Scarcely a block from our office in Paris is a monetary phenomenon that has escaped the financial press. In one of the highest-cost economies in the world, you can buy a woman’s shirt for 2 euros. A dress? Four euros. A man’s jacket can be had for the price of a cup of coffee.
June 29th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 20 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "deflation"
Feds’ Plan is to Reflate the Economy
For that, they need rising consumer prices. Consumers need to borrow…and spend. They’ll do so, say economists, when prices rise and their dollars lose value. So far, milk and potatoes aren’t cooperating.
June 1st, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Fed Will “Monetize the Debt”
Meanwhile, the US Treasury is borrowing hundreds of billions’ of dollars in order to close the gap between what the US spends and what it receives in taxes. Even if the Chinese are willing to fund that borrowing in the very short term, it just pushes forward the inevitable day…
May 29th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
A Merciless War Between Inflation and Deflation
The rally itself is a part of a larger battle between two contradictory body parts – the heart and the mind. The heart wants to believe that the worst is over. It reacts sentimentally, remembering the glory days of the great bubble era and wishing they were back.
May 29th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 1 comment | Continued
Japan: A Morality Tale of Banks and Government Refusing to Deal With Debt?
This may puzzle some people. Wasn’t the Japanese economy roaring into a bubble in the late 1980s? Indeed it was – driven in part by the 300 basis point decline in interest rates that resulted from the soaring yen.
May 27th, 2009 | Nathan Lewis | 0 comments | Continued
Investors Tend to Race Ahead and Ruin the Whole Thing
If people could read next year’s fashion magazines, they’d buy tomorrow’s fashions today. Then, some wiseacre would buy the day after tomorrow’s fashions…just to be ahead of everyone else. And then, nobody would want to be stuck with tomorrow’s hairdo – it would already be out-of-style.
May 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Plan to Survive 2009
Editor’s Note: In today’s essay space, we bring you comments from fellow Daily Reckoning readers on how they will survive and prosper 2009. Inflation, deflation, depression, recession, there is a plan for all seasons!
April 23rd, 2009 | The Daily Reckoning | 10 comments | Continued
Huge Inflation
Distract from what? Huge inflation. Yes. Yes. We know. There is no huge inflation now. In fact, industrial production in the United States fell for the fourth month in a row. It hasn’t been this low since 2002. But then, why would output grow when demand is falling and credit remains tight?
March 17th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
China is Considering Ways to Diversify Out of the Dollar
Reports in the press this week say that China is considering ways to diversify out of the dollar. The Chinese are no fools. They see what is coming. And they know what it will do to them – the holders of the largest pile of dollars ever assembled. The Financial Times made it perfectly clear to them in a cartoon yesterday. It shows Barack Obama in front of a huge smoking trashcan filled with dollars. The president is pouring on gasoline…
February 16th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 7 comments | Continued
In Gono We Trust
We have it from our usually unreliable source in Washington that Gideon Gono, now head of the Zimbabwean central bank, has been called in to aid the Obama Administration. In secret talks, Gono has agreed to replace the out-going Ben Bernanke, who is said to be going to work as a helicopter pilot. Gono will take over the Fed. And a new bill has already been designed – our source was able to sneak out a copy of the new note – for 1 million U.S. dollars. That’s Gideon Gono’s picture on it…
February 4th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 6 comments | Continued
What We Face Now Is a Depression
What happened to Thomas L. Friedman? Did he drop the hair dryer in the bathtub…and give himself a jolt? Suddenly, he’s saying something that is modest and sensible. But his brush with intelligence lasted only three paragraphs. Then, it’s back to the old simpleton Friedman…with a solution to every crisis…and a fix for every problem his last solution caused. But you can’t fix a depression. And what we face now is a depression…
February 3rd, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
Circle September 26th on Your Monetary Calendar
Bankers are bankers, after all. Their product is money. But they have gold in their vaults for a reason. It was money before paper was money. So September 26th may mark the end of the orderly and coordinated management of gold sales by European Central Banks. And it may mark the beginning of a new monetary era where gold reasserts its importance as money…
January 28th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 2 comments | Continued
The Swift and Violent Rise of Oil
If you want to know why oil prices could double this year, or how $52 trillion in total global debt will utterly suffocate central bank attempts to resuscitate bank lending, or Ben Bernanke’s secret plan to turn trillions of dollars worth of toxic assets into shareholder equity, read on! Two topics in one day! Why are oil prices lying? How much air is left in the credit bubble?…
January 20th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 10 comments | Continued
Fight Fire with Fire!
Fight fire with fire! All over the world people suffer from the mistakes they made in the go-go years. They spent too much. They borrowed too much. They paid too much. Now, all those bad debts, bad investments, and bad balance sheets are burning up – scorching fingers all over the planet. So what do the feds do to try to fix this problem? Fight fire with fire! Throw some more tinder onto the blaze…get people to borrow, spend and speculate even more!…
January 16th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 2 comments | Continued
Debunking the Velocity of Money Myth
I worry about the deflation possibility. I am always considering new facts and old premises as part of an analytical check to my evolving outlook. My recent tirade is not against the “possibility” of deflation – which cannot be denied. It is a reaction to the nonsense that underlies the great many bad arguments for deflation, which are either littered with factual errors about history or rely on theoretical concepts that are outdated, obsolete and have been long discredited…
January 15th, 2009 | Ed Bugos | 11 comments | Continued
