Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Deflationary pressures...

Continue unabated throughout the Developed world.  As I wrote here years ago with respect to the great rate compression, the interest channel of income has all but ossified with "safe" rates at or near zero bound.

As if that was not enough the continued commitment of G20 governments to engage in austerity in order to fix a debt problem (which is, of course, illusory for the largest issuers of sovereign currency) is a further drag on deficits...deficits that need to be high in order for any reasonable hope of recovery to surface.

And, as if that were not bad enough, the austerity programs include additional taxation, which further drains demand from respective economies.  Once again, readers, think of taxation (in modern fiat currency arrangements) as demand management systems.

Something has to give, and it will of course be the commitment of the politicians, but these of course are the most susceptible to lag and to the reluctance of three little words that politicians avoid with pathological consistency:  "I was wrong".

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