Donate Bitcoin

Donate Paypal


PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

Central Banks

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 11 Oct 2015, 23:59:31

Great points guys. Yes all this demonstrates how at some point our economies will be forced to adjust to the physical realities of the world. The sooner the better as time is growing short
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 01:19:27

AgentR11 wrote:With QE they are able to keep inflation (barely) positive, except, interestingly, food, which is at a substantially higher rate. Food being one of those things that you can't fudge. (haha) People need 2k kcal/day; whether that is priced at $2, $20, or $200 is irrelevant. The requirement remains the same. My opinion is that we are seeing the true magnitude of the QE interventions in the price of food; and that combined artificial, upward pressure on price is sufficient to offset the other deflationary forces in play in this, the Final Depression.

But for now. QE, very low inflation, ZIRP, no deflation. Food available in the store.


What is interesting to me is that they manage to exclude food and energy from the Core Inflation figures. Maybe no one has to eat, go to work, or heat their home in upper-crust land.
Looks like true inflation figures must not be visible to the masses. Might make them think they are losing too many battles in the class war.
"It don't make no sense that common sense don't make no sense no more"
John Prine
Hawkcreek
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 1468
Joined: Sun 15 Aug 2004, 03:00:00
Location: Washington State

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby AgentR11 » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 09:29:18

Hawkcreek wrote:What is interesting to me is that they manage to exclude food and energy from the Core Inflation figures. Maybe no one has to eat, go to work, or heat their home in upper-crust land.
Looks like true inflation figures must not be visible to the masses. Might make them think they are losing too many battles in the class war.


In upper crust land, the price of energy and food remain very small percentages of their liquid net worth. You hop in the Benz and the driver takes you to the office, whether its $4 in gas or $20 in gas for that gallon, the driver's pay (inc taxes) for the day far exceeds the cost of the fuel or maintenance on the car. When you sit down for dinner, prepared by staff, its beautiful, and sublime... and the food was nothing compared to what it takes to keep the staff on premises. Food and fuel could double or triple in price, and it would still be an invisible decimal point.

For the upper middle class, folks that still go to the grocery store themselves; the price is noticed, but the signal generally isn't acted on. If 18 eggs cost $2.50 a year ago, and they're $4.xx today, you notice, but you still buy and use the eggs at the same rate & type. (eggs are under pressure right now... ag difficulties in play) . You notice your bill for your typical basket of stuff has gone up; but you still just swipe the card and tap in your pin/sign.. It remains a small percentage of income, doubling something small.. its still small.

For the regular middle class and working class slobs though??? The pinch has started. Food and fuel are absolutely impinging on their other expense categories. When this current little dip in oil prices runs its course, wrecking US production, the price will rise again, and I suspect the drop in traffic miles will be more than slightly measurable.

For those at the whim of SNAP... well, food is probably in paranoia land now, you don't have to go without against your will many times, or for very long, for it to really mess with your head. I'm not sure how that segment will play out, but if it doesn't adjust with the rate of increase in prices, some stuff is gonna get broke.
Yes we are, as we are,
And so shall we remain,
Until the end.
AgentR11
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 6357
Joined: Tue 22 Mar 2011, 09:15:51
Location: East Texas

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby GHung » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 09:54:06

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... -and-spend

The golden age of central banks is at an end – is it time for tax and spend?

The IMF appears fixed on interest rates and QE to boost the global economy but just as homeowners take on larger mortgages when rates are low, governments can also sustain higher deficits.

Turn those machines back on. So demands the unscrupulous banker, Mortimer Duke, when he finds he and his brother Randolph have been ruined by their speculative scam in the film Trading Places. Having lost all his money betting wrongly on orange juice futures, Mortimer demands that trading be restarted so that he can win it back.

It’s not known whether Christine Lagarde is a secret fan of John Landis movies. As a French citizen, François Truffaut might be more her taste. There is, though, more than a hint of Trading Places about the advice being handed out by Lagarde’s International Monetary Fund to global policymakers.

To Europe and Japan, the message is to print some more money. Keep those machines turned on, in other words. To the US and the UK, there was a warning that raising interest – something central banks in both countries are contemplating – could have nasty spillover effects around the rest of the world. Think long and hard before turning those machines off because you may have to turn them back on again before very long, Lagarde is saying, because the big risk to the global economy is not that six years of unprecedented stimulus has caused inflation but that the recovery is faltering.

These are indeed weird times. Share prices are rising and so is the cost of crude oil, but the sense in financial markets is that the next crisis is just around the corner. The world is one recession away from a period of stagnation and prolonged deflation in which the challenge would be to avoid a re-run of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That fate was avoided in 2008-09 by strong and co-ordinated policy action: deep cuts in interest rates, printing money, tax cuts, higher public spending, wage subsidies and selective support for strategically important industries. But what would policymakers do in the event of a fresh crisis? Would they double down on measures that have already been found wanting or go for something more radical? Ideas are already being floated, such as negative interest rates that would penalise people for holding cash, or the creation of money by central banks that would either be handed straight to consumers or used to finance public infrastructure, also known as “people’s QE”.

Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, makes the point that since 2008, the main tool for stimulating activity has been monetary policy – a combination of lower interest rates, cheaper currencies and QE – but this is largely played out. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank when Lehman Brothers went bust in 2008, believes that an over-reliance on ultra-loose monetary policy is creating the conditions for the next crisis.

In many ways, this feels like the summer of 2007, before the markets froze up but when some of the malign consequences of the over-lax regulation of the financial markets were becoming apparent. It also bears some resemblance to the period in the late 1970s between the first and second oil shocks when what looked like a solid enough recovery was built on the shakiest of foundations. Back then, policymakers pulled all the levers they thought would see the return of non-inflationary growth only to find that the respite was brief.

The inability of any part of the world economy to achieve sustainable escape velocity looks like a case of history repeating itself. Summers says the answer is to accept that fiscal policy – taxes and public spending – have a bigger role to play.

In an article for the FT (paywall), Summers says that rules for annual budget deficits and government debt ratios should be rethought. “Long-term low interest rates radically alter how we should think about fiscal policy. Just as homeowners can afford larger mortgages when rates are low, government can also sustain higher deficits.”

The IMF agrees. In a thinly disguised dig at Germany, it used last week’s World Economic Outlook to call on those countries with capacity to loosen fiscal policy to boost demand. For the moment, these calls are likely to fall on deaf ears, but as quickly became clear in late 2008, orthodoxy goes out of the window in a crisis.

Trichet thinks structural reform is the answer, although his paper is a bit hazy on what sort of changes he would like to see. Structural reform is certainly part of the solution, but not if it means a continuation of policies that are clearly not working.

Three of the big structural changes to the global economy have brought us to the current parlous position. The first, as Charles Goodhart has explained in a recent paper for Morgan Stanley, is that the size of the global labour force expanded rapidly in the last quarter of the 20th century. In part this was due to demographics, with the baby-boomer generation increasing the working age population. In part, it was due to the advent of China and eastern Europe entering the global economy after 1990.

If the supply of something rises, its price will fall. In the case of labour, that means wages have come under downward pressure. The abundance of cheap workers has meant companies have been able to substitute labour for capital, resulting in lower investment rates and a downward trend in global interest rates.

Lower global interest rates have led to a second big change: the increased financialisation of the global economy, which has manifested itself in an enlarged role for banks, shadow banks and hedge funds; asset price bubbles; and rising debt levels.

The squeeze on real wages has also meant weaker inflationary pressures, keeping interest rates low. It has been a golden age for independent central banks.

This golden age is now at an end. The days when central banks could give the odd tweak to interest rates to keep inflation on target are over. Having told the world that they could fix the crisis, their reputations are on the line.

Goodhart believes slower population growth and ageing populations will alter the balance of power in the labour market. Workers will become scarcer and more valuable. Wages will rise and companies will have the incentive to invest more, raising productivity. In contrast to Thomas Piketty, Goodhart thinks the outlook is for less inequality as labour’s bargaining position relative to capital becomes stronger.

But perhaps not yet. Ultra-loose monetary policy, together with tighter supervision of the financial sector, was supposed to minimise the risks of another crash while ensuring that plentiful supplies of cheap money boosted real activity.

The opposite has occurred. Wages, productivity and growth have been poor even as investors have taken bigger and bigger risks in the search for high returns. In Trading Places, the Duke brothers get their just desserts. In real life, they have been allowed to take us to the brink of ruin for the second time in less than a decade.


What I see as being universally ignored is the rising costs (declining benefits) over time of increasingly-more-expensive-to produce real capital in terms of resources; increasing claims on a declining resource base, currently being masked by commodity deflation. There's a growing perceptive disconnect between the financialised sectors and what actually drives economic growth and stability. QE, ZIRP, NIRP,, whatever, can only cover for this trend temporarily. Most, if not virtually all, civilisational downturns can be traced to some combination of resource depletion, ecological degradation, and ever-more complex schemes to compensate for such. Declining overall net thermodynamic returns to economies play out in some rather bizzare ways. At least we're not to the point of sacrificing virgins or somesuch. Too many claims, and too many promises that can't be kept, can only result in an eventual rebalancing, long-term. This time it's global.
Last edited by GHung on Mon 12 Oct 2015, 10:21:57, edited 1 time in total.
Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit nothing but their Souls. - Anonymous Ghung Person
User avatar
GHung
Intermediate Crude
Intermediate Crude
 
Posts: 3093
Joined: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 16:06:11
Location: Moksha, Nearvana

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 10:11:33

Ah so in this article they are saying that Keynesian policies can save us. I do not think so. You see we have arrived at a most unfortunate juncture and that is that the consumer is laden with tremendous debt and the real economy does not need more money but cheaper oil and cheaper everything for that matter. Well welcome to the real world of overpopulation meeting up with relative resource scarcity, no amount of economic tinkering or adjustment can negate this reality. So tax more really? Spend more really? HOW. Well what about assets well they will depreciate as in Deflation. Welcome to a probable coming Stagflation. All of us here it seems are now wise to this intractable juncture we are in. We are no longer drinking the Kool aid. Except for maybe copious abundance what happened to him/her anyway?
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 14:05:26

Central Banks will not go quietly into that good night, they will scratch, bite and claw all the way until the system crashes beyond all the measures they can take.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby ralfy » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 19:53:40

Tanada wrote:Only Industrial Capitalism requires constant growth. The kind of Capitalism practiced before 1750 or so existed with a steady rate of profit and loss balancing each other so that net growth was zero or darn close to it on either side.


From what I remember, merchant capitalism originated from enclosures of land by a few because they were armed or were backed by armed groups coupled with wage labor and in several cases, slavery. The global economy did not grow significantly as a whole because various technologies were not yet in place.
User avatar
ralfy
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 5569
Joined: Sat 28 Mar 2009, 11:36:38
Location: The Wasteland

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 20:02:42

In fairness to Tanada, Ralfy, their was a period there, right after the enlightenment-renaissance that feudalism was out of vogue and hyper capitalism had not yet begun, when these circumstances described by Tanada existed. But it was relatively short lived. Capitalism by its nature seems to contain within itself the seeds of exploitation and concentration of wealth and power not to mention the elevation of greed.
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby dissident » Mon 12 Oct 2015, 23:02:18

Please don't over romanticize the 1500-1800 period. This was the mercantilist colonial era with large resource grabs and offloading of excess population into lands "liberated from the savages". There was no steady state economy and it was the same Ponzi transient that came after.
dissident
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 6458
Joined: Sat 08 Apr 2006, 03:00:00

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby kublikhan » Tue 13 Oct 2015, 13:05:35

Hawkcreek wrote:What is interesting to me is that they manage to exclude food and energy from the Core Inflation figures. Maybe no one has to eat, go to work, or heat their home in upper-crust land.
Looks like true inflation figures must not be visible to the masses. Might make them think they are losing too many battles in the class war.
Actually, overall inflation is even lower than core inflation. Core inflation is 1.8%. Overall inflation this year is 0.2%. And that is higher than the most recent month's inflation data which came in at negative .1%. If their main concern was pulling the wool over the eyes of the sheeple about how low prices were they would be trumpeting the overall inflation rate which is much lower than core inflation.

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) decreased 0.1 percent in August. Over the last 12 months, the all items index rose 0.2 percent before seasonal adjustment.

The 12-month change in the index for all items less food and energy also remained the same, at 1.8 percent.
Consumer Price Index Summary
The oil barrel is half-full.
User avatar
kublikhan
Master Prognosticator
Master Prognosticator
 
Posts: 5002
Joined: Tue 06 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Illinois

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Tue 13 Oct 2015, 19:58:30

kublikhan wrote:Actually, overall inflation is even lower than core inflation. Core inflation is 1.8%. Overall inflation this year is 0.2%. And that is higher than the most recent month's inflation data which came in at negative .1%. If their main concern was pulling the wool over the eyes of the sheeple about how low prices were they would be trumpeting the overall inflation rate which is much lower than core inflation.

That is part of my problem. I don't understand how there is virtually no inflation when my own lying eyes keep seeing packages getting smaller and prices getting higher.
Maybe it is just old age that gives me sticker shock on everything nowadays.
I will start paying closer attention to prices, month by month.
"It don't make no sense that common sense don't make no sense no more"
John Prine
Hawkcreek
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 1468
Joined: Sun 15 Aug 2004, 03:00:00
Location: Washington State

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby ralfy » Tue 13 Oct 2015, 21:17:28

onlooker wrote:In fairness to Tanada, Ralfy, their was a period there, right after the enlightenment-renaissance that feudalism was out of vogue and hyper capitalism had not yet begun, when these circumstances described by Tanada existed. But it was relatively short lived. Capitalism by its nature seems to contain within itself the seeds of exploitation and concentration of wealth and power not to mention the elevation of greed.


The period is described in my post (i.e., merchant capitalism), but to took place across several centuries.
User avatar
ralfy
Light Sweet Crude
Light Sweet Crude
 
Posts: 5569
Joined: Sat 28 Mar 2009, 11:36:38
Location: The Wasteland

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby Hawkcreek » Tue 13 Oct 2015, 21:18:10

pstarr wrote:It's all about Innovation: small packages have more value because of the Information Age. The same with jars of Heirloom tomatoes. It's another victory for intellectual property


Thanks, I needed that. :-D
"It don't make no sense that common sense don't make no sense no more"
John Prine
Hawkcreek
Expert
Expert
 
Posts: 1468
Joined: Sun 15 Aug 2004, 03:00:00
Location: Washington State

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby kublikhan » Wed 14 Oct 2015, 13:59:01

Hawkcreek wrote:That is part of my problem. I don't understand how there is virtually no inflation when my own lying eyes keep seeing packages getting smaller and prices getting higher.
Maybe it is just old age that gives me sticker shock on everything nowadays.
I will start paying closer attention to prices, month by month.
You have to understand that you could have zero or even negative inflation in the general economy and some parts of it could still have high levels of inflation. This could happen because falling prices elsewhere in the economy can offset the rising prises. For example, even though our economy had only 0.2% overall inflation, food inflation was higher at 1.6%. This was offset by falling prices in gasoline. And that's just food vs gas. The same thing can happen even within one category. The drought in the western US really pushed up meat prices these last few years. US herds dropped to 40 year lows. Then there were viruses infecting pork and chicken driving up prices. It all depends on what you are buying. If you were buying alot of beef, pork, and eggs you would feel the pinch to your wallet. If you were buying more chicken, grains and produce you would have seen more modest price rises or even a fall in prices. And if you don't drive you would have missed entirely the fall in gasoline prices.

The drought in California and demand will keep food prices higher in 2015 with household staples such as meat and dairy expected to rise by 4%. Consumers already felt the pinch in 2014 when the price of beef rose by 10% to 12%, compared to its usual increase of 2% to 3% each year. Te effects of the drought in the western Great Plains in 2012 and 2013 pushed demand to outstrip supply as ranchers saw their herds of cattle drop to 30- to 40-year lows and are still lingering. While pork prices did not rise as much as beef, a virus which infected hogs caused supply to shrink and pushed the price of pork up by 8% to 10% in 2014.

“Prices increased quite a bit as the supply of bacon, ham and sausage declined,” he said. “That hit consumers significantly and it led to them having to pay a lot more at the grocery store for animal protein.” With the large increases in beef and pork prices, many people switched to buying chicken and fish, Graeff said. The price of chicken remained stable and rose by a historical average of 2% to 3% in 2014 and was not as “adversely affected” with a “plentiful supply.”

The good news is that both pork and beef prices will only increase moderately by 4% to 5% in 2015, which is still “somewhat expensive, but the rate of increase is not as drastic,” Graeff said. As the herds of cattle increase, prices will moderate by 2016. “It’s going to take another year or year and a half before we see the swine and herd numbers increase to get enough supply to see some price decreases back into the food chain.”

“Food prices change all the time, but typically it is all about supply and demand. The California drought was one of the worst in history and had a great impact on prices in 2014 and could continue to this year.” Diners will likely see more and more “unique” and smaller cuts of meat on their plates in 2015 as the restaurant industry copes with the rising costs.
Why Your Steak and Other Food Prices Are Still Rising This Year

The most notable annual inflation was seen in the perimeter of the grocery store—retail beef and veal, pork, eggs, fish and seafood, dairy, and fresh fruit all experienced above-average price increases. Alternatively, items in the center aisles of grocery stores experienced below-average inflation or, in some instances, even deflation. In 2014, prices fell for fresh vegetables, sugars and sweets, and nonalcoholic beverages.

Food price inflation is expected to vary by category. Beef and veal prices are expected to continue to experience the effects of the Texas/Oklahoma drought. Farmers' decisions on calving and herd sizes will be felt down the line due to the 16- to 18-month production process. Egg prices are expected to rise from 12.5 to 13.5 percent due to the effect of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) on table-egg-laying flocks. In contrast, the effects of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) on the hog industry are subsiding, and the hog industry has started to expand in 2015, resulting in a decrease in farm-level hog prices.

[Chicken prices are 1.2 percent lower. Dairy prices are 2.5 percent lower with milk 7.2% lower. Fresh fruit prices are 1.7 percent lower.] This is not to say that the drought has had no impact on fresh produce prices—other factors, such as the strength of the U.S. dollar and low oil prices, have placed downward pressure on retail fruit and vegetable prices.
Food Price Outlook, 2015-2016
The oil barrel is half-full.
User avatar
kublikhan
Master Prognosticator
Master Prognosticator
 
Posts: 5002
Joined: Tue 06 Nov 2007, 04:00:00
Location: Illinois

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby Tanada » Wed 14 Oct 2015, 16:46:32

The whole debate is rather silly, the Central Banks were never interested in saving anyone but themselves in the first place.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
User avatar
Tanada
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 17050
Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA

Re: Central bank cavalry can no longer save the world

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 06 Mar 2016, 11:38:31

Good article about how the Federal reserve had on intention of saving the world or the US, it simply wanted to save the big banks. Here is an excerpt from this linked article "In 2008 the Federal Reserve had a choice: It could save the economy, or it could save the banks. It might have used a fraction of what became the vast QE credit – for example $1 trillion – to pay off the bad mortgages and write them down. That would have helped save the economy from debt deflation. Instead, the Fed simply wanted to re-inflate the bubble, to save banks from having to suffer losses on their junk mortgages and other bad loans.

Keeping these debts on the books, in full, let banks foreclose on defaulting homeowners. This intensified the debt-deflation, pushing the economy into its present post-2008 depression. The debt overhead is keeping it depressed.

One therefore can speak of a financial war waged by Wall Street against the economy. The Fed is a major weapon in this war. Its constituency is Wall Street. Like the Justice and Treasury Departments, it has been captured and taken hostage." here is link: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/ ... cture.html
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
User avatar
onlooker
Fission
Fission
 
Posts: 10957
Joined: Sun 10 Nov 2013, 13:49:04
Location: NY, USA

PreviousNext

Return to Economics & Finance

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 32 guests