Economics isn’t about money. Money is important because it facilitates the division of labour, but good economic theory applies with or without money. Economics is about how humans allocate scarce resources. This implies that trade-offs are critical to the good economist, because he/she understands that allocating scarce resources to satisfy one need in the present means that these resources will not be available to satisfy another need in the present or the future*. Right now, the entire world is dealing with a trade-off that has far-reaching consequences.

The trade-off is associated with the COVID-19 threat and has been portrayed as being between lives and money, but the correct way to view the trade-off is between lives today and lives in the future. Unfortunately, the people making the decisions regarding what should be done have neither the data nor the knowledge to properly analyse the trade-off.

For one thing, when decisions were made to implement widespread lock-downs these people clearly had no inkling of the short-term cost, in terms of illness and lives, of NOT locking down the economy. We know this because as recently as six weeks ago there were projections of millions of deaths in the US alone**, but the actual rates of death and serious illness have been vastly lower than projected. The experts who made these wildly inaccurate forecasts claim that the vastly lower death rates are due mainly to the lock-downs, but we know this isn’t true based on what happened in countries that didn’t implement draconian social distancing measures. For example, although Sweden, which was not forced into lock-down mode, has experienced a slightly higher rate of infection than its Scandinavian neighbours, its rate of COVID-19 infection is about the same as that of Germany, which is considered to have done a good job of containing the virus via strict social-distancing measures, and much lower than those of Spain, Italy, France and the US.

Even more importantly, the decision-makers are clueless about the long-term costs, in terms of lost lives and lowered living standards, that likely will result from the lock-downs. How could they not be clueless, because in order to make a reasonable assessment you must have a thorough understanding of history and good economic theory. As far as I can tell, not one of the health/medical officials or political leaders at the forefront of the COVID-19 decision-making process has this understanding.

Regarding the cost to human life stemming from locking down large sections of the economy, there is a lot of evidence that people who are poor and out of work are more likely to die than people who are financially comfortable. This is not only because the poorer people have access to lower-quality healthcare and food, but also because they are more prone to stress-related diseases and/or more likely to be subject to physical violence. In addition, a more immediate negative consequence of the lock-downs is that some people have been denied elective surgeries and others have decided not to seek immediate medical treatment for minor issues. This will lead to many deaths over the coming 12 months that would have been avoided with earlier medical intervention.

Note that I refer to GOOD economic theory above, because only a good economist is capable of comprehending the indirect, long-term and unintended consequences of a policy. A bad economist may well believe that shutting down the entire economy for 2+ months is akin to a very long weekend, and that everything will go back to normal soon after the shut-down ends — just like it does every Monday following the 2-day weekend shut-down. Larry Summers is a case in point.

The upshot is that people with power/authority are making decisions regarding a major trade-off between lives today and lives in the future while being in possession of insufficient information about one side and almost no information/knowledge about the other side of the trade-off.

*This is related to Frederic Bastiat’s Broken Window parable, in that what is immediately obvious is the benefit achieved by allocating the resource to satisfy one current need but what isn’t immediately obvious are the benefits that would have accrued if the resources had been allocated differently.

**The experts at Imperial College predicted 2.2M deaths in the US and 510K deaths in the UK.

[This blog post is an excerpt from a recent TSI commentary]

Last week, a highly paid (we assume) JP Morgan analyst opined:

“When it comes to market developments, we believe that the Fed’s action last Thursday represents a pivotal moment in this crisis. Powell’s statement included that “we will continue to use these powers forcefully, proactively, and aggressively until we are confident that we are solidly on the road to recovery” and probably the most important, historic statement, “We should make them whole. They did not cause this.” This crisis is different from any other in recent history in that it was not caused in any way by businesses or investors. Unhindered by moral hazard, the response of fiscal and monetary authorities is and will continue to be unprecedented, with the goal of essentially making everyone ‘whole.’ We believe the significance of this development is underestimated by markets, and this reinforces our view of a full asset price recovery, and equity markets reaching all-time highs next year, likely by H1. Investors with focus on negative upcoming earnings and economic developments are effectively ‘fighting the Fed,’ which was historically a losing proposition.”

Well, if moral hazard was the only thing that prevented the Fed from acting in the past to eliminate everyone’s losses, then why has the Fed never bothered to eliminate poverty? After all, not every poor person is in that situation due to having done something wrong. In particular, none of the children living in poverty are to blame for their predicament.

Taking a broader view, if it is possible for the central bank to make everyone “whole”, then why are some countries poor? These countries have central banks that are capable of doing what the Fed is now promising to do.

The problem, of course, is that the central bank cannot add real wealth to the economy. It cannot produce anything of real value. All it can do is conjure money and credit out of nothing, thus setting in motion countless exchanges of nothing for something and distorting the price signals upon which markets rely. This is a recipe for more poverty and generally lower living standards in the long term.

At some point during the second half of this year, the release of pent-up demand as restrictions are removed and people go back to work, combined with the flood of new money generated by the Fed, could make it seem as if there has been a ‘V’ bottom in the economy and that the entire recession lasted only about four months. This could enable the SPX to return to within 10% of its February-2020 all-time high before year-end. However, the price distortions that have been and will be caused by the effort to make everyone “whole” will prevent a sustainable recovery.

The deluge of new money will boost asset prices and the prices of life’s necessities, but many businesses that closed their doors during March of 2020 will never re-open and many people who lost their jobs will remain unemployed (and thus dependent upon government handouts). Also, many of the people who do end up with jobs will find that their real incomes have fallen, because there will be an excess supply of labour and the currency’s loss of purchasing power will be reflected to the greatest extent in the prices of things that are in relatively short supply. For the majority of people, therefore, the post-shutdown economy will never be as good as the pre-shutdown economy, not despite the Fed’s efforts but largely because of them.

In a blog post three weeks ago, I mentioned that in TSI commentaries over the past year I had been tracking the current performance of the gold mining sector (as represented by the HUI) with its performance during the mid-1980s (as represented by the Barrons Gold Mining Index – BGMI). The 1980s comparison predicted the big moves that have occurred since May of last year, including the Q1-2020 crash. I concluded the earlier post with the comment: “History informs us that after a crash comes a rebound and after a rebound there is usually a test of the crash low.”

Here is an update of the weekly chart that I have been showing at TSI for almost a year. The latest price shown for the HUI is last week’s close. The chart suggests that the obligatory post-crash rebound is almost complete and that the next move of consequence will be a decline to test the March low.

If a test of the March low occurs, it should be successful (it’s highly probable that the gold mining indices and ETFs made their bottoms for the year last month). However, with regard to future outcomes there is always more than one realistic possibility. For example, although the historical record suggests that a test of the March low will happen within the next two months, a more bullish short-term outcome is possible.

Parameters that could be used to indicate that a different short-term scenario was playing out have been mentioned at TSI, but at this stage I think the odds favour a test of the crash low for pretty much everything that has crashed, including the gold sector. Looking beyond the short-term, I expect that the major fundamental differences between the late-1980s and the present will assert themselves during the second half of this year and cause the current market for gold mining stocks to diverge (in a bullish way) from the 1980s path.