Inflation Leaves Investors Little Choice
Inflation Leaves Investors Little Choice
Kurt Kasun
May 30, 2008
The peaceful co-existence between commodity-related investments and most sectors which comprise the broader US Stock indices, is drawing to a close. As inflation tightens its grip over the world economy, US treasuries and stocks (consumer-related, tech, and financials) will suffer while investments in tangible assets will see their gains accelerate higher. I consider the terms “inflation” and “currency debasement” to be largely synonymous. The bottom line is that purchasing power is going to drastically decline. Income and wealth is not going to keep up with rising prices for goods and services for the US consumer. Hard asset investments will emerge as the sole safe haven against the deleterious effects of inflation.
I find it amazing that the majority of pundits and advisors in the financial media are still peddling tech and financial investments. Most of these guys who proclaim commodities are in a bubble are merely trying to persuade their audience to invest in US stocks. “A bet against the American consumer has been a bad bet for 25 years” is a popular refrain. Well, 25 years of living beyond our means to consume is going to have ugly consequences. The government’s highly inflationary and currency-devaluing policies heretofore created asset bubbles, the over-flow of which created a wealth effect that positively impacted consumption and GDP. The problem was that the numbers masked the rot which was occurring in the real economy. Incentives created asset growth and dependency at the expense of investment in this country’s productive capacity in tangible goods. Austrian economists refer to this as mal-investment. Inflation is the inevitable outcome, even in a US-centric world. But things have changed. We are on the brink of massive global inflation, the likes of which the world has never seen. In the recent edition of The Economist magazine an article titled “Inflation’s Back” observes, “Loose money in American and rigid exchange rates in emerging markets are a perilous mix.”
In today’s globally-synchronizes world, the same Economist article insightfully informs:
Now that this bubble has burst, the cross-border monetary stimulus has changed direction. As the Fed has cut interest rates, emerging economies that link their currencies to the dollar have been forced to run a looser monetary policy, even though their economies are overheating. Emerging economies with currencies most closely aligned to the dollar, notably in Asia and the Gulf, have seen the biggest price rises.
While the majority of Americans are waking up to inflation they do not fully comprehend its global nature and effect on commodity prices. They have yet to be converted to the bullish case for commodities. On the other hand, pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional funds are converting and Congress is not pleased. We are not a bubble. We are in the second phase of a multi-year commodity rally that began six or seven years ago. The first phase was marked by the early smart money trickling in. The second phase began in earnest last year when institutional money started to pour into passive index funds. The third phase is yet to occur and will be made obvious when thousands of mutual funds and other investment vehicles are created, and the individual investor, after finally losing faith in his tech and consumer stocks, capitulates and converts over to the commodity world. Or will it?
If Congress has its way, investments in commodities might be limited. Failures to scapegoat President Bush, OPEC, and the energy companies (though they still valiantly try) have forced them to point their cross-hairs on a new group of investors. They use the pejorative term “speculator” when describing this evil cohort. This is ridiculous and confirms that they either have no idea or interest in exploring the real causes of our current predicament. Any attempt to devise solutions without understanding the cause of problem is the height of ignorance and could have devastating consequences. Investors/speculators are moving into hard asset investments to protect themselves from the effects of the government’s harmful inflationary policies. The policies of our government have left us up a creek and not having the means to preserve our wealth by investing in non-paper assets would indeed take away our only paddle.
Are they trying to force us to continue to throw good money after bad by investing in financial stocks, US treasury paper, and other US stocks? Inflation visibly rearing its ugly head in plain view for even the most near-sighted Keynesian economist to see, despite the laughable grossly-distorted US government statistics, is quickly morphing into runaway freight train, threatening to destroy your purchasing power and value of your paper assets. As long as bonds and the US stock market (along with the housing market) were moving higher, the dramatic gains in commodity prices and related investments was tolerable. But now, we are beginning to witness flows out of US paper and into tangible assets.
Commodity investments, after five years of moving higher in tandem with the stock market, have resumed their more traditional inverse correlation. We are increasingly witnessing more days when commodity investments and the broader market move in opposite directions. Alarmingly, this might seem to be a positive development in the short run, if the US dollar extends its counter-trend rally to benefit of US paper and to the detriment of oil, grains, and other raw materials. This phenomenon would undoubtedly be short-lived and especially painful for those holding the false hope that it represents a major trend reversal.
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