With the tragic disasters in Japan, there has been a lot more talk of the country in general.  Japan has an interesting economic story and it is important to review.

After World War II, Japan was devastated.  There were two cities that had nuclear bombs dropped on them and the country as a whole experienced a great loss in life and property.  But along with Germany, a miracle seemed to take place.  That miracle was the free market.  Japan and Germany both adopted relatively free market policies that laid the path to huge growth.

Japan became one of the richest countries in the world.  By the 1980’s, there was paranoia in the United States and other western countries that Japan was taking over the world.  Japanese companies were buying assets in the U.S. and were becoming big manufacturers.  People were worried that the Japanese were undercutting the competition by selling cheap products.  My response was to point out that we shouldn’t complain if they want to sell us inexpensive products.  Would we complain if they were giving them away for free?

Then the 1990’s came.  The Japanese stock market hit a high of over 38,000 in 1989.  In March 2009, it hit a low just above the 7,000 mark.  Perhaps the lost decade should be referred to as the lost 2 decades.

So if you invested in Japanese stocks in late 1989, you would still be down by well over 50%.  So much for the theory of buy and hold.  But Japan really is a mixed picture and it is important to look at both sides.

The Japanese people in general are hard working and highly educated.  Unfortunately, the government is mercantilist.  The government in Japan, while not the worst, is not exactly an example of free enterprise.  This has stifled growth.  There is much more bureaucracy and spending now than compared to 50 or 60 years ago.

Although Japan has seemingly struggled in the last 20 years, it is important to remember that it is the second richest country in the world (per capita) out of the major countries.  The U.S. is still the richest.  For this, I am not including small countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai, which are examples of the most economically free places on earth.

The Japanese government has an enormous debt.  The debt to GDP ratio is around 200%.  This is by far the highest of any industrialized nation.  But at the same time, the Japanese central bank is not creating money out of thin air like crazy as other places are.  This is why the yen is still an attractive currency.  The only reasoning I can think of behind this is that there are a lot of suckers in Japan buying government debt.  Maybe they can’t be considered suckers yet because interest rates have remained low, but at some point the holders of government debt will be suckers.

The Japanese government and Japanese central bank will be faced with a decision similar to that in the U.S.  Either the government will have to drastically cut back or the central bank will have to inflate.  If neither of these happen, then the Japanese government will default on its debt outright.  It cannot be sustained.

If there is one lesson to be learned from Japan, it is that the government can kick the can down the road for a long time if it can find enough suckers.  It really is amazing that the debt to GDP has gone to 200% without seeing rates skyrocket.

Japan will face the inevitable just like the west.  The government’s spending is not sustainable.  The earthquakes and tsunamis are a further setback for the Japanese people.  However, it is still a rich country with hard working people.  If the people there ever get the government to pursue free market policies like it did after World War II, the economy there would take off.

The latest chart of the adjusted monetary base is showing that the Fed is continuing to create new money at an unbelievable pace.  You can view the latest one-year monetary base chart here:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/usfd/page3.pdf

If you want a broader and much scarier view, you can view it here:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE

When QE2 is done, the monetary base will have more than tripled from 2008.  If this money gets out into the system and is loaned out via fractional reserves, then we will see massive price inflation that has never been seen in modern America.  The 1970’s will look very tame.

The Fed says it has an exit plan, but that exit plan would mean a crushing depression.  I think we are years away from that.  We may have another recession (or a continuation of one) before we get to the point of high price inflation.  Normally, upon seeing the adjusted monetary base skyrocket, it would be easy to predict price inflation on the horizon.  This time is different though because banks are taking the money of depositors and keeping it as excess reserves.

You can view the chart of excess reserves here:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EXCRESNS

The excess reserves have gone up in almost perfect correlation with the monetary base.  This has kept a lid on price inflation.  However, this won’t last forever.  Either the Fed will reverse course or this money will eventually get out in the form of new loans.

The Fed continues to walk on a tight rope that is getting narrower and narrower.  On one side is inflation and on the other side is depression.  It will keep shifting from side to side and overcompensating so that it does not fall.  Eventually, when it is faced with hyperinflation and can’t hold on any longer, the Fed will choose to fall on the side of depression.  Things will not be pretty until we get through this.

After my last post regarding buying a house, I received a comment from someone saying their sister is looking at buying a house.  Specifically, the issue of interest rates was raised and there was a question of whether someone should hurry up and buy now.

As far as interest rates, nobody really knows for sure if they will go up or down in the near future.  Regardless of one’s knowledge of Austrian economics, the future is unpredictable because of human action.  Austrian economics can help us make forecasts based on certain conditions, but even then the timing is almost impossible.  Of course, if any of us knew what interest rates would do next week or next month, we would be rich.  If we could do it on a consistent basis, we would be richer than Warren Buffett.

While I think interest rates will go up over the longer term due to Federal Reserve inflation and the government running up debt, it really is impossible to say what they will do in the short-term.  There were people 6 or 7 years ago saying that interest rates just couldn’t go any lower and yet they did.  If the stock market crashes again and people get scared of another recession (or the recession not ending, depending on how you look at it), then rates could easily go down more.

The good thing is, I don’t think interest rates should really dictate to anyone whether they should hurry up and buy a house.  For the person’s sister who will be looking, my advice is to look, but not hurry.  Unless you live outside of a big city in the Midwest, then chances are that there are some good deals in your neighborhood.  This really is a buyer’s market and you can afford to be patient and wait for a good deal.  In some areas, there are a lot of short sales.  While these can be really frustrating, they can also pay off.  While some foreclosures are good deals too, you have to be careful not to get into any bidding wars with other people.

The good news is that if there is a jump in interest rates, it will probably just drive prices down commensurate with the rise in rates.  If rates fall, then housing prices may tick up, but there should still be some deals out there.

You obviously can’t time the short-term moves in interest rates.  This is just a game of luck.  You can get a contract on a house and rates may go up or down the day before you were planning to lock in.  But I wouldn’t make a big decision based on a quarter point of interest.  And if for some reason you buy a house and rates fall after that, you always have the option of refinancing.

So for buying a house, my advice is that you should do it if it is right for you and you can afford it.  Be patient and don’t feel rushed because of interest rates.  When you do buy something, make sure you lock in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage so that you can pay back the bank in depreciated dollars later on.

Yesterday I received a nice comment and was asked about setting up a permanent portfolio via a 401k plan.  As a side note, I don’t always respond to comments as I don’t want to get bogged down in debates and get sidetracked, but if someone asks an interesting question, I will post a response if I think I can contribute something insightful (I’ll have another response to another comment tomorrow).

For a 401k plan, it is hard to set up a permanent portfolio (as described by Harry Browne in his book Fail Safe Investing).  It is even harder to recommend something because every company is different in what they offer.  Some companies offer plans that limit you to just a few mutual funds, while other plans may offer hundreds of funds.

If your 401k plan is limited and only offers a few funds, then it will be impossible to set up anything close to the permanent portfolio.  My best advice in this situation is to split up your money between stocks, long-term bonds, and a money market fund.  Hopefully your plan at least includes these options.  The problem here is that you don’t have anything in gold or even related to gold.  This leaves your portfolio vulnerable to inflation and if you are going to be short on something right now, an inflation hedge is the last thing you want to leave out of your investments.

In this circumstance, take any non-emergency money that you have saved up and invest it in gold or gold related investments to make up for the shortfall in your retirement plan, if this is possible.

If your 401k plan offers a lot of choices, then you may be able to work with it.  I have seen plans that offer all of the Fidelity mutual funds and Fidelity offers a lot of select funds.  The stocks, bonds, and cash portions should be easy.  For your inflation hedge, you can at least invest in a precious metals mutual fund. Now understand that this is not the same as owning the metal.  Gold stocks are actually much more volatile than the price of the metal.  So if you can’t invest in gold directly, you should go lower with a mutual fund of gold stocks.  In this case, it might be good to put 10% in a gold mutual fund.  For more inflation protection, you could also add in 5% for an energy mutual fund.  If you were to put a full 25% in a gold mutual fund (made up of gold stocks), your portfolio would get hammered if something happened like the fall of 2008.

In some Fidelity plans (and I suspect others offer similar options), you can use “brokerage link”, which allows you to invest in most mutual funds and maybe more depending on your plan.  If this is an option, you can take most of your 401k money and put it into the permanent portfolio mutual fund (PRPFX).  If your plan allows you to buy exchange traded funds (ETFs), then you can buy TLT (bonds), GLD (gold), and an ETF of the broad market like the S&P 500.  The cash portion is always easy to find something.  In addition, you could always take your gold percentage down to 20% and put the other 5% in SLV (silver).  Silver is more volatile, but can be very profitable in a commodity bull market.

Explore your choices with your 401k plan and adapt as necessary.  Just make sure you find some protection against inflation.  The Fed is creating new money like crazy and having all of your money sitting in cash is actually a huge risk right now.

Yesterday, Paul Craig Roberts had an article on the latest jobs report that said there were 192,000 new jobs last month.  In the latter part of the article, he discusses how these figures are determined.  I can’t really confirm or deny his comments there.  If his claims are accurate, it almost makes you wonder why anyone would pay any attention to such a report.

The part of his article that I would like to discuss in more depth is at the beginning where he points out that most of the added jobs were service jobs.  Paul Craig Roberts is a good writer and has been a great advocate for civil liberties.  He has taken a principled anti-war position and has been very libertarian in these respects.  Although he can provide interesting information when it comes to economics, this is the area where I disagree with him on a lot of issues.  He does not understand the free market.

He says in his article, “How can Americans, who had no growth in their real incomes and who are foreclosed from their homes and maxed out on credit card debt, car payments, and student loans, spend more every month in bars and restaurants?  How can a few service areas of the economy grow when nothing else is?”

This is representative of things he has written before.  He has a lot in common with Pat Buchanan.  Now, I agree with Roberts up to a certain point that, generally speaking, things are a mess right now.  There are a lot of distortions in the economy and government interference is preventing the proper allocation of resources according to consumer demand.  But who is he to say that there should be less jobs in the service area and more in some other area.

Back in January, I wrote a post on a classic article by Harry Browne dealing with economic fallacies.  In Browne’s article, he addressed this exact point.  For decades, people have been complaining that the U.S. does not manufacture enough.

What Paul Craig Roberts and others fail to realize is that there is nothing wrong with service jobs if that is what is being demanded.  Last time I checked, there was no shortage of food and clothing in the United States.  Now I understand that we don’t have a free market in the U.S., but it is still free enough that there is some natural aligning of resources with their proper use.

In an advanced civilization, more services mean more luxury.  There is nothing wrong with this.  It takes less people and less resources to make food, clothing, shelter, and other basic needs.  This is due to a variety of factors within the free market.  The high division of labor allows people to specialize.  There is comparative advantage which means that an American might be better off allowing someone in South America or Asia to make food, clothing, and other goods.  The CEO of McDonald’s might be the best cashier there is, but it doesn’t mean it is a good value of his and the company’s time to have him working the register.

In addition, technology gets better and there is more capital investment over time.  This allows more and better goods to be produced at cheaper prices (if there wasn’t monetary inflation) and it frees up human capital to focus on other things.  If consumers have all of their basic needs met, then they will demand other things.  Those things might be restaurants, spas, hair dressers, massage parlors, etc.

Again, I’m not saying that the economy is great right now (it’s not) and I’m not saying that all resources are being properly allocated (they’re not).  But if there really are service jobs being added, there is nothing wrong with this, especially when it seems that other industries (cars, construction) are being the most subsidized by government.

Housing prices have gone down across the United States in the last 5 years.  In some areas, prices are down by 50% or more.  Of course, other areas have seen smaller declines and there might even be a few areas that haven’t seen declines.  But where will housing prices, in general, go from here?

This analysis is a generalization as housing prices can vary and do different things from region to region.  For example, I wouldn’t recommend buying a house in Detroit, regardless of what the overall housing market does in the U.S.

There are a lot of pros and cons for buying a house today.  There was a huge bubble in real estate and we have seen the bubble pop.  The question remains if the bubble has completely deflated yet.  It is hard to say because the government has worked hard in trying to prop up prices or at least decreasing the rate of decline.

There are a lot of people underwater in their homes now.  They owe more for their mortgage than what their house is worth.  There a lot of short sales and foreclosures.  A good portion of these need to be cleared before housing prices will go up again.  In addition, it is hard to say how many people would like to sell but aren’t even trying right now because of the depressed market.

There are certainly a lot reasons to be bearish on housing right now.  With that said, there may be one very good reason to be bullish.  That reason is the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy.  While it is the Fed’s policies that caused the original bubble in the first place, the Fed is creating new money like never before and it will continue at least through June, unless they cancel QE2.

If you are looking to buy a house as your primary residence, I don’t think you should be too concerned about the short-term outlook on housing prices.  Instead, you should be asking yourself other questions.  Can I afford the payments each month?  Do I have money for a down payment?  Can I afford all of the other expenses with home ownership?  Do I plan to stay in the house for several years?

If you are answering yes to all of these questions, then perhaps you should buy a house for your primary residence, as opposed to renting.  Interest rates are not quite as low as 6 months ago, but they are still very low by historical standards.  If you can lock in a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, then you will pay it back in depreciated dollars.

If you are looking to buy an investment property, then the most important thing to look at is your payments vs. the rent.  When you consider your payments, you have to factor in the mortgage, the property taxes, association fees, homeowners insurance, repairs, and possibly a management company.  If you add up all of these things and average them on a per month basis and you can collect rent that is higher than this amount, then it is probably a good investment property if it is in a decent area.

The biggest indicator of a bubble five years ago was rents vs. prices.  You could rent a place for far less than your monthly mortgage payments on a similar place.  It meant that prices either needed to come down or rents had to go up.  In a situation where rents are higher (as we are beginning to see in some areas), then either rents will go down or housing prices will go up.

I think we will see some more in the way of price decreases in the near future.  But interest rates are a wild card right now and there are more signs of price inflation.  Even if housing prices don’t go up in real terms, they may go up in nominal terms due to the falling dollar.  This will be good for people with a fixed rate mortgage.  You can pay off your lender in money that is worth less and less each passing day.

As far as investments, I have warned about the possibility of uprisings in Saudi Arabia.  As far as oil is concerned, Libya is small peanuts compared to Saudi Arabia.  If major protests begin in Saudi Arabia, you can look for the price of oil to double or more if oil supply disruptions are threatened there.

This is an example of where international events affect the entire planet, both short-term and long-term.  Overall, the events should be positive for liberty in the long-term.  People are tired of oppression by thug dictators and are beginning to rebel.  We can thank technology for a large part of this.

It is interesting to observe where these uprisings are occurring.  There is a theme of protests happening in Middle Eastern countries, which are mostly dictatorships.  In addition, most of these dictators get money from the U.S. government, which makes it easier for them to suppress opposition.

We shouldn’t ignore the demographics of the countries that are experiencing these protests.  These are mainly poor countries where a lot of the people are living on a few dollars a day, if that.  Some of them have computers and cell phones because of the inexpensive technology industry.  But many of them are struggling just to put food on the table each day.

Saudi Arabia is different.  The Saud family are dictators and they are oppressive.  There is very little social freedom in Saudi Arabia.  But it is an oil rich country and there is a little bit of free enterprise there.  Although it is nothing like the U.S., there is somewhat of a middle class there.  In addition, there are a lot of foreigners working in Saudi Arabia.  The Saud family recently said they would spend $36 billion to help the people there.  If they were smart, they would have just offered it all in checks directly to everyone, but instead it looks like it will be more like an Obama stimulus on government programs.

Although there is certainly a possibility of revolution in Saudi Arabia, it is a different country that Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya.  There is more for people to lose there.  Sometimes when you have more wealth, you don’t take as much risk because you don’t want to lose what you have.

I had seen earlier stories listing several countries that could face revolution.  I saw the United Arab Emirates on this list a few times.  I don’t think the people who wrote these stories thought things through.  They have obviously never been to a place like Dubai.

Dubai and other parts of the United Arab Emirates have freer markets than the U.S. and almost everywhere else.  Dubai is an example of a benevolent dictatorship.  There are still problems with social freedoms, but even here it is a far better place than Saudi Arabia.  Economically speaking, it is a booming place.  Sure it had some problems a couple of years ago, probably because of its ties to the U.S. dollar, but Dubai has a lot going for it.  Despite what many people think, it is not a wealthy country primarily due to oil.  It has a huge tourist industry and it is a great place for international businesses.  There is very little in the way of taxes and regulations.

In addition to all of this, the majority of people there are immigrants.  People go there for jobs.  These people are not going to hit the streets and protest.  They know they have a better life there than the third world country from which they came.  I see the prospects of revolution in Dubai and the rest of the U.A.E. to be low.  I don’t see a revolution happening in a place that has indoor skiing.

Saudi Arabia is the wild card right now.  It could go either way.  If big protests do begin there, I hope you own some oil stocks or futures.

There is more and more talk of U.S. government intervention in Libya and other countries with protests.  There are calls for humanitarian aid and some are even saying the U.S. military should set up a no-fly zone.

Let’s examine the libertarian position on this issue.  First, it is wrong for anyone to initiate violence.  It was amazing how much restraint protestors in Egypt showed.  Even in Libya, it seems that most of the violence is coming from the government or in response to it.  It gets more complicated when a third party enters the picture.  Oftentimes, it can make things worse when an outsider steps into the picture as it can just cause more conflict.

This situation gets even more complicated because it is not one individual against another individual.  It is millions of people protesting the government, while the government is trying to retain power.  It is likely that there are also millions of people who support the Libyan government, even if tacitly.

It is important to realize that the same government that runs trillion dollar deficits, wastes tons of money, lies, cheats, steals, kills, and messes up everything it touches, cannot do anything right.  I am talking about the U.S. government here, although the same could be said for most or all governments.  But the point is that the U.S. government can’t magically make things better in Libya or anywhere else.  Washington D.C. is one of the most crime-ridden cities there is.  Let’s see the politicians clean up that one city from poverty and crime before it tries to remake the world.

From a libertarian standpoint, any individual should be free to donate money to protestors or even go over there and help them.  But it is not for the U.S. government to decide for Americans what to do.  The most that Obama and his administration should do is encourage non-violence (which would be hypocrisy of course).  The U.S. government should not spend one dime doing anything in Libya or any other countries for that matter.

With a bad economy and price inflation becoming a bigger concern, it would not be surprising for the politicians in DC to look for a distraction.  This could mean a minor war.  Another war would be horrible, but it would certainly serve as a distraction.  It could also be used as a scapegoat for high oil prices and a down economy.  Don’t rule anything out at this point.

Also, let’s keep an eye on Saudi Arabia.  If things start to erupt there, look for oil prices to spike a lot more than they already have.

Yesterday, Ben Bernanke was in front of Congress and he spoke about the rising price of oil.  He said that a prolonged rise would pose a danger to the economy.  However, he said, “The most likely outcome is that the recent rise in commodity prices will lead to, at most, a temporary and relatively modest increase in U.S. consumer price inflation.”

It is ironic that the man most responsible for rising oil prices is discussing this issue.  Although the news out of Libya and the rest of the Middle East have triggered a run-up of oil prices in the last few weeks, we shouldn’t ignore the importance of monetary policy.  First, as I discussed the other day, higher oil prices do not cause price inflation.  Monetary inflation is what causes higher oil prices.  If oil prices go up without monetary inflation, then we should expect to see other prices (especially those not directly tied to oil) go down.

When there is new money injected into the economy, this new money does not get spread around equally, especially at the beginning.  It goes into hot spots.  In the late 90’s, it went into stocks, particularly technology stocks.  In the 2000’s, it went into real estate (among other things).  Now this new money (whether it is from QE1 or QE2) is looking for hot spots.  There are disturbances in the Middle East where there is a lot of oil, therefore new money is used to bid up the price of oil.

When there is a general rise in prices over time (ignoring short-term effects of velocity), there is only one thing to blame.  It is from an increase in the money supply.  The Federal Reserve and the government that gives the Fed its power are solely responsible for this.  The central bank has been granted a monopoly over the money supply in the U.S.  Only the Fed can legally create new money out of thin air.  So for Bernanke to be sitting there talking about higher oil prices with a straight face is something to be seen.

This is why it was important for the government and bankers to change the definition of inflation.  Inflation used to be an increase in the money supply.  Now they define inflation as an increase in prices.  This is so that they don’t have to take the blame for inflation.  When there are higher prices, people like Bernanke find others to blame.  They can pick the enemy du jour.  Right now, they can blame Libya.  Then they can claim that the higher price of oil is causing inflation.  Don’t buy this nonsense.  Don’t even buy it with your depreciating dollars.

Harry Browne’s wisdom has been missed for 5 years now.  Fortunately, his legacy and his influence live on.