with special thanks to Jeremy Grantham of GMO





with special thanks to Jeremy Grantham of GMO





with some commentary from Gonzago Lira
See, how come I don’t look as cool
when I make my predictions?
(snip)"Zero Hedge had a justifiable freak-out over the NY Fed asking Primary Dealers for their thoughts on the size of QE2. According to Bloomberg, the NY Fed was asking the dealers how big they thought QE2 would be, and how big they thought it ought be: $250 billion? $500 billion? A trillion? A trillion every six months? (Or as Tyler pointed out, $2 trillion for 2011.)
That’s like asking a bunch of junkies how much smack they want for the upcoming year—half a kilo? A full kilo? Two kilos?
What the hell you think the junkies are gonna say?
Between BK’s clear reading of the tea leaves coming from the Wall Street Journal, and TD’s also very clear reading of the tea leaves by way of Bloomberg, you’re getting a seriously contradictory message: The Fed is going to lightly tap-tap-tap liquidity into the markets—just a little—just a few hundred billion dollars at a time—
—while at the same time, the Fed is saying to the Primary Dealers, “We’re gonna make you guys happy-happy-happy with a righteously sized QE2!”
The contradictory messages don’t pacify the financial markets—on the contrary, they make the markets simultaneously contemptuous of Bernanke and the Fed, while very frightened as to what they will ultimately do.
What happens when the financial markets don’t really know what the central bank is going to do, and suspect that the central bankers themselves aren’t too clear either?
Guess.
So to sum up, we have:
• Rising commodity prices, the effects of which (because of hedging) will be felt most severely in the period January–March of 2011.
• A beggar-thy-neighbor race-to-the-bottom Currency War, that might well devolve into a Trade War, which would force up prices on imported goods.
• A Federal Reserve that does not seem to know what it is doing, as regards another round of Quantitative Easing, which is making the financial markets very nervous—nervous about the Fed’s ultimate responsibility, which is safeguarding the U.S. dollar.
• A U.S. economy that is weak to the point of collapse, where not even 0.25% interest rates are sparking investment and growth—and which therefore prohibits the Fed from raising interest rates, if need be.
• A U.S. fiscal deficit which is close to 10% of GDP annually, and which is therefore unsustainable—especially considering that the total U.S. fiscal debt is well over 100% of GDP.
These factors all point to one and the same thing:
An imminent currency collapse.
Therefore, I am confident in predicting the following sequence of events:
• By March of 2011, once higher commodity prices reach the marketplace, monthly CPI will be at an annualized rate of not less than 5%.
• By July of 2011, annualized CPI will be no less than 8% annualized.
• By October of 2011, annualized CPI will have crossed 10%.
• By March of 2012, annualized CPI will cross the hyperinflationary tipping point of 15%.
After that, CPI will rapidly increase, much like it did in 1980.
What the mainstream commentariat will make of all this will be really something: When CPI reaches 5% by the winter of 2011, pundits and economists and the Fed and the Obama administration will all say the same thing: “Happy days are here again! People are spending! The economy is back on track!”
However, by the late spring, early summer of 2011, people will realize what’s going on—and the Federal Reserve will initially be unwilling to drastically raise interest rates so as to quell inflation.
Actually, the Fed won’t be able to raise rates, at least not like Volcker did back in 1980: The U.S. economy will be too weak, and the Federal government’s balance sheet will be too distressed, with it’s $1.5 trillion deficit. So at first, the Fed will have to let the rising inflation rate slide, and keep trying hard to explain it away as “a sign of a recovering economy”.
Once the Fed realizes that the rising CPI is not a sign of a reignited economy, but rather a sign of the collapsing dollar, they will pursue a puerile “inflation fighting” scheme of incremental interest rate hikes—much like G. William Miller, the Chairman of the Fed from January of ‘78 to August of ‘79, pursued so unsuccessfully.
2012 will be the bad year: I predict that hyperinflation’s tipping point will be no later than the first quarter of 2012. From there, it will accelerate. By the end of 2012, I would not be surprised if the CPI for the year averaged 30%.
By that point, the rest of the economy—unemployment, GDP, all the rest of it—will be in the toilet. By that point, the rest of the economy will no longer matter: The collapsing dollar will make 2012 the really really bad year of our Global Depression—which is actually kind of funny"(snip)
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