With These Bailouts, Who Needs Austerity?

Bill Fleckenstein MSN Money April 2, 2011

4/1/2011 12:37 PM ET

By Bill Fleckenstein, MSN Money

Fiscal discipline is a political liability in our bailout era, making money printing the more likely course. This may boost stocks even as it erodes purchasing power.

Related topics: stocks, Europe, gold, oil, Bill Fleckenstein

The deteriorating condition of the PIIGS' sovereign debt continues. About a week and a half ago, both Greece and Portugal saw their ratings cut by Standard & Poor's, with more downgrades likely to come.

In addition, Portugal proved austerity is a short sale, as the government there basically "fell" after the Portuguese parliament rejected Prime Minister Jose Socrates' modest attempt at financial discipline. No one bothered to panic, though, as illustrated by this sample headline from Bloomberg: "Portugal Bonds Fall, European Stocks Gain, On Bailout."

Economic bubbles, past and present

European markets barely flinched again in late March, when early indications of a potential bank capital shortfall in Italy became apparent. (Bank stocks there declined 5% after a surprise deal to raise $1 billion was announced by UBI Banca on March 29.)

This brave, if arguably irrational, behavior can be explained by the fact that markets and investors have learned, in Pavlovian fashion, that trouble means a bailout is coming. They no longer even bother to panic and sell on bad news, but instead go straight into party mode.

Bill Fleckenstein

If markets can celebrate serious solvency issues as harbingers of more free money, why should citizens be willing to stand by in any democratic country and let their leaders impose discipline and, ultimately, tough times on them when they can just be "rescued" by a policy that seemingly has no downside? (The inflationary consequences take long enough to show up that they aren't even a consideration.) Thus, not only is austerity a short sale, but the printing press has been raised to an even higher level of worship than it was before.

On March 23, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a presentation that Marc Faber was making to some of the top people who manage one of the world's largest buckets of private money. Given the backdrop of austerity versus the printing press, it was certainly a well-timed event.

With all the crosscurrents in the world, it was a wonderful time to be able to see what minds like these were thinking (Marc and I also had dinner later), and I wanted to share some of the main thoughts that emerged from the day.

First of all, I thought I used the term "money printing" a lot, but in the several hours that I was around Marc, I must have heard him use it 25 times. In his view, money printing "distorts prices badly and causes huge misallocations of capital." Thus he feels that the wild volatility we have seen in nearly all markets will continue.

He also expects the response to any and all prospective problems will be even more money printing, and he continues to be bullish on gold (he says the risk is in not owning it, rather than owning it). He is also quite bullish on oil and oil stocks, adding that if you really think the economies of the world will do well, that is a commodity you definitely want to own.

Marc his words

His expectation is that money printing will be such that stocks generically may be OK, as they have been in other countries where the confetti-making has gotten out of hand, his favorite example being Mexico from the early 1970s to the late 1980s.

As the peso collapsed, stocks in general basically preserved purchasing power, which is the name of the game when the world is turning the colored paper we call "money" into confetti. In such an environment, it is extremely important to preserve your purchasing power (if not make it grow). Having said that, he sees markets in the short run as due for a decent-sized correction.

Marc also thinks government bonds will be a disastrous investment, and that the European Central Bank will print money rather than risk a collapse of the euro.

As for Japan, Marc sees select large-cap stocks there as attractive, since the Japanese will print money to finance reconstruction after the recent disasters there. In addition, Marc is keeping an eye on Japanese government bonds, as they may be an indication that things are starting to change in Japan in various ways.

Looking ahead, Marc said he would not be surprised to see sovereign defaults in the next few years. More importantly, in his view, central bankers have become such hostages to inflated asset markets, it is unlikely that tighter monetary policies -- whenever necessary -- will be implemented again.

Granted, most of the conclusions that one would draw from the time we spent together are similar to views I already held, but I always find it worthwhile to hear what other smart people are saying and thinking.

Why pay now when you can pray later?

Marc closed his presentation with a terrific quote from Ludwig von Mises that I also wanted to share: "There is no means of avoiding a financial collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as the final and total collapse of the currency involved."

The latter path, unfortunately, is the one we are on. It began with Alan Greenspan in the early 1990s and his small bailouts, leading to the attempted bailout of the burst stock bubble with a real estate bubble. Now, of course, we have increased the stakes with the rescue of the financial system as we continue toward the destruction of the dollar, as von Mises predicted.

At the time of publication, Bill Fleckenstein owned gold.

This column is a synopsis of Bill Fleckenstein's daily column on his own website, FleckensteinCapital.com, which he's been writing on the Internet since 1996. Click here to find Fleckenstein's most recent articles.

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