Inflation/Deflation

The July 2011 Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U) released yesterday puts the June year-over-year inflation rate at 1.66%, which is less than half the 3.82% average since the end of the Second World War. That being said the ShadowStats Alternate annualized rate of inflation is 9.26%. [Which is more accurate?] Words: 384

If inflation starts to head towards 5%, you can be sure it’s headed for 10% because they don’t have the ability to stop it now. The only antidote they have to the mess we are in, which is massively excessive debt reinforced by derivatives, is unlimited money printing. The idea that you can withdraw the punch bowl or sharply raise interest rates, it just doesn’t exist, unless you want to take a complete deflationary collapse.

Is this the time to acquire gold? Or is this the time to run away from it? Either answer could be correct, depending upon what course government chooses. Government is at a decision point, one that will determine how our economic malaise next turns. [Let's review their choices.] Words: 922

There is some discussion in the blogosphere that the recent spike in gold reflects increased inflation expectations (possibly due to higher potential for Fed's QE3). That may be true, but that assumption is completely inconsistent with inflation expectations implied by TIPS.

A look at the status of the economy, and in particular money supply, shows that deflation is starting to show up. Below are 7 charts that support that view. Words: 370

You don’t need [actual] deflation—a reduction in the outstanding supply of money—to have markets react to a decrease in the rate of money supply growth..., anticipate the eventual deflation [and begin to price it into the market. Remember 2008?] Oil prices fell from $147 in July of 2008 to $33 per barrel by early 2009. The S&P 500 went into free-fall starting in September of 2008 and bottomed out in March of 2009—falling almost 50% in six months. This is what has already happened to the gold mining sector but, remember, central banks may be on a counterfeiting holiday right now but they have a history of taking very short vacations.

Global investors are now being violently whipsawed by the decisions of central banks, as they switch between inflationary and deflationary policies. The choice governments now face is to allow a deflationary depression to finally purge the worldwide economy of its imbalances, or try to levitate real estate, equity and bond prices by printing massive quantities of their currencies.

Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies, and Peter Tchir, founder of TF Market Advisors, talk about Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman's recommendation that policy makers should consider allowing slightly higher inflation as a way to spur the U.S. economy.

How this economic disaster ends is something about which many of us speculate. Two extreme endings are likely — a sudden deflationary collapse or a period of very high inflation/hyperinflation which ultimately cripples commerce and resolves itself in a deflationary collapse. In either case, the deflationary collapse is another Great Depression. It is important to know which route will occur because of what will happen to asset values along the way. Words: 1057

Money/credit expansion (inflation) is insidious and like an addictive drug. The first effects appear to be pleasant - a seeming increase, if not boom, in business; lower interest rates; more available credit and a decline in unemployment - BUT, unless the monetary stimulus is continued, and probably at increasingly higher doses, the temporary high disappears. Below is a sampling of what eventually happens when central bankers try to 'help' the economy by creating money out of nothing. Words: 799