Tuesday Aug 20 2024 14:05
4 min
As Milton Friedman famously said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output”.
There’s lots of talk about “greedflation” and price gouging coming out of Washington these days. Kamala Harris on Friday outlined some broad economic policies to tackle housing, food and other costs – i.e. attempting to win over votes by saying she can wave a magic wand to end inflation. She even touted price controls — we know how these end. In the end, money supply is all that really counts when it comes to inflation.
So we really should be thinking about what the presidential candidates will mean for fiscal policy, that is, how much spending and debt is coming down the pipe. And on that front, it appears likely that the US is heading towards ever larger deficits, whoever wins the November election. It’s all bread and circuses. Harris is arguably stagflationary (boosting demand and constraining supply), whilst Trump could be more inflationary.
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Either way, it’s the 4D trade — debt debasement & dollar devaluation. No surprise then that gold is trading at record highs — the spot gold price touched a fresh record this morning — and the dollar has declined to its lowest level this year. Bitcoin has not had much luck lately — whilst Trump is ‘pro crypto’, Harris seems decidedly less so.
Stock markets continued on their merry way on Monday. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 each chalked up an eight straight day of gains and are moving closer to the all-time highs struck earlier this year. There were gains too in Europe as investors looked ahead to Jay Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole at the end of the week. The major bourses have opened broadly higher again this morning, but the FTSE 100 is lagging, down 0.3% in early trade.
Asian stock markets were broadly higher overnight, but China stocks fell after the PBOC kept its benchmark loan prime rate unchanged. Sweden's Riksbank cut rates this morning.
The market appears to have almost completely recovered from the bout of panicked selling at the start of August. But volatility should remain elevated for the next few months, particularly as we look to the uncertain US election and uncertain US economy.
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index fell by 0.6 percent in July 2024 following a decline of 0.2 percent in June — not so hot. Meanwhile, a NY Fed survey shows a record percentage of people (4.4%) expect to lose their job in the coming months — which is the highest since the survey began in 2014.
Not much data is due out today. Look to downward revisions to US jobs later this week.
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Past performance is not indicative of any future results. This information is provided for informative purposes only and should not be construed to be investment advice.
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