Gold correction is buying opportunity for investors------Shan Saeed

GOLD CORRECTION COULD BE BUYING OPPORTUNITY FOR SMART, SHARP AND SAVVY INVESTORS---BY Shan Saeed

I firmly believe that equities are ready to drop into October-November and then rally again towards the end of the year. Historically speaking

The scenario is very much on the wall. The Fed will start printing money again and that would create a negative sentiment driving markets down. They don’t however see a threat to the March 2009 lows.

"Maybe the stock market won’t be very happy about additional stimulus, more interventions into the free market. Though anything could happen, but let’s put it this way that I do not think that we will go and breakdown below the March 2009 level".

I could see a downside target of no more than 950 on the S&P on the pullback. Any break below 1,000 will rattle the Fed. Ben bernanke is under pressure from all quarters......, But Chairman Ben Bernanke will allow further market declines once 1,000 is reached. US is so full of debt, stuck in a period of slow growth and high unemployment, that the Federal Reserve will soon have to revert to crisis era policies.

I am absolutely convinced the Fed will aggressively market the importance of QE and massively so". The US economy is not robust". Not buying into the good news brigade of commentators who believe the worst is behind us and the US economy is on the mend. We have mixed signals, but in general the economy is still weak".


GOLD CORRECTION IS POSSIBLE

There could be a significant correction in gold and other commodities as the dollar changes course. However any large decline would represent a buying opportunity.

The governments of every developed economy, including the US, the UK and Western Europe, will eventually default on their sovereign debts, so the one thing he will never do in his life is 'sell my gold.

The reason is very simple. Gold is not a liability of someone else, you really own it, you keep it in a safe deposit box, its quantity can not be increased at the same rate as you can print money which will eventually again weaken the US dollar. I am not saying that the dollar will go straight down, but eventually the purchasing power of money will lose."


DOLLAR OVERSOLD.

The US dollar is extremely oversold and investor sentiment is very bearish. As a contrarian, I would not be short the dollar right now. This is buying opportunity for some smart, sharp and savvy investors.


Treasuries may become worthless

Mark my word. US Treasuries may become worthless as central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, print money in an effort to boost economies.

“Over the next 10 years, we won’t see any restrictive monetary policy anymore and no real interest rates above zero. Accommodative interest rates ambiance will continue.
Bond yields will “rise massively going forward..........



Disclaimer: This is just a research piece and not an investment advice...Every investment carries risk and return..Please execute your own due diligence before making any investment strategy or decision...

Its not Chinese Yuan but weak US Dollar which is the problem----By Shan Saeed

Chinese Yuan is not the problem but the US dollar which is the hurting the confidence level of the global economy------By Shan Saeed

Lets share some facts and let you decide….Some people who cant even say china have now become gurus in the Chinese economy...

Chinese Yuan is not the problem, it is the weak US dollar which is hurting the global confidence level of the decision makers and investors...Why, the reasons are given below.....

Lets analyze the Chinese economy and its strategic actions

- Chinese are already consuming more.
- Chinese people are spending more on luxury good, investments and Real Estate
- Chinese is the largest auto sales market in the world right now
- Chinese economy is the driving the global economy otherwise we are all doomed
- Chinese is the 2nd largest consumer of the oil industry
- Chinese government is making strategic investment in oil with 60 deals in 19 countries from africa to asia to south america amounting to $117 billion deals.

I fully respect the Chinese leadership for their strategic insight...

Every country has the right to protect industry and her people. Its the right for chinese leadership to appreciate yuan when the global economy stabilizes. Yuan would appreciate to 4% this year.....since 19th June yuan has been appreciated 2% ...

The Chinese yuan has appreciated and I think will continue... the problem is that if the government let's it appreciate consistently there will be tons of hot money so I expect them to increase 2-3% then decrease 2-3% in order to stave off hot money and make it not worth it for speculators. Yuan appreciation would allow the Chinese people to buy more American exports. But what American exports? Everything is already made in China. America exported its manufacturing jobs years ago. Even if China's currency were to appreciate, production would just move to cheaper countries like Vietnam, not back to America.


According to my Harvard educated friend Shaun Rein---Expert on Chinese economy


Unless there are structural reforms to America's economy, a stronger renminbi will not lower the trade surplus in any meaningful way. However, net-net after a year or so expect a total of a 4-5% appreciation, especially once the Christmas ordering season is done and exports back to long-term stability. with the holiday season coming, the last thing American retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT) can afford is costlier products on their shelves. Costco (COST) is refusing to sell Coca-Cola (KO) products because Coke wants to charge too much. If customers are balking at price increases for sodas, what do you think will happen if iPhones (AAPL), Dell (DELL) computers and Mattel (MAT) toys--all made in China--rise in price?
Some analysts have observed that if Wal-Mart were a country it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner. Some 70% of the products sold in Wal-Mart have Chinese components. Billions of dollars of purchasing power would be taken from American consumers if the renminbi were to appreciate. The holidays would not be such a merry time.
With unemployment already at 10 %, American consumers are already stretching their shopping dollars farther than they have in a long time. The last thing they need is more expensive goods. Price increases would stop any thaw in consumer spending.


Analyze the American Economy.....

- Household debt to GDP is 122%..It would require $5-6 trillion to bring to 100% level of GDP..Deleveraging will be a huge drag on the economy creating a sub-par growth..
- US consumers are not spending in USA due to lack of confidence in the economy
- Fed is already debasing the US dollar due to QE..Government action cant boost the confidence of the American consumers....
- US dollar is deliberating kept weak to boost exports and support the industry
- Consumers have to save more to bolster the economy....
- Most of the corporations are sitting on Cash which is like a negative debt...

- The US should drop some export bans to China in the tech sector [there is a lot]. For Boeing, China is 2nd largest market outside US.

Shaun Rein adds on futher who is MD--China Market Research Group..

The problem is not a undervalued RMB/ Yuan but a weak USD and faltering confidence which is causing volatile swings in currency markets, oil barrel pricing, and gold. As nations rebalance their holdings towards euros, Australian dollars, Brazilian real and Japanese yen, the dollar continues to weaken. Even retail investors are jumping on the bandwagon. This flight will not end until the dollar reverses course or, at the very least, remains stable, and it's dangerous because it means countries will be less likely to buy Treasury bills and finance America's recovery.
A weaker dollar won't help create more exports. It will just make things more expensive for Americans. Foreign companies will produce elsewhere, because it is still cheaper to produce in low-cost labor markets like Vietnam.
Rather than wasting time pushing China to strengthen the yuan President Obama and his economic team should focus and figure out how to strengthen the dollar by paying down Chinese debts. A strong dollar, not a strong yuan, is what's important for America's future.

US economy is in doldrums,-----By Shan Saeed

No Way Out for the US economy..Where are we heading for? This is the billion dollars question. Get ready for worse....

I really dislike sounding inflammatory. Saying that things are going to go terribly wrong runs a risk of being classed with those who think the world will end in December 2012 because of something Nostradamus or the Bible says, or because that’s what the Mayan calendar predicts.

This is different. In the real world, cause has effect. Nobody has a crystal ball, but a good economist (there are some, though very few, in existence) can definitely pinpoint causes and estimate not only what their immediate and direct effects are likely to be (that’s not hard; a smart kid can usually do that) but the indirect and delayed effects.


In the first half of this year, people were looking at the U.S. economy and seeing that some things were better. Auto sales were up – because of the wasteful Cash for Clunkers program. Home sales were up – because of the $8,000 credit and distressed pricing. Employment was up – partly because of Census hiring, and partly because hundreds of billions have been thrown at the economy. The recovery impresses me as a charade. But figures were questionable and not real.........


Let’s get beyond what the popular media parrots are telling us and attempt to derive some reasonable assumptions about how things really are and where they’re headed.

A Brief Economic History/Summary:

Before we get to where things stand at the moment, let’s briefly look at where we‘ve come from.


That a depression was in the cards has been foreseeable for decades. The distortions cranked into the system in the ‘60s – the era of “guns and butter” spending by the government – resulted in the tumult of the ‘70s. Things could, and one could argue should, have come unglued then. But they didn’t, for a number of reasons that have only become clear in retrospect:


* Interest rates were allowed to rise to curative levels;
* The markets were non-manipulated and so, as they became quite depressed, were left to send out real distress signals;
* The U.S. was still running a trade surplus;
* The dollar had only come off the gold standard in 1971 and was still relatively sound.


Then, starting with Reagan and Thatcher, the world’s governments started cutting taxes and deregulating. The USSR collapsed peaceably. China, then India, made a shift toward free markets. And on top of it all, the computer revolution got seriously underway. All told, a good formula for recovery and a sound foundation for a boom.


But sadly, taxes, government spending, and deficits soon started heading much higher. Despite the collapse of its only conceivable enemy, U.S. military spending continued to skyrocket. Monetary policy encouraged everyone to take on huge amounts of debt, much more than ever in the past, and everyone soon found they could live way above their means. The stock, real estate, and bond markets got pumped up to ridiculous levels. The main U.S. export became trillions of paper dollars. Worst of all, the U.S. devolved into just another country, undistinguished by anything other than a legacy of a high standard of living.


The standard of living in the U.S. is now going down for these reasons, and others. But most disturbing to the average American is the falling position of the U.S. relative to the rest of the world. In brief, Americans won’t take kindly to the notion that they can’t continue earning, say, $10-40 an hour, for doing exactly the same thing a Chinese will do for $1-4 an hour.


What’s going to happen is that the Americans’ earnings are going to drop, while those of the Chinese are going to rise, meeting someplace in the middle. Especially when the Chinese works harder, longer, saves his money, and doesn’t burden his employer with all kinds of legacy benefits, topped off with lawsuits. This is a new threat, one that can’t be countered with B-2 bombers. It’s also something as big and as inevitable as a glacier coming down a valley during an Ice Age.


This, along with other problems presented by the business cycle have ushered in the Greater Depression. Depression and recession are consumer cycles.....

How Long Will the Greater Depression Last?


Let’s briefly recap two definitions of a depression, along with a couple of examples, with an eye to seeing how things may evolve from here.


One definition is that a depression is a period of time when most people’s standard of living drops significantly. Russia had this kind of depression from roughly 1917 to 1990, so more than 70 years. A second definition is that it is a period of time when economic distortions and mis-allocations of capital are liquidated. Russia had this kind of depression from 1990 up to about 2000. It was very sharp but relatively brief.

The difference between these two examples is that, during the first, the state was in total – or even increasing – control. By the time of the second, the country had greatly liberalized. As a result, the depression was a period of necessary and tumultuous change, rather than drawn-out agony. A depression can be a bad thing or a good thing, partly depending on which definition applies.


Today, things are problematic in Russia for a number of reasons that aren’t germane to this article. But people can own property, entrepreneurs can start businesses, and the top tax rate is 11%. The depression of 1990-2000 resulted in greatly improved conditions in Russia.


Let’s look at a couple of other examples: Haiti and Mozambique.


Haiti has been a disaster since Day One and has no current prospect of improvement. The billions of dollars Obama is idiotically about to send them will evaporate like a quart of water poured into the Sahara – just like the billions of aid and charity that have gone before it. Worse, it will eliminate the necessity of Haiti making meaningful reforms. Additional aid actually precludes the possibility of liquidating distortions, mis-allocations of capital, and unsustainable patterns of life. It’s counterproductive.


Mozambique went through a long and nasty civil war from about 1970 to the early ‘90s. The war made conditions worse than anything even Haiti has seen. But when it came to an end, the Mozambicans changed things simply in order to survive. The place is hardly a beacon of the free market today, but duties and taxes have been reduced, most parastatals have been privatized, and entrepreneurs can operate. It’s a good sign that the country is drawing foreign investment but very little foreign aid, which always just cements people in their bad habits while ensuring government officials stay in office.


Why do I bring up these examples? Because it’s clear to me the U.S. is heading in the direction of Russia before 1990, or Haiti today. Not in absolute terms, of course. These examples are illutrative of the fact, what USA should be avoiding and doing in the right direction for the betterment of american people and businesses. But everything the U.S. government is doing – raising taxes, increasing regulations, and inflating the currency – is not only the wrong thing to do, but also exactly the opposite of the right thing.


This is really serious, because the government is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. What governments do makes all the difference – actually the only difference – in how countries perform. How else to explain that Haiti and Singapore were on pretty much the same level after World War 2, and look where they are now.


To my thinking, the U.S. is now clearly on the path Argentina started down with the Peron regime. Cause has effect. Actions have consequences, and the result will be much the same. Except I believe the descent of the U.S. will be much faster, much scarier, and will end in a much harder landing than that experienced by Argentina.


I say this because there’s no realistic possibility the Obama regime is going to change course. To the contrary, they’re likely to accelerate in the present direction. They believe the government should direct society – as do most Americans at this point. They feel government is a magic cure-all and not only can but should “do something” in response to any problem. Most complaints aren’t that they’re doing too much, but that they’re doing too little. Everything on the political front, therefore, is a disaster. There’s absolutely no prospect I can see that it will get better, and every indication it will get worse.


I’m not going to try to predict what will happen in the 2012 elections, but it’s fair to say the last several elections are indicators of the degraded state of the average American. What are the chances they’ll make a 180-degree turn, in the direction of someone like Ron Paul? I’d say close to zero, and libertarianism will remain a fringe movement, at best. Will Boobus americanus vote for someone who says the government should actually do less – much less – in the middle of a crisis? Especially if the current wars expand, which is quite likely in this kind of environment? No way.


Simply, the chances of a reversal in what passes for the philosophical attitude of this country are slim and none. And Slim’s left town. While there are some who hope for an improvement on the political front, I think that’s very naïve.


The Tea Party movement? Its ruling ethos appears to be a kind of inchoate rage. I sympathize with the fact that many seem to be honest middle to lower middle-class Americans who see their standards of living slipping away and don’t know why, or how to stop it. They feel bad that it’s no longer the America portrayed in Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne movies, but many are quick to blame the changes on swarthy immigrants. They’re desperately looking for a political solution. These folks tend to be highly nationalistic and atavistic, with a tendency to worship their preachers and the military. I just hope some popular general doesn’t get political ambitions…


The only bright spots – but these are very major bright spots – are in the areas of individual savings and technology.


As things get worse, the productive members of society will redouble their efforts to save themselves by producing more while consuming less; the excess will be savings. Those savings create a pool of capital that can be used to fund new businesses and technologies.
The problem here is that with the dollar losing value quickly---thanks to Quantitative easing, the savers will be punished for doing the only thing that can really improve the situation. And they’ll be discouraged by wrongheaded propaganda telling people to consume more, not to save. Funding new business and technologies will be harder with more regulations. But still, people will find a way to set aside a surplus. And that is a factor of overwhelming importance.


As are breakthroughs in science and technology. Don’t forget that there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived, altogether, in all of previous human history. These are the people that will wind the main stem of human progress. And their numbers are going to grow. So there’s real cause for optimism.


The problem is that most young Americans now go in for things like sociology and gender studies, whereas the up-and-coming scientists and engineers are primarily Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Indians who, even if they get advanced training in the U.S., tend to go back home afterwards. Partly because the U.S. discourages hiring non-Americans for “good” jobs, but mostly because they can see more opportunity abroad.


So, how long will the Greater Depression last? Quite a while, at least for the U.S.


But wait. Aren’t there other bright spots? How about the dollar?



The Dollar


Over the years I’ve been agnostic as to whether this depression would be inflationary or deflationary. Or both in sequence, with inflation first, followed by a credit collapse deflation; or a deflation followed by a runaway inflation. Or perhaps both at the same time, just in different sectors of the economy – e.g., prices of McMansions collapse because people can’t afford to live in them, while the prices of rice and beans skyrocket because that’s all people can afford.


At the moment I’m leaning towards a deflation in most areas. Why? Because the purchasing media in the U.S. is primarily credit based. If a mortgage defaults, what happens to the dollars it represents? They literally disappear, which is deflationary. If a bond defaults, the same thing happens. If stocks and property prices crash, the dollars they represent vanish. If people or businesses don’t borrow, the money supply fails to expand; in fact, many are trying to pay back loans, which is deflationary. Even so, contrary to popular opinion, deflation is much better than inflation. Deflation is pernicious....Deleveraging is happening in the US which will be huge drag on the economy for the next 4-5 years...


Because today’s dollar is just paper and credit, and because deflationary conditions will create a clamor for many more of them, the government will eventually succeed in its inflationary efforts. It’s true, as Bernanke has said in a moment of wry wit, that they can dump $100 bills from helicopters to prevent deflation. But it’s not likely since, in our fractional reserve banking system, the primary way the money supply is expanded is through the granting of loans, not the printing of paper, the way it was done in Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe.
One problem with credit-based inflation is that at some point, banks become afraid to lend, and people afraid to borrow – a time like right now. In fact, people may even become too afraid to leave their dollars in banks. They’re coming to realize the FDIC is thoroughly bankrupt.


Here’s a speculative scenario. To solve these deflationary problems and resolve Ben’s helicopter conundrum, maybe the Fed will go into the retail banking business by directly taking over the hundreds of institutions that are now failing. The average American would feel safe depositing directly with the Federal Reserve. And the Fed could lend as much as they want, without the restrictions imposed by actual capital or pesky shareholders.


Ridiculous? I think not, certainly not after GM, Fannie, and the rest. Certainly not when you consider that this depression is still in only the second inning. It would be one way to head off deflation.


Be that as it may, or may not, at some point after the deflationary waters have receded as far as possible, an inflationary tsunami is going to wash ashore, to the surprise of all.


Everybody knows how bad things were in Weimar Germany, and what a catastrophe hyperinflation has been in Zimbabwe. But those were agrarian economies, with people still quite close to the land. If it hits in the U.S., as highly specialized and urbanized as it is, it will be an unparalleled disaster. And not just for the U.S., because the reserves of almost all governments are mostly U.S. dollars. And dollars are used as the de facto currency by the average man in about 50 countries. All told, there may be as many as seven trillion of the things held outside of the U.S., and, at some point, everybody will be trying to unload them at once. At which time they’ll lose value very, very quickly.


So, far from being something to rely on, and very far from being as good as gold, the dollar is going to be a lead player in the catastrophe called the Greater Depression. And all the other paper currencies are going down with it. Pity the fool who doesn’t see this coming.
Or, for that matter, what’s going to happen to interest rates.

Interest Rates


The government is doing everything in its power to keep interest rates as low as possible. Asset bubbles will be created soon.....There are many reasons for this. Low rates make it easier for people to support their debt burdens and borrow more. Low rates inflate the value of stocks, bonds, and real estate – and the last thing the government wants to see is a meltdown of the markets. But, perhaps even more important, it’s a lot easier for the government to service $12 trillion of official debt at 2% than at 12%. That much of a rise in rates alone will add over a trillion to what they need to borrow to keep the giant Ponzi scheme going.

Of course it’s a fool’s game. Eventually (I’ll guess between six and 24 months), when their creation of dollars eventually overcomes the credit markets’ destruction of dollars, consumer prices will go up. That evidence of inflation will cause interest rates to rise, with all the short-term negative effects the government so fears. But higher rates are absolutely necessary to get out of the depression. Remember, it was the high rates of the early ‘80s that set the stage for the boom that followed.


Rates – the price of money – shouldn’t be controlled by the state, up or down, any more than the state should control the price of oil, or bread, or toothpaste. One of the major reasons the USSR collapsed was an inability to make correct economic calculations, and much of that was due to their arbitrarily fixed interest rates. One reason why Japan has been fading into the economic background over the last two decades is that the government has artificially suppressed rates, in the vain hope of stimulating the economy. All they’ve gotten is excessive levels of government debt, which will result in the destruction of the yen. And what will be tens of millions of impoverished, and very angry, Japanese savers.


The same thing is in process of happening in the West due to suppressed interest rates. The Next Steps Down in the Markets

With interest rates depressed to near zero, stocks, bonds, and property in the Western countries are as good as they’re going to get – especially after a very long boom in all three. When rates inevitably go higher, stocks, property – absolutely bonds – are likely to head much lower. That’s entirely apart from the fundamentals under them, which are truly ugly. In turn, that will bankrupt pension funds across the economy, many of which are already severely underfunded.


These pension funds are likely to be the centerpieces of the next leg down of the evolving crisis. Will the government bail them out? Perhaps, although after the misadventure of poor taxpayers throwing money at rich traders at Goldman and AIG, the public doesn’t like the ring of that term. More likely it will nationalize them, assuming their assets in exchange for a special class of its paper. In the interest of “fairness,” that will happen to small and solvent funds as well as large and bankrupt ones.


After that, the next problem area will be insurance companies. And not necessarily because they’ll suffer from the same problems, like derivative trading, that sunk AIG. Even the well-managed ones have their assets invested primarily in commercial loans, commercial property, bonds, and stocks.


How This Will End

Nassim Taleb has popularized the concept of the Black Swan: an event that no one thought was possible, actually happening. Naturally, it takes everyone by surprise. To that lesson from zoology, let me suggest one from astronomy. Let’s call it the Financial Asteroid Strike theory.


It’s well known that there are millions of pieces of sizable space debris floating around the solar system. It’s just a matter of time before something crosses our path at an inopportune moment, as has happened so many times in the past. Unlike the Black Swan, it’s well known that Financial Asteroids exist. It’s just that really serious ones appear so rarely that people conduct their lives as if they never will. It’s been such a long time since the last depression that people see it as something distant and academic – like the Chicxulub or Tunguska asteroid strikes. Until the actual moment it hits, everything is completely normal. Then everything changes radically.


I’d sum it up by saying that a Financial Asteroid Strike takes much longer to happen than you might expect, but once it actually gets underway, it happens much more quickly than you could have imagined. We had a strike in 2008. But they tend to come in clusters. I expect more to enter the atmosphere fairly soon.


The question is whether the next one is going to wipe out all the economic and financial dinosaurs or just flatten the trees for some miles around. Either way, it’s far from being all gloom and doom.

How This Could Be a Good Thing

Everyone, certainly including myself, prefers good times to bad times. But much of the good times of the last two decades were a result of an entire civilization living above its means. It was great fun while it lasted, but the party is over. The result will be massive unemployment, lots of business failures, and huge investment losses. These things are most unpleasant, but inevitable. That said, I always like to look at the bright side.


And what might that be?


Let’s restrict ourselves to just one of the lead actors in this drama: the United States of America.

The bankruptcy of the U.S. government will, at least at some point, lead to a big drop in the number of government employees. This is a good thing, since little of what they do serves a useful purpose; most are an actual impediment to production.


With some luck it could result in the sale of agencies that have some value, e.g., NASA, the Smithsonian, and the National Parks – to private enterprise. It will also force a vast retrenchment of the military, although only after more costly wars make that necessity very obvious. It will force a decentralization of power, with more devolving to the states and municipalities. It will mean much less regulation, since there won’t be the personnel or money to enforce it. It will also mean much less taxation for the same reasons, even though the state will try desperately to collect more, and will absolutely succeed in the near term.

Internationally, it seems to me a sure thing that organizations like the UN, the IMF, the OECD, and so many more, will be totally hollowed out or even disappear. At a time when governments are straining to maintain themselves, they’re unlikely to ship scarce capital abroad. So the people who are worried about the UN taking over the U.S., One World Government and such, will have to find something different to fret about.


As domestic currencies the world over are inflated away, some medium of exchange and store of value will have to be agreed on. I don’t see any realistic alternative to gold. China is going to be a focus of change in this regard (among many others). The stupidity of the Chinese government buying U.S. government paper in order to enable Americans to continue consuming the things Chinese factories produce will come to an end. That will be an impetus to demands for an alternative medium of exchange.


But if the U.S. and governments of other advanced countries lose power, governments in places like Africa (in particular) will collapse; Somalia is a model of things to come there. That may sound like a horrible thing, but – notwithstanding teething pains – it’s a big step forward. Deprived of free money, free weapons, and lots of free bad advice that have entrenched kleptocracies, the Africans are likely to make real progress after the Greater Depression plays itself out.


The transition period, however, is likely to be messy almost everywhere.


Can we prevent the status quo from falling apart, and preclude these messy changes? Further, should we, if we could?


Entirely apart from the fact that change is an essential part of life – and I think the status quo is in dire need of some real change (although absolutely not the kind Obama and his posse might have in mind) – I actually don’t think there’s a realistic solution to the problems the world is facing in this decade.


Yes, there are solutions that the government could proactively bring about – almost entirely by doing less, rather than more. But the odds of the U.S. voluntarily defaulting on its debt, abolishing the Fed, using gold as money, abolishing all agencies not specifically designated in the Constitution, eliminating the income tax, and cutting back on military expenditures by about 90% -- among other things – are so small as to be considered a fantasy.


In fact, the concept of invoking changes of that scale are too scary for most to even contemplate. But they’ll happen anyway. Which means these things aren’t going to happen voluntarily, under some kind of control, and in a more or less orderly manner. Even so, because anything that must happen will happen – all these things and more will actually happen and, in the happening, will be most unpleasant and dangerous.


It seems to me that the upset we’re looking at could be the biggest thing since the Industrial Revolution. Or perhaps the French Revolution is a better analogy, although I expect it’s going to be a bit of both. It seems entirely possible to me that we could have another American Revolution, as unlikely as that seems among a nation of commuters and suburbs-dwelling reality TV watchers.


But it’s hard to see how it could be anything like the first one, which was led by thoughtful, rich, free market-oriented farmers and merchants. More likely this one will center on people like Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity on the one side, and Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi on the other – strident, antagonistic, and bent, but also full of charisma and certainty. I don’t see much chance of collegial and reasonable compromise.


The best advice is not to be around the watering hole when two antagonistic groups of chimpanzees are hooting and panting at each other, getting ready to fight for control of it.


I’m afraid the current state of affairs is corrupt through and through. From the top of the financial world in New York, to the top of the political world in DC, right down to the average man on the street, 50% of whom aren’t obligated to pay income taxes but feel entitled to be net recipients of government largesse at the expense of others. Even among those that have assets, there’s no feeling of shame in gaming the system any way possible. There’s no longer any onus to being one of the 40 million people on electronic food stamps, or defaulting on one’s mortgage and continuing to live in the house, and collecting indefinitely extended unemployment benefits. Bankruptcy is just something you do when needed.


Frankly, it’s a mystery to me how the U.S. in particular, but most of the developed world, is going to escape from the very unpleasant consequences of its very stupid past – and current – actions.


I’ve just scratched the surface of the possibilities for the next ten years here. What’s clear is that some patterns of production and consumption are unsustainable; they will stop. What’s not clear is what new patterns will replace them. But that’s not so worrisome; what’s a matter of more concern is what forms of political and social organization will appear.


But let me leave you with a final bit of good news. Most of the real wealth – science, technologies, capital and consumer goods – will still be here. There’s just going to be a change in ownership. And it’s possible to position yourself to get more than your share.
Based on the above, what looks good to me – on a long-term basis – over the years to come? In general, stocks, bonds, and property are dead ducks, and headed much lower. But when a real bottom arrives, perhaps even in this decade, fortunes will be made buying back into them. Gold and silver, even though they’re no longer cheap, are going much higher; they’ll be what you’ll trade for things that are cheap. Agricultural commodities are going to do well. The trillions of currency units being printed all over the world will definitely ignite more bubbles, which should present fantastic speculative opportunities. And because the political situation will be hairy, diversify your assets outside of your home country.


Discalimer: This is just a research piece and not an investment advice..Please execute your own due diligence before making any investment strategy or decision.

Economic Depression Cures----Murray Rothbard---Shared by Shan Saeed

Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure

by Murray N. Rothbard


This is a classic piece first published in 1969.
Solution to current problem....Free market with no intervention by the government in the market since Keynes is dead according to Economist Magazine


We live in a world of euphemism. Undertakers have become "morticians," press agents are now "public relations counsellors" and janitors have all been transformed into "superintendents." In every walk of life, plain facts have been wrapped in cloudy camouflage.

No less has this been true of economics. In the old days, we used to suffer nearly periodic economic crises, the sudden onset of which was called a "panic," and the lingering trough period after the panic was called "depression."

The most famous depression in modern times, of course, was the one that began in a typical financial panic in 1929 and lasted until the advent of World War II. After the disaster of 1929, economists and politicians resolved that this must never happen again. The easiest way of succeeding at this resolve was, simply to define "depressions" out of existence. From that point on, America was to suffer no further depressions. For when the next sharp depression came along, in 1937–38, the economists simply refused to use the dread name, and came up with a new, much softer-sounding word: "recession." From that point on, we have been through quite a few recessions, but not a single depression.

But pretty soon the word "recession" also became too harsh for the delicate sensibilities of the American public. It now seems that we had our last recession in 1957–58. For since then, we have only had "downturns," or, even better, "slowdowns," or "sidewise movements." So be of good cheer; from now on, depressions and even recessions have been outlawed by the semantic fiat of economists; from now on, the worst that can possibly happen to us are "slowdowns." Such are the wonders of the "New Economics."

For 30 years, our nation's economists have adopted the view of the business cycle held by the late British economist, John Maynard Keynes, who created the Keynesian, or the "New," Economics in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, published in 1936. Beneath their diagrams, mathematics, and inchoate jargon, the attitude of Keynesians toward booms and bust is simplicity, even naïveté, itself. If there is inflation, then the cause is supposed to be "excessive spending" on the part of the public; the alleged cure is for the government, the self-appointed stabilizer and regulator of the nation's economy, to step in and force people to spend less, "sopping up their excess purchasing power" through increased taxation. If there is a recession, on the other hand, this has been caused by insufficient private spending, and the cure now is for the government to increase its own spending, preferably through deficits, thereby adding to the nation's aggregate spending stream.

The idea that increased government spending or easy money is "good for business" and that budget cuts or harder money is "bad" permeates even the most conservative newspapers and magazines. These journals will also take for granted that it is the sacred task of the federal government to steer the economic system on the narrow road between the abysses of depression on the one hand and inflation on the other, for the free-market economy is supposed to be ever liable to succumb to one of these evils.

All current schools of economists have the same attitude. Note, for example, the viewpoint of Dr. Paul W. McCracken, the incoming chairman of President Nixon's Council of Economic Advisers. In an interview with the New York Times shortly after taking office [January 24, 1969], Dr. McCracken asserted that one of the major economic problems facing the new Administration is "how you cool down this inflationary economy without at the same time tripping off unacceptably high levels of unemployment. In other words, if the only thing we want to do is cool off the inflation, it could be done. But our social tolerances on unemployment are narrow." And again: "I think we have to feel our way along here. We don't really have much experience in trying to cool an economy in orderly fashion. We slammed on the brakes in 1957, but, of course, we got substantial slack in the economy."

Note the fundamental attitude of Dr. McCracken toward the economy – remarkable only in that it is shared by almost all economists of the present day. The economy is treated as a potentially workable, but always troublesome and recalcitrant patient, with a continual tendency to hive off into greater inflation or unemployment. The function of the government is to be the wise old manager and physician, ever watchful, ever tinkering to keep the economic patient in good working order. In any case, here the economic patient is clearly supposed to be the subject, and the government as "physician" the master.

It was not so long ago that this kind of attitude and policy was called "socialism"; but we live in a world of euphemism, and now we call it by far less harsh labels, such as "moderation" or "enlightened free enterprise." We live and learn.

What, then, are the causes of periodic depressions? Must we always remain agnostic about the causes of booms and busts? Is it really true that business cycles are rooted deep within the free-market economy, and that therefore some form of government planning is needed if we wish to keep the economy within some kind of stable bounds? Do booms and then busts just simply happen, or does one phase of the cycle flow logically from the other?

The currently fashionable attitude toward the business cycle stems, actually, from Karl Marx. Marx saw that, before the Industrial Revolution in approximately the late eighteenth century, there were no regularly recurring booms and depressions. There would be a sudden economic crisis whenever some king made war or confiscated the property of his subject; but there was no sign of the peculiarly modern phenomena of general and fairly regular swings in business fortunes, of expansions and contractions. Since these cycles also appeared on the scene at about the same time as modern industry, Marx concluded that business cycles were an inherent feature of the capitalist market economy. All the various current schools of economic thought, regardless of their other differences and the different causes that they attribute to the cycle, agree on this vital point: That these business cycles originate somewhere deep within the free-market economy. The market economy is to blame. Karl Marx believed that the periodic depressions would get worse and worse, until the masses would be moved to revolt and destroy the system, while the modern economists believe that the government can successfully stabilize depressions and the cycle. But all parties agree that the fault lies deep within the market economy and that if anything can save the day, it must be some form of massive government intervention.

There are, however, some critical problems in the assumption that the market economy is the culprit. For "general economic theory" teaches us that supply and demand always tend to be in equilibrium in the market and that therefore prices of products as well as of the factors that contribute to production are always tending toward some equilibrium point. Even though changes of data, which are always taking place, prevent equilibrium from ever being reached, there is nothing in the general theory of the market system that would account for regular and recurring boom-and-bust phases of the business cycle. Modern economists "solve" this problem by simply keeping their general price and market theory and their business cycle theory in separate, tightly-sealed compartments, with never the twain meeting, much less integrated with each other. Economists, unfortunately, have forgotten that there is only one economy and therefore only one integrated economic theory. Neither economic life nor the structure of theory can or should be in watertight compartments; our knowledge of the economy is either one integrated whole or it is nothing. Yet most economists are content to apply totally separate and, indeed, mutually exclusive, theories for general price analysis and for business cycles. They cannot be genuine economic scientists so long as they are content to keep operating in this primitive way.

But there are still graver problems with the currently fashionable approach. Economists also do not see one particularly critical problem because they do not bother to square their business cycle and general price theories: the peculiar breakdown of the entrepreneurial function at times of economic crisis and depression. In the market economy, one of the most vital functions of the businessman is to be an "entrepreneur," a man who invests in productive methods, who buys equipment and hires labor to produce something which he is not sure will reap him any return. In short, the entrepreneurial function is the function of forecasting the uncertain future. Before embarking on any investment or line of production, the entrepreneur, or "enterpriser," must estimate present and future costs and future revenues and therefore estimate whether and how much profits he will earn from the investment. If he forecasts well and significantly better than his business competitors, he will reap profits from his investment. The better his forecasting, the higher the profits he will earn. If, on the other hand, he is a poor forecaster and overestimates the demand for his product, he will suffer losses and pretty soon be forced out of the business.

The market economy, then, is a profit-and-loss economy, in which the acumen and ability of business entrepreneurs is gauged by the profits and losses they reap. The market economy, moreover, contains a built-in mechanism, a kind of natural selection, that ensures the survival and the flourishing of the superior forecaster and the weeding-out of the inferior ones. For the more profits reaped by the better forecasters, the greater become their business responsibilities, and the more they will have available to invest in the productive system. On the other hand, a few years of making losses will drive the poorer forecasters and entrepreneurs out of business altogether and push them into the ranks of salaried employees.

If, then, the market economy has a built-in natural selection mechanism for good entrepreneurs, this means that, generally, we would expect not many business firms to be making losses. And, in fact, if we look around at the economy on an average day or year, we will find that losses are not very widespread. But, in that case, the odd fact that needs explaining is this: How is it that, periodically, in times of the onset of recessions and especially in steep depressions, the business world suddenly experiences a massive cluster of severe losses? A moment arrives when business firms, previously highly astute entrepreneurs in their ability to make profits and avoid losses, suddenly and dismayingly find themselves, almost all of them, suffering severe and unaccountable losses – How come? Here is a momentous fact that any theory of depressions must explain. An explanation such as "underconsumption" – a drop in total consumer spending – is not sufficient, for one thing, because what needs to be explained is why businessmen, able to forecast all manner of previous economic changes and developments, proved themselves totally and catastrophically unable to forecast this alleged drop in consumer demand. Why this sudden failure in forecasting ability?

An adequate theory of depressions, then, must account for the tendency of the economy to move through successive booms and busts, showing no sign of settling into any sort of smoothly moving, or quietly progressive, approximation of an equilibrium situation. In particular, a theory of depression must account for the mammoth cluster of errors which appears swiftly and suddenly at a moment of economic crisis, and lingers through the depression period until recovery. And there is a third universal fact that a theory of the cycle must account for. Invariably, the booms and busts are much more intense and severe in the "capital goods industries" – the industries making machines and equipment, the ones producing industrial raw materials or constructing industrial plants – than in the industries making consumers' goods. Here is another fact of business cycle life that must be explained – and obviously can't be explained by such theories of depression as the popular underconsumption doctrine: That consumers aren't spending enough on consumer goods. For if insufficient spending is the culprit, then how is it that retail sales are the last and the least to fall in any depression, and that depression really hits such industries as machine tools, capital equipment, construction, and raw materials? Conversely, it is these industries that really take off in the inflationary boom phases of the business cycle, and not those businesses serving the consumer. An adequate theory of the business cycle, then, must also explain the far greater intensity of booms and busts in the non-consumer goods, or "producers' goods," industries.

Fortunately, a correct theory of depression and of the business cycle does exist, even though it is universally neglected in present-day economics. It, too, has a long tradition in economic thought. This theory began with the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume, and with the eminent early nineteenth century English classical economist David Ricardo. Essentially, these theorists saw that another crucial institution had developed in the mid-eighteenth century, alongside the industrial system. This was the institution of banking, with its capacity to expand credit and the money supply (first, in the form of paper money, or bank notes, and later in the form of demand deposits, or checking accounts, that are instantly redeemable in cash at the banks). It was the operations of these commercial banks which, these economists saw, held the key to the mysterious recurrent cycles of expansion and contraction, of boom and bust, that had puzzled observers since the mid-eighteenth century.

The Ricardian analysis of the business cycle went something as follows: The natural moneys emerging as such on the world free market are useful commodities, generally gold and silver. If money were confined simply to these commodities, then the economy would work in the aggregate as it does in particular markets: A smooth adjustment of supply and demand, and therefore no cycles of boom and bust. But the injection of bank credit adds another crucial and disruptive element. For the banks expand credit and therefore bank money in the form of notes or deposits which are theoretically redeemable on demand in gold, but in practice clearly are not. For example, if a bank has 1000 ounces of gold in its vaults, and it issues instantly redeemable warehouse receipts for 2500 ounces of gold, then it clearly has issued 1500 ounces more than it can possibly redeem. But so long as there is no concerted "run" on the bank to cash in these receipts, its warehouse-receipts function on the market as equivalent to gold, and therefore the bank has been able to expand the money supply of the country by 1500 gold ounces.

The banks, then, happily begin to expand credit, for the more they expand credit the greater will be their profits. This results in the expansion of the money supply within a country, say England. As the supply of paper and bank money in England increases, the money incomes and expenditures of Englishmen rise, and the increased money bids up prices of English goods. The result is inflation and a boom within the country. But this inflationary boom, while it proceeds on its merry way, sows the seeds of its own demise. For as English money supply and incomes increase, Englishmen proceed to purchase more goods from abroad. Furthermore, as English prices go up, English goods begin to lose their competitiveness with the products of other countries which have not inflated, or have been inflating to a lesser degree. Englishmen begin to buy less at home and more abroad, while foreigners buy less in England and more at home; the result is a deficit in the English balance of payments, with English exports falling sharply behind imports. But if imports exceed exports, this means that money must flow out of England to foreign countries. And what money will this be? Surely not English bank notes or deposits, for Frenchmen or Germans or Italians have little or no interest in keeping their funds locked up in English banks. These foreigners will therefore take their bank notes and deposits and present them to the English banks for redemption in gold – and gold will be the type of money that will tend to flow persistently out of the country as the English inflation proceeds on its way. But this means that English bank credit money will be, more and more, pyramiding on top of a dwindling gold base in the English bank vaults. As the boom proceeds, our hypothetical bank will expand its warehouse receipts issued from, say 2500 ounces to 4000 ounces, while its gold base dwindles to, say, 800. As this process intensifies, the banks will eventually become frightened. For the banks, after all, are obligated to redeem their liabilities in cash, and their cash is flowing out rapidly as their liabilities pile up. Hence, the banks will eventually lose their nerve, stop their credit expansion, and in order to save themselves, contract their bank loans outstanding. Often, this retreat is precipitated by bankrupting runs on the banks touched off by the public, who had also been getting increasingly nervous about the ever more shaky condition of the nation's banks.

The bank contraction reverses the economic picture; contraction and bust follow boom. The banks pull in their horns, and businesses suffer as the pressure mounts for debt repayment and contraction. The fall in the supply of bank money, in turn, leads to a general fall in English prices. As money supply and incomes fall, and English prices collapse, English goods become relatively more attractive in terms of foreign products, and the balance of payments reverses itself, with exports exceeding imports. As gold flows into the country, and as bank money contracts on top of an expanding gold base, the condition of the banks becomes much sounder.

This, then, is the meaning of the depression phase of the business cycle. Note that it is a phase that comes out of, and inevitably comes out of, the preceding expansionary boom. It is the preceding inflation that makes the depression phase necessary. We can see, for example, that the depression is the process by which the market economy adjusts, throws off the excesses and distortions of the previous inflationary boom, and reestablishes a sound economic condition. The depression is the unpleasant but necessary reaction to the distortions and excesses of the previous boom.

Why, then, does the next cycle begin? Why do business cycles tend to be recurrent and continuous? Because when the banks have pretty well recovered, and are in a sounder condition, they are then in a confident position to proceed to their natural path of bank credit expansion, and the next boom proceeds on its way, sowing the seeds for the next inevitable bust.

But if banking is the cause of the business cycle, aren't the banks also a part of the private market economy, and can't we therefore say that the free market is still the culprit, if only in the banking segment of that free market? The answer is No, for the banks, for one thing, would never be able to expand credit in concert were it not for the intervention and encouragement of government. For if banks were truly competitive, any expansion of credit by one bank would quickly pile up the debts of that bank in its competitors, and its competitors would quickly call upon the expanding bank for redemption in cash. In short, a bank's rivals will call upon it for redemption in gold or cash in the same way as do foreigners, except that the process is much faster and would nip any incipient inflation in the bud before it got started. Banks can only expand comfortably in unison when a Central Bank exists, essentially a governmental bank, enjoying a monopoly of government business, and a privileged position imposed by government over the entire banking system. It is only when central banking got established that the banks were able to expand for any length of time and the familiar business cycle got underway in the modern world.

The central bank acquires its control over the banking system by such governmental measures as: Making its own liabilities legal tender for all debts and receivable in taxes; granting the central bank monopoly of the issue of bank notes, as contrasted to deposits (in England the Bank of England, the governmentally established central bank, had a legal monopoly of bank notes in the London area); or through the outright forcing of banks to use the central bank as their client for keeping their reserves of cash (as in the United States and its Federal Reserve System). Not that the banks complain about this intervention; for it is the establishment of central banking that makes long-term bank credit expansion possible, since the expansion of Central Bank notes provides added cash reserves for the entire banking system and permits all the commercial banks to expand their credit together. Central banking works like a cozy compulsory bank cartel to expand the banks' liabilities; and the banks are now able to expand on a larger base of cash in the form of central bank notes as well as gold.

So now we see, at last, that the business cycle is brought about, not by any mysterious failings of the free market economy, but quite the opposite: By systematic intervention by government in the market process. Government intervention brings about bank expansion and inflation, and, when the inflation comes to an end, the subsequent depression-adjustment comes into play.

The Ricardian theory of the business cycle grasped the essentials of a correct cycle theory: The recurrent nature of the phases of the cycle, depression as adjustment intervention in the market rather than from the free-market economy. But two problems were as yet unexplained: Why the sudden cluster of business error, the sudden failure of the entrepreneurial function, and why the vastly greater fluctuations in the producers' goods than in the consumers' goods industries? The Ricardian theory only explained movements in the price level, in general business; there was no hint of explanation of the vastly different reactions in the capital and consumers' goods industries.

The correct and fully developed theory of the business cycle was finally discovered and set forth by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, when he was a professor at the University of Vienna. Mises developed hints of his solution to the vital problem of the business cycle in his monumental Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912, and still, nearly 60 years later, the best book on the theory of money and banking. Mises developed his cycle theory during the 1920s, and it was brought to the English-speaking world by Mises's leading follower, Friedrich A. von Hayek, who came from Vienna to teach at the London School of Economics in the early 1930s, and who published, in German and in English, two books which applied and elaborated the Mises cycle theory: Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle, and Prices and Production. Since Mises and Hayek were Austrians, and also since they were in the tradition of the great nineteenth-century Austrian economists, this theory has become known in the literature as the "Austrian" (or the "monetary over-investment") theory of the business cycle.

Building on the Ricardians, on general "Austrian" theory, and on his own creative genius, Mises developed the following theory of the business cycle:

Without bank credit expansion, supply and demand tend to be equilibrated through the free price system, and no cumulative booms or busts can then develop. But then government through its central bank stimulates bank credit expansion by expanding central bank liabilities and therefore the cash reserves of all the nation's commercial banks. The banks then proceed to expand credit and hence the nation's money supply in the form of check deposits. As the Ricardians saw, this expansion of bank money drives up the prices of goods and hence causes inflation. But, Mises showed, it does something else, and something even more sinister. Bank credit expansion, by pouring new loan funds into the business world, artificially lowers the rate of interest in the economy below its free market level.

On the free and unhampered market, the interest rate is determined purely by the "time-preferences" of all the individuals that make up the market economy. For the essence of a loan is that a "present good" (money which can be used at present) is being exchanged for a "future good" (an IOU which can only be used at some point in the future). Since people always prefer money right now to the prospect of getting the same amount of money some time in the future, the present good always commands a premium in the market over the future. This premium is the interest rate, and its height will vary according to the degree to which people prefer the present to the future, i.e., the degree of their time-preferences.

People's time-preferences also determine the extent to which people will save and invest, as compared to how much they will consume. If people's time-preferences should fall, i.e., if their degree of preference for present over future falls, then people will tend to consume less now and save and invest more; at the same time, and for the same reason, the rate of interest, the rate of time-discount, will also fall. Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time-preference, which lead to an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, and also to a falling rate of interest.

But what happens when the rate of interest falls, not because of lower time-preferences and higher savings, but from government interference that promotes the expansion of bank credit? In other words, if the rate of interest falls artificially, due to intervention, rather than naturally, as a result of changes in the valuations and preferences of the consuming public?

What happens is trouble. For businessmen, seeing the rate of interest fall, react as they always would and must to such a change of market signals: They invest more in capital and producers' goods. Investments, particularly in lengthy and time-consuming projects, which previously looked unprofitable now seem profitable, because of the fall of the interest charge. In short, businessmen react as they would react if savings had genuinely increased: They expand their investment in durable equipment, in capital goods, in industrial raw material, in construction as compared to their direct production of consumer goods.

Businesses, in short, happily borrow the newly expanded bank money that is coming to them at cheaper rates; they use the money to invest in capital goods, and eventually this money gets paid out in higher rents to land, and higher wages to workers in the capital goods industries. The increased business demand bids up labor costs, but businesses think they can pay these higher costs because they have been fooled by the government-and-bank intervention in the loan market and its decisively important tampering with the interest-rate signal of the marketplace.

The problem comes as soon as the workers and landlords – largely the former, since most gross business income is paid out in wages – begin to spend the new bank money that they have received in the form of higher wages. For the time-preferences of the public have not really gotten lower; the public doesn't want to save more than it has. So the workers set about to consume most of their new income, in short to reestablish the old consumer/saving proportions. This means that they redirect the spending back to the consumer goods industries, and they don't save and invest enough to buy the newly-produced machines, capital equipment, industrial raw materials, etc. This all reveals itself as a sudden sharp and continuing depression in the producers' goods industries. Once the consumers reestablished their desired consumption/investment proportions, it is thus revealed that business had invested too much in capital goods and had underinvested in consumer goods. Business had been seduced by the governmental tampering and artificial lowering of the rate of interest, and acted as if more savings were available to invest than were really there. As soon as the new bank money filtered through the system and the consumers reestablished their old proportions, it became clear that there were not enough savings to buy all the producers' goods, and that business had misinvested the limited savings available. Business had overinvested in capital goods and underinvested in consumer products.

The inflationary boom thus leads to distortions of the pricing and production system. Prices of labor and raw materials in the capital goods industries had been bid up during the boom too high to be profitable once the consumers reassert their old consumption/investment preferences. The "depression" is then seen as the necessary and healthy phase by which the market economy sloughs off and liquidates the unsound, uneconomic investments of the boom, and reestablishes those proportions between consumption and investment that are truly desired by the consumers. The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market sloughs off the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers. Since prices of factors of production have been bid too high in the boom, this means that prices of labor and goods in these capital goods industries must be allowed to fall until proper market relations are resumed.

Since the workers receive the increased money in the form of higher wages fairly rapidly, how is it that booms can go on for years without having their unsound investments revealed, their errors due to tampering with market signals become evident, and the depression-adjustment process begins its work? The answer is that booms would be very short lived if the bank credit expansion and subsequent pushing of the rate of interest below the free market level were a one-shot affair. But the point is that the credit expansion is not one-shot; it proceeds on and on, never giving consumers the chance to reestablish their preferred proportions of consumption and saving, never allowing the rise in costs in the capital goods industries to catch up to the inflationary rise in prices. Like the repeated doping of a horse, the boom is kept on its way and ahead of its inevitable comeuppance, by repeated doses of the stimulant of bank credit. It is only when bank credit expansion must finally stop, either because the banks are getting into a shaky condition or because the public begins to balk at the continuing inflation, that retribution finally catches up with the boom. As soon as credit expansion stops, then the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments liquidate the unsound over-investments of the boom, with the reassertion of a greater proportionate emphasis on consumers' goods production.

Thus, the Misesian theory of the business cycle accounts for all of our puzzles: The repeated and recurrent nature of the cycle, the massive cluster of entrepreneurial error, the far greater intensity of the boom and bust in the producers' goods industries.

Mises, then, pinpoints the blame for the cycle on inflationary bank credit expansion propelled by the intervention of government and its central bank. What does Mises say should be done, say by government, once the depression arrives? What is the governmental role in the cure of depression? In the first place, government must cease inflating as soon as possible. It is true that this will, inevitably, bring the inflationary boom abruptly to an end, and commence the inevitable recession or depression. But the longer the government waits for this, the worse the necessary readjustments will have to be. The sooner the depression-readjustment is gotten over with, the better. This means, also, that the government must never try to prop up unsound business situations; it must never bail out or lend money to business firms in trouble. Doing this will simply prolong the agony and convert a sharp and quick depression phase into a lingering and chronic disease. The government must never try to prop up wage rates or prices of producers' goods; doing so will prolong and delay indefinitely the completion of the depression-adjustment process; it will cause indefinite and prolonged depression and mass unemployment in the vital capital goods industries. The government must not try to inflate again, in order to get out of the depression. For even if this reinflation succeeds, it will only sow greater trouble later on. The government must do nothing to encourage consumption, and it must not increase its own expenditures, for this will further increase the social consumption/investment ratio. In fact, cutting the government budget will improve the ratio. What the economy needs is not more consumption spending but more saving, in order to validate some of the excessive investments of the boom.

Thus, what the government should do, according to the Misesian analysis of the depression, is absolutely nothing. It should, from the point of view of economic health and ending the depression as quickly as possible, maintain a strict hands off, "laissez-faire" policy. Anything it does will delay and obstruct the adjustment process of the market; the less it does, the more rapidly will the market adjustment process do its work, and sound economic recovery ensue.

The Misesian prescription is thus the exact opposite of the Keynesian: It is for the government to keep absolute hands off the economy and to confine itself to stopping its own inflation and to cutting its own budget.

It has today been completely forgotten, even among economists, that the Misesian explanation and analysis of the depression gained great headway precisely during the Great Depression of the 1930s – the very depression that is always held up to advocates of the free market economy as the greatest single and catastrophic failure of laissez-faire capitalism. It was no such thing. 1929 was made inevitable by the vast bank credit expansion throughout the Western world during the 1920s: A policy deliberately adopted by the Western governments, and most importantly by the Federal Reserve System in the United States. It was made possible by the failure of the Western world to return to a genuine gold standard after World War I, and thus allowing more room for inflationary policies by government. Everyone now thinks of President Coolidge as a believer in laissez-faire and an unhampered market economy; he was not, and tragically, nowhere less so than in the field of money and credit. Unfortunately, the sins and errors of the Coolidge intervention were laid to the door of a non-existent free market economy.

If Coolidge made 1929 inevitable, it was President Hoover who prolonged and deepened the depression, transforming it from a typically sharp but swiftly-disappearing depression into a lingering and near-fatal malady, a malady "cured" only by the holocaust of World War II. Hoover, not Franklin Roosevelt, was the founder of the policy of the "New Deal": essentially the massive use of the State to do exactly what Misesian theory would most warn against – to prop up wage rates above their free-market levels, prop up prices, inflate credit, and lend money to shaky business positions. Roosevelt only advanced, to a greater degree, what Hoover had pioneered. The result for the first time in American history, was a nearly perpetual depression and nearly permanent mass unemployment. The Coolidge crisis had become the unprecedentedly prolonged Hoover-Roosevelt depression.

Ludwig von Mises had predicted the depression during the heyday of the great boom of the 1920s – a time, just like today, when economists and politicians, armed with a "new economics" of perpetual inflation, and with new "tools" provided by the Federal Reserve System, proclaimed a perpetual "New Era" of permanent prosperity guaranteed by our wise economic doctors in Washington. Ludwig von Mises, alone armed with a correct theory of the business cycle, was one of the very few economists to predict the Great Depression, and hence the economic world was forced to listen to him with respect. F. A. Hayek spread the word in England, and the younger English economists were all, in the early 1930s, beginning to adopt the Misesian cycle theory for their analysis of the depression – and also to adopt, of course, the strictly free-market policy prescription that flowed with this theory. Unfortunately, economists have now adopted the historical notion of Lord Keynes: That no "classical economists" had a theory of the business cycle until Keynes came along in 1936. There was a theory of the depression; it was the classical economic tradition; its prescription was strict hard money and laissez-faire; and it was rapidly being adopted, in England and even in the United States, as the accepted theory of the business cycle. (A particular irony is that the major "Austrian" proponent in the United States in the early and mid-1930s was none other than Professor Alvin Hansen, very soon to make his mark as the outstanding Keynesian disciple in this country.)

What swamped the growing acceptance of Misesian cycle theory was simply the "Keynesian Revolution" – the amazing sweep that Keynesian theory made of the economic world shortly after the publication of the General Theory in 1936. It is not that Misesian theory was refuted successfully; it was just forgotten in the rush to climb on the suddenly fashionable Keynesian bandwagon. Some of the leading adherents of the Mises theory – who clearly knew better – succumbed to the newly established winds of doctrine, and won leading American university posts as a consequence.

But now the once arch-Keynesian London Economist has recently proclaimed that "Keynes is Dead." After over a decade of facing trenchant theoretical critiques and refutation by stubborn economic facts, the Keynesians are now in general and massive retreat. Once again, the money supply and bank credit are being grudgingly acknowledged to play a leading role in the cycle. The time is ripe – for a rediscovery, a renaissance, of the Mises theory of the business cycle. It can come none too soon; if it ever does, the whole concept of a Council of Economic Advisors would be swept away, and we would see a massive retreat of government from the economic sphere. But for all this to happen, the world of economics, and the public at large, must be made aware of the existence of an explanation of the business cycle that has lain neglected on the shelf for all too many tragic years.

This essay was originally published as a minibook by the Constitutional Alliance of Lansing, Michigan, 1969.

Reprinted from Mises.org

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was the author of Man, Economy, and State, Conceived in Liberty, What Has Government Done to Our Money, For a New Liberty, The Case Against the Fed, and many other books and articles. He was also the editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, and academic vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Fear in the economy is a depreciating asset----By Shan Saeed

Greenspan: Fear, Confidence Crisis Undermining US Recovery

Confidence is the main driver in the economy and fear itself is a depreciating asset for the economy and pretty pernicious indeed. It’s highly unlikely that ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan would call himself a Keynesian. But he obviously agrees with the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes that “animal spirits” represent a crucial ingredient of a healthy economy.

A crisis of confidence grips the economy, Greenspan said. That helps to explain why GDP growth slipped to 1.7 percent in the second quarter from 3.6 percent in the first quarter.

Capital investment should have climbed sharply in recent months, as corporate profits soared, Greenspan wrote in the Financial Times. But that investment has fallen short, and that combined with a collapse of the consumer sector has depressed the economy. Double dip recession is inevitable...Recession is not a business cycle but a consumer cycle..When consumers dont spend, businesses dont invest, the economy shrinks...This is a true definition of recession.....

“These shortfalls (are) the result of widespread private-sector anxiety over America’s future. And they have defused much, if not most, of the impact of the administration’s fiscal stimulus.” Moreover, the government’s intervention in the economy through that stimulus has itself increased the anxiety. Markets dont prefer government intervention. It creates distortion....

“The instinctive reaction of businessmen and householders to uncertainty is to disengage from those activities that require confident predictions of how the future will unfold. Both the corporate and consumer sectors are unwilling to invest in illiquid assets. Instead there has been a massive move to the safety of Treasuries.

“It is this rapid rise in aversion to illiquid risk that explains a large part of the anemic recovery in the U.S.Government intervention in the economy is a problem now. Almost all economists and policymakers agree activist government was necessary in the immediate aftermath of the Lehman bankruptcy.

But the $862 billion fiscal stimulus has been of questionable value.And he’s not too impressed with the new financial reform law.It is going to take years to address the unprecedented complexity of final rulemaking required in the massive Dodd-Frank bill.

“The inevitable uncertainty engendered will inhibit financial innovation and intermediation, and render the rules that will govern a future financial marketplace disturbingly conjectural.”Uncertainty will be the result. This is bound to have a significant impact on economic growth.” Deleveraging will be a drag on the economy creating a subpar growth for the next 3-4 years.....

Star economist Robert Shiller agrees with Greenspan about the confidence deficit, though he thinks more government intervention is needed to boost confidence rather than less.

“In a broad sense, damage to morale — which Keynes called “animal spirits” — surely ranks as one of the most important reasons for the American economy’s persistent weakness. Meanwhile, James Grant, editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, shares Greenspan’s wariness of government intervention, informing that regulators are looking behind at the last crisis instead of ahead at what dangers lurk.

This is not recovery in USA---Shared by Shan Saeed

From Paul Krugman---Special Note


But we can safely predict what he and other officials will say about where we are right now: that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.
The small sliver of truth in claims of continuing recovery is the fact that G.D.P. is still rising: we’re not in a classic recession, in which everything goes down. But so what?
The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down sky-high unemployment. We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising, and much faster growth to bring it significantly down. Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead. Will the economy actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.
All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial.
After its last monetary policy meeting, the Fed released a statement declaring that it “anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization” — Fedspeak for falling unemployment. Nothing in the data supports that kind of optimism. Meanwhile, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, says that “we’re on the road to recovery.” No, we aren’t.
Why are people who know better sugar-coating economic reality? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is that it’s all about evading responsibility.
In the case of the Fed, admitting that the economy isn’t recovering would put the institution under pressure to do more. And so far, at least, the Fed seems more afraid of the possible loss of face if it tries to help the economy and fails than it is of the costs to the American people if it does nothing, and settles for a recovery that isn’t.
In the case of the Obama administration, officials seem loath to admit that the original stimulus was too small. True, it was enough to limit the depth of the slump — a recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says unemployment would probably be well into double digits now without the stimulus — but it wasn’t big enough to bring unemployment down significantly.
Now, it’s arguable that even in early 2009, when President Obama was at the peak of his popularity, he couldn’t have gotten a bigger plan through the Senate. And he certainly couldn’t pass a supplemental stimulus now. So officials could, with considerable justification, place the onus for the non-recovery on Republican obstructionism. But they’ve chosen, instead, to draw smiley faces on a grim picture, convincing nobody. And the likely result in November — big gains for the obstructionists — will paralyze policy for years to come.
So what should officials be doing, aside from telling the truth about the economy?
The Fed has a number of options. It can buy more long-term and private debt; it can push down long-term interest rates by announcing its intention to keep short-term rates low; it can raise its medium-term target for inflation, making it less attractive for businesses to simply sit on their cash. Nobody can be sure how well these measures would work, but it’s better to try something that might not work than to make excuses while workers suffer.
The administration has less freedom of action, since it can’t get legislation past the Republican blockade. But it still has options. It can revamp its deeply unsuccessful attempt to aid troubled homeowners. It can use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored lenders, to engineer mortgage refinancing that puts money in the hands of American families — yes, Republicans will howl, but they’re doing that anyway. It can finally get serious about confronting China over its currency manipulation: how many times do the Chinese have to promise to change their policies, then renege, before the administration decides that it’s time to act?
Which of these options should policy makers pursue? If I had my way, all of them.
I know what some players both at the Fed and in the administration will say: they’ll warn about the risks of doing anything unconventional. But we’ve already seen the consequences of playing it safe, and waiting for recovery to happen all by itself: it’s landed us in what looks increasingly like a permanent state of stagnation and high unemployment. It’s time to admit that what we have now isn’t a recovery, and do whatever we can to change that situation.

Structured Devaluation and Rise in Gold prices------Shan Saeed

Competitive Devaluation and Gold outlook lights up the financial markets.....By Shan Saeed


The United States, the eurozone, the United Kingdom, Japan and other major economies may be heading into a period of competitive devaluations. Similarly, China and some of the other strong-currency countries are acting to slow revaluation of their own currencies to maintain a competitive edge in world markets. I foresee Currency manipulation and monetary dumping by different countries moving forward......

Each country is responding to domestic political pressure to promote domestic employment and income growth – believing that exchange-rate undervaluation will boost exports, restrain imports, and support its local economy.

This is the wrong medicine for what ails the world economy.

Rather than boost world trade and global business activity, these policies – like the trade barriers and protectionist mindset erected in the midst of the Great Depression – will retard economic expansion and hurt employment everywhere.

At the same time because of these myopic policies gold investors everywhere -- these policies will boost world commodity prices and domestic inflation in each of the countries pursuing these misguided policies.

What I foresee is an extended multi-year stagflation in the mature industrial nations punctuated with periods of actual recession, much like the decade of the 1970s. In fact, we are already there with years to go before a full restoration of economic health and rising prosperity.

In some ways, mirroring the experience of the 1970s, we are also in the midst of a great bull market for gold – with gold prices set to zoom in the years ahead as commodity prices rise and inflation accelerates.

US policymakers and many private-sector economists guide us that inflation is not and will not be a problem because of low capacity utilization and high unemployment – what they are calling economic "slack." But slack in the 1970s did not prevent a sharp rise in commodity prices and an acceleration of US consumer price inflation to double-digit rates late in the decade. It is conveniently forgotten that historical episodes of high inflation and hyperinflation have not been periods of robust business activity. Quite the contrary as demonstrated by Weimar Germany in the 1920s or Zimbabwe today.

What policymakers are forgetting is that inflation is, first and foremost, a monetary phenomenon – too many dollars and too much debt relative to the available supply of goods and services. It is only a matter of time before the past and continuing rise in money supply, what the Fed calls quantitative easing, and the continuing growth in outstanding debt arising from the US Federal budget deficit, result in an acceleration in US consumer-price inflation.

Quantitative easing is also the mechanism through which the Fed attempts to devalue the US dollar against other currencies. I call it monetary dumping.QE is not going to fix the economy..The phenomenon is going global..Japan is copy the idea with $60 billion debt and asset purchase to fight deflation in the country. In effect, the Fed purchases foreign currencies with newly created dollars. In turn, efforts by other countries to devalue their currencies or maintain relative undervaluation, as in the case of China, requires their central banks to purchase dollars with their own newly created money.

So, efforts by a number of countries to manage devaluations or under valuations of their currencies will boost money supply growth in the various countries playing the game – and will globalize the coming acceleration in inflation.

As investors around the world see rising commodity prices and accelerating consumer-price inflation – not just in the United States but also in their own countries – many will turn to gold to protect the real value of their savings and wealth. Gold is your wealth insurance in times of uncertainty and chaos.

This scenario of accelerating global inflation across many countries and currencies supports our long-term bullish outlook for gold – and our expectation that prices for the yellow metal will exceed $1500 an ounce in the next 1.5 years, then $2000 an ounce in the next 5 to 10 years time, and quite possibly much higher levels in the years ahead.

Disclaimer:
This is a research piece and not an investment advice..Investors are suggested to execute their own due diligence before making any investment strategy or decision.