원문 보기
are you seeing signs of inflation beginning to increase we're seeing very substantial in Flight it's very interesting we're raising prices people are raising prices to us it's being accepted I mean it's not they don't take home building I mean you know the cost of we've got nine home builders in addition to our manufactured housing thing and then uh operation which is the largest in the country so we really do a lot of housing the costs are just up up steel costs just every day uh they're they're going up and that there hasn't yet been because the wage the wage stuff follows I mean if the UAW writes a three-year contract we got a three-year contract but if you're buying Steel at General Motors or someplace you're paying more every day uh so it's an economy really it's red hot I mean and we weren't expecting it I mean all our companies when they they thought when we're allowed to go back to work you know at or various operations we closed the furniture stores I mentioned you know they were closed for six weeks or so on average and they didn't know what was going to happen when they one album and you know they can't stop people from buying things and we can't deliver them but they said well that's okay nobody else can deliver them either and we'll wait for three months or something and start with the backlog grows and then we thought it would end when the 600 payments ended and I think you know around August the last year it just kept going and it keeps going and it keeps going and it keeps going and I get the figures every week I call calls me and we go over day by day what happened at three different stores in Chicago and Kansas City and Dallas and it just won't stop uh people have money in their pocket and and they pay the higher prices and on carpet prices go up in a month or two you know man that was the price increase for April for our costs are going up Supply chains is all screwed up you know for all kinds of people but it's almost a buying frenzy except certain areas you can't buy it you know you really can't buy international air travel and there's so the money is being diverted from a little from a piece of the economy into the rest and everybody's got more cash in our pocket than except for meanwhile you know it's a terrible situation for a percentage of the people you know this suit I'm more to suit you know for a year practically and that means that as a dry cleaner nurse just went out of business I mean that nobody's bringing in suits uh to get dry to clean nobody's nobody's bringing in white shirts uh the place where my wife goes a small business person if you didn't have takeout and delivery services for restaurants you got killed on the other hand if you've got takeout facilities done you know same Source sales of dairy cleaner up a whole lot and they adapted them but it's it is not a price sensitive economy right now in the least and uh I don't know exactly how one shows up in different price indices but there's there's more inflation going on than quite a bit more inflation going on than people would have anticipated just six months ago or thereabouts yeah there's one very intelligent man who thinks it's dangerous and that's just the start inflation is going to affect you the uh it's certain we will have inflation over time and we are following policies in this country now to stimulate things which stimulate business which are bound to have some inflationary consequences and to the extent that we borrow money from the rest of the world it would be very human on the part of of politicians in the future decide that they would rather pay the rest of the world back in dollars that are worth far less than the dollars they borrowed I mean it's so it's the classic way of reducing the impact and cost of external debt and we're building up a lot of external debt I always find it interesting when politicians now talk about using the taxpayers money to do this and the taxpayers money to do that and how the taxpayers are paying the bonuses at AIG we haven't raised taxes at all in this country you know I mean taxpayers are paying nothing beyond what they were paying a couple years ago as a matter of fact the federal revenues this year which were close to 2.6 trillion a couple years ago you know maybe more like 2.3 trillion so we are taking less money for the taxpayers the people are really paying for the things we're doing now will probably be the people who are buying fixed dollar Investments much of it from the US government and who will find the purchasing power when they go to redeem those Investments to be far less so you can you might say that that the AIG bonus is probably the Chinese are the people that are ultimately paying the most in terms of the loss of purchasing power they will have with their with their Holdings of government bonds U.S government bonds many years down the road but it sounds better to say the taxpayer than to say the Chinese are paying for it it's an interesting situation I read that comment every day about how the taxpayers are doing this and that and I haven't had my taxes raised you haven't had your taxes raised they're giving me 250 bucks back here pretty soon taxpayers haven't paid anything so far and my guess is that the ultimate price of much of this will be paid by a shrinkage in the value of the real value of fixed dollar Investments down the road and that will be the easiest thing to do and if it's the easiest thing to do it's the most likely thing to have happen so you will see plenty of inflation now the best protection against inflation is your own earning power if you're the best teacher if you're the best surgeon if you're the best lawyer you know whatever it may be you will command a given part of other people's production of goods and services no matter what the currency is whether it's seashells or rice marks or or dollars so your own earning power is the best by far if you're the best journalist whatever it may be you will get your share of the National Economic pie regardless of the value of whatever the currency may be as measured against some earlier standard the second best protection is a wonderful business you know if you if you own the Coca-Cola trademark company you will get a given portion of people's labor 20 years from now and 50 years from now for your product and it doesn't make any difference what's happened to the price level generally uh because people will give up three minutes of Labor fine whatever it may be to enjoy you know a uh 12 ounces of you know of a product they like so those are the those are the great assets your own earning power first and then the earning power of a wonderful business that does not require heavy capital investment that requires heavy capital investment you get killed in inflation and the with those guidelines I would tell you the best thing to do is invest in yourself yeah so the young man should become a brain surgeon and invest in Coca-Cola instead of government bonds counted back and you're discounting at present interest rates stocks are very very cheap now the question is what interest rates do over time but there's a view of what interest rates will be based in the yield curve out to 30 years and you know so on it's it's a fascinating time we've never really seen what shoveling money in on the basis that we're doing it on a fiscal basis while following a monetary policy of something close to zero interest rates and it is enormously Pleasant but in economics there's one thing always to remember you could you could never do one thing you always have to say and then what and we're sending out huge sums I mean president on Wednesday 85 percent of the people we're gonna get a fourteen hundred dollar check you know we're back uh 85 and a couple years ago we were saying 40 of the people couldn't never could come up with four hundred dollars of cash so we've got 85 percent of the people getting those sums and so far we've had no unpleasant consequences from it I mean people feel better and the people who get the money feel better and people are lending money they don't feel very good but it causes stocks to go up it causes business to flourish it causes an electorate to be happy and we'll see if it causes anything else and if it doesn't cause anything else you can count on it continuing in a very big way but there are consequences of everything in economics that is the that is why the Googles and the apples when we don't know Microsoft but they are incredible companies in terms of what they earn on Capital they don't require a lot of capital and they gush out more money and if you're trying to find bonds that gush out Margo more money from that federal government we got 100 billion physical shooting out like you know 30 or 40 million dollars a year or whatever it may be depending on the short-term versions so that puts the pressure on which is exactly of course what the monetary authorities want I mean that's they're pushing the economy innate and they're doing in Europe they're even more extreme and they're pushing and we're aiding it with fiscal policy and people feel good and people will become numb to numbers you know trillions don't mean anything that anybody but uh and fourteen hundred dollars does mean something to them so we'll see where it all leads but it's Charlie and I consider it the most interesting movie by far we've ever seen in terms of economics though yes and the professional economists of course have been very surprised by what's happened it reminds me of what Churchill said about Clement adley he said he was a very modest man and had a great deal to be modest about and that's exactly what's happened with the professional economist they were so confident about everything turns out the world is more complicated than they thought Kane said it many years ago that it's an invisible tax that only one man in a million really understands and its attacks on people that have had faith in their currency uh the government's issued that the best protection the best investment against inflation is to improve your own earning power yeah your own talents very few people maximize their talents and if you increase your talents they can't tax it while you're doing it they you know they can't take it away from you so if you become more useful in your activities your profession you know doctor lawyer whatever it may be that is the best protection against a currency that might decline at a rapid rate and and the best investment passive investment I I think is is a good business if you own an interest in a good business you're very likely to maintain purchasing power no matter what happens to the currency but uh it's interesting in the United States the value of the dollar since I was born is declined by 94 to six cents so inflation is a very cruel tax on people who believe in fixed dollars but things can work out pretty well even during inflationary times I mean if somebody told me when I was born you know the dollar bill is going to go to six cents I might have I might have said you know let me go let me go back I'm not I'm not interested in emerging into that kind of a world but actually it's worked out pretty well so I have no complaints
Comments 0