Friday, December 12, 2008

I'm Looking for Inflation in my Top Right Corner Drawer of my Desk

It seems to me that the U.S. Government is laying the foundation for massive inflation down the road.
Now, a lot can change as we head down the road to the future, but it just makes sense to me that increasing the monetary base by 40% just is asking for inflation to rear it's ugly head.
Let's look at the details:
The U.S. Government has commited roughly $8.5 Trillion to Financial Rescue Incentives.
This is broken down into various government arms. The Federal Reserve has committed $5.5 Trillion to back the ailing Financial System. The FDIC has guaranteed around $1.1 Trillion in loans to banks, Citigroup and G.E. The Treasury has backed about $1.1 Trillion (including the $700 Billion TARP). Congress is crafting a 2nd stimulus package estimated at $500 Billion. The Federal Housing Administration has committed $300 Billion to help borrowers. The Federal Reserve has committed $1.8 Trillion to Commercial Paper Programs, and the Federal Reserve has committed $200 Billion to help unfreeze the Consumer Loan Market.
It is estimated that the Government has already tapped $3.2 Trillion in Bailout Spending.
And all of this comes on top of the Treasury last spring helping finance a stimulus package costing $168 Billion!
America truly is "Bailout Nation!"
If you go back in history to the Great Depression, you will see that the lack of liquidity caused a severe defationary period. It was always thought that this tragedy could be averted by creating massive liquidity if such a crisis occurred again. Well, we have such a crisis now and the U.S. has responded, by indeed, creating massive liquidity. So instead of a severe deflationary period, I predict that we will have a period of massive inflation.
The U.S. will have to send interest rates sky high to attract the money it needs to pay for the current bailout. There will be severe pressure on the U.S. dollar.
And we in Canada will have to increase our interest rates to attract the capital we need for our debt.
So keep an open mind when making investments. Massive inflation could be in the cards down the road.

1 comments:

chris said...

Interesting argument. I would tend to agree that inflation may be a concern for investors in the near future. For example, if we take a look at realty in Calgary we can see that prices are on the rise. This data could be interpreted as a potential sign of demand side inflation; that is assuming that the increase in price is in fact created by a increase in demand for house.