저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
요약 보기
결론: 2008년보다 더 큰 위기가 오고 있으며, 원인은 연준과 재정정책이고 그 결과는 인플레이션이다. 정부 재원 조달 방식: 세금은 가장 정직한 방식이지만 인기가 없어 정치인은 차입으로 지출을 미룬다. 국채 이자까지 합치면 실제 비용은 훨씬 커진다. 부채 한계: 미국 국가부채가 약 30조 달러에 달해 민간이 감당할 수준의 금리를 줄 수 없게 되었고, 원리금 상환은 사실상 불가능하다. 화폐 발행 구조: 연준이 국채를 매입하며 신규 화폐를 찍으면 경제에 새 지출이 생기고, 그 결과 물가가 오른다. 팬데믹 이후: 정부 지출의 약 절반이 연준의 화폐 발행으로 충당되는 것으로 추정되며, 현대화폐이론(MMT)을 근거로 무제한 지출이 가능하다는 인식이 퍼져 있다고 비판한다. 인플레이션은 세금: 정부가 화폐를 찍어 나눠주면 국민의 구매력이 줄어드는 것이므로 인플레이션은 사실상 조세다. 실업자에게 돈을 주는 것도 생산 없이 소비만 늘려 물가를 올린다. 자본주의 관점: 물가 하락이 생산성 향상과 생활수준 향상의 원동력이었는데, 인플레이션이 이를 막아 소비자의 이득을 빼앗는다. 투자 관련 발언: 인플레이션을 투자 전략의 핵심 변수로 보라고 강조한다. 구체적 종목·지수 가격 예측은 없다. 리스크: 화폐 발행과 부채 확대가 계속되면 물가 급등과 금융 위기가 나타날 것이라는 경고가 핵심이다. 출연자 전망: 장기적으로 인플레이션과 재정 위기가 악화될 것으로 본다.
다듬은 글
in my introduction you pointed out that I was warning about the 2008 financial crisis before it happened. That was the case. In fact, I was warning about it very vocally at many of the money shows I attended leading up to that crisis.
Well, I can assure everybody today that the crisis that's coming is going to be far worse than anything we experienced in 2008. But it's going to be of a different nature, and there's going to be a different outcome. Of course, the cause is the same: the Federal Reserve and monetary policy, and to a lesser but still important extent, government fiscal policy, which is helping drive the reckless monetary policy. But the way it's going to play out in the financial markets is going to be a lot different than it was in 2008. And this is the money show, so I think the title is appropriate relative to what's going to happen to our money.
The important consideration this time around is going to be inflation. I think inflation is the primary factor everybody should take into account when formulating an investment strategy, especially one meant to do well in the coming decade. You have to think of inflation not just as a monetary phenomenon, not just as its effect on prices, consumer prices and asset prices, but also in its most basic form, which is taxation. Inflation is really a tax. That's what it boils down to, and you have to understand this, because governments really have two ways of paying for their expenditures.
The most honest way is current taxation. Obviously, that can be unpopular with the people paying the taxes. Nobody likes sending money to the US government. So when politicians are constantly running for reelection, they don't want to tell voters how much all these government programs cost. There are certainly voters who benefit from the programs and couldn't care less what they cost, because they're not the ones paying the taxes. But there's another group of voters who pay the taxes and don't directly benefit from many of those programs, so they're more aware of what they cost. Politicians looking to get as many votes as possible try to find other ways to finance their spending that won't aggravate taxpayers.
Another way government can do it, which is really the first way just delayed, is borrowing money. I'm talking about borrowing legitimately from a private lender willing to lend money to the US government by buying a US Treasury bond. When governments do this, they're just delaying taxation into the future, because whatever money the government borrows today must be repaid tomorrow. Where will the government get the money to repay the bondholders? From the taxpayers of the future. But in the meantime, the taxpayers of today have to pay the interest on the money that's been borrowed.
So when government pays for its spending programs by borrowing, taxpayers are actually on the hook for an even greater cost, because they not only pay back the principal but also all the interest. It's like buying a new television. If you buy it outright, it's cheaper than putting it on a credit card and paying the minimum every month. By the time you pay off the TV, you may have paid two or three times the actual cost because of all the interest. That's the same thing when you pay for government programs with debt. By the time the debt is repaid, the programs have cost far more than if they'd been paid for with current taxes. The benefit to politicians is that taxpayers either don't understand this or don't care, because they think some taxpayer in the future will be stuck repaying the debt, not the voters today. By and large, that's how much of our government spending has been paid for until recently.
Now the government has to resort to a new method of finance, because it is now impossible to borrow from private sources. It can't afford to pay a high enough interest rate to private lenders to make the transaction viable, and that's because of the enormity of the debt we currently have. The US government has borrowed so much to delay the day of reckoning, kicking the can down the road as we've gone deeper and deeper into debt. We now have a national debt approaching 30 trillion dollars, and there is no way the US government can finance that. Repaying the debt is completely impossible, not with money that has any real purchasing power. The principal is so enormous that even if the government were forced to pay a normal rate of interest, it could not actually make those payments.
So what's happening now is that the government is financing its expenditures through inflation. The process works like this: the government issues debt, and the Federal Reserve buys that debt. But when the Fed buys the debt, it has to expand the money supply to do it.
When the US government borrows from a private lender, it's taking money from one person and lending it to another. It doesn't increase the money supply. The person lending to the government can't also spend that money, because they've lent it out, and the government then gives it to someone else to spend. But when the Fed monetizes that debt and prints new money, it's all new spending in the economy. The government hasn't taken money away from anybody. It's giving new money to other people.
Another way to think about it: when the government taxes you to pay for its spending, it literally takes your money. If it's an income tax, it comes right out of your paycheck. The government takes your money and gives it to somebody else, who spends the money you earned. You can't spend it, because the government took it. Your standard of living, your purchasing power, is diminished because you have less to spend.
But when the government doesn't raise your taxes and instead just prints money and gives it to that same individual to spend, your purchasing power, at least in dollar terms, hasn't been diminished. Now, though, there's another person who has been handed all this cash and can go out and spend it. That person competes with you to buy things, prices get bid higher, and the result of that type of taxation is that prices go up. Everything becomes more expensive. So instead of the government taking your money, it takes the purchasing power of your money. That's a tax.
If you look at what's happening now, especially since the beginning of the pandemic, government debt and money printing are off the charts. We've never experienced anything like this. About half the money the government is now spending is being printed by the Federal Reserve. So it's not really borrow and spend anymore, it's print and spend. Right now, nobody seems to think this is a problem. People seem to think we've stumbled onto the equivalent of a monetary fountain of youth. People like to call it Modern Monetary Theory: we can have whatever we want as long as the government prints the money to pay for it, and there's no limit as long as the government is willing to print.
Why didn't we realize this in the past? If all we had to do was print money, why have we been paying taxes all these years? The printing press has existed for hundreds of years. If we could have whatever we want through the magic of government printing, what's the point of everyone paying taxes? The reality is this is a fantasy that is going to end in disaster.
There's a big difference between earning money and having the government print it. When people are productive, when they have a job, go to work, and their labor increases the supply of goods or services available to the public, you do work, and your work either helps produce a good people want or need, or provides a service people need. In exchange, you earn money, and you can use it to buy the goods and services you helped produce. The more productive you are, the more you earn, and the greater share of what society produces you can enjoy.
But when the government just prints money and gives it to people, when you have unemployed people sitting at home getting a check from the government, they've produced nothing. They've added no goods or services to the economy, yet they can consume goods and services in the same proportions as if they had actually worked and been productive members of society. What does this do? It drives up prices. If your work adds to the goods and services you consume, that's fine. But if you start consuming goods and services without helping create any of them, you just have more money chasing a diminished supply, and prices are going to go up, and they're going to go up like never before.
The irony is that the Federal Reserve has been promising Americans more inflation. Well, that's one promise they're going to deliver on, and beyond their wildest expectations. Contrary to what everybody is saying, inflation is not a good thing. Higher inflation is not progress. What people want is a lower cost of living. When prices go down, that's progress, and that's capitalism. In real capitalism, businesses become more productive, more efficient, and develop economies of scale. As the cost of production comes down, demand goes up, because as prices fall, more people can afford to buy more. Falling prices have historically driven a rising standard of living.
The government has interrupted that benevolent process through inflation. Inflation doesn't simply make prices go up. It also prevents prices from going down. A decline in prices would have been a windfall for the consumer, and when government denies consumers that windfall, it's still a tax. The government is still taking your purchasing power, because the goods and services you want to consume are more expensive as a result of government-driven inflation.
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