Il Mondo è cambiato: per la terza volta in due anni
In molte occasioni, Recce’d negli ultimi 18 mesi vi ha menzionato gli Anni Settanta. E ancora più di frequente vi ha scritto di stagflazione.
Ora che ci siamo, ora che avete i dati sotto gli occhi, dovete solo chiedervi se vi siete già preparati, se avete adattato i vostri investimenti a questo scenario.
Che non è una sorpresa: assolutamente. Si tratta di uno scenario già ben visibile da oltre un anno. Ai meno attenti, ed ai più creduloni, è stato fatto credere che le cose stavano diversamente.
Chi ci ha seguiti, adesso forse è pronto. Tutti gli altri devono invece correre.
Può essere utile rileggere oggi quello che uno dei più noti ed esperti economisti al Mondo, John H. Cochrane, scriveva qualche settimana fa, prima della Festa del Thanksgiving negli USA, a proposito dell’inflazione e del comportamento dei consumatori.
Nov 26
Black Friday begins tonight, and Americans, after emerging from our collective turkey coma, will dive into our sacred, national ritual: shopping.
Those who haven’t shopped lately are in for a rude awakening: Many items will be out of stock, delayed or cost a lot more than they used to. Welcome to inflation, back from the 1970s!
As you look for a deal on a Peloton to work off your pandemic paunch, here is a brief explanation about what’s going on with our economy, why so many things are becoming more expensive, why this hurts all of us, and why the government can’t spend its way out of this mess.
Why are prices rising?
The news is full of “supply chain” problems. Shipping containers can’t get through our ports. Car-makers can’t get chips to make cars. Railroads look like the 405 at rush hour.
What’s underlying many of these problems is the fact that businesses can’t find enough workers. There aren’t enough truck drivers, airline pilots, construction workers and warehouse workers in the “supply chain.” Restaurants can’t find waiters and cooks. There are 10 million job openings and only seven million people looking for work. About three million people who were working in March 2020 are no longer working or looking for work.
But supply chains wouldn’t be clogged if people weren’t trying to buy a lot. The fundamental issue is that demand is outstripping supply.
Strawberry prices go up in the fall because the supply is lower; apples are cheap, because they are abundant. Prices of one good relative to another change, and induce us to shop effectively.
That’s normal.
Inflation is different. Inflation describes all prices and wages going up at the same time, straining supply throughout the economy. That’s the situation right now. Even the Dollar Tree stores just became the buck and a quarter stores, raising all prices 25%.
What’s driving current inflation?
Widespread inflation always comes from people wanting to buy more of everything than the economy can supply. Where did all that demand come from? In its response to the pandemic, the U.S. government created about 2.5 trillion new dollars, and sent checks to people and businesses. It borrowed another $2.5 trillion, and sent more checks to people and businesses. Relative to a $22 trillion economy, and $17 trillion of existing (2020) federal debt, that’s a lot of money.
People are now spending this money, the economy can’t keep up, and prices are rising. Milton Friedman once joked that the government could easily create inflation by dropping money from helicopters. That’s pretty much what our government did.
(I do not here argue the wisdom of this policy. The government helped a lot of people and businesses to get through the lockdowns. One can quibble that money could have been distributed more thoughtfully, but we’re here to think about inflation, not Covid policy.)
What’s wrong with inflation?
Prices and wages all rising at the same rate doesn’t sound so bad. But it’s never that simple. Inflation is chaotic! Some prices go up faster than others. You can’t get things you need. Neither can businesses. And wages tend to lag behind prices, so workers lose in real terms, as do those on fixed incomes.
What was the Fed’s role in all of this?
The Federal Reserve failed at its most basic job: to figure out how much the economy can produce, and to bring demand up to, but not beyond, that supply. To that end, the Fed controls interest rates. If people get a higher interest rate on money in the bank, they will leave it there rather than spend it. But the Fed failed to see inflation coming, and kept interest rates at zero, where they remain. The Fed says it is keeping interest rates low to improve “labor market conditions,” despite the widespread worker shortages and the eruption of inflation.
Will inflation continue?
It’s hard to say. If the Federal Reserve’s immense staff of economists can be caught off guard, so can you and I.
That said, there is some momentum to inflation, so further price increases are likely. Higher property prices will feed into higher rents; rising input costs and wages will lead to higher prices; trillions of those extra savings are still waiting to be spent.
Where inflation goes after that depends on how much more our government continues to print or borrow to send people checks and expand social programs. This doesn’t seem likely to end soon. And if people believe that monetary policy will never return to controlling inflation, and taxes and spending will never come into line so the government can start to repay mounting debts, inflation spirals out of control.
The good news is that long-term interest rates—the kind you pay to borrow for a mortgage or car—have not yet risen, as they tend to do when bond markets expect inflation. Bond markets think inflation will quickly subside. It’s still very cheap to borrow, a bright light for consumers. And low rates make it easier for the government to slow inflation.
Okay, so what can Washington do about it?
Simple: It has to stop printing and borrowing money. And it has to reassure people who hold our debt that there really is a plan for paying it off. And the Fed has to return to the unglamorous job of curbing inflation, rather than endless “stimulus” and “accommodation.”
To ease supply constraints, our government has to remove the sand in the gears. The ports are clogged because of countless regulations—like zoning laws that forbid stacking empty containers. Multiply anecdotes like this by tens of thousands throughout the economy and you’ll begin to get a picture of where we are. We need a long-overdue Marie-Kondoing of public affairs.
If inflation is as simple as you say it is, why are politicians singing another tune?
Politicians hate inflation because it means they can’t keep spreading money around. Supply constraints reverse political rhetoric. When a politician says a new program will “create millions of jobs,” those jobs are now a cost, not a benefit, because there aren’t any available workers.
So they offer a string of excuses, just as they did in the 1970s—including lots of talk about “supply shocks” and “bottlenecks” and “transitory” inflation —while hoping it all goes away.
The Biden administration, having just cancelled the Keystone pipeline, is now begging the Saudis and Russians to turn on the pumps, just as Richard Nixon pleaded with OPEC. The White House is accusing oil companies of colluding to raise prices. They will likely pressure other companies to limit price increases, as presidents from Kennedy to Ford did. This shouldn’t come as a surprise: Every past inflation has sparked a witch hunt for “speculators,” “hoarders,” “middlemen,” “price-gougers,” and other phantasms. Let’s hope the government doesn’t try price controls, as Nixon did, precipitating gas lines and shortages of everything.
Meanwhile, the administration is re-messaging its spending plans as inflation-fighters. It won’t work. Consider the childcare plan, to take just one example, which they say will lower costs. The government will subsidize childcare while mandating higher wages for staff, more licensing requirements and inspections. Childcare costs will inevitably rise for the country as a whole. One can believe that it’s a good policy, and that it’s worth the cost, but it will make costs higher, not lower.
Politicians don’t want to face the hard reality that inflation brings, but inflation has a way of forcing change, as it did in 1980.
So, should I try to buy things on Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
Only if you really need it. Prices are the neurons that transmit information in the economy. High prices tell you to wait and to let someone who values that Peloton more than you do have it. Most Americans should take this golden opportunity to build up some savings, look for a job or a better job, and enjoy those leftovers.
E’ sufficiente spendere meno, dice qui sopra nell’articolo John H. Cochrane: non sappiamo come la pensano i nostri lettori, alle prese con le spese di carburante aumentate del 80%.
Ma ciò che qui è importante è proprio quel suggerimento: spendere meno. Come abbiamo già scritto oggi in un altro Post, il punto centrale del nuovo scenario è proprio questo: la crescita dell’economia.
Nell’immagine che segue, Recce’d vi ricorda che:
l’errore fatto dalle Banche Centrali (e riconosciuto proprio questa settimana) è un errore di proporzioni epiche, mai visto prima nella Storia; e poi che
Banche Centrali e Governi possono fare nulla per risolvere i problemi dal lato dell’offerta
A tutti voi lettori, i private bankers, i promotori finanziari, i wealth managers e i robot advisor hanno spiegato che non c’è da preoccuparsi, che non fa nulla, che va tutto bene, che l’inflazione tornerà al 2%, che il Mondo va benissimo.
Come avete già visto, e come vedrete nei prossimi mesi, queste sono semplicemente frasi pronunciate in modo leggero, superficiale, spregiudicato allo scopo di inzuccherare, confondere ed illudere; hanno nulla a che vedere con la realtà
Il vostro private banker, il vostro wealth manager, il vostro promotore finanziario, il vostro robot advisor a voi ha raccontato quello che Goldman Sachs gli diceva di raccontarvi: e quello che vi ha raccontato lo potete rileggere qui sotto nell’immagine.
Goldman Sachs aveva nel mese di aprile una previsione per il tasso di inflazione a dicembre 2021 del 2,77% ancora in aprile, ovvero otto mesi fa. Il tasso di inflazione oggi sta al 7%.
.Si tratta soltanto di un errore grossolano ai limiti dell’incredibile, oppure Goldman Sachs ed il vostro private banker non ne capiscono assolutamente nulla?
Oppure (terza possibilità) sono riusciti a fregarvi, facendovi tutti fessi?
Visto che tutti voi lettori siete dotati di un’ottima capacità di giudizio e discernimento, per il futuro fareste bene a NON fidarvi: fareste bene a ragionare usando la vostra testa, informandovi, ed usando le vostre capacità critiche insieme ad un pizzico di scetticismo.
Noi vogliamo aiutarvi, e per questa ragione ci trovate sempre disponibili contattandoci attraverso il nostro sito. In aggiunta, vi aiutiamo attraverso questo Blog, gratuitamente: ad esempio, mettendovi a disposizione qui sotto un secondo articolo.
Perché questo articolo vi può essere utile, da un punto di vista pratico? Perché si tratta di un articolo scritto nel mese di settembre, e quindi tre mesi fa.. Può essere molto utile, per tutti voi, confrontarsi con quello che si scriveva e leggeva tre mesi fa.
In questo caso, chi scrive è autorevole, una mente brillante capace di ragionare in modo critico, evitando in questo modo di cadere nella trappola di Goldman Sachs e dei promotori finanziari. L’articolo che leggete di seguito fu scritto in settembre, eppure c’era già scritto ciò che leggete stamattina sui quotidiani.
Ma attenzione: ci trovate scritto anche ciò che leggerete tra tre e sei mesi.
Questo è un contributo utile, per la gestione dei vostri investimenti sui mercati finanziari: l’articolo è molto, molto chiaro nello spiegare ciò che i mercati dovranno affrontare (“political and economic pain”) quasi altrettanto chiaro quanto era chiaro, 12 mesi fa, che la “inflazione transitoria” era soltanto una stupidaggine.
Come abbiamo scritto oggi in un altro Post, la fase della stupidità è finita. Auguriamoci che non si arrivi alla “crisi della fiducia” della quale, in questo Post, scrivemmo qualche mese fa.
Today’s inflation is transitory, our central bankers assure us. It will go away on its own. But what if it does not? Central banks will have “the tools” to deal with inflation, they tell us. But just what are those tools? Do central banks have the will to use them, and will governments allow them to do so?
Should inflation continue to surge, central banks’ main tool is to raise interest rates sharply, and keep them high for several years, even if that causes a painful recession, as it did in the early 1980s. How much pain, and how deep of a dip, would it take? The well-respected Taylor rule (named after my Hoover Institution colleague John B. Taylor) recommends that interest rates rise one and a half times as much as inflation. So, if inflation rises from 2% to 5%, interest rates should rise by 4.5 percentage points. Add a baseline of 2% for the inflation target and 1% for the long-run real rate of interest, and the rule recommends a central-bank rate of 7.5%. If inflation accelerates further before central banks act, reining it in could require the 15% interest rates of the early 1980s.
Would central banks do that? If they did, would high interest rates control inflation in today’s economy? There are many reasons for worry.
The shadow of debt
Monetary policy lives in the shadow of debt. US federal debt held by the public was about 25% of GDP in 1980, when US Federal Reserve Board Chair Paul Volcker started raising rates to tame inflation. Now, it is 100% of GDP and rising quickly, with no end in sight. When the Fed raises interest rates one percentage point, it raises the interest costs on debt by one percentage point, and, at 100% debt-to-GDP, 1% of GDP is around $227 billion. A 7.5% interest rate therefore creates interest costs of 7.5% of GDP, or $1.7 trillion.
Where will those trillions of dollars come from? Congress could drastically cut spending or find ways to increase tax revenues. Alternatively, the US Treasury could try to borrow additional trillions. But for that option to work, bond buyers must be convinced that a future Congress will cut spending or raise tax revenues by the same trillions of dollars, plus interest. Even if investors seem confident at the moment, we cannot assume that they will remain so indefinitely, especially if additional borrowing serves only to pay higher interest on existing debt. Even for the United States, there is a point at which bond investors see the end coming, and demand even higher interest rates as a risk premium, thereby raising debt costs even more, in a spiral that leads to a debt crisis or to a sharp and uncontrollable surge of inflation. If the US government could borrow arbitrary amounts and never worry about repayment, it could send its citizens checks forever and nobody would have to work or pay taxes again. Alas, we do not live in that fanciful world.
In sum, for higher interest rates to reduce inflation, higher interest rates must be accompanied by credible and persistent fiscal tightening, now or later. If the fiscal tightening does not come, the monetary policy will eventually fail to contain inflation.
This is a perfectly standard proposition, though it is often overlooked when discussing the US and Europe. It is embodied in the models used by the Fed and other central banks. [Previous post here on just what that means.] It was standard IMF advice for decades.
Successful inflation and currency stabilization almost always includes monetary and fiscal reform, and usually microeconomic reform. The role of fiscal and microeconomic reform is to generate sustainably higher tax revenues by boosting economic growth and broadening the tax base, rather than with sharply higher and growth-reducing marginal tax rates. Many attempts at monetary stabilization have fallen apart because the fiscal or microeconomic reforms failed. Latin-American economic history is full of such episodes.
Even the US experience in the 1980s conforms to this pattern. The high interest rates of the early 1980s raised interest costs on the US national debt, contributing to most of the then-large annual “Reagan deficits.” Even after inflation declined, interest rates remained high, arguably because markets were worried that inflation would come surging back.
So, why did the US inflation-stabilization effort succeed in the1980s, after failing twice before in the 1970s, and countless times in other countries? In addition to the Fed remaining steadfast and the Reagan administration supporting it through two bruising recessions, the US undertook a series of important tax and microeconomic reforms, most notably the 1982 and 1986 tax reforms, which sharply lowered marginal rates, and market-oriented regulatory reforms starting with the Carter-era deregulation of trucking, air transport, and finance.
The US experienced a two-decade economic boom. A larger GDP boosted tax revenues, enabling debt repayment despite high real-interest rates. By the late 1990s, strange as it sounds now, economists were actually worrying about how financial markets would work once all US Treasury debt had been paid off. The boom was arguably a result of these monetary, fiscal, and microeconomic reforms, though we do not need to argue the cause and effect of this history. Even if the economic boom that produced fiscal surpluses was coincidental with tax and regulatory reform, the fact remains that the US government successfully paid off its debt, including debt incurred from the high interest costs of the early 1980s. Had it not done so, inflation would have returned.
The Borrower Ducks
But would that kind of successful stabilization happen now, with the US national debt four times larger and still rising, and with interest costs for a given level of interest rates four times larger than the contentious Reagan deficits? Would Congress really abandon its ambitious spending plans, or raise tax revenues by trillions, all to pay a windfall of interest payments to largely wealthy and foreign bondholders?
Arguably, it would not. If interest costs on the debt were to spiral upward, Congress would likely demand a reversal of the high interest-rate policy. The last time the US debt-to-GDP ratio was 100%, at the end of World War II, the Fed was explicitly instructed to hold down interest costs on US debt, until inflation erupted in the 1950s.
The unraveling can be slow or fast. It takes time for higher interest rates to raise interest costs, as debt is rolled over. The government can borrow as long as people believe that the fiscal reckoning will come in the future. But when people lose that faith, things can unravel quickly and unpredictably.
Will and Politics
Fiscal policy constraints are only the beginning of the Fed’s difficulties. Will the Fed act promptly, before inflation gets out of control? Or will it continue to treat every increase of inflation as “transitory,” to be blamed on whichever price is going up most that month, as it did in the early 1970s?
It is never easy for the Fed to cause a recession, and to stick with its policy through the pain. Nor is it easy for an administration to support the central bank through that kind of long fight. But tolerating a lasting rise in unemployment – concentrated as usual among the disadvantaged – seems especially difficult in today’s political climate, with the Fed loudly pursuing solutions to inequality and inequity in its interpretation of its mandate to pursue “maximum employment.”
Moreover, the ensuing recession would likely be more severe. Inflation can be stabilized with little recession if people really believe the policy will be seen through. But if they think it is a fleeting attempt that may be reversed, the associated downturn will be worse.
One might think this debate can be postponed until we see if inflation really is transitory or not. But the issue matters now. Fighting inflation is much easier if inflation expectations do not rise. Our central banks insist that inflation expectations are “anchored.” But by what mechanism? Well, by the faith that those same central banks would, if necessary, reapply the harsh Volcker medicine of the 1980s to contain inflation. How long will that faith last? When does the anchor become a sail?
A military or foreign-policy analogy is helpful. Fighting inflation is like deterring an enemy. If you just say you have “the tools,” that’s not very scary. If you tell the enemy what the tools are, show that they all are in shiny working order, and demonstrate that you have the will to use them no matter the pain inflicted on yourself, deterrence is much more likely.
Yet the Fed has been remarkably silent on just what the “tools” are, and just how ready it is to deploy those tools, no matter how painful doing so may be. There has been no parading of materiel. The Fed continues to follow the opposite strategy: a determined effort to stimulate the economy and to raise inflation and inflation expectations, by promising no-matter-what stimulus. The Fed is still trying to deter deflation, and says it will let inflation run above target for a while in an attempt to reduce unemployment, as it did in the 1970s. It has also precommitted not to raise interest rates for a fixed period of time, rather than for as long as required economic conditions remain, which has the same counterproductive result as announcing military withdrawals on specific dates. Like much of the US government, the Fed is consumed with race, inequality, and climate change, and thus is distracted from deterring its traditional enemies.
Buy some insurance!
An amazing opportunity to avoid this conundrum beckons, but it won’t beckon forever. The US government is like a homeowner who steps outside, smells smoke, and is greeted by a salesman offering fire insurance. So far, the government has declined the offer because it doesn’t want to pay the premium. There is still time to reconsider that choice.
Higher interest rates raise interest costs only because the US has financed its debts largely by rolling over short-term debt, rather than by issuing long-term bonds. The Fed has compounded this problem by buying up large quantities of long-term debt and issuing overnight debt – reserves – in return.
The US government is like any homeowner in this regard. It can choose the adjustable-rate mortgage, which offers a low initial rate, but will lead to sharply higher payments if interest rates rise. Or it can choose the 30-year (or longer) fixed-rate mortgage, which requires a larger initial rate but offers 30 years of protection against interest-rate increases.
Right now, the one-year Treasury rate is 0.07%, the ten-year rate is 1.3%, and the 30-year rate is 1.9%. Each one-year bond saves the US government about two percentage points of interest cost as long as rates stay where they are. But 2% is still negative in real terms. Two percentage points is the insurance premium for eliminating the chance of a debt crisis for 30 years, and for making sure the Fed can fight inflation if it needs to do so. I am not alone in thinking that this seems like inexpensive insurance. Even former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers has changed his previous view to argue that the US should move swiftly to long-term debt.
But it’s a limited-time opportunity. Countries that start to encounter debt problems generally face higher long-term interest rates, which forces them to borrow short-term and expose themselves to the attendant dangers. When the house down the street is on fire, the insurance salesman disappears, or charges an exorbitant rate.
Bottom line
Will the current inflation surge turn out to be transitory, or will it continue? The answer depends on our central banks and our governments. If people believe that fiscal and monetary authorities are ready to do what it takes to contain breakout inflation, inflation will remain subdued.
Doing what it takes means joint monetary and fiscal stabilization, with growth-oriented microeconomic reforms. It means sticking to that policy through the inevitable political and economic pain. And it means postponing or abandoning grand plans that depend on the exact opposite policies.
If people and markets lose faith that governments will respond to inflation with such policies in the future, inflation will erupt now. And in the shadow of debt and slow economic growth, central banks cannot control inflation on their own.