Crack Up Boom

Got this in the old email today, and think that the readers would be interested in it. Overall, it is an interesting piece that provides much food for thought.

kiss is still a kiss. A sigh is still a sigh...

And a bubble is still a bubble.

When a kiss is over, it’s over. When a bubble pops...well...that’s all she
wrote! All kisses end - even the wettest “French” kisses. And so do all
bubbles - even sloppy mega-bubbles of liquidity. This one will be no
exception. But of course, it’s not the certainties that make life
interesting...it’s the uncertainties - the known unknowns and the unknown
unknowns, as Mr. Rumsfeld says. We are all born of woman and end up where
all men born of women end up - dead. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have
some fun between baptism and last rites.

You’ll remember we said that this worldwide financial bubble is both
worldlier, and more financial than any in history.

And, for the moment, it is very much alive. So much alive that the media
can hardly keep up with it. Forbes magazine, for example, tries to
estimate the wealth of the world’s richest people. But the rich don’t
typically give out their balance sheets, telephone numbers and home
addresses. So, there’s a fair amount of guesswork in the calculations.

But when it came to guesstimating the net worth of Stephen Schwarzman,
founder of Blackstone, the Forbes crew wandered off into fiction. They put
his wealth at about $2 billion. Recent filings in connection with the new
Blackstone IPO show he earned that much in a single year!

In this phase of the bubble, it is as if your neighbors were throwing a
wild party - and you weren’t invited. You detest them...envy them...and
want to join them, all at once. A very small part of the population is
having a ball; everyone else is getting restless and wondering when the
noise will stop.

We wish we knew. And we’ve given up guessing.

Meanwhile, the experts, commentarists, kibitzers and analysts are saying
that there is a whole new phase of the giant bubble about to unfold;
things could get a whole lot crazier. Even many of our respected
colleagues are pointing to a text by the great Austrian economist, Ludwig
von Mises, for a clue. What we have here, they say, is what Mises
described as a “Crack-Up Boom.”

Before we go on, readers should be aware that the “Austrian school” of
economics is probably the best theory about the way the world works. Like
The Daily Reckoning, it is suspicious of efforts to control the natural
workings of an economy, in general...and suspicious of central banking, in
particular. The fact that it was a one-time “Austrian,” Alan Greenspan,
who became the most celebrated central banker in history, only increases
our suspicions. He was able to master central banking, we imagine, because
he understood what it really is - a swindle.

What is a “Crack-Up Boom?” Von Mises explains (with thanks to Ty Andros
for reminding us):

“‘This first stage of the inflationary process may last for many years.
While it lasts, the prices of many goods and services are not yet adjusted
to the altered money relation. There are still people in the country who
have not yet become aware of the fact that they are confronted with a
price revolution which will finally result in a considerable rise of all
prices, although the extent of this rise will not be the same in the
various commodities and services. These people still believe that prices
one day will drop. Waiting for this day, they restrict their purchases and
concomitantly increase their cash holdings. As long as such ideas are
still held by public opinion, it is not yet too late for the government to
abandon its inflationary policy.’

“But then, finally, the masses wake up. They become suddenly aware of the
fact that inflation is a deliberate policy and will go on endlessly. A
breakdown occurs. The crack-up boom appears. Everybody is anxious to swap
his money against ‘real’ goods, no matter whether he needs them or not, no
matter how much money he has to pay for them. Within a very short time,
within a few weeks or even days, the things which were used as money are
no longer used as media of exchange. They become scrap paper. Nobody wants
to give away anything against them.

“It was this that happened with the Continental currency in America in
1781, with the French mandats territoriaux in 1796, and with the German
mark in 1923. It will happen again whenever the same conditions appear. If
a thing has to be used as a medium of exchange, public opinion must not
believe that the quantity of this thing will increase beyond all bounds.
Inflation is a policy that cannot last.”

Mises is describing the lunatic phases of a classic inflationary cycle.

At first, no one can tell the difference between a real dollar - one that
is earned, saved, invested or spent - and one that just came off the
printing presses. They figure that the new dollar is as good as the old
one. And then, prices rise...and people don’t know what to make of it.
Later, they begin to catch on...and all Hell breaks loose.

You see, if you could really get rich by printing more currency,
Zimbabweans would all be as rich as Midas, since the Mugabe government
runs the presses night and day.

Von Mises died in 1973 - long before this boom really got going - let
alone cracked up. He may never heard of a hedge fund...or even a
derivative, for that matter. A world money system without gold? He
probably couldn’t have imagined it. People spending millions of dollars
for a Warhol? Twenty million for a house in Mayfair? Chinese stocks at 40
times earnings? He would have chuckled in disbelief. He understood how
national currency bubbles expand and how they pop, but he probably never
would have imagined how insane things could get when you have a whole
world monetary system in bubble mode.

He’d have recognized the beginning of this bubble...and he’d have
recognized the end, but the middle...or the beginning of the end - that
would have dumbfounded him. During his lifetime he saw a Crack Up Boom in
Germany in the ’20s...and a few more here...but he never saw a worldwide
Crack Up Boom.

No, dear reader, no one, anywhere, has ever seen a worldwide Crack Up
Boom. We’re the first, ever. Pretty exciting, huh?

We’ll soon get to see if the fundamental things still apply...after all,
this year’s Agora Financial Investment Symposium is centered on the ins
and outs of global investing. The conference is taking place in Vancouver,
British Columbia, July 24-27, and you won’t want to miss it. All of your
favorite Agora Financial faces will be there - along with a few special
guests, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb and James Howard Kunstler. Secure
your spot before the tickets sell out...

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