The Dow rose 155 points on Friday. And today, stocks are rising in Asia. Oil is over $74. Gold rose $13 on Friday… to close at $954. And the dollar is killing us softly… sinking to $1.43 per euro on Friday.

Stocks and oil are at their highest levels so far this year. With such profits at hand people figure they don’t need the dollar. Investors run to the safety of the greenback when financial storms approach. But now… they think it will be clear sailing.

“Worlds bankers suggest rebound may be under way,” says a headline at the New York Times.

Is the world economy really recovering? Should you buy stocks now to take advantage of this new bull market?

You already know the answer, don’t you, dear reader.

After a fall comes a bounce. And along with the bounce come a lot of silly ideas. You see how it works? “Markets make opinions,” say the old timers on Wall Street. When stocks are going up investors find reasons why they are going up. Pretty soon, they’ve convinced themselves that they’ll go up forever.

But bounces do not last forever. They aren’t giant turtles… they’re moths. After a few months of flitting around bright lights, they dry up. When exactly this summer of winged love will end, we don’t know. September or October is our guess. But we have little doubt it will come to an end soon.

Ultimately, stock prices depend on earnings. People compare the rate of return they can get from stocks to what they can get from other investments. Rising earnings signal higher rates of return, so investors pay more.

During the great credit expansion of 1945-2007, businesses could anticipate, generally, rising earnings. People were buying more and more things on credit. In a national economy, businesses pay wages and then the employees use the wages to buy products. The wages are a ‘cost’ to the business… but they are also the source of business revenue. When sales come from credit, on the other hand, businesses have the revenue but no wage cost. Profits go up.

Now, the cycle has turned. Businesses still have the wage cost. But instead of using the money to buy things, the employee uses it to repay loans for purchases made last year or the year before. Now the business has the cost but not the revenue.

As they say in the economic textbooks: bummer.

The process of de-leveraging will be slow. Maybe 5 years. Maybe 15. Maybe 25. It will up and down… with high unemployment (businesses will cut their wage costs as sales fail to recover)… low prices (at least in real terms)… low profits… and slow growth, or none at all.

Is that bad? No, not at all. It’s good. Economies need to adjust to the new realities of the post-credit bubble world. It will take time. And with the world’s financial authorities fighting it every step of the way… it could take a LONG time. As we’ve explained in these Daily Reckonings, government is a profoundly conservative, parasite-protecting enterprise. It cannot draw forth the future – it has no idea what the future will be. Instead, all it can do is to try to recover the past. That’s the idea of the ‘recovery’… to try to coddle, protect and pay-off yesterday’s success stories. From Wall Street to welfare… governments attempt to prevent correction.

And more thoughts:

*** The Obama administration announced that it expects $9 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. One of the great mysteries of our time is: where will the money come from? As we pointed out last week, even if every dollar of US savings is applied to the task, the feds will still be short. And if they make up the difference with funny money – from their quantitative easing scam – the Chinese vigilantes are likely to get cheesed off and dump their US Treasury bonds.

The evidence shows that the Chinese…and other Asians…are already trying to lighten up on their US debt holdings. This from the New York Times:

“Figures released by the Treasury Department this week indicated that China reduced its holdings of Treasury securities by $25 billion in June, the most China had ever sold in a month.

Monthly figures can be volatile, and can be revised, so it is risky to draw conclusions from one month’s data. In May, China increased its holdings by $38 billion, according to the Treasury figures.

“Nonetheless, the decline highlighted a fact… Asia’s appetite for Treasury securities is not growing as fast as it once did. That means the United States will have to turn to other buyers, including American citizens, who are now saving as they did not do during the boom years, to finance the deficits… In the first half of 2009, China and Hong Kong acquired only 9 percent of the more than $800 billion worth of Treasuries that were sold.

“ Japan, which was replaced by China as the largest foreign holder of Treasuries last year, has been a larger buyer this year, taking up 11 percent of the new supply of Treasuries.

“Ownership of US Treasuries by China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand — since 1994 — rose to 25 percent, from less than 8 percent. Since then, as budget deficits in the United States grew, the share has fluctuated within a narrow range. In June, it was 24.7 percent.”

If Asians don’t finance US debts, who will? We don’t know… But the fewer bonds Asians buy… the more they are bought with funny money by the Fed. And the more the Fed buys with funny money the fewer Asians want to buy with real money.

How will this end? Badly…we keep saying. There is no way out. Either the feds cease spending more than they can raise honestly, by taxation and reasonable borrowing. Or, the system runs into chronic, mega deficits…like the chronic deficits in the private sector during the bubble years. Then, it blows up.

That is why we caution readers against the dollar and against Treasuries. Most likely, they will both go up this autumn…as investors flee to safety from the next market downturn. But the chances of them blowing up completely are too great. That’s why we stick with gold – even though we would not at all be surprised by a period of weakness in the gold market.

*** On Friday night, we went to a ‘dinner in white’ at a nearby chateau. It was a jolly affair, at an ancient chateau entirely surrounded by a moat.

We set up our table, alongside the others. We gathered for drinks. We saw old friends. And then we prepared for dinner.

Why “white?” The dinner marks the occasion of the Assumption of the Virgin. It’s held each year in this rural area of France. Everyone brings a full dinner service – table, chairs, candles, etc. etc. Then, after setting up outside, under the stars… there’s a twist. Couples switch around so that your editor ends up having dinner with a woman to whom he is not married.

Having dinner with someone else’s wife can be a delight. At least, you have nothing to argue about. But how much of a delight it is depends entirely – or perhaps mostly – on chance.

In our case, we were trebly lucky. In front of us was a charming woman who turned out to be a relative of many people we already knew. So we kept up a lively conversation about cousins, uncles, aunts… family tragedies… and upcoming marriages. On our right, was a cute woman with a bright smile and a friendly manner. On our left, was another charming woman with a shrewd, fast wit.

Time passed quickly. We crossed swords with the woman on our left – over education policies. We chatted with the woman in front of us – about family, the weather, local trends, food and whatever. We flirted with the woman on our right:

“Do you come to these dinners often,” we asked.

“About as often as you do,” came the reply, “once a year.”

“Well, the dinners suit you. You look very nice in white.”

“Thanks… but I really don’t have any choice. It’s a ‘dinner in white,’ after all. If I had a choice, I’d wear black.”

“Why… because you have a black, cruel heart? Or is it because you are in a sad mood? I hope not. And if so, perhaps I can cheer you up by telling you joke. How many Belgians does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“I’ve heard that one.”

“Then why does the guy from Belgium go to sleep with one full glass of water next to his bed and one empty glass?”

“I don’t know… why?”

“Because he never knows if he’ll be thirsty or not when he wakes up in the night.”

“Oh…”

Source: The Future Will Come

We challenge you to find the “green shoots” in this picture. It shows the severity of the financial crisis in terms of corporate profits.

As we’ve said before, you may be able to have a jobless recovery, but we seriously doubt you can have a profitless one. Unless the negative trend line of this chart changes direction, you can forget about a sustainable rebound in stocks.

What you’re looking at is by far the biggest decline in earnings on record (the data goes back to 1936). It shows that 12-month as-reported S&P 500 earnings have declined over 90% over the past 20 months (with over 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported for Q1 2009). (Hat tip to The Big Picture.)

This decline will not be fixed by Team Obama “phony money” solution. At best, the complete abandonment of sound fiscal principles will put off the great credit unwinding. And there is evidence in current stock valuations that it is having an effect on investor sentiment. But as recent experience has taught us, credit expansion cannot go on forever. And a bubble in treasuries is no exception.

Here’s what RBS chief credit strategist Bob Janjuah has to say about phony money. (Apologies to the grammar police: Janjuah isn’t one for the finer points of syntax and spelling.)

As absurd as the shrill chorus that is busy spinning that fact that coz central banks are going print-tastic, this means stocks are going higher and higher. Have folks learnt NOTHING!! The events of the last few yrs highlight the difference between ILLUSORY wealth/growth and REAL wealth/growth. The illusion can win out for a while, but ultimately REALITY WILL BITE HARDER the longer the illusion persists. But somehow this shrill chorus is given air-time and column inches – I am stunned by this. Be Warned – reckless central bank printing has NEVER succeeded over any meaningful investment horizon as a means of delivering real grwth and real wealth gains, and it is NOT going to wrk now. In fact, if the REFLATION/NOMINAL GRWTH policy trick does get legs, it will be simply setting up the next even more nasty balance sheet recession, from which the road back to normality will be horrible and much worse than what we have now.

]]> http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/obamas-phony-money-wont-fix-economy/16834/feed 0 http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/china%e2%80%99s-growth-slows-but-a-rebound-may-be-on-the-way/15658 http://www.contrarianprofits.com/articles/china%e2%80%99s-growth-slows-but-a-rebound-may-be-on-the-way/15658#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:18:12 +0000 Jason Simpkins http://www.contrarianprofits.com/?p=15658 China’s economy expanded by 6.1% in the first quarter, its slowest pace in at least a decade. But many economists believe this will be the low point for the world’s third-largest economy, as signs of recovery are already starting to emerge.

A collapse in exports and industrial overcapacity are the two main factors dragging on China’s economy. The 6.1% expansion follows growth of 6.8% in the previous three months and 9% for all of 2008.

The global financial crisis has obliterated overseas demand for Chinese goods and factory closures have force millions of migrant workers back to the countryside. But still other data suggests that this could be the low point for China’s economy.

Industrial production expanded by 8.3% in March from a…

During a credit deflation, things get cheaper. Without lines of credit, people can’t bid things up and prices fall to their “cash on hand” level. Given a long enough time, things settle out and prices relative to wages actually become attractive. But it’s a long and bumpy ride from here to there. The trick is to maintain roughly the same level of income as others take wage cuts or lose their jobs entirely. Add this to the general lack of credit and you find that the cost of living drops dramatically. You might have felt poor a couple of years ago when you earned $50,000 per year, but if you can hold onto that income, why, in the next couple of years you could feel positively wealthy!

The holding on part is where it gets a little tricky.

It’s tricky because when credit evaporates, less goods and services can be bought. A lot of jobs providing those goods and services become unnecessary. Layoffs become all the rage. You wind up with a lot of formerly employed people with no jobs and no money and no attractive prospects. Doesn’t seem fair, but that’s what happens when hopes and livelihoods get propped up on the shifting sand of credit expansion.

When credit vanishes, actual cash becomes king. Promises to pay take a back seat to actual ability to pay. Exactly what are we calling “cash”, though? God and the free markets like gold and silver because they’re relatively rare, easily divisible, and it’s very difficult to control their supply, and hence innately honest. Governments prefer colorful bits of paper that they issue precisely because they can print up as many as they need.

While credit isn’t wealth, neither is money. Money is just a commodity we use to represent and exchange wealth. It’s rather vital to have a measuring tool that resists stretching and deformation or else you get into all sorts of trouble. Gold and silver tend to resist stretching; paper money begs for it.

During the last really big credit bust in this country cash was very strictly tied to gold and silver. The exchange rates were fixed; you got one ounce of gold for a twenty-dollar bill (plus 67 pennies). Fifty-four cents got you an ounce of silver. So when the credit bubble popped and prices slumped, they did so in terms of a dollar that was a reliable proxy for gold and silver. How things have changed!

First FDR devalued the dollar and a little later Nixon killed it. The currency we have today is a hoax wrapped in a lie. It isn’t tied to anything. The old dollar was a certificate that could be exchanged for a very specific amount of gold. The one we’ve had since 1971 is a promise from the U.S. government…and little paper promises from governments have a dismal history.

You may have noticed that during our recent gargantuan credit bust people again ran to the dollar. They expressed a very strong preference for greenbacks over…well, just about everything else in the wide world. But running to the dollar for shelter these days is like seeking protection from the man who is shooting at you…or running from the doorway of a burning building to the second floor.

During the last depression, the dollar’s tie to gold limited the ability of our communist dictator to goose the money supply. Roosevelt had to coerce the citizenry to give him their gold under pain of imprisonment so he could allow for some easing of the dollar’s value. This time around, FDR II can just have central banks conjure more up as much cash as deemed necessary out of nothingness because the dollar isn’t tied to gold anymore.

Inflation is a slow burn on its default setting, which governments enjoy so much. It’s why they insist on monopolizing currency in the first place. But let inflation go on long enough and the currency becomes worthless. Sometimes events conspire to accelerate the race to worthlessness. Wars, laughably unpayable national debt, financial panics…that sort of thing.

The government would prefer an endless boom, even though such a thing—like individual biological immortality or perpetual motion — just isn’t possible. The central bank gets things started by expanding credit. Good times ensue. Everyone is employed and everyone lives beyond their means and bids up the prices of assets with money they don’t really have. This can’t go on forever (and never does!), but governments hate to see the ravages of the inevitable contraction after their artificially-induced boom. States love for their citizens to be blissfully distracted with fantasy, especially the really unsustainable sort.

So what is a government to do when it wants people to spend and they just refuse? When the rubes refuse to play ball and insist on hanging on to their savings, all you have to do is make saving less attractive than spending. Increase the money supply…make the money people hold less valuable…encourage them to get rid of it. Set the currency ablaze and ferret the consumers out.

Around these parts, we subscribe to the view that savings are essential for capital investment, but politicians side with Keynes on this and believe savings are for suckers; debt is where it’s at. And if private debt has brought the population to its knees, then the obvious answer is a dollop of public debt to kill their currency and finish them off!

It’s not just the amount of dollars that the central bank produces, however; it’s the amount that actually gets circulated and the speed at which it moves through the economy. When the general populace senses that the dollars they’re holding are losing value (because the central bank is accelerating the increase in supply), they try very hard to get rid of them as quickly as possible. They trade them for things that will hold their value.

The real trouble with hyperinflation isn’t that it devalues the currency, however; it’s that it devalues souls. It leads people astray. It removes the moral stops. It changes all sense of proportion. Like a sadistic, juvenile prankster, government spikes the punch with a little quantitative easing and before you know it all bets are off. People drunkenly succumb to the baser instincts they normally keep in check. The thin layer of restraint provided by the neo-cortex is broken and all sorts of reptilian longings are indulged…and consequences be damned.

Trying to invest and plan for the future under a fiat currency regime is like trying to be witty and convincing while drunk. Inevitably the wrong things are said and done because perception and judgment are hopelessly warped.

During a hyperinflation, the majority of the population who counted on the scrip they were forced to deal with and save can only feel angry desperation as all their savings turn to ashes practically overnight. The reward for personal thrift coupled with trust in the largest institution around—the state—is loss and future uncertainty. Under such conditions, societies tend to come apart fairly rapidly. Crime rises as savings and incomes disappear. Ethnic tensions may mount. There is a bull market in internal strife and personal misery.

People generally rather consume than produce or delay gratification. This is why the masses can be lied to with paper. But the universe is a weighing machine, not a voting booth. Wishes don’t trump reality. And disaster must befall those who expect something for nothing. We here in the Whiskey Room like to point the finger at governments, but we also have to acknowledge that thing in human nature that allows governments to exist in the first place and to flourish.

For the past decade in the U.S. easy credit — pretend money — led people to put their houses up as collateral on debts that could only be paid back if real estate prices kept getting propped up by more easy credit. Then they used this debt to finance vacations and trips to big retails chains to buy things that would not be used to produce or store wealth. And this was just an expansion of credit!

When the actual money supply expands in order to ease debt repayments…well, all sorts of screwy things happen. That’s what generally spurs the vulgar expansion of the money supply: the political desire to ease massive debt repayment, both public and private…that and war. When you see a nation living beyond its means, watch out; its currency will be thrown under the bus when the bill comes due.

Destroying the currency, however, means that the debts really weren’t repaid…because they were paid back with dollars that aren’t worth the value of those that were initially borrowed. It’s a big swindle and everyone involved knows it. But it goes on anyway with all the nasty consequences you’d expect from such massive debauchery, delusion and theft.

The list of countries that have suffered the ravages of paper money hyperinflation is pretty darned long…and ironically it starts with the very first country to give paper money a try, long, long ago. China’s Yuan Dynasty’s little experiment with paper money ended badly. In fact, it helped end the Yuan Dynasty.

For the first time in history, currencies everywhere are merely paper…including the world’s reserve currency. The potential…the inevitability…of a worldwide bonfire of these little paper vanities staggers the imagination. The conflagration will be mesmerizing in its size and intensity. You may even find yourself enjoying the view…if you make it a point to be standing far enough away not to be consumed.

Source:  The Joys of Hyperinflation

George Soros says the great credit expansion that was born with the baby boomers…and has lasted as long as we have…is now over. And this week comes word that the “end of abundance” is here too. That’s what it said on page nine of Monday’s Financial Times. And then, Bo Diddley died.

All the palmy trends of the boomer generation seem to be coming to an end.

Naturally, the world’s leaders are worried. They gathered in Rome this week for the customary monkeyshines. Even Robert Mugabe – who is banned from traveling in Europe – put on a false mustache so he could dine out on the Via Veneto, leaving his lieutenants in Harare to beat and starve Zimbabwean voters. Poor Mugabe. Goebbels would have gotten a warmer reception at a meeting of Jewish orphans.

At 84, Mr. Mugabe is almost living proof of Haeckel’s biogenetic law. It maintains that the history of the individual rehearses the history of the species. In Mugabe’s long life, from prison cell to presidential palace, he is the history of revolution…a Kerensky and a Stalin… the liberation struggle’s saint and its monster, too…all in one. To black Africans he is a big disappointment. To whites he is proof that Ian Smith was right all along. When Ian Smith left the top man role in Rhodesia, the country was the ‘bread basket of Africa’ with a currency as strong as the pound. Now it is a basket case whose peoples’ bones stick out and whose dollars are already as worthless as a campaign promise.

But everything follows the same laws – from embryo to corpse…from boom to bust…from seed to fruit to rot…nothing escapes, neither an individual, an empire, a species, nor a market.

This is not the first time in our lifetimes that the world has seen this kind of show. In the ’70s, Paul Ehrlich, like Malthus before him, foresaw a crowded, hungry world. In his popular book, “The Population Bomb,” he said hundreds of millions of people would starve to death. This was a world in which England couldn’t even exist; he said it would disappear by the year 2000. He was wrong about that. He was wrong about a lot of things. Julian Simon challenged him, arguing that a free economy always reduces real prices. On September 29th, 1980, the two made a famous bet – on whether the prices for 5 basic metals – chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten – would actually go down, inflation adjusted, in the following ten years – despite population growth. What happened? Simon won. On the 29th of September 1990, the prices of all five were lower. Ehrlich settled up with a check for $576.07.

In theory, Simon will always win a bet like that; competition and technology always force prices down. But Ehrlich wasn’t wrong about everything. And Simon wasn’t right about everything. While one believed the weight of numbers would send the world to Hell…the other had a god-like faith that the market would always save it, guided by an invisible hand to progress and prosperity. But while Simon is right in theory, the invisible hand is not always the gentle paw that he imagines; it does not necessarily call out for more booze just because the crowd gets thirsty. In fact, sometimes it vanishes altogether, allowing a Mugabe to ruin a country…instead of permitting the free market to build it up.

Simon had the good luck to make his bet at the beginning of a major decline in commodity prices. Oil, for example, hit an all-time high over $100 a barrel, in current dollars, in December 1979. Ten years later, it was trading near $30. And by 1998, the price had fallen to $10. Had he made his bet ten years earlier or ten years later, he probably would have lost.

Back to the raw facts facing the Roman holidaymakers: Over their plates of crespelle all fiorentina, delegates will learn that high food prices are putting millions of people on the verge of starvation. Then, as they wash down their peposo with a tide of Barolo or Chianti Classico, they will reflect on how this came to be. The “green revolution,” someone will mention, seems to have run its course. (Out of politeness or imbecility, no one will mention the Fed’s easy money policies.) Ehrlich’s population bomb never exploded, they might come to believe, because irrigation, selective breeding, and the use of petroleum-based products greatly improved farm productivity.

But now, the green revolution has turned brown. It is as mature as the credit cycle…or Robert Mugabe himself. The water is running out. Opposition to bio-engineering is growing. And petro-chemical inputs are both less effective and much more expensive than they used to be. Result? In 1961, crop yields grew by 10% per year. Lately, they’ve increased less than 1% per year.

Meanwhile, in 1970, there was about 1 acre of arable land on the surface of the planet for every pair of feet. But the feet have multiplied – just like Erhlich said they would – from a bit over 3 billion people to more than 6 billion; and now the species is expanding like sub-prime debt. Just look at a chart. Human population looks just like the NASDAQ in ‘99 or oil in ‘08. This bubble-like population explosion, along with urbanization, highways, pollution, desertification and so forth, has cut the amount of farmland per person in half. Meanwhile, the number of people bellying up to the bar continues to grow by 11% per year – more than 10 times faster than crop yields.

Everyone wants a drink; but there’s only so much beer on tap. Who knows? This may be a good time to short the whole damned race.

Enjoy your weekend,

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning

Editor’s Note: Don’t forget – you can hear Bill speak at this year’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver, British Columbia. This year’s theme is “View from the Peak: Seeking Profits in a time of Risk and Scarcity” – and it’s your first look at investment opportunities, global market concerns, and the best investment bets across the globe.

The Symposium takes place July 22nd and July 25th, 2008…but tickets are sure to sell out, so secure your spot today by clicking here for all the details:

Agora Financial Investment Symposium – July 22-25

Bill Bonner is the founder and editor of The Daily Reckoning. He is also the author, with Addison Wiggin, of the national best sellers Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century and Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis.

Bill’s latest book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics, written with co-author Lila Rajiva, is available now by clicking here:

Mobs, Messiahs and Markets

Source: Boomer Trends Coming to an End

We’re beginning to see the whole world financial situation as a U.S. problem. There is a lot going on…but the big story seems to be about America (and Britain, to the extent it shared the Anglo-Saxon economic model)…its money, its wealth and its place in the world.

The plot is simple enough. After an extremely successful run, the United States is struggling to maintain its edge. Its people are deeply in debt. Its currency is being sold off. Its labour…its capital markets…and its technological lead are all being challenged by faster, more youthful competitors.

Like any Greek tragedy, the hero is a victim of his own hubris. He thought he could steal the gods’ fire and get away with it.

Americans thought they could do things that have always been off-limits to mortals. They believed they could operate a financial system based entirely on paper money, for example. They believed they could spend money they hadn’t earned – and live off credit forever. They believed the myths of the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Benign Capitalism…the Black Scholes Option Pricing Model and the Great Moderation…that Deficits Don’t Matter and the War on Terror does.

And now…the whole society is being marked down – by inflation, deflation and a trillion-dollar, unwinnable war.

On the surface, it is merely another chapter in the world’s financial history. George Soros elaborates:

“The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years. However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.”

Those last 60 years were the 60 glorious years in which the United States was on top of the world. It’s the period roughly corresponding to Baby Boomers’ lives. Born after WWII…growing up in the ’60s…taking command in the ’80s…and now looking forward to retirement. Was there any better time to be alive? Was there any better place to be alive in than the United States of America? Its money was the world’s best. Its economy was the most dynamic and productive. And its people were the world’s richest. Full employment. Full stomachs. Free love and open bars…what more could you ask for?

Yesterday, the dollar hit another record low against oil. It now takes $111 to buy a barrel of oil…and, in Atlanta, $3.36 to buy a gallon of gasoline.

“That’s nothing,” said our driver in Manchester yesterday. “Here, the price of gas is nearly $10 a gallon. Of course, you don’t see any big American gas guzzlers either.”

Our driver showed us the instrument panel of his 2-year-old Skoda. It revealed an average fuel consumption of 56 mpg.

The car was comfortable and reasonably large. It didn’t seem to lack power.

“Here in England, we couldn’t afford to drive your cars,” he concluded.

Our guess is that Americans can’t afford to drive American cars either. The latest numbers show consumer spending rising – but only because consumers are forced to spend more on fuel. And experts believe that the summer of ‘08 will be the first in which Americans actually drive less – forced off the road by high fuel prices.

Most people think of inflation as affecting prices they pay for bread and magazines. But inflation has a bigger agenda; it adjusts the wealth of whole societies.

The problem for Americans – and many others in the developed world – is that their wages are too high. They are used to earning a lot more money than their counterparts in, say, China or Vietnam. But why? Only because they have more capital and more skills, so they can produce more. But that situation is changing fast. Capital is piling up in China, Russia, Brazil and India – and elsewhere. As a result – wages in those places are soaring. Nestle just agreed to a 16% wage increase for its St. Petersburg, Russia, staff. In China, urban wages rose 18.7% in 2006. Ten percent annual increases in India are said to be the average.

In the United States, the last real, hourly wage increases came in the 1970s. Since then, adjusted for inflation, wages have been flat. But we Baby Boomers scarcely noticed. Because we were entering our peak earning years, our assets (stocks, then houses) were rising in value, and the expanding credit cycle left us with more money to spend.

But now, as Soros points out, that credit cycle has turned against us. The super boom is over. Our houses are going down. And the value of our labor and our stocks – which have held fairly steady – are being marked down by inflation. We are not becoming a Third World country…but we are becoming a poorer one…with a labor force that is less and less overpriced each year. Seems like a good time to retire. But forget the Winnebago – with gasoline at $3.36 a gallon, who can afford to cruise around on the wide-open spaces?

“Inflating is immoral in a sense because it steals,” Ron Paul said to us in an interview for I.O.U.S.A. “It steals value if you double the money supply and your prices go up twice as much…it’s an invisible hidden tax. But the real immorality here is that some people pay higher prices then others. So if you’re in the middle class, or especially low middle income, your prices might be going up fifteen percent a year. Somebody on Wall Street working leverage buyouts doesn’t have to worry about the rising cost of living. This to me is a immoral act, that is prohibited by the Constitution, and the outcome is always tragic.”

Could it be downhill from here on out – to the end of our lives?

*** Crude oil futures surged to their highest price ever today, hitting a new record of $113.93.

The rise in the price of crude was due to yet another rash of dollar weakness, prompting traders and investors to run to the safety of oil and other commodities, such as our favourite yellow metal.

Supply concerns also pushed the price up, as there were some minor pipeline disruptions.

There is a way we could circumvent these problems, our resident oil expert, Byron King tells us.

“There’s a new technology that can also be used to pump oil from old wells that were thought to be dry for decades. That alone could potentially add several hundred years to America’s oil supply.

“The truly awesome potential lies in this fact: The ‘Oil Vacuum’ could prove to be the only way to economically extract an oil reserve on U.S. soil that amounts to three Saudi Arabias.

“The U.S. Department of Energy says anyone who can pull this off ‘could contribute nearly 3 million barrels per day to reduce oil imports, improve energy security and fuel economic growth.”