The Patient Died Anyway

An expected inflation rate of 2.5% is well within “contained.” It would be irresponsible to put the economy into a serious recession under such a set of circumstances. My Dad had a saying, “The operation was a success, but the patient died anyway.” Raising rates in any serious manner would whip inflation but would kill the economy at this point. Rates will need to go back up at some point, but not until the economy shows signs of a rebound. I think the chances of the Fed raising rates by the 75 basis points, by January, that the market has priced in, is quite low.

What will happen is that over time the annual comparisons will begin to be less problematic. The cure for high prices is high prices, as the true cliché goes.

Sadly, we may get some help on the housing inflation component. Foreclosure filings last month were up nearly 50% compared with a year earlier. Nationwide, 261,255 homes received at least one foreclosure-related filing in May, up 48 percent from 176,137 in the same month last year and up 7% from April, foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. said Friday.

The prices of homes in many areas are going to fall to the level at which they can be rented. As more homes come onto the market for rent, the pressure on rent prices will fall. And the measure of owners’ equivalent rent will fall along with it. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com (and an adviser to Republican John McCain’s campaign), wrote earlier this week that “the Bush administration’s efforts to encourage loan modifications and delay foreclosures are being completely overwhelmed.”

Separately, a Credit Suisse report from this spring predicted that 6.5 million loans will fall into foreclosure over the next five years, reaching more than 8 percent of all US homes. (AP) That is going to keep pressure on housing prices for several years at the least.

Thus, it is likely that Bernanke and company will continue to talk tough on inflation. But, as noted above, I also doubt that they will raise rates this year, and probably not until well into the next.

The only reason to raise rates would be to protect the dollar from a serious collapse. I think it more likely the Treasury would intervene in the markets to prevent such a collapse. Dennis Gartman, at dinner Wednesday night, suggested that if the administration really wanted to get the market’s attention, they could intervene in the currency markets and release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the same time. While it would only be a temporary fix, it would make speculators nervous. However, they might consider such an experiment preferable to having the Fed raise rates during the middle of a slowdown/recession.

And the dollar seems to have found at least a temporary bottom, and we could see further strengthening next week, as Ireland voted today to reject the proposed European central government. Since it takes an absolute 100% consensus among all member nations, that kills the deal. Europe now has a very odd shape. They have a commercial union. Some of the members share a currency. Some of them share actual membership in the EU. Some of them are in NATO. They have competing and very different needs for monetary policy.

In fact, it will be hard to get anything done in Europe apart from commercial treaties, etc., as any one country can veto any particular item which is not to their advantage. Over time, this is going to be seen by the world as an issue for the euro. And given the demographic and pension problems of “Old Europe,” the currency is going to come under increased pressure from competing needs for funding, taxes, and an easy monetary policy.

Six years ago I talked about the euro rising to $1.50, but I also noted that by the middle of the next decade it is likely to come back to par. We are halfway on that journey, and I still think we will arrive at my predicted point.

I think it is possible that the dollar could rise 10% or more this year against the euro, which would help inflationary pressures. Import prices into the US are up 17.8% year over year. A stronger dollar will help alleviate that.

Inflation in Asia and Europe

Countries throughout Asia would love to have a 4.2% inflation rate. Indonesia is at 10.4%, almost twice what they were a year ago. Vietnam would love to have such mild inflation, as its own level is up over 25%. Inflation in China is 8%. Inflation is up throughout the continent. And oil and food are the culprits.

Korea is particularly strained. Korea has seen its import prices rise by almost 45% in the last 12 months. Read this note from Stratfor:

“South Korea is among the most vulnerable of Asia’s top economic players to global price increases due to its heavy reliance on imports for many of life’s basic essentials - including oil, wheat, corn and coarse grains. At least 96 percent to 100 percent of its annual consumption in each of these items is imported. With global supplies in these basic necessities set to tighten, South Korea’s inflation and the associated social unrest can only rise. (Protests in South Korea can draw hundreds of thousands of marchers.)

“Interest rate hikes are one of the most readily available tools for fighting inflation and for propping up a weak currency. In theory, raising rates would help attract foreign money into South Korea by raising the rate of return on investments in the country, thus helping to increase the value of the local currency and to contain rising energy import costs and inflation. But just June 12, South Korea’s central bank decided to keep interest rates frozen at 5 percent. This was because the potential economic slow-down an interest rate increase could trigger is too politically risky for the government, and because there are less controversial means to bolster the won.

“If interest rates were raised to tackle the problem of increasingly expensive imports, the access of Korean businesses and households to credit to fund their operating costs or mortgage payments would shrink. This would make the government of President Lee Myung Bak even less popular.”

What to do? Each country will try its own particular witch’s brew. China is raising interest rates, increasing bank reserves, and allowing its currency to continue to rise. But make no mistake, there are no easy answers. Each choice has its own unintended consequences.

But a large part of the problem in Asia is food and energy. And monetary policy alone cannot address world supply imbalances. To a greater or lesser degree, every country is faced with the same conundrum. Do you risk higher unemployment and your economy to fight inflation that is not strictly speaking a monetary problem? If food is rising 40% in Vietnam, its workers will have to make more in order to eat? Will such a price increase force higher wages and perhaps a wage increase spiral like the US saw in the ’70s? If you increase the value of your currency too fast, you risk losing your competitive price advantage and thus losing business and jobs.

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