First of all, the economics department denied that Business Cycles existed. See "The Great Recession Conspiracy" for a short description and "This Time Is Different" for a longer version complete with lots of footnotes. Macro- economics is utter foolishness.
Second, the Philips Curve. This supposed relationship between unemployment and inflation is based on a half dozen data points in the English coal fields in the 1930's. It is the worst distortion of data I have ever seen in my life!!! And macro economist live and die by it. I just wish they would all die by it.
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ZERVOS: The Fed Is Risking An Inflation Disaster, And There Will Only Be One Place To Hide
Bloomberg TV
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The Fed, of course, recently adopted Evans Rule, which indicates that
tightening won't occur until unemployment gets to around 6.5%, or
inflation expectations are around 2.5%. The Bank of Japan is expected to
see a new round of aggressive policy, thanks to the wishes of incoming
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
While markets seem to be pretty happy about it all (ESPECIALLY in Japan) Zervos thinks it will end in uncontrollable inflation, like in other past Keynes-inspired experiments.
In his note, he recounts his time at The Fed:
Bottom line for Zervos: This won't end pretty, and there's only one place to hide. The good news is: It's stocks.
Here is the problem boys and girls. Ol Uncle Ben has printed over THREE TRILLION DOLLARS in brand new US$100 bills and stashed them in New York Banks. Feel free to piss on all of Uncle Ben's macro economic theories. The LAWS of physics rule here: He can either burn all those bills or he can release them in the US economy. When he does that, there will be inflation like you have never dreamed of.
While markets seem to be pretty happy about it all (ESPECIALLY in Japan) Zervos thinks it will end in uncontrollable inflation, like in other past Keynes-inspired experiments.
In his note, he recounts his time at The Fed:
In fact when I first arrived at the Fed
in 1991, all the staff PhD economists I met spoke some foreign language -
call it MITease. My world of rational expectations and real business
cycles had no place at the table. So in order to understand the policy
makers, and the people I had lunch with everyday, I had to learn how
they see the world, even if it made absolutely no sense. I can remember
vividly debates about the Phillips curve. And to this day I still have
no idea how the concept has survived. We had high employment, high
inflation and low real growth in 70s - followed by low unemployment, low
inflation and high real growth in the 90s. No matter how much you
"shift" or "augment" this flawed curve concept, it just doesn't work.
The fact that the basic Phillips curve notion of trading off inflation
for employment is now explicitly built into Fed policy decisions scares
me to no end. There has always been a fat tail to higher inflation
outcomes with Bernanke at the helm, but upon reflection, last week's
6.5/2.5 announcement probably made it A LOT fatter!
There are no coefficients, no NAIRUs, no
Phillips curves and no r-stars. And the rule has summed up Fed behavior
in the post crisis world better than any other. To that end, the only
safe place to hide from the guaranteed dilution of the real value of
money and debt is in real/hard assets. And if you still believe (like I
do) that the business cycle exists, and we will eventually see an
upswing in real growth, then the best real asset is physical capital -
specifically equity capital. Good luck trading.
See more Zervos at Markit Hub >Here is the problem boys and girls. Ol Uncle Ben has printed over THREE TRILLION DOLLARS in brand new US$100 bills and stashed them in New York Banks. Feel free to piss on all of Uncle Ben's macro economic theories. The LAWS of physics rule here: He can either burn all those bills or he can release them in the US economy. When he does that, there will be inflation like you have never dreamed of.
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