Great discussion on devaluation and recovery, Jesse, at Jesse’s Café Américain, cites an interview with Ray Dalio in Barron’s. Ray Dalio is the Chief Investment Officer at Bridgewater Associates.
The Incontrovertible Truth About Debt, Deleveraging, Devaluation and Recovery
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
It is incomprehensible that any informed economist does not understand this difference between deflationary deleveraging and a cyclical recession.
And if they do, how could they possibly justify giving trillions of capital to the banks to support them in their excess so that they might freely make loans again, when it was their reckless lending and speculation that brought us to this point?
And the economists also know full well that the real cure lies in devaluing the currency and restoring the balance sheet of the individual households through an increase in the median wage and the debt relief of bankruptcy.
There must be reform, a change in the system that spawned these repeated bubbles and epoch malinvestment.
"Basically what happens is that after a period of time, economies go through a long-term debt cycle — a dynamic that is self-reinforcing, in which people finance their spending by borrowing and debts rise relative to incomes and, more accurately, debt-service payments rise relative to incomes. At cycle peaks, assets are bought on leverage at high-enough prices that the cash flows they produce aren’t adequate to service the debt. The incomes aren’t adequate to service the debt. Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a debt restructuring. General Motors is a metaphor for the United States.
The process of bankruptcy or restructuring is necessary to its viability. One way or another, General Motors has to be restructured so that it is a self-sustaining, economically viable entity that people want to lend to again.
This has happened in Latin America regularly. Emerging countries default, and then restructure. It is an essential process to get them economically healthy.
We will go through a giant debt-restructuring, because we either have to bring debt-service payments down so they are low relative to incomes — the cash flows that are being produced to service them — or we are going to have to raise incomes by printing a lot of money.
It isn’t complicated. It is the same as all bankruptcies, but when it happens pervasively to a country, and the country has a lot of foreign debt denominated in its own currency, it is preferable to print money and devalue….
There will be substantial nationalization of banks. It is going on now and it will continue. But the same question will be asked even after nationalization: What will happen to the pile of bad stuff?… (More precisely, who will take the loss? If it is not those that took the profits, then you have injustice, transfer of wealth – Jesse)
The Federal Reserve is going to have to print money. The deficits will be greater than the savings. So you will see the Federal Reserve buy long-term Treasury bonds, as it did in the Great Depression. We are in a position where that will eventually create a problem for currencies and drive assets to gold….Everything is timing. You print a lot of money, and then you have currency devaluation. The currency devaluation happens before bonds fall. Not much in the way of inflation is produced, because what you are doing actually is negating deflation.
So, the first wave of currency depreciation will be very much like England in 1992, with its currency realignment, or the United States during the Great Depression, when they printed money and devalued the dollar a lot. Gold went up a whole lot and the bond market had a hiccup, and then long-term rates continued to decline because people still needed safety and liquidity. While the dollar is bad, it doesn’t mean necessarily that the bond market is bad…
From the U.S. point of view, we want a devaluation. A devaluation gets your pricing in line. When there is a deflationary environment, you want your currency to go down. When you have a lot of foreign debt denominated in your currency, you want to create relief by having your currency go down. All major currency devaluations have triggered stock-market rallies throughout the world; one of the best ways to trigger a stock-market rally is to devalue your currency…
Buying equities and taking on those risks in late 2009, or more likely 2010, will be a great move because equities will be much cheaper than now. It is going to be a buying opportunity of the century."
Recession? No, It’s a D-process, and It Will Be Long – Ray Dalio – Barrons
