The world’s foremost Elliott wave expert Robert Prechter goes “behind the scenes” on the Federal Reserve Bank
November 25, 2010
By Elliott Wave International
The ongoing financial crisis has made the central bank’s decisions — interest rates, quantitative easing (QE2), monetary stimulus, etc. - a permanent fixture on six-o’clock news.
Yet many of us don’t truly understand the role of the Federal Reserve.
For answers, let’s turn to someone who has spent a considerable amount of time studying the Fed and its functions: EWI president Robert Prechter. Today we begin a 3-part series that we believe will help you understand the Fed as well as he does. (Excerpted from Prechter’s Conquer the Crash and the free Club EWI report, “Understanding the Federal Reserve System.”)
Money, Credit and the Federal Reserve Banking System Conquer the Crash, Chapter 10
By Robert Prechter
An argument for deflation is not to be offered lightly because, given the nature of today’s money, certain aspects of money and credit creation cannot be forecast, only surmised. Before we can discuss these issues, we have to understand how money and credit come into being. This is a difficult chapter, but if you can assimilate what it says, you will have knowledge of the banking system that not one person in 10,000 has.
The Origin of Intangible Money
Originally, money was a tangible good freely chosen by society. For millennia, gold or silver provided this function, although sometimes other tangible goods (such as copper, brass and seashells) did. Originally, credit was the right to access that tangible money, whether by an ownership certificate or by borrowing.
Today, almost all money is intangible. It is not, nor does it even represent, a physical good. How it got that way is a long, complicated, disturbing story, which would take a full book to relate properly. It began about 300 years ago, when an English financier conceived the idea of a national central bank. Governments have often outlawed free-market determinations of what constitutes money and imposed their own versions upon society by law, but earlier schemes usually involved coinage. Under central banking, a government forces its citizens to accept its debt as the only form of legal tender. The Federal Reserve System assumed this monopoly role in the United States in 1913.
What Is a Dollar?
Originally, a dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold. Dollar bills and notes were promises to pay lawful money, which was gold. Anyone could present dollars to a bank and receive gold in exchange, and banks could get gold from the U.S. Treasury for dollar bills.
In 1933, President Roosevelt and Congress outlawed U.S. gold ownership and nullified and prohibited all domestic contracts denoted in gold, making Federal Reserve notes the legal tender of the land. In 1971, President Nixon halted gold payments from the U.S. Treasury to foreigners in exchange for dollars. Today, the Treasury will not give anyone anything tangible in exchange for a dollar. Even though Federal Reserve notes are defined as “obligations of the United States,” they are not obligations to do anything. Although a dollar is labeled a “note,” which means a debt contract, it is not a note for anything.
Congress claims that the dollar is “legally” 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold. Can you buy gold for $42.22 an ounce? No. This definition is bogus, and everyone knows it. If you bring a dollar to the U.S. Treasury, you will not collect any tangible good, much less 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold. You will be sent home.
Some authorities were quietly amazed that when the government progressively removed the tangible backing for the dollar, the currency continued to function. If you bring a dollar to the marketplace, you can still buy goods with it because the government says (by “fiat”) that it is money and because its long history of use has lulled people into accepting it as such. The volume of goods you can buy with it fluctuates according to the total volume of dollars — in both cash and credit — and their holders’ level of confidence that those values will remain intact.
Exactly what a dollar is and what backs it are difficult questions to answer because no official entity will provide a satisfying answer. It has no simultaneous actuality and definition. It may be defined as 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold, but it is not actually that. Whatever it actually is (if anything) may not be definable. To the extent that its physical backing, if any, may be officially definable in actuality, no one is talking. …
Do you want to really understand the Fed? Then keep reading this free eBook, “Understanding the Federal Reserve”, as soon as you become a free member of Club EWI.
Money, Credit and the Federal Reserve Banking System Conquer the Crash, Chapter 10
By Robert Prechter
… Let’s attempt to define what gives the dollar objective value. As we will see in the next section, the dollar is “backed” primarily by government bonds, which are promises to pay dollars. So today, the dollar is a promise backed by a promise to pay an identical promise. What is the nature of each promise? If the Treasury will not give you anything tangible for your dollar, then the dollar is a promise to pay nothing. The Treasury should have no trouble keeping this promise.
In Chapter 9 [of Conquer the Crash], I called the dollar “money.” By the definition given there, it is. I used that definition and explanation because it makes the whole picture comprehensible. But the truth is that since the dollar is backed by debt, it is actually a credit, not money. It is a credit against what the government owes, denoted in dollars and backed by nothing. So although we may use the term “money” in referring to dollars, there is no longer any real money in the U.S. financial system; there is nothing but credit and debt.
As you can see, defining the dollar, and therefore the terms money, credit, inflation and deflation, today is a challenge, to say the least. Despite that challenge, we can still use these terms because people’s minds have conferred meaning and value upon these ethereal concepts.
Understanding this fact, we will now proceed with a discussion of how money and credit expand in today’s financial system.
How the Federal Reserve System Manufactures Money
Over the years, the Federal Reserve Bank has transferred purchasing power from all other dollar holders primarily to the U.S. Treasury by a complex series of machinations. The U.S. Treasury borrows money by selling bonds in the open market. The Fed is said to “buy” the Treasury’s bonds from banks and other financial institutions, but in actuality, it is allowed by law simply to fabricate a new checking account for the seller in exchange for the bonds. It holds the Treasury’s bonds as assets against — as “backing” for — that new money. Now the seller is whole (he was just a middleman), the Fed has the bonds, and the Treasury has the new money.
This transactional train is a long route to a simple alchemy (called “monetizing” the debt) in which the Fed turns government bonds into money. The net result is as if the government had simply fabricated its own checking account, although it pays the Fed a portion of the bonds’ interest for providing the service surreptitiously. To date (1st edition of Prechter’s Conquer the Crash was published in 2002 — Ed.), the Fed has monetized about $600 billion worth of Treasury obligations. This process expands the supply of money.
In 1980, Congress gave the Fed the legal authority to monetize any agency’s debt. In other words, it can exchange the bonds of a government, bank or other institution for a checking account denominated in dollars. This mechanism gives the President, through the Treasury, a mechanism for “bailing out” debt-troubled governments, banks or other institutions that can no longer get financing anywhere else. Such decisions are made for political reasons, and the Fed can go along or refuse, at least as the relationship currently stands. Today, the Fed has about $36 billion worth of foreign debt on its books. The power to grant or refuse such largesse is unprecedented.
Each new Fed account denominated in dollars is new money, but contrary to common inference, it is not new value. The new account has value, but that value comes from a reduction in the value of all other outstanding accounts denominated in dollars. That reduction takes place as the favored institution spends the newly credited dollars, driving up the dollar-denominated demand for goods and thus their prices. All other dollar holders still hold the same number of dollars, but now there are more dollars in circulation, and each one purchases less in the way of goods and services. The old dollars lose value to the extent that the new account gains value.
The net result is a transfer of value to the receiver’s account from those of all other dollar holders. This fact is not readily obvious because the unit of account throughout the financial system does not change even though its value changes.
It is important to understand exactly what the Fed has the power to do in this context: It has legal permission to transfer wealth from dollar savers to certain debtors without the permission of the savers. The effect on the money supply is exactly the same as if the money had been counterfeited and slipped into circulation.
In the old days, governments would inflate the money supply by diluting their coins with base metal or printing notes directly. Now the same old game is much less obvious. On the other hand, there is also far more to it. This section has described the Fed’s secondary role. The Fed’s main occupation is not creating money but facilitating credit. This crucial difference will eventually bring us to why deflation is possible.
How the Federal Reserve Has Encouraged the Growth of Credit
Congress authorized the Fed not only to create money for the government but also to “smooth out” the economy by manipulating credit (which also happens to be a re-election tool for incumbents). Politics being what they are, this manipulation has been almost exclusively in the direction of making credit easy to obtain. The Fed used to make more credit available to the banking system by monetizing federal debt, that is, by creating money. Under the structure of our “fractional reserve” system, banks were authorized to employ that new money as “reserves” against which they could make new loans. Thus, new money meant new credit.
It meant a lot of new credit because banks were allowed by regulation to lend out 90 percent of their deposits, which meant that banks had to keep 10 percent of deposits on hand (“in reserve”) to cover withdrawals. When the Fed increased a bank’s reserves, that bank could lend 90 percent of those new dollars. Those dollars, in turn, would make their way to other banks as new deposits. Those other banks could lend 90 percent of those deposits, and so on. The expansion of reserves and deposits throughout the banking system this way is called the “multiplier effect.” This process expanded the supply of credit well beyond the supply of money.
Because of competition from money market funds, banks began using fancy financial manipulation to get around reserve requirements. In the early 1990s, the Federal Reserve Board under Chairman Alan Greenspan took a controversial step and removed banks’ reserve requirements almost entirely. To do so, it first lowered to zero the reserve requirement on all accounts other than checking accounts. Then it let banks pretend that they have almost no checking account balances by allowing them to “sweep” those deposits into various savings accounts and money market funds at the end of each business day. Magically, when monitors check the banks’ balances at night, they find the value of checking accounts artificially understated by hundreds of billions of dollars. The net result is that banks today conveniently meet their nominally required reserves (currently about $45b.) with the cash in their vaults that they need to hold for everyday transactions anyway. [1st edition of Prechter's Conquer the Crash was published in 2002 -- Ed.]
By this change in regulation, the Fed essentially removed itself from the businesses of requiring banks to hold reserves and of manipulating the level of those reserves. This move took place during a recession and while S&P earnings per share were undergoing their biggest drop since the 1940s. The temporary cure for that economic contraction was the ultimate in “easy money.”
We still have a fractional reserve system on the books, but we do not have one in actuality. Now banks can lend out virtually all of their deposits. In fact, they can lend out more than all of their deposits, because banks’ parent companies can issue stock, bonds, commercial paper or any financial instrument and lend the proceeds to their subsidiary banks, upon which assets the banks can make new loans. In other words, to a limited degree, banks can arrange to create their own new money for lending purposes.
Today, U.S. banks have extended 25 percent more total credit than they have in total deposits ($5.4 trillion vs. $4.3 trillion). Since all banks do not engage in this practice, others must be quite aggressive at it. For more on this theme, see Chapter 19 [of Conquer the Crash].
Recall that when banks lend money, it gets deposited in other banks, which can lend it out again. Without a reserve requirement, the multiplier effect is no longer restricted to ten times deposits; it is virtually unlimited. Every new dollar deposited can be lent over and over throughout the system: A deposit becomes a loan becomes a deposit becomes a loan, and so on.
As you can see, the fiat money system has encouraged inflation via both money creation and the expansion of credit. This dual growth has been the monetary engine of the historic uptrend of stock prices in wave (V) from 1932. The stupendous growth in bank credit since 1975 (see graphs in Chapter 11) has provided the monetary fuel for its final advance, wave V. The effective elimination of reserve requirements a decade ago extended that trend to one of historic proportion.
The Net Effect of Monetization
Although the Fed has almost wholly withdrawn from the role of holding book-entry reserves for banks, it has not retired its holdings of Treasury bonds. Because the Fed is legally bound to back its notes (greenback currency) with government securities, today almost all of the Fed’s Treasury bond assets are held as reserves against a nearly equal dollar value of Federal Reserve notes in circulation around the world. Thus, the net result of the Fed’s 89 years of money inflating is that the Fed has turned $600 billion worth of U.S. Treasury and foreign obligations into Federal Reserve notes.
Today the Fed’s production of currency is passive, in response to orders from domestic and foreign banks, which in turn respond to demand from the public. Under current policy, banks must pay for that currency with any remaining reserve balances. If they don’t have any, they borrow to cover the cost and pay back that loan as they collect interest on their own loans. Thus, as things stand, the Fed no longer considers itself in the business of “printing money” for the government. Rather, it facilitates the expansion of credit to satisfy the lending policies of government and banks.
If banks and the Treasury were to become strapped for cash in a monetary crisis, policies could change. The unencumbered production of banknotes could become deliberate Fed or government policy, as we have seen happen in other countries throughout history. At this point, there is no indication that the Fed has entertained any such policy. Nevertheless, Chapters 13 and 22 address this possibility.
Do you want to really understand the Fed? Then keep reading this free eBook, “Understanding the Federal Reserve”, as soon as you become a free member of Club EWI.
Rumors are, the U.S. government “is propping up the stock market.” By Elliott Wave International
Out of thousands of questions recently submitted to us at Elliott Wave International, the most frequent one received is: “Can the Fed manipulate the stock market?” Read our expert’s answer on this and other misleading “investment wisdom.” Read more.
You will find many intriguing Q&As at EWI’s Message Board. We offer it as a free way for our Club EWI members and subscribers to interact with EWI and the Socionomics Institute’s experts. We strive to answer every Message Board reader, and publicly post the best Q&As.
By far, the most frequent question we’ve been asked recently is:
“What is your take on the persistent internet chatter that the Federal Reserve is holding up the stock market via QE2, POMO, etc.? How can stocks ever decline again if the Fed is in control?”
We have several active Message Board posts that touch on “market manipulation.” But here is an eye-opening chart that will help shed more light on this issue.
EWI President Robert Prechter published this chart in his October 2008 Elliott Wave Theorist. Review this chart carefully. For too many investors, the crash of 2007-2009 is becoming a hazy memory. And almost no one in the mainstream financial media talks about the utter panic in the markets in September-October 2008, the worst part of the crash.
If you think back to that time, you may remember that the Federal Reserve and U.S. government took many aggressive steps to help stop the collapse. Every time they would announce a new intervention, the market would cheer. Result? Prechter’s chart gives an unequivocal answer:
As you can see, announcements of bailouts, unlimited credit, bans on short sales, etc., were powerless against the biggest stock market collapse in 76 years. The DJIA kept sliding. It didn’t stop until March 6, 2009 — after it had slipped below 6,500.
So: Is the Fed and the “Plunge Protection Team” engaged in market manipulation? You can browse EWI’s Message Board for some answers, but one thing is clear: When stocks were crashing two years ago, few dared to suggest that the Fed was in the saddle. Bob Prechter puts it best:
“When markets go up, the Fed seems to be in control; when they go down, it seems out of control. But the control aspect is an illusion.”
Get your 33-page Market Myths Exposed eBook for FREELearn why you should think independently rather than relying on misleading investment commentary and advice that passes as common wisdom. Just like the myth that government intervention can stop a stock market crash, Market Myths Exposed uncovers other important myths about diversifying your portfolio, the safety of your bank deposits, earnings reports, inflation and deflation, and more! Protect your financial future and change the way you view your investments forever! Learn more, and get your free eBook here.
FED is getting ready to print more money to stimulate the economy. Total bank credit has stopped expanding. Total debt, which is principal + interest, is more than the money supply, which is principal only. As the shortage of US dollars forces foreclosures and bankrutpcies, FED and the government is cherry picking favored ones to be bailed out. So the question is: Can the FED stop deflation? What if FED were to print $5000 per borrower, and hand it out? Would you spend it, or would you pay outstanding debt with it? As people choose to deleverage by paying down debt, the velocity of money is declining and consumer credit is shrinking. And there is more. Let us read what else is deflationary.
September 23, 2010
By Elliott Wave International
As the biggest credit bubble in history continues to shrink, consumer prices have stayed flat over the past several months, meaning there is no sign of inflation to come, despite growing commitments from the U.S. government.
So what’s keeping inflation at bay, given all the stimulus money promised? The answer is: Deflation - an overwhelming urge for consumers to liquidate their assets for cash. And this new economic phase is finally becoming too obvious to ignore, as explained in recent commentary from the world’s largest technical analysis firm.
“The economy is moving into a critical new phase, an outright deflation in which ‘prices fall because people expect falling prices.’ Obviously, this implies an element of recognition, as efforts to protect against indebtedness and falling prices contribute to further declines. We can tell deflation is entering a new stage because of the language and ideas that financial observers now use to describe it.” – The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast (September 2010)
Get an independent look at the future of the U.S. economy by reading Robert Prechter’s FREE Deflation Survival Guide. Newly updated for 2010, Prechter’s 90-page ebook on deflation reveals the biggest threat to your money right now. You’ll learn not only how to prepare for deflation and adapt during it; you’ll also learn how to survive it and, most important, prosper during it, so you’ll be ready for the buying opportunity of a lifetime at its end. Click Here to Download Your 90-Page Deflation eBook for FREE.
Here are a few recent comments about the new economic reality:
“[New Jersey Governor] Christie spelled out the details of his proposal Tuesday. They include: repealing an increase in benefits approved years ago; eliminating automatic cost-of-living adjustments; raising the retirement age to 65 from 60 in many cases; reducing pension payouts for many future retirees; and requiring some employees to contribute more to their pensions.” — Associated Press (Sept. 15)
“U.S. Home Prices Face Three-Year Drop as Inventory Surge Looms” — Bloomberg (Sept. 15)
“Atlanta Awash in Empty Offices Struggles to Recover From Building Binge” — Bloomberg (Sept. 14)
“The world economy faces a long, hard slog toward recovery and could slide into deflation and financial instability if leaders fail to deliver on promises of reform.” — Reuters (Sept. 10)
“Deflation seems to have the upper hand lately in the debate among investors about inflation versus deflation.” — Marketwatch (Sept. 8 )
“With the release of the August sales figures, one thing is clear for car shoppers — it’s a buyer’s market.” — Edmunds (Sept. 2)
“20 Funds to Guard Against Deflation” — Smartmoney (Aug. 29)
“Dividend-Yield Signal Screams Deflation” — Forbes (Aug. 25)
The word “deflation” also started appearing more in the financial media around 2002, but Robert Prechter, president of technical analysis firm Elliott Wave International and author of the 2002 New York Times best-seller Conquer the Crash, added in the updated 2009 edition of his book that the deflation references back then were in an entirely different context:
“The rarely used word deflation has become fashionable in financial discussion. … It is fashionable, however, not to predict its occurrence but primarily to dismiss the idea that it has any serious likelihood of occurring. The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said in May [2004] that there is ‘maybe one chance out of four’ that deflation will occur.”
– Conquer the Crash, 2nd edition (2009)
And Prechter says the opinion from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas was not an isolated outlook at the time. Here’s another quote from around the same time:
“Not one economist [of 67 surveyed] said it was ‘very likely’ the economy would slip into deflation, and only 6% said it was ’somewhat likely.’ About 95% said deflation was ‘not very likely’ to happen.” — Barron’s (2003)
In hindsight, we know that economists — in the aggregate — were dead wrong about their deflation predictions.
As we saw above, references to “deflation” are increasing now — because it’s obvious.
So if economists were unable — or worse, unwilling — to warn you in advance about the threat of deflation a few years ago, what are they not warning you about now?
Get an independent look at the future of the U.S. economy by reading Robert Prechter’s FREE Deflation Survival Guide now. Newly updated for 2010, Prechter’s 90-page ebook on deflation reveals the biggest threat to your money right now. You’ll learn not only how to prepare for deflation and adapt during it; you’ll also learn how to survive it and — most important — prosper during it, so you’ll be ready for the buying opportunity of a lifetime at its end. Click here to download your free 90-Page Deflation eBook now.
A Classic Technical Pattern Agrees with the Elliott Wave Count: Slicing the Neckline
August 17, 2010
By Elliott Wave International
In the August issue of his Elliott Wave Theorist, market forecaster Robert Prechter alerted readers that the U.S. stock market was slicing the neckline of a classic head-and-shoulders pattern in technical analysis, and that this may send the market into critical condition.
Prechter said that when the Elliott wave count and a head-and-shoulders pattern are saying the same thing about the stock market, it’s best to pay attention.
Here’s how the August issue of the Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, the sister publication to Prechter’s Theorist, described the head and shoulders pattern unfolding in the stock market:
“The weekly Dow chart [below] shows the development of an intermediate-term, head-and-shoulders pattern from the January high at 10,729.90 to the present. The January high marks the left shoulder, the April 26 high at 11,258 is the head, and the right shoulder is now ending. The April [Theorist] discussed the pertinent characteristics that Edwards and Magee used to define this technical pattern … all apply to the current formation. Observe how weekly stock trading volume has contracted during the development of the right shoulder, a necessary trait of this pattern. The downward-sloping neckline — exactly as on the big ten year pattern — displays market weakness, which is consistent with our interpretation of the wave structure.”
This chart shows the head-and-shoulders pattern.
Here’s what Robert Prechter himself said in a recent Elliott Wave Theorist:
“Generally, when the neckline slopes downward, the right shoulder does not rise to the level of the left shoulder …”
Please look at the chart again — then re-read Prechter’s quote.
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline Slicing the Neckline: When the Market May Go into “Critical Condition”. EWI is the world’s largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
The total outstanding debt in the world is approaching record levels. Most are preparing for inflation thinking that central banks will be printing money to pay the debt. What if someone told you inflation is not the immediate danger, but deflation is? Why? Because our money supply is not printed money. It is debt. When debt deflates, it is money supply that deflates. Most of the world’s debt is denominated in US dollars. Creditors are asking for US dollars to be paid back. Not gold, not stocks, not houses. This creates demand for US dollars. This is why when there is a debt crisis, US dollar goes up. US dollar has already lost it’s value due to excessive borrowing for decades. Now it is time to move up. Here is an article about the excessive debt burden of many developed countries.
By Elliott Wave International
The biggest balloon in the world is deflating.
This balloon had been inflated with a quadrillion (1015) dollars, which is to say: This balloon was filled not with air but with debt from around the globe.
What will happen as this global debt winds down? In two words: Deflationary Depression — the likes of which could be unprecedented in history. Want to Learn
A thousand trillion in debt can’t be wished away or swept under the rug. No one can “forgive” the debt. The consequences of unwinding this debt could be as massive as the dollar figure itself.
We’ve heard plenty about the debt problems of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
But how about the world’s second largest economy? Consider this fact reported in the Japan Times (July 8):
“Japan’s government debts are the highest the world has ever seen, at 219 percent of gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.”
Then there’s the world’s sixth largest national economy. In January 2009, Robert Prechter wrote this in the Elliott Wave Theorist:
“British banks have amassed $4.4 trillion worth of foreign liabilities, twice Britain’s annual GDP. … England, moreover, ‘has not defaulted since the Middle Ages.’ The possibility that it may do so again is yet another indication that the bear market is of … (larger) degree, exactly as Elliott wave analysts have predicted all along.”
Remember, Japan and Great Britain are major world economies. Imagine what the debt totals would look like in a line-item analysis of other nations, regions, states, provinces and municipalities around the world, including the U.S.
De-leveraging will likely lead to a deflationary crash — a “day of reckoning.”
Chinese GDP growth was more than 10% according to yesterday’s report. China is taking steps to clamp down on credit expansion to avoid an over heating economy.
As you likely know, the Asian markets have become an undeniable force in the global economy, and they have provided some of the most exciting investment opportunities in the past few years. Should you invest in China and Japan now? Discover an entirely fresh perspective on their economies in an eye-opening new free report from our friends at Elliott Wave International.
Sharp cultural contrasts — from fashion to desired marital traits — exist between China and Japan. This has everything to do with the overarching economic conditions, as you’ll discover inside.
“The East Asian Travel Logs,” brimming with brilliant and unique insights, allows you to see the East Asian markets through the eyes of EWI’s top Asian market analyst. It weaves together the regions’ recent cultural and economic trends with expert insights into their past to give you a long-term, holistic portrait you can’t find elsewhere — so you are equipped to make your own investment decisions in the region.
This analysis was originally available only to EWI’s paying subscribers, but it is now free for all to read and learn. It is so eye-opening and insightful, EWI was compelled to give it to you.
China had one child policy for a while and is likely to face an aging population that will become a problem in a decade. Japan already has this problem and is likely to get worse starting 2014. But do we have enough reason to ignore demographics and jump into these Asian markets and expect great returns?
There has been a lot of debate about what the government is doing to stave off a so-called double-dip recession. Some say it will cause runaway inflation; others say it’s simply delaying the inevitable. The man you’ll hear from below says DEFLATION is the true concern.
It’s true that Robert Prechter is a polarizing figure in the world of finance. Some write off his technical analysis theories as esoteric market hocus-pocus. Others swear by the natural order of the markets, which is why they believe Elliott waves and Fibonacci are the purest forms of technical analysis.
Whatever your opinion, it’s hard to deny that Prechter is on to something. Virtually no one has called the crisis like him.
MarketWatch columnist Peter Brimelow recently reported, “Over the past three years, [Prechter's] bearishness paid off handsomely. It’s up an annualized 5.25% against negative 8.12% annualized for the total return Wilshire 5000.”
Some might say it’s luck. Those familiar with Prechter’s writing call it unique insight.
After all, who else warned (as early as 2002, early enough to take action) about the impending tops in real estate, commodities and stocks or about defaulting pension plans, municipal bankruptcies and massive bank failures — plus a huge rally in the once-”doomed” U.S. dollar?
Only Prechter.
You can read what Prechter is saying now in a compelling new XX-page interview, where he’s asked tough questions about fiat currency, gold, the Fed, the Great Depression, financial bubbles, government intervention and how to protect your money — and even profit — in today’s environment.
Read Prechter’s candid answers for free, and find out where he thinks the markets are heading next.
Prechter explains why devaluation of the currency won’t fix the economy and why deflation is the real threat. The political will to print money does not exist. It will only appear after deflation is apparant at the bottom.
The following article is an excerpt from Elliott Wave International’s free report, 20 Questions With Deflationist Robert Prechter. It has been adapted from Prechter’s June 19 appearance on Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour.
Jim Puplava: In 1933 at the bottom of the crisis, the Roosevelt administration comes in. In its first week they declare a bank holiday, they reopen the banks with the FDIC, they sever gold, they come in with massive fiscal stimulus and they devalue the dollar substantially. The result was from 1933 to1937 we have positive CPI, economic growth, a robust stock market. If fiscal and monetary measures fail to revive the economy and the market, could the government try devaluation to change the deflationary outcome the way they did 1933?
RP: Well, you have to have a benchmark in order to devalue a currency. Our currency isn’t pegged to anything, so I don’t understand even what the term devaluation would mean. What would they do to do create a devaluation?
Editor’s Note: The article you are reading is just one small excerpt from Elliott Wave International’s FREE report, 20 Questions With Deflationist Robert Prechter. The full 20-page report includes even more of Prechter’s insightful analysis on fiat currency, gold, the Fed, the Great Depression, financial bubbles, and government intervention. You’ll learn how to protect your money — and even profit — in today’s environment. Read ALL of Prechter’s candid answers for FREE now. Access the free 20-page report here.
JP: Maybe they come out with a formal saying: the dollar is now worth a half a euro, X amount of yen or it’s a formal statement. They just declare it formally.
RP: Yeah, but everybody already knows what it’s worth, because it’s floating freely against these other currencies. And they certainly couldn’t fix it to a lesser currency like the euro. And then the managers of this other currency would simply make another decree and negate it. That’s not going to work.
Let’s take your example, because it’s very important. The whole idea of the government being ahead of the curve is bogus. You know the collapse was from September 1929 down to July 1932, right? The government did not act until it was over. They waited for the bottom of the collapse—of course—and then they finally decided they’re going to do something about it. So, months after the low in 1932, they finally shut the banks and pass laws such as Glass-Steagall, which created the FDIC, and the Securities and Exchange Act, and that sort of thing, to bring confidence back into the banking system. I think the same thing is going to happen here. They’re going to try the same old stuff, more and more lending, more and more borrowing—which is the problem, not the solution—until everything collapses, and then they’ll go, “Oh maybe we should try something else,” and by that time we’ll already be at the deflationary nadir, and it’ll be time to look for an inflationary outcome.
My whole thesis is exactly along those lines. We want to stay prepared for a deflationary crash, and when it’s over, we’re going to convert whatever money we have to stocks, and raw land, and gold, and whatever else we want to buy. That’s when—if the government makes a political decision to inflate through currency printing—it would make the decision. They’re not going to make it before the bottom. The government has never acted before the bottom, never acted in a new way. Right now these bailouts and other schemes are simply pressing the accelerator harder on what we’ve been doing since 1913.
Long Decline Ahead
Jim Puplava: I want to come back to government spending, but first I want to move onto the stock market. In your last two Elliott Wave Theorist issues, you laid out a scenario that would put the Dow and S&P, which in your opinion may have peaked on April 26, as the top from here. You feel that this top is the biggest top formation of all time, a multi-century top and we could head straight down in a six-year collapse that would end in 2016 that could see a substantial portion of the S&P and the Dow wiped out in a similar way that we saw between 1929 and 1933. Let’s talk about that and the reasoning behind it.
RP: Yes, you’re exactly right. I did a lot of work on technical forms, cycle forms and Elliott wave forms in April and May and put them in a double issue. Let’s talk about the cycles first.
The 7¼-year cycle has been quite regular since the first bottom in 1980. The next bottom was at the crash in October 1987. The next one was November 1994, which is when the economy went through four years with lots of layoffs; it was a recessionary period throughout until that cycle bottomed. The next one was between September 2001, which was the 9/11 attack, and the October 2002 bottom. And the latest one was at the low in March 2009. All those periods are 7¼ years apart, so we are in the uptrend portion of the 7¼-year cycle.
However, notice for example that in 1987, the market went up until August of that year and then bottomed in October, just a couple of months later. So the decline occurred very, very late in the cycle. This time it occurred a little bit earlier in the cycle, topping in ‘07 and bottoming in ‘09. In the current cycle, prices should peak the earliest of all of them. It’s what we in the cycle prediction business call “left-hand translation.” The market’s already gone up for about a year, and I think that’s just about enough. I think we’re going to spend most of the cycle going down. But the important thing to note is that the next bottom is due in 2016. That means I think we’re going to have a repeat of what happened between 1930—which was the top of the rally following the 1929 crash—and the July 1932 low. Instead of taking two years, it’s going to take about six years.
It’s going to be a very long decline. It’s going to be interrupted by many, many rallies, just as the decline from 1930 to 1932 was. And every time it bottoms and rallies, people are going to say “OK, that’s enough; it’s over.” But it won’t be over. It’s just going to be a long, long process. I think you and I will probably be talking a few times during this period. One of the interesting aspects of this process is that optimism should actually remain dominant through the first three years of the cycle. That will carry us into 2012. Even though prices will be edging lower, most people are going to think it’s a buy, and you shouldn’t get out of your stocks, and recovery is just around the corner, probably for the next three years. And then, for the final half of the cycle, the final three years, that’s when you’ll get the capitulation phase when everyone finally gives up.
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Prechter on CNBC: Market Pro: Long Bear Market Looming
Robert Prechter, president of Elliott Wave International, tells host Maria Bartiromo why he sees dark days ahead on CNBC’s Closing Bell.
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Fear and uncertainty that drive a severe bear market are the same emotions which can set the stage for authoritarianism, in most any nation.
"Bear markets of sufficient size appear to bring about a desire to slaughter groups of successful people. In 1793-1794, radical Frenchmen guillotined countless members of high society. In the 1930s, Stalin slaughtered Ukrainians. In the 1940s, Nazis slaughtered Jews. In the 1970s, Communists in Cambodia and China slaughtered the affluent. In 1998, after their country's financial collapse, Indonesians went on a rampage and slaughtered Chinese merchants." - Bob Prechter, Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior, p. 270
Why do authoritarian tendencies emerge only during bear markets in stocks?
"As society becomes more fearful, many individuals yearn for the safety and order promised by strong, controlling leaders." - The Socionomist, May 2010
Bob Prechter's new science of socionomics explains that stock market fluctuations mirror trends in people's collective mood. In simple terms, when the market is buoyant, it indicates positive social mood; the opposite when a bear market takes over.
The fascinating part is that because the stock market and social mood trend closely together, a forecaster can apply Elliott wave analysis to both — and predict both.
Generally, widespread brutalities and wars do not follow the first phase of a bear market. Extreme violence, when it does occur, often follows the worst part of the market's downturn — like the end of the Great Depression, a negative social mood period that ultimately ushered in World War II.
But even during the first phase, a negative social mood grows. So, if a forecaster determines correctly where in the wave structure social mood resides, he can make educated forecasts about what will follow in society — given what has happened before under similar social mood trends.
Authoritarianism is a subject of heated discussions these days, which makes it a timely topic for a socionomic study. The latest, two-part issue of the monthly Socionomist gives you just that: A look at historic trends and specific forecasts for the years ahead.
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
Telegraph.go.uk, May 26: "US money supply plunges at 1930s pace… The M3 money supply in the U.S. is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history."
Deflation is suddenly in the news again. It's a good moment to catch up on a few definitions, as well as strategies on how to beat this rare economic condition.
And who better to ask than EWI's president Robert Prechter? He predicted the first wave of deflation in the 2007-2009 "credit crunch" and has written on this topic extensively.
We've put together a great free resource for our Club EWI members: a 63-page "Deflation Survival Guide eBook," Prechter’s most important deflation essays. Enjoy this excerpt — and for details on how to read the eBook in full free, look below.
What Makes Deflation Likely Today? Bob Prechter, Deflation Survival Guide, free Club EWI eBook
Following the Great Depression, the Fed and the U.S. government embarked on a program…both of increasing the creation of new money and credit and of fostering the confidence of lenders and borrowers so as to facilitate the expansion of credit. These policies both accommodated and encouraged the expansionary trend of the ’Teens and 1920s, which ended in bust, and the far larger expansionary trend that began in 1932 and which has accelerated over the past half-century. Other governments and central banks have followed similar policies. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and similar institutions, funded mostly by the U.S. taxpayer, have extended immense credit around the globe.
Their policies have supported nearly continuous worldwide inflation, particularly over the past thirty years. As a result, the global financial system is gorged with non-self-liquidating credit. Conventional economists excuse and praise this system under the erroneous belief that expanding money and credit promotes economic growth, which is terribly false. It appears to do so for a while, but in the long run, the swollen mass of debt collapses of its own weight, which is deflation, and destroys the economy. A devastated economy, moreover, encourages radical politics, which is even worse.
The value of credit that has been extended worldwide is unprecedented. Worse, most of this debt is the non-self-liquidating type. Much of it comprises loans to governments, investment loans for buying stock and real estate, and loans for everyday consumer items and services, none of which has any production tied to it. Even a lot of corporate debt is non-self-liquidating, since so much of corporate activity these days is related to finance rather than production.
Figure 11-5 is a stunning picture of the credit expansion of wave V of the 1920s (beginning the year that Congress authorized the Fed), which ended in a bust, and of wave V in the 1980s-1990s, which is even bigger.
…it has been the biggest credit expansion in history by a huge margin. Coextensively, not only is there a threat of deflation, but there is also the threat of the biggest deflation in history by a huge margin. …
Why Deflationary Crashes and Depressions Go Together
Financial Values Can Disappear
Deflation is a Global Story
What Makes Deflation Likely Today?
How Big a Deflation?
Much, Much More
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts lead by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
