Posted on 07/30/2003 6:31:30 AM PDT by arete
I spent a lot of time over the weekend hitting the malls, watching the crowds, and noting the prevailing sentiment. The feeling I got was "escape and fantasy," a subtle but overwhelming sense of unreality.
These days the kids are heavily into sex, sexy clothes, near-nudity, cartoons, funny-paper movies, pseudo-violence. Look at your local newspaper and observe the new movies that are coming out. Nine out of 10 appear to be aimed at teenagers, and most have little to do with anything resembling reality. It's all escape, escape, escape.
I've been on this earth for quite a while, and I've been a pretty good observer of the so-called "human condition." I was in high school during the '40s along with Jack Kerouac who was one class above me. So I was there when the "beats" shocked America with their protests against this nation's old, up-tight ways. But the beats were protesting in their own way, and Kerouac's "On the Road" became the cry for a new freedom.
I was there in World War II, which brought on a seminal change in America's thinking. Suddenly, we went international. And we went triumphant. We were king of the world, and everybody knew it.
I was there in the '60s, lived in a commune for a while, and was writing against the Vietnam War in the face of protests from many of my own subscribers. The kids at Berkeley started the revolt against the Vietnam War, and the revolt quickly spread across the nation. Those were the hippie days, but the hippies were protesters -- protesting first against the War and then against up-tight America and its love of violence and its sexual repression. Drugs became the order of the day.
In the late-80s, the lust for money and success began to take over, and by the late-'90s everything was money, more money -- and profits above all, even if you had to lie about your profits.
What I see now is ESCAPE. Nobody's protesting -- Americans are just escaping. People somehow sense that "something is wrong," but they don't want to deal with it. So today it's all about celebrities, parties, big cars, second homes and lots and lots of sex. Sex is the greatest escape mechanism that God ever invented. Like cholesterol, there's good sex and bad sex.
And there's a third division, it's called LOTS of sex. You want to see lots of sex, turn on TV, go to any movie or better still -- watch MTV. I'm not saying that what hundreds of millions of kids are seeing on MTV is good or bad, I'm just observing that MTV has turned into an over-the-top "girlie show." Talk about escapism, this is it.
So what are people escaping from? I believe that consciously or unconsciously, they're escaping from our future. And what is our future? I'll say it once more -- our future is "INFLATE OR DIE."
What - you don't understand what that means? Then I'll rephrase it. Our future is "INFLATE OR REPUDIATE."
You see, the 1990s under Fed Chief Alan Greenspan was a decade of over-spending and debt creation. Half of all our Federal debt was created during the 1990s. During the 1990s our government ran up $2.87 trillion of new debt. This was more than all the debt the US government had built up since the United States were first formed.
But that's just part of the story. Coming up is roughly $44 trillion of unfunded liabilities, which includes Social Security, Medicare, normal government expenses and interest on the national debt.
We have a $10 trillion economy. How on earth is a $10 trillion economy going to service what's coming up in the way of $38 trillion in debt?
There are two choices. Repudiate a good chunk of this debt or at least cut it back drastically. Or finance the debt via the printing presses. Which one do you think the US government is going to choose? Look, if we're running the printing presses full speed now, and the BIG expenses haven't even hit yet, what do you think our leaders are going to do when the "debt hits the fan?" You guessed it, they're going to inflate at a level that has never been seen before.
Right now we're seeing just the tip of the mess. Our federal budget deficit is now half a trillion dollars, and our current account deficit is another half trillion. This is bad enough, but it's financial peanuts compared with what lies ahead.
And the irony is this -- here's the US, the world's biggest debtor nation, playing policeman to the world, running up bills of $3.9 billion a month in Iraq alone and placing our military all over the world. It's obvious that our government leaders are totally refusing to face the situation, and in fact, they're rapidly making it worse.
So changes will have to happen. One change is that free spending by Americans will have to stop -- and the new trend, forced upon Americans, will be savings.
A second change will be parsimony -- American consumers will have to scrimp, to cut back, to economize in order to pay their bills.
A third change will be employment. Jobs will be increasingly difficult to find. Unemployment will remain high as America's manufacturing and service bases are exported to low-wage nations overseas.
A fourth change will be recognition. Slowly but surely Americans will be forced to face the truth -- this nation is spent-up, it's over-spent -- we've spent our future and more.
A fifth change will be the recognition that the US can no longer be the undisputed world's hyper-power. Sure we'll have the world's biggest and baddest military, but that's actually going to be a problem. The problem is expenses. It's just too darn expensive to be military master of the world. It will be too expensive when you're building debts of a trillion dollars a year.
A lot of our success is due to one extraordinary phenomenon. That phenomenon is the acceptance of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Up to now we've been able to print our debts away. Up to now the world has been willing to accept dollars for their goods and merchandise. But as the mountain of dollars builds up, the world will begin to choke on dollars. The world may even begin to question whether the dollars are a valid holding. When that happens, everything changes. And I mean everything.
Bond holders are beginning to bail out. They're jumping the ship. As I write, the 30-year Treasury is down over a point to new lows. This means mortgage rates are heading up. This means debt will be more expensive to carry. This means people and pension funds and mutual funds which are holding the long bonds are already down better than 15% since mid-June.
The Fed has forced savers either to take big losses in bonds or to earn literally nothing in T-bills or CDs. The Fed's low-interest policy has forced oldsters to spend their savings or lose their shirt in bonds.
Subscribers, listen to me. The future is being carved out as I write. The future is going to be the US government printing massive amounts of Federal Reserve Notes (we call them "dollars") in order to pay off debts and unfunded liabilities coming due.
The future is going to be dollar-deterioration and a move out of financials and into tangibles. The future is going to be a flow of funds out of paper and into real wealth -- gold and silver.
I don't know how many of my subscribers have moved into gold and silver and gold and silver shares. In my opinion, the precious metals are still on the bargain table. Compared to the amount of paper that has been printed, the precious metals are ridiculously cheap. Gold was $850 back in 1980. Gold today is less than half its 1980 peak price. Before this bull market in the metals is over, I expect 1980's peak price to be far surpassed.
This isn't just a case of making profits. This isn't just a case of "beating the market." Buying the metals and the metal stocks here has to do with financial survival. It has to do with arming yourself against a mighty tide, and I don't know how I can make the case any stronger.
It's time for all my subscribers to get into a new and unfamiliar mindset. The mindset is based on a Federal Reserve which has allowed this nation to move toward a position which I can only describe as "technical bankruptcy." We've got a $10 trillion economy but we're going to deal with unfunded liabilities of over $40 trillion plus our "normal" ridiculous budget and current account deficits.
Think about it -- or join the "escape generation." The choice is yours.
Richard Russell
Dow Theory Letters Inc.
Nor can it force institutions to lend...
I'm sorry, but the hyperinflation scenario is a mirage. This economy will not hyperinflate. If it were conducive to even modest Seventies-style stagflation, it would already be hyperinflating under present Fed policies. All roads - and I mean all roads - to hyperinflation lead through deflation in the current global economic mileau.
The American consumer will not - no, cannot - increase debt loads to maintain the spending levels requisite for hyperinflation. The American corporation certainly will not do so in a context of excess capacity and contracting aggregate demand. The three pillars of America's market economy - stocks, bonds, and real estate - are so starkly overvalued that they cannot provide conduits for the necessary liquidity.
The American economy will either recover soundly or it will plunge into a deflationary contraction. I would almost bet my life on it. The moment inflation approaches even levels seen in the 70s/80s, the housing sector will grind down, the stock markets will crash, the bond markets will meltdown; there would be a systemic personal credit crunch - a wave of defaults, foreclosures, and bankruptcies.
Consumer spending will seize up, capital investment & labor expenditures will freeze, and prices will drop in an attempt to support corporate earnings. The economy will plunge into the vicious circle of deflation. As for the Fed, one must account for psychology. At any sign of economic vigor, the Fed will behave as if it's succeeded and tighten monetary policy, which will immediately circumvent the inflationary process.
Even if it does not do so, this economy simply cannot hyperinflate. The malinvestments of the Nineties must be liquidated and the structural imbalances of the post-bubble era must be reordered. Hyperinflation cannot accomplish that task - it will require a deflationary contraction. More exactly, the relatively moderate inflation which must precede hyperinflation will immobilize economic activity before the threshold of hyperinflation is reached.
In keeping with the theme of Russell's commentary, this idea that debasement of the currency may resolve the structural impediments to U.S. economic expansion is another escapist fantasy. The economy will either inexplicably shift into vigorous, sustainable recovery or more likely plunge into a systemic deflationary contraction. The Fed will fail.
Richard W.
Well the Austrian School of economics people say that it can't be avoided so you are in good company.
Richard W.
Richard W.
In the American and European economies, the price of East Asian imports would plunge - thereby acutely magnifying the already marked deflationary pressures of uncompetitive trade disadvantages. American and European corporations would need slash their own prices to compete with those of East Asia - particularly Japan in this instance, which would displace China [or rather reinforce China] as the chief global source of deflationary pressure.
Europe would plunge into crippling deflation almost immediately, and the United States would shortly thereafter sink with the global shift. East Asia will hyperinflate; America and Europe will deflate; this will rebalance the global economy in the worst possible way......
I think not. The Fed always reacts too late. If the economy does recover, then we'll see hyperinflation from all the 'goosing' the Fed's being doing recently.
That's actually part of the key nexus I alluded to above in bringing Japan into this global equation. The Japanese export economy simply cannot tolerate American hyperinflation. As their banking sector and bond markets came under pressure, they would need draw on their American assets to maintain their solvency - as would other Asian economies. This would suck liquidity out of the American economy even as the Fed attempts to increase the monetary supply and prevent the onset of deflation induced in part by East Asian devaluation.
The Europeans would seem stuck between a rock and a hard place. Simultaneously service-based and export-dependent by sector. They'd want to pull assets out, but they'd have no obvious havens for their funds since their markets would be under even worse pressure. I'm uncertain what they'll do in the final analysis.
We are in an era of economic M.A.D. - where any given economy might sustain itself over the long-term only at the expense of another.
In a deflationary scenario, the American consumer would be reducing aggregate purchases of all products - whether imported or domestic. In the United States, this would manifest as a classic deflationary spiral, but in East Asia, this would manifest as hyperinflation. This because the American consumer market comprises the greater part of demand for both American and East Asian products. Given time, this would inaugurate a competitive rebound of American manufacturing, but this could only follow the initial onset of deflation.
In any inflationary scenario, you simply cannot create the economic circumstances conducive to a revival of American industry & exports. That's another reason why the American economy cannot hyperinflate. No other economy can absorb the global economic shock of American hyperinflation. In the current economic order, all roads to U.S. hyperinflation lead through deflation. You simply can't get there from here any other way, or at least no one has properly explained how....
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