5 ms·

Why the dollar is going to collapse

jwb119 17y ago
i think the point here is that for the first time in quite a while the dollar has a legitimate _chance_ at hitting a doomsday scenario. whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but the odds are greater than they have been historically. keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency..
- nostrademons 17y ago
  "i think the point here is that for the first time in quite a while the dollar has a legitimate _chance_ at hitting a doomsday scenario. whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but the odds are greater than they have been historically." The odd thing is that for most of that time period, there were always folks saying that we not only had a chance of hitting the doomsday scenario, it was virtually certain. The first time I encountered people saying that the Fed was destroying the money supply and we would all be doomed to hyperinflation and a survivalist existence, it was 1991 and I was 10 years old (it probably would've been earlier, but my dad wouldn't let me read his newsletters before then). And folks were certain it would happen by the end of Clinton's first year in office...no wait, by 1997...no, at the Millenium...no, by 2005...no, by fall of 2006...no, 2007 will surely be it...YES, finally it's 2008 and the world's falling apart, except it's going to get a lot worse by 2010! Kinda like the boy who cried wolf. "keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency.." Then why did it deflate so much from 1929-1932, or inflate so much from 1932-1937?
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  "keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency" Sure there was. Gold as currency is just as susceptible to instability as anything else, as a simple thought experiment can show. Consider that the supply of gold, though growing, grows extremely slowly. The supply of goods and services which are exchanged in economic transactions (and for which currency acts as a proxy), however, goes through great spurts of growth which the supply of gold cannot hope to match. Thus, a gold standard during such a spurt can only lead to widespread deflation (as would any currency which failed to keep pace with the quantity of goods and services it must stand in for). I really don't know why people harbor this mystical belief that a shiny piece of metal is somehow immune to well-understood economic principles.
  - gnaritas 17y ago
    > I really don't know why people harbor this mystical belief that a shiny piece of metal is somehow immune to well-understood economic principles. Because thinking is hard.
- trevelyan 17y ago
  Gold was the transmission mechanism for international deflation during the Great Depression. Recovery started in country after country roughly six months after abandoning the gold standard. Countries which depreciated/unpegged their currencies recovered much faster. Large sample regressions with graphs, detailed timelines and other supporting data in Eichengreen's Golden Fetters.
socratees 17y ago
I just hear it everywhere. I'm sure the whole world has too much at stake if US Dollar loses its value. The economy might stagflate for a while, but I believe it will eventually recover. After all, USA is the largest economy in the world.
- fleitz 17y ago
  What special property does having the largest economy in the world have against it collapsing through the application of poor economic theory? I would hazard a guess that Zimbabwe has massive inflation because of the Mugabe school of economic thought rather than because it is a small economy.
  - swombat 17y ago
    Things like "economies" work by practical consensus rather than by theory. The dollar has the value that we all agree it has.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The USA does not have the largest economy in the world by far: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Nominal_GDP_IMF_2008_millions_of_USD.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Nominal_G...
  - socratees 17y ago
    But technically EU isn't a country right?
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      Technically US states are sovereign too :) ...and really, if you looked at the US states as separate economies you'd see many glaring dichotomies that would make you wonder how it can be considered a single economic entity. No, Europe's not a country, but it behaves like one for trade and currency purposes and has no internal tariffs. Nor can Germany (for example) impose a tariff separately from the EU. So in this context, the EU might as well be a country.
jacquesm 17y ago
I looked through your submissions and the other pages on that blog for a bit, interesting collection. Stuff that matters indeed. In the interest of full disclosure, do you still hold dollars or have you completely converted to gold now ?
- biohacker42 17y ago
  More like sensationalist doomsday headline stuff.
- barrkel 17y ago
  Of course, in the case of a true doomsday situation, gold will also inflate - people will be desperate, and increasing amounts of gold required to get anywhere. Without a functioning economy, everything is scarce => expensive.
  - fatdog789 17y ago
    I have a gun. You have gold. Which do you think is more valuable? Force trumps money, currency, and metal. In a true doomsday situation, the guy with the gun will always have more in the bank than the guy with the gold.
    - BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
      Yeah, but gold can buy you not only guns, but people with guns.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      Using force to extort people usually ends badly, except for dictators at the top of the chain. You will never find security in weapons.
      - fatdog789 17y ago
        This isn't about using force to extort, this is about using force during an end-of-the-world situation.
derobert 17y ago
The Fed now pays interest on reserves (new as of last fall). When the Fed wants to pull that money out, it can (1) raise the interest rate on reserves, thus encouraging banks to hold the reserves and (2) sell the assets it bought to raise the monetary base. Looking at, for example, the current yield on treasuries shows very little inflation expectations.
- bitdiddle 17y ago
  the gap between treasuries and TIPS is growing nicely, signally at least inflationary expectations
biohacker42 17y ago
I am sure we'll see increased inflation, will it go as high as it did in the 70s-80s maybe. But this article is claiming the sky is falling. Oooh look scary charts, never mind what velocity of money is or how it works, or that the Fed can increase AND decrease the money supply, just look at those scary charts!
- stuffthatmatter 17y ago
  You believe the same Fed that gave bankers billions of dollars and is actively working against congress to be audited, is going to 'decrease the money supply', ignore our huge debt and save us all? You are drinking alot of government kool-aid. Keep watching CNBC.
  - asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
    Do you know what hyper inflation does to banks?
rwolf 17y ago
This "flying up impossibly at the last minute" is a feature of graphs of national debt (http://images.google.com/images?q=national+debt http://images.google.com/images?q=national+debt), but it's also a feature of graphs of US furniture sales. I'm not saying the US dollar is fine. I'm just tired of people using this kind of graph to try to make a point.
anigbrowl 17y ago
You seem obsessed with this topic, but I question the quality of your sources and analysis. Of course if there were an exponential rise in money supply or similar absent a different fiscal, monetary and regulatory climate then this would be deeply alarming. But I feel you're making a meta-version of the same mistake many economists did, of over-extrapolating from a short trend. Massive policy changes inevitably result in discontinuities of quantitative data, so it's a mistake to apply the trend which obtained up to the discontinuity to the new discontinuity. To take an oft-used metaphor, suppose the economy is a car or truck and money supply is one part of the steering system. If you notice you're heading for a crash, well you're going to spin the wheel hard or slam on the brakes - there's your discontinuity. The path of the car, on the other hand (which is GDP), will change more slowly. And once you've observed that the new course takes you out of immediate danger, you can then moderate the control system which you had drastically changed. In other words, slamming on the brakes (or accelerating out of danger, or swerving - adjust your metaphor to taste) does not in itself damage the car, but aims to substantially alter its vector. In the bigger picture, addressing the question of whether the US economy will be in the toilet or at least near to it for years to come, of course it will. Just as the unpleasant effects of a hangover can often go on longer than the drinking party which induced it, so it will take time to unwind and recover from the serious structural imbalances of recent years. Obviously, I have a more sanguine view of this process than you do, as I believe it will still be possible for opportunity and growth to take place in the US. If you find my view dangerously laid-back, I guess the appropriate thing for you would be to invest heavily in defense contractors and raw materials.
- Confusion 17y ago
  Of course if there were an exponential rise in money supply Then it still wouldn't matter. Some things only make sense when they are plotted on a log or log-log scale. These graphs are pointless.
- stuffthatmatter 17y ago
  there's one incorrect logic in your statement: You assume US can just slam on the brakes and the brakes would stop the car completely. When in fact, with the massive amount of baby boomers retiring/draining SS and medicare, the disappearance of our manufacturing sectors, the increasing commodity (food, oil) prices, and the need to pay back 100T+ debt owed to foreign countries and to ourselves, I suggest that it is impossible.
angusdavis 17y ago
I am not saying inflation should not be a serious concern, however the article fails to mention that the Fed changed the rules so they can now pay interest on these reserves. That's a massive change in law and policy and is the Fed's primary answer to articles like this one, so it's weird the author completely misses that point. Here's what FRB NY's Dudley said this week - from Reuters article: "Dudley argued that the Fed's large and growing balance sheet is nothing that prevents the Fed from controlling inflation once the economy corrects. 'It is not the case that our expanded balance sheet will inevitably prove inflationary,' he said. Specifically, Dudley said the Fed's new ability to pay interest on excess reserves is a critical tool it uses to keep banks from lending these reserves and thereby creating new credit and boosting inflation. 'Thus, through the IOER rate (interest on excess reserves), the Federal Reserve can effectively retain control of monetary policy,' he said, noting that the Fed can increase the IOER rate if banks begin to find it more profitable to lend these reserves." http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/07/29/afx6714000.html http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/07/29/afx6714000.html
northwind 17y ago
As an interesting (as in "odd") exercise, go to the root node of the blog (http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/ http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/) and notice the phrase "Curse of Maturin Towers". After asking yourself "WTF does that mean?", do a Google search for the aforementioned phrase (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Curse+of+Maturin+Towers http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Curse+of+Maturin+Towers); hmm, no useful results (that is, we could not find a definition). Now do a Google search for "Maturin Towers" as an exact phrase (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Maturin+Towers http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Maturin+Towers) and notice we have 300+ hits for a rather odd exact phrase; all of which point to, or are directly related to, the AngloAustria blog (http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/ http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/). Could this be an well crafted SEO blog designed to tell people what they want to hear?
- reedlaw 17y ago
  That sounds more like a Goolgewack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack) than good SEO. How would a blog benefit from using a keyword no one searches for?
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Well, the blog is authored by one 'Jack Maturin'. And referring to one's residence as '(Lastname) Towers' is a popular comic trope among Brits. 'Curse of Maturin Towers' has all the romance and implied danger of a Sherlock Holmes story, but stems from his rueful discovery that a confident prediction has turned out completely wrong shortly after he made it. An American would mention Murphy's Law, without meaning to imply there was ever a legislator named Murphy who went around causing things to fail.
davidmathers 17y ago
Flagged for linking to an ignorant econo-crank.
billswift 17y ago
The OP made a point of mentioning the potential effects of fractional reserve banking, but apparently "forgot" to mention that the Fed can raise reserve requirements any time it wants to reduce the effects the OP is concerned about.

i think the point here is that for the first time in quite a while the dollar has a legitimate _chance_ at hitting a doomsday scenario. whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but the odds are greater than they have been historically. keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency..

nostrademons 17y ago
"i think the point here is that for the first time in quite a while the dollar has a legitimate _chance_ at hitting a doomsday scenario. whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but the odds are greater than they have been historically." The odd thing is that for most of that time period, there were always folks saying that we not only had a chance of hitting the doomsday scenario, it was virtually certain. The first time I encountered people saying that the Fed was destroying the money supply and we would all be doomed to hyperinflation and a survivalist existence, it was 1991 and I was 10 years old (it probably would've been earlier, but my dad wouldn't let me read his newsletters before then). And folks were certain it would happen by the end of Clinton's first year in office...no wait, by 1997...no, at the Millenium...no, by 2005...no, by fall of 2006...no, 2007 will surely be it...YES, finally it's 2008 and the world's falling apart, except it's going to get a lot worse by 2010! Kinda like the boy who cried wolf. "keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency.." Then why did it deflate so much from 1929-1932, or inflate so much from 1932-1937?
ubernostrum 17y ago
"keep in mind that during the depression we were on the gold standard, thus there was none of the inflationary/deflationary risk of a fiat currency" Sure there was. Gold as currency is just as susceptible to instability as anything else, as a simple thought experiment can show. Consider that the supply of gold, though growing, grows extremely slowly. The supply of goods and services which are exchanged in economic transactions (and for which currency acts as a proxy), however, goes through great spurts of growth which the supply of gold cannot hope to match. Thus, a gold standard during such a spurt can only lead to widespread deflation (as would any currency which failed to keep pace with the quantity of goods and services it must stand in for). I really don't know why people harbor this mystical belief that a shiny piece of metal is somehow immune to well-understood economic principles.
- gnaritas 17y ago
  > I really don't know why people harbor this mystical belief that a shiny piece of metal is somehow immune to well-understood economic principles. Because thinking is hard.
trevelyan 17y ago
Gold was the transmission mechanism for international deflation during the Great Depression. Recovery started in country after country roughly six months after abandoning the gold standard. Countries which depreciated/unpegged their currencies recovered much faster. Large sample regressions with graphs, detailed timelines and other supporting data in Eichengreen's Golden Fetters.

socratees 17y ago

I just hear it everywhere. I'm sure the whole world has too much at stake if US Dollar loses its value. The economy might stagflate for a while, but I believe it will eventually recover. After all, USA is the largest economy in the world.

fleitz 17y ago
What special property does having the largest economy in the world have against it collapsing through the application of poor economic theory? I would hazard a guess that Zimbabwe has massive inflation because of the Mugabe school of economic thought rather than because it is a small economy.
- swombat 17y ago
  Things like "economies" work by practical consensus rather than by theory. The dollar has the value that we all agree it has.
jacquesm 17y ago
The USA does not have the largest economy in the world by far: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Nominal_GDP_IMF_2008_millions_of_USD.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Nominal_G...
- socratees 17y ago
  But technically EU isn't a country right?
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Technically US states are sovereign too :) ...and really, if you looked at the US states as separate economies you'd see many glaring dichotomies that would make you wonder how it can be considered a single economic entity. No, Europe's not a country, but it behaves like one for trade and currency purposes and has no internal tariffs. Nor can Germany (for example) impose a tariff separately from the EU. So in this context, the EU might as well be a country.

jacquesm 17y ago

I looked through your submissions and the other pages on that blog for a bit, interesting collection. Stuff that matters indeed. In the interest of full disclosure, do you still hold dollars or have you completely converted to gold now ?

biohacker42 17y ago
More like sensationalist doomsday headline stuff.
barrkel 17y ago
Of course, in the case of a true doomsday situation, gold will also inflate - people will be desperate, and increasing amounts of gold required to get anywhere. Without a functioning economy, everything is scarce => expensive.
- fatdog789 17y ago
  I have a gun. You have gold. Which do you think is more valuable? Force trumps money, currency, and metal. In a true doomsday situation, the guy with the gun will always have more in the bank than the guy with the gold.
  - BrentRitterbeck 17y ago
    Yeah, but gold can buy you not only guns, but people with guns.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    Using force to extort people usually ends badly, except for dictators at the top of the chain. You will never find security in weapons.
    - fatdog789 17y ago
      This isn't about using force to extort, this is about using force during an end-of-the-world situation.

derobert 17y ago

The Fed now pays interest on reserves (new as of last fall). When the Fed wants to pull that money out, it can (1) raise the interest rate on reserves, thus encouraging banks to hold the reserves and (2) sell the assets it bought to raise the monetary base. Looking at, for example, the current yield on treasuries shows very little inflation expectations.

bitdiddle 17y ago
the gap between treasuries and TIPS is growing nicely, signally at least inflationary expectations

biohacker42 17y ago

I am sure we'll see increased inflation, will it go as high as it did in the 70s-80s maybe. But this article is claiming the sky is falling. Oooh look scary charts, never mind what velocity of money is or how it works, or that the Fed can increase AND decrease the money supply, just look at those scary charts!

stuffthatmatter 17y ago
You believe the same Fed that gave bankers billions of dollars and is actively working against congress to be audited, is going to 'decrease the money supply', ignore our huge debt and save us all? You are drinking alot of government kool-aid. Keep watching CNBC.
- asdlfj2sd33 17y ago
  Do you know what hyper inflation does to banks?

rwolf 17y ago

This "flying up impossibly at the last minute" is a feature of graphs of national debt (http://images.google.com/images?q=national+debt http://images.google.com/images?q=national+debt), but it's also a feature of graphs of US furniture sales. I'm not saying the US dollar is fine. I'm just tired of people using this kind of graph to try to make a point.

anigbrowl 17y ago

You seem obsessed with this topic, but I question the quality of your sources and analysis. Of course if there were an exponential rise in money supply or similar absent a different fiscal, monetary and regulatory climate then this would be deeply alarming. But I feel you're making a meta-version of the same mistake many economists did, of over-extrapolating from a short trend. Massive policy changes inevitably result in discontinuities of quantitative data, so it's a mistake to apply the trend which obtained up to the discontinuity to the new discontinuity. To take an oft-used metaphor, suppose the economy is a car or truck and money supply is one part of the steering system. If you notice you're heading for a crash, well you're going to spin the wheel hard or slam on the brakes - there's your discontinuity. The path of the car, on the other hand (which is GDP), will change more slowly. And once you've observed that the new course takes you out of immediate danger, you can then moderate the control system which you had drastically changed. In other words, slamming on the brakes (or accelerating out of danger, or swerving - adjust your metaphor to taste) does not in itself damage the car, but aims to substantially alter its vector. In the bigger picture, addressing the question of whether the US economy will be in the toilet or at least near to it for years to come, of course it will. Just as the unpleasant effects of a hangover can often go on longer than the drinking party which induced it, so it will take time to unwind and recover from the serious structural imbalances of recent years. Obviously, I have a more sanguine view of this process than you do, as I believe it will still be possible for opportunity and growth to take place in the US. If you find my view dangerously laid-back, I guess the appropriate thing for you would be to invest heavily in defense contractors and raw materials.

Confusion 17y ago
Of course if there were an exponential rise in money supply Then it still wouldn't matter. Some things only make sense when they are plotted on a log or log-log scale. These graphs are pointless.
stuffthatmatter 17y ago
there's one incorrect logic in your statement: You assume US can just slam on the brakes and the brakes would stop the car completely. When in fact, with the massive amount of baby boomers retiring/draining SS and medicare, the disappearance of our manufacturing sectors, the increasing commodity (food, oil) prices, and the need to pay back 100T+ debt owed to foreign countries and to ourselves, I suggest that it is impossible.

angusdavis 17y ago

I am not saying inflation should not be a serious concern, however the article fails to mention that the Fed changed the rules so they can now pay interest on these reserves. That's a massive change in law and policy and is the Fed's primary answer to articles like this one, so it's weird the author completely misses that point. Here's what FRB NY's Dudley said this week - from Reuters article: "Dudley argued that the Fed's large and growing balance sheet is nothing that prevents the Fed from controlling inflation once the economy corrects. 'It is not the case that our expanded balance sheet will inevitably prove inflationary,' he said. Specifically, Dudley said the Fed's new ability to pay interest on excess reserves is a critical tool it uses to keep banks from lending these reserves and thereby creating new credit and boosting inflation. 'Thus, through the IOER rate (interest on excess reserves), the Federal Reserve can effectively retain control of monetary policy,' he said, noting that the Fed can increase the IOER rate if banks begin to find it more profitable to lend these reserves." http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/07/29/afx6714000.html http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/07/29/afx6714000.html

northwind 17y ago

As an interesting (as in "odd") exercise, go to the root node of the blog (http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/ http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/) and notice the phrase "Curse of Maturin Towers". After asking yourself "WTF does that mean?", do a Google search for the aforementioned phrase (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Curse+of+Maturin+Towers http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Curse+of+Maturin+Towers); hmm, no useful results (that is, we could not find a definition). Now do a Google search for "Maturin Towers" as an exact phrase (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Maturin+Towers http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=Maturin+Towers) and notice we have 300+ hits for a rather odd exact phrase; all of which point to, or are directly related to, the AngloAustria blog (http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/ http://angloaustria.blogspot.com/). Could this be an well crafted SEO blog designed to tell people what they want to hear?

reedlaw 17y ago
That sounds more like a Goolgewack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack) than good SEO. How would a blog benefit from using a keyword no one searches for?
anigbrowl 17y ago
Well, the blog is authored by one 'Jack Maturin'. And referring to one's residence as '(Lastname) Towers' is a popular comic trope among Brits. 'Curse of Maturin Towers' has all the romance and implied danger of a Sherlock Holmes story, but stems from his rueful discovery that a confident prediction has turned out completely wrong shortly after he made it. An American would mention Murphy's Law, without meaning to imply there was ever a legislator named Murphy who went around causing things to fail.

davidmathers 17y ago

Flagged for linking to an ignorant econo-crank.

billswift 17y ago

The OP made a point of mentioning the potential effects of fractional reserve banking, but apparently "forgot" to mention that the Fed can raise reserve requirements any time it wants to reduce the effects the OP is concerned about.