Tag Archives: Inflation

Inflation Doomsayers and Downplayers

25 Friday Jun 2021

Posted by in Inflation, Monetary Policy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

There’s a big disconnect between recent news about escalating inflation and market expectations of inflation. In fact, there’s a big disconnect between market expectations and what we’re hearing from some conservative economists. The latter are predicting more inflation based on the recent spurt in prices and the expansionary policy of the Federal Reserve. Can these disparate views be reconciled?

Market Predictions

Market interest rates are considered pretty good predictors of inflation, at least relative to surveys and macroeconomic models. That’s because a fixed interest return is eroded by inflation, and fixed income investors will bid up interest rates to incorporate a premium to compensate for perceptions of increased inflation risk. This is known as the Fisher Effect, after the economist Irving Fisher. In fact, investors should bid rates up more than one-for-one with expected inflation, because the inflation premium will be taxed. A higher return must compensate for both higher expected inflation and taxes on the increased inflation premium.

After rising by about 1.2% from last summer through mid-March, interest rates on Treasury notes have declined slightly. The earlier run-up anticipated a strengthening economy, but if the increase was due to higher expected inflation, we could say it represented an added premium of about 1%, and that’s roughly in-line with changes in some other market-based gauges of expected inflation (ignoring pandemic lows).

Recent Inflation News

Meanwhile, measured inflation certainly has increased in 2021. I say “measured” because 1) “true” price changes are measured imperfectly, and 2) there is a difference between real inflation, which is a continuing process, and month-to-month changes in prices. Here, we’re really talking about the latter and hoping it doesn’t turn into a bad case of the former!

The green line in the chart below is the percent change in the consumer price index (CPI) from a year earlier. After declining during the pandemic, it rebounded sharply this year to almost 5% in May. The purple line is the increase in the CPI excluding food and energy prices, otherwise known as the “core” CPI. The jumps shown in the chart are well in excess of the market’s assessment of inflation trends.  

Both versions of the CPI have jumped in the past few months, but it turns out that durable goods like washing machines, TVs, and (probably) Pelotons have jumped the most sharply. Most of the weakness in prices during the pandemic was in non-durable goods, which stands to reason because so many activities away from home were curtailed. Also noteworthy about these price movements: when measured over a span of two years, prices excluding food and energy have risen at an annualized rate of only 2.6%. 

There are two other lines in the chart above that demonstrate much less alarming changes in prices: the orange line is so-called “median” inflation, which is the price change in the median component of the CPI. That is, half of all price components included in the CPI rose faster and half rose slower than the median. It has barely accelerated this year and stood at only about 2.1% higher in May than a year earlier. The blue line is the so-called “trimmed” CPI, or the average price change of the middle 84% of all CPI components. While it has accelerated in 2021, the year-over-year increase was only 2.6% in May. 

Thus, the breadth of the jump in prices was limited. The Federal Reserve and a lot of market participants insist that the uptick is narrow and temporary — a transitional phenomenon related to the sluggish recovery of supplies in the post-pandemic environment.

But again, the accuracy of price measures is always in question. For example, the housing cost component of the CPI was up only 2.2% in May from a year ago, but it is calibrated to actual survey data only twice a year, the survey is a weak data source, and we know home prices and rents have risen aggressively. Quality and quantity adjustments are always in question as well. An old approach for businesses dealing with rising costs is to reduce package size, which has been called “shrinkflation”. It seems to be back in vogue.

Inflation Drivers

It’s not yet clear how much wage pressure is occurring now. The economy-wide average hourly earnings data has been distorted over the past 15 months by the changing mix of employment, first shifting toward greater concentration in high-wage (work-at-home) occupations and now shifting back toward lower-wage jobs as the economy reopens. But we know many employers are facing a labor shortage, due in large part to extended unemployment benefits and other pandemic-related aid, so this puts upward pressure on wages. In 2021, minimum wage rates are undergoing substantial increases in 17 states, and a number of large employers such as Amazon have increased their minimum pay rates. That creates competitive pressure for smaller employers to boost pay as well.

The fundamental cause of an “honest-to-goodness” inflation is “too much money chasing too few goods”. The Federal Reserve has certainly given us enough to worry about in that regard. The basic money stock (M1) increased by four-fold in the late winter and early spring of 2020, just as the pandemic was spreading. Today, it is almost five times greater than in early 2020, so growth in the money stock remains quite fast even as the recovery proceeds. No wonder: the U.S. Treasury is issuing about $1 trillion of new debt every four-to-six weeks, and the Fed is essentially monetizing these deficits by purchasing a huge chunk of that debt.

That’s a lot of “helicopter” money… new money! But are there too few goods for it to chase? Or is it really chasing anything? Is it just sitting idle? First, GDP is likely to exceed its pre-pandemic level in the second quarter, despite the fact that private payrolls are still down by about 7 million employees. Of course, that doesn’t eliminate the ostensible imbalance between money and goods, and one might expect a veritable explosion in price inflation under these circumstances.

So far that seems unlikely. The so-called velocity of money (its rate of turnover) has plunged since the start of the pandemic, with no discernible rebound through the first quarter of 2021. That means a lot of the cash is not being used in transactions for real goods, but financial transaction volume has been quite strong in 2020-21. Daily stock trading volume was up by more than 50% in 2020 from 2019, and in the first quarter of 2021 it stood another 34% higher than the 2020 average (though volume tapered in April). This is to say nothing of the increased frenzy in cryptocurrency trading. So, while some money is turning over, the expansion of the money stock remains daunting and pressure might well spill-over into goods prices.

Caution Is a Virtue

So long as the Fed keeps printing money, and assuring investors that it will keep printing money, the equity markets are likely to remain strong. There are mixed signals coming from Fed officials, but the over-riding message is that the recent uptick in prices is largely temporary and limited in scope. That is, they assert that certain prices are being squeezed temporarily by rebounding demand for goods while suppliers play catch-up. 

Market expectations of inflation seem to agree with that view, but I have strong trepidations. There are cash reserves held in the private sector to support more aggressive spending. Large companies, consumers, and banks are still holding significant amounts of cash. The Biden Administration is doing its best to spend hand-over-fist. This administration’s energy policy is causing fuel bills to escalate. Home prices and rents are strong. The dollar is down somewhat from pre-pandemic levels, which increases import prices. Finally, the Fed is reluctant to reverse the huge increase in the money supply it engineered during the pandemic. If the recent surge in prices continues, and if higher inflation embeds itself into expectations, it will be all the more difficult for the Fed to correct. 

The market and the Fed might be correct in predicting that the spike in measured inflation is temporary. The recent data show that these worrisome price trends have not been broad. Just the same, I don’t want to hold fixed income investments right now: if higher expectations of inflation cause market interest rates to rise, the value of those assets will fall. Stock values should generally keep pace with inflation barring stronger signals of tightening by the Fed. Unfortunately, however, many would suffer in an inflationary environment as wages, fixed assets, and benefits are devalued by rising prices.

Note: This post also appears on The American Reveille.

Fiat Money, Government and Culture

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Monetary Policy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Partytime

The money we use every day has roughly zero intrinsic value. That includes paper, coins made from base metals, and electronic bookkeeping entries that can be drawn on via plastic cards and communication devices. We take it for granted that all of these forms of payment will be accepted in transactions. The dollars we use in the U.S. are backed only by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government, which is quite a bit of nothing when it comes right down to it. This form of money is called “fiat money” because it derives value essentially by decree, including the government’s willingness to accept your dollars in payment of taxes. It’s a fine thing that such a level of trust exists in society, and most important is trust that the next seller will accept your dollars in trade.

An old maxim in economics known as Gresham’s Law holds that “bad money drives out good”, particularly when the “good money” and the “bad money” are assigned the same legal value in exchange. The good money, having greater intrinsic value than the bad money, will quickly disappear from use as a medium of exchange. Like any asset, the good money will be held as a store of value, but not used in routine transactions.

In the past, our “good money” consisted mainly of claims on precious metals. However, the U.S. government stopped redeeming dollars in gold in the 1930s, silver in the 1960s, and silver coins stopped circulating at about the same time.

What’s so “bad” about fiat money, given that we trust its usefulness in the next transaction? The lack of intrinsic value places its issuing authority, the Federal Reserve in our case, in a position of tremendous power and responsibility as the keeper of the “full faith” of the U.S. government. However, the Fed is privately owned (by banks), and no one at the Fed is elected. The members of its Board of Governors are appointed by the President to 14-year terms. The lengthy terms are hoped to keep the Fed independent and immune to political manipulation. Ostensibly, the Fed conducts policy in the objective pursuit of price stability and full employment. (Never mind that the two goals may be incompatible.)

The Fed, as the authority responsible for the nation’s fiat money, has traditionally allowed the money supply to grow by issuing “new money” in exchange for federal debt obligations, like Treasury bonds. The Fed buys the bonds, and the payment becomes a seed for new money growth. For the Treasury, which raises funds to finance government activities by collecting taxes and borrowing, this mechanism is quite convenient. The Fed can act to “accommodate” the government’s needs, essentially printing money to fund deficits.

Does it happen? Absolutely, although in the past few years, the Fed has demonstrated a more subtle variation on this theme, and one that is cheaper for the government. That will be the subject of a future post. The key point here is that with the cooperation of the monetary authority, the government avails itself of the so-called printing press. Thus, it is not answerable to taxpayers for any expansion in its spending. The government can commandeer resources as it sees fit, with no restraint from the governed.

That’s the key point made by Jörg Guido Hülsmann in a post on the Mises Wire blog, “How Fiat Money Destroys Culture“. On that note, I’d say first that enabling the displacement of private commerce for government-directed activity is a sure-fire prescription for degrading the culture. Government is not and never will be a font of creativity. Capitalism and markets, on the other hand, deliver an astonishing degree of cultural wealth to every segment of society. The freedom to create and share art, cuisine, customs and technology, without interference by government, is the very essence of culture. Some might object that government often serves as a conduit for bringing cultural works to the public, and that government can and does direct resources to the arts. There is an extent to which that’s true, of course, but it may be a deal with the devil: public sector support for new art is often subject to strings, politicization, and favoritism. That’s crony culturalism, to coin a phrase.

Hülsmann discusses other cultural repercussions of fiat money. By enabling the government to compete for resources with the private sector, and by swelling the quantity of money relative to goods and assets, fiat money puts upward pressure on prices. This might manifest in the prices of goods, the prices of assets, or both, and it might be very uneven. This changes the distribution of rewards in society in fundamental ways.

Price inflation penalizes those who hold currency. Hülsmann says:

“In a free economy with a natural monetary system, there is a strong incentive to save money in the form of cash held under one’s immediate control. Investments in savings accounts or other relatively safe investments also play a certain role, but cash hoarding is paramount, especially among low-income families. … By contrast, when there is constant price inflation, as in a fiat-money system, cash hoarding becomes suicidal.“

Price inflation also rewards those in debt. Strictly speaking, this is true only when inflation accelerates unexpectedly, since lenders tend to demand sufficient interest to offset expected inflation. Hülsmann blames the widespread growth of debt financing in modern society on fiat currency. There is an element of truth to this assertion, but it strikes me as an exaggeration, given the advances in financial markets and technologies over the past century or so. We are much better at allocating resources inter-temporally than in 1900, for example, so the growth of consumer and business debt over the years should be viewed in the context of future earning power and enabling technology. Still, there are those for whom these markets and technologies are out of reach, and the destructive effect of inflation on their ability to save should not be minimized. This contributes to greater dependency at the lowest levels of the socioeconomic spectrum, a very regrettable kind of cultural change.

Growth of the money stock tends to reward many at the top of the socioeconomic spectrum, partly because it is associated with stock market appreciation. Again, when the Fed buys government bonds, or mortgage bonds, or any other asset, it always finds willing sellers, usually brokers/dealers and banks. Successful bidding by the Fed for assets is the first step in lifting asset prices (and reducing yields). But market participants tend to know all this in advance. Therefore, private traders will bid up asset prices in advance, assuming that the Fed has indicated its intentions. Other assets, being substitute vehicles for wealth accumulation, will also be bid upward, as a given amount of income produced by an asset is valued more highly when competing yields are low. After the Fed completes a round of asset purchases, the process can repeat itself.

Goods inflation and higher asset prices generated by continuing debt monetization and distorted interest rates tend to skew the distribution of wealth toward the top and away from the bottom. Moreover, if cost and pricing pressure build up in goods markets, those with the greatest market power always fare best. Thus, debt monetization has the potential to be a very inegalitarian process, and one not based on fundamental economic criteria such a productivity. This too represents a damaging form of cultural change.

A more accurate form of Gresham’s law might be the following: government ambition drives out “good money”. The existence of fiat money creates an avenue through which the expansion of government can be funded without approval by current or future taxpayers. This ultimately leads to a stagnant economic environment and a stagnant culture: government displaces private activity, the economy’s growth potential and vibrancy deteriorates, and society’s ability to support all forms of culture declines. To add insult to injury, the process of monetizing government debt punishes small savers and rewards the privileged. The distribution of cultural rewards will follow suit.

Busted Big Government

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in National Debt

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

accounting or accountability

Alan Greenspan says we are “way underestimating” the U.S. national debt. His statements on this point make a great follow-up to last night’s post on bailouts. Here are a couple of recent Greeenspan quotes from an article by Nicholas Ballasy:

“Largely because we are not including what I would call contingent liabilities, that is the issue of, which is answered by a question: what is the probability that in today’s environment JP Morgan would be allowed to default? The answer is zero or less.”

Now, that means that whole balance sheet is a contingent liability. Now to be sure, while it’s contingent, there’s no interest payments but ultimately that overhangs the structure because we have committed in so many different ways to guarantee this, that and the other thing. It’s not only Fannie and Freddie but it’s a whole series of financial institutions and, regrettably, it is also non-financial institutions.”

The bailout barometer I mentioned last night is an eye-opener, but it reflects a very incomplete view of the contingent liabilities faced by the government. Ballasy discusses some massive unfunded liabilities associated with programs like Social Security, which has a trust fund that Greenspan calls “meaningless”:

“The Social Security and Medicare Trustees 2014 annual report said while legislation is needed to address all of Social Security’s financial imbalances, ‘the need has become most urgent with respect to the program’s disability insurance component. Lawmakers need to act soon to avoid automatic reductions in payments to DI beneficiaries in late 2016.’”

Lawrence Lindsey, an economic official in the Bush Administration, says the real national debt is closer to 300 percent of GDP when unfunded obligations for Social Security and Medicare are added. The fast-dissipating disability insurance fund was the subject of another post here two days ago. It is a case study in irresponsible governance. Here is Ballasy with another Greenspan quote:

“According to Greenspan, entitlement spending in the U.S. was 4.7 percent of GDP in 1967 compared to more than 14 percent today. ‘Had we kept it at that level, our productivity would be far higher today. The average wage would be very significantly higher, the standard of living would be higher and what we have to do is think about how we are going to shrink that pie back and, to me, that is the single most important problem that confronts this country,’ he said.“

Shrinking the ongoing flow of entitlements is a tall political order. Avoiding the contingencies that would add to existing obligations calls for economic policies that promote stability, rather than boom and bust cycles that follow misguided efforts to stimulate the economy. Still another matter is to deal with the obligations that already exist. Higher taxes, inflation and default do not represent attractive policy options, but our activist government has placed us squarely in that corner.