Erst kommt noch ein defla­tionärer Schock – dann die Inflation

Nachdem ich in den letzten Tagen die Rückkehr der Inflation thematisiert habe, nun also eine andere Argumentation. Es muss erst noch richtig schlimm werden, bevor es zur Inflation kommt. Leuchtet ein:

  • “I still have a currency note for 1,000,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars kindly sent to me by a reader at the height of the gold bug fever in 2011. (…) But the great inflationary blow-off never happened. Those who held onto their gold bars or ETF funds with a sacred conviction watched gold prices drop 40pc over the next three years, even as equities marched higher in the Bernanke-Draghi-Carney bull market.” – bto: warum? Weil das Geld in die Vermögenswerte floss.
  • “So is it any different this time as gold closes in on $2,000 an ounce? Goldman Sachs seems to think so, warning clients that ‘real concerns around the longevity of the US dollar as a reserve currency have started to emerge’. The argument is a mind-twisting paradox. ‘Ironically, the greater the deflationary concerns that policymakers must fight today, the greater the debt build-up and the higher the inflationary risks in the future’ it said.” – bto: Das kann durchaus sein. Aber es ist immer die Frage, ob die Nachfrage in der Realwirtschaft steigt.
  • “There are echoes of the early 1970s when a compliant Fed accommodated the fiscal overreach of the Vietnam War and the Great Society, culminating in the inflationary collapse of the Bretton Woods system.” – bto: Klar ist, dass die Ausweitung der Geldmenge sich irgendwie niederschlagen muss.
  • “Central banks are no longer selling gold. (…) Russia’s central bank has been soaking up 80pc of the country’s gold production, taking the world’s third biggest source of mine supply off the market. China, India, and Turkey have been accumulating, but so have Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czechs. Central banks bought a net 656 metric tonnes in 2018 and another 650 tonnes in 2019, the highest levels in fifty years.” – bto: Und die taz schreibt, es sei eine “Blase” und nur so teuer, weil die Staaten so viel halten und nicht auf den Markt geben.
  • “(…) the Fed denies that it is debauching the dollar, insisting that the Covid shock has left rampant over-capacity and will be ‘disinflationary’ for years to come. Former Fed chair Ben Bernanke told Congress last week that markets were wrong to bet on inflation when QE was first launched, and they are just as wrong now. He has a point. Real rates collapsed in much the same way in 2012 yet it proved to be a false alarm. (…) Inflation fell for the next three years. So the question is whether something has fundamentally changed in monetary dynamics since then.” – bto: Und ich würde sagen ja, weil es nun in die Realwirtschaft geht.
  • “Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research says QE did not catch fire last time because the Western banking system was broken, and Basel regulation made matters worse by forcing lenders to raise capital buffers. Central banks had to ramp up QE to offset the ensuing destruction of broad M3 money.” – bto: Und das Geld floss in die Vermögensmärkte.
  • “Lenders are now in better shape and the Fed’s $3 trillion blast of QE since March has this time led to a 27pc rise in the M3 money supply year on year, the fastest rise since the war time surge in 1943. The money sits in bank accounts waiting for inflationary ignition once life returns to normal. The Fed could hoover up the excess liquidity before this happens but clearly has no intention of doing so (…) openly aiming to ‘run the economy hot’ as an insurance policy. It faces pressure from Joe Biden and the Democrats to fight inequality, deploying stimulus to close the wealth gap rather than driving up asset prices.” – bto: was nachvollziehbar ist.
  • The fiscal picture is infinitely worse today than a decade ago. The International Monetary Fund forecasts a federal deficit of 24pc of GDP this year, lifting the debt ratio to 141pc. (…) There must be a powerful temptation to dabble in Modern Money Theory and to start injecting QE stimulus directly into the veins of the US economy. Indeed, I am sure this will eventually happen.” – bto: ich auch!
  • “(…) the economic recovery will be slower and more painful than markets expect. The latest relief packages on both sides of the Atlantic are too small and poorly-designed to avert a creeping insolvency crisis in the autumn. (…)  If this squeeze is allowed to happen, a fresh bout of economic worry will cause inflation expectations to fall again, triggering a spike in real yields and setting off an instant exodus of hot money from gold. (….) We will have to revisit the deflationary quagmire one last time before the Fed and fellow central banks go for full-throttle reflation as the lesser of policy evils.” – bto: und das alles noch für einen guten Zweck, den Kampf gegen den Klimawandel.

→ telegraph.co.uk (Anmeldung erforderlich): “Gold will have its glory day, but don’t jump the gun”, 29. Juli 2020