Some consider inflation rising prices. That is incorrect, rising prices are simply symptomatic of inflation. Inflation is the increase in the money supply and credit. The word “inflation” once applied only to the quantity of money. It meant that the volume of money was inflated, blown up or overextended.
As the money supply is increased, people have more money to offer for goods. But if the supply of goods doesn’t increase — or increases at a slower pace than the money supply — the prices of goods goes up. Each individual dollar becomes less valuable because there are more dollars available. This leads to more of them being offered for a commodity.
A “price” is an exchange ratio between a dollar and a unit of goods. When people have more dollars, they value them less. Goods then rise in price, not because there are fewer goods than before, but rather because there are more dollars available.
Does the following sound familiar?
“Continued inflation caused severe distortions within the U.S. economy and in financial relations around the world. At home, an artificially created ‘easy-money’ policy encouraged people to incur more debt for new houses, new cars, new appliances, etc., at prices that continued to rise. Businessmen were encouraged to venture on new undertakings that could not have been profitable under stable monetary conditions. It led to rampant speculation in real estate, securities and other things; and it became so rampant, in fact, that things such as real estate began to be thought of as an investment.”
It sounds like something that was written within the past year or two. But, in fact, it comes from a publication first published in 1955. That is why I say that it is impossible that Fed officials can’t see what was coming. They simply don’t care.
In my own book, Burning Your Money, I wrote that anything that artificially increases aggregate demand for goods and services is inflation. It could be lowering interest rates, increasing credit or money printing, as the Fed has been doing with its so-called quantitative easing.
This is the uncomfortable truth the money creators don’t want you to know. But why would they want to hide it?
Governments hide inflation because it keeps the interest on national borrowing low, allows the government to keep Social Security payments as low as possible and allows for lower interest rates for consumers, which encourages the phony expansion of the debt-dependent economy.
By hiding the truth, the money creators seek to control the system, or non-system of fiat dollars which they use to control us. Americans believe they have trillions of dollars in savings and investments. In truth, what they have is only numbers, not substance. It is fiat, which is “money” only by the decree of the “authority” of government.
The U.S. economy of the 1990s ranks as the worst bubble economy in history. The boom was built on debt upon debt. Only time will reveal the nasty economic truth. The authorities have created a mania on credit and credit created spending power out of nothing.
The probabilities are that much worse is to come because the quantity of credit outstanding dwarfs the quantity of currency money.
I believe that no matter the propaganda, the Fed will take the survival route in a national banking crisis. It is under no obligation to save anybody except the currency if it can. If past is prologue, in the 1930s depression, the Fed went from 11 percent to 92 percent Treasury obligations. It fled to safety and let the economy crash.
The Federal Reserve is trying to expand credit to replace savings with the result that they have created asset bubbles one right after the other. We are still in a consumption and a real estate bubble that is fast coming to an end.
Let’s remember that the last time the dollar crashed in the 1980s, it crashed under far more favorable conditions as to trade balance and debt.
To survive personally we have to understand that the U.S. government is destroying the U.S. currency. They printed money that caused the mania and the debt pyramid. Now they are printing even more dollars to try to revive what they created and destroyed. Yes, it’s insanity by any definition. But it’s not new. It has happened to all currencies throughout history.
No matter how much money you have, you will in a few years be dead broke without intelligent action. Governments steal and confiscate wealth by printing money. The more they print, the greedier they become for your assets. The people never seem to understand this. Patient gradualism over time is the way that it’s done. People see it but can’t come to action. Time paralyzes them until they wake up one day in poverty.
So now is the time to begin preparing for this. Just remember the economic and social situation will have a doomsday aura and you will have to have courage to invest in such a time.
Friends, you have to do all these things before the crowd, not with the crowd. With hyperinflation, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. But in spite of all the potential disaster, many people will do well and even prosper. The right information is critical.
Of course, it’s unknown at this point just how far President Biden will go to make good on his campaign promises to raise everyone’s taxes and spend another $2 trillion in “stimulus.” But even a scaled-down version of expectations from Biden’s economic plans must be seen as inflation-friendly and inflation-likely.
Now is the time to inflation-proof your portfolio, before Joeflation hits full blast. Here are ways you can get positioned right for an inflationary era:
1. Buy gold. Gold is the traditional inflation hedge because over time it maintains its relative purchasing power. Sure, there are times when the ratio gets out of whack, but it has been doing its value-retention job for 5,000 years. Pretty good track record. Silver is good, too, if you have an appetite for some risk. It typically rises faster than gold, but also dives faster than gold if there’s a reversal.
2. Buy real estate. Real estate agents are fond of saying, “Buy land, because they’re not making any more of it.” Not all land is a good investment as residential real estate tends to rise in concert with inflation, sometimes even outpacing it. So renters would do well to look into investing in a roof over their heads instead of enriching a landlord’s portfolio. I don’t recommend debt, but a fixed-rate mortgage locks in your interest rate that will not go up as Fed interest rates chase inflation higher.
3. Buy TIPS. Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) are indexed to the Consumer Price Index so they gain absolute value as inflation rises, though in relative terms they just keep you even. They’re not big moneymakers but consider them insurance against inflation.
4. Avoid bonds. Inflation is the enemy of bonds because the income they pay is fixed at the time they’re issued. So you’re stuck with that rate even as inflation climbs higher and erodes the return from the bond.
Written by Bob Livingston
