It is illogical to expect an artificially-low interest rate to help the economy. This is because the best-case scenario resulting from interest-rate suppression is a wealth transfer from savers to speculators. In other words, the best case is a ‘wash’ for the overall economy. The realistic case, however, is very much a negative for the overall economy, because in addition to punishing savers an artificially low interest rate will cause mal-investment and thus make the economy less efficient.

Furthermore, thanks to the Japanese experience of the past two decades there is now a mountain of recent empirical evidence to support the logic outlined above. Japan’s policymakers have tried and tried again to propel their economy to the mythical “escape velocity” by pushing interest rates down to absurdly low levels and keeping them there, but every attempt has failed. Unfortunately, the fact that interest-rate suppression has been a total bust in Japan has not dissuaded other central banks from going down the same path.

The root of the problem is devotion to bad economic theory. If you are convinced that lowering the interest rate, pumping money into the economy and ramping-up government spending is beneficial, then from your perspective a failure of such measures to sustainably boost the rate of economic growth can only mean that the measures weren’t aggressive enough. If the interest rate is reduced to zero and the economy remains sluggish, then a negative interest rate must be needed. If the economy doesn’t become strong in response to 10% annual money-supply growth, then 15% or 20% annual monetary expansion is obviously required. If a hefty boost in government spending fails to kick-start the economy, then it must be the case that government spending wasn’t boosted enough.

The alternative is that the theory underlying the policy is completely wrong, but this possibility must never be acknowledged.

A popular view is that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) is inflating the Yen to oblivion. This view is wrong. The reality is that while there is certainly a risk that the BOJ will eventually inflate Japan’s money supply at a fast pace, it is not currently doing so.

The spectacular QE program introduced by the BOJ in April of last year did have some effect on the money supply, but the effect was nowhere near as great as generally believed. As illustrated by the chart displayed below, the year-over-year (YOY) rate of increase in Japan’s M2 money supply rose from around 3% in early-2013 to just above 4% near year-end, but 4% is a long way from the explosive growth that most analysts thought would result from the BOJ’s new Yen-depreciation policy. Furthermore, the YOY rate of increase in Japan’s M2 has since drifted down to 3% and appears to be on its way back to the long-term average of 2% (I think it will be back at 2% by October). This means that Japan is still maintaining the world’s lowest monetary inflation rate, which prompts me to ask: Why are so many analysts still blindly assuming that the BOJ is rapidly expanding the Yen supply? Why aren’t they spending the 15 minutes that would be needed to validate — or in this case invalidate — their assumptions by checking the money-supply figures available at the BOJ web site?

An implication of the above is that the supply side of the Yen’s supply-demand equation remains bullish for the Yen’s exchange rate. However, for most currency traders this doesn’t matter. The reason is that the supply side dominates very long-term trends in the foreign exchange market, but the demand side often dominates over periods of up to 2 years.

One of the main reasons that T-Bonds continue to rise in price (fall in yield) is that most speculators continue to bet on a price decline (a rise in long-term interest rates). In other words, the sentiment backdrop remains supportive. It’s worth noting, for example, that despite the strong and consistent upward trend of the past 9 months, there is still a substantial speculative net-short position across the 30-year T-Bond and 10-year T-Note futures markets. Therefore, higher T-Bond/T-Note prices and lower long-term interest rates probably lie in store.

That being said, the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) is now a) very ‘overbought’ by some measures (momentum, not sentiment), b) within 2% of intermediate-term resistance at 120, and c) within 6% of its mid-2012 all-time high. A test of resistance at 120 will almost surely happen and a test of the all-time high will possibly happen prior to the next intermediate-term peak, but a sustained break into all-time-high territory is very unlikely.

TSI was short-term bullish on US Treasury bonds from mid-December of last year through to mid-August of this year, but turned short-term “neutral” in a report published on 17th August. I expect to see additional gains in the T-Bond price and additional declines in the T-Bond yield over the next few months, but the short-term risk/reward is no longer skewed towards reward. It is also not skewed towards risk, meaning that it doesn’t yet make sense to bet against this market.

The extent to which monetary stimulus weakens an economy’s foundations and gets in the way of real progress will be proportional to the aggressiveness of the stimulus. This is because the greater the monetary stimulus, the greater the part within the overall economy that will end up being played by ‘bubble activities’ (businesses, projects, investments and speculations that only seem viable due to artificially low interest rates and a constant, fast-flowing stream of new money). That’s why the unprecedented (at that time) monetary stimulus of 2001-2005 led to the most severe economic fallout in more than 50 years, and why the even more over-the-top monetary stimulus of 2008-2013 has paved the way for an economic downturn of even greater severity than that of 2007-2009.

I’ll be writing more about the coming economic bust (aka severe recession or depression) over the next several months, especially if signs appear that it will soon get underway. For now, here are a few preliminary thoughts:

1) The next economic bust is likely to be worse than, and different from, the one that occurred during 2007-2009. What I mean is that the next bust is unlikely to be an amplified version of what happened previously. The main reason is that almost everyone, including the monetary central planners, will be prepared for a repeat of 2007-2009. Of particular relevance, whereas the Fed didn’t start to pump money into the economy until almost 12 months after the start of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and economic recession (the Fed began to cut its targeted interest rate in September of 2007, but it didn’t begin to monetise assets in a way that boosted the monetary inflation rate until September of 2008), it’s likely that the next time around the Fed will be much quicker to ramp up the money supply.

2) Due to the much quicker application of monetary ‘accommodation’ to counteract future economic weakness, the next bust could be associated with sharply rising commodity prices. This would be due to commodity hoarding in reaction to the belief that money is being trashed.

3) In the lead-up to and during the next economic bust, gold will probably be the best investment because it is the most logical commodity for large investors to hoard. It is the most logical commodity-refuge due to its global liquidity, its globally recognised value, the fact that the amount of gold used in commercial/industrial applications is trivial compared to the amount of gold held for monetary/investment/speculative purposes, and the distinct possibility that a collapse of or an existential threat to the current monetary system would result in gold returning to its traditional role as money.

4) The next economic bust won’t be caused by a geopolitical event, such as the disintegration of Ukraine and/or Iraq, but it will likely be exacerbated by restrictions placed on international trade due to increasing geopolitical tension.

5) The timing of the next bust is currently unknown. Two years ago I thought that it would be well underway by now, but it’s clear that negative real interest rates have a remarkable ability to postpone the day of reckoning. My current guess is that it will begin in 2015.

6) Three things I expect to see shortly before the start of the next economic bust are: a) the S&P500 Index dropping well below its 200-day moving average; b) evidence across the financial markets of a general increase in risk aversion (e.g. widening credit spreads, strength in gold relative to most other commodities); and c) a decline in the US monetary inflation rate to below 7%.