April 24, 2024

Federal Reserve Policies Have Put The Nation On The Road To Economic Chaos

October 27, 2012 by 4 Comments

By Axel Merk

The FOMC has crossed the Rubicon: our analysis suggests that the Federal Open Market Committee is deliberately ignoring data on both growth and inflation. At best, the FOMC’s intention might have been to not rock the markets two weeks before the election. At worst, the FOMC has given up on market transparency in an effort to actively manage the yield curve (short-term to long-term interest rates):

  • On growth, economic data, including the unemployment report, have clearly come in better than expected since the most recent FOMC meeting. FOMC practice dictates that progress in economic growth is acknowledged in the statement. Instead, the assessment of the economic environment is verbatim. Had the FOMC given credit to the improved reality, the market might have priced in earlier tightening. The FOMC chose to ignore reality, possibly afraid of an unwanted reaction in the bond market.
  • On inflation, the FOMC correctly points out that inflation has recently picked up “somewhat.” However, it may be misleading to blame the increase on higher energy prices, and then claim that “longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable.” Not so, suggests an important inflation indicator monitored by the Fed and economists alike: 5-year forward, 5-year inflation expectations broke out when the Fed announced “QE3”, its third round of quantitative easing where the emphasis shifted from a focus on inflation to a focus on employment. This gauge of inflation measures the market’s expectation of annualized inflation over a five year period starting five years out, ignoring the near term as it may be influenced by short-term factors:
Inflation Expectations

The chart shows that we have broken out of a 2 standard deviation band and that the breakout occurred at the time of the QE3 announcement. In our assessment, the market disagrees with the FOMC’s assertion that longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable. At best, the FOMC ignores this development because they also look at different metrics (keep in mind that the Fed’s quantitative easing programs manipulate the very rates we are trying to gauge here) or has a different notion of what it considers longer-term stable inflation expectations. At worst, however, the FOMC is afraid of admitting to the market that QE3 is perceived as inflationary.

In our assessment, inflation expectations have clearly become elevated. Ignoring reality by ignoring growth and inflation may not be helpful to the long-term credibility of the Fed. Fed credibility is important, as monetary policy becomes much more expensive when words alone don’t move markets anymore.

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Axel Merk

Axel Merk is President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments
Merk Investments, Manager of the Merk Funds

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Why Are Americans Underinvested In Gold and Silver?

October 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Although there are no definitive statistics on how many Americans own gold or silver, the number is certainly small.  A Gallup poll earlier this year showed that 28% of respondents thought that gold was the “best investment” but the actual number of people actually owning some form of gold or silver bullion is far less.  A Kitco poll indicated that the number of Americans owning precious metals may be as low as 1%.

Despite the steady erosion in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, Americans retain their faith in paper money, apparently oblivious to the destruction of their wealth.  Monetary debasement is an insidious process that few Americans fully understand as explained by economist John Maynard Keynes in 1921.

“By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some …. Those to whom the system brings windfalls …. become “profiteers” who are the object of the hatred … the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery .. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Most Americans don’t bother trying to understand economic theories but it is not hard to understand the following charts.

courtesy: kitco.com

When the average American finally realizes what is happening to the value of the dollar, the rush to gold and silver will result in a massive upward surge in precious metal prices.  That day has not yet arrived and until it does, buy gold and silver with impunity, especially on corrections.

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, Silver Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Would A Romney Victory Cause Gold To Collapse?

October 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

By Axel Merk & Yuan Fang

Monetary Cliff?

As the presidential election is rapidly approaching, little attention seems to be getting paid to the question that may affect voters the most: what will happen to the “easy money” policy? Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Bernanke’s current term will expire in January 2014 and Republican candidate Mitt Romney has vowed that if elected, he would replace Bernanke. Given the tremendous amount of money the Fed has “printed” and the commitment to keep interest rates low until mid-2015, the election may impact everything from mortgage costs to the cost of financing the U.S. debt. Trillions are at stake, as well as the fate of the U.S. dollar.

Should Obama be re-elected, Bernanke might continue to serve as Fed Chairman; other likely candidates include the Fed’s Vice Chairman Janet Yellen and Obama’s former economic advisor Christina Romer. With any of them, we expect the Fed policy to be continuingly dominated by the dovish camp, and moving – with varying enthusiasm depending on the pick of Fed Chair – towards a formal employment target, further diluting any inflation target. We are not only talking about Bernanke and the other two candidates’ individual policy stances (though all three are known as monetary “doves”, i.e. generally favoring more accommodative monetary policy), but also the composition of voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), as we will discuss below.

If Romney were to be elected, a front-runner for the Fed Chairman post is Glenn Hubbard, Dean of Columbia Business School and a top economic adviser to Romney. Hubbard has expressed his skepticism about the mechanism that Bernanke used to boost the economy. In our analysis, an FOMC led by Hubbard (or another Romney appointee) will be leaning toward mopping up the liquidity sooner. Extending forward guidance to mid-2015 will also be under question. It will no doubt add uncertainty to monetary policy and increase market volatility.

More importantly, however, a “hawkish” Fed Chair, i.e. one that favors monetary tightening, might put to the test Bernanke’s claim that he can raise rates in “15 minutes”. Technically, of course, the Fed can raise rates by paying interest on reserves held at the Fed or sell assets acquired during various rounds of quantitative easing. The challenge, no matter who the Fed Chair is going to be, is the impact any tightening might have on the economy. Bernanke has cautioned many times that rates should not be raised before the recovery is firmly “entrenched.” What he is referring to is that market forces may still warrant further de-leveraging. If the stimulus is removed too early, so Bernanke has argued, the economy might fall back into recession. A more hawkish Fed Chair, such as a Glenn Hubbard, may accept a recession as an acceptable cost to exit monetary largesse; however, because there is so much stimulus in the economy, just a little bit of tightening may well have an amplified effect in slowing down the economy. Keep in mind that European countries are complaining when their cost of borrowing rises to 4%, calling 7% unsustainable. Given that the U.S. budget deficit is higher than that of the Eurozone as a whole, and that our fiscal outlook is rather bleak, it remains to be seen just how much tightening the economy can bear. Our forecast is that with a Republican administration, we are likely to get a rather volatile interest rate environment, as any attempt to tighten may have to be reversed rather quickly. Fasten your seatbelts, as shockwaves may be expressed in the bond market and the “tranquility” investors have fled to by chasing U.S. bonds may well come to an end. Foreigners that have historically been large buyers of U.S. bonds may well reduce their appetite to finance U.S. debt, with potentially negative implications for the U.S. dollar.

Let’s dig a little deeper and look at who actually decides on interest rates: it is the voting members of the FOMC that ultimately make the imminent monetary policy decisions, rather than the noise creating pundits and non-voting members.

Three factors will further boost the dovish camp, which already dominates the FOMC committee:

    • Two previously vacant seats on the Fed’s Board of Governors were recently filled by Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell this May. Like other board governors, both Stein and Powell appear to be in favor of Bernanke’s dovish policy. Stein was a Harvard economics professor and used to be more ‘hawkish’ before he took office. But in his first keynote speech as a board governor on Oct. 11, Stein openly supported QE3 and called for continuing asset purchases in absence of a substantial improvement in the labor market. Jerome Powell was a lawyer and private equity investor as well as an undersecretary under George H.W. Bush. Powell has also expressed support for more easing, with inflation an afterthought. Their appointments not only fill all voting seats at the Fed for the first time since 2006, but also further increase the board’s dove-hawk ratio from 9-1 to 11-1. The influence will also carry on to the following years, as board governors hold non-rotating voting rights.
    • Additionally, four current voting members will be replaced next year, including Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker, who has dissented in every FOMC meeting this year. Regional Fed Presidents, unlike Governors, vote on a rotating basis. In 2013, Kansas Fed president Esther George is likely to be the only voting member who appears to hold a hawkish stance. George has expressed her opposition to QE3 and the Fed’s balance sheet expansion, echoing her predecessor Thomas Hoenig’s hawkish tone. But given that she is not a Ph.D. economist, her passion and influence is likely to be more on regulatory than monetary issues; we doubt she will be as vocal as Hoenig or Lacker. In our assessment, the FOMC committee may be “über-dovish” in 2013.
    • Finally, Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, who was known as a monetary policy hawk, has recently shifted to a more dovish stance. He surprised the market with remarks supporting the Fed’s decision to keep rates extraordinarily low until the unemployment rate has fallen below 5.5%, as long as inflation remains below 2.25%. Kocherlakota will be a voting member in 2014, but his shift of stance will weaken the hawkish voice. With fewer dissidents on the board, the Fed may continue to err firmly on the side of inflation and stick to to its mid-2015 low rate pledge.

No matter who wins the election, we will see a policy dilemma for the Fed in the coming years: On the one side, should economic data continue to surprise to the upside, it will be increasingly difficult for the Fed to carry on its dovish policies. On the other side, if the Fed were to abandon its current commitment, we foresee rising market volatility. The U.S. economy is likely to face a “monetary policy cliff” in addition to the “fiscal cliff”. With easy money, inflation risks may well continue to rise, possibly imposing higher bond yields (lower bond prices) and a weaker dollar. With tight money, the Fed may induce a bond selloff. Historically, because foreigners are active buyers of U.S. bonds, the dollar has weakened during early and mid-phases of tightening, as the bond bull market turns into a bear market. It’s only during late phases of tightening that the dollar has historically benefited as the bond market turns yet again into a bull market. We encourage investors to review their portfolios to account for the risk that bonds may be selling off, taking the U.S. dollar along with it.

Please sign up to our newsletter to be informed as we discuss global dynamics and their impact on gold and currencies. Please also register for our Webinar on Thursday, November 8th, 2012, where we will focus on implications on China and Asian currencies.

Axel Merk

Axel Merk is President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments

Yuan Fang is a Financial Analyst at Merk Investments and member of the portfolio management group.

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

U.S. Mint Numismatic Precious Metals Sales Decline

October 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

According to Coin Update, sales of numismatic precious metal coins showed weekly sales declines.  Future sales, however, may increase due to an upcoming price decrease based on the recent correction in precious metal prices.

The latest report of the United States Mint’s numismatic product sales shows mostly lower numbers for precious metals products. Elsewhere in the report, the Chester Arthur Presidential $1 Coin and Alice Paul Bronze Medal Set makes its debut.

Ten out of sixteen gold numismatic products showed weekly sales declines compared to the prior period. The US Mint currently has these products priced based on an average gold price within the $1750 to $1799.99 range. With the market price of gold below this range for the entire reporting period, buyers may be showing restraint as they await the next weekly pricing adjustment.

Eighteen out of twenty-seven of the silver numismatic products showed weekly sales declines compared to the prior period. The US Mint raised prices for many of these products earlier in the month when the market price of silver was approaching $35 per ounce. Silver has since fallen back from this level, although the higher product prices remain in effect. The America the Beautiful Five Ounce Silver Coins showed sales declines across all nine options currently available. Gains were seen for the 2012 Proof and 2012-W Uncirculated Silver Eagles compared to the prior period.

The 2012 Proof Platinum Eagle, which is the only available platinum product, showed negative sales on the week.

See the full sales report for U.S. Mint numismatic products here.

Month to date figures for U.S. Mint gold and silver bullion coins remains strong.  Through October 24th, the U.S. Mint sold 2,584,000 one ounce American Eagle Silver Bullion coins.  If the current sales pace continues, monthly sales could exceed 3.5 million ounces which would be the second best monthly sales total after January when 6,107,000 silver Eagles were sold.

Sales of the American Eagle Gold Bullion coins also remain strong through October 24th with 48,500 ounces sold.  If the current pace of sales is maintained, total sales of the American Gold Bullion coins should reach almost 65,000 for October which would be the third highest sales month of the year.  In January the U.S. Mint sold 127,000 ounces of gold bullion coins followed by 68,500 ounces in September.

Although gold prices have soared over the past decade and the purchasing power of the dollar has collapsed, the American public still does not recognize the value of gold and silver as a store of wealth.  Expect this to change as the bull market in precious metals continues.

Filed Under: Bullion Sales, Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, Platinum, Silver, US Mint Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sound Money Advocate Faces Terminal Jail Sentence

October 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

The New York Times reports on the “domestic terrorism” case of Bernard von NotHaus who awaits sentencing for minting private money known as the Liberty Dollar.  At the age of 68, Von NotHaus is facing the equivalent of a terminal jail sentence since he faces 20 years in prison.

By Alan Feuer, New York Times

Prison May Be the Next Stop on a Gold Currency Journey

MALIBU, Calif. — High above the cliff tops and the beach bars, up a winding mountain road, in a borrowed house on someone else’s ranch, an unusual criminal is waiting for his fate.

His name is Bernard von NotHaus, and he is a professed “monetary architect” and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

Described by some as “the Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement,” Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars’ worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country — so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of “domestic terrorism” for using them to undermine the government.

Of course, if you ask him what caused him to be living here in exile, waiting with the rabbits for his sentence to be rendered, he will give a different account of what occurred.

“This is the United States government,” he said in an interview last week. “It’s got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it’s worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!”

The story of Mr. von NotHaus, from his beginnings as a hippie, can sound at times as if Ken Kesey had been paid in marijuana to write a script on spec for Representative Ron Paul. At 68, Mr. von NotHaus faces more than 20 years in prison for his crimes, and this decisive chapter of his tale has come, coincidentally, at a moment when his obsessions of 40 years — monetary policy, dollar depreciation and the Federal Reserve Bank — have finally found their place in the national discourse.

A native of Kansas City, Mr. von NotHaus first became enticed by making money while living with his companion, Talena Presley, without a car or electric power in a commune of like-minded dropouts in a nameless village on the Big Island in Hawaii. It was 1974, and Mr. von NotHaus, 30 and ignorant of economics, experienced “an epiphany,” he said, which resulted in the writing of a 20-page financial manifesto titled “To Know Value.”

In it he described his conviction that money has a moral aspect and that any loss in its value will cause a corresponding loss in social and political values. It was only three years after President Richard M. Nixon had removed the country from the gold standard, and Mr. von NotHaus, a gold enthusiast, began buying gold from local jewelers and selling it to his friends.

One day, he recalled, “we were all sitting around thinking, ‘Wow, we ought to do something with this gold.’ And I said: ‘Yeah, we could make coins. People love coins. We could have our own money!’ ”

Within a year, he had established the Royal Hawaiian Mint, a private — not royal — producer of collectible coins. Hitchhiking to a library in the county seat of Hilo, he said, he looked up “minting” in the encyclopedia and soon was turning out gold and silver medallions with images of volcanos and the Kona Coast.

So went the better part of 20 years. Then came 1991, which saw the emergence of a successful local currency in Ithaca, N.Y., called the Ithaca Hour. The 1990s were a time of great ferment in the local-money world with activists and academics writing books and papers, like Judith Shelton’s “Money Meltdown.” Mr. von NotHaus, traveling with his sons, Random and Xtra, to adventuresome locations, like Machu Picchu, read these seminal works.

“I had been working on it since 1974,” he testified at his federal trial in North Carolina. “It was time to do something.”

The Constitution grants to Congress the power “to coin money” and to “regulate the Value thereof” — but it does not explicitly grant an exclusive right to do such things. There are legal-tender laws that regulate production of government currency and counterfeiting laws that prohibit things like “uttering” gold or silver coins “for use as current money.”

Mr. von NotHaus claims he never meant the Liberty Dollar to be used as legal tender. He says he created it as “a private voluntary currency” for those conducting business outside the government’s purview. His guiding metaphor is the relationship between the Postal Service and FedEx. “What happened in the FedEx model,” he testified, “is that they” — a private company offering services the government did not — “brought competition to the post office.”

To introduce the Liberty Dollar in 1998, Mr. von NotHaus moved from Hawaii to Evansville, Ind., where he joined forces with Jim Thomas, who for several years had been publishing a magazine called Media Bypass, whose pages were filled with conspiracy theories and interviews with militia members, even Timothy McVeigh.

Working from the magazine’s office, Mr. von NotHaus lived in a mobile home and promoted his nascent currency to “patriot groups” on Mr. Thomas’s mailing list while reaching an agreement with Sunshine Minting Inc., in Idaho, to produce the Liberty Dollar. His marketing scheme was simple: he drove around the country in a Cadillac trying to persuade local merchants like hair salons and restaurants to use his coins and to offer them as change to willing customers.

Banks, of course, did not accept his money; however, to ensure that it found its way only into hands that wanted to use it, Mr. von NotHaus placed a toll-free number and a URL address on the currency he produced. If people mistakenly got hold of it, they could mail it back to Evansville and receive its equivalent in actual dollar bills.

Now jump ahead to 2004. A detective in Asheville, N.C., learned one day that a client of a credit union had to tried to pass a “fake coin” at one its local branches. An investigation determined that some business acquaintances of Mr. von NotHaus were, court papers say, allied with the sovereign citizens’ movement, an antigovernment group.

Federal agents infiltrated the Liberty Dollar outfit as well as its educational arm, Liberty Dollar University.

In 2006, with millions of the coins in circulation in more than 80 cities, the United States Mint sent Mr. von NotHaus a letter advising that the use of his currency “as circulating money” was a federal crime.

He ignored this advice,and in 2007, federal agents raided the offices in Evansville, seizing, among other things, copper dollars embossed with the image of Mr. Paul.

Two years later, Mr. von NotHaus was arrested on fraud and counterfeiting charges, accused of having used the Liberty Dollar’s parent corporation — Norfed, the National Organization for Repeal of the Federal Reserve — to mount a conspiracy against the United States.

At his federal trial, witnesses testified to the Liberty Dollar’s criminal similitude to standard American coins. They said his coins included images of Lady Liberty and cheekily reversed “In God We Trust” to “Trust in God.” Then again, his coins were made of real gold and silver, as American coins are not, and came in different sizes and unusual denominations of $10 and $20.

In his own defense, Mr. von NotHaus testified about a “philanthropic mission” to combat devaluation with a currency based on precious metals and asserted that he was not involved in “a radical armed offense against the government or their money.”

It was, of course, to no avail; and in 2011, a jury found him guilty after a 90-minute deliberation.

These days, Mr. von NotHaus paces shoeless in a mansion, in the hills above the ocean, that was lent to him by a friend. His sentencing has yet to be scheduled, and this leaves time for reflection. He feeds the hummingbirds outside his window. He reads books on fiat currency. He is even writing a book — on the gold standard, of course.

“The thing that fires me up the most,” he will say, “is this is what happens: When money goes bad, people go crazy. Do you know why? Because they can’t exist without value. Value is intrinsic in man.”

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Fed’s Efforts To “Print” New Jobs Is Failing – What Does The Fed Do Next?

October 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In an effort to expand credit and spur job creation, the Federal Reserve has massively expanded its balance sheet with the most aggressive monetary policies in the history of the Federal Reserve.  Since the start of the financial crisis, the Fed instituted two rounds of quantitative easing under which over $2.75 trillion of debt securities were purchased by, in effect, printing money.

The first two phases of quantitative easing resulting in soaring stock and gold prices but did little to reduce the unemployment rate which has remained stubbornly high.  In early September, Fed Chairman Bernanke went all in on his aggressive monetary policies with the announcement of QE3 under which the Fed will conduct open-ended asset purchases.

The Federal Reserve said it will expand its holdings of long-term securities with open-ended purchases of $40 billion of mortgage debt a month in a third round of quantitative easing as it seeks to boost growth and reduce unemployment.

“We’re looking for ongoing, sustained improvement in the labor market,” Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in his press conference today in Washington following the conclusion of a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. “There’s not a specific number we have in mind. What we’ve seen in the last six months isn’t it.”

Stocks jumped, sending benchmark indexes to the highest levels since 2007, and gold climbed as the Fed said it will continue buying assets, undertake additional purchases and employ other policy tools as appropriate “if the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially.”

Bernanke is enlarging his supply of unconventional tools to attack unemployment stuck above 8 percent since February 2009, a situation he called a “grave concern.”

Bernanke said the open-ended purchases would continue until the labor market improved significantly. “We’re not going to rush to begin to tighten policy,” he said. “We’re going to give it some time to make sure that the economy is well established.”

While the U.S. has “enjoyed broad price stability” since the mid-1990s, Bernanke said, “the weak job market should concern every American.”

Although Bernanke’s goal is laudable, many consider his extreme monetary policies ineffective while massively debasing the value of the U.S. currency.  Printing money is not the primary precursor for job creation or increased national wealth, and the latest economic results prove this assertion.  Sales revenues of America’s largest corporations have declined for six consecutive quarters and companies have fired the largest number of employees since 2010.

Courtesy Wall Street Journal

If economic conditions continue to deteriorate, expect Bernanke to implement even more extreme unconventional monetary policies,  all of which would involve money printing on an unimaginable scale.

The ludicrous assertion by Fed Chairman Bernanke that the U.S. has “enjoyed broad price stability” since the 1990’s is revealed as an outright falsehood by the Fed’s own statistics on the loss of purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.  Meanwhile, gold, the only currency with any intrinsic value is reflecting the true extent to which the U.S. dollar has been debased by Fed policies.  As the economy weakens and the Fed expands its monetary madness, the price of gold will continue to soar.

 

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Fed’s Outrageous Attempt To Debase The Dollar Will Send Gold Soaring

October 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

By Axel Merk

Doubling down on QE3, the Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Bernanke tells China and Brazil: allow your currencies to appreciate. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that Bernanke wants the U.S. dollar to fall. Is it merely a war of words, or an actual war? Who is winning the war?

The cheapest Fed policy is one where a Fed official utters a few words and the markets move. Rate cuts are more expensive; even more so are emergency rate cuts and the printing of billions, then trillions of dollars. As such, the Fed’s communication strategy may be considered part of a war of words. Indeed, the commitment to keep interest rates low through mid 2015 may be part of that category. But quantitative easing goes beyond words: QE3, as it was announced last month, is the Fed’s third round of quantitative easing, a program in which the Fed is engaging in an open-ended program to purchase Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). To pay for such purchases, money is created through the strokes of a keyboard: the Fed credits banks with “cash” in payment for MBS, replacing MBS on bank balance sheets with Fed checking accounts. Through the rules of fractional reserve banking, this cash can be multiplied on to create new loans and expand the broader money supply. The money used for the QE purchases is created out of thin air, not literally printed, although even Bernanke has referred to this process as printing money to illustrate the mechanics.

Why call it a war? It was Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega that first coined the term, accusing Bernanke of starting a currency war. Here’s the issue: like any other asset, currencies are valued based on supply and demand. When money is printed, all else equal, supply increases, causing a currency to decline in value. In real life, the only constant is change, allowing policy makers to come up with complex explanations as to why printing money does not equate to debasing a currency. But even if intentions may have a different primary focus, our assessment is that a central bank that engages in quantitative easing wants to weaken its currency. It becomes a war because someone’s weak currency is someone else’s strong currency, with the “winner” being the country with the weaker currency. The logic being a weaker currency promotes net exports and GDP growth. If the dollar is debased through expansionary monetary policy, there is upward pressure on other currencies. Those other countries like to export to the U.S. and feel squeezed by U.S. monetary policy. Given that politicians the world over never like to blame themselves for any shortcomings, the focus of international policy makers quickly becomes the Fed’s monetary largesse.

Bernanke speaking at an IMF sponsored seminar in Tokyo pointed to the other side of the coin: if China, Brazil and others don’t like his policies because they create inflation back home, they should allow their currencies to appreciate. But these countries are reluctant as stronger currencies lead to a tougher export environment.

Now keep in mind that it is always easier to debase a currency than to strengthen it. Switzerland, the previously perceived safe haven by many investors, has taken the lead. Using a central bank’s balance sheet as a proxy for the amount of money that has been printed, the Swiss National Bank’s printing press has surpassed that of the Federal Reserve considering relative growth since August 2008. Again note that no real money has been directly printed in these programs; also note that some activities, such as the sterilization of bond purchases by the European Central Bank, cause a central bank balance sheet to grow, even if sterilization reflects a “mopping up” of liquidity:

Japan has warned about intervening in the markets on multiple occasions, but the size of the Japanese economy as well as the lack of political will make an intentional debasement more difficult. Indeed, the Japanese did their money printing in the 1990s, but forgot we had a financial crisis in recent years.

Bernanke does acknowledge the concerns of emerging markets, but argues they are blown out of proportion. He elaborates that undervaluation and unwanted capital inflows are linked: allow your currencies to appreciate (versus the dollar) and you won’t have to be afraid of excessive capital inflows, inflation and asset bubbles. Ultimately, and importantly, Bernanke says the Fed will continue its course, suggesting that it will strengthen the U.S. economic recovery; and by extension, strengthen the global economy.

Let’s look at the issue from the viewpoint of emerging markets: policy makers like to promote economic growth, among other methods, through a cheap exchange rate, up to a certain point. They don’t want too much inflation or too many side effects. Historically, they manage these side effects with administrative tools. However, taking China as an example, taming price pressure through, say, price controls, has not been very effective. We believe that’s a good thing, as China would otherwise experience product shortages akin to what the Soviet Union experienced. Conversely, however, China must employ a broader policy brush to contain inflationary pressures. We believe – and Bernanke appears to agree – currency appreciation is one of the more effective tools.

So how will this currency war unfold? The ultimate winner may well be gold. But as the chart above shows, it’s not simply a race to the bottom. If one considers what type of economy can stomach a stronger currency, our analysis shows an economy competing on value rather than price has more pricing power and therefore the greater ability to handle it. Vietnam mostly competes on price; as such, the country has, more than once, engaged in competitive devaluation. At the other end of the spectrum in emerging markets may be China: having allowed its low-end industries to move to lower cost countries, China increasingly competes on value. Within Asia, we believe the more advanced economies have the best potential to allow their currencies to appreciate. It’s not surprising to us that China’s Renminbi just recently reached a 19-year high versus the dollar.

What we have little sympathy for is an advanced economy, e.g. the U.S., competing on price. We very much doubt the day will come when we export sneakers to Vietnam. As such, a weak dollar only provides the illusion of strength with exports temporarily boosted. Yet the potential side effects, from inflation to the sale of assets to foreign investors with strong currencies, may not be worth the risk.

Please register to join us as we discuss winners and losers of the unfolding currency wars in our Webinar this Thursday, October 18, 2012.

Axel Merk is President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments
Merk Investments, Manager of the Merk Funds.

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Japan Joins The QE Race – Who Can Print The Most Money?

September 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

After what appeared to be a coordinated effort by Europe and the U.S. to print their way to prosperity, Japan quickly joined the race to eternal QE with the surprise announcement of additional monetary easing.

TOKYO—The Bank of Japan took surprisingly strong steps to further ease its monetary policy on Wednesday, following similar steps by the Federal Reserve, as it tries to tackle entrenched deflation, an export-sapping strong yen and the impact of slowing global growth.

The central bank’s policy board decided at the end of a two-day meeting to increase the size of its asset-purchase program—the main tool for monetary easing with near-zero interest rates—to ¥80 trillion ($1.01 trillion) from ¥70 trillion.

The move came after the Fed introduced another round of quantitative easing last week, which put renewed upward pressure on the yen.

“These measures in pursuit of powerful monetary easing will make financial conditions for such economic entities as firms and households even more accommodative by further encouraging a decline in longer-term market interest rates and a reduction in risk premiums,” the central bank said in a statement released together with the rate decision.

Board members voted unanimously to expand the scope of the asset-purchase program. The BOJ also decided to leave its policy rate, or the unsecured overnight call loan rate, unchanged in a 0.0%-0.1% range.

Japan has been in an endless loop of money printing ever since stocks and real estate crashed in the early 1990’s after one of the biggest financial bubbles in history.  Twenty years of quantitative easing and monetary stimulus have resulted in stagnant wages, the largest debt to GDP ratio in the world and a stock market that is still off 75% from its high.  Except for printing additional money, Japan seems flat out of options for reviving its economy.

Courtesy yahoo finance

Does anyone really expect this desperation tactic to cure Japan’s problems?

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Fed’s Open Ended Money Printing Will Destroy The Purchasing Power Of U.S. Dollar

September 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

By Axel Merk

May we suggest a Twitter version of today’s FOMC statement: “Don’t worry, be happy! ” – No, the economic outlook hasn’t improved. In fact, the Fed may want you to take a valium to stomach the ride ahead. Alternatively, if you don’t get mollified by the Fed’s “communication strategy”, you may want to consider taking action to protect the purchasing power of your hard earned dollars.

Here’s the challenge: the Federal Reserve (Fed) wants to keep interest rates low across the yield curve (from short-term to long-term rates) to aid the economic recovery. But good economic data might send the bond market into a tailspin, i.e. raise long-term rates and thus cause massive headwinds to the economic recovery. We got a taste of how quickly the bond market can sell off earlier this year when the economy appeared to pick up some steam. Higher interest rates would further encourage the major deleveraging that market forces still warrant, not a desirable scenario from our understanding of Fed Chairman Bernanke’s thinking.

Engaging in further rounds of asset purchases (“Quantitative Easing”, “QE3”, “QEn+1”) may alleviate some of those upward pressures on interest rates, but the moment a program is announced, the market prices it in and looks ahead, threatening to mitigate any lasting impact of QEn+1. Picture the Fed as trying to hold a carrot in front of the donkey, well, market, to make us believe another stimulus is coming, without actually giving it. That way, the Fed can print less money to achieve its goals. The Fed calls it communication strategy.

Some have suggested a more open-ended approach to asset purchases. But that would likely come with some sort of guidance as to when to stop it, such as when a certain level of unemployment or nominal growth is reached. Given that everything Bernanke has done has been signaled well ahead of time (the blogosphere is full of the “best kept secret”, the likelihood of more QE), introducing a completely new concept is rather un-Bernanke-ish. You may not agree with Bernanke, but as an investor please don’t act surprised.

In recently released FOMC minutes, the Fed tells us that it might communicate to the market that rates may remain low even as the economy recovers. Bingo! We have long argued that Bernanke considered the early monetary tightening during the Great Depression as a grave mistake, as it undid all the “progress” that had been achieved. But more to the point, the Fed needs to get our attention away from the economy. By keeping the link to the economy, the Fed will always struggle to keep the upper hand on the bond market. So forget about the carrot: we need valium, not carrots. By communicating with the market that rates will remain low independent of how the economy might perform, the bond market just might not be selling off as aggressively as economic growth picks up.

That’s exactly the path we believe the Fed is going to go down. It will be interesting, however, to see what the Fed’s explanation will be. We doubt they will use the valium analogy. Some Fed watchers would like to see a nominal GDP target or something similar, but don’t bet your donkey on Bernanke going that far.

The basic challenge is – and we are interpreting here as we don’t think the Fed or any central banker in office would ever frame it this way: the Fed wants to have inflation, wants to move the price level higher to bail out home owners, wants to push up nominal wages, and wants to push up nominal GDP to make the debt burden more bearable. But the Fed doesn’t want the market to price in inflation, as that would push interest rates up.

That’s why we may be heading ever more into the “Land of Make-Believe.” But as investors enjoy their valium, the U.S. dollar is at risk of melting away under their feet. Drugged up, we are too busy laughing at Greece and doling out advice to Europe to notice that our “don’t worry, be happy” approach might lead to rather unhappy purchasing power. If you think you are above the fray, let me just ask whether you have watched the euro in recent months? As of late, that perceived weakling of a currency appears to be giving the greenback a run for its money. We are not suggesting that investors dump their U.S. dollars and exchange them all for euros. However, we would like to encourage investors to consider embracing currency risk, for example through a managed basket of currencies, as a way to manage the risk posed to the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. Adding currency exposure to a portfolio may have valuable diversification benefits.

Some sympathize with the ever greater complexity of monetary activism around the world. But it’s really rather simple: there’s too much debt in the world. To deal with the debt, countries may deflate, default or inflate. In the US, we have what both Bernanke and his predecessor Greenspan have called the printing press; as such, so their argument goes, the U.S. dollar is safe – in nominal terms at least. Greece is not capable of procuring valium, which creates a different set of challenges. But stop pitying Greece and consider taking action to protect your purchasing power at home.

Please sign up to our newsletter to be informed as we discuss global dynamics and their impact on gold and currencies. You can also engage with me directly at Twitter.com/AxelMerk where I provide real-time updates on the economy, currencies, and global dynamics..

Axel Merk
President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments
Merk Investments, Manager of the Merk Funds

Filed Under: Bullion Sales, Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fed’s Easy Money Policies Will Continue – Why Bernanke Must Err On The Side Of Inflation

August 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

By Axel Merk

To print or not to print? Odds are that Fed Chairman Bernanke has been contemplating this question while drafting his upcoming Jackson Hole speech. The one good thing about policy makers worldwide is that they may be fairly predictable. As such, we present our crystal ball as to what the Fed might be up to next, and what the implications may be for the U.S. dollar and gold.

First off, we may be exaggerating: on process rather than substance, though. That is, Bernanke isn’t just thinking about whether to print or not to print as he is sitting down to draft his speech. Instead, he considers himself a student of the Great Depression and has been pondering policy responses to a credit bust for some time. Consider the following:

  • Bernanke has argued that going off the gold standard during the Great Depression helped the U.S. recover faster from the Great Depression than countries that held on to the gold standard for longer.
    • Bernanke is correct: subject to many risks, debasing a currency (which going off the gold standard was) can boost nominal growth. Think of it this way: if the government takes your purchasing power away, you have a greater incentive to work. Not exactly the mandate of a central bank, though.
    • Note by the way that by implication, countries that hold on to the gold standard invite a lot of pain, but have stronger currencies. Fast forward to today and compare the U.S. to Europe. While neither country is on the gold standard, the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has increased more in percentage terms than that of the European Central Bank since the onset of the financial crisis. Using a central bank’s balance sheet as a proxy for the amount of money that has been “printed”, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the Eurozone experiences substantial pain, but the Euro has been comparatively resilient.
    • Possibly the most important implication: Bernanke considers the value of the U.S. dollar a monetary policy tool. When we have argued in the past that Bernanke might be actively working to weaken the U.S. dollar, it is because of comments such as this one. This is obviously our interpretation of his comments; a central banker rarely says that their currency is too strong, although such comments have increasingly been made by central bankers around the world as those pursuing sounder monetary policy have their economies suffer from competitive devaluations elsewhere.
  • Bernanke has argued that one of the biggest mistakes during the Great Depression was that monetary policy was tightened too early. Here’s the problem: in a credit bust, central banks try to stem against the flow. If market forces were to play out, the washout would be severe and swift. Those in favor of central bank intervention argue that it would be too painful and that more businesses than needed would fail, the hardship imposed on the people is too much. Those against central bank intervention point out that creative destruction is what makes capitalism work; the faster the adjustment is, even if extremely painful, the better, as the recovery is healthier and stronger.
    • If the policy choice is to react to a credit bust with accommodative monetary policy, fighting market forces, and then such accommodation is removed too early, the “progress” achieved may be rapidly undone.
    • We are faced with the same challenge today: if monetary accommodation were removed at this stage (interest rates raised, liquidity mopped up), there’s a risk that the economy plunges right back down into recession, if not a deflationary spiral. As such, when Bernanke claimed the Fed could raise rates in 15 minutes, we think it is a mere theoretical possibility. In fact, we believe that the framework in which the Fed is thinking, it must err on the side of inflation.

Of course no central banker in office would likely ever agree with the assessment that the Fed might want to err on the side of inflation. But consider the most recent FOMC minutes that read:

  • An extension [of a commitment to keep interest rates low] might be particularly effective if done in conjunction with a statement indicating that a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy was likely to be maintained even as the recovery progressed

As the FOMC minutes were released three weeks after the FOMC meeting, many pundits dismissed them as “stale”; after all, the economy had somewhat improved since the meeting. Indeed, it wasn’t just pundits: some more hawkish Fed officials promoted that view as well. But to make clear who is calling the shots, Bernanke wrote in a letter dated August 22 (the same date the FOMC minutes were released) to California Republican Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: “There is scope for further action by the Federal Reserve to ease financial conditions and strengthen the recovery.” Various news organizations credited the faltering of an incipient U.S. dollar rally on August 24 with the publication of this Bernanke letter.

For good order’s sake, we should clarify that the Fed doesn’t actually print money. Indeed, printing physical currency is not considered very effective; instead, liquidity is injected into the banking system: the Fed increases the credit balances of financial institutions in accounts held with the Fed in return for buying securities from them. Because of fractional reserve banking rules, the ‘liquidity’ provided through this action can lead to a high multiple in loans. In practice, one of the frustrations of the Fed has been that loan growth has not been boosted as much as the Fed would have hoped. When we, and Bernanke himself for that matter, have referred to the Fed’s “printing press” in this context, referring to money that has been “printed”, it’s the growth in the balance sheet at the Federal Reserve. That’s because the Fed’s resources are not constrained; it’s simply an accounting entry to pay for a security purchased; that security is now on the Fed’s balance sheet, hence the ‘growth’ in the Fed’s balance sheet.

Frankly, we are not too concerned about the environment we are in. At least not as concerned as we are about the environment we might be in down the road: that’s because we simply don’t see how all the liquidity can be mopped up in a timely manner when needed. At some point, some of this money is going to ‘stick’. Even if Bernanke wanted to, we very much doubt he could raise rates in 15 minutes. To us, it means the time for investors to act may be now. However, talking with both existing and former Fed officials, they don’t seem terribly concerned about this risk. Then again Fed officials have rarely been accused of being too far sighted. We are concerned because just a little bit of tightening has a much bigger effect in an economy that is highly leveraged. Importantly, we don’t need the Fed to tighten: as the sharp selloff in the bond market earlier this year (and the recent more benign selloff) have shown, as soon as the market prices in a recovery, headwinds to economic activity increase as bond yields are rising. That’s why Bernanke emphasizes “communication strategy”, amongst others, to tell investors not to worry, rates will stay low for an extended period. This dance might get ever more challenging.

In some ways, Bernanke is an open book. In his ‘helicopter Ben’ speech a decade ago, he laid out the tools he would employ when faced with a collapse in aggregate demand (the credit bust we have had). He has deployed just about all tools from his toolbox, except for the purchase of foreign government bonds; recently, he shed cold water on that politically dicey option. Then two years ago, in Jackson Hole, Bernanke provided an update, specifying three options:

  • To expand the Fed’s holdings of longer-term securities
  • To ease financial conditions through communications
  • To lower the interest rate the Fed pays on bank reserves to possibly 10 basis points or zero.

We have not seen the third option implemented, but the Fed might be discouraged from the experience at the European Central Bank: cutting rates too close to zero might discourage intra-bank lending and cause havoc in the money markets.

As such, expect Bernanke to give an update on his toolbox in Jackson Hole. The stakes are high as even doves at the Fed believe further easing might not be all that effective and could possibly cause more side effects (read: inflation). As such, we expect him to provide a framework as to why and how the Fed might be acting, and why we should trust the Fed that it won’t allow inflation to become a problem. For investors that aren’t quite as confident that the Fed can pull things off without inducing inflation, they may want to consider adding gold or a managed basket of currencies to mitigate the risk to the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.

Please sign up to our newsletter to be informed as we discuss global dynamics and their impact on gold and currencies. Please also follow me on Twitter to receive real-time updates on the economy, currencies, and global dynamics.

Axel Merk
President and Chief Investment Officer, Merk Investments
Merk Investments, Manager of the Merk Funds

Filed Under: Currency debasement, Featured, Gold, US Debt Crisis Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,