The Great Currancy Flush

Its official folks, the chips are in, the game is set and we are off to the final finish.

What am I speaking of? Why the last G20 meeting, 16 Feb 2013, meeting in Moscow, pledged that they would not devalue their currencies to save their own economies at the expense of the rest of the globe.

This is as rich as Chamberliane proclaiming "Peace in Our Time!". It will be brought to naught just as quickly.

Lets review:

The United States, that super debter of all historical debtors, the nation who in today's dollars, has a bigger debt than all previous nations of earth's history put together, is presently flooding $100 BILLION into the currency swill each and every month. Quantitative Easing 4 is the perpetual round and it came a lot faster than anyone had anticipated. There was narry even a pause between QE 3 and QE 4.

Comrade Obama is on a rip roll, promising one program after another, all with a nation that spends twice as much as it takes in and with every state effectively bankrupt, too. Is anyone in their right mind to think that that tap would be shut off for even a second. The US government spending is now making up 25-30% of GDP and rising. At this point a shut off of the tap would cardiac arrest the economy in an instant. Instead, they prefer for it to die more slowly, from dry land drowning. So, no chance of that ever happening...let the dollars role.

China: that nation blew a bubble bigger even than the nutty Yanks. Whole ghost cities, 8 lane super autobahns to nowhere and so on and so on. It tried to shut down the tap, somewhat, but found that like a good addict, the moment the high dosage of prime grade A currency is cut, the bends step in. Manufacturing falls, realestate purchasing collapses and crowds with torches and spears start to gather. Not good, not good. The war lords in Beijing like to stay in power as much as the Politburo in Washington.

So on with the taps and off goes the economy "growing" again, along with inflation. Another drowning victim waiting to happen.

Japan? Oh please, the land of the endless recession has been doing nothing but attempting to devalue its currency still further (though with little success against an even faster devaluing dollar) for the better of the past 20 years. There's nothing new under the Japanese sun and nothing is going to change.

The EU? That is France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the rest of the riff raff? Really? That Euro train wreck which has been going in mad scramble from one currency crisis to another, declaring victory and the final righting of all wrongs, only to look like keystone cops. The EU and its member cattle are screwed beyond the word's very meanings. They are the headless corpse. Even the head has stopped blinking and sticking out its tongue but the body still runs and runs.

Now France, the latest nation to once again prove that repossession and redistribution is a re-dead end to one's economy, has given that running corpse more things to run to. The French economy has managed to go from bad but manageable to end of the world cataclysm in one short year. Nothing like 75% confiscatory taxes on the job creators to kill the job creation. France's job laws have already been some of the worst in the world. Hire a new employee? Basically you've just added a family member until the end of their working days, since firing is all but impossible. Better be really really really sure you want him.

The UK? The nation that just discovered that it has a 30 billion pound...wait, 40 billion...or is it 50 billion...oh bloody hell, its huge, alright! hole in its nationalized banks. That's right, that's another 50 billion to 50 quadrakazillion pounds sterling (really there is no sterling in it, there wouldn't be enough in all the world) to fill and fill it only by printing more funny money...well actually most won't get printed, they'll just add a number with lots of zeros to the computers.

Thank God they found horse meat in the frozen dinners, to take everyone's minds off of those numbers with lots of zeros. Timely wasn't it?

So where does this leave Russia? Well, not in the not so nice place of having to play the same game or be priced out of the export markets. The dollar fell from 32R/1USD to 30R/1USD and was frozen there, by the Russian central bank, which too is now playing that game.

Our only hope is: with a minuscule national debt of $48 billion vs a $1.7 trillion economy we can outlast the debt laden leviathans of currency devaluation.

Either way folks, hold on tight, its finally come to that big big hill on the ride....now all we need is a few good wars to distract the peasants.

You Bet a Weak Dollar Drives Inflation

So here I am in this position as a global sourcing manager and I've got news for you, a weak dollar is going to kill the American economy. What you say? How could that be? Why the Fed swears up and down that it's doing this to save the US economy.

Well the problem is, the Fed has built a house of cards over the years, with a massive creation of M3 (cash) flooding the world, very low interest rates and no regulation of lending along with low amounts of reserve cash at banks...all to create a perfect storm. Of course, for those who create the money (the private banking system called the Federal Reserve) this is a windfall that's moving your wealth to their pockets...suckers.

Now, back to this driving inflation thing and the weak dollar. As most people learned in the one or two economic classes they might actually have taken, a weak currency allows a nation to export more, especially finished goods. Alas, that's under normal circumstances and there is absolutely nothing normal about the modern American shamonomy. With most of the US' manufacturing base overseas there is little to either 1. export or 2. export that does not require at least some of the components to be manufactured globally and brought back to America.

Again, back to the sliding dollar and my suppliers. Well now, I've just gotten done with several supplier conferences and guess what: I've got suppliers from India to Indonesia, from Italy to Canada asking for price increases from 7-15%. Yup, ghouls and goblins (it is Halloween) this is called inflation, inflation driven by global manufacturing and the falling dollar. And while we here in what's left of American industry might still be able to fight off these full increases it should never be mistaken for what it is: a rear guard action and that's absolutely what it is, a fighting retreat just made worse by Mr. Bernanke and the interest knife he wields. Never mind how he'll compete for investments for Uncle Spend Like a Drunken Sailor's budget deficits when competing with much higher European and Japanese rates.

So boys and girls, ghasts and ghosts, while the shock might not be hitting you yet, just give it another 3 or so months and you'll definitely have a yule tide log...that'll cost you 15% more.