Gold News

Creditization Failing at 2% Growth

Debt needs more growth to avoid collapse...

NEW reports cite "positive data", says Bill Bonner in his Diary of a Rogue Economist.

But what we see are negative data.

Take what Morgan Stanley calls "deep subprime" auto loans. These make up about one-third of the subprime auto-loan market.

Borrowers are falling behind on repayments on most subprime auto loans. But "deep subprime" borrowers are falling behind fastest.

Corporate defaults are spiking. And the last three months have seen bank lending shrink by more than 5% – the sharpest contraction in the "credit-money supply" since 2008.

Therein hangs a tale, as they say.

This is a system that depends on credit in place of real money. Over the last half-century or so, the credit-money supply has grown from $1 trillion to $66 trillion.

That was the source of much of the economy's "growth"...and most of the price increases on Wall Street.

There's no way to stand still in a system like this. Either the amount of new credit (debt) increases...or the old debt expires, reducing the money supply and causing a slump.

Economist Richard Duncan, who keeps a keen eye on the "creditization" of the global economy, calculates that without at least 2% credit growth, recession is unavoidable.

Duncan says credit grew by 2.6% last year, enough to avoid a recession. This year, he says credit will increase no more than the 2% minimum, putting the economy in jeopardy.

For our part, we know that corrections happen – both in the stock market and the economy. We just don't know when they happen.

We know, too, that a tightening cycle (higher interest rates) almost always seems to presage a correction.

But the Fed will never voluntarily return to a "normal" market-discovered interest rate system.

The insiders who control the system depend on cheap credit; they won't give it up voluntarily.

We have talked about how a "Deep State" runs the government. Voters don't decide the direction of the country; the insiders do.

This explains why so many things are done by the government that don't help most people...and why it's so hard to change the direction of the country in a major way.

There's one other important concept you should know about. It explains how real wealth is created.

There are two kinds of transactions.

There are win-win deals, where the two parties go into the deal voluntarily, hoping to come out ahead. And there are win-lose deals, where one party is forced into the deal by the other.

In neither case can we ever know in advance what the outcome will be; we can't predict the future. But we can know what kind of deal it is. And we know that only win-win deals add wealth.

All value (progress...wealth...satisfaction) depends on what people want.  And a win-win deal is the only way to find out what that is.

You build a "spec" house. You invest $500,000 (including the cost of the money you borrowed). Then, the feds confiscate the house and give you $200,000 for your trouble.

How much is the house worth?

You don't know. Only if someone voluntarily pays for it can you find out. All you know from this transaction: not to do that again!

If you sell the house for $600,000, you know that you have increased the world's wealth by $100,000. The house is worth $100,000 more than the time and resources that went into building it.

If, on the other hand, potential buyers don't like the house...and you are forced to sell it for $400,000...you know that you have reduced the world's wealth by $100,000.

Either way, the transaction is still a win-win deal. The buyer believes he has a house at least worth – to him – $400,000. The seller (who had hoped for more) would still rather have the money than the house.

It is a win-win for the economy, too: It yields information that is valuable and honest.

Win-win deals are the sine qua non of a properly functioning economy. They're the only way to know if you're going forward or backward.

The Main Street economy does win-win deals.

One man wants bread. Another wants $3 so he can buy fuel. One wants someone to drive him to the train station. Another gladly gives up his time in exchange for $25.

But the government does only win-lose deals. One party is forced to do something it doesn't want to do. One wins; one loses.

Wars are the ultimate win-lose deals, for example.

Win-lose deals also distort the vital price signals that make it possible for an economy to function correctly and create additional wealth.
 

New York Times best-selling finance author Bill Bonner founded The Agora, a worldwide community for private researchers and publishers, in 1979. Financial analysts within the group exposed and predicted some of the world's biggest shifts since, starting with the fall of the Soviet Union back in the late 1980s, to the collapse of the Dot Com (2000) and then mortgage finance (2008) bubbles, and the election of President Trump (2016). Sharing his personal thoughts and opinions each day from 1999 in the globally successful Daily Reckoning and then his Diary of a Rogue Economist, Bonner now makes his views and ideas available alongside analysis from a small hand-picked team of specialists through Bonner Private Research.

See full archive of Bill Bonner articles

Please Note: All articles published here are to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it. Please review our Terms & Conditions for accessing Gold News.

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