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BookmarkThe Fed’s preferred measures of inflation are so low they’re in the Fed’s panic zone. It seems like right now, from their standpoint, the playbook isn’t working. What gives?
‘There’s an ideal playbook, and it would look something like this,’ explains Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars, ‘You’d have higher inflation than we’d have today, but not super high. It might be in the 3-4% range. GDP of maybe 5% — which is pretty high — and then that would bring down the debt-to-GDP ratio so the United States doesn’t look like Greece.’
The result would be a cheaper dollar, which would help exports and get the inflation the Fed wants. ‘And you’d have negative real interest rates,’ he added, ‘which is to say inflation would be higher than the nominal rate — so let’s say inflation 3.5% and a nominal rate of maybe 2.5%, you’d have 1% negative rates.’
But if we look closely, says Rickards, none of that is happening. There’s no inflation…in fact, the Fed is talking about deflation, which to them is worse. Instead of a weaker dollar, we have a stronger one. Interest rates are rising, but without any inflation, we’re getting positive real rates.
‘I don’t think the market correction was really about believing that the Fed would actually ‘taper,’’ he continued, ‘the way they said they’re going to or raising interest rates in 2014, which I don’t think anyone expects, although there was a lot of talk about that.’
Mr. Rickards thinks the Fed is way off the mark about the economy’s health. Bernanke thinks the economy is in much better shape than it really is. ‘My expectation between now and [the next major Fed meeting in] September,’ he told us, ‘is that as the data come in, it’ll be very clear their forecast is wrong, again. You look at the Fed’s forecasts for the last four years, they were wrong every time, and they were wrong by a lot — meaning why should we believe the forecast now? [See chart nearby.] They’re not going to taper.’
After September, things get even more interesting. After all, Jim reminds us, Bernanke will be a lame duck. That means his last Board of Governors meeting will be in January. ‘We can’t be certain of this,’ Rickards qualified, ‘but it seems very unlikely that he’s going to do anything dramatic on his way out the door. If Bernanke actually does taper in September, which I don’t expect, it’s going to be a shock to the markets, and we’re going to see more of a drawdown in gold, a drawdown in stocks, etc.’
After we had our fill about the Fed, we pivoted to gold. The People’s Bank of China last revealed its total gold holdings in April 2009 — 1,054 tonnes — and they could use it as a weapon in the currency wars.
‘I don’t know specifically,’ he said. ‘I certainly don’t want to pretend I have that date here on my desk.’ But he said he expects the Chinese to give an update of their official gold figures at the end of the first quarter in 2014. That date would match with China’s previous announcements.
He confirmed that ‘they made that announcement in April 2009. The last prior announcement was, I think, five years earlier.’ But he told us something more important: ‘If you’re China, the last thing you want to do is be transparent about your gold purchases, because it will drive the price up.’
So, we wondered, what will make the Chinese reveal their true gold purchases? Mr. Rickards answered simply they’ll do it when they ‘have enough gold that you don’t need more. In other words, they may want more, they may buy more, but they want to be in a position where they just raise their hand and say to the world, ‘Hey, we’ve got our gold, now we’re a player. Now when the international monetary system collapses and the world has to reconfigure the system, we get a big seat at the table.’’
He compared China’s strategy to a game of Texas hold ‘em. ‘You want a big pile of chips. The U.S. has a big pile of chips, Europe has a big pile of chips. The U.S. has 8,000 tonnes of gold, 17 members of the euro system have 10,000 tonnes. China at 1,000 tonnes is not a player, but at 5,000 tonnes, they are a player.’
According to his best information…China is there already. To be clear, no one really knows except for maybe a member of the Communist Party, says Jim. ‘But I have spoken to a number of sources in Asia,’ he told us, ‘I’ve spoken to a number of people who are very close to the physical market, I’ve done my own investigations, etc. Every time I have an estimate and try to verify it, what I get back is that I’m wrong on the low side.’
So he expects that come April 2014, China will announce that they own 5,000 tonnes of gold.
