Donald Trump’s coming trade war with China could ultimately topple the current US economic regime of monetary inflation which enables America’s bubble-monopolist capitalism. The road, though, is unlikely to be direct or smooth.Some trade warriors argue that the economic war with China will improve the prospects for US prosperity by stimulating onshoring of industrial activity.   Critics argue that, in so far as onshoring occurs there is likely to be a loss of productivity.   Some warriors are optimistic about a spontaneous simultaneous rise in US productivity – whether due to US-led technological progress or radical deregulation coupled with cutting government waste.  It’s possible, yes, but it’s nowhere near certain with grounds for skepticism beyond the scope of this article.  There is a

It is hard to exaggerate the importance of China in the future of gold even if the relationship falls short of monocausal. Beijing’s actual course both in economic policy and geopolitics since its giant bubble economy turned to bust — starting circa 2020 — has had a huge bearing on gold’s super-strong performance. By contrast if the bust were to spark somehow a triumph of economic and political freedom in China, a continuing stellar rise for gold would depend, most likely, on a further collapse of general confidence in fiat money led by the dollar hegemon.The roots of gold’s dependence on China do not figure at all in the conventional IMF/Keynesian analysis of the present “malinvestment problem” in that country. According to this analysis the huge loss of private wealth corresponding to

A serious omission is notable in the circulating list of suspects responsible for the early August quake in global risk-on markets. This is the role of “monopoly capital” in stimulating wild technological change which by-passes potential benign control by the invisible hands of free markets.In assessing the charge against monopoly capital, the concept of revolution and its differentiation from coup is important. Revolution starts from below amidst a groundswell of new ideas and individual actions. Its continuing progress means at some point an overturning of the status quo regime. A coup by contrast describes a change in regime brought about by deliberate plotting on the part of a group within the present elites,The distinction is perhaps most obvious in the case of politics. Ryan McMaken

The severe losses for the center-right parties in the mid-summer French and British general elections, (i.e., Macron’s center-right coalition partners and Britain’s Tories) together with a shift in the US toward MAGA within the Republican Party, pose a severe and possibly existential challenge to the ideal of sound money. This is despite surveys revealing strong and broad popular anger about the cumulative loss of purchasing power of their money during the pandemic and its aftermath. Moreover, the hypothesis that the ideal of sound money gets a political fillip during and following a serious episode of inflation, is mythological rather than based on research from the laboratory of monetary history. The expectation that there will be responsive changes in monetary regime triggered by

“Fast thinking” is a corrupting short-cut in mental processes which the late Daniel Kahneman identified by experiments in financial decision-making. Fast thinking plagues the market-place as it responds to the new threat of responses to Fed-led inflation. That threat had emerged even before the post-pandemic inflation starting in late 2022 cooled from its peak levels. The most recent surge in prices had materialized even though its symptoms in goods markets were tamed by reversal of earlier supply side dislocations.An often-reported theme illustrating the current inflation angst suggests the Powell Fed will start to cut its policy rate by Summer 2024 out of misplaced complacency or due to political calculation. According to some of the inflation worriers, that rate policy would jar with a

Reports on the death of the present cycle of politically motivated monetary easing, in the words of Mark Twain, grossly exaggerated. Contemporary market analyses are full of how the Fed and ECB are dialing back on previous hints of Spring 2024 rate cuts. In tune with this, commentators are lauding the central banks, especially the Fed, for a show of political independence as elections approach.
The bigger picture though suggests otherwise. In the economic aftermath of the pandemic, monetary policy has again been blatantly political.
Yes, in both the US and Europe, central banks have had the chutzpah to claim credit for slowing down the rise of consumer prices. The truth is they have taken advantage of the supply boost from fading pandemic dislocations to pursue continued—but now partially

As the Biden administration ramps up new government spending—and budget deficits—to unheard-of peacetime levels, reality sets in. No economy and no currency can withstand this explosive assault for very long.
Original Article: The Dollar See-Saws between Two Views on Fiscal Explosion

Fiscal explosion is not in the economic dictionary. But in the foreign exchange markets and bond markets this intuitive concept has sometimes powered a narrative which drives long-term US interest rates and the dollar upward in tandem. The puzzle to explain at such times, whether the early 1980s, or autumn 2023, is why the dollar shrugs off the inflation danger of so much red ink in the government accounts.
Let’s start with the proposal for a new entry to the lexicon. A fiscal explosion is a suddenly perceived alarming deterioration in the public finances, now and in the future. Perceptions are the crucial element here. The underlying reality of government finances might have been deteriorating for some considerable time before this impacts investor analysis and decision making.
Fiscal

Supposedly, the "big news" is the decline of inflation. However, the monetary and political forces driving the latest bout of inflation have not gone away.
Original Article: "The Great Phony Disinflation Enters Its Finale"

“La commedia è finita!” summarizes where the United States and Europe now stand in the Great Phony Postpandemic Disinflation. Why phony? Reported consumer price index (CPI) inflation has been falling in the US and Europe; but this has little to do with the advertised monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB), and Bank of England.
Rather, the decline in reported CPI inflation is consistent with a natural downward rhythm of prices, reflecting fading pandemic restraints on supply. In a good money system, the essence of which is the absence of monetary inflation, average consumer prices (as represented by the CPI) would have long ago returned to their prepandemic levels.
Instead, in the financial marketplace and its surroundings, where the propaganda of the

Ryan McMaken (RM): There is a lot of talk these days about the US losing its global monetary hegemony. But a lot needs to happen in terms of unwinding the present system before that can happen. At the heart of this seems to be what you call “globalized money without a global money.” What do you mean by that, and what does it have to do with the dollar’s global importance?
Brendan Brown (BB): Globalization of money under the fiat regime magnifies and extends national monetary power. The currency of the largest economy, so long as it is freely tradable and meets minimally sufficient standards as a store of value, becomes the dominant international money. Dominance brings hegemony. Smaller countries in defying the lead of the dominant money, whether by choosing an alternative type of monetary

While the faux debt ceiling drama rages in Washington, DC, governments worldwide are defaulting on their debt via inflation.

Original Article: "Default by Inflation Is the Real Drama in the Global Debt Market"

The real drama of default in global markets has not been the federal debt ceiling negotiations in Washington but the write-off by inflation. The issue of whether it turns out that the US Treasury for a few weeks has been slow in servicing its debts—with all delays subsequently rectified—is a sideshow. We could regard this as camouflage for the ongoing real write-off operation. In this, countries led by the US, where a great inflation emerged during the pandemic and Ukraine war, have achieved big reductions in the real value of their debts.
The governments have also gained from a reduction in the total nominal market value of their fixed-rate debts due to the rise in interest rates. Those gains do not show up directly in national accounts. Rather, they are opportunity cost savings.

The current banking crises have deep roots in US financial history. Monetary authorities have engaged in inflationary behavior for more than a hundred years.

Original Article: "A Pyrrhic End to 130 Years of Vicious Bad Money and Banking Crises"

The original vicious circle starts with inflationary interventions in an up-to-then well-anchored monetary regime. Consequent asset inflation spawns a banking crisis. That leads to the installation of anticrisis safety structures (one illustration is a novel or enhanced lender of last resort). Alongside a possible monetary regime shift, these damage the money’s anchoring system. A great asset inflation emerges and leads on to an eruption of another banking crisis, devastating in comparison with the first.
An array of additional safety structures is put in place which makes the now-bad money worse than before. After a long and variable lag, a long and violent monetary storm means the safety structures fail, a banking crisis again erupts but this time milder than the previous.
Then a further

The monetary regime in power now—the so-called 2 percent inflation standard—is promising us a “return to normal” after the great pandemic and war inflation of 2021–22. At this time of powerful propaganda—the dismal accompaniment of natural disaster and war—we should be on our guard against such messaging.

Bad money regimes base themselves on a dysfunctional social contract. You, the people, agree to put up with a “moderately good” money in return for us (the regime) providing benefits in terms of employment and economic prosperity which would be unavailable if you (the people) had insisted on a high-quality money.

There is a story of war and peace in the contemporary currency markets. It has a main plot and many subplots. As yet, the story is without end. That may come sooner than many now expect.
The narrator today has a more challenging job than the teller of the story about neutral, Entente, and Central Power currencies during World War I. (See Brown, Brendan “Monetary Chaos in Europe” chapter 2 [Routledge, 2011].)

Under any remotely sound money regime the aftermath of war and/or pandemic is highly likely to feature a sharp decline in the prices of goods and services on average. Even under unsound money regimes there are powerful forces operating towards lower prices once the war/pandemic recedes. Strong injections of monetary inflation, however, can overpower them.

Inflations have an inbuilt mechanism which works to burn them out. Government (including the central bank) can thwart the mechanism if they resort to further monetary injections of sufficient power. Hence inflations can run for a long time and in virulent form. This occurs where the money issuers see net benefit from making new monetary injections even though likely to be less than for the initial one which took so many people by surprise.

Global supply shocks are historically rare events. All the more extraordinary to have two such shocks in quick succession—the second arriving even before the first has entirely faded away. That is what the world now experiences in the form of the Great Pandemic followed by the Great West-Russia economic war. The most visible symptom of the supply disruption is the sky-high price of energy and a range of other commodities.

In the incessant media discussion about whether inflation is transitory there is a big elephant in the room about which all are silent. Perhaps strangely some do not see it. Others for whatever reason pretend it is not there. The elephant is the fantastic surge in US corporate profits that monetary inflation has fueled during the second year of the pandemic.

There has been no constant concept of asset price inflation through the modern age of fiat money even amongst those who recognize the condition. The term has become most popular in the present period of inflation targeting coupled with the use of radical monetary tools.

Many episodes of monetary inflation, some even long and virulent, do not feature a denouement in a sustained high CPI inflation over many years. Instead, these episodes have the common characteristics of asset inflation and the monetary authority levying tax in various forms – principally inflation tax or monetary repression tax.

Authored by Brendan Brown via The Mises Institute,Never mind that the US Treasury’s indictment late last year of Switzerland as a currency manipulator rested on some flawed evidence and does not identify the crime.

The 1920s featured political détente, debt liquidations by prior consumer price inflation, an introductory stalling of monetary inflation, a German economic miracle, and a broad-based technological revolution. The 2020s have none of these.

Original Article: "Why the 2020s Won’t Be like the Roaring 20s"
This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.

The Fed Emperor’s New Clothes Show is a continuous comedy without laughter. The latest act, the virtual Jackson Hole conference (August 27), was dreadful. The show’s audiences are accustomed to the Fed chair and his board delivering solemn pronouncements about their aims—low inflation, high employment, and financial stability.

Abstract: Much of Shiller’s new book is about how economic narratives form, spread, and fade. Drawing on medical evidence about the spread of infectious disease, Shiller argues that “economic fluctuations are substantially driven by contagion of oversimplified and easily transmitted variants of economic narratives.” But Shiller ignores the powerful role of monetary disorder, whether in forming the narrative or determining the contagion rate, or as a competitor to the narrative.

In the last decade, the combination of virulent asset price inflation and low reported consumer price inflation crippled sound money as a political force in the US and globally. In the new decade, a different balance between monetary inflation’s “terrible twins” — asset inflation and goods inflation — will create an opportunity for that force to regain strength.