Government Debt: A Potential Hidden Grenade

A recent opinion piece from the Financial Times expressed concerns about the significant built-up of government indebtedness and the potential risks of ballooning costs to maintain it.  The risk is characterized as follows:

“The trigger now may be a lethal combination of rising inflation and financial instability. The difficulty is that central banks cannot take away the punch bowl and raise rates without undermining weak balance sheets and taking a wrecking ball to the economy.”

The concern is legitimate, especially when you look at these two graphs that the IMF included in their April 2021 Fiscal Monitor:

Advanced economies are carrying debt comprising approximately 120% of GDP (Figure 1.1). Given historical low in general interest rates (Figure 1.3), the debt burden (expense) appears manageable at the moment holding roughly about 1.8% of GDP. But what will happen when rates go up? The obvious, of course, is debt expense will increase.    

By any historical standard it is unreasonable to expect that at some point interest rates will not go up. In other words, it is unreasonable to expect the current trend to continue without running into significant problems. The effects of that reversal when compared to the current trend could be consequential, and one which may take a lot of economic pain if not dealt properly. 

Money Multiplier – A Red Flag

Here in this post I give an update to the money multiplier proxy, which helps us get an understanding where prices may go into the future. 

The more money moves, the more money is being multiplied – which means more of it is created. This ultimately puts pressure in inflation, which impacts all markets. The reverse is also true: a slowing down of the multiplier means money creation is slowing. In a debt-ridden market that we are currently witnessing – particularly in equity markets, a slowing down of the money multiplier is not particularly sanguine. 

You must remember that higher prices as measured by the popular CPI will put pressure on the FRB to hike interest rates. This would lead to higher interest costs, which would not be great for the housing market or government finances.

As we see below, the money multiplier continues to slow down, the trend is obvious. This means that if this trend continues we should expect some meaningful correction (minimum 10-15% drop) in equity prices. When? I have no idea, but probably sometime before year-end 2021.   

Source: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/current/default.htm

Pay No Mind to Consumer Price Inflation…Sort of

The FT reported today that “US inflation rose 4.2 per cent in April over its level a year ago…[and] is the biggest rise since 2008 and a significant leap compared with the 2.6 per cent reading in March.”

While the metric does look ominous – and I have no doubt that inflationary pressures are going to continue to mount up – this measure of headline inflation is misleading. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) has a lot of assumptions included in its calculation that make it subject to imprecision. Not that the metric is wrong, but rather it may misrepresent the spending habits of the average consumer. 

As such, a much better indicator of inflation is the Median Consumer Price Index. This index omits outliers and is therefore a more precise indicator of underlying inflation trends. 

As you can see from the graph and chart below, although there is a small tick upwards in the Median CPI, it is not yet at an alarming level. The data source of the graph and chart can be seen here.      

Percent change, past 12 months

Date	Nov-2020	Dec-2020	Jan-2021	Feb-2021	Mar-2021	Apr-2021
Median CPI	2.2	2.2	2.1	2.1	2	2.1
16% trimmed-mean CPI	2.1	2.1	2	2	2.1	2.4
CPI	1.2	1.4	1.4	1.7	2.6	4.2
CPI less food and energy	1.6	1.6	1.4	1.3	1.6	3

After Massive Government Intervention, Here’s How It Ends

After reading this article from Bill Bonner (original here), I am reminded of one of Ronald Reagan's quote, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

We must look back at history. It is replete with disaster after disaster at the hands of "the Government". At some point we must ask ourselves if whether what we have been taught to believe about "the Government" is true. We must start with our sources: where did we get that knowledge? what evidence is there that challenges that knowledge? 

It is the art of asking questions. Keep asking why, and you will get closer to the truth.

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People make mistakes. The private world of win-win deals routinely corrects them. Death, divorce, default, destitution – many are the ways it sets things right.

But the public world… the world backed by tanks and armed police… the world of wars and sanctions… regulations and money-printing… uses its considerable might to resist correction.

No matter how stupid… no matter how wasteful or harmful to the public weal – government programs are rarely and reluctantly discarded.

The Definition of Eternity

Dear readers who doubt this is true are invited to recall the real nature of government. It is an organization that has only one real goal – to protect and promote the people who control it.

And as we’ve seen, illuminated by the great Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, it is always controlled by a small segment of the society – the elite.

We’ve seen also that the “investments” made on behalf of the public most often benefit only the elite. And, protected by their beneficiaries, errors persist and accumulate.

Even the most temporary and woebegone government agency becomes eternal. Crises – forgotten by the public for decades – still trouble the sleep of well-paid agents of the federal government.

Programs that should have been a source of shame and embarrassment continue indefinitely, while the people who put them in place – who should have been bankrupted… run out of town on a rail… or at least had the good grace to resign from office, or like German general Erwin Rommel, to accept the cyanide pill – stay proudly at their posts year after year.

Elections are supposed to “throw the bums out.” But apart from a few headliner acts, the show remains little changed… with the same clowns, misallocating the same resources, over and over.

How It Ends

And yet, as American economist Herbert Stein remarked, things that can’t go on forever must come to an end.

But how? When? Those are our questions for today.

And we won’t beat around the bush. The answer is this: Deprived of regular hygiene, public life gets dirtier and dirtier… until finally, we all “take a bath” on the feds’ bad investments.

We pause to back-fill…

Errors – even in public life – are usually limited by money. The feds may want to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure… or on climate control… but they lack the means.

This forces them to make trade-offs… hard choices – cutting here to spend there… raising taxes… or borrowing.

Raising taxes tends to upset those who pay them, imposing a barrier that politicians are reluctant to cross.

And even when Congress passes a tax increase, it doesn’t mean that the feds will actually collect more tax revenue. People duck and dodge. Even without cheating, they change the way they do business and how they spend their money.

In the end, tax revenue, as a percentage of GDP, tends to stay fairly constant, as tax rates rise or fall.

And borrowing brings its own problems. First, a dollar must be earned before it can be saved. Then, it must be saved before it can be borrowed.

This century, federal deficits have far outstripped GDP growth and savings rates, which is why the feds have had to resort to the printing press.

Besides, even when there is money available from private lenders, borrowing by the feds will “crowd out” private borrowers, driving up interest rates, depressing the economy, and putting voters in a sour mood.

It is only because our fake-money system permits the feds to spend so much, without depleting savings or raising taxes, that they can make so many bad “investments.”

(An important note: As prices begin to rise, the Federal Reserve will come under pressure to “taper” off its money-printing ways. Most likely, next month, as higher inflation rates are reported, we will see some fireworks at the Fed… and in the markets… Stay tuned.)

Extraordinary Scrubbing

In addition to the bad investments on existing wars – against terrorists, poverty, recessions, bear markets, and drugs – the Biden Administration has proposed an additional $4 trillion to do battle against temperature changes and viruses… as well as allegedly improving the nation’s families and its infrastructure.

Some of these proposals will be adopted. Money will be misspent. Debt will increase. And the grime will grow thicker and greasier than ever.

With no routine way of cleaning it off… an extraordinary scrubbing will be needed.

Wars, revolutions, economic collapse – the ways in which elites are finally punished… and their bamboozles eventually corrected… fill the history books. They’ve been explored by historians and catastrophists such as Edward Gibbon, Arnold Toynbee, Oswald Spengler, Joseph Tainter, Peter Turchin… and many others.

Each has his own theory… his own “spin”… on the issue. Some emphasize foreign competition. Others focus on the degeneration of the elite themselves. Some lay the blame on economic mismanagement or resource depletion. Others insist the real problem is a moral failure.

Joseph Tainter put forward the idea that governed societies are fundamentally problem-solving organizations. Each problem requires a solution. Each solution adds costs… and increases the complexity of the organization.

Eventually, the complexities and additional costs become unbearable; the society collapses.

Parasitic Living

Another way to look at it is that the elite is fundamentally parasitic, living off the labor of others.

As time goes by, more and more people naturally wish to join the elite. They learn to speak the language of business schools and The New York Times. They send their children to college.

And then… the college graduates feel entitled to an elite lifestyle, and take their places on Wall Street, in the government, a university, or a non-profit organization.

Thus are more and more people turned into quasi-rentiers, contributing little to the real wealth of the society, while relatively fewer remain to make the plumbing work.

Here at the Diary, we pretend no precision. Our analysis is broad-brush… like a barn door painted by a blind man.

During our own lifetimes, America’s elite has degenerated greatly. Funded with almost unlimited fake money, it has become arrogant, corrupt, and incompetent.

And now… caught in an “inflate or die” trap… its “investments” become more desperate and less productive than ever…

And since the elite controls both soap and water… the dirt builds up.

And then, we all get hosed.

Regards,

Bill

Bubbles Everywhere in a Bubble Economy

In a “bubble” market, all sorts of incongruities show up, and of course, there is no shortage of pundits who will claim that “this time is different” or some similar epithet to describe irrationality.

But make no mistake, the markets can remain irrational longer than most can remain solvent. It is on that basis that renowned investor Jim Rogers once reminded me that the bubble economy can and will do things that defy reason – and for a lot longer than anyone can think or imagine.

The bubble will continue until it cannot; and only then you will witness the inevitable day of reckoning. Until that day comes, we will point out the warning signs as they pop up.  

Here today I present you risk premium, that extra buffer to account for extra risk, for the worst kind of debt. Thanks to the FT, this is what it says:

"The premium, or “spread”, above benchmark government bond yields on triple C-rated US corporate bonds, which sit on the precipice of defaulting, has fallen to just above 6.4 percentage points, according to data from Ice Data Services. The spread has been lower on only two occasions: in 2014, just before a collapse in oil prices roiled the debt of energy companies, and in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis."

European vs. US Economic Growth Rates

What do you expect to happen to an economy where the Government shuts it on and off, and then compare that to an economy where the Government broadly speaking allows it to flourish? This is what happens:

How Much Government Handouts Are We Getting?

This week the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released the Gross Domestic Product results for the first quarter of 2021. The release is here. There we see that the US economy grew at an annualized rate of 6.4% in the first quarter of 2021. 

Also included in that BEA release were estimates of Personal Income. When we dig deeper we see that the share of government handouts to the personal income of all people comprised a record-high rate of 34%. This rate is nowhere near what we have seen over the last 20 years, particularly prior to the government lockdowns policies enacted in March 2020.

Even when compared to the last financial crisis of 2008 – 2009, we see that share oscillating between 15% and 20%. Take a look at this graph for yourself:

                    Source: Bureau of Ecomomic Analysis. Calculated as the percentage of monthly 'Personal current transfer receipts' to 'Personal Income'.

The problem here is two-fold: 

• One is that the government is giving out money it does not have. We are all too aware of the debt problems the government has. 

• The other is that dependence on government is a breeding ground for all sorts of distortions – which among many include subsidizing behavior that is not conducive to increasing productivity and therefore economic growth, or getting people used to the idea that there is such a thing a free lunch (something for nothing), etc. 

Yet, the longer this policy of the government giving out money it does not have goes on, the closer it leads to an ultimate disaster. Imagine a drug junkie who realizes that his drug dealer is no longer around. That’s an appropriate image of what awaits for those who believe the current path we are on is sustainable. Reality is harsh to those who believe in fairy tales. 

More Debt, No Problem…For Now!

Adding perspective to the sustainability of the market upswing we’ve seen over the last year, it is a sobering reminder provided by a Financial Times report on margin debt. They report the following:

Data collected by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority shows that total margin debt across Wall Street hit $822bn by the end of March — after Archegos had failed. That was almost double the $479bn level of this time last year and far more than the around $400bn peak that margin debt reached in 2007, just before the financial crisis.

To put these numbers in context, ABP Invest, a London-based fund, calculates that during the 2000 dotcom and 2007 credit booms, US margin debt topped out at roughly 3 per cent of gross domestic product. Now it is nearly 4 per cent.

 For the medium term (1 – 3 months) we are going to continue to witness a relative upward move in financial markets thanks to the continuing loosening of restrictive government policy (lockdowns). Let us not forget that the economic issue we experienced since March 2020 had nothing to with the virus, but rather all of it the result of government policy. The virus did not shut down economies, governments did.

Yet, the upswing we’ve seen in equity markets has been the result of massive liquidity injections by the government institutions – a purely Keynesian policy. This is not sustainable. To believe this is sustainable is to believe that the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale. Leverage cuts both ways. Be careful to catch a knife as it is falling off your table.

Money Multiplier: Another Down Month...A Warning?

I have previously noted about the recent changes to the M1 metric published by the FRB. Although this change caused the M1 to balloon, it did not materially impact how it is use in our proxy assessment for the money multiplier. The money multiplier, as you may remember, is an estimate in relation as to how fast the money is moving and being created in an economy.

The more money moves, the more money is being multiplied – which means more of it is created. This ultimately puts pressure in inflation, which impacts all markets. The reverse is also true: a slowing down of the multiplier means money creation is slowing. In a debt-ridden market that we are currently witnessing, a slowing down of the money multiplier is not particularly sanguine.

Based on the M1 reported by the FRB yesterday, the overall money multiplier declined month-over-month, and the trend appears to be solidifying. That said, the Biden Administration continues its spending spree, as there is talk that more “stimy” money may make its way into the market. This should be read somewhat bullish by those who believe that the economy is improving.

But make no mistake, this economy is being propped up by government money. Any growth seen is fictions. The money multiplier, while slowing and giving an ominous warning sign, will not be received by the market in the manner that it should. As it is common to bubbles, they do crazy things that extend beyond reason or logic.

As you can see for yourself, the money multiplier trend is down.     

How to Lie with Statistics - Part 6: The One-Dimensional Picture

Continuing with my previous post, here I summarize Chapter 5 of the book How to Lie with Statistics. This chapter is titled, The One-Dimensional Picture.

The deceptive practice described in this chapter can be succinctly summarized as follows: The danger of “varying the size of the objects in a chart.” What this means in practice is that – depending on what the aspirant is aiming to accomplish – he is trying to show a disproportionate picture to give an impression that may not necessarily be accurate.

For example, take a graph that may represent yearly car sale, put on that graph a large car to represent a high car sales and a small car for low car sales. Simply eye-balling the large and small car picture will leave you thinking exactly what the author intends – the author will simply point to the picture to show you how right he is. In other words, size proportions of picture charts matter as much as the metric being reported (e.g. average, etc.)

Bill Bonner: Confessions of a Doomsayer

Today's post is courtesy of Bill Bonner. The original can be read here.

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A dear reader writes to say we are wrong.

“What these doomsday prophets like Bonner fail to explain is the efficiency of today’s supply chain that can quickly produce goods and services to meet demand. The market continues to roar in the face of his daily diatribes. If we were keeping score, we would say Fed: 40; Bonner: 0. I do enjoy reading the columns as I find them highly entertaining.”

– Mike C.

And yes, of course, we are wrong about a great number of things. This is partly because the odds are so heavily against us.

If we say “The bond market topped out on August 4, 2020” (which we think it did), we are guessing that it won’t go higher and finally top out on any of the 365 days in this year.

And now, in our constant rehearsal of the “sky is falling” forecast, we will be wrong again… until it finally hits us in the head.

When might that be? Well, we don’t know. It could begin any day now… or not.

In the meantime, the Federal Reserve will be right… and we will look like an idiot.

Lesson Learned

Today, we enter the confessional. And let’s begin by warning new readers that they should never pay attention to our stock market suggestions.

Publicly traded stocks don’t interest us; we don’t do any serious research on them.

And on the rare occasions when we comment on any particular company, we are as likely to be wrong as right.

(Full disclosure: We do own stocks! They’re managed for us by our trusted old friend, Chris Mayer.)

Just this week, we were reminded that, some months ago, in this space, we laughed at investors who were buying Hertz (HTZGQ).

The company had gone bankrupt. But somehow, it had found favor with the young traders who spend their time chatting about such things. They were so eager to buy the stock that the company – then in bankruptcy – decided to issue new shares.

It would have been a first in the history of finance… had not the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) put a stop to it.

“When you’re young… in love… at war… or in a bubble…” we concluded, “there’s no time to think straight, or even think at all.”

Well, wouldn’t you know… we’re in a bubble. The used car market turned up… and Hertz – like a sleeping beauty, kissed by its Reddit suitors – came back to life. The company is back in business.

The whippersnappers turned out to be right. We turned out to be wrong.

We take no lesson from the Hertz story but that there are a lot of things you can be wrong about. We’re working our way through them, slowly.

A Costly Lesson

Take Amazon (AMZN), for example… please.

One of the most spectacular things we were wrong about was Jeff Bezos’ creation. When it came out – this was more than 20 years ago – we called it “The River of No Returns.” The title was clever. But the prediction was poor.

Amazon’s business strategy was a classic formula for failure. The company cut its margins so thin, it lost money on every sale. Then, it aimed to make up for the losses by increasing volume.

That was never going to work, we opined.

And it never really did. Amazon’s retailing business has never made enough money to justify the huge “investment” (losses) necessary to reach its present scale.

So its core business is still a river of no returns – not worth a fraction of its current market price.

But how were we supposed to know that a virus would come along… so that people would stay home and be almost forced to order from amazon.com?

Boom! Amazon’s net sales rose by more than $100 billion last year.

And how were we to know that its huge data processing needs would get it into a whole new line of business that would be so profitable?

Yes, the cloud computing business. That’s where the money is. Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts for a bit more than 10% of the company’s sales… but more than 60% of its profits.

AMZN gave our dear readers their first big opportunity to get rich. Those who were smart enough to ignore our advice could have bought the stock for under $50. Today, split adjusted, it is over $3,000, giving the company a market value of about $1.7 trillion.

Jeff Bezos got so rich, he could go through the most expensive divorce in history and still have a net worth estimated at almost $200 billion.

Mechanistic Approach

So let’s turn back to the Federal Reserve, which is clearly ahead of us – as our dear reader tells us – on points.

There – on the big picture, the macro view – we do pay attention. And maybe there, we are less of an idiot than we appear.

Ours is a “moralistic” view. That is, we assume that if we leave the dishes unwashed, sooner or later, they’ll attract cockroaches. But, of course, that could happen any time.

Almost all other observers today use a more mechanistic approach.

They believe you can understand an economy – and are able to predict its next moves – by looking at dials and instruments, as if you were flying an airplane.

Losing altitude? Give the machine more throttle!

The trouble with the mechanistic approach is that an economy is not a machine. It is more like a living thing… infinitely complex, with purposes and prejudices we can’t possibly know.

As for adjusting the throttle, forget about it. You can’t plot a course… or determine the correct speed or altitude… because you never know where you’re going. You won’t know until you get there.

And you don’t know how to fly a plane, anyway.

Moralistic Approach

But the “moralist” is always wrong… before he is right. He notices when things seem out-of-whack. But he has no way of knowing when or how they will go back into whack.

That is what happened in 2000 and again in 2008.

Each time, the stock market was in a boom and the mechanics were proclaiming a New Era.

The moralists denied it. “How could investors make money from unprofitable companies?” they wondered in 1999.

Eight years later, they wanted to know how people could get rich by “taking out equity” from their own homes.

Both times, the doomsayers (including us) were way too early, anticipating crashes years before they ever happened.

Then, when the crises came, the Fed gave the plane full throttle – “printing” record amounts of new money. The mechanics saw a recovery. The moralists saw more trouble ahead.

And now, in the greatest bout of money-printing in U.S. history, we doomsayers see another calamity coming – the third major crisis of the 21st century.

Will we be right or wrong?

Bad Ending

The Fed has set off a boom. Everything is flying through the air. The mechanic sees sales increasing… unemployment going down… stocks near record highs.

Even things with no apparent value – NFTs, money-losing businesses, Dogecoin – can be worth billions. Dogecoin, created as a joke in 2013, is now said to be worth $42 billion… or just slightly less than Hewlett-Packard, for example.

We try not to pretend to know things we don’t know. And we have no idea why Dogecoin is worth more than HP.

But we believe this boom is going to end badly… like the other two. Only worse.

Boom… boom… Ka-boom!

Regards,

Bill

High Savings Mean High Risk Aversion

The FT reported this astonishing statistic:

Households around the globe accumulated the excess — defined as the additional savings compared with the 2019 spending pattern and equating to more than 6 per cent of global gross domestic product — by the end of the first quarter of this year, according to estimates by credit rating agency Moody’s.

The article goes on to argue that some of this “additional savings” will be spent because it is assumed that savers are beginning to be optimistic about the future and therefore will be more inclined to spend. Yet this assumption is problematic because nowhere in the article does it hint of the impact that such spending will have in the general price level: higher demand will lead to higher prices, all things being equal. And higher inflation lead to higher risk premiums in market prices. Should inflationary pressures show up, that will lead to a disorderly unwinding of financial transactions because of the risk of runaway inflation. It is a mistake by the FT to simply look at one side of the equation and come up with half-baked conclusions and not fully considering the implications.  

That being said, I think what the FT describes is too optimistic. Savers are savings because they are not as sanguine about the future as we are led to believe. Additionally, as the article goes on to mention, some believe that in the US “excess savings were held by the richest 40 per cent of the population and suggested this could hold back the scale of the economic boost because ‘high-income households will hold [rather than spend] the bulk of excess savings’”

Record Breaking Amount of Cash Flowing into Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)

The Financial Times reported some eye-popping metrics surrounding exchange-traded funds (ETFs). As I have mentioned repeatedly, we are witnessing the proverbial high tide raises all boats, as the massive amounts of money injections by the Federal Reserve and the spending by the Federal Government, have lifted the ETFs balances like we’ve never seen before. Here are a few notable reporting values:

·         Global net investor inflows into exchange traded funds and products reached $359.2bn in the first three months of 2021, the busiest quarter on record, according to the data provider ETFGI. That lifted net global ETF inflows since the end of March 2020 to just over $1tn.

·         Net inflows into US and Canadian equity ETFs reached $143bn in the first quarter of 2021, up from $30.4bn in the same period last year. Global equity ETFs gathered $46.7bn, more than four times the inflows of $10.5bn registered in the first quarter of 2020. Asia-Pacific equity ETF flows almost doubled to $19.3bn from $9.9bn, according to ETFGI.

·         Vanguard attracted ETF inflows of $96.2bn in the first three months of 2021, up from $50bn in the first quarter of last year when financial markets were retreating due to coronavirus fears…BlackRock’s iShares ETF unit gathered inflows of $71.4bn in the first quarter, compared with just $13.6bn registered in the first three months of 2020. State Street, the third-largest ETF manager globally, gathered first quarter inflows of $23.9bn after seeing net outflows of $2.8bn in the first three months of 2020.

Bill Bonner: The Feds’ Economic Hypotheses Are Empty

Note: Today's article is from Bill Bonner. You can read the original here.

Enjoy!

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Civilization Is Restraint

Whenever and wherever there is great inflation, so is there great trouble.

The French Revolution and the inflation of the assignats and land warrants, for example…

Hyperinflation in Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution…

Germany’s Weimar Republic inflation and the rise of the Nazis…

Yugoslavia, 1994-1996… inflation of 62% PER DAY… and the end of the country.

Civilization is restraint, as Sigmund Freud put it. It requires rules… discipline. Weeds must be pulled up. Trees must be pruned. Property must be protected. Roofs must be fixed. Contracts must be respected. Two plus two must equal four.

And money must be neither dear nor cheap, but true.

Order must be maintained. And order requires energy… expense… and time.

Slack off… or squander your time and energy – How many women are on your board? Sanction the Russians? More stimmy money for everyone! – and things fall apart…

…and then blow up.

Empty Gestures

At least, that’s our hypothesis.

To which we add… that by our count, in the U.S., the nitro and the glycerin have been edging towards each other for two decades.

People still go about their business, more or less as before. Congress still meets and pretends to govern. People still vote, pretending to select worthy representatives.

Wall Street still pretends to allocate precious capital to productive businesses. Prices still pretend to reflect the real value of stocks and bonds. The press still pretends to report the news. The Federal Reserve still pretends to offer real money.

But the gestures are empty… the facts are fake… and the numbers don’t add up.

Outgo > Income

Forty years ago, in the month of March, the federal government collected $44 billion in tax revenue and spent $53 billion. Even then, the feds were $9 billion in the hole.

But they could borrow the money honestly; no big deal.

In March 2021, the feds collected some $267 billion in tax receipts. But they spent $927 billion – a new record. And a record monthly deficit of $660 billion, approximately equal to the entire U.S. annual budget during the Ronald Reagan administration.

Not only do income and outgo not match… they’re never going to get together.

Losing money at this rate implies a loss for the year of about $8 trillion… More likely, March was an outlier, and the loss will be “only” about $3-$4 trillion, still far more than can plausibly be borrowed.

And this is on top of other big numbers that don’t add up, either.

Trouble Ahead

And here is where it leads. Here’s Business Insider:

“…In our view, the risk is investors are going to experience an acceleration in economic growth and inflation of a magnitude economists and the Fed are totally unprepared for,” said Hans Mikkelsen, head of high-grade credit strategy at Bank of America.

And here’s economist Nouriel Roubini:

Over the next few years, loose monetary and fiscal policies will start to trigger persistent inflationary – and eventually stagflationary – pressure, owing to the emergence of any number of persistent negative supply shocks.

Make no mistake: Inflation’s return would have severe economic and financial consequences. We would have gone from the “Great Moderation” to a new period of macro instability.

Even Larry Summers, former director of the National Economic Council, who is rarely right about anything, sees trouble coming. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, he said:

This is the least responsible fiscal macroeconomic policy we’ve had for the last 40 years.

Nothing to Worry About

But wait… What are we worried about?

The Biden team “modeled” various scenarios. It found that inflation will not be a problem. Here’s The New York Times:

A monthslong effort to monitor and model economic trends inside the White House and the Treasury Department found little risk of prices spiraling upward faster than the Fed can manage.

What a relief! No cause for concern, sayeth the feds’ models.

Of course, Rudolf von Havenstein, who ran the German central bank from 1908 to 1923, had models, too. So did Gideon Gono, jefe of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe from 2003 to 2013.

And Ben Bernanke, in charge at the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, had models that told him that the mortgage finance crisis was nothing to worry about, either.

On Thursday, May 17, 2007 said the great man:

We believe the effect of the troubles in the subprime sector on the broader housing market will likely be limited, and we do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.

The models sound scientific. But they are nothing more than voodoo guesswork.

Regards,

Bill