Removing the Safety Valves

Something big has recently changed in our culture.

We no longer accept any unpleasant reality, no matter the costs of denying it, nor the benefits it might return in the long run.

For example, parents who do not permit their children to play unsupervised for fear of a scuff. And school teachers who no longer fail anyone and mark all students as above average. And high schools that fly their students to Europe rather than make them sweat on the West Coast trail. And universities that have dumbed-down their curriculums. And citizens who refuse to accept election results and blame fictional demons rather than questioning their own beliefs. And environmentalists who promote green growth rather than austerity and population reduction.

Recessions function like the safety valves on a pressure cooker that prevent a dangerous explosion. Recessions used to be viewed as a normal event that purged malinvestments and poor performers thus allowing healthy re-growth in the next cycle.

Today we are unwilling to accept any downturn. As soon as the markets start to drop the central banks step in to prop them up. Extraordinary measures have become ordinary. The absurd has become normal.

We’ve removed most of the safety valves and the pressure is building. Soon the pressure will be so high that we’ll be forced to remove the last safety valve and start handing out printed money to citizens, thus risking a repeat of the Weimar event and its terrible consequences.

It’s not like we need to abandon capitalism and free markets. To the contrary, all we need to do is let markets function the way we pretend they function.

I understand all the thermodynamic reasons that we might not want to let a recession take root, but I ask you, how is delaying the inevitable going to make things better? It’s not. It’s going to make things much worse.

Our only choices are do we want to fall from a higher elevation later, or climb down from a lower elevation sooner?

Where are the adults?

The Fed Stops Pretending by Peter D. Schiff

The elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge is that the “unconventional” policies that were introduced to fight a “once in a century” crisis are now the conventional policies of choice to combat the normal fluctuations of the business cycle. But zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing only worked a decade ago because people thought they were temporary. If they knew that the policies were permanent, the dollar may have plummeted and the resulting inflation may well have overwhelmed any benefits the stimulation delivered. But the naïve belief that the Fed could reverse course, unwind its bloated balance sheet and normalize interest rates, kept the game going and kept the dollar strong. Now that the illusion may about to be shattered, the dollar may not survive the next round of enhanced QE and ZIRP.

QE4 will have to be larger than the three earlier rounds combined, as the annual Federal budget deficits could exceed 3 trillion. However, while China, Russia, and many emerging market nations were eager buyers of Treasuries during those initial rounds, they may likely be sellers of Treasuries during the next round. That means none of the inflation created to finance QE would be exported. So the big price increases next time may take place in the supermarket rather than the stock market. Americans would finally be forced to deal with the adverse effects of inflation that we have been spared for the past 10 years. It’s not going to be pretty.

https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/the-fed-stops-pretending-201906100556

Hat tip to Panopticon for his excellent daily posts on the economy and climate.

https://climateandeconomy.com/2019/06/10/10th-june-2019-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/