Hey all, we're mid week in a Holiday shortened market week. On Friday, the US markets are closed for Good Friday, and I'm happy about that. If we can close for significant people, we can certainly close for God and son.
Now I'm sure you looked at the headline of the article and figure that I lost my last marble. Deflation? Isn't that where prices of things come down? Indeed it is. And like the housing bubble of 2005 - 2007, this time will probably be no different. ( pay attention to that word probably, I'll come back to it later in this piece)
The biggest cure for high prices, is indeed high prices. When prices of things get too far out of whack, markets have an interesting way of putting them back in whack.
Naturally there's multiple mechanisms at work, but the bottom line is that there always comes a point, where "things" are just too expensive to be purchased. Then, things sit on shelves and ultimately have to be "marked down." This is going to happen again. But, and this is the big elephant... we probably have to endure something akin to a hyper inflation, before we get the big bust and everything falls down.
Right now, we've still got supply chain issues, manufacturing issues, etc. to deal with. Take China and their lockdown of tens of millions of people. NONE of those people are producing products that will end up on Wal-Mart's shelf. So, the products that are there or are in transit, will demand higher prices. No doubt.
But trees don't grow to the moon, and everything eventually reverts to the mean. Always and forever. The twist this time, is that the reasons for the hyper inflation, aren't rooted in the public doing incredibly stupid things. Think back to the "Tulip mania" of the 1600's. I don't know what kind of mushrooms they were snorting during that period, but people were giving up family farms for one tulip bulb. Peak insanity.
The Fed, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank all raised interest rates this week again to fresh multi-year highs.
They just can’t seem to help themselves.
At the same, they each suggested or explicitly warned that there is more tightening coming plus a willingness to hold their policies at hawkish levels for a while.
They just can’t seem to help themselves.
Let’s focus on the Fed. Inflation and all of its major drivers fell in the last half of 2022.
I’m not going to say it fell sharply, steeply or significantly, because some prices have come down – some even sharply, some just a tad – and some have not at all.
The so-called price deceleration occurred despite the pace of economic growth, which picked up in the second half of the year and unemployment remained fairly static.
We know that the goal of the Fed’s statutory dual mandate is to balance the risks of inflation versus the benefits of solid economic growth and maximum unemployment.
Jeremy Bivens points out that currently, “the benefits of low unemployment are enormous, and the risks of inflation are retreating rapidly.”
Here’s what he wrote before the Fed’s 25-basis point rate hike on Wednesday:
“If the Fed lets the current recovery continue [quickly] by not raising interest rates further at this week’s meeting, 2023 could turn out to be a great year for the economic fortunes of American families.
“It is time for the Fed to stand pat on interest rate increases and wait to see how the lagged effects of past increases enacted in 2022 will filter through to the economy.
“Continuing to raise rates in the early stretches of 2023 will be a clear mistake and pose an unneeded threat to growth in the next year.”
He envisioned a Powell press conference after a meeting at which the Fed decided to leave rates alone, emphasizing these points: