Weitere Vergleiche mit den 1970er-Jahren
Vor Kurzem hatte ich an dieser Stelle ausführlich die Gedanken von Ray Dalio zu den “Paradigmen-Wechseln”. Passend machte sich auch John Plender von der FT (einer der sehr guten Analysten der sehr guten Zeitung) seine Gedanken zum Thema. Er sieht starke Ähnlichkeiten zu den 1970er-Jahren, was zunächst überrascht, ist doch von Inflation nichts zu sehen:
- “(…) more than $13tn of government bonds are trading at negative yields. But while this may strike many as unnatural, it is not unprecedented. In the Great Inflation of the 1970s real interest rates were extremely low or negative across much of the developed world. A comparison between events in that earlier period with today’s seemingly freakish financial conditions contains several clues as to what may go wrong with monetary policy now.” – bto: Doch es ist schon ein Unterschied, ob man sich mit den Inflationserwartungen täuscht oder ob man bewusst Papiere kauft, bei denen man draufzahlt. Oder?
- “(During) the high inflation of the 1970s (…) instead of a search for yield or a retreat into government paper, investors fled from supposedly safe assets such as fixed-interest IOUs into real assets such as property. The value of land, bricks and mortar ballooned in response to excessive money and credit expansion. A property-based financial crisis ensued, most notably in the UK, where the Bank of England had to organise a lifeboat operation to rescue fringe banks.” – bto: Diese Blasen haben wir heute auch, allerdings breiter und in mehr Märkten. Insofern ist es ein möglicher Vergleich.
- “The losers, as is the case today, were the system’s creditors. (…) soaring inflation severely eroded the value of their ‘safe’ assets. (…) in the 1980s tightened policy and bond markets offered unusually high real interest rates for a protracted period because it took so long for policy credibility to return.” – bto: Wie wäre das heute möglich? Ich kann es mir nicht vorstellen, weil wir dann eine starke Deflation bräuchten, da die Nominalzinsen nicht wie damals fallen können.
- “One important difference today is that measures of the ‘natural’ rate of interest consistent with normal economic conditions have been moving downwards for years. (…) Since the great financial crisis, central bankers in advanced countries have also preferred to err on the side of easing. The Fed, for example, is widely expected to cut its policy rate next week, despite the economy chugging along tolerably well, inflation being close to target and unemployment near its lowest level for 50 years.” – bto: die sogenannte “asymmetrische Reaktion”. Ich denke zudem, die massive Kreditschöpfung der vergangenen Jahrzehnte hat Geld wenig knapp werden lassen und damit den Preis gesenkt.
- “(…) the most important difference between negative real rates in the 1970s and today relates to moral hazard. That is, current interest rates create an illusion of debt sustainability because it is so easy for governments, companies and households to service debt. Yet the debt has increased considerably since the financial crisis, reaching 245 per cent of world gross domestic product last year.” – bto: Wenn Schulden nichts kosten und nie getilgt werden müssen, sind sie sustainable. An diesem Zustand darf sich halt nichts ändern. Wie wir wissen, haben die Notenbanken den Zins aber nicht vollständig unter Kontrolle und die vergangenen Jahrhunderte haben gezeigt, dass Zinsen immer wieder gestiegen sind, egal welche Erwartungen es gab.
- “The difficulty for central banks is that, if inflation returns, it may prove impossible to damp down a rising price level without creating a financial crisis as debtors confront higher borrowing costs. Inertia may therefore triumph. Yet debt cannot accumulate forever. Such is the complacency on this score that the seeds of both financial instability and renewed inflation are probably being sown now.” – bto: Das wird aber über eine Vertrauensfrage ins Spiel kommen, den die Schulden wirken an sich ja deflationär.
