Argentine inflation lessons for the U.S.

This is a rather long post, but it should prove of interest to all those worrying about the possibility of a non-transient and significant increase in U.S. inflation. I've drawn much of it from my previous posts on the subject of Argentina and inflation.

I first visited Argentina in 1970, when I spent my summer there visiting my soon-to-be wife. The country has intrigued, fascinated, and frustrated me ever since. In 1975 we decided to move there and I've been an avid student of monetary policy and inflation ever since. In 1976 we witnessed the military overthrow of the disastrous government of Isabel Perón. After a few years of "relative" stability under a military dictatorship, things began to deteriorate about a year or two after we returned to the States in 1979. Our timing couldn't have been better. By the late 1980s, Argentina was spinning out of control, as its annual inflation rate peaked at over 20,000%. During a visit to the country around that time I was fascinated to watch hyperinflation unfold: prices almost tripled within the span of three weeks. Miraculously—or so it seemed—inflation subsequently fell to zero by the mid-1990s, thanks to the government's decision in 1991 to peg the peso at 1-1 to the dollar.

During the four years we lived in Argentina, inflation averaged about 7% a month. That adds up to an annual inflation rate of 125%, and that's enough to seriously impact your everyday life. My first memory of when the reality of inflation hit me was the day I collected my first paycheck. I began thinking "what should I do with this money?" Keeping the money in my pocket or under the mattress made no sense, since the money was losing value constantly—because prices were rising constantly. The decision was easy: we had to spend the money, and spend it fast. So my wife and I set off for the nearest warehouse store to buy "stuff" that we could store in the closet. Canned foods and powdered milk for our 1-year old infant ranked high on our list. We scoured the store and found a bunch of storable stuff, but we couldn't find any milk. I thought that was curious, because it was very popular (Leche Nido, by Nestle). But then I opened a door to an adjacent storage room and saw boxes of powdered milk stacked to the rafters. So I asked the girl at the cash register if someone could fetch us a couple of boxes. "I'm sorry, sir," she replied. "The milk is not for sale."

That's when it dawned on me that everyone was thinking like I was: nobody wanted money, everyone wanted stuff instead. For the next several years I would juggle money balances between pesos and dollars and "stuff." With lots of inflation, money becomes like a hot potato. When I saw something for sale that I needed and the price looked reasonable, I would buy it immediately, because I learned that if you waited to look for it in another store, the price was likely to go up. During one episode of very high inflation, grocery stores would post prices on chalkboards, and change them throughout the day. It was a daily struggle to survive, because salaries and wages always went up after the prices for "stuff" went up (incomes lagged prices, and over time that impoverishes wage earners). 

In 1979 we sold our house, in preparation for returning to the U.S. There was no such thing as a mortgage at that time, and hardly anyone had a checking account. If you wanted to buy a house, the best terms you could find were "0-30-90," which meant that you had to pay one-third of the purchase price at the time of signing the purchase contract, followed by the second third a month later and the final third in three months. The man who bought our house (for the equivalent of about $30,000) graciously agreed to pay me the full amount in cash at the signing of escrow. Before going to the escrow office to finalize the deal, we went to his office. There he took out several grocery bags full of peso bills and started counting the bills; after counting each stack he passed it over to me, and I counted it, then he placed the stack back in one of the bags. I wish I could remember what the price of the house was in pesos, but all I remember is that the bills were of large denomination and they filled three grocery bags—it took us a half hour to count it all. After we had both counted the money and signed the escrow papers, he accompanied me to the bank to help me carry all the money and to serve as an informal body guard—can you imagine carrying cash equal to the price of a house in grocery bags while walking 6 blocks to the bank? I handed over the bags of money to the cashier and explained that I wanted to convert the pesos to dollars and wire the total amount to my account in the U.S. It took the cashier 20 minutes to count and verify the bills. I was fortunate that at the time it was legal to convert pesos to dollars and to wire dollars to an overseas bank account—it hasn't always been like that, and it isn't today.

When we visited Argentina in 1986, I remember my 6-year-old son was fascinated by all the banknotes that people carried around in order to conduct their daily transactions. They had denominations ranging from 3 to 8 digits. Prices were routinely quoted in "palos" with a palo being slang for a million, much as we would say "5 bucks." A friend gave my son a grocery bag full of old peso notes that he had collected, and he went almost crazy with delight. "Wow, Dad, how much can I buy with all this money?" he asked me. "Well, Ryan, with all that money you might be able to buy a pack of chewing gum," I replied, even though the nominal value of the notes must have been in the tens of millions. I then tried to explain to him how inflation worked, but I quickly realized he just couldn't understand it.

Years later I would study the situation in Argentina during the time we lived here and understand what was happening. In a nutshell, since the government was unable to finance its deficit by selling bonds, it simply ordered the central bank to print up new currency in order to pay its bills. New bills flooded the country like Monopoly money. Money became like a hot potato that nobody wanted to hold. Better to change my peso salary to dollars at the beginning of the month, and then convert back to pesos when I needed to buy something. Better to save money by buying stuff than to save money in the bank. Since very few people back then had bank accounts, newly-minted bills just kept accumulating in the economy and losing their value. A $1 million peso note issued in 1978 was initially worth several thousand dollars, but by the mid-1980s that same note was worth only 20 cents and was withdrawn from circulation.

Bottom line, the supply of pesos was growing rapidly at the same time that the demand for pesos was falling. This resulted in a huge increase in money velocity (which is equivalent to saying there was a huge decline in the demand for money), and the ratio of money to nominal GDP fell sharply for years and years. A 50% increase in the money supply could support a 70 or 80% rise in prices and nominal GDP. The government would periodically try to slow the rate of inflation by limiting money growth to a rate lower than the prevailing rate of inflation, but it never worked because the velocity of money just kept increasing. More and more people held their money balances in dollars instead of in pesos, and spent their pesos as fast as they could. The government was essentially financing its deficit via an inflation tax; as long as you were holding pesos in your hands, they were losing value and you were effectively paying money to the government. So everyone naturally tried to avoid holding pesos. It was a vicious circle, as rising inflation destroyed confidence and the demand for money, and that in turn fueled higher inflation.

The key feature of the U.S. monetary system—as distinct from Argentina's—is that the Fed cannot create money directly—only banks can do that. The Fed can, however, make it easier for banks to create money by increasing the supply of bank reserves. Banks need reserves in order to collateralize their deposits. The Fed creates reserves by buying securities (e.g., Treasury bills, notes and bonds, and more recently, mortgage-backed securities and some corporate bonds). In effect, the Fed buys securities and pays for them with bank reserves. But crucially, reserves are not money that can be spent anywhere.

In times of great uncertainty and surging money demand, like today, the Fed fills the market's need for short-term safe securities by buying riskier securities from the banking system and paying for them with risk-free reserves which pay a floating rate of interest; reserves thus have become T-bill equivalents. If banks don't find the reserves attractive they can use them to support increased lending, which indeed does result in a monetary expansion. But if that expansion exceeds the market's demand for money, then higher inflation will be the result. Throughout most of last year, the fact that inflation did not rise strongly suggests that the Fed's actions were not inflationary. Bank reserves—which swelled by about $4 trillion last year—served to satisfy the banking system's demand for risk-free, short-term assets, and the public's demand for a massive increase in bank savings deposits and checking accounts. Demand for money and money equivalents was turbo-charged last year by all the uncertainties and disruptions caused by the Covid-19 panic.

But now things are changing. Uncertainty is declining, and confidence is increasing. People don't want or need to hold so much money in the form of bank savings deposits. Prices for many things are rising, and measured inflation has accelerated significantly. The Fed argues that the rise in inflation is only transient, the result of lockdown-induced supply shortages coupled with exuberant demand from newly "liberated" consumers who no longer worry about Covid. The Fed also argues that "easy money" is necessary to help the economy back on its feet. I disagree. 

I think the Fed is making a big mistake by pegging short-term interest rates at a level that is far below the current rate of inflation. Holding cash or cash equivalents (e.g., bank savings deposits, checking accounts, T-bills, money market funds) pays virtually zero interest, just as holding actual cash does. But holding cash in your pocket or at the bank means you are losing money—you are effectively paying an inflation tax which amounts to as much as 8% per year (the CPI rose at an 8.45% annualized rate in the three months ending in May). 

Let that sink in. Your money balances are costing you 8% per year. Cash is not a safe asset these days. It's a very expensive asset, in fact. Better to get rid of cash by spending it on almost anything else, right? Buy land, buy powdered milk, buy stocks, buy commodities, fix up your home, buy a car, invest in new plant and equipment ... the list goes on, and not surprisingly, the prices of all those things are rising. It's Argentina deja vu all over again. Oh, and in addition to shedding unwanted cash, you might also consider borrowing money in order to buy things, since the cost of borrowing is less than the rate of increase in the prices of those things.

Current Fed policy amounts to a concerted effort to undermine the demand for money, at a time when the supply of money continues to surge. The M2 money supply has risen at a 15.4% annualized rate in the six months ending in May, and it's up at a 15.1% annualized rate in the three months ending in May. That's a classic prescription for rising inflation. For the two-decade period leading up to the Covid period, M2 growth averaged a little over 6% per year—and for that same period inflation was relatively low and stable.

It gets worse. The Fed is not just targeting a near-zero rate for short-term securities that is far below the current level of inflation, it is all but ensuring that the rate on short-term securities will continue to be far below the rate of inflation for at least the next two years—and possibly for as far as the eye can see. The market is in full agreement: the implied yield on 3-mo. LIBOR two years from now is 0.8%, which implies about 2 Fed tightenings in the interim. In fact, the entire Treasury yield curve, from 1 day out to 30 years, falls well below the current rate of inflation. The TIPS market provides further proof that interest rates are expected to be below the level of inflation for as far as the eye can see: 5-yr real TIPS yields are -1.6%, 10-yr real yields are -0.9%, and 30-yr real yields are -0.2%.

Who wants to hold Treasuries that will produce negative real returns for a lifetime? Who wants to hold cash that will lose up to 8% of its value in the next year? The longer real yields remain negative, the more the incentive to reduce one's holdings of cash and other "risk-free" securities, and the more the incentive to increase one's holdings of "stuff" that will on average appreciate by the rate of inflation. 

Economics is all about scarcity and incentives. Today the incentives are powerfully lined up to fuel a cycle of rising inflation. People respond to incentives, and they are voting with their feet. That's why the prices of things are rising, and that's why rising inflation is very unlikely to be a transient problem. Unless, of course, the Fed reverses course and begins jacking up short-term interest rates in a BIG way. Which in today's political environment seems unlikely. 

The US economy as seen from 30,000 feet

As the Covid-19 panic fades into the sunset, it's time to climb to 30,000 feet and review some of the economy's macro vital signs.

Despite the destructive impact of economic and social shutdowns which resulted in millions of lost jobs and businesses and untold damage to the physical and mental health of even more millions, and despite the government's efforts to ameliorate the damage by borrowing trillions in order to shovel money from the pockets of some into the pockets of many, the economy has emerged in amazingly good shape. In fact, the private sector is wealthier and more prosperous than ever before—although the benefits have undoubtedly been distributed unequally and often rather crudely. The public sector, on the other hand, has rung up a tab that will take generations to cover.

Lurking in the background of this surprisingly good news, however, is inflation, which is very much alive and well and prospering.

Chart #1

The Federal Reserve today released its estimates of household balance sheets, which are summarized in Chart #1. (Nonprofit organizations are included in these numbers.) Household wealth has blossomed, thanks to strong financial markets, lots of saving, real estate appreciation, and only a modest accumulation of debt.  

Chart #2

Chart #2 converts the net worth numbers in the first chart to real (inflation-adjusted) figures. Note that the y-axis is logarithmic, which renders steady growth rates into a straight line. Note further that the real net worth of the US private sector has risen slightly more than an annualized 3.6% per year over the past 70 years. It's worthwhile comparing this chart to Chart #16 in my previous post. Both paint a similar picture: net worth and equity prices have appreciated on average by a fairly steady rate over the long haul, and the trend lines I have added to each chart do a fairly good job of dividing above- and below-trend years into equal amounts. Both suggest that valuations and net worth today are somewhat above long-term trends, but not by an egregious amount. In short, the current period does not stand out in any extraordinary way from our long-standing experience.

Chart #3

Chart #3 uses the data from Chart #2 and divides it by the population of the US to get real per capita net worth (currently, the average person's share of total wealth is about $410,000). Here again we see a fairly steady rate of growth over time, but a bit more above trend in the past year. The obvious conclusion to be drawn from all of these charts is that further wealth and equity price gains are likely to be a lot less exciting in coming years than they have been in previous years. 

Chart #4

Chart #4 shows the ratio of total household debt to total household assets, which can be likened to the average degree of leverage employed by the private sector. Here we see a rather dramatic and ongoing decline in financial leverage that began back in 2008, in the depths of the Great Recession. That recession, as you might recall, owed quite a bit to the private sector's use of excessive leverage to buy homes in previous years. We've now rolled back the clock on leverage to the levels of the early 1970s. Which, curiously, was just before the great wave of inflation that lifted housing prices. (I daresay that the recent boom in inflation and housing prices are likely two sides of the same coin.)

Chart #5

In this umpteenth appearance of Chart #5, we see that the gains in equity prices in the past year have been accompanied by a decline in the Vix "fear" index. The Vix is still a bit above the levels that seem to prevail in "normal" times, so there may be room for further gains provided we avoid unpleasant surprises.

Chart #6

Chart #6 tracks the rolling 12-month total of federal spending and tax revenues. Covid-19 provided cover for the most dramatic increase in federal spending since WW II. Things are beginning to return to normal, it would seem, thanks to May's avalanche of tax receipts (thanks in turn to the capital gains generated by a strong stock market in late 2020) and a lessening in the pace of growth of spending. Still, the federal budget is for all intents and purposes very nearly out of control. Spending MUST be reined in or there will be hell to pay at some point. The problem is not so much the amount of debt, but rather the fact that enormous levels of spending are hugely wasteful and make for fertile terrain for graft and corruption. No country has ever borrowed and spent its way to prosperity. That we are not in ruins today is testimony to the hard work and prudence of our private sector, as the charts above document. 

The most important reason to cut spending is to improve the health of the economy, since government can never spend taxpayers' money as prudently, wisely, and efficiently as taxpayers can.

Chart #7

Chart #7 shows total federal revenues on a rolling 12-month basis (blue line) and its major components. The recent surge in revenues owes a lot to a surge in individual income tax receipts, which in turn have been boosted by capital gains revenue thanks to the strong stock market. Corporate income taxes have also increased thanks to strong profits growth in the latter half of the year.

Chart #8

Chart #8 makes a repeat appearance using the latest data. It's hard to believe, but true: the burden of the federal debt (measured as total interest payments as a percent of GDP) today is about as low as it has ever been, even though total debt as a percent of GDP is higher than it has ever been (save for the WW II years). The circle is squared by the level of interest rates, which remain very near all-time historic lows. The blue line on this chart is virtually certain to start rising within the next year as market interest rates rise—as they must, given the huge rise in inflation shown in the following charts.

Chart #9

Chart #9 plots the level of the CPI index ex-energy on a log scale. Here we see how inflation by this measure has averaged just about exactly 2% per year over the past two decades. But note how the index jumps in the past several months above trend. The year over year rate has been boosted to a degree due to the dip in the level of the index in April and May of last year (the so-called "base effect"), but that dip was fully reversed by August last year. What we've seen in recent months is a mini-boom in the index above and beyond its long-term trend growth rate. This makes me think that rising inflation is not just transient. But tell that to the Fed, whose members are inordinately afraid to pull the punchbowl this time around, after doing so prematurely too many times in the past.

Chart #10

Chart #10 looks at the 6-mo. annualized change in the CPI (both with and without energy) to get a better idea of what has happened since the very weak CPI data in the first half of last year. By this measure inflation is running at a 4-6% annualized rate. And even higher—prices are up at a 7-8% annualized rate over the past 3 months! All of this is very reminiscent of what happened to inflation in the mid 2000s when it gradually became obvious that the Fed had failed to tighten policy sufficiently. And when they did manage to tighten policy we ended up with the Great Recession which began in 2008. I would further note that the 10-yr Treasury yield rose from 3.5% in 2003 to a high of 5.5% in 2006. We could easily see a repeat of this in the years to come. Beware fixed income bonds.

It's hard to believe, but today the 10-yr Treasury yield is a mere 1.4%, which is way less than the current rate of inflation. Way less. The entire Treasury curve is well below the current rate of inflation, which means that Treasuries are generating losses in real terms that are on the order of $0.5-0.7 trillion per year (and possibly more). Uncle Sam doesn't mind, though, since he is the world's biggest debtor. (The debt holder's loss is the debt issuer's gain.) Uncle Sam is currently benefiting from a "stealth" tax which is otherwise known as an inflation tax, and it's generating a not insignificant amount of money—much more than all corporate income tax receipts.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

On the surface, conditions in the US look pretty fantastic these days. Prices for lots of goods and services are soaring. Job openings are at record highs. Financial markets are awash in liquidity, and financial market conditions in general are about as good as they have ever been. Debt service burdens for most people are at all-time lows. The stock market is on the cusp of new all-time highs. Corporate profits are booming. Air travel is surging. The economy has recovered just about all it lost to the Covid-19 crisis. Household net worth is at all-time highs in nominal, real and per capita terms. Private sector jobs have recovered almost 70% of what they lost due to the Covid-19 shutdown. Vaccines and natural immunity have all but vanquished Covid-19. Conditions are improving daily, with no near-term end in sight. On the inflation front, expectations currently remain reasonably anchored at around 2.5%.

We are not free of problems or worries, of course. Is Biden of sound mind and body? Is Kamala capable of running the country? Will Congress pass, by the thinest of partisan margins, another round of trillion-dollar spending boondoggles and a permanent and massive expansion of the welfare state? Will the Fed wait too long to reverse its enormous QE efforts? How many of the 10 million workers currently sitting on their hands will want to return to work when emergency unemployment benefits expire in a few months? How long will it take for the Fed to boost short-term rates to a level that once again offers a positive real rate of return? What will happen, in the meantime, with the nearly $5 trillion in savings that have accumulated in the banking system since March 2020? Does the historically low level of real risk-free yields on TIPS suggest that US economic growth will be anemic at best for as far as the eye can see? Are equity valuations dangerously over-priced?

My sense of the news is that several potentially worrisome initiatives are now unlikely to prevail. Thanks to the opposition of the G7, Biden's proposal to unify and raise corporate tax rates to a higher level is dead; instead, the best he can hope for is an agreement to create a new, lower minimum tax rate (15%) that is uniform among developed economies. Even that looks dodgy, however. Senator Manchin appears to be standing firm against nuking the filibuster. Biden's spending plans, which are looking more extreme by the day, are facing growing pushback among the saner elements of his party. 

As for the ugly, the Libertarian-leaning Tax Foundation recent issued a report that says Biden's tax hikes and spending proposals (billed as all-in stimulus) would in fact hurt the economy (the WSJ has more details). I agree: Biden's tax and spend agenda is the last thing this economy needs right now.

The charts that follow flesh out several of these arguments and developments. In the end, I remain near-term bullish but still quite worried about the potential for 1) higher-than-expected inflation down the road and 2) more outrageous and destabilizing fiscal "stimulus" and tax-hike proposals, all of which could end up derailing what for now is looking like a classic boom-type recovery.

Chart #1

Chart #1 illustrates the bizarre developments in the labor market. Many millions of people have returned to work, but there are still millions more on the sidelines. The number of job openings has exploded because employers are unable to find workers who want to work. The obvious culprit is the emergency unemployment benefits which create an enormous incentive for people to remain unemployed until these benefits expire in early September. While this is mostly a temporary problem, it is unnecessarily holding back the recovery and continuing to balloon the deficit. 

Chart #2

Chart #2 has both good and bad news. Good: more companies are looking to increase their hiring than ever before. Bad: There's a huge shortage of willing workers which is stymying efforts by millions of companies to grow. 

Chart #3

Chart #3 illustrates the dramatic improvement in airline passenger traffic. However, the number of people passing through US airports is still about 30% below the prevailing levels at this time in 2019. 

Chart #4

Small businesses employ the lion's share of US workers, so it is concerning that their confidence has sagged from the heady levels of the Trump years, as Chart #4 shows. Undoubtedly several factors are at work: emergency unemployment benefits which pay people not to work, the prospect of rising tax rates on corporate profits and individual incomes, renewed growth in regulatory burdens, and the knowledge—which will not soon fade—that state and local officials can turn off their business at a moment's notice should a new virus surface. 

Chart #5

As Chart #5 shows, the number of private sector jobs today is about 7 million less than where they would have been if the prior trend had continued. Public jobs are more than one million less than they were pre-pandemic. Yet despite these huge job losses, real GDP today is at least as high as it was prior to the Covid shutdowns. That means that the productivity of those who have been working has shot up dramatically, as the economy was forced to find ways to produce more with fewer people. We've seen a revolutionary advance in productivity thanks to Covid. As millions of currently idled workers find there way back into the workforce, that will give GDP growth a significant boost lasting at least through year end.

Chart #6

Chart #6 is quite sobering. Prior to the Great Recession, the labor force (defined as all those of working age who are employed or looking for work) was growing at a rate of about 1.2% per year. Since then, growth in the labor force has been anemic—more so than ever before. I calculate that there are about 19 million fewer in the labor force today than there would have been at the prior trend growth rate. That's a lot of idled human capacity.

Chart #7

Chart #7, Bloomberg's Financial Conditions Index, today is about as high as it has ever been. This all but rules out a near-term recession or even a growth pause. Liquidity is abundant, credit quality is excellent, and nerves have calmed.

Chart #8

Chart #8 shows corporate credit spreads. Today, spreads are about as low as they have ever been, which is a sign that the market is quite optimistic about the outlook for economic growth and corporate profits. One factor contributing to this is the abundance of liquidity and the Fed's pledge that it will not tighten monetary conditions for a long time. Not only does this limit downside economic risk, but it also adds to inflationary pressures down the road, and inflation is something that generally benefits debtors.

Chart #9

Chart #9 is my indispensable tool for judging the likelihood of recession. With the exception of the Covid-19 shutdown/recession, every other recession on this chart was preceded by 1) a flattening or inversion of the Treasury yield curve (red line), and 2) a high and rising real Federal Funds rate. Today the yield curve is steepening, much as it has always done during growth cycles, and the real funds rate is as low as it has ever been. This adds up to an extremely low probability of recession for the foreseeable future.

Very low real yields, such as we have today, are not an unalloyed boon, unfortunately, since they weaken the demand for money (while also actively encouraging borrowing and spending), and thus this can be harbinger of rising inflation if the Fed does not take steps to a) reduce the supply of money by reversing its QE actions and b) boosting short-term interest rates. High and rising inflation would dramatically increase the likelihood of Fed tightening and eventually lead to another painful recession. That risk is not yet imminent, however, but it is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Chart #10

Chart #10 shows an index of non-energy spot commodity prices. Prices have soared, beginning right around the time—in late March—when federal government started pumping trillions of dollars into the economy to offset the effect of shutdowns, and the Fed ended up buying almost all of the debt that was issued, thus massively expanding the money supply. How much of the increase in prices is due to monetary inflation, and how much to the economic recovery and increased demand for goods and services which had suddenly become in short supply? 

Chart #11

I've been featuring Chart #11 often over the past year, since I think it illustrates something that almost all commenters have either ignored or forgotten. The chart shows the percentage of annual income (GDP) that is held in cash or cash equivalents (M2); as such it is a good measure of money demand. As all economists should know by now, the balance between money supply and money demand is of crucial importance. When the supply of money exceeds the demand for it, inflation is the result. The Fed's massive increase in the money supply last year was matched by an equally massive increase in money demand—that's why inflation was low last year. More recently, it looks like money demand is beginning to soften. That makes sense, given the fading of the Covid crisis and the return of confidence. Yet the Fed has done nothing to reverse its massive increase in the money supply. That's why inflation has begun to rise at a troubling rate in recent months (see Charts #9 and 10 in my last post). 

The future course of inflation is of the utmost importance, yet most observers, including the Fed, insist that the recent rise in inflation is transitory—inflation has increased solely because demand has outpaced supply of late and supply eventually will catch up. That's probably true in part, but I think the more important explanation is that the Fed has allowed (and even encouraged) the demand for money to decline without taking offsetting action to either reduce money supply or boost money demand. 

Chart #12

Chart #12 compares the M2 money supply to nominal GDP. For many years they tracked each other closely. But now we've seen an unprecedented surge in M2 that has so far not been matched by a similar pickup in nominal GDP, (both nominal and real GDP today are above their pre-Covid highs, but have not yet exceeded their pre-Covid trend growth rate). In the absence of a concerted attempt by the Fed to reduce the money supply, I would expect to see nominal GDP pick up significantly in future years, with most of the pickup coming in the form of rising prices. There is an awful lot of potential inflationary fuel out there, and it only needs only a return of confidence and a laggard Fed to ignite.

Chart #13

Chart #13 compares the 2-yr annualized growth rate of real GDP (red line) with the real yield of 5-year TIPS. (I've assumed that GDP growth in the current quarter will be an annualized 7%.) Not surprisingly, these two variables tend to track each other. Strong GDP growth is consistent with generally high real rates, and weak growth with low real rates. The current level of real yields is about as low as we have ever seen. I can only think that is because market participants expect the long-term rate of GDP growth to be generally anemic. Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Biden's recently proposed budget in fact assumes that despite many trillions of fiscal "stimulus" coupled with rising tax burdens the economy's rate of growth over the next decade will average only 1.7% per year, substantially lower than anemic growth of the Obama years (2009-2017), when growth averaged a little over 2% per year (the weakest recovery on record). 

Chart #14

Chart #14 compares the real Fed funds rate (blue line) to the real yield on 5-yr TIPS (blue line)—the latter being the market's expectation for what the blue line will average over the next 5 years. When the blue line is below the red line, that indicates the market is expecting the Fed to increase its real funds rate target in the future, which is generally the case in normal times. When the blue line is higher than the red line, this is the market saying that the Fed is too tight and is thus likely to have to ease policy in the future. Looks to me like the Fed is plenty easy these days. 

For practical purposes, a very negative real yield on cash and cash equivalents such as we have today (the blue line being a good proxy for cash yields) creates powerful incentives for people to borrow money and spend it. Why? Because borrowing at a negative real rate during a period of rising prices means you don't have to take on much risk in order to make a profit, since the price of most anything you buy will rise while your debt burden—which costs little or nothing to maintain—will shrink. Another way of looking at it: negative real rates strongly discourage people from holding money (i.e., it erodes money demand) and strongly encourage them to spend money. There's an awful lot of money being held these days which is steadily losing purchasing power. If the Fed doesn't reverse its QE efforts, unwanted money will find its way into higher prices.

Chart #15

Chart #15 compares nominal and real yields on 5-yr Treasuries, with the difference between the two (green line) being the market's expectation for the average annual increase in the CPI over the next 5 years. Note the significant pickup in inflation expectations that has occurred since March '20, when the market only expected inflation to average 0.2% per year. That expectation has now jumped to 2.5%. That's not particularly troubling, but it does represent a huge change.

Chart #16

Chart #16 shows the monthly history of the S&P 500 index of equity prices since 1950. As the chart shows, equity prices have increased by an annualized 7% per year over this 70+ year period. Add dividend yields to this, and you get an annualized total rate of return on equities of about 8.5% per year. There's a lot of variability along the way, to be sure, but a buy-and-hold strategy generally pays off handsomely. Note that the 7% trend line shows just about as many above-trend years as below-trend years. If anything, I take this to mean that the equity market today is not necessarily in a "bubble" like it was in the years leading up to 2000.