U.S. may face deflation, a problem Japan understands too well

Source: LA Times

Reporting from Washington — The White House prediction Friday that the deficit would hit a record $1.47 trillion this year poured new fuel on the fiery argument over whether the government should begin cutting back to avoid future inflation or instead keep stimulating the economy to help the still-sputtering recovery.

But increasingly, economists and other analysts are expressing concern that the United States could be edging closer to a different problem — the kind of deflationary trap that cost Japan more than a decade of growth and economic progress.

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So how likely is the problem?

The latest U.S. data are sobering: Consumer prices overall have declined in each of the last three months, putting the inflation index in June just 1.1% above a year earlier. The core inflation rate — a better gauge of where prices are going because it excludes volatile energy and food items — has dropped to a 44-year low of 0.9%.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0726-deflation-economy-20100726,0,1020949.story

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While Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Republicans continue to bleat about the threat of hyperinflation as a reason for opposing the extension of unemployment benefits, the reality is that deflation remains a danger, as predicted by Paul Krugman:

http://mediamatters.org/research/201004260010

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Since President Obama's inauguration, right-wing website Newsmax has repeatedly used inflammatory anti-Obama rhetoric and stoked readers' fears of hyperinflation and economic collapse to drive sales of the financial-services products it offers, including newsletters and investment programs. Fox News analyst Dick Morris and Steve Forbes have played key roles in promoting Newsmax's financial products and economic rhetoric.

If you use the 1980 measurement style, we are running around 8%.

http://www.shadowstats.com

The real world matters.

If any worthwhile measure of core inflation showed anything like 8% then you would have to explain the behavior of all bond markets around the world.

Funny how everybody in all types of investor classes is happy to buy trillions of dollars of bonds bonds paying half the current inflation rate.

How charitable banks must be that they will lend me money to buy a house at a rate locked in for 30 years at a little over half current inflation...

Why lend me money at some of the current interest rates when inflation is running at 8 percent? Maybe banks are just being charitable, and extending a sub-five percent loan out of sense of civic duty, and eating the three percent difference as charity.

:)

This deficit fighting crap is about as sensible as policy as nuking Denver would be, and probably ultimately about as damaging.

...Mentioned in reference to the extension of the Bush tax cuts. Instead, it is expiration versus promoting growth and small business. But, if you talk about unemployment benefits, then every other sentence mentions the deficit.

Primarily S American.

A good hedge would be to get long treasuries actually!

Don't you watch Glen Beck
He'll be happy to get you in on a great deal
Not only a great deal, but it will protect you frs Obama's Brown-shirts in the Peace Corps knocking down your door and taking away everything you own

Limpballs and Beck?

The only two guys who can't think themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Krugman did it not too long ago, sad to say.

I know he was speaking in the hypothetical, but it struck me as a bit irresponsible.

Hyperinflation may happen in the future, but I think we'll experience a few years of deflation first, as assets are liquidated making the dollar stronger.

There is no consensus among the 'mighty' that wages should be raised, and without the support of greater consumer purchases, the economy isn't going to improve ....

They hate that wages cut into 'profits', so they have fought (and won) the fight against good wages, having them stagnate now for decades ...

Well ... The devil will get his due, and that bill has come to our doorstep .... They have cut wages to the bone, and now a LACK of buying power, family by family, has starved the marketplace of buyers with disposable income .... There is no reason to presume our fellow citizens are going to suddenly emerge at the showrooms, ready to open their pocketbooks, if there is precious little in those pocketbooks ...

Wages ? ... They are the REAL stimulus ..... The LACK of wages is what compels some in government to try and stimulate the overall economy with so called 'stimulus', and hope the ripple passes along throughout the system. They are priming the pump of a pool with little liquid .... The stimulus wont be enough ...

Ain't gonna work this time around .... wages had been wrongly suppressed for so long now, and the political will to support higher wages simply does not exist ...

I am well paid, and I am not buying a new car, a house or condo, a boat, nice clothes or fancy toys .... Why ? ... Because I still don't make any more than it takes to have a roof over my head and food in the fridge.

I cannot imagine how hard it is for those just entering the job market; making paltry compensation with few benefits ... all thanks to 'conservative' economic policies ...

We have been riding a wave that began in the 30's, when Unions fought hard to force companies to pay decent wages, and those wages sent children to college, bought homes and cars and invested tiny sums in a tamed marketplace ... We have ever since been multiplying THOSE wages, as children grew, became educated, and strived ever higher (always BETTER than the parents .. Remember that old saw ?)

That ride is just about over as the good jobs with good pay have escaped across mighty oceans .... The old money is long depleted, and jobs now come with fear and a pittance of a wage .... Low wages cannot sustain a robust economy ....

Cest La Vie ....

BTW: Maybe it's time to let the chips fall where they may, and start the battle for the next '1930's' .... perhaps a worldwide minimum wage ? ....

Enjoy some Adam Smith ....


"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy when part of the members are poor and miserable."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The rate of profit... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute toward the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state ....{As Henry Home (Lord Kames) has written, a goal of taxation should be to} 'remedy inequality of riches as much as possible, by relieving the poor and burdening the rich.'"
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

since 2001 the oil war has sucked at least 5 trillion dollars out of our economy. every second the economy is drained of it`s ability to survive.

Show of hands: who would like their money to be worth more?

Now point the finger: who wouldn't like that?