Thoughts From The Frontline : Velocity of Money

The Implications of Velocity

John Mauldin — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:00:00 GMT

The Velocity of Money
Our Little Island World
GDP = (P) x (T)
P=MV
A Slowdown in Velocity
Dallas and Thoughts on the Economy

This week we do some review on a very important topic, the velocity of money. If we don’t understand the basics, it is hard to make sense of the hash that our world economy is in, much less understand where we are headed.

But before we jump into that, I want to let my Conversations subscribers know that we have posted a recent conversation with two hedge-fund managers, Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors [and his staff] here in Dallas and Hugh Hendry of the Eclectica Fund in London. Our discussions centered on what we all think has the potential to be the next Greece, but on a far more serious level. It was a fascinating time.

Then next Wednesday we will post a Conversation I had with George Friedman of Stratfor fame, and then the following Wednesday a Conversation that I just completed with Dr. Ken Rogoff and Dr. Carmen Reinhart, the authors of This Time Is Different.

For new readers, Conversations with John Mauldin is my one subscription service. While this letter will always be free, we have created a way for you to "listen in" on my conversations with some of my friends, many of whom you will recognize and some whom you will want to know after you hear our conversations. Basically, I will call one or two friends each month and, just as we do at dinner or at meetings, we will talk about the issues of the day, with back and forth, give and take, and friendly debate. I think you will find it very enlightening and thought-provoking and a real contribution to your education as an investor.

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The Velocity of Money

The Federal Reserve and central banks in general are running a grand experiment on the economic body, without the benefit of anesthesia. They are testing the theories of Irving Fisher (representing the classical economists), John Keynes (the Keynesian school) Ludwig von Mises (the Austrian school), and Milton Friedman (the monetarist school). For the most part, the central banks are Keynesian, with a dollop of monetarist thrown in here and there.

Over the next few years, we will get to see who is right about debt and stimulus, the velocity of money, and other arcane topics, as we come to the End Game of the Debt Super Cycle, the decades-long cycle during which debt has grown. I have very smart friends who argue that the cycle is nowhere near an end, as governments are clearly increasing debt. My rejoinder is that it is nearing an end, and we need to think hard about what that end will look like. It will not be pretty for a period of time. The chart below shows the growth in debt, both public and private.

But the end of this debt cycle involves more than just debt reduction. There are a number of ideas we have to get our heads around, including the velocity of money. Basically, when we talk about the velocity of money, we are speaking of the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent. To give you a very rough understanding, let’s assume a very small economy of just you and me, which has a money supply of $100. I have the $100 and spend it to buy $100 of flowers from you. You in turn spend $100 to buy books from me. We have created $200 of our "gross domestic product" from a money supply of just $100. If we do that transaction every month, we will have $2400 of annual "GDP" from our $100 monetary base.

So, what that means is that gross domestic product is a function of not just the money supply but how fast that money moves through the economy. Stated as an equation, it is P=MV, where P is the nominal gross domestic product (not inflation-adjusted here), M is the money supply, and V is the velocity of money. You can solve for V by dividing P by M. By the way, this is known as an identity equation. It is true at all times and all places, whether in Greece or the US.

Our Little Island World

Now, let's complicate our illustration a bit, but not too much at first. This is very basic, and for those of you who will complain that I am being too simple, wait a few pages, please. Let's assume an island economy with 10 businesses and a money supply of $1,000,000. If each business does approximately $100,000 of business a quarter, then the gross domestic product for the island is $4,000,000 (4 times the $1,000,000 quarterly production). The velocity of money in that economy is 4.

But what if our businesses get more productive? We introduce all sorts of interesting financial instruments, banking, new production capacity, computers, etc., and now everyone is doing $100,000 per month. Now our GDP is $12,000,000 and the velocity of money is 12. But we have not increased the money supply. Again, we assume that all businesses are static. They buy and sell the same amount every month. There are no winners and losers yet.

Now let's complicate matters. Two of the kids of the owners of the businesses decide to go into business for themselves. Having learned from their parents, they immediately become successful and start doing $100,000 a month themselves. GDP rises to $14,000,000. In order for everyone to stay at the same level of gross income, though, the velocity of money must increase to 14.

Now, this is important. If the velocity of money does not increase, that means that (in our simple island world) on average each business is now going to buy and sell less each month. Remember, nominal GDP is money supply times velocity. If velocity does not increase, GDP will stay the same. The average business (there are now 12) goes from doing $1,200,000 a year down to $1,000,000. The prices of products fall.

Each business now is doing around $80,000 per month. Overall production is the same, but divided up among more businesses. For each of the businesses, it feels like a recession. They have fewer dollars, so they buy less and prices fall. So, in that world, the local central bank recognizes that the money supply needs to grow at some rate in order to make the demand for money "neutral."

It's basic supply and demand. If the demand for corn increases, the price will go up. If Congress decides to remove the ethanol subsidy, the demand for corn will go down, as will the price.

If Island Central Bank increases the money supply too much, you will have too much money chasing too few goods and inflation will rear its ugly head. (Remember, this is a very simplistic example. We assume static production from each business, running at full capacity.)

Let's say the central bank doubles the money supply to $2,000,000. If the velocity of money is still 12, then the GDP will grow to $24,000,000. That will be a good thing, won't it?

No, because with the two new businesses only 20% more goods are produced. There is a relationship between production and price. Each business will now sell $200,000 per month, or double their previous sales, which they will spend on goods and services, which only grew by 20%. They will start to bid up the price of the goods they want, and inflation sets in. Think of the 1970s.

So, our mythical bank decides to boost the money supply by only 20%, which allows the economy to grow and prices to stay the same. Smart. And if only it were that simple.

Let's assume 10 million businesses, from the size of Exxon down to the local dry cleaners, and a population that grows by 1% a year. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses are being started every month and another hundred thousand fail. Productivity over time increases, so that we are producing more "stuff" with fewer costly resources.

Now, there is no exact way to determine the right size of the money supply. It definitely needs to grow each year by at least the growth in the size of the economy, the population, and productivity, or deflation will appear. But if money supply grows too much then you have inflation.

And what about the velocity of money? Friedman assumed the velocity of money was constant, and therefore he stated that inflation is always and everywhere a function of the supply of money. And it was, from about 1950 until 1978 when he was doing his seminal work. But then things changed.

Note that nothing Friedman says contradicts the equation MV=PT, if you assume constant velocity. Almost by definition you get inflation if the money supply grows too fast.

Let's look at two charts sent to me by Dr. Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management in Austin (and one of my favorite economists). First, let's look at the velocity of money for the last 108 years.

Notice that the velocity of money fell during the Great Depression. And from 1953 to 1980 the velocity of money was almost exactly the average of the last 100 years. Also, Lacy pointed out in a conversation that helped me immensely in writing this letter, that the velocity of money is mean reverting over long periods of time. That means one would expect the velocity of money to fall over time back to the mean or average. Some would make the argument that we should use the mean from more modern times, since World War II; but even then, mean reversion would result in a slowing of the velocity of money (V), and mean reversion implies that V would go below (overcorrect) the mean. However you look at it, the clear implication is that V is going to drop. In a few paragraphs, we will see why that is the case from a practical standpoint. But let's look at the first chart.

Now, let's look at the same chart since 1959 but with shaded gray areas that show us the times the economy was in recession. Note that (with one exception in the 1970s) velocity drops during a recession. What is the Fed response? An offsetting increase in the money supply to try and overcome the effects of the business cycle and the recession. P=MV. If velocity falls then money supply must rise for nominal GDP to grow. The Fed attempts to jump-start the economy back into growth by increasing the money supply.

In this chart from Hoisington, the recessions are in gray. If you can't read the print at the bottom of the chart, he assumes that GDP is $14.5 trillion, M2 is $8.2 trillion, and therefore velocity is 1.7, down from almost 1.97 just a few years ago. If velocity is to revert to or below the mean, it could easily drop 10% from here. We will explore why this could happen in a minute.

P=MV

But let's go back to our equation, P=MV. If velocity does slow by another 10%, then money supply (M) would have to rise by 10% just to maintain a static economy. But if we assume 1% population growth, 2% (or thereabouts) productivity growth, and a target inflation of 2%, then M (money supply) actually needs to grow about 5% a year, even if V is constant. And that is not particularly stimulative, given that we are in recession.

Bottom line? Expect money-supply growth well north of 7% annually for the next few years, or at least the attempt. Is that enough? Too much? About right? We won't know for a long time. This will allow armchair economists (and that is most of us) to sit back and Monday-morning quarterback for many years.

A Slowdown in Velocity

Now, why is the velocity of money slowing down? Notice the real rise in V from 1990 through about 1997. Growth in M2 (see the above chart) was falling during most of that period, yet the economy was growing. That means that velocity had to rise faster than normal. Why? Primarily because of the financial innovations introduced in the early '90s, like securitizations, CDOs, etc. It is financial innovation that spurs above-trend growth in velocity.

And now we are watching the Great Unwind of financial innovations, as they were pursued to excess and caused a credit crisis. In principle, a CDO or subprime asset-backed security should be a good thing. And in the beginning they were. But then standards got loose, greed kicked in, and Wall Street began to game the system. End of game.

The financial innovation that drove velocity to new highs is no longer part of the equation. Its absence is slowing things down. If the money supply hadn't risen significantly to offset that slowdown in velocity, the economy would have been in a much deeper recession, if not a depression. While the Fed does not have control over M2, when they lower interest rates it is supposed to make us want to take on more risk, borrow money, and boost the economy. So they have an indirect influence.

And now we come to the policy conundrum for the Fed. They have pumped a great deal of money (liquidity) into the economy. Normally, banks would take that money and multiply it by lending it out (through fractional reserve banking at a potential 9-times factor), increasing velocity and the overall money supply. In the past, the more the Fed increased the money supply, the more banks lent.

But today bank lending is still falling at an average of 15% annually, so far this year. But what if that trend stops?

Corporations in the US have more money on hand than ever in the last 54 years. They are more productive. Their debt-to-equity ratio has been dropping by about 25% for the last 3 quarters, as they repair balance sheets. Capital spending jumped 18% annually in the last quarter. If we are not at an inflection point of rising employment, we are close to it (although we do need at least 100,000 new jobs a month to make up for increased population). And thus are the stock market bulls inspired, and we hit new trend highs weekly.

While growth this quarter will not be as robust as last, it will be fairly good for an economy with 10% unemployment. If you are a Fed governor, you have to be worried that things could turn around quicker than now seems plausible. What if corporations decided to take their cash and start investing in growth?

The last chart showed a small uptick in velocity at the end of last year. What if that is for real? What if we have turned the corner? Then the Fed will have to start taking back the money they have put into the economy, unless they want to see inflation. And indeed, that is what some Fed governors are arguing. They want to raise rates now, or at least signal that they will begin to do so soon. Note there have been a number of speeches by Fed officials of late assuring the bond market that they are aware of the problem, and that they have all the tools they need to keep inflation (and higher interest rates) at bay.

But then again, while there are signs that the economy may be picking up, it is a strange type of recovery. It is what I call a statistical recovery. Let's look at this litany from my friend David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff. He notes that there are measures of economic health other than the stock market and GDP. To wit:

More than five million homeowners are behind on their mortgages.
There are over six million Americans who have been unemployed for at least six months, a record 40% of the ranks of the jobless.
The private capital stock is growing at its slowest rate in nearly two decades.
Roughly 30% of manufacturing capacity is sitting idle.
Nearly 19 million residential housing units, or about 15% of the stock, is vacant.
One in six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed.
Commercial real estate values are down 30% over the past year.
The average American worker has seen his/her level of wealth plunge $100,000 over the last two years, even with the recovery in equity markets this past year.
Bank credit is contracting at an unprecedented 15% annual rate so far this year as lenders sit on a record $1.3 trillion of cash.
Unit labor costs are down an unprecedented 4.7% over the past year, and what has replenished household coffers has been the federal government, as transfer payments from Uncle Sam now make up a record 18% of personal income (and the Senate just passed yet another jobless benefit extension bill!)."

Wow. 18% of personal income in the US is now from the US government (also known as taxpayers, current and future).

If you take away the punchbowl too soon, you risk strangling a very shaky recovery that is significantly dependent on stimulus spending, which is going to rapidly go away the second half of this year. Further, the Fed situation is complicated by the fact that taxes are highly likely to go up in 2011 (maybe the largest tax increase ever), which will put a serious strain on the economy.

I think the Fed is on hold throughout 2010 and well into 2011, as they see what effect the tax hikes, coupled with decreased stimulus, bring. Next week we will explore the potential effects of the tax hike on the 2011 economy. Stay tuned.

Let me ask for a little bit of help. I am trying to find data on the potential tax increases, and what I am finding is all over the board. In fact, I had intended to write about that topic this week, but simply don't trust the numbers I am reading. If you have a source or RECENT paper, I would love to see it. Thanks.

Dallas, and Thoughts on the Economy

What started me thinking about tax increases was the problems that so many people I know personally are having, including my kids. It is difficult watching your kids struggle with fewer work hours, the need to make car payments and buy diapers. For many, it's cuts in pay, lost jobs, and more. Lack of health insurance is often a worry, too.

And knowing it could get worse is rather sobering. Trust me, I see the human side of the need for health-care reform, but also balance it with the need for some fiscal responsibility. We have $38 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities. How can we add more? Does anyone really believe that this bill being offered will actually cut spending? How do you cut Medicare by $500 billion when it is already so underfunded? Really? But what about kids and families with no insurance? Something better than what we are seeing is needed to get the problem solved. More on this next week.

I will be a panelist in the inaugural "America: Boom or Bankruptcy?" summit to be held in Dallas on March 26. There will be five of us, presenting problems (plenty of those!) and possible solutions. This promises to be a no-holds-barred, full-throttle event. It should be a lot of fun. Details at www.fedfriday.com.

It's time to hit the send button. I have kids coming to the airport, and I want to be there. Spring break and all, and I look forward to it. Have a great week.

Your worried about the kids analyst,

John Mauldin

Back to the Future Recession

John Mauldin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:24:58 GMT

MV=PQ
Financial Innovation: The Round Trip
2010-11: Back to the Future Recession
The Fed at the Crossroads
How Did We Get It So Wrong?
The Trend Is Not Your Friend When It Ends
Orlando, Naples, Cleveland, and Grandkids

This week we look at the second half of my speech from a few weeks ago at my annual Strategic Investment Conference in La Jolla. If you have not read the first part, you can review it here. The first few paragraphs are a repeat from last week, to give us some context. Please note that this is somewhat edited from the original, and I have added a few ideas. You can also go there to sign up to get this letter sent to you free each week.

MV=PQ

Okay, when you become a central banker, you are taken into a back room and they do a DNA change on you. You are henceforth and forever genetically incapable of allowing deflation on your watch. It becomes the first and foremost thought on your mind: deflation, we can't have it.

MV=PQ. This is an important equation, right up there with E=MC². M (money or the supply of money) times V (velocity -- which is how fast the money goes through the system -- if you have seven kids it goes faster than if you have one) is equal to P (the price of money in terms of inflation or deflation) times Q (roughly standing for the Quantity of production, or GDP)

So what happens is, if we increase the supply of money and velocity stays the same, and if GDP does not grow, that means we'll have inflation, because this equation always balances. But if you reduce velocity (which is happening today) and if you don't increase the supply of money, you are going to see deflation. We are watching, for reasons we'll get into in a minute, the velocity of money slow. People are getting nervous, they are not borrowing as much, either because they can't or the animal spirits that Keynes talked about are not quite there.

To fight this deflation (which we saw in this week's Producer and Consumer Price Indexes) the Fed is going to print money. A few thoughts on that. The Fed has announced they intend to print $300 billion (quantitative easing, they call it). That is different than buying mortgages and securitized credit card debt -- that money (credit) already exists.

When they just print the money and buy Treasuries, as with the $300 billion announced, they can sop that up pretty easily if they find themselves facing inflation down the road. But that problem is a long way off.

Sports fans, $300 billion is just a down payment on the "quantitative easing" they will eventually need to do. They can't announce what they are really going to do or the market would throw up. But we are going to get quarterly or semi-annual announcements, saying, we are going to do another $300 billion here, another $500 billion there. Pretty soon it will be a really large total number.

When we first started out with TALF and everything, it was a couple hundred billion, and now we just throw the word trillions around and it just drips off of our tongues and we don't even think about it. A trillion is a lot. It's a big number. And the total guarantees and backups and all this stuff we are into -- I saw an estimate of $10-12 trillion. That's a lot of money.

Understand, the Fed is going to keep pumping money until we get inflation. You can count on it. I don't know what that number is; I'm guessing maybe as much as $2 trillion. I've seen various studies. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater thinks it's about $1.5 trillion. It's some very big number way beyond $300 billion, and they are going to keep at it until we get inflation.

Side point: what happens if the $300 billion they put in the system comes back to the Fed's books because banks don't put it into the Libor market because they are worried about credit risks? It does absolutely nothing for the money supply. Okay? It's like, goes here, goes back there -- it doesn't help us. The Fed has somehow got to get it into the financial system. They've got to figure out how to create some movement.

Will it create an asset bubble in stocks again? I don't know, it could. Dennis [Gartman] talked about being nervous yesterday. I would be nervous about stock markets both on the long side, as I think we are in a bear market rally, but also there is real risk in being short. Bill Fleckenstein will be here tonight. He is a very famous short trader. He closed a short fund a couple of months ago. He says he doesn't have as many good opportunities, and basically he's scared of being short with so much stimulus coming in. So it's going to work, at least in terms of reflation, but the question is, when? A year? Two years?

Financial Innovation: The Round Trip

Financial innovation is one of the drivers of the velocity of money. We started in approximately 1991 creating the first securitizations and CDOs. It was done at Merrill Lynch, if I remember right. But they started getting copied, and then we went into warp speed, creating all kinds of new CDOs and SIVs that invested in loans, securitized mortgage debt -- most of which was rated AAA -- banks loans, credit card debt, etc. Without thinking about it, we created a shadow banking system that funded a huge chunk of our total credit markets. It was outside the bailiwick of the normal regulatory authorities.

Then in 2007 we began to destroy the shadow banking system. If it was working so well, why did we do that? Because they mismatched their liabilities and assets. They were borrowing short-term and lending long-term, and doing it highly leveraged. They were buying up long-term assets at 4-5-6%, some (or most) of them rated AAA. Then they were selling commercial paper at 1% or 2% -- so you get a 2-3% profit spread.

A 2-3% spread doesn't really make you anything, you're not really excited about that; so since we're dealing with AAA investments that everyone believes to be absolutely safe, let's leverage it up 6-7-8 times. Now you're talking a 20% return. Now you're talking about making money, real money. And I should note that we were also talking real commissions and monster bonuses.

I think one other side note needs to be made here. In hindsight, we can now look back and wonder what the investment banks were thinking. They "must" have known they were pushing bad paper into the system.

But their behavior tells us they didn't know. If they really believed they were, there would not have been so much of the toxic debt left on their books. Bear Stearns launched very large funds to buy this debt at obscene leverages and sold it to their best customers. At least some people in management thought there was real value in these securities, which just goes to show how lax or ignored the risk managers were in all parts of the financial industry.

Then it all began to implode, because people started paying attention to some of the assets on the balance sheets of the various SIVs and CDOs and suspected they might not be worth what they had originally thought. You have subprime mortgages in your Special Investment Vehicle? Hey, I'm not going to buy your commercial paper. Suddenly, the commercial paper market simply imploded. This was the start of the banking crisis.

So we started taking the innovation of securitizations off the table. The innovation that had driven the velocity to new highs was now slowly being pulled off. So, velocity slows down, and it's continuing to slow down with each passing month.

Let's survey the economic landscape. We have an unstable economy. Housing doesn't bottom until 2011 or 2012, unless, as I wrote the other day, we give immigrants a green card to come here. We need the immigrants anyway. We need smart immigrants. By the way, I've never had as much response to my letter, both positive and negative. It ran about 60/40 for. Many of the "against" were people outside of the US, saying why are you trying to take our best, we need them. I suppose there is a certain logic to that, but if we could pull a million homes off the market, it would solve a big part of the US credit crisis right now, not to mention, we would have people putting money into our system and it wouldn't cost taxpayers anything.

But back to the current scene. Consumer spending is slowing, and it's going to slow for years as savings increase. At one time we were savings 7-8-10% of our incomes, back in the early '80s. We grew from 63% of the economy being consumer spending, to 71% in 2006. We are going back to the mid --to low 60s in terms of the percentage of consumer spending in GDP. We are not doing it all at once, it's going to take years; but, gentle reader, it's the blue screen of death! We are hitting the reset button.

Economists have a term for this process. It's called rationalization. We have too many stores to sell "stuff," all sorts of stuff. Too many malls. We have too many factories to build too many cars, too many plants to build too many widgets for an economy where 65% of GDP is consumer spending. When we built all that capacity it was for an economy in which consumer spending was 71%; and because we were enthusiastic and believed we would grow at 3% forever, we probably built it for 73% or 74%.

We are watching capacity utilization fall off the table. It is down to 67%, fully 15% below normal. What happens when you see that? You start closing factories. It's just what you have to do. We are going to have fewer restaurants, fewer clothing stores. The survivors will get bigger market shares; that's just what happens. Schumpeter called it creative destruction.

And this being a different type of recession -- because we are hitting the full credit-cycle reset, it's going to take longer. I think the recession -- the actual, honest, mark-to-market numbers --will be negative through 2009. Then we'll start to improve. This current first quarter is going to be ugly again, then it will be a little better in the third quarter. The second quarter -- I don't know how bad it's going to be, but it's not looking good.

But in 2010 we could start seeing slow growth again, maybe Muddle Through. There might be a sluggish recovery in 2010, but we have to put an asterisk on that possibility because the Democrats are going to push through the largest tax increase in history.

First of all, the tax increase is the Republicans' fault. They didn't make the tax cuts permanent when they had the chance, so consequently they go away in 2010. US taxes are going to go way up, whether there is no compromise, so that we go back to the pre-Bush years, or there is some compromise because the Obama Administration realizes that putting in that type of a tax increase will throw us back into recession. Remember Roosevelt? What did he try to do? He raised taxes in the middle of a recession (1937), when unemployment was 14%, driving it back up to 20%. Unemployment will be 10% or 11% by this time next year, and maybe by the fourth quarter.

If you count those who are working part-time but want full-time employment, the unemployment number is closer to 15%. Yesterday, my taxi driver was a mechanical engineer who lost his job, but had kids and had to do whatever he could to put food on the table. He said there are a lot of people like him here in California.

The deficit is going to explode way past $2 trillion unless somebody can show some sense. Let's look at the carbon credit problem. Obama wants to impose this new carbon credits program, which sounds benign. We call it a credit and not a tax. Here's the issue. It gives us two bad possibilities, one of which is going to happen. Number one, he is assuming there is something like $800 billion coming in over the next decade from these carbon credits, and he's put that as income in his proposed budget, like it's going to get passed into the system. He is assuming that revenue. If he doesn't get it, deficits are much higher in the near term.

But if he gets it, it's even worse, as US industry becomes uncompetitive with Third World industries that don't have the same carbon credits and energy costs. Do you think China or India will pass the same legislation? They are building more coal-fired plants every month than we build in a year.

We are going to be seeing factory after factory shut down and moved off-shore, because they simply won't be able to compete. Either way, we go back to that economics technical term I used earlier: we're screwed. The carbon credits program is just a massively bad idea. There are things that we should do to cut down energy usage, but this is not the way to go about it. We can talk about other ways to do it if you want to.

2010-11: Back to the Future Recession

I think the country could re-enter a recession in 2010 and 2011; we would go right back into it when those tax hikes start to hit. What do tax increases do? They take money out of consumers' pockets -- and the consumers that actually spend. Plus, 75% of those who will see their taxes rise are small businesses that employ people, so we deflate ourselves.

Liberal economists are going to argue, "Wait a minute, John. We are taking it from these [rich] guys, but we are giving it to lower-income families, so it will get spent." But it's going through the government -- we don't get the same bang for our buck. We don't get new employment. We're simply transferring and creating a new welfare state; plus, we have a number of recent studies which show that the propensity now is not to spend the new money but to use it to pay down debt. This is not a pro-growth policy, and growth is what we need. Not wealth transfers and a new welfare state.

At some point inflation starts to show up again, because when you start running two-trillion-dollar deficits and you start trying to borrow it, at the same time the Fed is printing money, at some point in this process the bond markets (and the currency markets) are going to rebel. An unsustainable trend will keep going until it stops. I don't know when that day is, but the current policies mandate that we will hit the proverbial wall. One day it will be just like August 2007. Someone is going to ring a bell and the Treasury bond market is going to look the deficits and wonder how they will fund them, and they are going to let out a huge gasp and then throw up. Because you can't run two- to three-trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.

As Woody Brock so capably points out, the key to watch is the debt-to-GDP ratio. You can grow debt fast; but at some point you start to have to grow the economy faster than you are growing debt, or you become an economic basket case, where the dollar is devalued and interest rates go up fast. At that point, the Fed will have lost control. The key item to watch now is the budget debates. Are we going to build in $2 trillion deficits, or we will show some fiscal restraint?

The Fed at the Crossroads

And, are we going to try and do this when unemployment is at 10% or more? The Fed at some point is going to come to a crossroads. They can allow inflation, like the '70s. (And some of us are old enough to have lived through the '70s, though I really didn't notice much -- I actually made money on inflation during the '70s. I was in the printing business before I went into the investment publishing business. I would buy traincar loads of paper on credit and put it on warehouse floors; and because I was the only guy who could get paper and I had it at a good price, I got a lot of business. So I made money off of that inflation cycle.

We figure out how to Muddle Through, even during periods like the '70s. So the Fed can bring that back -- which they all swear they won't do -- or they can withdraw liquidity. What happens if they withdraw liquidity? It slows the economy down, because we are pulling money out of the system. Just as higher interest rates begin to take a toll on the economy, they will have to start pulling money out of the system to avoid higher inflation. By the way, if rates are rising that means the interest payments on the federal debt are rising, because we have a lot of short-term federal debt. Frankly, as a government, we should be buying all the 30-year bonds we can possibly buy. But we are not, because that would increase the pressure on the current debt. We have the long-term forecasting ability of a mongoose.

We are in the middle of a Great Experiment, the one truly great experiment of this time; so the economists are fascinated. We have Keynes versus von Mises versus Irving Fisher versus Friedman, and they all have theories about what you should do after depressions and what works. Someone commenting on Keynes said, "In a world organized in accordance with Keynesian specifications there would be a constant race between the printing press and the business agents of the trade unions. With the problem of unemployment largely solved, the printing press could maintain a constant lead."

Printing money. That's what the current Fed is doing. Just as aside, here is a great quote I came across. It really doesn't have anything to do with anything, but it's fun. John Ehrlichman told us about a conversation between Richard Nixon and Arthur Burns, who was Nixon's nomination to be Chairman. Nixon said, "I know there is the myth of the autonomous Fed [short laugh]. When you go up for confirmation some Senator may ask you about your friendship with the President. Appearances are going to be important, so you can call Ehrlichman to get messages to me, and he'll call you." I'm sure that's not done today.

Seriously, the independence of the Fed is critical, Nixon notwithstanding. Given the recent revelations about Bernanke and Paulson supposedly telling Ken Lewis at Bank of America not to tell the public about how bad the Merrill situation was -- do you think there might possibly be some pressure on Bernanke? His term is up early next year. It is quite possible we get a Fed chairman who would be more accommodative of a left-wing agenda than Bernanke, who I believe really will pull back from allowing inflation to get too high.

This would force budgetary discipline on Congress, which the left will not like. I can see some real issues in the upcoming nominating process if Bernanke is not left at the helm. Do we really want Larry Summers?

Let's get back to our discussion of the Great Experiment. Von Mises said there is nothing you can do about a deleveraging cycle, you basically just let it all go to hell and then pick up the pieces. The hair-shirt economists, I call the Austrians: just let it drop, take your medicine, take your 15-20% unemployment, and just deal with it, because you'll be able to come back faster from the lower base. By the way, to von Mises, the velocity of money was a meaningless concept. Gold was where you should have had your money to begin with.

Then there is Friedman, who produced his great work that says inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. He had his studies to prove it. But when he did his studies, in the 30 years that he analyzed, the velocity of money was remarkably stable. So of course, inflation had a 1-to-1 correlation with money supply.

Fisher says, "The velocity of money is important." For Fisher, debt deflation controlled all other economic variables. It was the driving economic force. You're going to have to rationalize all your debts. There's nothing you can do about it; but what you do is, do as much as you can to provide a soft landing for the people who lose their jobs. Do whatever you can to get them along and to keep the system working, but you are still going to have to go through a credit reorganization. We are going to find out in 5-6 years who was right. That is the experiment we are living through. My bet's on Fisher, just for the record.

How Did We Get It So Wrong?

So how did we get it so wrong? How did we get here? Let's go back to first principles: Ideas have consequences. And bad ideas tend to have bad consequences. We've taught two generations of financial managers theories that were patently absurd. Rob Arnott is going to be here later with us for the panel discussion. Rob recalls standing in front of 200 academics, professors in schools that teach economics. He asked them, "How many of you believe in the efficient market hypothesis?" Something like two or three raised their hands. "How many of you teach it?" All of them raised their hands.

We have been teaching generations of MBA students economic garbage. Gaussian curves and things you could model. The classic line is from Ibbitson, is a brilliant professor and a brilliant mind, who said economics is a science. No it's not. It's barely an art form. It's voodoo. That's what we practice. We look at the entrails of the Wall Street Journal and try to predict the future. Sometimes it's about as bloody as sheep entrails. CAPM... poor Harry Markowitz's Modern Portfolio Theory got so twisted beyond recognition. I remember being with Harry Markowitz. I gave a speech at a big hedge fund conference about five years ago, talking about why Modern Portfolio Theory was not going to work. The next year it was the 50^th anniversary of Modern Portfolio Theory, and they brought Harry out to speak. He of course talked about why it was. I remember meeting him in the hall of this big hotel. And I asked him a couple of questions; I forget what they were because he so staggered me with, "Oh, you missed the whole concept of correlation and assets. Correlations change."

And he started drawing quadratic equations in the air. But because I was standing in front of him, he was drawing them backwards so I could see them. I mean, this guy is absolutely brilliant. But he's right, you should have a diversified portfolio of noncorrelated assets; but as John was showing yesterday, correlations in a crisis all go to one.

What money managers did was to create models that said, "If you do this, diversify your portfolio like this, and here are all your noncorrelated asset classes -- see what happens? You get long-term positive results."

And they would project that into the future. But they didn't project crises, when correlations go to one. Modern financial theory only works in models if you assume a few things that are patently not true in the real world. So we trained a generation of managers and investors that they should buy 60% stocks and 40% bonds. Yet for the last 40 years, bonds have outperformed stocks. Where was that in the model?

Well, we can go back to the 19^th century and see it. But we created a trend from 1944 to 2000 that said we were going up, and we trained a generation to believe they could model, and they did it. They modeled garbage, and now we've wiped out a generation of retirement income. I could go on and on, but it's nonsense.

We let the rating agencies become way too important. They were supposed to be the adults supervising the sandbox, and they weren't. They started out perfectly acceptably, but then they decided they wanted to rate multiple-obligor securities like real estate mortgage bonds using the same ratings they used for corporate bonds. They sold their business souls and didn't even realize it.

Remember, we trained a generation of people to think they could model this stuff. So they modeled what potential defaults would be, based on past performance, and not even past performance that looked like the assets in the investments they were rating. But it was scientific and looked like the models they learned in school.

Every time you get a letter from me, there is a page and a half down there at the bottom, full of disclosures. At least twice in those disclosures I say past performance is not indicative of future results. It's like, "coffee is too hot, don't spill it." We don't pay attention to it, but it's the most important thing, because past performance has nothing to do with future history.

The future is going to look different, yet we think we can model it. The models are bullshit. (That's a technical economics term that requires advanced degrees to use.) They just are. Now you can take some comfort from them, and you have to try and figure stuff out, and you look for correlations. That's what I do, and we all do that. I confess I use models every day.

But you have to recognize that the model has a huge asterisk beside it. You just can't bet the farm on it. And God, have I learned that the hard way. I've got bruises on my back from making assumptions. That's why I don't go around half-naked, because it would just look ugly.

We let the rating agencies use a corporate bond-rating system -- AAA, AAB -- for multi-obligor bonds that had nothing to do with reality, and they rated them up on the way up and now they are rating them down on the way down, and they are screwing us both ways. Because if you lose 1% on a triple-A bond, it immediately goes to junk. That means the banks have to write it off their capital and sell it for 50 cents on the dollar.

When did this problem start? July of 2007, when we introduced mark-to-market accounting. When did AIG have a problem? When they had to start writing their AAA's down. Now we should never have let it get to that place to begin with, but now we have to deal with reality. You can't just sit there and say, "Tsk, tsk, we need to let these guys go bankrupt."

No, you can't, not unless you want 25% unemployment again. We have "X" amount of pain to go through to get back to whatever the "new normal" will be. Think of this as a big tube of pain, OK? We can do it in one year or in seven or eight years. I vote for seven or eight. I don't want 20-25% unemployment. I would rather have 10% unemployment for seven years. Now, that's just me, because I know when my neighbor is unemployed, when my kid is unemployed, that it hurts.

The Trend Is Not Your Friend When It Ends

So, the establishment is now saying, "Let's keep the system going." Now, are we going to have problems when the Fed starts trying to pull the extra cash they are printing out of the economy? Yes. Is that going to create a different form of future history than we have experienced in the past? Yes. Therefore, trying to model the future based upon that past, will not work.

We believed the trend. The trend is not your friend when it ends. OK? It just isn't. Now, I'm the guiltiest person in the world. I live on what one of my friends calls "psychic income." That is the income you get when you take a current business model, the current business you are in, and you say, if I could grow these assets to "Y" I would make "Z". That "Z" charges me up. I haven't earned it yet and the train probably won't go there, but it gets me up in the morning. That's my psychic income. We all do that. But we rarely realize that it's just psychic income; it's not real income until the cash is there.

Given all that I have said, I still contend I am not a pessimist, at least not in the long term. Stocks go from high valuations to low valuations to high valuations. They've done it in US markets and world markets, and we are halfway through the trip in a secular bear market. We haven't gotten to low valuations yet, I don't care what they say. The P to E at the end of July was something like 289 on the S&P. You can go to the S&P website and you can see that. Now you smooth it with five-year curves and performance, and it goes to 20. 20 is not cheap. But it's going to get cheap -- at least that's what history tells us.

Now maybe history is wrong, because past performance is not indicative of future results; and I could be wrong, but sometimes you just have to set an anchor and say this is what I'm believing. I think we are going to lower valuations, and when that happens we will have compressed price to earnings ratios just like we did in 1982. The world will be coming to an end and we'll be moaning and groaning. We haven't gotten as bad as we were in '82 -- whoever pointed that out is correct.

But what will happen? The stock market will be a coiled spring and we'll have a bull market and we'll get to have fun in the stock market again. Until then, be careful.

Orlando, Naples, Cleveland, and Grandkids

I am writing today's letter at the St. Regis Hotel in Laguna Beach, California. I am going to hit the send button a little early so I can get out and walk around, as it looks to be too beautiful a place to be in my room writing. This weekend I join Rob Arnott and his friends (Mohammed El-Erian, Harry Markowitz, Jack Treynor, and Peter Bernstein, among others) at his annual conference. It is one of the few conferences I attend where I just go just to absorb as much as I can, and don't speak. This one looks to be special.

On Monday I fly out to Orlando to speak at the Chartered Financial Analyst's national conference on the "state of the union" of the alternative investment industry. I think my talk will garner mixed reviews, and is certain to be controversial in a few circles. I hope I get invited back some time.

Then I am back home for most of the next two months. I will make a quick trip to Naples to be with my friends at Jyske Global Asset Management for their conference the 29-31 of May (www.jgam.com). And I am going to schedule a quick trip to Cleveland to get a full physical at the Cleveland Clinic with my good friend and best-selling author Dr. Mike Roizen. I have put it off too long. I will tell you more about the really interesting program they have, where you can get a three-day, thorough physical in one long day. I think it is a real value.

And then there was a call from Tiffani last Saturday. She was in Kentucky visiting friends. One of my standing rules is that when I get back from Europe I am not to be disturbed before 10 at the earliest the next morning. But I got a call from her, and I groggily took it, worried that something was wrong.

"Dad, I'm pregnant. It's going to be a Christmas baby. What do you think?" Didn't she just tell me January 23 or so that they were going to try? That didn't take long. Not long at all.

Henry and Angel are due in June. Chad and his SO Dominique are due in October. I will go from no grandkids to three in the space of a few months. And Amanda is getting married in August. Lots of things happening in the Mauldin clan. And it's all good.

I need to wrap it up. Tiffani will be here in a few hours, and then the meetings start. Have yourself a great week; and if you are at the CFA conference, be sure and look me up.

Your almost ready to be a grandfather analyst,

John Mauldin

The Velocity Factor

John Mauldin — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:05:16 GMT

The Velocity Factor
Richard Russell Tribute

"A severe global recession will lead to deflationary pressures. Falling demand will lead to lower inflation as companies cut prices to reduce excess inventory. Slack in labour markets from rising unemployment will control labor costs and wage growth. Further slack in commodity markets as prices fall will lead to sharply lower inflation. Thus inflation in advanced economies will fall towards the 1 per cent level that leads to concerns about deflation.

"Deflation is dangerous as it leads to a liquidity trap, a deflation trap and a debt deflation trap: nominal policy rates cannot fall below zero and thus monetary policy becomes ineffective. We are already in this liquidity trap since the Fed funds target rate is still 1 per cent but the effective one is close to zero as the Federal Reserve has flooded the financial system with liquidity; and by early 2009 the target Fed funds rate will formally hit 0 per cent. Also, in deflation the fall in prices means the real cost of capital is high - despite policy rates close to zero - leading to further falls in consumption and investment. This fall in demand and prices leads to a vicious circle: incomes and jobs are cut, leading to further falls in demand and prices (a deflation trap); and the real value of nominal debts rises (a debt deflation trap) making debtors' problems more severe and leading to a rising risk of corporate and household defaults that will exacerbate credit losses of financial institutions."

- Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University

I had breakfast with Nouriel this morning down in Soho (I am in New York today). I thought the above quote was an excellent way to lead off this week's letter. Some of the more important questions of the moment are whether we face a serious bout of deflation, and if so, what can be done about it. There are market observers who are looking at the graphs which show the meteoric rise in the monetary base (see below) and predict that we will soon see much higher and rising inflation and a seriously falling dollar (accompanied with a large rise in gold). Is inflation everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon, as Friedman taught us? Can we see a large rise in the monetary base that is not accompanied by inflation? As Frederic Bastiat said (roughly), "In economics there is what you see and then there is what you don't see." The more important of the two items is what you don't see. In this week's letter we talk about what most market observers are not seeing, and why you should be paying attention.

We are going to revisit portions of an important e-letter I wrote earlier this year about the velocity of money. I am updating the charts and adding a lot of new commentary. I cannot overly stress how important this is. If you want to understand the markets, the dollar, gold, and more, you have to have this information down. You will need to put on your thinking cap, as much of what I am writing is counterintuitive and certainly not considered as received wisdom in much of the financial-commentator media. (Note: this letter will print longer than usual as there are a lot of graphs.)

Also, I am going to make an important announcement at the end of the letter about a new information service, and I need feedback from some of you.

Richard Russell Tribute

But first, I and some of my fellow newsletter writers (Bill Bonner and Dennis Gartman, among others, are slated to be there) are going to be hosting a special tribute dinner to honor Richard Russell for his outstanding contribution of over 50 years to not only the craft of investment writing but to the lives and investment portfolios of his readers. He is one of my personal heroes as well as a good friend. At 84, his writing today is better than ever, and now he writes every day, not just once a month! Richard is an institution in the investment writing world, and after talking with his wife Faye he has said he would let us plan the dinner.

Richard has some of the most loyal readers anywhere. I have personally talked to readers who have been reading Dow Theory Letters almost since the beginning (1956), and their enthusiasm for all things Richard has not waned.

We really hope we can get a roomful of Richard's friends, writing colleagues, and fans who have benefited from his wisdom over the years, to honor him for a life well lived and a true servant's spirit, as well as being a guide not just in the markets but in life. The dinner will be Saturday evening, April 4, 2009 in San Diego. In order to know how many people we should plan for, please send an email to russelltribute@2000wave.com indicating how many tickets you would like. Plan on the tickets being around $200, with any money left over going to Richard's favorite charity. I actually expect tickets to go rather fast, so let us know as soon as possible. We will get back into contact with you as to the exact time and place. Thanks.

The Velocity Factor

When most of us think of the velocity of money, we think of how fast it goes through our hands. I know at the Mauldin household, with seven kids, it seems like something is always coming up. And with Christmas looming, the velocity, at least in terms of how fast money seems to go out the door, seems faster than normal. And what about my business? Travel costs are way, way up; and as aggressive as we are on the budget, expenses always seem to rise. Compliance, legal, and accounting costs are through the roof. I wonder how those costs are accounted for in the Consumer Price Index? About the only way to deal with it is, as my old partner from the 1970s Don Moore used to say, is to make up the rise in costs with "excess profits," whatever those are.

Is the Money Supply Growing or Not?

But we are not talking about our personal budgetary woes, gentle reader. Today we tackle an economic concept called the velocity of money and how it affects the growth of the economy. Let's start with a few charts showing the recent high growth in the money supply that many are alarmed about. The money supply is growing very slowly, alarmingly fast, or just about right, depending upon which monetary measure you use.

First, let's look at the adjusted monetary base, or plain old cash plus bank reserves (remember that fact) held at the Federal Reserve. That is the only part of the money supply the Fed has any real direct control of. Until very recently, there was very little year-over-year growth. The monetary base grew along a rather predictable long-term trend line, with some variance from time to time, but always coming back to the mean.

But in the last few months the monetary base has grown by a staggering amount - by over 1400% on an annual basis, as shown in the next chart from my friend Dr. Lacy Hunt at Hoisington Asset Management. And when you see the "J-curve" in the monetary base (which is likely to rise even more!) it does demand an explanation. There are those who suggest this is an indication of a Federal Reserve gone wild and that 2,000-dollar gold and a plummeting dollar are just around the corner. They are looking at that graph and leaping to conclusions. But it is what you don't see that is important.

Now, the same graph but in percentage terms:

Several of my readers have sent me questions related to the chart below, which compares the above graph to the value of the US dollar, as measured in the trade-weighted dollar index. If the Fed is flooding the market with dollars, does that not mean a crash in the dollar is imminent? What foreign government or investor would want to hold dollars when the Fed is debasing the currency so rapidly?

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Illiquid

The answer is that the Fed is not creating money in the sense of, say, monetizing the national debt (that comes later in the letter). Remember that the adjusted monetary base is cash plus bank reserves on deposit at the Fed. Banks have to hold a certain portion of their assets as liquid assets in order to meet potential demand from depositors for their money. If they go below that required number, the regulators come in and demand they increase their liquid assets immediately.

Various assets have been getting a "haircut" as to their ability to count as liquid reserves. With more and more assets becoming illiquid, the amount of money held in the liquid asset portion of many US banks assets has been dwindling. What to do? The Fed decided to take these assets and trade them (temporarily) for US treasuries, which are quite liquid. It's a kind of "Give me your tired, your poor, your humble illiquid assets yearning to be free" program to allow banks to stay in regulatory compliance.

But notice something. While the Fed did create the T-bills, they did not inject new capital into the overall system. If a bank had one billion in assets and gave the Fed $100 million to get liquid T-bills, it still just has $1 billion in assets. Yes, it could sell them to someone else to get cash, but that someone else would use already existing dollars. The Fed has provided liquidity but did not inject (yet) new cash into the overall system through this program. At some point in the future, when banks are once again doing business with each other and the system is more liquid, banks will take those T-bills back to the Fed and receive back whatever collateral they used to get them in the first place.

To illustrate what I am saying, let's look at MZM, or Money of Zero Maturity. Stated another way, you can think of it as cash, whether in a bank, a money market fund, or in your hands. We will look at the growth of MZM in the next two charts, one of which shows the actual growth and the other the growth in annual percentage terms.

Now remember, Friedman taught us that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. If you increase the money supply too fast, you risk an unwanted rise in inflation. If the money supply shrinks or grows too slowly, you could see deflation develop.

Note that MZM was growing at close to an 18% rate year over year earlier in the year but that growth is now down to 10%. Also note that less than three years ago MZM was growing close to zero. Since that time inflation has increased. Therefore, one could make the case that the Fed is causing inflation by allowing the money supply to increase too rapidly. Case closed?

Maybe not. Correlation is NOT causation. More cash sometimes means that people and businesses are taking less risk. The Fed cannot control what we do with our money, only how much bank reserves it allows and how much cash it puts into the system.

Forecasting inflation from a money-supply graph is very difficult. It used to be a lot simpler, but in recent decades has been very unreliable, for reasons we will look at in a moment. But it is much too simplistic to draw a direct comparison between inflation and an arbitrary money-supply measure.

If we look at a graph of M2, which includes time deposits, small certificates of deposit, etc., we again see a rise in recent growth. M2 is the measure of money supply that most economists use when they are thinking about inflation. And we see that M2 is growing at a sprightly 7% year over year. This is not all that high historically, but again it is up significantly from the past few years. See the graph below. Note that there have been several times (as recently as 2000) when annual M2 growth was over 10%.

But there is more to the inflation/deflation debate than just money supply. Money supply is what you see. And now we look at what most of us don't see.

The Velocity of Money

Now, let's introduce the concept of the velocity of money. Basically, this is the average frequency with which a unit of money is spent. Let's assume a very small economy of just you and me, which has a money supply of $100. I have the $100 and spend it to buy $100 worth of flowers from you. You in turn spend the $100 to buy books from me. We have created $200 of our "gross domestic product" from a money supply of just $100. If we do that transaction every month, in a year we would have $2400 of "GDP" from our $100 monetary base.

So, what that means is that gross domestic product is a function not just of the money supply but how fast the money supply moves through the economy. Stated as an equation, it is Y=MV, where Y is the nominal gross domestic product (not inflation-adjusted here), M is the money supply, and V is the velocity of money. You can solve for V by dividing Y by M. (In last April's discussion of the velocity of money I used "P" instead of "Y". Lacy Hunt tells me the more correct statement of the equation is Y=MV, and I defer to the expert. Sorry for any confusion.)

Now, let's complicate our illustration just a bit, but not too much at first. This is very basic, and for those of you who will complain that I am being too simple, wait a few pages, please. Let's assume an island economy with 10 businesses and a money supply of $1,000,000. If each business does approximately $100,000 of business a quarter, then the gross domestic product for the island would be $4,000,000 (4 times the $1,000,000 quarterly production). The velocity of money in that economy is 4.

But what if our businesses got more productive? We introduce all sorts of interesting financial instruments, banking, new production capacity, computers, etc.; and now everyone is doing $100,000 per month. Now our GDP is $12,000,000 and the velocity of money is 12. But we have not increased the money supply. Again, we assume that all businesses are static. They buy and sell the same amount every month. There are no winners and losers as of yet.

Now let's complicate matters. Two of the kids of the owners of the businesses decide to go into business for themselves. Having learned from their parents, they immediately become successful and start doing $100,000 a month themselves. GDP potentially goes to $14,000,000. But, in order for everyone to stay at the same level of gross income, the velocity of money must increase to 14.

Now, this is important. If the velocity of money does NOT increase, that means (in our simple island world) that on average each business is now going to buy and sell less each month. Remember, nominal GDP is money supply times velocity. If velocity does not increase and money supply stays the same, GDP must stay the same, and the average business (there are now 12) goes from doing $1,200,000 a year down to $1,000,000.

Each business now is doing around $80,000 per month. Overall production on our island is the same, but is divided up among more businesses. For each of the businesses, it feels like a recession. They have fewer dollars, so they buy less and prices fall. They fall into actual deflation (very simplistically speaking). So, in that world, the local central bank recognizes that the money supply needs to grow at some rate in order to make the demand for money "neutral."

It is basic supply and demand. If the demand for corn increases, the price will go up. If Congress decides to remove the ethanol subsidy, the demand for corn will go down, as will the price.

If the central bank increased the money supply too much, you would have too much money chasing too few goods, and inflation would rear its ugly head. (Remember, this is a very simplistic example. We assume static production from each business, running at full capacity.)

Let's say the central bank doubles the money supply to $2,000,000. If the velocity of money is still 12, then the GDP would grow to $24,000,000. That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

No, because only 20% more goods is produced from the two new businesses. There is a relationship between production and price. Each business would now sell $200,000 per month or double their previous sales, which they would spend on goods and services, which only grew by 20%. They would start to bid up the price of the goods they want, and inflation sets in. Think of the 1970s.

So, our mythical bank decides to boost the money supply by only 20%, which allows the economy to grow and prices to stay the same. Smart. And if only it were that simple.

Let's assume 10 million businesses, from the size of Exxon down to the local dry cleaners, and a population which grows by 1% a year. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses are being started every month, and another hundred thousand fail. Productivity over time increases, so that we are producing more "stuff" with fewer costly resources.

Now, there is no exact way to determine the right size of the money supply. It definitely needs to grow each year by at least the growth in the size of the economy, plus some more for new population, and you have to factor in productivity. If you don't then deflation will appear. But if money supply grows too much, then you've got inflation.

And what about the velocity of money? Friedman assumed the velocity of money was constant. And it was from about 1950 until 1978 when he was doing his seminal work. But then things changed. Let's look at two charts sent to me by Lacy. First, let's look at the velocity of money for the last 108 years.

Notice that the velocity of money fell during the Great Depression. And from 1953 to 1980 the velocity of money was almost exactly the average for the last 100 years. Also, Lacy pointed out, in a conversation which helped me immensely in writing this letter, that the velocity of money is mean reverting over long periods of time. That means one would expect the velocity of money to fall over time back to the mean or average. Some would make the argument that we should use the mean from more modern times since World War II, but even then mean reversion would mean a slowing of the velocity of money (V), and mean reversion implies that V would go below (overcorrect) the mean. However you look at it, the clear implication is that V is going to drop. In a few paragraphs, we will see why that is the case from a practical standpoint. But let's look at the first chart.

Now, let's look at the same chart since 1959, but with shaded gray areas which show us the times the economy was in recession. Note that (with one exception in the 1970s) velocity drops during a recession. What is the Fed response? An offsetting increase in the money supply to try and overcome the effects of the business cycle and the recession. Y=MV. If velocity falls then the money supply must rise for nominal GDP to grow. The Fed attempts to jump-start the economy back into growth by increasing the money supply.

In this chart, Lacy assumes we are already in recession (gray bar at far right). The black line is his projection of velocity in the near future. If you can't read the print at the bottom of the chart, he assumes that GDP is $14.17 trillion, M2 is $7.6 trillion and therefore velocity is 1.85, down from almost 1.95 just a few years ago. If velocity reverts to or below the mean, it could easily drop 10% from here. We will explore why this could happen in a minute.

Y=MV

But let's go back to our equation, Y=MV. If velocity slows by 10% (which it well should) then money supply (M) would have to rise by 10% just to maintain a static economy. But that assumes you do not have 1% population growth, 2% (or thereabouts) productivity growth, and a target inflation of 2%, which means M (money supply) would need to grow about 5% a year, even if V is constant. And that is not particularly stimulative, given that we are in recession. And notice above that M2 is growing just about in line with that.

Bottom line? Expect money-supply growth well north of 7% annually for the next few years. Is that enough? Too much? About right? We won't know for a long time. This will allow armchair economists (and that is most of us) to sit back and Monday morning quarterback for many years.

My friends at GaveKal have their own measure of world velocity, and as you might expect it is slowing too. This slowing is a global problem and is one of the reasons we are in a global recession.

A Slowdown in Velocity

Now, why is the velocity of money slowing down? Notice the significant real rise in V from 1990 through about 1997. Growth in M2 (see the above chart) was falling during most of that period, yet the economy was growing. That means that velocity had to have been rising faster than normal. Why? It is financial innovation that spurs above-trend growth in velocity. Primarily because of the financial innovations introduced in the early '90s, like securitizations, CDOs, etc., we saw a significant rise in V.

And now we are watching the Great Unwind of financial innovations, as they went to excess and caused a credit crisis. In principle, a CDO or subprime asset-backed security should be a good thing. And in the beginning they were. But then standards got loose, greed kicked in, and Wall Street began to game the system. End of game.

What drove velocity to new highs is no longer part of the equation. The absence of new innovation and the removal of old innovations (even if they were bad innovations, they did help speed things up) are slowing things down. If the money supply did not rise significantly to offset that slowdown in velocity, the economy would already be in a much deeper recession.

While the Fed does not have control over M2, when they lower interest rates it is supposed to make us want to take on more risk, borrow money, and boost the economy. So, they have an indirect influence.

I expect the Fed to cut at least another 50 basis points next week, and to give us a statement with a nod toward difficult economic conditions. The latest Beige Book from the Fed was simply dreadful, so you can bet the governors will have a deteriorating economy in mind. Given the 25-plus-year low in consumer confidence, they have little choice.

I agree with Nouriel that the Fed will soon move rates close to zero. For all intents and purposes, the markets have already moved there. But is it having an effect on the willingness of banks to lend? Not hardly. Standards for lending are tightening every week. Look at the graphs below. The willingness of banks to make consumer loans is dropping to a 28-year low. And they are tightening standards on all sorts of business loans.

Now, I argued above that the Fed is not really expanding the money supply, so far. But within a few quarters, we will be facing outright deflation. The Fed is going to monetize at least a portion of what will be a $1+ trillion dollar US deficit. They have announced they are going to purchase $800 billion in mortgage-backed and other types of consumer loan assets. That will be a direct infusion of dollars into the economy. That is serious monetization. But they may feel they have no choice if they want to keep the US economy from going Japanese.

When someone becomes a Fed governor, they take them into a back room and perform a DNA transplant on them. They come out of that room viscerally, almost genetically, focused on preventing deflation from happening on their watch.

How much monetization will be enough to halt deflation and overcome the slowdown in the velocity of money and the rise in personal savings? No one knows. There is no fancy equation or model which can encompass all the factors, or at least not one I know of.

We will also soon see which of the additional deflation-fighting policies that Bernanke outlined in his 2002 "helicopter" speech the Fed will adopt. It is highly likely that we will see more than a few of them. It is quite possible that we will see the Fed start to set rates on longer-term bills and even bonds in an effort to pull down longer-term rates for corporations and individuals.

We will explore all the deflation-fighting options and what the results might be in future letters, but remember that there will come a time when the Fed will have to "take back" some of the liquidity they are going to provide. That means we could be in for a multi-year period of slow growth after we pull out of this recession. And this recession could easily last through 2009.

A Conversation with John and Friends

Next week, I will announce a brand new subscription service that we will be offering to you. I travel and speak all over the world, and during this time I get to have private dinners and personal telephone conversations with some of the best minds in this business. Tiffani has often remarked what an education she gets just sitting at the table with us, and wishes she could have recorded the conversations for everyone to listen to.

And that is what we have decided to do. We are going to invite you to regularly "meet me" at the table for conversations with my friends and colleagues. This will be the only place you will be able to listen to detailed conversations with my colleagues who are leading experts in their fields. These encounters will be designed so that out of the mountain of information available, you get a concise view of the current landscape and can be motivated to make better decisions in your personal and business economic life.

This week, would you please let me know what you think? Here are two additional ideas in the works:

1. George Friedman of Stratfor and I spent a day together last week, brainstorming. We decided we are going to have quarterly conference calls to analyze the geopolitical landscape and discuss the immediate economic implications. You will get to listen.

2. I get hundreds of intelligent questions each week that, if answered, could benefit all of my readers. We will be giving you a place to drop your questions into a "Virtual Hat," and I will then answer them on a protected website.

While the basic format and level of service in Thoughts from the Frontline is not going to change, in the first half of 2009 we will be launching these new, unique subscription services.

Which of these services would benefit your life? Do you have any compelling ideas that I haven't mentioned that you would like our firm to pursue? What do you enjoy about Frontline Thoughts? What changes if any would you like to see? Please let Tiffani and me have your feedback (good or constructive) and your ideas - send them to eu@2000wave.com. As an incentive, she will randomly pick 5 emails to receive a free annual subscription to one of the new services. Thanks very much.

The letter is already long, so I will refrain from personal remarks this week. Enjoy your week.

Your knowing that we will all get through this analyst,

John Mauldin

The Velocity Of Money

John Mauldin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 03:23:00 GMT

The late and great Milton Friedman told us that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. But there is an asterisk to his equation that we need to examine, namely, the velocity of money. Sometimes a fast-growing money supply is not as inflationary as you might think. Then we will take quick looks at why the banking sector is in for more and larger rounds of write-offs, as well as note that the housing industry is in a hole but is gamely digging itself deeper....(read more)