The Zealous Pursuit Of State-Sponsored Collapse

Authored by EconomicPrism"s MN Gordon via Acting-Man.com,

When Bakers Go Fishing

Government intervention into a nation’s economy is as foolish as attempting to control the sun’s rise and fall by law or force.  But that doesn’t mean governments don’t meddle each and every day with the best – and worst – of intentions.  The United States government is no exception.

From the “When the government helps the economy” collection: Breaking a few eggs while baking the bridge to nowhere omelet. [PT]

 

Over the years, layers and layers of interference by various federal, state, and local agencies have built up like grime on a kitchen window.  The grease shines and smells of something fierce.  The layers of government grime also drip and ooze into every crack and crevice of the economy.

These days, for example, it is impossible to carry out a simple private transaction with your barber or barista without some form of government interference.  Has your barber obtained the required license and paid the obligatory fees to be able to legally taper your neck line?  Has your barista’s espresso bean grinder passed city health inspection?

Is the hot Cup of Joe served in a paper cup of appropriate recycled material composition?  Did the hot beverage exceed the legally accepted temperature standard?  Did state and local governments receive their tax exaction upon payment?

 

The licensing racket – left panel: the basic definition of the racket; middle panel: how long it takes and what it costs to obtain licenses for assorted jobs in the US; right panel: the inexorable growth of rules and regulations. One shouldn’t be surprised that the pace of real economic growth has steadily declined since peaking in the late 19^th century (or if one wants to focus on the modern era, since it peaked not too long after WW2). From money supply inflation to regulatory inflation, Leviathan has undermined the economy at every turn by inflating all the stuff we definitely don’t need more of. The pretense is that this is needed to “protect” us (for instance, last year the police courageously protected the citizens of Georgia from the dangers of an unlicensed lemonade stand by arresting its 14-year old female proprietor). Let us be clear: No-one will be allowed to terrorize the community by running an unlicensed lemonade stand or engaging in the high crimes of dispensing unlicensed manicures and haircuts. [PT] – click to enlarge.

 

When it comes to more complicated matters, where real money’s on the line, government interference is an absolute disgrace.  Did you know that it costs 10 times more to have an appendectomy in the United States than in Mexico?  Is the procedure 10 times better?

Obviously, this is nothing new.  Governments have been regulating and impressing their fingerprints all over commerce since society first granted its leaders the opportunity.  People are so accustomed to it that they accept government intervention as necessary to better their lives.

When it comes to price fixing, wage controls, and dictating oil production, things quickly go haywire.  This is because prices, wages, and resources have their own independent relationships beyond what can be legislated.

When the price of a certain good or commodity is artificially fixed below its natural equilibrium, scarcity and shortages follow.  In short, when the price of bread is decreed below the cost of the wheat that goes into it, bakers go fishing.

The scourge of occupational licensing [PT]

 

Credit Market Intervention

Perhaps the most nefarious of all government intervention, is that which directly affects a nation’s money stock.  Many people don’t recognize its occurrence.  But they do misdiagnose its effects.

Wage stagnation, for instance, is often blamed on greedy executives off-shoring their production.  In reality, this is merely a consequence of a forced monetary regime that inhibits genuine capital formation and earned savings in favor of asset price inflation. Of course, only a complete killjoy would bother scratching below the surface to uncover such minutiae.

Without question, the last decade has brought forth some of the craziest monetary policy experiments in human history.  If you recall, the Federal Reserve dropped the federal funds rate to near zero in December 2008, and kept it there until December 2015 – exactly seven years.

Since then, the Fed has hiked the federal funds rate four times – 0.25 percent each time – bringing the federal funds rate up to 1.25 percent. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets on December 12 and 13, and will likely raise the federal funds rate another 0.25 percent.

It is also anticipated that the Fed will raise rates three times in 2018, assuming financial markets and the economy don’t break down before they can accomplish this.

 

Broad true money supply TMS-2 and the federal funds rate – a mountain of money was created, and it is an apodictic certainty that is has not made us one iota more prosperous – quite the contrary. [PT] – click to enlarge.

 

Concurrent with the Fed’s interest rate raising efforts, they’ve also begun to reduce their balance sheet.  They’re selling some of the roughly $3.6 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchased as part of their Quantitative Easing program. This reversal of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing program reduces the pool of available credit in the financial system.

It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the effect this will have on an economy and financial markets that are wholly addicted to cheap and abundant credit.  So where does the GOP’s tax bill fall within this landscape?

 

The Zealous Pursuit of State-Sponsored Collapse

Here we turn to David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan.  Stockman’s more than four decades of in-the-trenches experience, study, and contemplation of taxes, budgets, and deficits, and how these all influence and affect the economy, is unrivaled. As he explains:

“All tax cuts are not created equal.  Their impact for good or ill depends on: (1) which taxes are cut; (2) how the revenue loss is financed; (3) when they occur in the business cycle; and (4) how they impact that nation’s underlying fiscal posture.

 

“Our point today is that the GOP gets an “F” on all four components of the test.  That’s because a deficit-financed tax cut is never a good idea, but is especially counter-productive if done late in the business cycle in the face of a structural deficit that is high and rising (owing to inexorable demographic pressures on entitlement spending); and in the teeth of an unprecedented cycle of monetary contraction, which is exactly what the Fed’s interest rate normalization and balance sheet shrinkage (QT or quantitative tightening) amounts to.”

 

David Stockman, former budget director in the Reagan administration – which he quit when it ignored his admonishments on its massive spending. [PT]

 

To clarify, if you’ve been out of school for a while, “F” stands for fail.  Most notably, financing tax cuts with money borrowed from the future is doomed to fail.  Hence, the great GOP tax cuts represent but another fail milestone in the zealous pursuit of state-sponsored collapse.

 

As an aside, since last week, when we declared buying bitcoin above $11,000 to be an action for idiots, bitcoin has spiked up above $19,000.  That represents more than a 70 percent increase in just one week.  Nonetheless, we stand behind our claim.  We also stand behind our claim that sometimes idiots get rich – click to enlarge.

 

We should point out that the spike to $19,000+ in BTC was confined to the Coinbase exchange, where a huge premium developed during the trading day. It was not replicated at any of the other exchanges, where BTC peaked just below $16,000. This is mainly a sign of inefficiencies at said exchange (BTC routinely trades at a premium there, but it is usually much smaller). It took a while for arbitrageurs to bring the premium back down, but they succeeded eventually. [PT]

 

Mugabe Out, Mnangagwa In, Inflation Down - Current Annual Rate 32%

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

Robert Mugabe’s 27-year reign of lawlessness, corruption, and incompetence came to an end late November 2017, after a “soft coup” engineered by Emmerson Mnangagwa (aka “the Crocodile”) successfully unseated the aged dictator. Since then, inflation expectations in Zimbabwe have fallen sharply. In consequence, inflation has fallen like a stone. Indeed, before Mugabe’s resignation, Zimbabwe’s implied annual inflation soared to peak rate of 356% (10/26/17). But, following Mnangagwa’s assumption of power, the implied annual inflation rate has fallen to today’s rate of 32%.  

In 2008, Zimbabwe suffered the second most severe episode of hyperinflation in recorded history. The annual inflation rate peaked in November 2008, reaching 89.7 sextillion (10^23) percent (see table below).

At the peak of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation episode in November 2008, Zimbabweans refused to use the Zimbabwe dollar. With that, the economy was spontaneously, and unofficially, dollarized. Eventually, the government faced this fait accompli in early 2009, when they dollarized the economy by accepting the dollar as the unit of account for government finances.

This year, Zimbabwe once again experienced a bout of hyperinflation, not due to dollarization, but because the Zimbabwean government is issuing, in effect, a new currency that is circulating parallel to the U.S. dollar. Currently (12/8/17), the annual inflation rate is at 32% (see chart below).

During Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation episode from 2007-2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe failed to report an accurate measure of inflation rates. When episodes of hyperinflation occur, the only feasible and reliable way to measure the inflation rate is via the application of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). To do so, data on the exchange rate between the domestic currency and a stable international currency are required. This was not feasible in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe dollar was not traded on an organized exchange that reported exchange rates, and the use of black-market exchange rates was not feasible either.

However, the organized stock market in Harare did provide prices that allowed for the calculation of implied Zimbabwe dollar exchange rates. One stock, Old Mutual, was, and still is, listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. Each share of Old Mutual commands the same claim on the company’s earnings and assets, irrespective of the market it is traded on. Therefore, given arbitrage and PPP, the ratio of the Old Mutual share price in Harare to that in London equaled the Zimbabwe dollar/sterling exchange rate.

To convert the resulting Zimbabwe dollar/sterling exchange rate to a Zimbabwe dollar/U.S. dollar rate, I multiplied the Zimbabwe dollar/sterling rate by the sterling/U.S. dollar rate, creating what is known as the Old Mutual Implied Rate (OMIR). By using the OMIR as an exchange rate between Zimbabwe dollars and USD, PPP was then applied as the final link necessary for calculating inflation rates.

When President Robert Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, regained control in Zimbabwe in 2013, government spending and public debt surged, resulting in economic instability. To finance its deficits, the government created a “New Zim dollar.” The New Zim dollar is issued at par to the U.S. dollar, but trades at a significant discount to the U.S. dollar. As a result of the issuance of the New Zim dollar, the money supply has exploded in Zimbabwe, and so has inflation.

Employing the same theory and method of measurement that was used to calculate Zimbabwe’s 2007-2008 hyperinflation episode, I was once again able to measure an accurate inflation rate, explained here in a detailed study. After doing so, I found that Zimbabwe experienced hyperinflation for the second time in less than ten years between September 2017 and early November 2017. 

Hyperinflation occurs when the monthly inflation rate reaches 50% per month and remains above that rate for at least 30 consecutive days. This initial threshold was breached on September 14, 2017, and the monthly inflation rate stayed above this rate until November 2, 2017. Currently, the monthly rate of inflation is -68% (see chart below).

China Hits A Brick Wall: For First Time Ever, Record Chinese Credit Creation Fails To Stimulate Economy

Submitted by Gordon Johnson of Axiom Capital

We believe that exhibit 1 says a lot: it shows that despite a record level of new credit issued by China’s PBoC YTD through Oct. 2017 (which stands in stark contrast to government authorities continued statements that China is de-levering), China’s economic backdrop is currently experiencing:

• (a) monthly construction new start (commercial + residential + office) growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 2),


• (b) monthly fixed asset investment growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 9),


• (c) monthly cement output slowing Y/Y (Ex. 5),


• (d) monthly electricity production slowing Y/Y (Ex. 6),


• (e) monthly M2 money supply growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 7),


• (f) monthly household loan growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 8),


• (g) monthly private fixed asset investment growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 10), and


• (h) monthly home price growth slowing Y/Y (Ex. 12) – in fact, select data points have turned negative Y/Y.

Stated differently, while the lion’s share of our client base continues to tell us, with respect to our bearish views on China… “President Xi Jinping will simply stimulate more if/when things get bad”, we would highlight, again as detailed in Ex. 1 below, China stimulated at a record pace in 2017, yet it did not resonate in improved economic activity (in fact, the exact opposite appears to be unfolding – i.e., economic growth is slowing across a number of data points).

Furthermore, underpinning our view that China’s debt stimulus was targeted specifically at the months preceding the 19^th Party Congress in Oct. 2017 (i.e., when President Xi Jinping consolidated power to become the strongest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong), implying we may see a phase of debt fatigue, we note that in the first 10 months of 2016, incremental credit issued in China on a month-over-month (“M/M”) basis was negative three times (i.e., May, July, and Oct.), and averaged $189 billion on a monthly basis; yet, in the first 10 months of 2017, incremental credit issued on a M/M basis was positive in each month outside of Oct., and averaged $429 billion on a monthly basis (in Oct. 2017, the month the 19^th Party Congress concluded, new credit issued fell by $11.9 billion M/M).

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? The broader point is… when you issue an unprecedented amount of credit targeted at a growing number of negative ROI projects multiple decades, at some point the law of diminishing marginal returns sets in (since 1/1/09, China’s credit has grown by CNY153.9 trillion while GDP has grown by a much more modest CNY 48.5 trillion, or a multiple of 3.17x, meaning a lot of bad investments have stacked up over the years) – keep in mind that China’s $3.6 trillion in credit issued in 2017 YTD through Oct. is more than the entire developed world combined. Put in the simplest of terms, at some point the incremental dollar in new credit created actually does more harm than good.

Ex. 1: China New Credit Created YTD Through Oct.

Note: Credit created = TSF + Local Gov"t Debt.
Source: PBoC; NBS; ChinaBond.

SO WHERE FROM HERE? When considering China hit the afterburners on new credit issuance in 2017, yet the impact seems to be quickly fading, it would appear we may have reached the point of “no return” (while Consensus, at this point, seems completely oblivious to this possibility, the recent sell-off across the Chinese stock markets suggest investors on-the-ground in China may be catching on).

CONCLUSION: In the face of China’s TTM 3Q17 credit as a percentage of GDP coming in at 250%, to “keep the party going”, Xi Jinping would have to force new credit issuance far in excess of $4.0 trillion in 2018 (which could trigger a number of ratings downgrades, as well as a reassessment by the IMF of China’s “market economy” status).

Moreover, given what we’ve seen this year – i.e., 101.7% Y/Y new credit issuance growth YTD through Oct. 2017 – it seems the level of credit necessary to stimulate growth in China could prove elusive at this point (we don’t recall any economist’s forecasts exiting 2016 pointing to China’s new credit issuance more than doubling Y/Y in 2017, yet that’s exactly what’s happened – had this been our base case, we would have expected all economic indicators in China to be moving substantially higher at this point in the cycle). Thus, to the thesis that rests on a view that: “Xi will just stimulate more”, we would argue that the extent of the stimulus necessary may be so high at this point that President Xi Jinping may have lost sight of how much debt he needs to “get things going again”. Should this prove to be the case, China’s economy will continue slowing, putting pressure on bulk commodity prices, and, ultimately, industrial/steel stocks (CAT, URI, FMG, RIO, X, CLF, GATX, and TRN, all of which we have SELL ratings on).

HOW’S THE DATA LOOK IN THE FACE OF CHINA’S RECORD 2017 CREDIT “BINGE”? So how do the data points look? Well, here’s a few (we feel the charts say it all)…

Ex. 2: Monthly Construction Starts (Residential + Commercial + Office)

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 3: GDP Growth Internals - China (FAI, Industrial Production, & Retail Sales)

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 4: China Monthly Steel Production by Year

Source: World Steel Association (WSA), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 5: China Cement Output

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 6: Y/Y Growth in Electricity Production by Month

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 7: China M2 Money Growth, Y/Y% - Multi Decade Low (bearish)

Source: Peoples" Bank of China (PBOC), Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 8: 3MMA Household Loan Growth, Y/Y%

Source: Axiom Capital Research, Bloomberg, National Bureau of Statistics.

Ex. 9: Monthly Total Fixed Asset Investment and Y/Y Growth

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 10: Monthly Private Fixed Asset Investment and Y/Y Growth

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 11: Private Investment in Industrial Sector and Y/Y Growth

Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Axiom Capital Research.

Ex. 12: Average Price Change of New Residential Buildings, by Tiered-Cities, %Y/Y

Source: National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Axiom Capital Research.

In short, we feel China could be the “black swan” that ruins the stock market rally party for many in the industrials space. Caveat emptor.

Learning From The "80s: The Power And Irony Of "MDuh"

Authored by Daniel Nevins via FFWiley.com,

Forget about big hair, Ray-Bans, and Donkey Kong. Don’t even think about Live-Aid, Thriller, and E.T. Above all else, the 1980s were the gravy days of the money supply aggregates.

Beginning in late 1979, the Fed built its policy approach around the aggregates - primarily M1 but occasionally M2, and policy makers also monitored M3 while experimenting with M1B and, later, MZM. But those were just the “official” figures. Economists and pundits debated the Fed’s preferred measures while concocting their own home-brewed variations.

Notably, the Fed allowed interest rates to fluctuate as much as necessary to achieve its money growth targets. Fluctuate they did - rates soared and dipped wildly as a direct result of the Fed’s policy. The world, meanwhile, watched the action as attentively as a Yorkie watches breakfast, studying every wiggle in every M. Missing one wiggle could have meant the difference between exploiting the volatility that the Fed unleashed or being sunk by that same volatility.

And to make sense of it all, the world looked to the most famous economist of his day, Milton Friedman. By converting a large swath of his profession to his strict brand of Monetarism, Friedman more than anyone else had triggered the monetary frenzy.

But then, almost as quickly as the frenzy blew in, it blew right back out. With none of the Ms living up to their billings as economic indicators, the Monetarists drifted from view. Not in five minutes but in five years, give or take a couple, their period of fame was over. Friedman’s reputation as an economics savant fell particularly hard—his highly publicized forecasts proved inaccurate in each year from 1983 to 1986. And the Fed once again redesigned its approach, first deemphasizing and eventually dropping its money growth targets.

But maybe the Monetarists came closer to explaining the economy than their critics allowed?

Maybe the best indicator - I’ll call it “MDuh” - was somehow hidden in plain sight?

Those are the arguments I’ll make in this article, and I’ll back each one with up-to-date data. I’ll propose a way of thinking that’s considered common sense in some circles even as it’s blasphemous within the mainstream core of the economics profession. And I’ll explain why MDuh was the true lesson of Friedman’s research.

Before we get to MDuh, though, there are two things you should know about Friedman and his co-researcher Anna Schwartz (if you didn’t already know them).

• First, they relied on data, not theory, when they shaped their version of Monetarism. They found a strong historical correlation between money growth and economic activity, and they also found that money growth predicts activity. They published those results in a groundbreaking 1963 book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960.


• Second, to their credit they never claimed to understand the monetary “transmission mechanism,” meaning the reasons the historical correlations were as strong as they were. But they offered their best guess, which lined up with prevailing Monetarist thinking. They believed that “there is a fairly definite real quantity of money that people wish to hold” and that our continual efforts to adjust money holdings to those fairly definite levels are the business cycle’s driving force. (See here for source.)

The Glaring but Rarely Acknowledged Problem with M1 and M2

The second point above explains why Monetarists defined the aggregates as they did. They defined each aggregate according to the characteristics that might influence the “fairly definite real quantity of money that people wish to hold.” But the characteristics they believed important, such as liquidity, stability, and value as a medium of exchange, led to unreliable indicators, as shown in the chart below:

The chart compares the most popular Monetarist measures, M1 and M2, to two measures that I created, MDuh and NBL. I’ll define MDuh and NBL in just a moment. I’ll first offer an explanation for why M1 and M2 lost their pre-1980s mojo as GDP correlates. And to do that, I’ll need to review a fallacy that underpins not only Monetarism but all of mainstream macro.

Mainstream theory relies on the false premise that bank loans are no different to other loan types. It ignores the reality that bank loans are unique, because banks are the only institutions that create deposits (money) while delivering loan proceeds. Bank borrowers receive money that banks create from thin air, and that brand new money has powerful effects. It boosts spending without requiring prior saving, meaning it’s mostly additive to economic activity. That is, it doesn’t have a large “crowding out” effect on other spending - bank-created money flows directly into nominal GDP. It might affect prices, real growth, or a combination of prices and real growth, depending on how the new money is spent. But it’s important to remember that the new money connects to a bank loan. The money–GDP correlation is merely a byproduct of a lending–GDP correlation. Bank lending, not money, is the driving force.

Back to M1 and M2: Why did those highly touted measures lose their strong correlations to GDP, whereas MDuh didn’t?

I would say it’s because they lost their connections to bank lending. The economists who created them made both additions to and subtractions from bank-created money, whereas I made no such adjustments when I calculated MDuh. I didn’t bother with the differences between checking, savings, and time deposits, and I didn’t bother with money that’s not created by banks, such as money market funds. In other words, I didn’t bother with the characteristics of money that absorb the attention of mainstream economists - liquidity, stability, and value as a medium of exchange. For what it’s worth, I doubt that people maintain definite money holdings, as the Monetarists claimed.

MDuh depends on a single question: Is a potential MDuh component initiated by a private entity with the legal authority to create money, meaning either a commercial bank or a similar deposit-taking institution? If the answer is yes, I include the component in MDuh. Otherwise, I don’t. By using only that criterion, I’m estimating the amount of new money that banks pump into the economy when they make loans and buy securities. Not surprisingly, MDuh correlates almost perfectly with net bank lending - the correlation between 1959 and 2016 was 0.97. And net bank lending, as you might have guessed, is “NBL” in the chart above.

To say it again, banking realities tell us that bank lending, not money, is the business cycle’s driving force, as shown by the data in my chart.

Why Friedman and Schwartz Were Almost “on the Money”

Now for the irony.

Over the 94-year period covered in Friedman and Schwartz’s Monetary History, data only existed for a few types of money. The authors couldn’t separate different types of bank accounts as finely as statisticians do today. They couldn’t measure any non-currency, non-bank-created money that may have existed over the period of study. In other words, they couldn’t add and subtract the various components of the Ms that disconnect them from bank lending.

So MDuh is far from an original measure. It consists of currency in circulation plus bank deposits less bank reserves, which is equivalent to the measure Friedman and Schwartz used in their book for the period until the Fed’s inception in 1913 (there were no central bank–held reserves) and almost equivalent thereafter. Their monetary history could have just as accurately been called “The History of MDuh.” In effect, their study of MDuh triggered the 1980s monetary frenzy in the first place.

(The only discrepancy between MDuh and Friedman–Schwartz is my adjustment for bank reserves, which isolates private sector–supplied credit by excluding deposits that arise though the Fed’s open market operations. Without the adjustment for bank reserves, MDuh would mix apples with oranges. It would combine private sector lending, which is pro-cyclical, with the Fed’s lending, which is intended to be counter-cyclical. Private sector lending is more strongly correlated to GDP, as you would expect.)

In an ideal world, Friedman and Schwartz’s followers would have recognized that MDuh mostly demonstrates the connections between business cycles, inflation, and bank credit cycles. But that’s not what happened. They stuck to their training, which told them that bank loans are identical to other types of lending. And then they obsessed over how to define money supply, as if economic insight comes down to whether to include, say, overnight repos in your favorite M. By so doing, they moved further and further from MDuh.

Next Steps for Those Who See Things as I Do

As mentioned above, my conclusions probably sound like common sense to many of you, even as they conflict with mainstream macro. You might wonder if you can exploit that discrepancy, and I explain how in my book Economics for Independent Thinkers (website here, Amazon link here).

For now, though, I’d say the next time your favorite analyst breaks down M1 or M2, comment politely that those indicators emerged from long-standing fallacies about money and banking.

Suggest that maybe people don’t fine-tune their money holdings to a “fairly definite” level as Monetarist theory requires. Or, even if they do, the desired money holdings wouldn’t propel the economy in the same way bank loans do. And then ask her to look at MDuh instead. Or, better yet, ask her to look at net bank lending and be done with it. Money, while occasionally interesting, mostly sows confusion among those who study it.

All Of The World"s Money And Markets In One Visualization

Millions, billions, and trillions...

When we talk about the giant size of Apple, the fortune of Warren Buffett, or the massive amount of global debt accumulated – all of these things sound large, but they are actually extremely different in magnitude.

That’s why, as Visual Capitalists" Jeff Desjardins explains, visualizing things spatially can give us a better perspective on money and markets.

How Much Money Exists?

This infographic was initially created to show how much money exists in its different forms. For example, to highlight how much physical cash there is in comparison to broader measures of money which include saving and checking account deposits.

Interestingly, what is considered “money” depends on who you are asking.

Are the abstractions created by Central Banks really money? What about gold, bitcoins, or other hard assets?

A New Meaning

However, since we first released this infographic in 2015, “All the World’s Money and Markets” has taken on a different meaning to us and many others. It’s a way of simplifying a complex universe of currencies, assets, and other financial instruments in a way that people can understand.

Numbers represented in the data visualization range from the size of the above-ground silver market ($17 billion) to the notional value of all derivatives ($1.2 quadrillion as a high-end estimate). In between those two extremes, we’ve added many other familiar measures, such as the GDP of California, the value of equities, the real estate market, along with different money supply metrics to give perspective.

The end result? A visually pleasing, but enlightening new way to understand the vast universe of global assets.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

*  *  *

To get “All the World’s Money” in book or poster form, go to the Kickstarter page now. Deadline: Oct. 31, 2017

What Makes A Good Economic Model?

Authored by Frank Shostak via The Mises Institute,

In order to make the data "talk," economists utilize a range of statistical methods that vary from highly complex models to a simple display of historical data. It is generally held that by means of statistical correlations one can organize historical data into a useful body of information, which in turn can serve as the basis for assessments of the state of the economy. It is held that through the application of statistical methods on historical data, one can extract the facts of reality regarding the state of the economy.

Unfortunately, things are not as straightforward as they seem to be. For instance, it has been observed that declines in the unemployment rate are associated with a general rise in the prices of goods and services. Should we then conclude that declines in unemployment are a major trigger of price inflation? To confuse the issue further, it has also been observed that price inflation is well correlated with changes in money supply. Also, it has been established that changes in wages display a very high correlation with price inflation.

So what are we to make out of all this? We are confronted here not with one, but with three competing "theories" of inflation. How are we to decide which is the right theory? According to the popular way of thinking, the criterion for the selection of a theory should be its predictive power. On this Milton Friedman wrote,

The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a theory or hypothesis that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed.

So long as the model (theory) "works," it is regarded as a valid framework as far as the assessment of an economy is concerned. Once the model (theory) breaks down, we look for a new model (theory). For instance, an economist forms a view that consumer outlays on goods and services are determined by disposable income. Once this view is validated by means of statistical methods, it is employed as a tool in assessments of the future direction of consumer spending. If the model fails to produce accurate forecasts, it is either replaced, or modified by adding some other explanatory variables.

The tentative nature of theories implies that our knowledge of the real world is elusive.

Since it is not possible to establish "how things really work," then it does not really matter what the underlying assumptions of a model are. In fact anything goes, as long as the model can yield good predictions. According to Friedman,

The relevant question to ask about the assumptions of a theory is not whether they are descriptively realistic, for they never are, but whether they are sufficiently good approximation for the purpose in hand. And this question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works, which means whether it yields sufficiently accurate predictions.

Why the Predictive Capability for Accepting a Model Is Questionable

The popular view that sets predictive capability as the criterion for accepting a model is questionable. Even the natural sciences, which mainstream economics tries to emulate, don"t validate their models this way. For instance, a theory that is employed to build a rocket stipulates certain conditions that must prevail for its successful launch.

One of the conditions is good weather. Would we then judge the quality of a rocket propulsion theory on the basis of whether it can accurately predict the date of the launch of the rocket? The prediction that the launch will take place on a particular date in the future will only be realized if all the stipulated conditions hold.

Whether this will be so cannot be known in advance. For instance, on the planned day of the launch it may be raining. All that the theory of rocket propulsion can tell us is that if all the necessary conditions will hold, then the launch of the rocket will be successful. The quality of the theory, however, is not tainted by an inability to make an accurate prediction of the date of the launch.

The same logic also applies in economics. We can say confidently that, all other things being equal, an increase in the demand for bread will raise its price. This conclusion is true, and not tentative. Will the price of bread go up tomorrow, or sometime in the future? This cannot be established by the theory of supply and demand. Should we then dismiss this theory as useless because it cannot predict the future price of bread?

Or consider a situation when a stock market is following an "up" trend over several years. As a result, an analyst has established that it is possible to outperform the stock market by following the barking of a dog.

If the dog barks three times it is a buy and if he barks once it is a sell. Should such a framework be accepted as a valid theory because it makes good forecasts?

Contrary to the popular way of thinking the criteria for selecting a model is not how well it worked in the past — i.e. passed the criteria of back testing and a life test — but whether it is theoretically sound.

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 2: 99.9% Of The Global Population Lives In A Country With A Central Bank

This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

Even though the nations of the world are very deeply divided on almost everything else, somehow virtually all of them have been convinced that central banking is the way to go. Today, less than 0.1% of the population of the world lives in a country that does not have a central bank. Do you think that there is any possible way that this is a coincidence? And it is also not a coincidence that we are now facing the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world. In Part I of this series, I discussed the fact that total global debt has reached 217 trillion dollars. Once you understand that central banks are designed to create endless debt, and once you understand that 99.9% of the global population lives in a country that has a central bank, then it finally makes sense why we have accumulated so much debt. The elite of the world use debt as a tool of enslavement, and central banking has allowed them to literally enslave the entire planet.

Some of you may not be familiar with how a “central bank” differs from a normal bank. The following definition of a “central bank” comes from Wikipedia…

A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a state’s currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base in the state, and usually also prints the national currency,^[1] which usually serves as the state’s legal tender.

Over the past 100 years or so, we have seen central banks steadily be established all over the planet. At this point, there are just 8 very small nations that still do not have a central bank…

-Andorra
-Monaco
-Nauru
-Kiribati
-Tuvalu
-Palau
-Marshall Islands
-Federated States of Micronesia

When you add the populations of those 8 nations together, it comes to much less than 0.1% of the global population.

But even though central banking is nearly universal, only a very small fraction of the global population can tell you how money is created.

Do you know where money comes from?

Here in the United States, most people just assume that the federal government creates money. But that is not true at all.

Many are absolutely shocked when they discover that U.S. currency is actually borrowed into existence. The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) to the Federal Reserve in exchange for money that the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air. The Federal Reserve then auctions off those bonds to the highest bidder.

Since the federal government must pay interest on those bonds, the amount of debt that is created in these transactions is actually greater than the amount of money that is created. But we are told that if we can just circulate the money throughout our economy fast enough and tax it at a high enough rate, then we can eventually pay off the debt. Of course that never actually happens, and so the federal government always has to go back and borrow even more money. This is called a debt spiral, and at this point we will never be able to escape it until we do away with this horrible system.

But why does our government (or any government for that matter) have to borrow money that is created by a central bank in the first place?

Why can’t governments just create money themselves?

Oops. That is the big secret that nobody is supposed to talk about.

Theoretically, the U.S. government doesn’t actually have to borrow a single penny. Instead of borrowing money the Federal Reserve creates out of thin air, the federal government could just create money directly and spend it into circulation.

Yes, this could actually happen.  Back in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue debt-free “United States Notes” which were not created by the Federal Reserve. These debt-free notes began to be issued, and you can still find them for sale on eBay today. Unfortunately, President Kennedy was assassinated shortly after this executive order was issued, and the notes were not in production for long.

If we had ultimately fully adopted “United States Notes” and had phased out Federal Reserve notes, we would not be 20 trillion dollars in debt today.

The elite of the world love to get national governments deep into debt, because it enables them to enslave entire populations while making an obscene amount of money in the process.

Back in 1913, an insidious plan was rushed through Congress just before Christmas that was based on a blueprint that had been developed by very powerful Wall Street interests. Author G. Edward Griffin did an extraordinary job of documenting how all of this happened in his book entitled “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”. A central bank was established, and it was purposely designed to create a government debt spiral, and that is precisely what happened.

Since 1913, the size of the national debt has gotten more than 6,000 times larger, and the value of our dollar has declined by more than 98 percent. Many conservatives are still under the illusion that we could get out of debt someday if we just grow the economy fast enough, but I have shown in another article that we have gotten to the point where this is mathematically impossible.

And most people are also operating under the false assumption that the Federal Reserve is part of the federal government. But that is not accurate either. The following comes from one of my previous articles…

There is often a lot of confusion about the Federal Reserve, because a lot of people think that it is simply an agency of the federal government. But of course that is not true at all. In fact, as Ron Paul likes to say, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

The Fed is an independent central bank that has even argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government. Yes, the president appoints the leadership of the Fed, but the Fed and other central banks around the world have always fiercely guarded their “independence”. On the official Fed website, it is admitted that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations”, and they very much operate like private entities. They even issue shares of stock to the private banks that own them.

In case you were wondering, the federal government has zero shares.

According to the U.S. Constitution, a private central banking cartel should not be issuing our currency. In Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution, Congress is solely given the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So why in the world has this authority been given to a central bank?

The truth is that we do not need a central bank.

From 1872 to 1913, there was no central bank and no income tax, and it turned out to be the greatest period of economic growth in all of U.S. history.

But since the Fed was established, there have been 18 different recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

Abolishing the Federal Reserve is one of the core issues of my platform, and I have been writing about these things for the last seven years.

As I discussed yesterday, the elite use debt to enslave all of the rest of us, and central banking allows them to literally dominate the entire planet.

Until we abolish this debt-based system and go to a currency that is debt-free, we are never going to permanently solve our very deep long-term economic and financial problems.

But because they are so immensely wealthy, the elite are able to wield extraordinary influence in our society. They control the mainstream media, our politicians and even global institutions such as the United Nations. Anyone that would dare to question the validity of the current system is marginalized, and for a long time very few politicians around the world were even willing to speak out against central banking.

However, that is starting to change. A new generation of leaders is rising up, and they are absolutely determined to break the stranglehold that the elite have on our society. It won’t be easy, but if we are able to wake enough people up, I believe that we will eventually be able to free ourselves from this insidious system.
 

Science Tells Us This Is All True

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

On April 30, 1934, under pressure from Italian-American lobby groups, the United States Congress passed a law enshrining Columbus Day as a national holiday.

President Franklin Roosevelt quickly signed the bill into law, and the very first Columbus Day was celebrated in October of that year.

Undoubtedly people had a different view of the world back then… and a different set of values.

Few cared about the plight of the indigenous who were wiped out as a result of European conquest.

Even just a few decades ago when I was a kid in elementary school, I remember learning that ‘Columbus discovered America’. There was no discussion of genocide.

It wasn’t until I was a sophomore at West Point that I picked up Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States (and then Columbus’s own diaries) and started reading about the mass-extermination of entire tribes.

Columbus himself wrote about his first encounter with the extremely peaceful and welcoming Arawak Indians of the Bahama Islands:

“They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

And so he did.

“I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.”

Columbus had already written back to his investors in Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Caribbean islands possessed “great mines of gold.”

It was all lies. Columbus was desperately attempting to justify their investment.

In Haiti, Columbus ordered the natives to bring him all of their gold. But there was hardly an ounce of gold anywhere on the island. So Columbus had them slaughtered. Within two years, 250,000 were dead.

Now, this letter isn’t intended to rail against Columbus. Point is, I never learned any of this information in school. Decades ago, no one really did.

But today, people are starting to be aware of what Columbus did. And our values are vastly different today than they were in 1937. Or in 1492.

Decades ago… and certainly hundreds of years ago… the idea of a ‘superior race’ still prevailed, endowed by their creator with the right to subjugate all inferior races.

This readily-accepted belief was the pretext of slavery and genocide.

Even as recently as the early 1900s, there were entire fields of ‘science’ devoted to studying the technical differences among various races and drawing data-driven conclusions about superiority.

Phrenologists, for example, would take precise measurements of people’s skulls– the circumference of the head, the ratio of forehead to eyebrow measurements, etc.– and deduce the intellectual capacity and character traits of entire races.

Jews could not be trusted. Blacks and Asians were inferior. These assertions were based on ‘scientific evidence’, even in nations like Sweden, the United Kingdom, and United States.

Today we’re obviously more advanced than our ancestors were. We know that their science was complete bullshit, and our values are totally different.

There are entire movements now (particularly among university students) to remove statues, rename buildings, and re-designate holidays.

Frankly this is a pretty slippery slope. If we judge everyone throughout history based on our values today, we’ll never stop tearing down monuments.

Even someone as forward-thinking as Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. And that’s a LOT of elementary schools to rename.

More importantly, there will come a time in the future when our own descendants judge us harshly for our short-sighted values.

Fortunately we no longer have faux-scientists today writing dissertations about racial superiority.

But we do have entire fields of ‘science’ that will truly bewilder future historians. Economics is one of them.

Our society awards some of its most distinguished prizes for intellectual achievement to economists who tell us that the path to prosperity is to print money, raise taxes, and go into debt.

Economists tell us that we can spend our way out of recession, borrow our way out of debt, and that there will never be any consequences from conjuring trillions of units of paper currency out of thin air.

They created a central banking system whereby an unelected committee of economists possesses nearly totalitarian control of the money supply… and hence the power to influence the price of EVERYTHING– food, fuel, housing, utilities, financial markets, etc.

Economists have managed to convince the world that inflation, i.e. rising prices, is actually a GOOD thing… and that prices quadrupling and quintupling during the average person’s lifespan is ‘normal’.

They’ve also succeeded in making policy-makers terrified of deflation (falling prices) even though just about any rational individual would naturally prefer falling (or at least stable) prices to rising prices.

Economists make the most ridiculous assertions, like “The debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves…” as if it’s perfectly acceptable for the US government to default on its citizens.

Or that the US economy is so strong because the American consumer spends so much money, i.e. consumption (and not production) drives prosperity.

The public believes all this nonsense because the ‘scientists’ say it’s true.

The scientists also come up with fuzzy mathematics to support their assertions. Last Friday, for example, the Labor Department reported that the US economy lost 33,000 jobs in September.

Yet miraculously the unemployment rate actually declined, i.e. fewer people are unemployed despite there being fewer jobs in the economy.

None of this makes any sense. Fewer jobs means lower unemployment. Spend more money. Print more money. Borrow more money. Debt is wealth. Consumption is prosperity.

All of this is based on ‘science’.

We may rightfully take umbrage with the values and ideas of our ancestors.

But it’s worth turning that mirror on ourselves and examining our own beliefs… for there will undoubtedly come a time when our own descendants wonder how we could have been so foolish.

Do you have a Plan B?

Bitcoin Tumbles Below $4000 - Down 21% From Record High

For the first time since August 22nd, the USD price of Bitcoin has dropped below $4000 - down over 20% from its record highs on September 1st.

Crackdowns by China (on ICOs and more recently confusion over Bitcoin exchanges) combined with JPMorgan"s Jamie Dimon"s comments today saw selling pressure extend as China opened...

All but one of the top 15 cryptocurrencies are under pressure...

As we noted earlier, what is ironic is that this is not the first time Jamie Dimon has lashed out at bitcoin: the last time Dimon slammed bitcoin was November 2015, at the Fortune Global Forum in San Francisco. Here’s what he had to say when asked directly about it by an audience member:

“You’re wasting your time with Bitcoin! Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” said Dimon. “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.”

“Blockchain is like any other technology. If it is cheaper, effective, works, and secure, then we are going to use it. The technology will be used, and it could be used to transport currency, but it will be dollars, not bitcoins.”

Speaking to CNBC later in the day, Dimon said he’s skeptical governments will allow a currency to exist without state oversight: “Someone’s going to get killed and then the government’s going to come down,” he said. “You just saw in China, governments like to control their money supply.” And yet, despite said "killing" Bitcoin remained well above $4,000.

That said, Dimon conceded that he wouldn’t short bitcoin because there’s no telling how high it will go before it collapses, saying that it "could hit $100,000 before it drops." The best argument Dimon has heard about owning bitcoin, is that it can be useful to people in places with no other options: “If you were in Venezuela or Ecuador or North Korea or a bunch of parts like that, or if you were a drug dealer, a murderer, stuff like that, you are better off doing it in bitcoin than U.S. dollars,” he said. “So there may be a market for that, but it’d be a limited market.”

What is also ironic is Dimon"s admission that his daughter purchased some bitcoin, saying "it went up and she thinks she is a genius."

And to think the Fed didn"t even have to inject $4 trillion in liquidity to make her feel that way, unlike so many stock "investors."

Shortly after Dimon"s comment, the chairman and CEO of the CBOE, Ed Tilly - which plans to offer bitcoin futures soon - defended the cryptocurrency after Dimon’s remarks.

“Like it or not, people want exposure to bitcoin,” Tilly said. Believers can bet on its rise, and Dimon is welcome to take the other side, he said. “We’re happy to be the ones in the middle.”

* * *

Incidentally, for those who "wasted their time" since Dimon"s 2015 threat, Bitcoin is up 1,018%.

*  *  *

Perhaps most ironically, while US elites are talking their book in desparation at this "new-fangled" virtual currency, Russia is working on legitimizing cryptocurrencies and is developing a legal framework that will govern transactions using digital currencies like Bitcoin.

Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov previously said that the regulation would be delayed that was originally set for October.

“In April, we announced that the draft law would be ready in October. However, the situation on the market made us, in addition to the main bill, consider several more options. And now all these projects are postponed, we are watching the situation to understand,” Sidorenko said.

Speaking at the II Moscow Financial Forum, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reassured Russian users of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that the government has no intention of outlawing or penalizing cryptocurrencies and is working on regulation.

“The state understands indeed that crypto-currencies are real. There is no sense in banning them, there is a need to regulate them,” Siluanov said.

Putin himself has embraced cryptocurrency and met with Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin, who instilled the advantages of Russia’s usage of the Blockchain Technology under Bitcoin.

After The Storms Are Over: America Can't Afford To Rebuild

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

A number of people have argued over the past few days that Hurricane Harvey will NOT boost the US housing market. As if any such argument would or should be required. Hurricane Irma will not provide any such boost either. News about the ‘resurrection’ of New Orleans post-Katrina has pretty much dried up, but we know scores of people there never returned, in most cases because they couldn’t afford to.

And Katrina took place 12 years ago, well before the financial crisis. How do you think this will play out today? Houston is a rich city, but that doesn’t mean it’s full of rich people only. Most homeowners in the city and its surroundings have no flood insurance; they can’t afford it. But they still lost everything. So how will they rebuild?

Sure, the US has a National Flood Insurance Program, but who’s covered by it? Besides, the Program was already $24 billion in debt by 2014 largely due to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. With total costs of Harvey estimated at $200 billion or more, and Irma threating to cause far more damage than that, where’s the money going to come from?

It took an actual fight just to push the first few billion dollars in emergency aid for Houston through Congress, with four Texan senators voting against of all people. Who then will vote for half a trillion or so in aid? And even if they do, where would it come from?

Trump’s plans for an infrastructure fund were never going to be an easy sell in Washington, and every single penny he might have gotten for it would now have to go towards repairing existing roads and bridges, not updating them -necessary as that may be-, let alone new construction.

Towns, cities, states, they’re all maxed out as things are, with hugely underfunded pension obligations and crumbling infrastructure of their own. They’re going to come calling on the feds, but Washington is hitting its debt ceiling. All the numbers are stacked against any serious efforts at rebuilding whatever Harvey and Irma have blown to pieces or drowned.

As for individual Americans, two-thirds of them don’t have enough money to pay for a $500 emergency, let alone to rebuild a home.

Most will have a very hard time lending from banks as well, because A) they’re already neck-deep in debt, and B) because the banks will get whacked too by Harvey and Irma. For one thing, people won’t pay the mortgage on a home they can’t afford to repair. Companies will go under. You get the picture.

There are thousands of graphs that tell the story of how American debt, government, financial and non-financial, household, has gutted the country. Let’s stick with some recent ones provided by Lance Roberts. Here’s how Americans have maintained the illusion of their standard of living. Lance’s comment:

This is why during the 80’s and 90’s, as the ease of credit permeated its way through the system, the standard of living seemingly rose in America even while economic growth rate slowed along with incomes.

Therefore, as the gap between the “desired” living standard and disposable income expanded it led to a decrease in the personal savings rates and increase in leverage. It is a simple function of math.

But the following chart shows why this has likely come to the inevitable conclusion, and why tax cuts and reforms are unlikely to spur higher rates of economic growth.

There’s no meat left on that bone. There isn’t even a bone left. There’s only a debt-ridden mirage of a bone. If you’re looking to define the country in bumper-sticker terms, that’s it. A debt-ridden mirage. Which can only wait until it’s relieved of its suffering. Irma may well do that.

A second graph shows the relentless and pitiless consequences of building your society, your lives, your nation, on debt.

It may not look all that dramatic, but look again. Those are long-term trendlines, and they can’t just simply be reversed. And as debt grows, the economy deteriorates. It’s a double trendline, it’s as self-reinforcing as the way a hurricane forms.

Back to Harvey and Irma.

Even with so many people uninsured, the insurance industry will still take a major hit on what actually is insured. The re-insurance field, Munich RE, Swiss RE et al, is also in deep trouble. Expect premiums to go through the ceiling. As your roof blows off.

We can go on listing all the reasons why, but fact is America is in no position to rebuild. Which is a direct consequence of the fact that the entire nation has been built on credit for decades now. Which in turn makes it extremely vulnerable and fragile. Please do understand that mechanism. Every single inch of the country is in debt. America has been able to build on debt, but it can’t rebuild on it too, precisely because of that.

There is no resilience and no redundancy left, there is no way to shift sufficient funds from one place to the other (the funds don’t exist). And the grand credit experiment is on its last legs, even with ultra low rates. Washington either can’t or won’t -depending on what affiliation representatives have- add another trillion+ dollars to its tally, state capitals are already reeling from their debt levels, and individuals, since they have much less access to creative accounting than politicians, can just forget about it all.

Not that all of this is necessarily bad: why would people be encouraged to build or buy homes in flood- and hurricane prone areas in the first place? Why is that government policy? Why is it accepted? Yes, developers and banks love it, because it makes them a quick buck, and then some, and the Fed loves it because it keeps adding to the money supply, but it has turned America into a de facto debt colony.

If you want to know what will happen to Houston and whatever part of Florida gets hit worst, think New Orleans/Katrina, but squared or cubed -thanks to the 2007/8 crisis.

Howard Marks Graciously Admits He Was Wrong: "Sees No Reason Why Bitcoin Can't Be A Currency"

Billionaire investor (and self-professed "Bitcoin Dinosaur") Howard Marks made headlines in July when he called Bitcoin a "unfounded fad.. a pyramid scheme" in one of his famous memos, igniting a firestorm of backlash from cryptocurrency advocates.

However, in his most recent Oaktree Capital memo, Marks retracted his position after being educated by some of his Bitcoin-loving friends regarding the cryptocurrency.

There has been particularly spirited response to my comments on digital currencies.  It prompted me to sit down with people ranging from some of my Oaktree colleagues to Steven Bregman and Murray Stahl of Horizon Kinetics (my July memo incorporated some of Steven’s observations on ETFs), and I learned that I’ve been looking at Bitcoin the wrong way.  In particular, I realized that the memo incorporated the wrong joke from my father; instead of “the half-million-dollar hamster,” it should have been this one:

Two friends meet in the street, and Jim tells Sue he has some great sardines for sale. 

The fish are pedigreed and pure-bred, with full papers and high IQs.  They were individually de-boned by hand and packed in the purest virgin olive oil.  And the label was painted by a world-renowned artist.
 
Sue says, “That sounds great.  I could use a tin.  How much are they?” and Jim tells her they’re $10,000. 

Sue responds, “That’s crazy, who would eat $10,000 sardines?” 

“Oh,” says Jim, “these aren’t eating sardines; these are trading sardines.”

I had been thinking about digital currencies like Bitcoin as investing sardines, and that may have been a mistake.  Their fans tell me they’re spending sardines, and while that may be the case, I think at the moment they’re being treated largely as trading sardines.  The question remains open as to whether Bitcoin is (a) a currency, (b) a payment mechanism, (c) an asset class, or (d) a medium for speculation.

The main complaint expressed in my memo was as follows:

Serious investing consists of buying things because the price is attractive relative to intrinsic value.  Speculation, on the other hand, occurs when people buy something without any consideration of its underlying value or the appropriateness of its price, solely because they think others will pay more for it in the future.

In the memo I talked about Bitcoin as an investment asset that should have a value that can be appraised.  While its fans tell me this isn’t the right way to view it, I note that in their February “Bitcoin Review,” even Steven and Murray called it “a new asset class.”  I think this is the weakest claim being made about Bitcoin.  As I said in the memo, “it’s not real” – there is no intrinsic value behind it.

What Bitcoin partisans have told me subsequently is that Bitcoin should be thought of as a currency – a medium of exchange – not an investment asset.  Given that the evolution of Bitcoin is so topical, I think further discussion is in order.  To start, I’m going to present the case for it as a currency.  What are the characteristics of a currency?

• Most importantly, it’s something that people agree can be used as legal tender (to buy things and pay debts), used as a store of value, and exchanged for other currencies.


• Currencies generally are created by governments. However, there have been exceptions: banks issued their own currencies in our nation’s first century, and it can be argued that the “Green Stamps” of my childhood, and airline miles today, have a lot in common with currencies.


• For a long time currencies were backed by (and exchangeable for) gold or silver, but that’s no longer the case. The truth is, there’s nothing behind currencies these days other than their issuing governments’ “full faith and credit.” But what do they promise? New currencies are sometimes created out of thin air (like the euro, which wasn’t legal tender sixteen years ago), and sometimes they’re devalued.


• Currencies change in value relative to each other, in theory based on differential purchasing power, and in practice based on changes in supply and demand (which can stem, among other things, from changes in purchasing power).

Bitcoin fans argue that it qualifies as a currency under these criteria: most importantly, it’s something that parties can agree to accept as legal tender and a store of value.  That actually seems right.

When I first responded to comments on the memo – even before my recent enlightenment – I found myself admitting that much of the criticism I had leveled at Bitcoin is applicable to the dollar as well.  Whereas I said Bitcoin “isn’t real” because it has no intrinsic or underlying value, that’s certainly true of the dollar and other fiat currencies: there’s nothing behind them either.  You can no longer exchange them for gold (and what is gold, anyway?  But that’s another subject).  In fact, government-issued fiat currencies are accorded value only because of a government edict.  Why, the fans of Bitcoin ask, is such an edict superior to an agreement among people to accept a non-government-issued currency?  Fiat currencies have value simply because of faith in the governments that issue them.  If enough people believe in it, why can’t faith in Bitcoin suffice?  If you consider the properties of fiat currencies, these are darn good questions.

So my initial bottom line is that I see no reason why Bitcoin can’t be a currency, since it shares the characteristics listed above, especially the fact that there are people (and businesses and even countries) that accept it as legal tender.

But that’s not good enough for Bitcoin’s fans.  It’s not the same as the dollar, they say; it’s better.   In all the following ways, they’ve told me, Bitcoin is superior to government-issued currency:

• All the relevant data regarding Bitcoin – number outstanding, number newly created, and transactions – are recorded in the “blockchain,” a sort of transparent electronic ledger of which everyone can have his or her own copy.


• Bitcoin can’t be debased by unlimited issuance, since the blockchain process has been set to permit only a gradual increase from today’s 16 million, to 21 million in 2140. In this sense Bitcoin is better than the dollar, of which a lot more can be issued at any time, diminishing its purchasing power through inflation. As Steven and Murray have written, “a purchase of Bitcoin is nothing other than a short sale of the currencies of the world.Merely by limiting the growth of supply, Bitcoin would become more valuable as other currencies devalue.”


• Since the blockchain exists on each person’s individual computer, rather than in a central location, it can’t be hacked, and thus Bitcoin can’t be stolen, counterfeited, or secretly created in amounts exceeding the authorized total. Likewise, Bitcoin isn’t subject to the currency controls on portability that are often imposed by failing governments. (But I wonder whether the technological claims made for the blockchain might be its Achilles’ heel. While I certainly don’t have the ability to assess these claims for myself, I wonder how many of Bitcoin’s advocates do either.)

Where will we go from here?  The partisans claim the outlook for Bitcoin as a currency is bright:

• Since very few people own it today but millions more will want it in the future, demand is sure to rise faster than supply, meaning the price will rise.


• Specifically, the U.S. money supply is almost $14 trillion, so if people and businesses decide to hold just one-third of their wealth in Bitcoin rather than dollars, (and who wouldn’t want to do so given all the advantages described above?), the value of the Bitcoin in circulation will rise to $4.5 trillion, from today’s $73 billion, for a gain of roughly 60x.


• There’s sure to be a network effect: the more people join the Bitcoin movement, the more it will be accepted as legal tender, the more useful it will be, and the more demand will increase.


• Ignoring Bitcoin’s utility as currency, many people will buy just because they believe someone else will pay them more for it. (This time-honored “greater-fool theory” lies at the heart of all speculative manias.) Likewise, people will buy it because of fear of missing out, another bull-market standard.

There’s absolutely no reason why Bitcoin – or anything else – can’t serve as a currency if enough people accept it as such.  While I’d point out that no private currency has gained widespread use in a long, long time, there’s nothing to say it can’t happen.

*  *  *

However, before Bitcoin enthusiasts get too over-excited by Marks" "acceptance," he is not convinced it"s not a speculative bubble...

Being willing to agree that Bitcoin may become an accepted medium of exchange is not the same as saying you should buy it now to make money.  Think about the fact that the price of Bitcoin has risen more than 350% so far this year and 3,900% in the last three years.  To the degree people argue that Bitcoin is a currency, then (a) why is it so volatile? and (b) is that desirable?  You might want to consider whether a real currency can do that, or whether speculative buying is determining Bitcoin’s price.  And whether what’s gone up can come down.

The immediate issue of Bitcoin as a currency still comes down to the question of whether today’s price is right.  The price of a Bitcoin is around $4,600 today.  Can one Bitcoin buy the same amount of goods as 4,600 dollar bills?  Or the much higher amounts that Bitcoin bulls think it will soon be worth?  I don’t think we have enough information to know, but the question isn’t irrelevant.  If it were, this would be another case of “there’s no price too high.”

The other purported use for Bitcoin, given its status as what Marc Andreessen calls a “digital bearer instrument,” is as a payment mechanism.  Its advantages in this regard include the following:

• transactions in Bitcoin can be anonymous (I understand it is often used to pay for opioids),


• payments are made without fees like those charged on credit card transactions and wire transfers,


• there can’t be fraud and merchant charge-backs like with credit cards, and


• it can be particularly useful in emerging nations lacking developed payment systems.

But I see two issues here:

First, I expect there to be many competing transaction systems. Will the banks and other financial institutions cede this territory to Bitcoin? Wouldn’t banks’ systems be more likely to gain acceptance from people other than perhaps millennials? What would happen to Bitcoin’s utility as a payment mechanism if Amazon announced its own? Would you rather transact in Bitcoin or Amazonians?

Second, if Bitcoin were to become the leading non-governmental payment system, what would cause it to appreciate? If you want to pay me in Bitcoin and I’ll accept it, what would cause its price to rise?Adherents would argue that the limited supply relative to the growing use will make the price rise. But that assumes there’s no price so high for Bitcoin that transferees won’t accept it in lieu of dollars. The “pro” side of the argument foresees limitless appreciation, but that doesn’t make sense. Think of any other currency: isn’t there a price at which you wouldn’t accept it? Would you sell your house for euros that are said to be worth two or three times as much as the dollar?

Marc Andreessen wrote an excellent article in The New York Times’ Dealbook, titled “Why Bitcoin Matters” (January 21, 2014).  The article outlined Bitcoin’s potential as a payment system and described many of the advantages listed above.  But it didn’t include one word about why these advantages give Bitcoin appreciation potential.

So what’s my real bottom line?

• Advocates say if Bitcoin is accepted as described above, you’ll make more than 50 times your money. Thus success doesn’t have to be highly probable for buying Bitcoin to have a huge expected return. This is called “lottery-ticket thinking,” under which it seems smart to bet on an improbable outcome that offers a huge potential payoff. We saw it in full flower in the dot-com boom in 1999-2000, and I think we’re seeing it in action again today with regard to Bitcoin.Nothing is as seductive as the possibility of vast wealth.


• Several of the “seeds for a boom” that I listed in “There They Go Again . . . Again” are at work in the Bitcoin surge: (a) there is a grain of underlying truth as set out above; (b) there’s the prospect of a virtuous circle: widespread demand will lead to wider acceptance as legal tender, which will lead to widespread demand; and (c) thus this tree may grow to the sky, as there is no obvious limit to this logic. None of these things necessarily make Bitcoin a mistake. They merely say elements that contributed to past bubbles can be detected today with regard to Bitcoin.


• Finally, Bitcoin isn’t alone. There are hundreds of digital currencies already – including eleven with market capitalizations over a billion dollars – and no limits on the creation of new ones. So even if digital currencies are here to stay, who knows which one will turn out to be the winner? Hundreds of e-commerce start-ups appreciated rapidly in the tech bubble based on the premise that “the Internet will change the world.” It did, but most of the companies ended up worthless.

Marks concludes graciously...

Thanks to the people who took the time to educate me, I’m a little less of a dinosaur regarding Bitcoin than I was when I wrote my last memo. 

I think I understand what a digital currency is, how Bitcoin works, and some of the arguments for it. 

But I still don’t feel like putting my money into it, because I consider it a speculative bubble.  I’m willing to be proved wrong.