A few dozen 40-100 yr gold, silver, economic, commodity, and monetary charts

roadrunner

Yeah, I know, this is from the NIA website. In any case a large number of these charts/information are taken from sources such as the FED, Treasury, BLS, etc.
Shadowstats was used to provide the currently estimated inflation adjusted prices.

I was sort of surprised that the inflation adjusted commodity charts of grains and softs somewhat mirrored the PM's in the 1970's. I had always thought that PM's outdistanced
those by a large amount. All of them are basically playing catch up from the 1980's. The effective price of inflation adjusted housing today is roughly on par with the mid-1940's
early 1920's.

A nice package of important charts all in one place. I find the Dow to Gold chart the most interesting since it has formed an expanding wedge pattern over the past 100 yrs.
With the current downtrend well in progress, it is being pulled strongly down by the 1980 bottom.

NIA provided charts

roadrunner

gsa1fan

Wow! The rocket ship chart! Please explain?

DoubleEagle59

Great looking charts.

Let the good times roll!!

Got to love that almighty US dollar!!!

DoubleEagle59

roadrunner

Rocket ship chart of FED bank reserves (or also M0 showing the same trend):

Basically the FED dumped in 850 BILL in fresh reserves during the 4th qtr of 2008 to stem the financial crisis. This allowed the big banks not to have to start selling assets
to bring their loan to reserves ratios back into line. That essentially doubled M0 monetary base from $850 Bill to $1.8 TRILLION...in months.

What's worse the FED did it again this past quarter by dumping in a fresh $400 BILLION in reserves to stem current problems that so far have not really surfaced. That's almost a tripling of M0 in a little over 2 years.

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And way to go UCONN HUSKIES for keeping their 2nd dream season alive. It's not often (if ever) that a team that goes 9-9 in conference play and finishes
in the bottom half but still wins all its other games. 13-0 in tournament games. Bring on the Butler! May the best team win.


roadrunner

cohodk

Interesting. They make it a point to specifically say the DOW Jones (stock market) gains are due solely to inflation. Yet they fail to mention through written word, that most commodities, including silver, havent even done that well. Silver has finally beaten inflation due tto doubling in the last 6 months.

So there is nothing that is an inflation hedge?

Or, is it as I have always said, that all asset classes have their day in the sun, but when viewed over ones lifetime, all have returns commemsurate with inflation?


Oil still looks cheap, perhaps just not as cheap as we've become used to.

Home prices are very low and extremely affordable. Probably not going much lower, but not higher either.


I like the "net worth" chart. This is a result of a low interest rate environment and zero savings rate. "Saving" became a bad word in 1980 and was never to be mentioned. We have only ourselves for creating an excessive economy built on credit and negative savings. Had Americans been just a bit more frugal over the last 30 years, our economy would not have become so overheated and ripe for collapse. The charts also show people making less but also working fewer hours----well, duh!!! How many vacation days does the civil union workers get? HMMMM.


The inventories chart--to which they base a prediction of massive inflation, is directly due to increased productivity and just in time practices. Due to better communication and relations between supplier, manufactured and seller, inventories do not need to be built up as goods can be produced and delivered more timely.

I agree with them about the imports charts. It is not sustainable that we will import more than we export. What will change is that we import less as more is produced in the US. The Japanese quake has issued a wake-up call to manufacturers who have highly concentrated operations. If Japan had parts plants in the US, they would not need to shut down Toyota or Honda. US manufactures are are also going to see the risks of doing all thier manufacturing in other countries, such as China. Jobs will come home.

The Weimar hyperinflation charts are presented as scare tactics. Otherwise, much information can be mined from charts, but just like in gold mining, there is a tremendous amount if waste byproduct.