 trillion. The closeness of the relationship between these two figures is explained by the nominal GDP total being inflated by increases in the money quantity. The match is never perfect, because there is always some consumer expenditure which is subject to estimates, future revisions, or simply not captured by GDP. To these we can add statistical error. Furthermore, at the beginning of the inflation there would have been a base level for GDP when money was sound from which subsequent inflations occurred.
The degree of the dollar’s loss of purchasing power is deliberately understated in official statistics. Originally, the policy was to reduce the cost to US and other governments of indexation introduced following the 1970s decade of price inflation. It is remarkable that the statistical suppression of changes in the general level of prices, now adopted in all advanced economies, is rarely questioned. Consequently, the scale of the fall in the purchasing power of fiat currencies has been ignored with some important consequences, at least for governments and their central banks, which are concealing evidence of the failures of monetary and economic policies.
Figure 2 compares the cumulative increase in the general level of prices measured by the CPI, and the Chapwood index — comprised of “the top 500 items on which Americans spend their after-tax dollars in the 50 largest cities in the nation”. The Chapwood price inflation numbers used in the chart are the arithmetic average of the fifty cities, the last data points being end-June 2020. Additionally, the growth of M3 money supply is included.
It should be clear that changes in the general level of prices are a theoretical concept which cannot be measured, because it is different for every individual. An average is therefore no more than an indication, even assuming the evidence is not manipulated by vested interests. Bearing this in mind, the cumulative price effect of the official cities’ CPI over the last ten years is for it to have risen by only 19%, compared with the Chapwood index which rose 159%, compounding by about 10% annually. By way of confirmation that the Chapwood figures are closer to the truth, we see that USD M3 diluted the dollar by increasing 109% over the period.
The lower increase in USD M3 relative to that of the Chapwood index suggests that as well as the dilution of the dollar’s spending power in a general sense, holdings of money have also been reduced relative to the commonly bought goods in the Chapwood index. In other words, consumers appear to show a relative preference in their spending for their common purchases over their less common purchases. This could be taken to be evidence of the earliest stages of a reduction of money balances in favour of everyday purchases. It is inconsistent with the official story upon which monetary policy is based, whereby the monetary authorities and their epigones delude themselves that price inflation is contained by the two per cent annual target, with some of them even claiming price inflation is banished for ever.
Figure 3 further illustrates the ineffectiveness of monetary policy by expressing GDP in 2010 prices adjusted by the CPI (the state’s version of real GDP), by the Chapwood index and finally by M3 money supply.
The monetary authorities claim that before the coronavirus crisis they had stabilised the US economy following the Lehman crisis. Measured by the CPI, by end-2019 the economy had grown by nearly 22% over nine years “in real terms”. But because the CPI is a heavily supressed measure of price inflation, the truth is different. The Chapwood index and USD M3 tell us that adjusted by these measures, GDP has more than halved from $15,241bn to $6,818 and $7,309bn respectively, measured by a base of 2010 dollars.
To be clear, GDP is simply a money total of all recorded transactions. It does not tell us anything about their quality, or indicate the degree of economic progress, or the lack of it. As always, there have been winners and losers. We can only conclude in the most general of terms that the contraction of real values has exposed the failure of monetary and economic policies.
Where it really matters is for governments, and the purchasing power of the taxes they collect.
A modern socialising government never reduces its expenditure, and budget deficits arise as a result of a reluctance to increase taxes to match spending. Prima facie it is evidence of an emerging hyperinflation, in that the decline in the purchasing power of the currency is driving the fall in the real value of taxation receipts, while at the same time it is realised that to raise taxes would be harmful to production, consumption, and therefore government finances.
Then came the coronavirus, an unexpected hit to nominal GDP, upon which government tax income depends. And now we have a second covid-19 wave, the economic consequences of which can only be guessed. Let us not forget that before all this happened, last September there was an emerging liquidity crisis evidenced by the failure in the dollar repo market, indicating, in all likelihood, the end of bank credit expansion. And we should also remember that the trade tariff war between the world’s two largest economies brought the growth of international trade to a sudden halt.
Anyone with an eye for the economic consequences of all these developments can only conclude that in addition to the already growing gap between government spending and tax receipts, governments are not just having to rescue their tax bases from a one or two-off hit from the coronavirus, but further rounds of inflationary expansions will follow at an increasing pace. Purely in terms of money quantities, hyperinflation is already well entrenched for the US dollar and all other fiat currencies subject to the same political and factual dynamics.
The degree of the dollar’s loss of purchasing power is deliberately understated in official statistics. Originally, the policy was to reduce the cost to US and other governments of indexation introduced following the 1970s decade of price inflation. It is remarkable that the statistical suppression of changes in the general level of prices, now adopted in all advanced economies, is rarely questioned. Consequently, the scale of the fall in the purchasing power of fiat currencies has been ignored with some important consequences, at least for governments and their central banks, which are concealing evidence of the failures of monetary and economic policies.
Figure 2 compares the cumulative increase in the general level of prices measured by the CPI, and the Chapwood index — comprised of “the top 500 items on which Americans spend their after-tax dollars in the 50 largest cities in the nation”. The Chapwood price inflation numbers used in the chart are the arithmetic average of the fifty cities, the last data points being end-June 2020. Additionally, the growth of M3 money supply is included.
It should be clear that changes in the general level of prices are a theoretical concept which cannot be measured, because it is different for every individual. An average is therefore no more than an indication, even assuming the evidence is not manipulated by vested interests. Bearing this in mind, the cumulative price effect of the official cities’ CPI over the last ten years is for it to have risen by only 19%, compared with the Chapwood index which rose 159%, compounding by about 10% annually. By way of confirmation that the Chapwood figures are closer to the truth, we see that USD M3 diluted the dollar by increasing 109% over the period.
The lower increase in USD M3 relative to that of the Chapwood index suggests that as well as the dilution of the dollar’s spending power in a general sense, holdings of money have also been reduced relative to the commonly bought goods in the Chapwood index. In other words, consumers appear to show a relative preference in their spending for their common purchases over their less common purchases. This could be taken to be evidence of the earliest stages of a reduction of money balances in favour of everyday purchases. It is inconsistent with the official story upon which monetary policy is based, whereby the monetary authorities and their epigones delude themselves that price inflation is contained by the two per cent annual target, with some of them even claiming price inflation is banished for ever.
Figure 3 further illustrates the ineffectiveness of monetary policy by expressing GDP in 2010 prices adjusted by the CPI (the state’s version of real GDP), by the Chapwood index and finally by M3 money supply.
The monetary authorities claim that before the coronavirus crisis they had stabilised the US economy following the Lehman crisis. Measured by the CPI, by end-2019 the economy had grown by nearly 22% over nine years “in real terms”. But because the CPI is a heavily supressed measure of price inflation, the truth is different. The Chapwood index and USD M3 tell us that adjusted by these measures, GDP has more than halved from $15,241bn to $6,818 and $7,309bn respectively, measured by a base of 2010 dollars.
To be clear, GDP is simply a money total of all recorded transactions. It does not tell us anything about their quality, or indicate the degree of economic progress, or the lack of it. As always, there have been winners and losers. We can only conclude in the most general of terms that the contraction of real values has exposed the failure of monetary and economic policies.
Where it really matters is for governments, and the purchasing power of the taxes they collect.
A modern socialising government never reduces its expenditure, and budget deficits arise as a result of a reluctance to increase taxes to match spending. Prima facie it is evidence of an emerging hyperinflation, in that the decline in the purchasing power of the currency is driving the fall in the real value of taxation receipts, while at the same time it is realised that to raise taxes would be harmful to production, consumption, and therefore government finances.
Then came the coronavirus, an unexpected hit to nominal GDP, upon which government tax income depends. And now we have a second covid-19 wave, the economic consequences of which can only be guessed. Let us not forget that before all this happened, last September there was an emerging liquidity crisis evidenced by the failure in the dollar repo market, indicating, in all likelihood, the end of bank credit expansion. And we should also remember that the trade tariff war between the world’s two largest economies brought the growth of international trade to a sudden halt.
Anyone with an eye for the economic consequences of all these developments can only conclude that in addition to the already growing gap between government spending and tax receipts, governments are not just having to rescue their tax bases from a one or two-off hit from the coronavirus, but further rounds of inflationary expansions will follow at an increasing pace. Purely in terms of money quantities, hyperinflation is already well entrenched for the US dollar and all other fiat currencies subject to the same political and factual dynamics.
- Source, Goldmoney
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Hyperinflation is Here
In the last ten years I have waged two crusades to bring attention to issues I believe to be in the public interest. From 2011, I wrote a series of articles about China’s gold policy, which had been accumulating physical gold from as long ago as 1983. The meme that gold was moving from west to east became broadly understood and almost a cliché. The second crusade was to inform the public that the business or trade cycle was only the symptom of a cycle of bank credit, which inevitably ends in a crisis of credit contraction.
It is now time for a new campaign, on a subject which I have been writing about in recent months, and that is to inform the wider public that their governments and their fiat currencies are now in a state of hyperinflation. It is not a development on the far horizon as many might think; it is already here.
What is hyperinflation?
To understand why hyperinflation is already with us is to know what constitutes hyperinflation. It is not rising prices, or a condition that exists when prices increase above a predetermined rate: rising prices are the consequence of both inflation and hyperinflation. As Milton Friedman put it, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, though he spoiled it by continuing, “…in the sense it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”[i] He was wrong on that last bit, conflating the price effect with the increase in the quantity of money. When even so-called monetarists are imprecise about inflation, let alone hyperinflation, it is hardly surprising public confusion is widespread.
There can only be one definition of hyperinflation, and that is the one headlined above, which you won’t find in any textbook. There is even no definition of it in von Mises’s Human Action, only of inflation, and that is more a description than a definition. And since it is a relatively recent phenomenon of unbacked fiat currencies, hyperinflation was never defined separately from inflation by classical economists. The difference between inflation and hyperinflation cannot be distinguished by degree either.
Have a look at US M1, the quantity of narrow money in the American economy, shown in Figure 1.
The progression of annualised monetary inflation from under 6% before the Lehman crisis, to 9.6% subsequently until March this year, and 65% in the thirty weeks since is clear from the chart. If the monetary authorities have the knowledge, the mandate, the authority, the ability and the desire to stop inflating the currency, we would not describe it as hyperinflation, instead deeming it to be no more than a brief period of exceptional inflation before a return to sound money policies.
But sound money was emphatically discarded in 1971, when the post-war Bretton Woods agreement was finally abandoned — not that the monetary regime at that time was in any way sounder than Adam’s fig leaf was an item of clothing. For the fact of the matter is that sound money in America was arguably abandoned long ago, with the founding of the Fed at Jekyll Island before the First World War.
As a means of funding government deficits, inflation is capable of being stopped by cutting government spending and/or raising taxes. But now, a one-off increase of 65% of narrow money is to be followed by another massive expansion already in the wings. The hope is that that will be enough, just as the original 65% increase in M1 was hoped to be enough to ensure a V-shaped recession would be followed by a return to normality.
The early stages of a hyperinflation are always seen by the monetary authorities as the only policy to pursue. They convince themselves that there are either no consequences, or that they can be controlled. An example of the genre is found in a paper by Michael T Kiley, a senior Fed economist.[ii] In August he concluded that the lack of further room to cut interest rates to deal with the coronavirus requires quantitative easing to a total of 30% of GDP, or $6.5 trillion, to offset the lack of room for manoeuvre on interest rates. Kiley writes that about $3 trillion had been enacted between end-February and end-June, leaving a further $3.5 trillion to come. If we assume the full $6.5 trillion stimulus is enacted by next February, then the increase reflected in narrow money could be to more than double it.
Kiley wrote his paper before the second coronavirus wave commenced. He was modelling an economic contraction measured in real GDP of just 10% in the second quarter (actually 9.5% — not to be confused with the annualised rate reported at 32.9%). But, as I pointed out in last week’s article, with monetary inflation running at such a rate, a dollar last February is not the same as an inflated dollar next February, being diluted on Kiley’s figures by $6.5 trillion. The consequence is some extremely damaging intertemporal shifts, as described in the Cantillon effect, whereby ultimately both productive workers and the poorest in society lose savings, salaries and social security benefits through loss of the dollar’s purchasing power for the benefit of the government, its agencies, and big business.
In his economic model, Kiley flattens the Phillips curve, apparently in an attempt to goal-seek a preferred outcome. The Phillips curve is meant to replicate graphically the relationship between inflation and unemployment, the idea being that an increase in price inflation goes along with a reduction in unemployment. Flattening it is the same as assuming that at a deemed level of full employment prices will not rise as much as previously modelled. But it is one thing to forecast such a relationship when the inflation “stimulus” is in the order of a few per cent, when arguably the public is more aware of the stimulation effect of monetary inflation than they are of the dilutionary effect on the money, but it is another matter when it is as dramatic as it is today.
We must resist the temptation to accept a mathematical relationship between prices of goods and services and the rate of employment, such as predicted by the Phillip’s curve. Whatever the level of employment, production adjusts because of the division of labour. In their dismissal of Say’s law, modern economists fail to realise that production and consumption broadly march or retreat together. Other than users of currency being temporarily conned by the initial effects of monetary stimulation, there is no enduring relationship between the quantity of money and employment.
Errors introduced by the mathematical economists through artifices such as the Phillips curve conceal the consequences of policies based on their forecasts at the outset. Consequently, the recommendations of senior economists at the Fed using economic models based upon macroeconomic assumptions give false comfort to the committees they advise. Furthermore, the annualised rate of the budget deficit since March was about $4.4 trillion, financed entirely through monetary expansion and significantly greater than covered by declining tax income.
If these conditions persist in the new fiscal year — which seems increasingly certain, Kiley’s calculation of the further $3.5 trillion stimulus underestimates the problem. According to an op-ed by Allister Heath in today’s Daily Telegraph, Larry Summers, the US economist and arch-inflationist, believes that the cost of covid-19 will reach 90% of US GDP, substantially more than Kiley’s estimate of 30%. Over-dramatic perhaps; but can we envisage that the forthcoming stimulus package, and then undoubtedly the one to follow that, will restore normality and set the budget deficit firmly in the direction towards a balance? If the answer is no, then we already have hyperinflation.
It is now time for a new campaign, on a subject which I have been writing about in recent months, and that is to inform the wider public that their governments and their fiat currencies are now in a state of hyperinflation. It is not a development on the far horizon as many might think; it is already here.
What is hyperinflation?
To understand why hyperinflation is already with us is to know what constitutes hyperinflation. It is not rising prices, or a condition that exists when prices increase above a predetermined rate: rising prices are the consequence of both inflation and hyperinflation. As Milton Friedman put it, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, though he spoiled it by continuing, “…in the sense it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”[i] He was wrong on that last bit, conflating the price effect with the increase in the quantity of money. When even so-called monetarists are imprecise about inflation, let alone hyperinflation, it is hardly surprising public confusion is widespread.
There can only be one definition of hyperinflation, and that is the one headlined above, which you won’t find in any textbook. There is even no definition of it in von Mises’s Human Action, only of inflation, and that is more a description than a definition. And since it is a relatively recent phenomenon of unbacked fiat currencies, hyperinflation was never defined separately from inflation by classical economists. The difference between inflation and hyperinflation cannot be distinguished by degree either.
Have a look at US M1, the quantity of narrow money in the American economy, shown in Figure 1.
The progression of annualised monetary inflation from under 6% before the Lehman crisis, to 9.6% subsequently until March this year, and 65% in the thirty weeks since is clear from the chart. If the monetary authorities have the knowledge, the mandate, the authority, the ability and the desire to stop inflating the currency, we would not describe it as hyperinflation, instead deeming it to be no more than a brief period of exceptional inflation before a return to sound money policies.
But sound money was emphatically discarded in 1971, when the post-war Bretton Woods agreement was finally abandoned — not that the monetary regime at that time was in any way sounder than Adam’s fig leaf was an item of clothing. For the fact of the matter is that sound money in America was arguably abandoned long ago, with the founding of the Fed at Jekyll Island before the First World War.
As a means of funding government deficits, inflation is capable of being stopped by cutting government spending and/or raising taxes. But now, a one-off increase of 65% of narrow money is to be followed by another massive expansion already in the wings. The hope is that that will be enough, just as the original 65% increase in M1 was hoped to be enough to ensure a V-shaped recession would be followed by a return to normality.
The early stages of a hyperinflation are always seen by the monetary authorities as the only policy to pursue. They convince themselves that there are either no consequences, or that they can be controlled. An example of the genre is found in a paper by Michael T Kiley, a senior Fed economist.[ii] In August he concluded that the lack of further room to cut interest rates to deal with the coronavirus requires quantitative easing to a total of 30% of GDP, or $6.5 trillion, to offset the lack of room for manoeuvre on interest rates. Kiley writes that about $3 trillion had been enacted between end-February and end-June, leaving a further $3.5 trillion to come. If we assume the full $6.5 trillion stimulus is enacted by next February, then the increase reflected in narrow money could be to more than double it.
Kiley wrote his paper before the second coronavirus wave commenced. He was modelling an economic contraction measured in real GDP of just 10% in the second quarter (actually 9.5% — not to be confused with the annualised rate reported at 32.9%). But, as I pointed out in last week’s article, with monetary inflation running at such a rate, a dollar last February is not the same as an inflated dollar next February, being diluted on Kiley’s figures by $6.5 trillion. The consequence is some extremely damaging intertemporal shifts, as described in the Cantillon effect, whereby ultimately both productive workers and the poorest in society lose savings, salaries and social security benefits through loss of the dollar’s purchasing power for the benefit of the government, its agencies, and big business.
In his economic model, Kiley flattens the Phillips curve, apparently in an attempt to goal-seek a preferred outcome. The Phillips curve is meant to replicate graphically the relationship between inflation and unemployment, the idea being that an increase in price inflation goes along with a reduction in unemployment. Flattening it is the same as assuming that at a deemed level of full employment prices will not rise as much as previously modelled. But it is one thing to forecast such a relationship when the inflation “stimulus” is in the order of a few per cent, when arguably the public is more aware of the stimulation effect of monetary inflation than they are of the dilutionary effect on the money, but it is another matter when it is as dramatic as it is today.
We must resist the temptation to accept a mathematical relationship between prices of goods and services and the rate of employment, such as predicted by the Phillip’s curve. Whatever the level of employment, production adjusts because of the division of labour. In their dismissal of Say’s law, modern economists fail to realise that production and consumption broadly march or retreat together. Other than users of currency being temporarily conned by the initial effects of monetary stimulation, there is no enduring relationship between the quantity of money and employment.
Errors introduced by the mathematical economists through artifices such as the Phillips curve conceal the consequences of policies based on their forecasts at the outset. Consequently, the recommendations of senior economists at the Fed using economic models based upon macroeconomic assumptions give false comfort to the committees they advise. Furthermore, the annualised rate of the budget deficit since March was about $4.4 trillion, financed entirely through monetary expansion and significantly greater than covered by declining tax income.
If these conditions persist in the new fiscal year — which seems increasingly certain, Kiley’s calculation of the further $3.5 trillion stimulus underestimates the problem. According to an op-ed by Allister Heath in today’s Daily Telegraph, Larry Summers, the US economist and arch-inflationist, believes that the cost of covid-19 will reach 90% of US GDP, substantially more than Kiley’s estimate of 30%. Over-dramatic perhaps; but can we envisage that the forthcoming stimulus package, and then undoubtedly the one to follow that, will restore normality and set the budget deficit firmly in the direction towards a balance? If the answer is no, then we already have hyperinflation.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Friday, October 23, 2020
John Rubino: 2020 Setting Us Up For the Real Crisis That’s Coming
According to this widely followed guest, we would do well to heed the lessons that 2020 has been providing, since in his analysis we are still facing the most convulsive crisis yet.
John Rubino, founder of DollarCollapse.com, returns to Liberty And Finance / Reluctant Preppers to answer viewers’ questions and alert us to the critical risks we face in the time ahead.
John also reveals the truth about gold’s role in banking that’s starting to leak out, even from official sources.
- Source, Liberty & Finance
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
The Relationship Between Inflation and Prices
Assuming no change in the average cash balances held by a population, over time there must be an inverse relationship between the expansion in the quantity of money in circulation and the diminution of its purchasing power.
This is unarguable in logic and to argue otherwise is to subscribe to a version of monetary perpetual motion. By the same token, while the effects on individual prices also have to allow for changes in the factors specific to them, the effects of monetary debasement on the general level of prices should be clear.
Now it is time to introduce a second factor; changes in the average cash balances held by a population.
Changes in cash balances are an expression of relative preferences between money and goods. If a population as a whole is satisfied with the stability of money as the medium of exchange, it will be happy to retain balances surplus to its immediate needs. We see this even with inflating currencies, such as the Japanese yen, where irrespective of the level of interest rates monetary expansion merely accumulates as bank deposits. It is unusual for a population to go to the extremes evident in Japan, but equally, a population which realises its currency is declining in purchasing power has every reason to dispose of it in favour of goods, maintaining lower balances in consequence.
The complete rejection of a currency as the medium of exchange renders it utterly valueless and is the common outcome to every hyperinflationary collapse. Governments that become ensnared by inflationary financing face the growing certainty of a Venezuelan outcome.
For now, monetary authorities around the world are relying on public ignorance about money and the theory of exchange. Those who trouble themselves to consider how their currency’s purchasing power is actually changing will notice how it is declining more rapidly than official statistics say. This is deliberate. After the introduction of widespread indexation in the early 1980s governments devised methods to reduce the costs incurred. Changes in statistical methodology have achieved that, with consumer price indices now entirely suppressed, so much so that central banks claim to be struggling to get the CPI to rise to its two per cent target.
The evidence from independent analysts in America such as Shadowstats and the Chapwood Index is that real world prices there are rising at closer to a ten per cent rate and have been for the last ten years. With the FMQ having grown at a monthly compounding annualised rate of 9.6% from the Lehman crisis to the end of 2019, the truth about price inflation appears closer to independent analysts’ calculation than the official CPI. Furthermore, there is little evidence of noticeable change in savings rates or cash hoarding over the period, which would have affected the general level of prices.
The first to realise that the purchasing power of a currency is declining and will continue to do so are usually those who own it for reasons other than as a normal medium of exchange. These are foreign holders who have accumulated currencies other than their own government’s fiat money as a result of trade and have chosen to retain it instead of selling it in the foreign exchanges. And there is a second group of foreign holders which has diversified investment portfolios into foreign financial markets.
These groups are primarily sensitive to external economic and financial factors, such as changes in the outlook for trade, financial asset values and their requirements to hold liquidity in their own currencies. It stands to reason that a state that manages to run continuing deficits on the balance of trade and retain an accumulation of foreign ownership of its currency is vulnerable to changes in international sentiment. This is the situation the dollar finds itself in, with US Treasury TIC figures revealing foreigners own financial securities worth approximately $20.6 trillion, and additionally bank deposits and commercial and US Treasury short-term bills totalling $6.15 trillion. In other words, foreign ownership of the dollar is 130% of the CBO’s estimate of current US GDP.
The accumulation of foreign dollar positions was due to a number of factors: the dollar is the international reserve currency, trade expectations were of continual global growth, the perpetuation of US trade deficits, increasing portfolio investment and a rising dollar. Global trade is now contracting, and the dollar has begun to decline. Commercial priorities are changing from global expansion to conserving capital.
With the global economic outlook deteriorating rapidly, the dollar is notably over-owned by foreigners, which is not counterbalanced by American ownership of foreign currencies. Most of US foreign financial interests are denominated in dollars with exposure to foreign currencies remarkably small at $714bn at end-June.[ii]
China has already declared a policy of reducing her dollar investments in US Treasury bonds and is selling her dollars to buy commodities. Few realise it, but China is doing what ordinary people do when they begin to abandon a currency — dumping it for tangible goods which will cost more in future due to the dollar’s declining purchasing power. And as the dollar’s purchasing power declines measured in commodities more nations are likely to follow China’s lead.
When you see a chart of the expansion of money supply, as illustrated in Figure 2 below and combine that with a falling dollar in the foreign exchanges, it is only a matter of time before increasing members of the domestic population begin to follow the foreigners’ lead.
Compared with the past, there is a generation of millennials which through their understanding of cryptocurrencies has learned about the debasement of fiat currencies by their governments. It remains to be seen whether this knowledge will bring forward the general public’s understanding of monetary affairs for an earlier abandonment of money for goods.
Changes in cash balances are an expression of relative preferences between money and goods. If a population as a whole is satisfied with the stability of money as the medium of exchange, it will be happy to retain balances surplus to its immediate needs. We see this even with inflating currencies, such as the Japanese yen, where irrespective of the level of interest rates monetary expansion merely accumulates as bank deposits. It is unusual for a population to go to the extremes evident in Japan, but equally, a population which realises its currency is declining in purchasing power has every reason to dispose of it in favour of goods, maintaining lower balances in consequence.
The complete rejection of a currency as the medium of exchange renders it utterly valueless and is the common outcome to every hyperinflationary collapse. Governments that become ensnared by inflationary financing face the growing certainty of a Venezuelan outcome.
For now, monetary authorities around the world are relying on public ignorance about money and the theory of exchange. Those who trouble themselves to consider how their currency’s purchasing power is actually changing will notice how it is declining more rapidly than official statistics say. This is deliberate. After the introduction of widespread indexation in the early 1980s governments devised methods to reduce the costs incurred. Changes in statistical methodology have achieved that, with consumer price indices now entirely suppressed, so much so that central banks claim to be struggling to get the CPI to rise to its two per cent target.
The evidence from independent analysts in America such as Shadowstats and the Chapwood Index is that real world prices there are rising at closer to a ten per cent rate and have been for the last ten years. With the FMQ having grown at a monthly compounding annualised rate of 9.6% from the Lehman crisis to the end of 2019, the truth about price inflation appears closer to independent analysts’ calculation than the official CPI. Furthermore, there is little evidence of noticeable change in savings rates or cash hoarding over the period, which would have affected the general level of prices.
The first to realise that the purchasing power of a currency is declining and will continue to do so are usually those who own it for reasons other than as a normal medium of exchange. These are foreign holders who have accumulated currencies other than their own government’s fiat money as a result of trade and have chosen to retain it instead of selling it in the foreign exchanges. And there is a second group of foreign holders which has diversified investment portfolios into foreign financial markets.
These groups are primarily sensitive to external economic and financial factors, such as changes in the outlook for trade, financial asset values and their requirements to hold liquidity in their own currencies. It stands to reason that a state that manages to run continuing deficits on the balance of trade and retain an accumulation of foreign ownership of its currency is vulnerable to changes in international sentiment. This is the situation the dollar finds itself in, with US Treasury TIC figures revealing foreigners own financial securities worth approximately $20.6 trillion, and additionally bank deposits and commercial and US Treasury short-term bills totalling $6.15 trillion. In other words, foreign ownership of the dollar is 130% of the CBO’s estimate of current US GDP.
The accumulation of foreign dollar positions was due to a number of factors: the dollar is the international reserve currency, trade expectations were of continual global growth, the perpetuation of US trade deficits, increasing portfolio investment and a rising dollar. Global trade is now contracting, and the dollar has begun to decline. Commercial priorities are changing from global expansion to conserving capital.
With the global economic outlook deteriorating rapidly, the dollar is notably over-owned by foreigners, which is not counterbalanced by American ownership of foreign currencies. Most of US foreign financial interests are denominated in dollars with exposure to foreign currencies remarkably small at $714bn at end-June.[ii]
China has already declared a policy of reducing her dollar investments in US Treasury bonds and is selling her dollars to buy commodities. Few realise it, but China is doing what ordinary people do when they begin to abandon a currency — dumping it for tangible goods which will cost more in future due to the dollar’s declining purchasing power. And as the dollar’s purchasing power declines measured in commodities more nations are likely to follow China’s lead.
When you see a chart of the expansion of money supply, as illustrated in Figure 2 below and combine that with a falling dollar in the foreign exchanges, it is only a matter of time before increasing members of the domestic population begin to follow the foreigners’ lead.
Compared with the past, there is a generation of millennials which through their understanding of cryptocurrencies has learned about the debasement of fiat currencies by their governments. It remains to be seen whether this knowledge will bring forward the general public’s understanding of monetary affairs for an earlier abandonment of money for goods.
- Source, James Turks Gold Money
Friday, October 9, 2020
Why Quantitative Easing is Inflationary
On 23 March the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) announced unlimited QE for both US Treasury stock and agency debt as well as however much liquidity commercial banks need.[i] While judging the expansion of the budget deficit to be inflationary, it is only inflationary to the extent that it is not financed by savers, either increasing the proportion of their savings relative to immediate spending, or to the extent they divert their savings from other investment media. In the latter case, citizens have been committing their savings more to equity markets than bond markets. The returns for discretionary portfolios managed on the public’s behalf have also found better returns in equities than in government and corporate bonds, though when assessing increasing investment risk Treasury stock is seen to be a safe haven in bond portfolios. Pension funds and insurance companies also allocate cash flow to US Treasuries and to the extent that this is the case, the issuance of further government debt is non-inflationary.
Furthermore, if a bank does not increase its balance sheet by expanding bank credit, its participation in the Fed’s QE programme is not inflationary either. For this to be the case, it would have to sell existing stock, call in loans or subscribe on behalf of clients.
By seeing them through a Nelsonian blind eye these factors give some encouragement to the Fed in funding the Treasury through QE, particularly since the statistics reflect a jump in savings, as the following chart from the St Louis Fed illustrates.
More correctly, the chart reflects the fall in spending when people locked down, as well as the $1,200 stimulus checks distributed to households at end-April, which marked the peak in the chart. Since then, there has been some downward adjustment, partly because some spending has returned, and the backlog of essential spending, such as property maintenance, is being addressed.
The evidence is not yet strong enough to claim this statistical shift in savings habits is permanent. Furthermore, being calculated as the percentage of personal disposable income that is not spent and given the high levels of personal debt throughout the population, much of these so-called savings will have disappeared into credit card and debt repayments. It is more likely that with rising unemployment and roughly 80% of the American salaried population living paycheque to paycheque, that far from there being a higher savings rate, personal finances have deteriorated so much that money is being withdrawn from savings on a net basis, to acquire life’s essentials. In fact, the savings rate is one of those unmeasurable economic concepts, and the reality is that Joe Average is worse off in today’s contracting economy and is drawing down on savings in order to subsist.
The non-inflationary element of QE then boils down roughly to increases in insurance company and pension fund investments in Treasury stock and the increase in bank holdings and reserves at the Fed not funded through the expansion of bank credit.
Furthermore, if a bank does not increase its balance sheet by expanding bank credit, its participation in the Fed’s QE programme is not inflationary either. For this to be the case, it would have to sell existing stock, call in loans or subscribe on behalf of clients.
By seeing them through a Nelsonian blind eye these factors give some encouragement to the Fed in funding the Treasury through QE, particularly since the statistics reflect a jump in savings, as the following chart from the St Louis Fed illustrates.
More correctly, the chart reflects the fall in spending when people locked down, as well as the $1,200 stimulus checks distributed to households at end-April, which marked the peak in the chart. Since then, there has been some downward adjustment, partly because some spending has returned, and the backlog of essential spending, such as property maintenance, is being addressed.
The evidence is not yet strong enough to claim this statistical shift in savings habits is permanent. Furthermore, being calculated as the percentage of personal disposable income that is not spent and given the high levels of personal debt throughout the population, much of these so-called savings will have disappeared into credit card and debt repayments. It is more likely that with rising unemployment and roughly 80% of the American salaried population living paycheque to paycheque, that far from there being a higher savings rate, personal finances have deteriorated so much that money is being withdrawn from savings on a net basis, to acquire life’s essentials. In fact, the savings rate is one of those unmeasurable economic concepts, and the reality is that Joe Average is worse off in today’s contracting economy and is drawing down on savings in order to subsist.
The non-inflationary element of QE then boils down roughly to increases in insurance company and pension fund investments in Treasury stock and the increase in bank holdings and reserves at the Fed not funded through the expansion of bank credit.
But this creates another factor: the extent to which existing bond investments are sold in order to subscribe for Treasury stock inevitably undermines corporate bond markets and their ability to satisfy their funding requirements.
And it is for this reason the Fed has appointed BlackRock to spearhead its purchases of corporate debt to ensure liquidity is available for those markets and to put a cap on risk premiums. Therefore, where banks do not expand credit to buy new Treasury stock, the Fed steps in to compensate with additional monetary inflation.
It has been necessary to go into the mechanisms behind funding government deficits in some detail to establish the inflationary consequences of QE, and to refute claims by monetary authorities and others that QE is either not or only partly inflationary, and so is consistent with the Fed’s mandate. No, with the exception of insurance and pension fund subscriptions, the Fed’s QE is almost pure monetary inflation.
It has been necessary to go into the mechanisms behind funding government deficits in some detail to establish the inflationary consequences of QE, and to refute claims by monetary authorities and others that QE is either not or only partly inflationary, and so is consistent with the Fed’s mandate. No, with the exception of insurance and pension fund subscriptions, the Fed’s QE is almost pure monetary inflation.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Monday, October 5, 2020
The Emerging Evidence of Hyperinflation
No doubt, the reluctance to reduce, or at least contain budget deficits is ruled out by the presidential election in November. But whoever wins, it seems unlikely that government spending will be reined in or tax revenue increased.
For the universal truth of unbacked state currencies is that so long as they can be issued to cover budget deficits they will be issued.
And as an inflated currency ends up buying less, the pace of its issuance all else being equal will accelerate to compensate. It is one of the driving forces behind hyperinflation of the quantity of money.
Since the Lehman crisis in August 2008, the pace of monetary inflation has accelerated above its long-term average, and the effect is illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 includes the latest calculation of the fiat money quantity, to 1 August 2020. FMQ is the sum of Austrian money supply and bank reserves held at the Fed — in other words fiat dollars both in circulation and not in public circulation.
Since the Lehman crisis in August 2008, the pace of monetary inflation has accelerated above its long-term average, and the effect is illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 includes the latest calculation of the fiat money quantity, to 1 August 2020. FMQ is the sum of Austrian money supply and bank reserves held at the Fed — in other words fiat dollars both in circulation and not in public circulation.
Because commercial banks are free to deploy their reserves within the regulatory framework, either as a basis for expanding bank credit or to be withdrawn from the Fed and put into direct circulation, whether in circulation or not bank reserves at the Fed should be regarded as part of the fiat money total.
It can be seen that the rate of FMQ’s growth was fairly constant over a long period of time — 5.86% annualized compounded monthly to be exact — until the Lehman crisis when the rate of growth then took off. Since Leman failed in 2008 FMQ’s total has grown nearly 300%.
Since last March growth in the FMQ has been unprecedented, becoming almost vertical on the chart, triggered by the Fed’s response to the coronavirus.
It can be seen that the rate of FMQ’s growth was fairly constant over a long period of time — 5.86% annualized compounded monthly to be exact — until the Lehman crisis when the rate of growth then took off. Since Leman failed in 2008 FMQ’s total has grown nearly 300%.
Since last March growth in the FMQ has been unprecedented, becoming almost vertical on the chart, triggered by the Fed’s response to the coronavirus.
And now a second wave of it has hit Europe and the early stages of a resurgence appears to be hitting the land of the dollar as well. With lingering hopes of a V-shaped recovery being banished, a further substantial increase in FMQ is all but certain.
Already, FMQ exceeds GDP. If we take the last time things were normal, say, in 2005 when the US economy had recovered from the dot-com crash and before bank credit expansion and mortgage lending become overblown, we see that in a functioning relationship FMQ should be between 35%—40% of GDP.
Already, FMQ exceeds GDP. If we take the last time things were normal, say, in 2005 when the US economy had recovered from the dot-com crash and before bank credit expansion and mortgage lending become overblown, we see that in a functioning relationship FMQ should be between 35%—40% of GDP.
But with the US economy now crashing and FMQ accelerating, FMQ is likely to be in excess of 125% of GDP in the coming months.
What is the source of all that extra money? It is raised through quantitative easing by the central bank in a system that bends rules that are intended to stop the Fed from just printing money and handing it to the government. Yet it achieves just that.
What is the source of all that extra money? It is raised through quantitative easing by the central bank in a system that bends rules that are intended to stop the Fed from just printing money and handing it to the government. Yet it achieves just that.
The US Treasury issues bonds by auction in the normal fashion. The major banks through their prime brokers bid for them in the knowledge that the Fed sets the yield for different maturities through its market operations.
The Fed buys Treasury bonds up to the previously announced monthly QE limit, only now there is no limit, giving the primary brokers a guaranteed turn and crediting the selling banks’ reserve accounts with the proceeds.
This arm’s length arrangement absolves the Fed of the sin of direct money-printing but evades the rules by indirect money-printing. The Treasury gets extra funding through this roundabout arrangement. Participating banks generally expand their bank credit to absorb the new issue, which they then sell to the Fed, which in turn credits the banks’ reserve accounts.
This arm’s length arrangement absolves the Fed of the sin of direct money-printing but evades the rules by indirect money-printing. The Treasury gets extra funding through this roundabout arrangement. Participating banks generally expand their bank credit to absorb the new issue, which they then sell to the Fed, which in turn credits the banks’ reserve accounts.
The Treasury gets the proceeds of the bonds to cover the deficit in government spending, and the banks get expanded reserves. The Fed’s balance sheet sees an increase in its liabilities to commercial banks and an increase in its assets of Treasury bonds. The Fed also funds agency debt in this manner, mostly representing mortgage finance.
Under President Trump, the Treasury’s current deficit initially expanded as a planned supply-side stimulus to the US economy to the tune of just over a trillion dollars before covid-19 created additional financial chaos. Businesses experienced severe dislocation and have suffered a widespread collapse. Consequently, and together with the direct injection of money into each household, the Congressional Budget Office revised its trillion-dollar deficit for the financial year just ended as the following screenshot from its website indicates:
Note how half the government’s income arose from revenues and half is covered by sales of government debt to the public (i.e. the commercial banks), which at the end of fiscal 2020 (ended yesterday) is estimated to total $20.3 trillion.
Under President Trump, the Treasury’s current deficit initially expanded as a planned supply-side stimulus to the US economy to the tune of just over a trillion dollars before covid-19 created additional financial chaos. Businesses experienced severe dislocation and have suffered a widespread collapse. Consequently, and together with the direct injection of money into each household, the Congressional Budget Office revised its trillion-dollar deficit for the financial year just ended as the following screenshot from its website indicates:
Note how half the government’s income arose from revenues and half is covered by sales of government debt to the public (i.e. the commercial banks), which at the end of fiscal 2020 (ended yesterday) is estimated to total $20.3 trillion.
But given that the first half of that fiscal year was pre-lockdown and the annualized rate of the deficit at that time was about a trillion dollars, simplistically the annualized rate of the deficit’s increase since last March is in the region of $4.4 trillion.
Incidentally, the CBO’s economic projections look too optimistic given recent events, in which case budget projections for this new calendar year will be adjusted for considerably lower revenue figures, and significantly greater outlays at the least.
- Source, James Turk's Gold Money
Monday, September 14, 2020
Gold & Silver Unstoppable: China Dumping USD For Real Stuff Right Now
Alasdair further sees the flagship monetary metals will be unstoppable in the face of the inescapable financial corner the Fed has backed into.
- Source, Liberty & Finance
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
James Turk: The Existing Monetary Order is Not Going to Survive
Paul Buitink talks to James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, about the current economic crisis.
James thinks it will inevitably lead to a collapse of confidence in fiat money and hence hyperinflation.
James also believes companies should just be able to go bankrupt.
He criticizes fiat currencies and calls upon people to return to sound money since corrupt money has corrupted the system.
The existing monetary order is not going to survive. He believes in buying gold and silver to protect your purchasing power. Gold needs to be in the hands of the people, not the central banks he says. He also likes Bitcoin better than fiat.
- Source, Reinvent Money
Friday, August 28, 2020
Where is All That Gold Being Stored?
WE'RE in the midst of a modern-day gold rush.
The precious metal has reached record high prices in recent days. A survey of 1,000 people by Magnify Money found that one out of six have invested in gold or other precious metals since May, and about half of Americans are seriously thinking about buying gold.
(This after Gallup reported in April that Americans had cooled somewhat on stocks as a long-term investment.)
Whether these people are stocking up on gold because they're worried about a pending apocalypse or simply convinced that it's a fabulous investment, they do have one major issue: storage. Bars and coins are bulky (and let's not get started on jewellery, which can be complicated emotionally).
With anxiety about the economy increasing - which tends to rise any time there's political or world turmoil - the need for storage is growing, too, and options are expanding to meet it.
"Gold and silver bullion storage options have simply grown more in location diversity, pricing - with even some offering short-term collateral loan options," said James Anderson, a research executive at SD Bullion in Toledo, Ohio.
"When I began in this industry pre-2008 financial crisis, there were perhaps 10 to 20 domestic bullion storage depositories. Now, there are hundreds in the US and abroad."
People tend to buy gold when they fear a sustained loss in stocks, bonds, real estate or other traditionally profitable investments, said Adrian Ash, the director of research for BullionVault in West London.
Increasing capacity
So private vault operators have been increasing their capacity as well - but specifically within presumed politically safe locations like Switzerland and Singapore, said James Turk, the founder and director of Goldmoney Inc in Toronto.
Switzerland's banks have always been deemed a safe haven for assets and precious metals, but in recent years many people started to lose faith in banks.
As a result, there has been an increased demand there for safe deposit boxes there that aren't run by banks.
"In late 2019, we even had to build additional boxes, as we had reached 100 per cent of our capacity," said Michael Hardmeier, the CEO of Sincona Trading AG, whose headquarters are in a former bank building in central Zurich.
Swiss vaults tend to be more expensive than those in England, where a new spot opened that was designed for those accustomed to a lavish lifestyle.
The vault is inside a former mansion run by International Bank Vaults (IBV).
A chauffeur driving a Rolls-Royce picks up clients and delivers them to the London mansion, where white-gloved custodians transfer them to their boxes (after a quick fingerprint and iris scan, of course).
Those boxes are stored within a steel-lined vault supposedly impenetrable to anyone attempting to illegally gain access from any angle.
You may have to spend a few of those gold bars to store them: It's advertised as the most expensive safe deposit box in the world, and the company claims it's available only to billionaires, with the smallest box starting at £600 (S$1,017) to rent (this would fit just a few gold bars).
IBV London managing director Sean Hoey said that, unlike a bank, IBV allows clients to buy gold and to store it - and it will buy back the gold.
Also, many gold owners believe that vaults, unlike banks, are somewhat resilient to an economic meltdown.
"You can use a safe deposit box, but folks worry that if there was an economic meltdown, the banks might close, and your metals would be trapped inside that bank," said Gary Cubeta, a gold dealer in Arizona and the president and founder of Insurance for Final Expense.
Even without an economic meltdown, there's less faith in bank safe deposit boxes, because there aren't federal laws governing these boxes, so if anything is stolen or destroyed, the customer is typically out of luck.
Old-fashioned route
That may be why some are choosing to go the old-fashioned route and are storing their gold at home.
Numerous YouTube videos and bloggers explain how to bury gold bars in everything from mincemeat to the backyard.
But it's wise to consider your home options before simply stuffing your gold under a tree.
Mr Cubeta, who advises gold owners to store their gold within 15 to 20 minutes of their home so they have easy access to it in case of a financial meltdown, said the best thing you can do is to keep half in a home safe while putting the other half in a safe deposit box.
"You need a safe especially designed for precious metals," he said, explaining that most gun safes can't withstand the heat of a fire, while precious metal safes will keep your gold protected for two hours.
Before moving your gold home, you need to contact the insurer that issues your homeowner's policy, because most don't cover large amounts of gold stored at home.
"On average, the standard homeowner's insurance policy covers around US$1,000 for jewellery or valuables, and the average home insurance policy is set up to protect the average household, so the limits will not be sufficient to cover expensive or valuable items," said Lev Barinskiy, the CEO of SmartFinancial, an insurance comparison site.
There are also storage options where you never even see the gold you own. Customers buy a digital token backed by physical gold held in a vault, said Joonas Karppinen, head of trading at InfiniGold.
"A token provides customers with actual ownership of the gold in question - which is essential, especially if your content insurance does not cover your bullion portfolio stored in the house," he said.
That's all good, unless you want to feel its weight in gold. Literally.
The precious metal has reached record high prices in recent days. A survey of 1,000 people by Magnify Money found that one out of six have invested in gold or other precious metals since May, and about half of Americans are seriously thinking about buying gold.
(This after Gallup reported in April that Americans had cooled somewhat on stocks as a long-term investment.)
Whether these people are stocking up on gold because they're worried about a pending apocalypse or simply convinced that it's a fabulous investment, they do have one major issue: storage. Bars and coins are bulky (and let's not get started on jewellery, which can be complicated emotionally).
With anxiety about the economy increasing - which tends to rise any time there's political or world turmoil - the need for storage is growing, too, and options are expanding to meet it.
"Gold and silver bullion storage options have simply grown more in location diversity, pricing - with even some offering short-term collateral loan options," said James Anderson, a research executive at SD Bullion in Toledo, Ohio.
"When I began in this industry pre-2008 financial crisis, there were perhaps 10 to 20 domestic bullion storage depositories. Now, there are hundreds in the US and abroad."
People tend to buy gold when they fear a sustained loss in stocks, bonds, real estate or other traditionally profitable investments, said Adrian Ash, the director of research for BullionVault in West London.
Increasing capacity
So private vault operators have been increasing their capacity as well - but specifically within presumed politically safe locations like Switzerland and Singapore, said James Turk, the founder and director of Goldmoney Inc in Toronto.
Switzerland's banks have always been deemed a safe haven for assets and precious metals, but in recent years many people started to lose faith in banks.
As a result, there has been an increased demand there for safe deposit boxes there that aren't run by banks.
"In late 2019, we even had to build additional boxes, as we had reached 100 per cent of our capacity," said Michael Hardmeier, the CEO of Sincona Trading AG, whose headquarters are in a former bank building in central Zurich.
Swiss vaults tend to be more expensive than those in England, where a new spot opened that was designed for those accustomed to a lavish lifestyle.
The vault is inside a former mansion run by International Bank Vaults (IBV).
A chauffeur driving a Rolls-Royce picks up clients and delivers them to the London mansion, where white-gloved custodians transfer them to their boxes (after a quick fingerprint and iris scan, of course).
Those boxes are stored within a steel-lined vault supposedly impenetrable to anyone attempting to illegally gain access from any angle.
You may have to spend a few of those gold bars to store them: It's advertised as the most expensive safe deposit box in the world, and the company claims it's available only to billionaires, with the smallest box starting at £600 (S$1,017) to rent (this would fit just a few gold bars).
IBV London managing director Sean Hoey said that, unlike a bank, IBV allows clients to buy gold and to store it - and it will buy back the gold.
Also, many gold owners believe that vaults, unlike banks, are somewhat resilient to an economic meltdown.
"You can use a safe deposit box, but folks worry that if there was an economic meltdown, the banks might close, and your metals would be trapped inside that bank," said Gary Cubeta, a gold dealer in Arizona and the president and founder of Insurance for Final Expense.
Even without an economic meltdown, there's less faith in bank safe deposit boxes, because there aren't federal laws governing these boxes, so if anything is stolen or destroyed, the customer is typically out of luck.
Old-fashioned route
That may be why some are choosing to go the old-fashioned route and are storing their gold at home.
Numerous YouTube videos and bloggers explain how to bury gold bars in everything from mincemeat to the backyard.
But it's wise to consider your home options before simply stuffing your gold under a tree.
Mr Cubeta, who advises gold owners to store their gold within 15 to 20 minutes of their home so they have easy access to it in case of a financial meltdown, said the best thing you can do is to keep half in a home safe while putting the other half in a safe deposit box.
"You need a safe especially designed for precious metals," he said, explaining that most gun safes can't withstand the heat of a fire, while precious metal safes will keep your gold protected for two hours.
Before moving your gold home, you need to contact the insurer that issues your homeowner's policy, because most don't cover large amounts of gold stored at home.
"On average, the standard homeowner's insurance policy covers around US$1,000 for jewellery or valuables, and the average home insurance policy is set up to protect the average household, so the limits will not be sufficient to cover expensive or valuable items," said Lev Barinskiy, the CEO of SmartFinancial, an insurance comparison site.
There are also storage options where you never even see the gold you own. Customers buy a digital token backed by physical gold held in a vault, said Joonas Karppinen, head of trading at InfiniGold.
"A token provides customers with actual ownership of the gold in question - which is essential, especially if your content insurance does not cover your bullion portfolio stored in the house," he said.
That's all good, unless you want to feel its weight in gold. Literally.
- Source, Business Times
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
The Next Phase of the Great Silver Squeeze
His recent analysis foresaw a banking crisis as soon as the end of July 2020, and a currency crisis yet this year. What is the latest from this engaging and respected analyst, so we can be ready for what comes next?
- Source, Liberty & Finance
Sunday, July 26, 2020
The Price of Gold andSilver is Infinity
I think the problems of the COMEX are going to happen considerably before that. I think they are going to be tied into a wider banking crisis. A banking crisis is certain. I cannot see how it can be avoided.
If our end point is the purchasing power of the dollar goes to zero, then you can see $1,800 for the price of gold and $19 for the price of silver is chicken crap compared to where it’s going to go.
So, this is a major, major move that is happening, not because they are buying gold and silver so much, but because people are beginning to realize what is happening to the purchasing power of the dollar, pound, euro and so on and so forth.
That is the thing to keep in mind.I think the dollar will be destroyed by year end, and the price of gold and silver is infinity.
I think the banking crisis could start in a month. Look what’s happening to their balance sheets.
I think the collapse is likely to be so rapid that in the absence of any other information, the best thing to do is to hold on to gold and silver as an insurance policy just in case I am right.”
- Source, USA Watchdog
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
The New Deal is a Bad Old Deal
Boris Johnson recently compared his reconstruction plan with Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal. Such is the myth of FDR and his new deal that even libertarian Boris now invokes them. Unless he is just being political, he shows he knows little about the economic situation that led to the depression.
It would not be unusual, even for a libertarian politician. FDR is immensely popular with the inflationists who overwhelmingly wrote the economic history of the depression era. In fact, FDR was not the first “something must be done” American president, a policy which started with his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. But the story told is that FDR took over from heartless Hoover who had failed to step in and rescue the economy from a free-market catastrophe, by standing back and letting events take their course instead. Nothing is further from the truth: Hoover was an interventionist to his fingertips. The last of the laissez-faire presidents was Calvin Coolidge, Hoover’s predecessor.
A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a programme extolling the virtues of FDR and his new deal. Stephanie Flanders, at that time the BBC’s economics correspondent, reiterated the myth about Hoover being a non-interventionist and FDR having all the correct reflationary policies. In a piece to camera at the Hoover Dam, no less, she recounted how it was an example of FDR’s new deal stimulus. While it wasn’t completed until 1936, building started in 1931 as a project by the eponymous Hoover, pursuing the same interventionist policies as FDR before FDR’s landslide election. It was never FDR’s project, the clue being in the dam’s name. Research by Flanders and the BBC was either biased, deficient, blind or all three.
The myth that has even drawn in Boris is so powerful it has intelligent people swearing the earth is flat. The FDR fairy-story is fundamental to the modern state’s interventionist stance; the very reason for its existence and its welfare commitments to the electorate. Wishful thinking about FDR’s pioneering role is now the pervasive theology. But the way the world is viewed cannot change the facts, and to quote FDR and his new deal as the template for economic policy is to repeat the errors that led to the longest and deepest depression in American history.
If in a few words one was to sum up why the state fails in its interventionist quest, it would be its inability to understand change. Free markets change all the time. Businesses and whole industries evolve and disappear in a natural process of selection driven by the consumer. The state’s response to a crisis is always aimed at a return to normality; normality being an unchanged state from before the crisis. The state protects yesterday’s jobs and yesterday’s businesses. Worse, by preventing evolutionary change at the heart of a dynamic economy it deprives it of the resources required to evolve. And that’s why the depression lasted into the Second World War.
The back-story to the depression
Before Hoover, US presidents understood a hands-off policy would let the economy rapidly fix itself. The post-war 1920—1921 depression in America was allowed to run its course. It lasted just eighteen months and was the prelude to a period of technological revolution that gave enormous benefits in the quality of life for all Americans. Following President Harding’s death in 1923, Coolidge was elected the new president. While Coolidge enforced a strict laissez-faire policy, he was either unaware of or ignored the monetary policies of Benjamin Strong at the Fed, which, to be fair to Coolidge, was only a decade old. The Fed’s monetary policy was the cause of an inflationary boom which ended in a stockmarket bubble in 1929.
In 1927, Coolidge announced he would not be standing for a second term, and Herbert Hoover was elected President in 1928 nearly a year before the stock market crisis occurred.
Fuelled by a free market approach and the stimulus of unbacked credit, when Hoover took office in March 1929 the economy was, in the epithet of historians, roaring. We can now begin our comparison with the present day. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister after a similar inflation-fuelled period; but the more important correlation is with Republican Donald Trump, whose interventionist policies imitate Hoover’s from his time as Secretary of Commerce in Harding’s administration onwards. Hoover deported immigrants and Trump builds a wall, both reasoning they take American jobs. And like Hoover, Trump uses tariffs to protect farmers and businesses from foreign competition deemed unfair.
The combination of a massive credit expansion in the 1920s and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act passed by congress in October 1929 — the month of the Wall Street Crash — serves as a template for the condition of America’s economy today. Apart from some differences in timing, the most significant difference is in the money. Before April 1933 the dollar was freely exchangeable by the public for gold at $20.67 to the ounce; today the dollar is unbacked. Prices were stable, today they rise.
By passing the Smoot-Hawley Act at the top of the credit cycle, Congress ensured a sharp downturn in the economic outlook, persuading bankers to call in their loans. The economy began to contract, and interventionist Hoover went to work. To quote from his memoires;
“…the primary question at once arose as to whether the President and the Federal government should undertake to investigate and remedy the evils… No President before had ever believed that there was a governmental responsibility in such cases. No matter what the urging on previous occasions, Presidents steadfastly had maintained that the Federal government was apart from such eruptions . . . therefore, we had to pioneer a new field.”[i]
Hoover called a series of White House conferences with industry leaders and bankers to persuade them to invest and maintain wages in order to keep consumer spending going. Like the neo-Keynesians of today, Hoover believed consumer spending was vital for the economy, but failed to make the connection with production, which is always first in temporal order, and provides the product for consumption without which it cannot happen. Hoover’s view on maintaining wages is reflected today in minimum wage rates, which innocuous though they may seem render certain activities uneconomic.
As is the case today, the Fed was ready to inflate. According to Murray Rothbard, the Fed
“…was just as ready to try to cure the depression by inflating further. It stepped in immediately to expand credit and bolster shaky financial positions. In an act unprecedented in its history, the Federal Reserve moved in during the week of the crash—the final week of October—and in that brief period added almost $300 million to the reserves of the nation’s banks. During that week, the Federal Reserve doubled its holdings of government securities, adding over $150 million to reserves, and it discounted about $200 million more for member banks.” [ii]
Monetary policy was a doppelganger for the Fed’s policies today. In today’s money, $300 million is about $26bn, using gold as the conversion factor. Today’s stimulus is a thousand times greater in real terms — so far.
In 1932 Roosevelt won a landslide against Hoover, and as was the custom at the time he took office the following March. Only a week before, an assassination attempt on Roosevelt struck the wrong man who died shortly afterwards. Banks were failing. Farmers were in revolt. The numbers of unemployed were increasing alarmingly. Hoover’s reflationary policies had failed, and he was said to be the least popular man in America on inauguration day. Fast-forward eighty-eight years and we see President Trump following in Hoover’s footsteps in this election year; and we can be pretty sure Joe Biden — if he is not asleep at the wheel — will cast himself as the new FDR with his version of the new deal.
Roosevelt then delivered his inaugural address, which included the famous line, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His speech was followed by the Hundred Days, the first time a president had set such a schedule.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor, is now pursuing his version of a Hundred Days announcing subsidies and new support as the occasion demands, financed by monetary inflation. Admittedly Sunak remains a free marketeer but has yet to prove his measures are temporary. Meanwhile, President Trump is destroying his administration’s finances in an attempt to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus in his election year.
They say that repeating a failed action in search of a different outcome is a sign of madness. Hoover and Roosevelt were pioneers of today’s failed economic policies and it is their post-war successors who are arguably certifiable. But the problem is deeper than that, with the public voting for the same failed policies, so even an economically literate politician has to deliver solutions in that context. It is what makes history repetitious. Instead of economics, psychological factors drive politics, including the public desire for the state to provide easy solutions to economic and personal difficulties. But the lesson from the Hoover era is that we stand on the precipice of an economic collapse as a result of a combination of excessive credit creation in the years before and the introduction of trade tariffs. And that was before the coronavirus was added to this lethal mix.
The psychology suggests that this time the politicians and the monetary authorities will pursue much the same course as before, even more aggressively. So far, the evidence supports this thesis, and it allows us to anticipate mistakes yet to be made.
It would not be unusual, even for a libertarian politician. FDR is immensely popular with the inflationists who overwhelmingly wrote the economic history of the depression era. In fact, FDR was not the first “something must be done” American president, a policy which started with his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. But the story told is that FDR took over from heartless Hoover who had failed to step in and rescue the economy from a free-market catastrophe, by standing back and letting events take their course instead. Nothing is further from the truth: Hoover was an interventionist to his fingertips. The last of the laissez-faire presidents was Calvin Coolidge, Hoover’s predecessor.
A few years ago, the BBC broadcast a programme extolling the virtues of FDR and his new deal. Stephanie Flanders, at that time the BBC’s economics correspondent, reiterated the myth about Hoover being a non-interventionist and FDR having all the correct reflationary policies. In a piece to camera at the Hoover Dam, no less, she recounted how it was an example of FDR’s new deal stimulus. While it wasn’t completed until 1936, building started in 1931 as a project by the eponymous Hoover, pursuing the same interventionist policies as FDR before FDR’s landslide election. It was never FDR’s project, the clue being in the dam’s name. Research by Flanders and the BBC was either biased, deficient, blind or all three.
The myth that has even drawn in Boris is so powerful it has intelligent people swearing the earth is flat. The FDR fairy-story is fundamental to the modern state’s interventionist stance; the very reason for its existence and its welfare commitments to the electorate. Wishful thinking about FDR’s pioneering role is now the pervasive theology. But the way the world is viewed cannot change the facts, and to quote FDR and his new deal as the template for economic policy is to repeat the errors that led to the longest and deepest depression in American history.
If in a few words one was to sum up why the state fails in its interventionist quest, it would be its inability to understand change. Free markets change all the time. Businesses and whole industries evolve and disappear in a natural process of selection driven by the consumer. The state’s response to a crisis is always aimed at a return to normality; normality being an unchanged state from before the crisis. The state protects yesterday’s jobs and yesterday’s businesses. Worse, by preventing evolutionary change at the heart of a dynamic economy it deprives it of the resources required to evolve. And that’s why the depression lasted into the Second World War.
The back-story to the depression
Before Hoover, US presidents understood a hands-off policy would let the economy rapidly fix itself. The post-war 1920—1921 depression in America was allowed to run its course. It lasted just eighteen months and was the prelude to a period of technological revolution that gave enormous benefits in the quality of life for all Americans. Following President Harding’s death in 1923, Coolidge was elected the new president. While Coolidge enforced a strict laissez-faire policy, he was either unaware of or ignored the monetary policies of Benjamin Strong at the Fed, which, to be fair to Coolidge, was only a decade old. The Fed’s monetary policy was the cause of an inflationary boom which ended in a stockmarket bubble in 1929.
In 1927, Coolidge announced he would not be standing for a second term, and Herbert Hoover was elected President in 1928 nearly a year before the stock market crisis occurred.
Fuelled by a free market approach and the stimulus of unbacked credit, when Hoover took office in March 1929 the economy was, in the epithet of historians, roaring. We can now begin our comparison with the present day. Boris Johnson became Prime Minister after a similar inflation-fuelled period; but the more important correlation is with Republican Donald Trump, whose interventionist policies imitate Hoover’s from his time as Secretary of Commerce in Harding’s administration onwards. Hoover deported immigrants and Trump builds a wall, both reasoning they take American jobs. And like Hoover, Trump uses tariffs to protect farmers and businesses from foreign competition deemed unfair.
The combination of a massive credit expansion in the 1920s and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act passed by congress in October 1929 — the month of the Wall Street Crash — serves as a template for the condition of America’s economy today. Apart from some differences in timing, the most significant difference is in the money. Before April 1933 the dollar was freely exchangeable by the public for gold at $20.67 to the ounce; today the dollar is unbacked. Prices were stable, today they rise.
By passing the Smoot-Hawley Act at the top of the credit cycle, Congress ensured a sharp downturn in the economic outlook, persuading bankers to call in their loans. The economy began to contract, and interventionist Hoover went to work. To quote from his memoires;
“…the primary question at once arose as to whether the President and the Federal government should undertake to investigate and remedy the evils… No President before had ever believed that there was a governmental responsibility in such cases. No matter what the urging on previous occasions, Presidents steadfastly had maintained that the Federal government was apart from such eruptions . . . therefore, we had to pioneer a new field.”[i]
Hoover called a series of White House conferences with industry leaders and bankers to persuade them to invest and maintain wages in order to keep consumer spending going. Like the neo-Keynesians of today, Hoover believed consumer spending was vital for the economy, but failed to make the connection with production, which is always first in temporal order, and provides the product for consumption without which it cannot happen. Hoover’s view on maintaining wages is reflected today in minimum wage rates, which innocuous though they may seem render certain activities uneconomic.
As is the case today, the Fed was ready to inflate. According to Murray Rothbard, the Fed
“…was just as ready to try to cure the depression by inflating further. It stepped in immediately to expand credit and bolster shaky financial positions. In an act unprecedented in its history, the Federal Reserve moved in during the week of the crash—the final week of October—and in that brief period added almost $300 million to the reserves of the nation’s banks. During that week, the Federal Reserve doubled its holdings of government securities, adding over $150 million to reserves, and it discounted about $200 million more for member banks.” [ii]
Monetary policy was a doppelganger for the Fed’s policies today. In today’s money, $300 million is about $26bn, using gold as the conversion factor. Today’s stimulus is a thousand times greater in real terms — so far.
In 1932 Roosevelt won a landslide against Hoover, and as was the custom at the time he took office the following March. Only a week before, an assassination attempt on Roosevelt struck the wrong man who died shortly afterwards. Banks were failing. Farmers were in revolt. The numbers of unemployed were increasing alarmingly. Hoover’s reflationary policies had failed, and he was said to be the least popular man in America on inauguration day. Fast-forward eighty-eight years and we see President Trump following in Hoover’s footsteps in this election year; and we can be pretty sure Joe Biden — if he is not asleep at the wheel — will cast himself as the new FDR with his version of the new deal.
Roosevelt then delivered his inaugural address, which included the famous line, “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His speech was followed by the Hundred Days, the first time a president had set such a schedule.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak, the new Chancellor, is now pursuing his version of a Hundred Days announcing subsidies and new support as the occasion demands, financed by monetary inflation. Admittedly Sunak remains a free marketeer but has yet to prove his measures are temporary. Meanwhile, President Trump is destroying his administration’s finances in an attempt to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus in his election year.
They say that repeating a failed action in search of a different outcome is a sign of madness. Hoover and Roosevelt were pioneers of today’s failed economic policies and it is their post-war successors who are arguably certifiable. But the problem is deeper than that, with the public voting for the same failed policies, so even an economically literate politician has to deliver solutions in that context. It is what makes history repetitious. Instead of economics, psychological factors drive politics, including the public desire for the state to provide easy solutions to economic and personal difficulties. But the lesson from the Hoover era is that we stand on the precipice of an economic collapse as a result of a combination of excessive credit creation in the years before and the introduction of trade tariffs. And that was before the coronavirus was added to this lethal mix.
The psychology suggests that this time the politicians and the monetary authorities will pursue much the same course as before, even more aggressively. So far, the evidence supports this thesis, and it allows us to anticipate mistakes yet to be made.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Gold Money: Economic Prospects for the Next Few Months
Before we proceed in our analysis of the price effects of inflation, we must assess the economic outlook,as the backdrop to the likely consequences for the scale of monetary inflation, and then we can have a stab at evaluating the effect on prices.
At this stage of the credit cycle, which began expanding following the aftermath of the Lehman crisis over a decade ago, a sharp contraction of bank credit to non-financials is normal. It is what drives periodic recessions slumps and depressions, and monetary stimulus by central banks is intended to help commercial bankers recover their mojo and resume lending.
The relevant history of central bankers’ attitudes to bank credit goes back to Irving Fisher’s description of how contracting bank credit intensified the 1930s depression by the liquidation of debt, forcing collateral values down and leading to bank runs and the bankruptcy of thousands of banks. Ever since, monetary policy is guided by the fear of a repeat performance. But the Keynesian stimulus at the start of the credit cycle only increases the destabilising nature of bankers’ behaviour, consisting of long periods of growing greed for profitable loan business, interspersed by sudden reversions to fear of loan risk. It results in a cycle of credit expansion and contraction, which in recent cycles have been resolved temporarily by increasingly aggressive expansions of base money along with government actions to support ailing industries.
It is a sticking-plaster approach which allows the wound to fester out of sight.
Following Lehman’s failure, a similar pattern to the one unfolding today of a rapid increase in bank assets through the newly invented QE was followed by a contraction of bank credit which lasted about fifteen months. But that crisis was about financial assets in the mortgage market, which had knock-on effects in the non-financials. Difficult though it was, its resolution was relatively predictable.
This crisis started in the non-financials and is therefore more damaging to the economy; its severity is likely to lead to a banking crisis far larger than the Lehman failure and possibly greater than anything seen since the 1930s depression.
Commercial bankers are now waking up to this possibility. For them, the immediate danger is associated with this quarter-end just passed, when demand for credit to pay quarterly charges increases significantly. Already, businesses are in arrears as never before, with many shopping malls, office blocks and factories unused and rents unpaid. It is this problem, shared by banks around the world, which due to the severity of current business conditions is likely to tip the banking system over the edge and into an immediate crisis. The extent of the problem is likely to be revealed any time in this month of July.
Excluding the subsequent effects, the Lehman crisis cost the US Government and its agencies over $10 trillion in support and rescue operations. This time, being in the non-financial sector with knock-on effects for the financial economy, this crisis is much deeper than Lehman and will require a far larger bailout cheque for collapsing industries. Part of the problem are the broken supply chains needing bridging finance. And none of this can be done without the Fed funding it all directly or indirectly through quantitative easing. Despite the massive monetary inflation already underway there can be no doubt that aggregate consumer demand and the production of goods to satisfy it will take an enormous hit this year and beyond, and there is little doubt about the state’s will be on the hook for even more monetary financing.
Unemployment of previously productive labour is already rising dramatically, and as bankruptcies increase the rise in the unemployment numbers will continue to do so. Let us therefore assume that compared with last year the production of goods and services and consumer demand for them will decline by at least 25%. Note that we avoid using money-totals, since they are meaningless; it is the exchange of labour being converted into physical products and services that matters.
Into this situation is injected enormous quantities of money, none of which defeats the constraints on true supply of goods, nor for overall demand in a high unemployment economy. Put in a more familiar way, we will have too much money chasing not enough goods. There is only one outcome, other things being equal; the purchasing power of the dollar in terms of consumer goods will be driven significantly lower. But central bank analysis rules this out, associating too much money chasing too few goods with only an expanding, over-stimulated economy.
This explains stagflation, the situation where an economy stagnating in overall demand is accompanied by rising prices. Nor are other things ever equal, the condition for the paragraph above. The early receivers of inflated money will spend it, driving up the prices of the goods and services they acquire before the prices of other goods and services are affected. These early receivers include the Federal Government, which in an election year is doubly unlikely to hold back. Distribution of state money will increasingly be in the form of welfare to the unemployed, skewing spending towards life’s essentials. Inevitably, in an economy with subdued activity not responding quickly enough to produce the volumes of products desired, prices, mainly of essential items, will increase sharply.
Almost certainly, a broad index of prices will not capture this secular effect until too late. The CPI includes a majority of items which are only occasionally bought by individuals. Poor demand for non-essentials where there is now an oversupply puts downward pressure on their prices even in an inflationary environment. It is therefore possible for the CPI to record little or no price inflation as an average when food and energy prices are rising strongly, particularly when statistical methods designed to show little or no increase in price inflation are additionally taken into account.
Consequently, central banks are already being badly misled by the CPI’s statistical method. And when prices for essentials are soaring, they will continue to increase the quantity of money in circulation, distracted by that 2% increase in the CPI target. By the time it creeps up above that rate it will be too late, much monetary water having already flowed under the bridge.
The politicians will likely dismiss rising prices for food and fuel as the result of profiteering — they always do and then contemplate introducing price controls, making this outcome even worse.
At this stage of the credit cycle, which began expanding following the aftermath of the Lehman crisis over a decade ago, a sharp contraction of bank credit to non-financials is normal. It is what drives periodic recessions slumps and depressions, and monetary stimulus by central banks is intended to help commercial bankers recover their mojo and resume lending.
The relevant history of central bankers’ attitudes to bank credit goes back to Irving Fisher’s description of how contracting bank credit intensified the 1930s depression by the liquidation of debt, forcing collateral values down and leading to bank runs and the bankruptcy of thousands of banks. Ever since, monetary policy is guided by the fear of a repeat performance. But the Keynesian stimulus at the start of the credit cycle only increases the destabilising nature of bankers’ behaviour, consisting of long periods of growing greed for profitable loan business, interspersed by sudden reversions to fear of loan risk. It results in a cycle of credit expansion and contraction, which in recent cycles have been resolved temporarily by increasingly aggressive expansions of base money along with government actions to support ailing industries.
It is a sticking-plaster approach which allows the wound to fester out of sight.
Following Lehman’s failure, a similar pattern to the one unfolding today of a rapid increase in bank assets through the newly invented QE was followed by a contraction of bank credit which lasted about fifteen months. But that crisis was about financial assets in the mortgage market, which had knock-on effects in the non-financials. Difficult though it was, its resolution was relatively predictable.
This crisis started in the non-financials and is therefore more damaging to the economy; its severity is likely to lead to a banking crisis far larger than the Lehman failure and possibly greater than anything seen since the 1930s depression.
Commercial bankers are now waking up to this possibility. For them, the immediate danger is associated with this quarter-end just passed, when demand for credit to pay quarterly charges increases significantly. Already, businesses are in arrears as never before, with many shopping malls, office blocks and factories unused and rents unpaid. It is this problem, shared by banks around the world, which due to the severity of current business conditions is likely to tip the banking system over the edge and into an immediate crisis. The extent of the problem is likely to be revealed any time in this month of July.
Excluding the subsequent effects, the Lehman crisis cost the US Government and its agencies over $10 trillion in support and rescue operations. This time, being in the non-financial sector with knock-on effects for the financial economy, this crisis is much deeper than Lehman and will require a far larger bailout cheque for collapsing industries. Part of the problem are the broken supply chains needing bridging finance. And none of this can be done without the Fed funding it all directly or indirectly through quantitative easing. Despite the massive monetary inflation already underway there can be no doubt that aggregate consumer demand and the production of goods to satisfy it will take an enormous hit this year and beyond, and there is little doubt about the state’s will be on the hook for even more monetary financing.
Unemployment of previously productive labour is already rising dramatically, and as bankruptcies increase the rise in the unemployment numbers will continue to do so. Let us therefore assume that compared with last year the production of goods and services and consumer demand for them will decline by at least 25%. Note that we avoid using money-totals, since they are meaningless; it is the exchange of labour being converted into physical products and services that matters.
Into this situation is injected enormous quantities of money, none of which defeats the constraints on true supply of goods, nor for overall demand in a high unemployment economy. Put in a more familiar way, we will have too much money chasing not enough goods. There is only one outcome, other things being equal; the purchasing power of the dollar in terms of consumer goods will be driven significantly lower. But central bank analysis rules this out, associating too much money chasing too few goods with only an expanding, over-stimulated economy.
This explains stagflation, the situation where an economy stagnating in overall demand is accompanied by rising prices. Nor are other things ever equal, the condition for the paragraph above. The early receivers of inflated money will spend it, driving up the prices of the goods and services they acquire before the prices of other goods and services are affected. These early receivers include the Federal Government, which in an election year is doubly unlikely to hold back. Distribution of state money will increasingly be in the form of welfare to the unemployed, skewing spending towards life’s essentials. Inevitably, in an economy with subdued activity not responding quickly enough to produce the volumes of products desired, prices, mainly of essential items, will increase sharply.
Almost certainly, a broad index of prices will not capture this secular effect until too late. The CPI includes a majority of items which are only occasionally bought by individuals. Poor demand for non-essentials where there is now an oversupply puts downward pressure on their prices even in an inflationary environment. It is therefore possible for the CPI to record little or no price inflation as an average when food and energy prices are rising strongly, particularly when statistical methods designed to show little or no increase in price inflation are additionally taken into account.
Consequently, central banks are already being badly misled by the CPI’s statistical method. And when prices for essentials are soaring, they will continue to increase the quantity of money in circulation, distracted by that 2% increase in the CPI target. By the time it creeps up above that rate it will be too late, much monetary water having already flowed under the bridge.
The politicians will likely dismiss rising prices for food and fuel as the result of profiteering — they always do and then contemplate introducing price controls, making this outcome even worse.
- Source, James Turk Goldmoney
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Bullion Prices Are Going to Rise And Fast
Between different schools of economics there is much confusion over the link between changes in the quantity of money and prices, exposed afresh by the collapse in GDP due to COVID-19 and the aggressive monetary response from the authorities to contain the economic consequences.
Neo-Keynesians appear to understand the link exists, but for them inflation is always of prices which can be managed by adjusting monetary policy subsequently.
Monetarists follow a mechanical quantity theory leading to a relatively straightforward relationship between changes in the quantity of money and of prices after a time lag of a year or so. The principal difference with the neo-Keynesians is in the timing: monetarists see monetary inflation occurring long before the price effect, and neo-Keynesians in charge of central bank monetary policy assume rising prices can be controlled subsequently by varying interest rates.
The Austrian school, which is banished from these proceedings, explains that inflation is of money and nothing else, and the effect on the general price level is determined by a combination of changes in the money quantity and of consumers’ relative preferences for holding money relative to goods.
But central banks operate exclusively on neo-Keynesian lines. They feel free to expand the money quantity so long as the general level of prices does not exceed a targeted 2%; except when it does there is usually an excuse not to restrict money supply growth immediately. Keynesian Inflationism offers problems on so many levels, not least being it is rather like driving a vehicle using a rear-view mirror for guidance. But importantly for our analysis, central banks do not seem to realise current monetary policies guarantee the death of their currencies.
Central bankers act as if money supply increases after prices, which is what monetary policy amounts to. They have other nonsensical beliefs, such as through an inflation tax despite robbing consumers of their wealth, it stimulates them to buy. Whoever thought that one up as a lasting policy beyond short-term distortions deserves an Ignoble prize for idiocy.
Ah! That was Lord Keynes. And perversely, his disciples are today’s main recipients of the Nobel prize for economics. We are now seeing central banks, like some latter-day Aztec priests, trying to appease their gods with human sacrifices. We are the sacrifices, lesser mortals trying to do the best for our families and ourselves, being slaughtered by monetary means.
Figure 1 indicates the alarming debasement of our savings, earnings, and pensions so far through monetary expansion and explains why the dollar’s purchasing power has been declining faster than the CPI suggests.
The fiat money quantity reflects not only money in circulation, that is to say true money as defined by Austrian economists, but additionally the banks’ deposit reserves held at the Fed, the last data being for 1 May. It captures fiat money both in circulation and theoretically available for circulation.
From 2009 it shows the excess monetary inflation that followed the Lehman crisis in 2008, which until 1 February this year grew at an annualised monthly compound rate of 9.5%, compared with the pre-Lehman average long-run rate of about 5.9%.
No wonder independent analysts calculating the rate of price inflation tell us that it is running at 8%—10% (Shadowstats.com and Chapwood Index), instead of the CPI’s 1.5—2.0%. And if that was not bad enough, the recent sharp increase at an annualised rate of 98% since March comes on top of it, putting FMQ at more than double where it would be if Lehman had not happened. FMQ now also exceeds GDP, telling us there is more fiat money than US output, and yet more liquidity is demanded through the banks by failing businesses.
The Fed has increased base money at an unprecedented rate to provide liquidity, allegedly for the non-financial sector. For this to get to businesses banks must be prepared to increase their lending to non-financials and bank credit must not contract. But as Figure 2 shows, bank balance sheets have stopped growing and even contracted since the end of April.
Between 26 February and 29 April bank balance sheets increased by $2,489bn. These figures include the uplift in total reserves held at the Fed and not in public circulation, which over the same period increased by $1,083bn. Therefore, banks increased their other assets by $1,406bn between these dates. Those other assets are split between financials and non-financials, the evidence of rising financial asset prices relative to commercial business’s decline strongly suggesting Wall Street has been favoured over Main Street
Subsequently, up to 17 June bank balance sheets contracted by $169bn. The extent to which banks are increasing financial activities will be balanced by an even sharper contraction in bank credit for non-financials than indicated by the overall balance sheet.
Central banks with their reliance on inflation now have a problem: the banks are failing to pass on extra money to the non-financial sector by expanding their balance sheets. Yet, the disruptions to supply chains, the onshore component totalling some $38 trillion and an unquantifiable offshore component feeding into it, are still there and their problems are growing by the day. In short, we face a continuing liquidity crisis with limited means of relieving it.
Neo-Keynesians appear to understand the link exists, but for them inflation is always of prices which can be managed by adjusting monetary policy subsequently.
Monetarists follow a mechanical quantity theory leading to a relatively straightforward relationship between changes in the quantity of money and of prices after a time lag of a year or so. The principal difference with the neo-Keynesians is in the timing: monetarists see monetary inflation occurring long before the price effect, and neo-Keynesians in charge of central bank monetary policy assume rising prices can be controlled subsequently by varying interest rates.
The Austrian school, which is banished from these proceedings, explains that inflation is of money and nothing else, and the effect on the general price level is determined by a combination of changes in the money quantity and of consumers’ relative preferences for holding money relative to goods.
But central banks operate exclusively on neo-Keynesian lines. They feel free to expand the money quantity so long as the general level of prices does not exceed a targeted 2%; except when it does there is usually an excuse not to restrict money supply growth immediately. Keynesian Inflationism offers problems on so many levels, not least being it is rather like driving a vehicle using a rear-view mirror for guidance. But importantly for our analysis, central banks do not seem to realise current monetary policies guarantee the death of their currencies.
Central bankers act as if money supply increases after prices, which is what monetary policy amounts to. They have other nonsensical beliefs, such as through an inflation tax despite robbing consumers of their wealth, it stimulates them to buy. Whoever thought that one up as a lasting policy beyond short-term distortions deserves an Ignoble prize for idiocy.
Ah! That was Lord Keynes. And perversely, his disciples are today’s main recipients of the Nobel prize for economics. We are now seeing central banks, like some latter-day Aztec priests, trying to appease their gods with human sacrifices. We are the sacrifices, lesser mortals trying to do the best for our families and ourselves, being slaughtered by monetary means.
Figure 1 indicates the alarming debasement of our savings, earnings, and pensions so far through monetary expansion and explains why the dollar’s purchasing power has been declining faster than the CPI suggests.
The fiat money quantity reflects not only money in circulation, that is to say true money as defined by Austrian economists, but additionally the banks’ deposit reserves held at the Fed, the last data being for 1 May. It captures fiat money both in circulation and theoretically available for circulation.
From 2009 it shows the excess monetary inflation that followed the Lehman crisis in 2008, which until 1 February this year grew at an annualised monthly compound rate of 9.5%, compared with the pre-Lehman average long-run rate of about 5.9%.
No wonder independent analysts calculating the rate of price inflation tell us that it is running at 8%—10% (Shadowstats.com and Chapwood Index), instead of the CPI’s 1.5—2.0%. And if that was not bad enough, the recent sharp increase at an annualised rate of 98% since March comes on top of it, putting FMQ at more than double where it would be if Lehman had not happened. FMQ now also exceeds GDP, telling us there is more fiat money than US output, and yet more liquidity is demanded through the banks by failing businesses.
The Fed has increased base money at an unprecedented rate to provide liquidity, allegedly for the non-financial sector. For this to get to businesses banks must be prepared to increase their lending to non-financials and bank credit must not contract. But as Figure 2 shows, bank balance sheets have stopped growing and even contracted since the end of April.
Between 26 February and 29 April bank balance sheets increased by $2,489bn. These figures include the uplift in total reserves held at the Fed and not in public circulation, which over the same period increased by $1,083bn. Therefore, banks increased their other assets by $1,406bn between these dates. Those other assets are split between financials and non-financials, the evidence of rising financial asset prices relative to commercial business’s decline strongly suggesting Wall Street has been favoured over Main Street
Subsequently, up to 17 June bank balance sheets contracted by $169bn. The extent to which banks are increasing financial activities will be balanced by an even sharper contraction in bank credit for non-financials than indicated by the overall balance sheet.
Central banks with their reliance on inflation now have a problem: the banks are failing to pass on extra money to the non-financial sector by expanding their balance sheets. Yet, the disruptions to supply chains, the onshore component totalling some $38 trillion and an unquantifiable offshore component feeding into it, are still there and their problems are growing by the day. In short, we face a continuing liquidity crisis with limited means of relieving it.
- Source, James Turk Goldmoney
Friday, July 10, 2020
A Potential Crisis in Comex Gold
We are all used to the bullion banks covering their shorts on Comex by waiting until the speculators are over-bullish and vulnerable to mark-downs that trigger their stops. Algorithmic traders go from long to short in a heartbeat as well, and they dump contracts into a falling market, speeding up the decline. We should say at this juncture that the Managed Money speculators are short-term, attracted by futures leverage, and their gold position is often part of a wider risk strategy deployed by hedge funds. They do not intend to stand for delivery. The wider investment world taking strategic portfolio decisions does not often get involved with gold, so the Comex gold contract has been a secular play.
The table below shows a typical set-up, in this case July 2016. The Managed Money category (296,106 — net 259,129 contracts) is close to record long. Open interest was 633,000 contracts and the gold price was at $1360, having run up from $1040 the previous December.
In the non-speculative category, the bullion banks (Swaps) had 56% of the shorts and the Producer/Merchants 44%. Mark-to-market value of the Swaps net short position was $25bn. Of the speculative longs, the managed money category (hedge funds) held 69%, and at 296,106 long contracts it was almost a record. There was a high level of bullishness; easy pickings for the bullion banks, who by the following December drove the price down to $1120, reducing their net shorts to under 50,000 contracts.
It was a game that evolved out of Comex futures being used simply to offset long bullion positions at the LBMA. Over time, bullion bank traders increased their trading position limits, as opposed to their pure hedging activity, making easy money jobbing the other side of Managed Money trades.
Now look at the current situation, with the gold price at decade highs ($1775) and open interest at 561,628 (30 June).
In the non-speculator category, the Swaps are more short than they were in July 2016 despite open interest being 71,372 contracts lower. The mark-to-market value is record net short at $36.6 billion. What has happened is the Producer/Merchants have cut their positions, presumably deciding that hedging mine output is less important in the current inflationary environment. Consequently, the bullion banks are bearing 71% of the short exposure.
The speculator category makes this more interesting still. At 138,555 net long, hedge funds are only 25,000 contracts longer than average, and compared with their bullishness in July 2016 have hardly got going. It is the other categories, Other Reported and Non-reported have taken 56% of the long side, and they are not behaving like skittish hedge funds at all. These include family offices, the ultra-wealthy and foreigners through Globex who are standing for delivery as a means of getting their hands on physical bullion —171 tonnes from the June contract alone.
The table below shows a typical set-up, in this case July 2016. The Managed Money category (296,106 — net 259,129 contracts) is close to record long. Open interest was 633,000 contracts and the gold price was at $1360, having run up from $1040 the previous December.
In the non-speculative category, the bullion banks (Swaps) had 56% of the shorts and the Producer/Merchants 44%. Mark-to-market value of the Swaps net short position was $25bn. Of the speculative longs, the managed money category (hedge funds) held 69%, and at 296,106 long contracts it was almost a record. There was a high level of bullishness; easy pickings for the bullion banks, who by the following December drove the price down to $1120, reducing their net shorts to under 50,000 contracts.
It was a game that evolved out of Comex futures being used simply to offset long bullion positions at the LBMA. Over time, bullion bank traders increased their trading position limits, as opposed to their pure hedging activity, making easy money jobbing the other side of Managed Money trades.
Now look at the current situation, with the gold price at decade highs ($1775) and open interest at 561,628 (30 June).
In the non-speculator category, the Swaps are more short than they were in July 2016 despite open interest being 71,372 contracts lower. The mark-to-market value is record net short at $36.6 billion. What has happened is the Producer/Merchants have cut their positions, presumably deciding that hedging mine output is less important in the current inflationary environment. Consequently, the bullion banks are bearing 71% of the short exposure.
The speculator category makes this more interesting still. At 138,555 net long, hedge funds are only 25,000 contracts longer than average, and compared with their bullishness in July 2016 have hardly got going. It is the other categories, Other Reported and Non-reported have taken 56% of the long side, and they are not behaving like skittish hedge funds at all. These include family offices, the ultra-wealthy and foreigners through Globex who are standing for delivery as a means of getting their hands on physical bullion —171 tonnes from the June contract alone.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Keynesian Macroeconomics Out of Control
Macroeconomics has become so far removed from reality that its practitioners cannot understand what is happening in the real economy. Never has this been more obvious than today. While they claim to be economically literate, macroeconomists are in thrall to their paymasters; a combination of government, quasi-government and financial institutions with a vested interest in not looking too closely at the full consequences of government economic and monetary policies.
From this neo-Keynesian macro world, the latest spinoff is modern monetary theory, which is little more than a logical extension of Keynesianism —justifying intervention by the state and the use of fiat currency being expanded limitlessly. MMT is the end of the line for arguments based on macroeconomic fallacies that have their origin in Keynes.
Stephanie Kelton’s book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy was released on Tuesday (9 June):
“Stephanie Kelton’s brilliant exploration of MMT dramatically changes our understanding of how we can deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure.”
That is the first sentence of Amazon’s sales pitch. If these claims are true, the world’s economic problems are easily solved. But we must put aside the marketing hyperbole and look at MMT seriously...
Stephanie Kelton’s book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy was released on Tuesday (9 June):
“Stephanie Kelton’s brilliant exploration of MMT dramatically changes our understanding of how we can deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure.”
That is the first sentence of Amazon’s sales pitch. If these claims are true, the world’s economic problems are easily solved. But we must put aside the marketing hyperbole and look at MMT seriously...
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
A Brief History of Monetary Silver
Silver has a similar history to gold of being money. Following the ending of barter, communities worldwide adopted durable metals – gold, silver or copper, depending on local availability — as the principal medium of exchange. And until the 1960s this heritage, with respect to copper and silver, was still reflected in the coinage used in most nations. The British currency is still known as sterling because since the reign of Henry II (1154–1189) money was silver coinage of sterling alloy, comprised of 92.5% silver, the balance being mainly copper.
Silver was the sole monetary standard, sometimes with gold on a bimetallic standard, for most regions from medieval times until the nineteenth century. Sir Isaac Newton reset the silver standard against gold in 1717, and it was because the British government overpriced gold and failed to adjust to the consequences of changing mine supplies, principally the subsequent expansion of gold supply from Brazil, that British commerce moved towards a gold standard during the eighteenth century.
We look in greater detail at these events later in this article.
As international trade developed, gold for trading nations assumed greater significance, leading eventually to the adoption of the British sovereign coin as the gold standard in the early nineteenth century.
In colonial America, silver was the principal circulating currency in common with that of Britain at the time, but following Newton’s introduction of a silver standard for the pricing of gold, similar practical relationships between the two metals existed for trade in nearly all Britain’s colonies; in America’s case at least until independence was formally gained by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.[i]
When Alexander Hamilton was Treasury Secretary, the US introduced a bimetallic standard with the first coinage act in 1792 when the dollar was fixed at 371.25 grains of pure silver, minted with alloy into coins of 416 grains. Gold coins were also authorised in denominations of $10 (eagles) and $2.50 (quarter eagles). The ratio of silver to gold was set at fifteen to one. All these coins were declared legal tender, along with some foreign coins, notably the Spanish milled silver dollar, which had 373 grains of pure silver making them a reasonable approximation for the US silver dollar.
However, not long after Hamilton’s coinage act was passed, the international market rate for the gold/silver ratio rose to 15.5:1, which led to gold being drained from domestic circulation, leaving silver as the common coinage. Effectively, the dollar was on a silver standard until 1834, when Congress approved a change in the ratio to 16:1 by reducing the gold in the eagle from 246.5 to 232 grains, or 258 grains at about nine-tenths fine. An additional adjustment to 232.2 grains was made in 1834. After a few years, gold coins then dominated in circulation over silver, the circulation of which declined as it became more valuable relative to gold. Gold discoveries in California and Australia then increased the quantity of gold mined relative to silver, making silver even more valuable relative to gold coinage thereby driving it almost totally out of circulation. This was remedied by an act of 1853 authorising subsidiary silver coins of less than $1 to be debased with less silver than called for by the official mint ratio and less than indicated by the world market price.
Under financial pressure from the civil war, in 1862 the government issued notes that were not convertible either on demand or at a specific future date. These greenbacks were legal tender for everything but customs duties, which still had to be paid in gold or silver. The government had abandoned the metallic standards. Greenbacks were issued in large quantities and the United States experienced a substantial inflation.
After the war was over Congress determined to return to the metallic standard at the same parity that existed before the war. It was accomplished by slowly removing greenbacks from circulation. The bimetallic standard, measuring the dollar primarily in silver, was finally replaced with a gold standard in 1879, reaffirmed in 1900 when silver was officially relegated to small denomination money.
In Europe, most countries on a silver standard moved to gold after the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1), when Germany imposed substantial reparations from France which were paid in gold, and Germany was then able to migrate from a silver to a gold standard. Other European nations followed suit.
More recently, silver circulated as money in Arab lands in the form of Maria Theresa dollars, which had circulated widely in the Middle East and East Africa from the mid-nineteenth century and were still being used in Muscat and Oman in the 1970s.
These are just some examples of silver’s use as money in the past. It lives on in base metal coins today, made to look like silver. Now imagine a world where fiat currencies are discredited: gold or gold substitutes will almost certainly return as the money for larger transactions, and silver will equally certainly return as money for everyday transactions. Bimetallism might not return as official policy due to the frequent adjustments required, but history has shown that a relatively stable market rate between gold and silver is likely to ensue, and silver more than gold will ensure widespread distribution of circulating metallic money.
Supply and demand factors
Analysts are currently grappling with the effects of the coronavirus on supply and demand in their forecasts for the rest of this year. Silver mines have been affected by changes in grades and production shutdowns. According to the Silver Institute, in 2019 less than 30% of mine supply was from mines classified as primarily silver, the rest coming from lead/zinc, copper, gold mines and “others” in that order of importance. Miners of lead/zinc, copper and others made up about 56% of global silver mine supply, so that a decline in global economic activity automatically leads to a decline in silver output from base metal miners.
At the same time, falling industrial demand for silver throws a greater emphasis on investment to sustain demand overall. Last year, non-investment demand was 806 million ounces, while investment was estimated at 186 million, a relationship which in a deep recession will require a significant increase in investment demand to absorb the combination of mine, scrap and available above-ground stocks. Identifiable above-ground stocks are estimated at 1,651 million, a multiple of 1.67 times 2019 demand, and 8.9 times 2019 investment demand.
For 2020 and beyond, I am very bearish for the global economy for reasons stated elsewhere. If I am right, current estimates for mine supply, of which over half is dependent on base metal mines, will prove optimistic. But silver demand for non-investment usage is likely to decline even more, in which case investment demand will probably need to at least double if silver prices are to rise in real terms.
An interesting point is found in the comparison with gold, where above-ground stocks are many multiples of mine and scrap supply. Stock-to-flow comparisons have been popularised recently by the cryptocurrency community as a measure of future monetary stability, compared with that of infinitely expandable fiat currencies. A high stock-to-flow signals a low rate of inflationary supply. Silver has a very low stock to flow ratio due to the low level of above-ground stocks. But it is a mistake is to rely on this measure of monetary stability for a metallic money when the lack of physical liquidity should be the main consideration.
At current prices, silver’s above-ground stock is worth only $31bn, compared with gold’s at over $10 trillion. With this relationship of 323 times of gold to silver’s above-ground stock values and an annual mine supply ratio of only 8 times as many silver ounces to that of gold, it appears that if gold returns to its traditional monetary role, silver will turn out to be substantially undervalued. “If” is a little word for a very big assumption; but given the unprecedented and coordinated acceleration of monetary expansion currently proposed, an ending of the current fiat currency regime and a return to gold and silver as monies is becoming increasingly likely.
The relationship with gold in the numbers above suggest that a bimetallic standard today on mine supply considerations alone would be at almost half Isaac Newton’s 1717 exchange rate. Obviously, the issue is not so simple and will be settled by markets. But looking at some other facts suggest the gold/silver relationship is due for a radical rethink. Table 1 below lists some of the relevant ones.
The clear outlier is the gold/silver ratio.
Silver was the sole monetary standard, sometimes with gold on a bimetallic standard, for most regions from medieval times until the nineteenth century. Sir Isaac Newton reset the silver standard against gold in 1717, and it was because the British government overpriced gold and failed to adjust to the consequences of changing mine supplies, principally the subsequent expansion of gold supply from Brazil, that British commerce moved towards a gold standard during the eighteenth century.
We look in greater detail at these events later in this article.
As international trade developed, gold for trading nations assumed greater significance, leading eventually to the adoption of the British sovereign coin as the gold standard in the early nineteenth century.
In colonial America, silver was the principal circulating currency in common with that of Britain at the time, but following Newton’s introduction of a silver standard for the pricing of gold, similar practical relationships between the two metals existed for trade in nearly all Britain’s colonies; in America’s case at least until independence was formally gained by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.[i]
When Alexander Hamilton was Treasury Secretary, the US introduced a bimetallic standard with the first coinage act in 1792 when the dollar was fixed at 371.25 grains of pure silver, minted with alloy into coins of 416 grains. Gold coins were also authorised in denominations of $10 (eagles) and $2.50 (quarter eagles). The ratio of silver to gold was set at fifteen to one. All these coins were declared legal tender, along with some foreign coins, notably the Spanish milled silver dollar, which had 373 grains of pure silver making them a reasonable approximation for the US silver dollar.
However, not long after Hamilton’s coinage act was passed, the international market rate for the gold/silver ratio rose to 15.5:1, which led to gold being drained from domestic circulation, leaving silver as the common coinage. Effectively, the dollar was on a silver standard until 1834, when Congress approved a change in the ratio to 16:1 by reducing the gold in the eagle from 246.5 to 232 grains, or 258 grains at about nine-tenths fine. An additional adjustment to 232.2 grains was made in 1834. After a few years, gold coins then dominated in circulation over silver, the circulation of which declined as it became more valuable relative to gold. Gold discoveries in California and Australia then increased the quantity of gold mined relative to silver, making silver even more valuable relative to gold coinage thereby driving it almost totally out of circulation. This was remedied by an act of 1853 authorising subsidiary silver coins of less than $1 to be debased with less silver than called for by the official mint ratio and less than indicated by the world market price.
Under financial pressure from the civil war, in 1862 the government issued notes that were not convertible either on demand or at a specific future date. These greenbacks were legal tender for everything but customs duties, which still had to be paid in gold or silver. The government had abandoned the metallic standards. Greenbacks were issued in large quantities and the United States experienced a substantial inflation.
After the war was over Congress determined to return to the metallic standard at the same parity that existed before the war. It was accomplished by slowly removing greenbacks from circulation. The bimetallic standard, measuring the dollar primarily in silver, was finally replaced with a gold standard in 1879, reaffirmed in 1900 when silver was officially relegated to small denomination money.
In Europe, most countries on a silver standard moved to gold after the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1), when Germany imposed substantial reparations from France which were paid in gold, and Germany was then able to migrate from a silver to a gold standard. Other European nations followed suit.
More recently, silver circulated as money in Arab lands in the form of Maria Theresa dollars, which had circulated widely in the Middle East and East Africa from the mid-nineteenth century and were still being used in Muscat and Oman in the 1970s.
These are just some examples of silver’s use as money in the past. It lives on in base metal coins today, made to look like silver. Now imagine a world where fiat currencies are discredited: gold or gold substitutes will almost certainly return as the money for larger transactions, and silver will equally certainly return as money for everyday transactions. Bimetallism might not return as official policy due to the frequent adjustments required, but history has shown that a relatively stable market rate between gold and silver is likely to ensue, and silver more than gold will ensure widespread distribution of circulating metallic money.
Supply and demand factors
Analysts are currently grappling with the effects of the coronavirus on supply and demand in their forecasts for the rest of this year. Silver mines have been affected by changes in grades and production shutdowns. According to the Silver Institute, in 2019 less than 30% of mine supply was from mines classified as primarily silver, the rest coming from lead/zinc, copper, gold mines and “others” in that order of importance. Miners of lead/zinc, copper and others made up about 56% of global silver mine supply, so that a decline in global economic activity automatically leads to a decline in silver output from base metal miners.
At the same time, falling industrial demand for silver throws a greater emphasis on investment to sustain demand overall. Last year, non-investment demand was 806 million ounces, while investment was estimated at 186 million, a relationship which in a deep recession will require a significant increase in investment demand to absorb the combination of mine, scrap and available above-ground stocks. Identifiable above-ground stocks are estimated at 1,651 million, a multiple of 1.67 times 2019 demand, and 8.9 times 2019 investment demand.
For 2020 and beyond, I am very bearish for the global economy for reasons stated elsewhere. If I am right, current estimates for mine supply, of which over half is dependent on base metal mines, will prove optimistic. But silver demand for non-investment usage is likely to decline even more, in which case investment demand will probably need to at least double if silver prices are to rise in real terms.
An interesting point is found in the comparison with gold, where above-ground stocks are many multiples of mine and scrap supply. Stock-to-flow comparisons have been popularised recently by the cryptocurrency community as a measure of future monetary stability, compared with that of infinitely expandable fiat currencies. A high stock-to-flow signals a low rate of inflationary supply. Silver has a very low stock to flow ratio due to the low level of above-ground stocks. But it is a mistake is to rely on this measure of monetary stability for a metallic money when the lack of physical liquidity should be the main consideration.
At current prices, silver’s above-ground stock is worth only $31bn, compared with gold’s at over $10 trillion. With this relationship of 323 times of gold to silver’s above-ground stock values and an annual mine supply ratio of only 8 times as many silver ounces to that of gold, it appears that if gold returns to its traditional monetary role, silver will turn out to be substantially undervalued. “If” is a little word for a very big assumption; but given the unprecedented and coordinated acceleration of monetary expansion currently proposed, an ending of the current fiat currency regime and a return to gold and silver as monies is becoming increasingly likely.
The relationship with gold in the numbers above suggest that a bimetallic standard today on mine supply considerations alone would be at almost half Isaac Newton’s 1717 exchange rate. Obviously, the issue is not so simple and will be settled by markets. But looking at some other facts suggest the gold/silver relationship is due for a radical rethink. Table 1 below lists some of the relevant ones.
The clear outlier is the gold/silver ratio.
- Source, James Turk's Goldmoney
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)