GLOBAL POLITICAL AWAKENING: Signs Hyperinflation Is Arriving

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Signs Hyperinflation Is Arriving

This post is gonna be short and sweet—and scary:

Back in late August, I argued that hyperinflation would be triggered by a run on Treasury bonds. I described how such a run might happen, and argued that if Treasuries were no longer considered safe, then commodities would become the store of value.

See, how come I don’t look as cool
when I make my predictions?

Such a run on commodities, I further argued, would inevitably lead to price increases and a rise in the Consumer Price Index, which would initially be interpreted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal government, as well as the commentariat, as a good thing: A sign that “the economy is recovering”, a sign that “normalcy” was returning.

I argued that—far from being “a sign of recovery”—rising CPI would be the sign that things were about to get ugly.

I concluded that, like the stagflation of ‘79, inflation would rise to the double digits relatively quickly. However, unlike in 1980, when Paul Volcker raised interest rates severely in order to halt inflation, in today’s weakened macro-economic environment, that remedy is simply not available to Ben Bernanke.

Therefore, I predicted that inflation would spiral out of control, and turn into hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar.

A lot of people claimed I was on drugs when I wrote this.

Now? Not so much.

In my initial argument, I was sure that there would come a moment when Treasury bond holders would realize that they are the New & Improved Toxic Asset—as everyone knows, there is no way the U.S. Federal government can pay the outstanding debt it has: It’s simply too big.

So I assumed that, when the market collectively realized this, there would be a panic in Treasuries. This panic, of course, would lead to the spike in commodities.

However, I am no longer certain if there will ever be such a panic in Treasuries. Backstop Benny has been so adroit at propping up Treasuries and keeping their yields low, the Stealth Monetization has been so effective, the TBTF banks’ arbitrage trade between the Fed’s liquidity windows and Treasury bond yields has been so lucrative, and the bond market itself is so aware that Bernanke will do anything to protect and backstop Treasuries, that I no longer think that there will necessarily be such a panic.

But that doesn’t mean that the second part of my thesis—commodities rising, which will trigger inflation, which will devolve into hyperinflation—will not occur.

In fact, it is occurring.